A Prince Among Men (27 page)

Chapter 22

J
asper found Hetty in her garden late in the afternoon on the day of Princess Charlotte's wedding. He had good news to report. He'd just met Mirandola on the Grays' doorstep and seen Mrs. Pendares direct the prince to the morning room. Altogether it was one of the most hopeful moments of his life.

The daily revelations of this other life had given Jasper a strange confidence. His life need not be confined to Mayfair. If he looked up at the stars from a narrower street, the sky was still as wide. At breakfast he had informed his father of his intention to marry Hetty.

The duke had begun his favorite lecture on the tide of presumption sweeping the town and then broke off abruptly, staring at Jasper as if really seeing him. His valet, Plumb, had given notice on the spot. His mother had listened to him in cold silence from her bed and informed him that she could do nothing whatever in the way of a betrothal party or wedding breakfa
st if he chose to make such a mé
salliance. In that moment Jasper had had a sudden sense of Ophelia's spirit
and had recommended that Lady Searle make the most of Sebastian's wedding.

The look on his mother's face had given him such satisfaction that he had gone directly to Rundell and Bridge for a ring. The little velvet box was tucked in his coat pocket.

Hetty sat on a bench, a pencil and notebook in hand, a flat, wide-brimmed straw bonnet shading her face from the afternoon sun. At the sound of his footsteps on the gravel path, she looked up, no alarm, no hesitation in her gaze. Jasper felt his heart expand slightly. He stopped just in front of her, enjoying the way she tilted her face up to his, leaving the curve of her throat exposed. The heat of the day had dampened the curls at her temple and brought a lovely flush to her skin. Her hand pressed to the crown of the floppy hat gave him a view of the creamy underside of her arm, and the cloth of her bodice, stretched across her right breast, defined the sweet swell of that utterly feminine shape. A heat he had not yet allowed himself to feel in her company, unfurled lazily in his loins.

"May I join you?" he asked.

"Please." She made way on the bench, pulling her skirts close and sliding to one side.

He dropped down beside her and indulged himself in looking at her until she laughed.

"What?"

"Jasper, you'll make me vain if you stare so."

"You've progressed to my name," he said.

She played with the pencil between her fingers. "I confess I've been rather free with it from our first meeting. In my mind."

Jasper gripped the back of the bench, steadying himself. He had a vision of snatching her arm and pulling her onto his lap. "Then you're willing to accept my suit."

Her glance came up, met his, and descended again. "Yes."

A little gust tossed the branches over their heads, and a startled bird flitted away. Jasper waited 'til he ha
d a reasonable measure of self-
restraint, then reached for her hand. "You do me a great—"

She put her fingers to his lips, shaking her head. "We honor each other."

He lifted her hand from his mouth and slowly drew her toward him, making no disguise of his intentions. "Close your eyes," he whispered. He worked the ribbons of her hat and set it aside.

The tip of her nose was pink from the sun. He kissed that spot first. Then he slid one hand up her back and with the other pulled at her waist, drawing her closer, taking her lips in a long, slow kiss.

Her body arched to meet his naturally, inevitably, the way a flower turned to the sun. They drew apart and immediately came together again with more hunger and impatience. Lips brushed and clung and parted, and Jasper drew back, surprised to find himself trembling. He pressed her head to his chest and rested his chin against her bright hair. He had never dreamed he would find himself so aroused by kissing a fully clothed virgin on a garden bench.

She pressed closer, her arms circling his back. "I had no i
dea that kissing would be so…
stirring. I suppose you have a vast deal of experience with this sort of thing."

"Not with this sort of thing," he said, allowing his hand to drift up and down her back. Her scent enveloped him now, clouding his brain. "Not with love."

"It's odd," she said. "I suppose we could not be closer, and
yet…
"
A little sigh escaped her, and Jasper wanted to catch that puff of breath. "I want to be closer. I
want
…
"

Jasper tightened his arms around her in a fierce embrace. "Hetty, stop." His innocent love had no idea of the effect of her words. "We can be closer. I promise we will be when we are wed."

He told her his parents' position on their marriage and begged her not to be saddened by it. "Their opposition means we can please ourselves with a long engagement or a brief one."

"Definitely a brief one," she said, lifting her head and smiling at him.

"We can have the banns read for the first time this Sunday, if you like."

"I would like that."

The little furrow between her brows appeared, tempting Jasper to smooth it with a touch of his finger. "Do you think Prince Alexander will see our writings?"

"He's here, with Ophelia."

A bright smile lighted her eyes, taking Jasper's breath away.

"How lovely. But Jasper, there is one creature I'm worried about."

"Creature?"

"Your mother's dog."

"Pet?"

Hetty nodded. "I wonder—if he's in terrible
disgrace, perhaps your mother would part with him."

A
lexander entered the Grays' morning room soundlessly. The steady, urgent scratching of Ophelia's pen filled the air. He took a moment to look over her shoulder as she wrote. Apparently not satisfied with arguing his case in the papers, as Jasper explained she had, she now addressed the editor of the
Quarterly,
inquiring whether that august journal would be interested in a piece on Prince Mirandola's vision of a new Europe.

He put his hands on her shoulders. "Ophelia."

She stopped writing instantly and a choked sob escaped her.

"I thought you'd gone," she said.

He kneaded her shoulders, feeling the knots of tension in the muscles. "I had to leave town for a while."

