His mild expression dissolved. A steeliness entered his eyes, but still she pushed on. “Oh, indeed! I’ve heard the tales. Gossip flows both ways. Just as you’ve heard the rumors about me, I’ve heard the whispers about you. Your ego and arrogance are certainly without justification given your dire straits, and yet you still act the haughty prince—”
“I am a prince—with all the responsibilities and duties that accompany the title,” he countered. “It’s not an act, Miss Hadley.”
The tightness of his formal address should have alerted her to his sudden turn of mood, but still she could not hold her tongue.
Abruptly, he became the cause of it all—everything that was wrong in her world.
“A prince of a lost kingdom,” she shot back. She knew she was being unkind, but he had not been particularly kind to her. “I heard you lost half the men in your country to your war.”
His expression altered. The carved mask of stone cracked, and she knew she had pushed too far.
He grasped her arm and yanked her close, thrusting his face near hers. “It was never my war. I didn’t start it. I was scarcely a man when it began, but I had to face the hard reality of it. I sure as hell didn’t want it, but I ended it. Take heed, you know nothing of which you speak,” he hissed.
She glared down at where he gripped her arm. “Perhaps ladies in your country find primeval manhandling charming, perhaps even the delightful Lady Libbie would enjoy such treatment. Why don’t you seek her out and unhand me?”
He said nothing. Simply stared—clung to her arm with hard fingers.
Grier inhaled raggedly, her chest rising and falling with deep breaths. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so angry. And truth be told, it wasn’t all entirely at him. She found herself frustrated with this whole wretched scenario. Finding a husband . . . a man who only wanted to marry her for her sudden fortune . . . It was becoming quite the distasteful task, contrary to the hope she had felt when she started this whole endeavor.
She shook her head. This night had simply been too much. Her temper had gotten away with her.
She glared down at his hand on her arm. He followed her gaze before lifting his stare back to her face. “Perhaps Lady Libbie is a lady who doesn’t go about casting aspersions on those whom she does not know.”
“Perhaps,” she returned, not about to argue that she was more ladylike than the elegant Lady Libbie. Garbed in her silks and satins, Grier felt about as out of place as an elephant in the dowager’s drawing room.
The moment stretched interminably, so unbearably intense as they stared at each other that Grier thought she could hear the rush of blood in her ears.
She felt the clear shape of his hand, each press of his fingers on her arm. Awareness of their closeness, the shocking intimacy of the situation, came crashing down over her. Her gaze flicked around the empty music room with its lonely instruments.
Her skin snapped, awake and alive. In fact all of her felt alive.
More alive than she had felt in quite some time.
Her gaze drifted, settled on his perfectly carved lips. Temptation incarnate. A man’s lips should not look so beautiful. He was as seductive as the princes of all her girlhood fairytales. For a moment she allowed herself to forget that this prince lacked the heroic qualities to accompany such looks, that he thought her unsuitable, a mere nobody rubbing elbows with her betters.
With a deep breath, she let herself forget all of that. She let herself step outside her numb self and dive into life.
Before she could regain her common sense and think to stop herself—before she could let him think enough to stop her, she stood on her tiptoes and slid a hand around his neck, delighting in the sensation of his silky hair against her fingers.
This. She’d have this before sentencing herself to a cold marriage of practicality, to a life of loneliness.
Chapter Ten
Grier glimpsed the prince’s widening eyes as she pressed her lips to his. Her heart beat so fiercely she feared it might burst from her chest. Almost. If she allowed herself to think about what she was doing and allowed such a thing as fear to enter her heart.
She saw nothing anymore as her eyes fluttered shut.
In closing her eyes, she only felt. She surrendered herself to sensation, to the waking of desire within her blood.
She was no stranger to kisses, but it had been a while. The moment she tasted the prince’s lips, she knew he was the perfect cure for her numbness.
For several heartbeats he didn’t move, held himself still as marble against her, and she feared his rejection. That he would set her away from him.
Then his arms slipped around her and he was kissing her back, his lips parting against hers. She opened her own mouth for him with a small gasp. He swallowed that sound, drank it deep into himself. She pressed herself closer, tighter against him, her muscles straining to get nearer.
A shudder racked him when she tentatively tasted him with her tongue. She buried her hands in his hair, pulling him down just as he urged her up against him. He tasted her back and she moaned at the sinuous stroking of his tongue along her own.
His large hands roamed over her back, holding her tightly, fiercely. One of those hands slid around to span her rib cage, his thumb grazing the underside of one aching breast, and her body burned from the inside out.
There was nothing delicate or dandified in the way he kissed. She felt consumed. By her own desire and by the magic of his expert mouth on hers. Her hands delved deeper into his hair. With a hard tug on the strands, she forced his head to a different angle, repositioning his head for her and slanting her mouth against his one way, and then another. She didn’t know herself anymore, this woman, this stranger losing herself, taking, seizing what she craved as if it were hers. As if he were hers.
He groaned into her mouth, and the sound shuddered through her.
