Dukes to the Left of Me, Princes to the Right

by Kieran Kramer

  “The murder,” Lady Gastly explained. “Ducal intrigue. I’d never even heard of the Drummond line, and now I’m all agog, thanks to my cook.”

  “Your cook?”

  “Yes, she’s friends with another cook in Town who told her an uncle went missing.”

  “Right,” said Poppy weakly. “That’s just a silly rumor. He ran off to sea, is all.” She vowed to go home and tell Cook to stop spreading tales about the Duke of Drummond, even if she suspected some of them might be true.

  She had no idea if they were or not. She took a peek at him conversing with Natasha, his expression polite but cool. Drummond was a man of mystery. She certainly couldn’t trust him, even though he was a most interesting companion. She’d gone to bed yesterday evening wishing she were thinking of Sergei, but she hadn’t very well been able to do that when her spectacular evening with Drummond at St. Paul’s had dominated her thoughts.

  She couldn’t think of Sergei until this morning, when she’d fortuitously rid herself of thoughts of the duke by dreaming about him all night.

  But now, even though Sergei was sitting right next to her humming under his breath (she wasn’t sure why), those dreams were coming back to her. And in them, Drummond was kissing her and running his hands all over her body again and—

  “I hope they start the program soon,” she whispered to Natasha.

  Natasha arched a brow. “You look ill, Lady Poppy, and I believe Sergei should take you home. I’ll need Drummond to stay with me in the event I’ll require a translator. You’re flushed redder than a pomegranate, I’ll have you know.”

  “I am?”

  Natasha nodded. “Sergei, stupid as he is, has a wonderful cure for the muck sweats he learned from his last mistress, a hag named Zoya. He has the worst possible taste in women.” She eyed Poppy up and down with a scornful curl to her lip.

  “I’m feeling fine,” Poppy murmured, aghast at Natasha’s personal revelations about Sergei and her tendency to insult him. She leaned down and petted the corgis in the princess’s basket. One of the dogs growled at her, the one with the missing eye.

  I’m just fine, she told herself, eyeing Nicholas’s muscled calf out of the corner of her eye and ignoring the subsequent skittering of her heart. Nicholas’s legs were, um, attractive, to say the least. She’d noticed them last night when he’d been sprawled on the floor of the Golden Gallery, his thighs tight in his breeches and his boots molded to his calves.

  Sergei kept humming.

  Hmm. She didn’t remember him humming in St. Petersburg.

  “What song is that?” Poppy asked him, really to make him aware that he was humming a bit loudly, not because she cared about the song.

  “No song,” he said with a shrug. “Just humming.”

  Poppy tried not to grit her teeth. He was her beloved, after all. If this were a new habit of his, she’d learn to love it. Humming would become one of those signature things that reminded her of him. Her heart would soften, and then she’d even start making requests—for different songs.

  But definitely not this one.

  “Perhaps you should hum a song everyone knows,” she whispered.

  Sergei shook his head. “I told you. This is not a song. I am humming, nothing more.”

  And went back to it.

  Poppy put a discreet curl over her ear to mask the noise, and then she grew ashamed of herself. The poor man was nervous, no doubt, being in a new country. Humming must bring him a sort of comfort.

  Thankfully, however, he stopped when Lady Gastly finally stood and called the room to attention. “Today we shall meet the former housemaid of a terribly shocking poet named John Keats,” she announced.

  The housemaid sat at the front of the room, her nose red and her mouth small and pinched.

  “Very few know of his work,” Lady Gastly went on. “And probably for good reason.”

  A trifle bored already, Poppy suppressed a yawn. This John Keats probably would be dull if no one had heard of him. And then she found herself stifling another yawn. Now that she thought about it, she’d slept very little last night, thanks to Drummond appearing in her dreams.

  She took a peek at him sitting on the other side of Natasha and felt slightly annoyed.

  He looked back.

  “Yes?” he asked dryly.

  She could hardly tell him the scandalous things he’d done to her in her dreams, but she could purse her mouth disapprovingly and return her attention to the front of the room.

