Spinning Gold

Spinning Gold

By Vivi Andrews

Spinning Gold

Published by Vivi Andrews

Copyright © 2012 Vivi Andrews

Smashwords Edition. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights reserved under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the produce of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Spinning Gold

Rumpelstiltskin Revisisted: No princes need apply.

Juliana Ravel will do anything to save her innocent brother from the executioner, but what the supposedly charming prince demands is impossible.  Spinning straw into gold?  He might as well ask her to fly.  Her only hope is a family heirloom - a gold medallion rumored to be the magic prison of one of the fabled golden fae.

Trapped inside the medallion for hundreds of years, Rue isn't fool enough to trust Juliana, but he can’t help but be tempted by the feisty beauty.  Even though she is the spitting image of the witch who betrayed and imprisoned him, Rue agrees to help her. For a price. 

Entranced by the exotic, golden-skinned man, Juliana agrees to his terms, believing her worries are at an end. But when the tyrannical prince finds her surrounded by riches, he isn’t about to let her walk away – instead holding her prisoner within the corrupt court. Juliana’s only freedom is her nights with Rue, where their negotiations turn to seduction, and together they construct a desperate plot to escape a life where they must keep spinning gold… or die.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter One: A Charm Offensive

Chapter Two: Comfortably Numb

Chapter Three: If I Pay Thee Not In Gold

Chapter Four: An Indecent Proposal

Chapter Five: Dream a Little Dream of Me

Chapter Six: Playing Court

Chapter Seven: Bad Moon Rising

Chapter Eight: All That Glitters

Chapter Nine: The Gilded Web

Chapter Ten: Three Guesses

Chapter Eleven: Getting Dusty

Chapter Twelve: Dearly Beloved

Chapter Thirteen: And They All Lived Happily Ever…

About the Author

Also by Vivi Andrews

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to everyone who helped make this book possible: my excellent editor, Gina Bernal, my fabulous beta readers—Kris, Kali, and Rocky—and especially to my parents who have always been my most staunch supporters. I’m lucky to have you.

Chapter One: A Charm Offensive

Once upon a time…

Juliana Ravel didn’t trust charm. Her father had been charming. She knew all too well that charm was merely a sweet candy coating—often disguising a core rotted with pure selfishness.

So when the notoriously charming prince flashed his famously dreamy smile down at her from his golden throne, his perfect lips curving in a perfect caricature of warmth, Juliana was not comforted. Instead her stomach curdled and cramped, and it was all she could do not to cringe.

But Ravels did not cringe. A Ravel was composed at all times. Even when petitioning a charming prince to spare the life of her wrongfully condemned brother.

Juliana sank into a low curtsey, sweeping down until the trailing ribbons decorating her sleeves brushed the floor. Head bowed, knees trembling, she waited for the prince to bid her to rise. She may be a merchant’s daughter, but she knew her courtly etiquette.

The throne room was opulent, with solid gold candelabras as tall as she was forming an aisle down the center of the room, leading up to the prince’s gilded throne, but she was not intimidated by wealth. Money was an old friend. An ounce of gold had a price, but royal favor was much more difficult to purchase.

What have we here? The prince’s low question carried easily across the silent room, his tone silken, smoothed by decades of practiced charm. Juliana fought back an instinctive shiver of revulsion.

"Citoyenne Juliana Ravel, Your Highness."

She didn’t dare lift her eyes, but didn’t need to in order to identify the speaker. Torlemain, the prince’s chief advisor, a tall, thin scarecrow of a man who always dressed in unrelieved black.

Ravel…Ravel… Now where have I heard that name recently?

Her thigh muscles began to burn with the effort of holding her curtsey motionless and deep. The weight of a dozen stares bored into her back from the opulent antechamber beyond the prince’s throne room. The viper pit, Colin had called it when he spoke of his mandated appearances at court. The prince’s inner circle. A courtly death-spiral, cycling ever tighter with each vaunted lord and lady trying to squeeze out those with more influence than they possessed. The parasites of power, hungry only for their own survival.

Her name hummed through their ranks. They knew her. Though not part of their elite circle, her wealth made her a fascination they couldn’t ignore. The Ravels had been richer than all of them combined before her brother’s arrest.

She heard his name too—and the word that was attached to it now—whispered on a delighted hiss that rippled through the crowd. Traitor. The injustice of it pressed into her chest, a hard stone where her heart ought to beat.

