Princess Charming (24 page)

“Has no one told you, my dear? My indifference is the stuff of legend. As is my intolerance.” He glanced down at her. “And never wear those breeches again.”

Lucy rolled the eyes he was admiring. Clearly Nick had no intention of allowing her to make her case. Very well. She would let the school speak for her. This would certainly be the day that Nick saw reason, because not only would he be introduced to the value of education for the lower classes, he would also meet the generous benefactor who gifted the school on a regular basis. Lucy did not know the gentleman’s name, as his beneficence had been anonymous, but Mr. Cartwright, the headmaster, had assured her that the school’s patron intended to visit that very day.

So Lucy gave up her attempts to lay out all of the school’s good work and instead let Nick offer pleasantries about the weather and the state of the roads, only responding to his comments when necessary. Actually, she responded a good deal more than was necessary, which further irritated her. Nick was doing his best, or perhaps his worst, to charm her, and it was working quite well, for her stomach fluttered with the nervous energy that his presence always created. His smile and dark eyes alone would have lured her into a delicious sense of complacency, but when he added his quick wit and dry sense of humor, Lucy could not help but be captivated.

“You did no such thing!” she shrieked when he regaled her with a tale from his school days. “Where in England would one find an elephant to put in the headmaster’s sitting room?”

Nick chuckled. “It pays to have friends in low places as well as high. The caretakers of the menagerie at the Tower do not mind if you buy them a pint or two. Or a dozen.”

He laughed unselfconsciously at the memory, and a great yawning pit opened in her midsection. She did not want to like Nick St. Germain. She did not want to find him captivating or handsome or any of the other things that might tempt her into regretting her refusal of him. She had accepted Mr. Whippet, and her blackmail kept the vicar neatly in hand. After all, Nick did not want her for herself. He wanted a royal bride who could take her place in society, not an inveterate reformer who had recently found how much she preferred the freedom of breeches to skirts. No, it was only Nick’s pride and his sense of his own consequence, as
well as his sense of honor, that made him pursue her still. His interest had nothing to do with her true charms. The thought only made the emptiness in her belly expand even further.

“Ah, it looks as if we’ve arrived.” Nick nodded toward the carriage window. “A smart-looking place, I must say.”

The carriage had brought them down the high street of the village before pulling to a stop in front of a picturesque cottage. Ivy climbed with gleeful abandon over the slate-gray stone, and the panes in the windows gleamed with polished care. On the small patch of lawn in front, two coltish-looking boys attempted to roll a hoop.

“I wonder that the children are not at their lessons,” Lucy said before the two lads came running toward the carriage. Almost instantly, a dozen heads appeared in windows and around gateposts. The front door of the cottage was thrown open, and a stream of shrieking, shoving boys came pouring out.

Lucy winced at the cacophony, and Wellington growled, angry that his nap should be summarily interrupted. She had hoped that Nick would find the boys diligently at their studies, perfect models of the highest aims of reform. With reluctance, Wellington rolled to his feet and barked at the chaos.

Nick stepped from the carriage and turned to offer Lucy his assistance. “My lady.” He bowed over her hand and delivered her safely to the ground while she tried to ignore the way his touch sent warmth traveling up her arm and down her spine. He reached into the carriage for Wellington, who came growling in protest.

“Gor’ blimey, it’s him! The nabob! The nabob!” a young voice cried, and the others quickly took up the chant. Lucy looked around, thinking to find the anonymous benefactor, but no other carriages were in sight. At that moment, Mr. Cartwright appeared. The headmaster mopped his balding brow as he toddled down the path.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said, wiping his forehead between effusive greetings. “What a delight to have two of our greatest supporters visit us in unison.” He smiled at her and bowed over Lucy’s hand. “Lady Lucinda. The boys always look forward to your visits.”

Lucy opened her mouth to return the greeting, but Mr. Cartwright had dropped her hand and turned toward Nick.

“Your Highness.” The headmaster bowed so deeply that Lucy was afraid he would not be able to right himself, but with a bit of wheezing, he returned to an upright position. Wellington, gingerly held in Nick’s arms, sniffed the headmaster with disdain, but the little dog’s disapproval did nothing to stem Mr. Cartwright’s enthusiasm. “As always, it is a great pleasure, indeed, Your Highness. The boys have finished the tree house you helped them begin last week. They hoped to have a formal dedication ceremony after tea.”

Formal dedication? Last week? Lucy looked from one man to the other, from the gleaming pate of the round little schoolmaster to Nick’s tall, solid form holding Wellington as if he were some species of rat, and her heart sunk to the top of her half boots. Oh, no. Oh, heavens. Not again. She refused to be duped twice by Nicholas St. Germain.

Mr. Cartwright urged Nick down the path toward the cottage, and Lucy followed in their wake, battling her confusion. Only she knew the answer already. She knew from the way Mr. Cartwright directed Nick to the most comfortable chair in the drawing room. It was obvious in the way several of the boys approached Nick to have their hair ruffled and to give account of their progress in their studies. Nick called each boy by name and offered praise or encouragement, whichever was more appropriate, while Wellington huffily settled himself at Nick’s feet for a resumption of his nap. Lucy sank onto a settee, too stunned to be furious, numb and yet aching, as she observed Nick in all the glory of his patronage.

Her numbness did not last long.

Heat kindled in her chest and then spread to her cheeks. The cad. The scoundrel. He had known their destination since she had sent him her note, but he had not breathed a word of his secret. No, he had let her make a fool of herself through the length of London and beyond. Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes.

