“What are you suggesting?” Véronique asked with a frown, as if she hadn’t already thought about it a dozen times already. “That I seduce him into signing it over? That I offer my body in exchange?”
“It would be far preferable to offering your body to Pierre.”
Overcome with disgust at the notion of any sort of intimacies with Pierre, Véronique stood abruptly. “That may be true, but surely I cannot possibly succeed in such a scheme. I am not a woman of experience. I am a virgin, and I have been nothing but prudish since that first night in the coach. Honestly, I was distraught because he had removed my shoes last night. My shoes! You should have seen the way he looked at me when I mentioned it today. He was quite amused.”
“But you lured him out of the ball,” Gabrielle reminded her. “Clearly you knew what you were doing that night.”
Véronique raised her hands to bring a halt to this conversation. “Perhaps nothing like that will even be necessary. I believe we have established a certain friendship. He talks to me, confides in me.” She stared across the garden pensively. “There is no one else he can talk to. I am sure he is close to his siblings in Petersbourg, but he is all alone here in France.…”
“Exactly,” Gabrielle replied. “His siblings are not here to support him, so he needs you. He has just learned a shocking truth about his mother, and discovered that he is not the person he thought he was. Use all of that to become his private confidante. Perhaps then he will show some benevolence to our family—out of a genuine affection for you.”
Véronique fanned her face with her hand, for she was overheated and perspiring. “Please understand, Gabrielle—I do not wish to use this connection to manipulate him. If I am being honest, I will admit to you, and to myself, that I want to be his true friend in every way. He needs one right now.”
Gabby approached and clasped both her hands in hers. “You are the best person I know, Véronique. An absolute angel. He does indeed need a friend, so be that for him. Win his loyalty, for our situation is perilous. Mine especially.” She lowered her gaze. “Oh, how I miss Robert. I must see him and tell him about the baby. I cannot bear another moment away from him.”
Véronique pulled her sister into her arms. “I am sure he is missing you, too. Perhaps in the end he will be able to convince his father to allow you to marry.” The words were optimistic, but in her heart, Véronique was not so confident.
Gabrielle sniffed. “I hope so, for I will die if I cannot be with him.”
Her sister’s pain was her own pain, and there were times Véronique wanted to sink into a chair and surrender to weeping, but she knew she must be strong and work toward some sort of positive outcome, whatever that turned out to be.
She stepped back and looked up at the house. “I wonder what is happening in there,” she said. “The doctor arrived a short time ago. Nicholas greeted him at the door.”
Gabrielle squeezed her hand. “And Nicholas will greet you at his own door later this evening, won’t he? After his meeting with the solicitor?”
Their eyes met again, and Véronique realized it was not trepidation she felt at the notion of being alone with Prince Nicholas again tonight—but rather a very ardent anticipation.
* * *
With the humid fragrance of a rose-scented bath still heavy in the air, Véronique stood up from her chair in front of the fire. “It is eleven o’clock,” she said. “He should have returned from dinner by now. Perhaps I should go to him. I hope this gown is all right. I have no idea what one wears to meet a prince alone in his bedchamber at this hour.”
“Your gown is perfect,” Gabrielle replied as she twirled a lock of Véronique’s golden hair around her finger and set it back in place at her temple. “You look lovely. He will be very pleased to see you.”
“But for what purpose?” Véronique wondered. “I am not sure what his expectations will be. If they are…” She paused to search for the right word. “If they are improper, I will have some difficulty with that, because I do not wish to surrender my honor in order to get what we want from him.”
But would she even be able to resist? Standing there in the soft candlelight, she remembered the hypnotic sensation of his kiss the night before, when she was lying on his bed, drunk from the wine.…
Or had it really been the wine? She wasn’t so sure. Even now, as she recalled the thrill of his hard, muscled form on top of hers, her body ached for his touch and she felt shamefully eager to pay any price he asked in exchange for the return of her home.
If he was now its owner, which he may not be …
“It’s time to go,” Gabby said. “Knock on his door, and scream if you need help.”
Véronique raised an eyebrow. “I certainly hope it won’t come to that.”
By the time she reached his bedchamber, her blood was racing with exhilaration, which caused her some concern for the safekeeping of her virtue this evening.
When she knocked, those heavy footsteps across the floorboards made her breath catch. Then the knob turned and the door opened.
There he was—her splendid prince—tall, dark, and magnificently handsome in the dancing firelight.
“Véronique,” he greeted. “I am pleased you came. Won’t you come in?” He stepped aside and gestured for her to enter.
Slowly she crossed the threshold and realized that tonight was vastly different from the night in the coach, when she had played the part of a seductress. Tonight she was herself—her true self—and she was far more conscious of the attraction that existed between them. This was not an act, nor was it a game. It was real.
“How was your dinner with the solicitor?” she asked, for she was here to be his friend and confidante, not his lover. If she could remember that, she would be fine.
He motioned for her to take a seat before the fire, then went to pour her a glass of wine. He handed it to her and sat down across from her.