  Which was what she did, and somehow felt sad and lonely of a sudden. She did want to go home. Natasha had been right. Perhaps she was ill. She wondered if her face were still as red as a pomegranate and then determined it couldn’t matter. She must stay and endure Drummond’s handsome profile, as well as Natasha’s sharp elbow in her side, and Sergei’s humming if, God forbid, it started up again.

  “Who is this John Keats?” Lady Gastly asked the housemaid. “And why have I never heard of him until you came knocking on my door?”

  The housemaid scratched the side of her nose. “He’s a poet,” she said in a thick Cockney accent. “Most people never ’eard of him. It’s because he’s a bit of a rebel.”

  There were excited yet disapproving gasps from all around—but not from Poppy. She was too busy thinking about Drummond again and wondering what would have happened if she’d taken her gown all the way off at the Golden Gallery. For a moment there, she’d been so close.

  Good thing she hadn’t.

  Yes, very good thing. Because then she would have possibly wrapped her arms about his neck and pressed her breasts against his chest and …

  And moaned.

  One didn’t moan at the top of St. Paul’s. Not unless one wanted to go to hell. Which was why she was so glad Drummond had kissed her in the street instead. When she’d moaned there, only two horses tied to a post had heard.

  “I beg of you, Lady Poppy,” Natasha leaned over and said, “please allow my recalcitrant brother to take you home. I could swear you just whimpered, and you’re wriggling about like a small child. Boris is getting quite frantic.”

  Poppy gave Natasha a pinched smile. “I’m fine, thank you. I’ve simply a stitch in my side.”

  But she wasn’t fine. She’d felt so alive last night! She wanted more of that feeling, and sitting here in this stuffy drawing room was doing nothing to help.

  She only wished she could show Sergei the intensity of emotion she felt for him.

  Somehow she would convey to him with her eyes that she adored him.

  But he didn’t look her way. He sniffed. She noticed his nostrils were quite large. Larger than … larger than she’d remembered.

  He sniffed again.

  “Have you a cold?” she whispered.

  “No,” he said, and gave a long, slow sniff.

  “Of course you have one,” she found herself insisting in a calm manner, just like a doctor.

  But inside she was reeling. Please, God, she was thinking. Please let it be a cold. And not another annoying habit she’d never noticed in St. Petersburg.

  She shifted in her seat and touched her hair, hoping no one thought she was sniffing so loudly and often. And then she felt terribly guilty. She should be thinking about making the prince a special punch to help him recover from his cold rather than be embarrassed about his sniffing.

  What kind of true love took exception to a cold?

  Because surely, that’s what it was.

  He sniffed again.

  She almost giggled—a trifle hysterically. Natasha directed another scowl her way, but Poppy ignored her. The housemaid had pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and was handing it to Lady Gastly.

  “ ’Ere’s Mr. Keats’s poem,” the housemaid said. “I dare you to read it.”

  “I suppose I will.” Lady Gastly winced and held the paper by one corner. She cleared her throat and looked over her captive audience.

  “ ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,’ ” she intoned. “ ‘Much ha
ve I travell’d in the realms of gold. And many goodly states and kingdoms seen…”

  While her hostess ploddingly read the poem, Poppy sat up straighter. Miraculously, her annoyingly persistent thoughts of St. Paul’s and Nicholas’s kisses and Sergei’s sniffing faded. The poem simply took over.

  She was shocked.

  And stunned.

  Keats’s poem was magnificent. It spoke of amazing discoveries and how life-changing they are. It affected her the same way her experience at the Golden Gallery had. Like the explorers in the poem who’d overlooked the Pacific, she’d overlooked London last night with the same “wild surmise,” seeing possibilities she hadn’t known existed.

  Lady Gastly folded up the paper and handed it back to the housemaid. “Who here has a comment to make?”

  Sergei sat stone-faced. Poppy wondered if he’d even understood the words in the poem, so she asked the prince in quiet Russian.

  He yawned. “Yes, I like to ice-skate. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh,” Poppy replied, blushing. “I’m so sorry. I thought I asked if you understood the poem.”