She looked up then, and Nick caught her eye. He was smiling, but not with the wicked triumph she expected. Instead, his mouth curved into gentle lines, as if inviting her to join in his secret. His chocolate eyes begged her indulgence, asking her not to reveal his deceit in front of the boys.

Lucy’s stomach twisted. He
was
a rascal and a scoundrel, but she couldn’t resist that silent entreaty. His pleasure in the boys was obvious, as was theirs in him. Lucy examined her heart and found she could not deny any of the males present the happiness they enjoyed. She would save her scold for later. After all, they were to picnic at Kew, and she could lambast him all around the pleasure gardens for the remainder of the afternoon. That thought was immensely comforting.

Mr. Cartwright, beaming benevolently, came to join her on the settee. “I had no notion that you were acquainted with the prince, Lady Lucinda. He is a fine fellow, is he not? Most generous to the school. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect he sent us his entire quarterly allowance last month.” The headmaster gave his brow one final mop before stuffing his handkerchief in his pocket. “With his help, we have purchased the cottage next door and filled it with aging seamstresses whose hands can no longer ply the needle. They will be motherly influences on the boys, or so we hope.”

Lucy barely heard Mr. Cartwright’s words, so intent was she on observing Nick. Now the boys were gathered in a ring around his chair as he regaled them with a tale of adventure in the wilds of his native land.

“Santadorran bears are far hungrier and far more fierce than French or Spanish bears,” she heard him say. “And so, as I huddled against the back wall of the cave, with no way to escape and no weapon at hand, I knew all was lost.” The boys alternately laughed and gasped as Nick’s tale carried them to the pinnacle of danger and then back down again. Lucy smiled at his vivid imagination. She doubted whether the Crown Prince of Santadorra had ever been allowed to venture alone into the mountain forests, much less enjoyed the opportunity to slay a bear.

The wild tales in the drawing room were followed by a more formal ritual, the dedication of the tree house. This newest addition to the school was found at some distance from the cottage, down the sloping lawn that led to the river. Nick appeared on the verge of offering her his arm for the trek, but the boys quickly commandeered him and Wellington and bore them off toward the river. Lucy followed more slowly at the side of Mr. Cartwright, who continued to lavish praise on Nick, eager for Lucy to murmur her approval at each new compliment.

The branches of a sturdy oak served as the foundation for the new tree house. Nick circled the tree, nodding and speaking softly to the tallest boy, while the others stood back and anxiously awaited his verdict.

“Well done,” he finally pronounced, and there was a collective sigh of relief and smiles all around. “Very fine, indeed.” Of course, then nothing would do but that Nick should climb the homemade ladder and admire the structure from within. Lucy held her breath as he mounted the wooden steps, mere bits of plank nailed into the tree trunk. A few moments later, he emerged on the small balcony that overlooked the river. He waved down at her, his face awash with pleasure, his manner enthusiastic, and Lucy could only wonder what had happened to the cynical, jaded nobleman he claimed to be. For here was a man who took as great a pleasure in the company of small, illiterate boys as he would in the society of England’s most elite aristocracy.

There was that pain in her chest again, Lucy thought almost offhandedly. She had felt it before, in her midsection, on the occasions when she had been in Nick’s company. That alarming but not unpleasant feeling had been born at their first meeting, when he had been laid out, unconscious, on the gravel path of Lady Belmont’s garden. She had felt it, too, that night in the maze at Carlton House, when she had first seen Nick in evening clothes instead of his rough gardener’s smock. Oh, she had felt this pain before in Nick’s vicinity more times than she cared to count—at Madame St. Cloud’s, in her stepmother’s kitchen, amid the press of the crowd in Spitalfields. Indeed, she felt it every time she was anywhere near him.

And it was at that moment, as Lucy gazed up at a prince acting like an overgrown, overexcited boy, that she realized she was in love with him—the one man in all of England who was most ill-suited to her dreams and purposes. An ache sprung up in her head and her heart simultaneously. Stupidly, amazingly, against judgment and common sense and reason, she loved him. And so she could never marry him, for she could imagine no worse fate than a lifetime spent with a man who did not want her, but simply a woman to conform to his ideas of a wife. Truly, she had no choice but to win the wager, or lose her heart forever.

NICK SO ENJOYED the company of the boys that he was tempted to linger at Mr. Cartwright’s school. He also wanted to postpone his explanation to Lucy. Once again he had deceived her, but this had been a harmless deception, one perpetrated solely so that he might enjoy the upper hand with her for a few brief moments. She had been a good sport not to expose his fraud in front of the headmaster and the boys. Instead, she had glared daggers at him and smiled in a way that promised decidedly feminine retribution.

Oddly enough, Nick was looking forward to it, for retribution meant she would have to get him alone to scold him properly. And if they were alone, the odds were good that he could maneuver her into his arms again. She had not seemed to object the last time he had held her in his embrace.

Their good-byes said, they left the boys behind to mourn the loss of their idol and Mr. Cartwright to contemplate what to do with the small bag of guineas Nick had pressed on him. Nick’s recent fortune at the faro tables should have been applied to a new pair of boots, but when Mr. Cartwright mentioned the need for cots for the seamstresses, the guineas grew too heavy for his purse. If he could report some headway with Lucy to his father, perhaps the king would relent enough to stand for new hessians.

To Nick’s surprise, the short drive to Kew proved quite pleasant. It was a beautiful June afternoon, the kind of day that made the copious amounts of English rain well worth the bother. When Nick had first arrived in his mother’s native land at age twelve, he had missed the mountains and pine forests of Santadorra quite keenly. The green beauty of England, though, had won another corner of his heart, and there was no place he loved as he did the royal gardens at Kew.