As she took the first delicious sip of the wine, she admired the muscles of Nicholas’s thighs as he crossed one long leg over the other.
“The dinner was … explosive,” he replied.
“How so?”
“Pierre was there.”
Véronique sat forward. “Was he, indeed? What happened? Did the solicitor reveal the contents of the will?”
A surprising glimmer of satisfaction flashed in Nicholas’s eyes. “Yes, he did, and it appears I am now full owner of d’Entremont Manor, though I cannot inherit the title, which unfortunately will die with the marquis. But I own all the surrounding lands, which includes close to three thousand acres of fertile farm country and tenant cottages, the flour mill in the village, the vineyard and winery, and another property to the south, less than a day’s coach ride from here. You might be familiar with it.” He inclined his head at her. “Care to hazard a guess at the address?”
Véronique cupped her wineglass in both hands and spoke shakily. “I am suddenly finding it difficult to breathe,” she said as she comprehended the news she had so longed to hear—that Pierre had not inherited her father’s home. Yet at the same time, Nicholas now held the key to her future, and she was not sure what to expect from him in the coming days.
“Why is that?” he asked.
“Because I am now entirely at your mercy.”
“Does that distress you?” He raised his glass to his lips and watched her over the sparkling crystal rim. “I suppose it should, seeing as how you committed a crime against me.”
A hot spark crackled and exploded in the fire, then floated up the chimney. Véronique strove to maintain her composure.
Leaning forward, Nicholas rested both elbows on his knees. “You needn’t worry,” he said. “I promise I will be easier to deal with than Lord d’Entremont. You and he were at an impasse, were you not?” He sat back again. “I promise not to ignore you, as he did.”
She noticed the self-satisfied look on his face. “You mentioned Pierre was at the dinner,” she said, clinging to the thread of the conversation, “and that
it was explosive. Was he very upset?”
“Oh yes,” Nicholas replied as he calmly sipped his wine. “He threw a tantrum and had to be physically restrained and dragged from the room.”
“Good heavens.”
“You should have seen it. He stood up from the table and swiped his full dinner plate onto the floor—cutlery, roast beef, gravy, and all. Everything smashed to pieces on the porcelain floor. Then he came at me like a charging bull, knocking chairs over as he circled the table.”
“What did you do?”
“I broke his nose before he could quite … organize himself.”
“You broke his nose?” Véronique exclaimed in delight, for she had not forgotten what Pierre tried to do to Gabrielle in the garden. “So he received nothing in the will?”
Nicholas set down his glass. “He received a modest house and property outside of Paris. I suppose it did come as a blow, when one considers that he had served the marquis faithfully all of his life, and I barely knew the man.”
There was a chill in his words, as if he cared nothing for the fact that his true father by blood had died that very day. Véronique knew it was a mask, however—a mask he wore to hide his true emotions. Nicholas had been affected by it, for she would never forget how he had stepped into her arms and clung to her in the library.
“Will you keep everything?” she asked. “Will you truly be master here?”
He leaned his temple on a finger and studied her, as if she somehow held the answer to that question.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he replied. “I could, I suppose, sell it off piece by piece. I’d be a very wealthy man. Not that I don’t have enough already. As you said earlier today, how much can one man enjoy when there are people starving in Paris?”
She sighed, feeling slightly more relaxed. “I am pleased to hear you feel that way. Would you consider a charitable endeavor with the proceeds of such a sale?”
He regarded her rather slyly. “Perhaps.”
Her blood skimmed through her veins as she sipped the wine again and felt very exposed beneath the intensity of his gaze. What was he thinking? she wondered as a number of possible scenarios danced around inside her head.
“What about my family’s property?” she asked. “What will you do with it?”
“What would you like me to do with it?”
The question filled her with hope, and she waited until her pulse settled down before replying. “I daresay you are teasing me, sir.”
“Yes, I am.” He smiled, and his eyes burned with an irresistible sensuous flame.
“Do you really, truly own my father’s property now?”
He nodded casually, as if it were nothing at all to take possession of a prosperous French estate, one that had been in another family’s possession for generations, and wave it tauntingly before the previous owner’s eyes.
“Then I suppose we have some negotiating to do,” she said.
His mouth curved into a tantalizing smile. “Yes, we do, Véronique—which I believe calls for more wine.”
Chapter Thirteen
Véronique watched Nicholas tip the decanter over her glass to refill it. As she listened to the sound of the dark liquid pouring into the crystal vessel, she found herself reclining back in the chair with a few improper ideas about how this negotiation would play out. Her uneasiness was gone. It had been replaced by something else. What, exactly?
Passion? Seduction? All at once, she felt like the woman she had become in the coach outside the ball, when she had lured him and teased him into wanting what she offered.
Nicholas returned to the fire and handed her the second glass of wine.
Before she accepted it, she said, “Is there any way to test this for laudanum, or must I simply trust that it’s pure?”
A hint of amusement touched his rakish eyes. “Either way, you can trust me,” he said. “Didn’t I prove that last night, when you were lying so prettily on my bed, stewed to the gills, and I only removed your shoes?”
