“You think me a goddess?” she asked, blushing.
Henry’s fingers brushed the soft skin of her nape, his knuckles skimming across the modest bodice of her gown and down her arm. He lifted her hand to his mouth, his intended words slipping away. “I think you are more beautiful than any goddess.”
Though her violet eyes held his gaze, he saw them begin to shutter. “You should not say such things. Lady Carmichael—”
“Has left,” he said, with a rough breath. “She has broken our betrothal.”
“She has?” Henry heard the shock in her voice. “But…why?”
“Because it was a farce.”
Irina bit her lips. “What about your title?”
“I don’t give a damn about it.” Henry drew a deep breath, his eyes flicking to a tall blond gentleman who had just appeared on the far side of the ballroom, his gaze searching the throng of dancers.
“You can’t mean that. You don’t plan to marry at all?”
“No,” he said, distracted. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” she repeated very slowly and very softly.
“Yes, you know it’s complicated, Irina,” he said, scrubbing a frustrated hand through his hair. Henry knew he did not have much time before Remi discovered them on the terrace, and all he could think of was warning Irina away. Save her from making a terrible mistake. “Irina, you cannot accept Remi.”
“Why not?”
“He is not good for you,” Henry said, noting the suddenly brittle tone of her voice and the pinched slant of her features. “He is not worthy of you.”
Irina’s reply was quiet, her gaze following his through the paned glass of the French doors. Her face hardened with understanding. “You are the last person to judge who is or isn’t worthy.” Her voice broke on the last word. “It’s not that complicated, after all. You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to have me, is that it?”
“No, Irina—”
“Just leave me be, Henry.” She plucked the blossom from her hair and let it fall from her fingers as she pushed past him. “Forget me and go back to your life. Let me go.”
As Irina left him to enter the ballroom and meet Remi, one thing gripped him with a violent certainty: he could never let her go. He’d always thought himself incapable of love, but that did not mean he didn’t have a desire to protect…to guard…to cherish…to make Irina smile and laugh…to give her pleasure in every form. His happiness began and ended with her.
On cue, Henry’s demons churned within him, filling him with instant crippling doubt. If he laid himself bare, would Irina accept him as he was? If she truly saw him and knew everything of his deepest, darkest secrets, would she stay? Or would she flee like that courtesan had, looking at him in horror for the monster he was? His fears threatened to derail the fragile realization unfurling like a new bud finally given sunlight. Stopping to retrieve the fallen flower, Henry studied the bloom. In some unexpected way, Irina had found his cold, shriveled, broken heart and made it whole again.
Rose, it seemed, had been right after all.
Because somewhere, somehow he’d fallen in love with the stubborn, willful, outrageous little hellion. Henry laughed out loud, the knowledge knocking the wind out of him but making him feel as if he could indeed hold up the sky. It was time to do something that he hadn’t done in a long time…fight for something he desperately wanted.
Win or lose, he had to try.
Chapter Nineteen
Lady Dinsmore had wanted Irina to remain at home the next morning, at least until after luncheon, in order to receive any callers, flowers, or notes from possible suitors. The ball had lasted until the small hours of the morning, though Irina had taken her leave close to midnight, after Max had left and then Henry immediately after. She’d danced with a handful of gentlemen, though when she’d settled into bed, her feet sore and her cheeks stiff from holding a false smile all evening, she hadn’t been able to recall specifically whom.
By morning, she could barely remember anything from the evening before that did not consist of Henry or Max. Irina would never have been able to concentrate on politely receiving visitors, not when her mind and body felt torn in as many directions as it did. So, she had called for her maid earlier than expected, dressed, had breakfast sent up, and then departed before noon, before Lady Dinsmore had even emerged from her own bedroom.
Most of society would be out strolling in Hyde Park, Irina figured, so she had instructed her driver in another direction. Yardley Botanical Gardens was in southwest London, along the banks of the Thames, and was a collection of glass greenhouses, a bowling green, and topiary gardens. As the driver set out for the gardens, Irina’s maid squirmed on the backward facing bench, across from Irina.
“Oh, Your Highness,” Jane said in her squeaky voice. “You don’t really want to see the death flower, do you?”
She wore a serviceable black dress and bonnet, making her sudden look of pure revulsion even more pointed.
“Of course I do. I hear it is enormous and strange—did you know it doesn’t have roots? It’s a parasite, Jane.”
“A what?”
“A living organism that survives on another organism. In this case, I’ve heard the rafflesia patma has bloomed out of a spongy old tree trunk.”
Jane grimaced as the carriage rocked over the streets toward the southern edge of the city.
“I’ve heard it smells like a rotting corpse,” Jane said. Her coloring, usually flush and healthy, had gone a bit yellow.
“I doubt it is as offensive as that,” Irina replied, though she secretly hoped it was. In fact, she was counting on it being too odious for most ladies and gentlemen to visit. She knew there would be people there, coming only to view the rare flower and to be seen doing so, but she also knew there would have been far more people clucking and crooning around Hyde Park and Rotten Row.
