The Princess and the Peer (28 page)

“No, it wasn’t like that.” But there was enough truth to his accusation to make her words sound weak, false.

From the derisive gleam in his eyes, she knew he heard the hesitation in her voice. “Then how was it?” he demanded. “Did you find the novelty of living in a mere town house entertaining after a life spent in palaces? Did you chuckle into your pillow each night over having to do without all the little luxuries, all the while knowing you would be returning soon enough to your pampered, overindulged existence?”

Her face stiffened. “You know nothing of my existence.”

“Do I not? Well, I’ll tell you what I think whether you care to hear it or not. I think you were bored, and with your brother not yet in England, you decided to escape your handlers and go off on a spree.”

Her eyes rounded in surprise. “How do you know Rupert wasn’t here at the time?”

“Because I have ears and a brain and I read the newspapers. I am aware that His Highness didn’t arrive in the country
until the early part of October—not long before you so abruptly fled from my town house.”

She said nothing, momentarily stunned into silence by how close his suppositions were to the truth.

“I also think,” he continued in a relentless tone, “that you misjudged the difficulties you might face running off alone to London. You were easy prey for those thieves, who took your reticule and your money, and I believe you were genuinely surprised at finding your coconspirator, Mrs. Brown-Jones, away from home.”

He crossed his arms pugnaciously over his chest. “Tell me, is she even a teacher, or was that yet another lie? Perhaps she’s actually the Queen of Sheba in disguise. After what I discovered tonight, I would believe almost anything.”

Emma drew herself up at his barely veiled insult. “Mrs. Brown-Jones was indeed my teacher and she did not conspire with me in any manner.”

“Except for telling me more lies, you mean?”

“She told you what you needed to hear.”

“No, she told me what you
wanted
me to hear.” His arms dropped to his sides and he stepped closer, so close she could feel the heat and barely repressed rage rippling off his body. “But what did
you
tell
her
? Did you tell her about us? About the fact you gave yourself to me the night before you left?”

Heat blossomed in her cheeks.

“Did you tell her how you tossed up your nightgown and let me tup you good and long and hard on my library sofa?”

Her mouth opened, but no sound emerged.

“What I don’t understand is why. Why did you give me your virginity? Or was its loss just another adventure? One more daring thing for you to try in order to keep the boredom at bay?”

A chill swept through her. “You think you have me all figured out, but you don’t know me at all,” she whispered.

A wry expression crossed his face. “You’re right. I don’t. Not after tonight. The girl I made love to was sweet and kind
and truthful. Her name was Emma. But you, Princess Emmaline, I don’t know what to make of you.”

She’d thought her heart was broken, but it shattered all over again. The man she loved, the man she dreamed of still, hated her. Even more, he disdained her, imagining the very worst things about her actions without giving her any chance to defend herself, without trying to see so much as a shred of good in her.

“Are you with child?” he asked suddenly, the blunt question taking her off stride yet again. “I at least deserve to know the truth of that.”

She could have punished him, she supposed. Refused to answer him either way. But she wasn’t the manipulative person he obviously imagined her to be and she would not deny his demand.

“No,” she said in a flat voice. “You may rest easy on that score, my lord. I am not carrying your child.”

She couldn’t tell if he was glad of the news or not, his features impassive and impossible to read.

“So all your flirting tonight is just that—flirting,” he said after a long moment. “Or are you in search of your next conquest? I’d be careful who you choose.”

The chill evaporated from her veins, replaced by a sudden fiery rage. “How dare you!”

“Then again, we’re alone.” He looked pointedly around the room. “If you’re just looking for a bit of slap and tickle, I’d be happy to oblige. We could christen yet another book room sofa.”

Her hand swung up without conscious thought, but he caught it before she could strike him, cradling her palm inside his own. Stepping closer, he slid his other arm around her waist and pulled her near. As he did, she caught the scent of alcohol on his breath. “You’ve been drinking,” she accused.