  He gave a careless shrug. “It was boring.”

  Boring?

  Poppy heartily disagreed, but perhaps because Lady Gastly hadn’t read in the prince’s native tongue, he couldn’t appreciate it.

  Natasha elbowed her hard. “Why don’t they read a Russian poet?” she asked. “Someone should tell them so.”

  “I shall.” Sergei stood, looking regal and commanding. His brow was firm, his chin was noble, and he wore many medals on his chest. “I would prefer to discuss a Russian work,” he announced loudly. “Something by Aleksandr Pushkin will suit.”

  Poppy gulped and slid just a tad lower in her seat. She loved him, but she’d really have to talk to him about becoming “one of the people” when he was out socializing.

  Lady Gastly laid her hand on her cheek. “Oh, dear. Perhaps we should forget about Keats, Your Highness. He is a shocking fellow.”

  There were murmurs of agreement.

  But then a familiar voice spoke.

  “I completely disagree.” Poppy swung around and saw Nicholas standing. His voice was low but fervent. “Mr. Keats’s poem is well worth discussing. He taps into man’s intrinsic desire for adventure, something for which every soul yearns.”

  He made eye contact with Poppy, and she felt a rush of connection. He could tell she craved adventure, too, couldn’t he?

  “All of us can be grateful to have heard it,” he concluded, and sat down.

  One could have heard a pin drop.

  Natasha drew herself up and sucked in her cheeks. Sergei directed a long, cold stare Nicholas’s way. Even Lady Gastly appeared stunned into silence by the duke’s outburst.

  Poppy didn’t know what to think. The Nicholas who’d just stood and spoken on behalf of Keats wasn’t the callous rake she knew but someone entirely different. Someone who’d been moved by a poem.

  His reaction shook her. Was he—could he possibly be … sensitive?

  She dared to glance at him, and he winked.

  The scoundrel.

  He was as sensitive as a log. She should have known he was merely amusing himself. What did he know of poets and poetry? And what was he doing alienating Sergei and Natasha that way? Wasn’t he supposed to make the Russian twins happy?

  Poppy was so annoyed at his unapologetic air, she moved closer to the prince, who had resumed his seat. “Don’t worry,” she told him, “I shall discuss Pushkin with you.”

  Was he to be blamed for caring so very deeply about his country’s poets?

  “We have much to discuss,” Sergei said, his eyes smoldering with something.

  “We do?”

  He leaned closer to her. “Be ready, Lady Poppy,” he whispered in her ear. “Like the big Russian bear, soon I will roar at you with passion. The passion of Pushkin. And more. Much more.”

  He pulled back and smiled slowly.

  “Oh,” she said, and waited for that melty, shivery feeling to take over and for her heart to thump with wild abandon, but nothing happened.

  Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was one of those moments when Nicholas wasn’t sure his Service duty was worth it. The day after the literary salon, while Prince Sergei attended to business in Whitehall, Nicholas found himself walking down an expansive wing at the British Museum with Poppy, Natasha, and her dogs. The princess had received special permission to bring the hairy yappers on their tour—in a pram, of all things.

  Now Natasha came to a halt in front of a statue of a Greek goddess. “I must ask you to push the corgis now, Nicky,” she told him with a lazy yawn. “Only very dear friends are allowed to do so.” She cast a sly glance at Poppy, who fortunately was too busy examining the Greek goddess’s garments to notice the slight.

  Already he’d lifted the pram up a massive set of stairs, which was no small feat with five dogs inside. And now he was to … push the pram?

  Over his dead body.

  A quick glance at Poppy showed she’d apparently heard every word, after all. Her eyes twinkled in amusement.

  He gave Natasha a tight smile. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  She pulled in her chin. “Whyever not?”

  It was too late for regrets, but for the umpteenth time, he wished he’d never gotten intimately involved with the princess.

  “I can’t push dogs”—he felt as if he had a pair of stockings stuffed down his throat—“in a pram.” There was a slight snicker from Poppy. “I never have,” he went on, his voice rising, “and I never will!”