She accepted the glass and again felt as if they were back in the ballroom, flirting unreservedly with each other under the assumption that lovemaking would occur in the next few hours.
She had offered herself to him quite blatantly that night. Was she offering herself to him now as part of this negotiation? Is that what he thought?
“So tell me,” he said as he sank into the chair across from her. “Why should I sign the property over to you, when your father was so quick to wager it in a card game? What if he does the same thing again? Perhaps you would be better off letting me keep it.”
“But then you would be our landlord,” she replied. “There is little security in that. How could we trust that you wouldn’t sell the house out from under us one day?”
“There is that word again,” he said. “Trust.”
She sighed. “It is you who keeps putting a finger point on it, sir. Not I.”
They both leaned forward in their chairs at the same time, and he chuckled. “Is this where we square off? Draw swords or muskets?”
Their faces were mere inches apart, and a shiver of excitement moved through her at the delicious proximity of those soft, full lips. The memory of their kiss was still imprinted on her brain.
His eyes roamed leisurely over all the contours of her face. “I suppose I should just sign the property over to your father,” he said in resignation, “since you’ve earned it.”
“If you were a gentleman of honor, that is exactly what you would do, because you know how badly I want it.”
“I do,” he replied, his gaze narrowing in on her mouth. “But we both know I am no gentleman. Therefore I feel I should claim some other form of compensation, since I certainly didn’t enjoy being drugged, tied up, and locked in this room for two days. And whatever agreement you had with d’Entremont is not binding between you and me. This is a new agreement.”
“A solicitor might argue that point,” she said. “Since you have inherited all his assets, you have also inherited his debts.”
“Hm, quite right, but I would also argue that since your contract with him involved criminal activity, it is not a legal contract, therefore not binding at all. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and take your grievances to the authorities. See what they have to say about it.”
She slouched back in the chair. “I thought we were going to be friends.”
“We can be.”
A long silence ensued while she sipped her wine and he sipped his.
“What do you want, then?” she asked.
He sat forward. “How about we start with a kiss?”
When she did not reply, he added, “Does it surprise you … that I would ask for such a thing?”
“Not at all. In fact, I am surprised to be getting off so lightly.”
He grinned. “I said let us start with a kiss. I didn’t say that would close the deal.”
She shook her head at him. “You are very wicked, sir. But I suppose you know that already.”
“Yes, I do.” He smiled dazzlingly and her heart turned over in her chest as he inched forward even closer, set his glass down, and held her face in his hands. A captivating heat exploded in her belly as he pressed his lips to hers with an unexpected gentleness.
His mouth was soft and warm. As his tongue met hers, she slid her hands up to rest on his broad shoulders.
Véronique was ashamed to admit it, but she was no longer thinking of the negotiation. Kissing Prince Nicholas had nothing to do with practicalities, and everything to do with her own wanton pleasures.
Ah, and he knew just how to make it last.… He kissed with slow lingering patience, and warm, teasing sensuality.
A heavy ache throbbed from within, and she feared she might surrender to him completely, right here and now. Her thoughts were floating in a haze. Surely it was not just the wine. It was him—all him. He aroused her masterfully with his lips and tongue, and the sublime touch of his hands.
“You taste heavenly,” he whispered as
his lips feathered across her cheek and he breathed hotly in her ear.
Tingling gooseflesh erupted all over her body, and all she wanted was more of this bliss.
“Is that enough of a payment?” she asked, the more sensible part of her brain hoping that he would say yes, and she would be removed from any further temptations.
Another part of her, however, wanted him to demand more and insist that she comply, for she was quickly melting into a soft ball of clay in his hands. She wanted to be stroked and kneaded.
“I hardly think so,” he said, rising from his chair and holding out his hand. “I’ll need at least an hour with you, Véronique. On the bed.”
Her courage evaporated at once, and she blinked up at him.
His brow furrowed as he recognized the change in her mood. “Do not fret, darling. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. Trust that I will stop at any time if you wish it. I just want to lie with you. One hour,” he said again, as if to punctuate their agreement with a firm deadline. “Then the property is yours.”
Her heart leapt. “The property will be mine? I have your word?”
“Yes, you have it,” he replied, and she rose to her feet with elation.
She had taken great risks for this one purpose. Now it appeared she had succeeded. Her family would not lose everything. Her parents would keep their home and Gabrielle might still have a chance to become Robert’s wife, if she could win the approval of his father.
Véronique was overcome with gratitude. Could it be this simple? Could she spend the next hour enjoying the pleasures of Prince Nicholas’s attentions, then be rewarded at the end of it? It seemed too good to be true.
If he could be trusted, that is …
She wanted to believe he could be. All her instincts insisted that he would not break his promise. One hour of kissing, and that would be enough to pay the price.
Consequently, she took his hand and followed him to the bed. He paused beside it and looked down at her feet. “May I remove your shoes again?” he asked, “so that you will be more comfortable?”
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