When they arrived, however, Irina took one look into the lake of carriages, curricles, and broughams parked outside the botanical gardens and decided she might have been wrong. She considered leaving, but then thought of the rafflesia patma and realized she was actually excited to see it. Even smell it, oddly enough.
She and Jane got out of the carriage and, almost immediately, Irina was spotted.
“Princess!” cried a voice from near a long, sleek topless carriage. Lady Lyon hopped and waved to gain her attention, and Irina started for her. Gwen had a man with her, and by his paunch and glowering expression, Irina figured he was Lord Lyon. He looked just as pleased as Jane to be there.
The countess kissed Irina on both cheeks before glancing back at her husband.
“Darling, this is Princess Irina Volkonsky,” Gwen said, to which Lord Lyon clicked his heels and bowed in a surprisingly fashionable manner. She’d expected a grumbled hello from his sour expression.
“Are you on your way in?” Irina asked.
“Oh yes! This is our second time coming. We were here last week. I cannot describe just how awful the stench was!”
“I could think of a few words to describe it,” Lord Lyon said, his nostrils flaring.
From behind Irina, Jane made a soft mewling sound. She turned and saw her maid’s coloring had drained some more.
“I’m afraid my companion rather fears the odor the flower is said to put off,” she explained when Lady and Lord Lyon eyed Jane with concern.
“Oh, well she isn’t the first one, I’m sure. Why, last week when we were here, Lady Rochester fainted! Keeled right over and bumped her head on the trunk the flower sprouted from!”
At this, Jane’s eyes went wide with alarm. Irina had never seen a person’s skin go green until that moment.
“Poor dear,” Gwen said, her good humor ebbing. “Perhaps she should stay with the carriage? Irina, you could come with us.”
The offer had much more appeal than the alt
ernative. She’d have to drag Jane to the flower and then perhaps deal with fainting. Or worse.
“Thank you,” Irina said with a nod to Jane, who scurried happily back into the carriage.
Inside the main greenhouse, the cool spring morning became a humid summer day with voices rising up to the soaring glass ceilings and becoming strangely muffled. There was a sickly sweet odor that greeted their noses, too, and Irina figured it was the rafflesia patma, more easily remembered as the death flower.
Gwen was rambling excitedly about not just the flower the dozens of people were all here to view and smell, but of upcoming balls, parties that had passed, and whom had been seen with whom. Irina tried to keep up with the flow of gossip, but like the night before, when the memory of faces and names of the men she’d danced with had started to fade, so too did Gwen’s voice.
Until the countess said one name that yanked Irina from the haze: “Lord Langlevit.”
Irina stopped in the center of the greenhouse, where thick shrubs of bright pink bougainvillea were flowering, and looked at Gwen, who seemed to be looking at someone.
Irina followed her gaze and saw the last person she’d thought to see here. Henry was walking toward them, a small piece of paper in his hand. He stopped before them and tipped his head.
“Your Highness. Lord and Lady Lyon,” he said, his eyes lingering on Irina an extra moment. “I am surprised at how many people I know wish to subject themselves to this particular fragrance.”
The pungent odor had intensified since they’d first entered the greenhouse, and now, meeting with Henry when she had not wanted to at all, made Irina feel just as ill as Jane had claimed to be.
“And yet you have come, as well,” Gwen put in.
He held up the scrap of paper in his hand, and Irina could see the etching of a flower with enormous petals and a black hole in the center of the cabbage leaf-like petals.
“My mother has an interest in such things. If she were in London, she would have come. I thought I would see it for her,” he said, tucking the small sketch into his breast pocket.
It was kind of him, and Irina instantly wished he hadn’t explained. It made it more difficult to remain angry with him.
“You are an artist, my lord?” Gwen asked because Irina’s own tongue had suddenly become heavy as sand.
“Far from it,” he replied. “I can copy a basic likeness, nothing more.”
Lord Lyon took his handkerchief and put it to his nose. “My dear, I do not think I can get much closer than this again.”
Gwen sighed with mock annoyance. “I think perhaps you should have stayed with the carriage, too. Come now,” she said, taking her husband’s arm. “We’ll wait by the orchids while the princess has a look.”
Irina wanted to insist that they both stay, but knew it was pointless. She would have had to face Henry at some point. Last night on the balcony, he’d yet again pulled her close then pushed her away. Why did he keep doing that? And worse yet, why did she keep allowing him to do it?
“Shall we?” Henry gestured toward the crowd of people surrounding what she knew must be the death flower.
“You needn’t accompany me,” she replied, walking forward and ignoring his arm, which he’d extended graciously. She didn’t want to be gracious in return. She wanted to bite his head off and spit it out.
He made no sense, and when she was with him, she made no sense, either. Even here, in public, among scores of other people, Irina did not trust herself. When she was not with him, she seemed to spend every moment building a fortress around her heart. A fortress that fell, time and time again, whenever she was with him.
“I know,” he replied, coming to walk beside her anyway. It was abominable, the way his mere presence obliterated every ounce of her good sense. Because deep down, she was glad he had ignored her dismissal. It was sickening. She was sick. And it made her angry.
“I think it best if we stop seeing so much of one another,” she murmured, aware her voice would carry easily.