  Damned dogs in prams.

  What was the world coming to?

  He refused to be chagrined at his lack of manners—a man could take only so much nonsense—and strode ahead of the two ladies, ignoring Poppy’s polite insistence to the princess that she push the pram while Natasha gathered her breath.

  If Poppy was trying to make him feel guilty, it wouldn’t work.

  Nevertheless, he looked straight through several celebrated oil paintings without really seeing them and realized with a start of shock that he wasn’t his usual assured self. Poppy was getting to him—far more than Natasha was with her silly attempts to capture his notice.

  Yes, Lord Derby’s daughter talked too much and she thought she knew everything there was to know, but somehow she was different from all the other ladies of his acquaintance. He thought it might have to do with her total lack of regard for what he thought of her.

  That was it. She didn’t give a tuppence for his opinion.

  It was a refreshing change.

  Yet lowering, too.

  Not many people had ever been able to work their way under Nicholas’s skin, and especially no woman. Yet Poppy’s indifference to his masculine charms, the ones he wielded so well over the rest of the female population, was causing him to take notice of her more than he cared to.

  Natasha glowered and Poppy beamed when they caught up with him in front of a large canvas by the English painter William Hogarth. It was obvious the princess couldn’t bear the fact that a lesser mortal was pushing her corgis about, and Poppy—naughty girl—was apparently enjoying the royal’s discomfiture.

  “What do you call your primary seat, Drummond?” Natasha demanded to know. “And where is it located?”

  He inhaled a silent breath and prayed for patience. He could swear she’d asked twice already. “Seaward Hall’s on the North Sea,” he replied with an equanimity he didn’t feel.

  Poppy was so close. He could smell her hair—it had the scent of sunshine and fresh air, mingled with a trace of violets.

  “Weren’t there Vikings there at one time?” his fiancée contributed to the conversation (what there was of it), her eyes still on the painting, her slender hands gripping the pram.

  He couldn’t help feeling a rush of pleasure at her interest, as if he were some lovesick boy craving attention from an unattainable female. But he had her, didn’t he? Whether she liked it o
r not, she would soon become his wife.

  “Legend has it,” he told her in as plain a tone as he’d spoken to Natasha, “there were stashes of Viking treasure buried along the shore. As a boy, I was constantly looking for it.”

  “You were an adorable, mischievous child,” Natasha pronounced as if she’d been witness to his childhood herself. “Let us move on.” And she sauntered over to the next painting, her chin in the air.

  Poppy glanced at him and giggled. “Yes, you adorable, mischievous duke,” she whispered to him, “let us move on.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. Not many people could get away with making fun of him.

  The remnants of a smile still curved her lips when she pushed the pram forward again and asked, “Did you ever find any Viking treasure?”

  “No, I didn’t.” He couldn’t help smiling himself at the memory. “I poked the sand with hundreds of sticks, turned over thousands of rocks. And to this day, I wonder what precious loot I might have missed.”

  Natasha moved farther down the hall, no doubt drawn by a threesome of fashionable young ladies talking animatedly beneath a painting of a handsome shepherd.

  In front of a beautiful scene of a field in Tuscany, Poppy looked from beneath her lashes at Nicholas in the most seductive yet intelligent way. He could barely comprehend how that could be, yet somehow she managed it.

  “Natasha’s obviously charmed by you.” His betrothed had a womanly way of turning her head just so when she was conversing.

  “It’s all part of being a duke,” he said, ignoring the fact that he was drawing up a mental list of things he liked about Poppy. “Rather a bore. What about Natasha’s transparent machinations to throw you and Sergei together?”

  Poppy shrugged. “I have no doubt it’s to get herself alone with you.”

  “I agree,” he replied, “but she must think you’ll be receptive to her lead.”

  Poppy had the grace to blush. “It’s in your best interest I go along, Your Grace. A happy prince and princess is our goal, so don’t fault me for falling into line.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t—it’s the willingness with which you do so that amuses me. Sergei’s not nearly your equal, you know.”