“That’s right,” he confirmed with an unrepentant smirk. “I dare say nearly everyone at tonight’s party has been doing the same.”

Still, she could tell he knew exactly what she was implying.

“So?” He nodded toward the couch. “What do you say?”

She stiffened against him. “I say that you’re vile and I don’t know how I could ever have thought otherwise.” She struggled suddenly, but he held her fast, showing her just how useless were her efforts. “Let. Me. Go!” she ordered.

But he only pulled her tighter, wrapping her inside the unbreakable bonds of his arms. His gaze locked on hers and he stared deeply, penetratingly into her eyes, studying her as if he might learn the answer to some unfathomable truth.

“Let you go?” he repeated.

The anger was abruptly gone from his voice, replaced by a strange introspection, the question asked as though he were speaking to himself. “I only wish I knew how.”

His mouth came down on hers.

She expected his kiss to be brutal, uncompromising.

That she could have handled.

That she might have been able to resist.

But his mouth was tender instead, his kiss searching, with a quality of almost quiet desperation and undeniable longing.

She wanted to push him away, but how could she when his touch felt so good, so right? When this act that might have been crude and cruel was suddenly beautiful instead?

She held on, letting him deepen their embrace, opening her mouth to invite him in so that more of their flesh could mingle, could connect.

Her anger fell away, pleasure flowing through her like a live current.

God, how she’d missed this.

Missed him.

Despite his hurtful words, she didn’t know how she would do without him again.

Suddenly she realized she couldn’t allow their kiss to continue. It would be much too easy to give in completely and let their desire carry them where it must not be permitted to go again.

She kissed him back for one long, blazing moment, then wrenched her mouth away, turning her head to the side when he would have drawn her back. “Stop,” she said brokenly. “We have to stop.”

“Why?” he countered. “You like it.”

“Yes. Too much.” Struggling again, she worked to break free of his hold.

This time he honored her request.

She took several steps back so that she was out of his reach. Then she wrapped her arms around her already aching chest. “You think I ran away for a lark, but you’re wrong. I ran away because I was scared and confused.”

“Scared and confused about what?” His dark brows furrowed with his own brand of confusion.

“My future. There is something else you do not know about me.” Shuddering, she drew a breath. “I am to be married. To a royal I have never met and of whom I know almost nothing. The marriage is one of convenience, of politics, arranged by my brother in order to secure our nation’s sovereignty.”

“What—”

She hushed him with a quick shake of her head, needing to get this out whether he chose to believe her or not. “I fled while Rupert was away, just as you supposed, while I might still have some chance of escaping. I planned to go to my old teacher’s house, to spend a bit of time away from my real life. And yes, to enjoy my freedom one last time. But then I met you.”

Moisture rushed unwanted into her eyes. She tried to blink it away, but more followed, a tear leaking down her cheek. “I wanted to tell you the truth about myself every day, but how could I when it would have meant the end? When I would have had to go away? I didn’t mean for things to go so far between us. I thought I could have a little fun without it causing either of us any harm. That I could have an adventure before I had to return home and do my duty as I must. But it became something entirely different, something that meant so much more.”

He stared at her, his skin unnaturally pale.

She rushed on again before she let herself say too much. “But none of that matters now. Whatever was between you and me is over, truly done.” She hugged her ribs even more tightly. “It’s probably better if you think I am a heartless, spoiled temptress. Keep thinking that, Nick, and leave me alone. Hate me, my lord, and regard me as a stranger, because that is all we can ever be.”

Before he had a chance to react, she turned and ran, her feet flying as if all the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.

“P
rincess Emmaline, another bouquet has arrived for you!”

Emma glanced up from her place on the drawing room sofa the following afternoon, the novel she had been pretending to read lying momentarily forgotten in her hands. She watched as one of her ladies-in-waiting carried a huge vase of pink hothouse roses into the room, the flowers’ sweet scent adding to the perfume of other fresh bouquets already adrift in the air.

“Who is this one from?” Sigrid inquired, tipping up her head from where she sat bent over her embroidery.