She relished the feverish movement of his lips on hers, the slide of his tongue deep in her mouth. He made her feel wanted, and that made her feel powerful. In that moment, she didn’t feel as if any of it could ever be enough—as if she could ever have enough of him.
Impossible as it seemed, the kiss deepened. They staggered together, clutching one another, stopping only when they collided with a pianoforte.
He nipped at her bottom lip and then sucked the bruised flesh into his mouth, clutching her closer for his starving mouth.
And still she wasn’t close enough. Her body hummed, alive and awake as she hadn’t ever felt before. That’s all that mattered. The extraordinary thrill of this moment.
She wanted to crawl into his drugging warmth, let it continue its waking heat through her. Nothing could ruin this moment.
Nothing except him.
As she dragged her lips to his jaw, kissing his bristly flesh, his voice rumbled in her ear. “My, my, Miss Hadley, I had no idea such a hellcat lurked beneath. Perhaps you’ve reconsidered my offer.”
She stilled, his words sinking in, reminding her where she was, who she was . . . who he was.
The fire in her blood cooled. The humming life that had so thrilled her slipped away until she was naught but the cold, numb shell again.
However nothing had doused his ardor. His hand drifted up from her rib cage to brush over her breast. The touch jolted her, sparked her to move, to react as any female of proper breeding should. As any unwed female who had not initiated a passionate kiss would do.
The crack of her palm against his cheek rang through the cavernous room. His arms dropped from her.
She stumbled away, gaping at him as he lifted a hand to his cheek, fingering the afflicted flesh.
“What was that for?” he demanded.
“You—you—” Her hand waved between the two of them, words of outrage strangling in her throat.
“Kissed you back?” he finished.
“No!” she denied.
“You touched my—” She swallowed, unable to say, unable to utter how close she had come to surrendering herself to the wretch. “You touched me. Intimately.”
“The way you attacked me with your lips, is it any surprise? I thought that’s where we were headed.”
“So this is my fault?” she charged, even as a small voice inside her head whispered, Yes. This is your fault. You attacked him with your lips like a man-starved harlot. Just as he said.
Heat swept over her face. “You were hardly a victim of my attentions.”
He shrugged in the shadowy room. “I reacted as any red-blooded man. I did not expect my touch would be unwelcome to someone so eager to kiss me in the first place.”
Mortified, she closed her eyes in a slow blink. She could deny nothing he said. She’d behaved the wanton and then slapped him when he reciprocated.
She opened her mouth to apologize. For everything. The kiss. The slap. She loathed nothing as much as admitting she was wrong. A weakness, to be sure, for she knew she was far from perfect. Papa had accused her of being too headstrong on more than one occasion, and rightly so.
Only she didn’t get the chance to utter those difficult words.
He stepped back from her, putting space between them as though she were something foul. And he likely thought she was. A tart or worse. The terrible notion seized her. What if he thought she was a desperate debutante hoping to get herself compromised so she could land herself a prince?
Hot gall rose up in her chest that he should think such a thing of her. The bitter taste coated her mouth at the thought of his suspecting she had set her cap for him. Holy hellfire! She fumbled with her hands, unsure where to put them and desperate to appear dignified now—to bury the wild, tempestuous female of moments ago and convince him she was a staid, respectable female with no designs on his person.
She watched him as he wiped a broad palm against his jacket, as if the feel of her was a regrettable sensation.
“Perhaps we should avoid each other during our stay here,” he announced.
His words stung. Absurd, of course. She completely agreed with him. Nothing good ever came from their encounters. He didn’t like her and she didn’t like him—contrary to that brief lapse in judgment moments ago when she had thrown herself into his arms. He was an escape. A break from the numbness. That’s all the kiss had been. She had seized a chance to feel again, to let sensation flood her as she lost herself in the arms of an attractive man.
She nodded roughly. They simply couldn’t get along. Every time they shared the same space sparks flew, and not sparks of the good variety. Well, any variety was really not to be desired with him.
She stopped nodding and finally found her voice. “I couldn’t agree more. You’re obviously here to pay court—”
“Not to you,” he cut in, his voice angry.
“I know that,” she gritted past clenched teeth. “And I wouldn’t want you to court me, make no mistake of that.”
He gave her a look that said he didn’t believe her. And she admitted to herself that she probably wouldn’t believe her, either. What girl wouldn’t want to be a princess? Even tomboy that she was, she’d often fantasized about living in a castle with a hundred-horse stable. It had been her favorite fantasy as she fell asleep every night.
She perched a hand on her hip. “Just because I kissed you doesn’t mean I like you. You were a welcome diversion from what’s been a less than pleasant few days.”
“Diversion?” He crossed his arms over his chest, clearly not liking the sound of that. Satisfaction curled through her. It was nice to offend him for a change.
Her lips twitched as her gaze swept over him—every glorious masculine inch. She knew it was improbable that anyone had ever called him a diversion before. Women probably thought the sun rose and set upon his manly visage. She was glad to make a dent in his overinflated ego.
She lifted her chin. “Yes. It won’t happen again, rest assured. The experience wasn’t quite what I hoped for,” she lied.
