The Prince’s Bride (13 page)

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.”