They had stopped behind the crowd and were waiting for their turn to step forward.
“I don’t want that,” he replied, also softly.
She refused to look at him, and instead stared ahead at a trio of ladies in soft pastel-colored walking dresses.
“No, you wouldn’t, would you? You want to kiss me. You want to bed me. But you don’t want to marry me,” she said, practically breathing the words to keep them from other ears. “For all your warnings against the gentlemen placing wagers and seeking my hand in marriage as a prize, you, my lord, are the most dangerous one of them all.”
He angled himself toward her, and she could feel the heat of his body, even through the already humid air.
“Those men care nothing for you.”
She blinked long and hard. There they were: words that burned yet soothed, prickling her skin and tormenting her with what they could mean…that he cared. But she would only be deluding herself—Henry had made his position more than clear. Multiple times.
“Max does,” she said.
Henry huffed and crossed his arms. “Lord Remisov is exactly what my instincts told me he was: a fake.”
Irina spun toward him and forgetting to whisper, said, “What do you mean by that?”
The ladies in pastel dresses turned to glance at her, but only for a moment, and Irina didn’t recognize them anyway. Still, that did not mean they didn’t recognize her.
“A letter from my contact in St. Petersburg arrived this morning. It seems your dear Max stole quite a bit from his coffers of family heirlooms years back, before he was shipped off to Paris.”
Irina frowned. Max had been “shipped off” when he’d been no more than fourteen or fifteen. He’d been bitter toward his father when she’d reconnected with him in Paris, so she could only imagine he’d have been furious and hurt when he’d first been sent away.
“That was years ago,” she said. “If he did steal family heirlooms, I’m sure it was only in an attempt to strike back at his father for sending him away so heartlessly. It doesn’t make him a fake.”
To which Henry replied, “It makes him a thief.”
“They would have been his items eventually,” Irina said, even though she knew it wasn’t quite true. Max had been stripped of his title. He never would have inherited the things he’d stolen. If he’d stolen anything at all! Henry’s contact could have gotten his information wrong.
“He was disowned, Irina,” he said just as the crowd in front of them drew apart and started away from the flower.
It came into full view then, a colossal flower that had emerged from a woody trunk on its side. Once the barrier the crowd had provided had disappeared, the stench seemed to reach out and curl around Irina and Henry. She covered her mouth and nose with her hand and stepped closer, her mind jumping between the oddly shaped flower and the words Henry had just said.
“What did you say?” she asked, still eyeing the five big pink petals, speckled with white, and the cavernous hole in the center. The whole thing was at least the size of a carriage wheel. And the stench…good heavens, it smelled like meat left out to fester in the sun. Carrion flies buzzed around the flower, darting into the hole and back up out of it.
“I said he was disowned,” Henry answered.
“Yes, I know. He was stripped of his title. If you think his father’s cruelty and closed-mindedness would be enough for me to judge him as a poor acquaintance, then I’m quite sure you know nothing at all about me.”
Even with her gloved hand covering her nose and mouth, the rotting flesh stink seemed to be pumping into her, coating the back of her tongue. Jane had been the wisest one of the bunch, she realized, and quickly walked away.
Henry followed her.
“Leave me be,” she hissed, walking faster toward an exit that led onto the lawns.
Henry stayed on her heels
.
“Good heavens, what is it?” she asked, hurrying into the fresh air and relishing the loss of the humid stink that had been filling the greenhouse. “Is there some wager you’ve a wish to win? Perhaps some idiot has put up a thousand pounds to the man who is seen strolling with the Ice Princess near the death flower.”
“I’ve already told you, I have no desire to win any bloody wagers,” he replied, his words raspy as he kept her quick pace. The grass had been level, but had changed over to brick at the beginning of a path leading into a grove of trees, the limbs severely trimmed into near-perfect box shapes.
“Well, maybe you should, my lord. With the liberties you’ve taken, I’m certain you’d be up to your knees in winnings.”
Henry caught the tips of her fingers and pulled her to a halt. “Is that what Remisov is up to?” His chest heaved for air, and Irina realized how fast she’d been walking. “Of course. Entering wagers, cozying up to you—”
“He is my friend. There is no need to cozy up,” she said, her heart pounding as Henry closed in on the scheme she and Max had concocted. A scheme she had started to get cold feet over.
“If I were to go to White’s and look in the betting book, what would I see, Irina? Lord Remisov’s name written in for the grand prize? Has he put up his two thousand pounds yet?” He shook his head, laughing and yet not really looking amused at all. No. He looked utterly ferocious. “That is it, isn’t it? He knows he’s won you. He knows you’ll marry him, and he’ll rake in his insane amount of winnings and be able to return to St. Petersburg a wealthy man, with or without his damned title.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, moving backward off the brick path and onto the grass, closer to the boxed edge of a low-branched tree. “He is already a wealthy man. Whatever winnings there are will go to the Bradburne Trust.”
Henry followed her off the path, a growl low in his throat. “He has told you this?”
The pruned branch tugged her linen dress, and Irina wrenched her arm away, backing up some more.
My Hellion, My Heart Page 24