His cat-gold eyes swept over her as if he didn’t quite know what to think. A smile threatened her lips again. She doubted she was like any female of his acquaintance.
He straightened. “Happy to hear that, then. I’d hate for you to think that our interlude meant anything.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think that,” she assured in her most offhand tone.
He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze penetrating through the shadows, searching her face. She held herself poised, as still as an arrow that moment before it flies from its bow. Finally he broke his gaze, turned from her, and strode out the door without a backward glance.
Grier waited several moments, gathering her breath and her composure before making her way from the room. Her steps fell silently as she moved down the corridor, her shadow stretching long into the night.
“Where’ve you been, ol’ boy?” Malcolm asked.
Sev downed his brandy in one smooth move before motioning for the waiting footman to refill his glass. He cursed under his breath at the sight of his shaking hand.
“Nowhere.”
“Well, you were nowhere for some time.”
Sev shrugged. “Took a stroll. It clears my head.”
“What do you need to clear your head about? The world lies sprawled before you, yours for the taking. You’ve won the war and you have the plumpest of heiresses baited on hooks for your choosing. Life, cousin, for you at any rate, is good.”
Indeed, he should agree with that sentiment. For the first time in years, his country was at peace. He was alive and his kingdom was on the mend. He should be able to put the years of war and pain and loss and uncertainty behind him. He should.
Malcolm stared at him, still waiting for a response.
“I only needed a bit of air,” he replied, once again vague.
“Ah.” Malcolm smiled as if suddenly understanding. “Would that air happen to be in the company of a certain Lady Libbie?”
Sev grimaced. The lovely Lady Libbie had not even been in the vicinity of his thoughts, which was unfortunate because she was on the top of his list of prospective brides and the reason he found himself here at all. He’d already received her father’s hearty approval for the match.
His cousin mistook his grimace for guilt, it seemed. “Ah, I see.”
Malcolm winked in an exaggerated manner and Sev was quite certain he did not see anything at all. With a covert look for the other gentlemen in the room, he leaned in close. “Well, she is a fetching bit of skirt, I’ll give you that. Couldn’t blame you for stealing away with her for a spell. And her papa did encourage you to better acquaint yourselves, did he not?” A snort of laughter followed this.
Sev slammed down his drink. “I wasn’t with her.” Too late he realized he overly emphasized her.
“Oh.” Malcolm’s eyebrows winged high. “Not her, eh? Who then?”
Sev merely grunted and flung back another drink. He wasn’t about to confess he’d been occupied with the elder Miss Hadley and have Malcolm think there was something afoot between the two of them. Because that most assuredly was not the case.
Certainly she had kissed him with all the fire and skill of a seasoned courtesan, but that meant nothing. His cheek still stung from the memory of what Grier Hadley thought of their kiss . . . thought of him. He was not the sort to chase any woman. If she was not interested in a dalliance, then so be it. He wasn’t interested in her.
What desire could he feel for a female who insulted him and the country he’d spent half his life fighting for? She was not the sort of female he liked at all. Too impertinent. Too tall—sun-browned and freckled as any field hand.
Suddenly her bright eyes, seductive and heavy-lidded as they had been in that shadowy music room, filled his memory, and his throat went dry. Naturally he’d responded to her. She was a warm, willing female, and he was merely a
hot-blooded man. Certainly there was nothing he found appealing about the female. Nothing at all.
Still, the image of Miss Hadley swam through his mind and the taste of her burned on his lips.
He set his unfinished drink down. Malcolm blinked up at him. “I believe I’ll retire for the night. I should like to rise early for a morning ride.”
“In this weather?”
Sev snorted, recalling spending many nights in tents with arctic winds raging outside and distant cannon fire lulling him to sleep. “An English winter is no match for Maldania in winter. You should remember that.”
Malcolm’s eyes clouded over. “Perhaps. I was just a boy when we were banished.”
Sev nodded and squeezed his cousin’s shoulder, regretting reminding Malcolm of the sore subject. “You know you are free to return home. Grandfather does not blame you for your father’s transgressions.”
“It fails to signify. Mother shall never set foot on Maldanian soil again, and I cannot leave her here. It’s all water under the bridge at any rate. I’m an Englishman now. Thank God they love titles. I may be destitute, but I have no dearth of invitations to the finest homes and parties. I’ll not starve.”
Sev clapped his cousin on the back. “There is that.”
“Maybe I’ll wed an heiress myself. Mother says it’s about time.” Malcolm scanned the room with a judicious eye, his gaze stopping on Jack Hadley. “One of the Hadley chits could be ideal. That fiery one with the freckles who tossed her drink on you.” He chuckled. “Bet she’d be a fine ride between the sheets. No boring romp there.”
Sev’s hands fisted at his sides. “Leave her be,” he commanded.
Malcolm looked sharply at him. “What? She might be unsuitable for you, but not me. She’d probably be grateful for my regard. She hasn’t had an easy time of it.”
“She’s mine.” He didn’t anticipate the words. Did not know he felt so possessive toward her until he uttered them.
Yet staring at his cousin’s shocked face, he found he did not regret them.
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