With their two blond heads, Emma imagined how she and her sister must look, like a pair of matched songbirds perched at opposite ends of the sofa.

Rupert completed the golden grouping, comfortably relaxed in a nearby chair. He held a carefully ironed copy of the
London Gazette
, the newspaper folded open to some article whose content clearly displeased him based on his periodic
harrumphs
of annoyance.

“The card says they are from His Grace, the Duke of Lymonton,” Baroness Zimmer said. “Quite some of the loveliest blossoms you have received today, Your Highness.”

The attractiveness of the duke’s floral offering notwithstanding,
Emma frowned as she tried but failed to recall the man. For the life of her, she had no memory of him. Had he been the dark-haired one with the quizzing glass or the fellow with the wine stain on his cravat?

Or neither?

Truthfully, all the gentlemen she’d met last night had blurred together, each one more forgettable than the last.

The evening as a whole was a bit hazy, she realized, the only memorable moments those she had spent with Nick. Her encounters with him were emblazoned in her mind’s eye with excruciating clarity, each detail vivid and indelibly stamped upon her. If she lived to be a hundred, she knew she would still be able to recall every moment, be able to recite each word and relive the bittersweet glory of his kiss.

After parting from him, she’d gone to the ladies’ withdrawing room, where she’d composed herself enough to return to the ball—or so she thought. But after only ten minutes, she’d known she could not continue. She’d had no difficulty convincing Sigrid that she had a headache, her sister happy to call for the coach so they might return to the estate and nurse Emma’s megrim.

Once inside her bedchamber, Baroness Zimmer had offered Emma a sleeping draft, which she had been more than willing to take. But rather than being lulled into a deep slumber, she’d lain listless and miserable, unable to rest as tears slid wetly over her cheeks, unstoppable as a tide.

Sometime not long before dawn, she’d finally fallen into a doze, her dreams more troubled than her thoughts as her mind replayed her confrontation with Nick over and over again. Her memories of their embrace taunted her as well, letting her experience his touch once more before he was viciously snatched away.

She’d been wan and listless at breakfast, unable to eat more than a bite of toast and take a sip of tea. When Sigrid suggested calling a physician, however, she had forced herself to shake off the worst of her lethargy. A quiet day at home was all she required, she assured her sister. The excitement
of the evening before had simply been too draining.

So there she sat with her siblings, acting as if she were reading when she’d really just been flipping the same two pages back and forth in an endless rhythm. It wasn’t as if she weren’t trying to read; she was. But each time she attempted to concentrate, the words would swim out of view and she would find herself thinking of Nick once again.

How he’d looked.

What he’d said.

And the way she’d run from him there at the last.

But he hadn’t followed, and she presumed he would not attempt to contact her again.

A shiver trailed over her skin like an icy breath as she remembered his shock, his rage. He’d been livid, the look in his eyes one that would have made a grown man quake with fright. But she’d held her own, refusing to be bullied or intimidated.

And she’d told him the truth, even if he had not cared to hear it.

But none of that had mattered. Maybe it was for the best that he despised her now, just as she’d said, because for them there could be no happy future.

Becoming aware that Baroness Zimmer was still waiting, clearly expecting her to offer some reply to her remark about the roses, Emma forced herself to gaze at the mantel where the older woman had placed the flowers.

“Lovely, yes,” Emma said. “And such a beautiful color.”

“How many is that now?” Rupert asked as the countess left the room. “A dozen bouquets each for you and Sigrid?”

“Eleven for Emma,” Sigrid informed him. “And eight for me. A widow of my years can only expect so much attention.”

Rupert arched a brow. “
Of your years?
You sound as if you’re about to enter your dotage. Shall I open the dower house once we return to Rosewald?”

“Don’t you dare,” Sigrid said, sending him an exaggerated
pout. “As you know already, I shall be more than content with the summer cottage, despite its size.”

The summer cottage
, as Sigrid called it, was more in the way of a manor house with forty-five rooms and a staff of sixty.