"But now you're back."

"I've come from Hume and Tollworthy. They will give the fund a few more days before they withdraw the offer. There is a chance."

She turned to him then, a little light of gladness in her eyes, and he kissed her swiftly once because he could get away with it.

She made a flustered rearrangement of her pens.

"Thank you for writing on my behalf," he said.

"You don't know whether I've done your cause any good."

"You've given me hope. If your writing campaign works, dozens of investors may purchase
shares of the fund. Trevigna will not perish as an independent nation.
"

"When that happens, I'll expect an official thank-you, Your Majesty." She made a light thing of it. "When you are crowned, will you knight me or honor me
with Trevigna's Order of the…
Olive?" He watched the interesting way she faltered under his regard.

"Trevigna has no honors for me to award, though I could invent an 'Order of the Pen' for you and Miss Gray." His attention seemed to settle on her mouth. "I would rather thank you personally, Ophelia."

"Unnecessary, really. Hetty and I were glad to write." Ophelia turned away, retreating to the window, looking down on the pavement as if the regular pattern of the stones fascinated her, her heart beating uncommonly fast. "If you succeed, will you have your constitutional convention?"

"It seems likely. Even Castlereagh agrees that it will be in England's best interest to have Trevigna as an ally whether she is a monarchy or a republic."

"Your tactics worked. With cunning and patience you've brought England to her knees."

He came over to the window and leaned his right shoulder against the wall, facing her. "What I remember, Ophelia, is kneeling to you."

She looked down, pinching little pleats of her skirt between her fingers. "That was a strange evening. The attack
in the alley, the moonlight…
you could not be sure of your feelings in such circumstances."

He crossed one foot in front of the other, his hands in his pockets. "You would be right, I
think, if I had not loved you for so long before that night."

Her head came up.

"I think I must have started loving you the very first day."

"You couldn't have. You hardly thought well of me at all, abusing my groom as I did."

"I liked you for it, for making things go your way, for your impertinence and determination and disdain for the rules. I had been overly cautious for months, and you freed me from that."

"I never thought of you in what I did. I'm too selfish."

"I've always seen you generous with Hetty and with me."

She turned her back on him and pressed her face to the wall. "Are you going to ask me to marry you again?"

He laughed. "Are you going to refuse me again?"

"I don't know." Her fingers closed and unclosed on the window frame. "I should."

"Why? Because I deceived you, betrayed our friendship? I'm prepared to apologize, to
beg…
"

"No." She drew a deep, ragged breath. "You had sound reasons for your imposture. I see that now. And once you'd begun, I suppose you were trapped, like Solomon with the secret of Hetty's birth."

"Then why?"

She turned to him then, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Her chin went up.

"You said yourself that you liked me because I abused you and ordered you about, but if we
marry, if I wed a prince and then see you in all your splendor and you kiss me and hold me, you will make me like Pet,
"
She turned away, pacing the length of the room with rapid strides, flinging her hands up in a wild gesture. "I will be good for nothing except to lie pressed to your side on a silken cushion, letting you stroke
"
— her hands flew up again—"my belly.
"
She came to a halt, her back turned to him, her arms crossed, her shoulders shaking a little.

Alexander shoved away from the wall, strode across the room, and seized her shoulders, spinning her into his arms. "You do not know what a tempting image that is." He tilted her face up to his and kissed her until her lips parted for his entry and her arms came around him.

"You will never be Pet though I hope you
will let me stroke your belly,"
he said, resting his chin on the top of her head. He felt her surprise in a quick breath that pressed her breasts against him.

"You are my night fairy, my Sprite. If I can catch you and keep you, I'm lucky. Even then I know you will bedevil me the rest of my life. And if you think I make you weak, what did you do to me to keep me laboring like Hercules at the Augean stables just for a glimpse of you?
"

"Do you love me?"

"I do."

"
L
ucca!
"
The shop bell tinkled.

"Majesty?" Lucca appeared, elegantly dressed and holding a single red rose. He glanced from Alexander to Ophelia, comprehension dawning in his eyes.

"You're going out?" Alexander asked.

Lucca acknowledged it, lifting the rose in a brief salute.

"Bring Father Leonardo back with you."

"Majesty! What will Donna Francesca say?"

"Nothing that will change my mind. Miss Tesio is marrying Sebastian Brinsby. I'm free."

Still Lucca stood, unmoving. "But if you do not have the nobles on your side, or the republicans, what
will…
"

Alexander half led, half pulled Ophelia through the velvet curtain toward the stairs. "Lucca," he said over his shoulder, "the priest."

"Yes, Majesty!"

T
he familiar room above the shop was deep in shadow, with one bright bar of sunlight across the head of the bed and corner of the wall. Alexander looked once at that temptation and then away, pulling the room's two chairs up to the hearth in a conversational arrangement.

Ophelia took the seat he offered her. "With this marriage you gamble everything."

"No less than you," he said, settling himself in the chair opposite hers. He needed her and wanted her and had nearly lost her. He had waited weeks for their coming together, but he remembered what she'd suffered at Wyatt's hands and would observe the proprieties today.

"Oh, marriage is no risk for me. I've left home. I can always live with Hetty—well, at least until she marries. Then I'm sure I'd be welcome to stay with Solomon."

"And if he marries Mrs. Pendares?"