Ah yes. The Traitor Ravel. Such a shame. The prince’s honeyed tones possessed just the right amount of regret at her brother’s impending beheading. Rise, my dear. We don’t stand on ceremony here.

Another pretty lie. If she hadn’t bowed properly or stayed down long enough, the prince could have claimed insult and had her executed at her brother’s side. She rose without complaint, keeping that knowledge from her face. Her quick tongue would only buy her trouble—and she didn’t have space for any more trouble in her life—so she held it clamped between her teeth, her gaze fixed on the polished marble floor.

"Come now, Citoyenne Ravel. Am I such a fright to look upon?"

Juliana instantly raised her eyes. Certainly not, Your Highness.

The prince—handsome, poised, chestnut hair perfectly curled—sat on his throne, a smile tilting his lips as he studied her face, her breasts, the cinch of her bodice at her waist. A chill slithered down her spine.

The touch of his gaze carried with it the feeling that she was merely another possession stripped from her brother’s hands, a prize for idle men of power to squabble over. No one had ever dared look at her in such a way before. As an object to be passed around. Yes, the women in her family were known to be beautiful, the same way a diamond was beautiful: as a fact of its nature, a facet of its worth. The adjective was often preceded with frighteningly or brutally and accompanied by a wry shake of the head, as if her beauty was a weapon in her bargaining arsenal. Before this moment, Juliana hadn’t considered how beauty could be a blight as well as a boon. She could curse her naiveté later. Right now she needed all her wits focused on survival.

"Such a shame, the prince murmured. Not your husband, I hope."

My brother, Your Highness.

Juliana caught herself nervously adjusting the ribbons on her bodice and forced her hands to still. The decorative ties were shot through with gold thread—the family color—and the silk alone was worth a small fortune. She’d debated the extravagance of wearing such finery as a supplicant, but in her experience men of power responded more to strength than humility, and the Ravel family’s strength was money. Pots of money. Ducats enough to drown in.

An embarrassment of riches was the trademark of the Ravel clan…and every last penny of their fortune would be confiscated by the crown the day her brother lost his head. Small wonder Colin had been framed.

Juliana couldn’t stir much optimism that the prince would commute her brother’s sentence. It was too much of a coincidence that the richest man in the kingdom had suddenly been found guilty of a falsified crime at the exact moment the prince’s coffers were running low. Yet the prince didn’t have to yield to her demands, only to delay the execution. If she could buy them more time, the letters of petition her brother’s allies had sent to the king would have time to find him.

The king was not known as charming. Gregory V had a reputation as a harsh but fair ruler, merciless with his enemies. But Colin wasn’t an enemy. The king would save her brother, Juliana was sure of it. The problem was no one had seen the king in public in years. Officially, he was on an extended diplomatic tour, but there were rumors he’d died at sea or on some distant hunt, rumors the prince himself had poisoned or smothered him in his sleep, even tales that he’d gone barking mad and been locked in his own dungeon.

Juliana refused to believe the stories. If she did, her hope would lose its foothold and slide off into despair.

She couldn’t think beyond this moment. The moment of truth. Or of lies. Whichever freed Colin.

Found guilty only yesterday, wasn’t he?

He was, Your Highness, but in error, I assure you. Colin would never betray the crown. He is your most loyal subject.

And yet our courts say otherwise.

Courts notorious for their ability to be bought. Colin might spout off political nonsense in the pub, but he was no more guilty of treason than she was. Though if women could hold property under the law, she would doubtless have been in the cell beside him. Her brother’s guilt was gold.

Perhaps it could also be his salvation.

Juliana brushed her rings with her thumb, reassuring herself with the touch of gold. What if I could purchase his freedom, Your Highness?

The prince laughed, a seductive ripple of warmth that made goose bumps break out in icy droves across her flesh. Only a Ravel would think justice was for sale. What is your family motto again?

Juliana swallowed. She’d always hated the words and they felt vile now on her tongue. Through gold, justice.

The prince smiled. But you have no gold.

She lifted the rings, flashing them in the light from the sconces. I have these. She touched the diadem on her forehead. And this.

The bulk of their assets already seized by the crown, she wore all that remained of the Ravel fortune—golden rings, golden thread, a golden circlet gleaming in her golden hair and the medallion bearing the family crest, a heavy weight of solid gold dragging down the gold-linked chain around her neck.

The prince arched a brow. Pennies. Does justice mean so little to you?

He waved a languid hand and the ornate gilded doors,