Princess Charming (12 page)

Lucy bristled at the slur against her father’s memory, but prudence held her tongue.

“Hush, you foolish girl.” The duchess was eyeing the little folly she’d ordered built in the center of the garden. To make room for the picturesque eyesore, she’d had Lucy’s mother’s roses removed. “If you had any sense, you would know that Lucy’s presence in our home accounts for many of our social invitations. She is a Charming by birth, a fact that these high sticklers in London make a great deal of, even if her father was a madman. If we lose her, you may no longer have the opportunity to snare a marquess.”

“A marquess?” Bertha snorted. “You have overused your
sal volatile
again, Mama. After three seasons, neither Esmie nor I have received an offer from so much as a
mister.
”

Lucy would have laughed at Bertha’s shrewd answer, but the duchess’s attack upon her father lit a flame of anger. The duchess shot her daughter a withering look. “Do you think I am made of pound notes? If it were not for the duke’s heir allowing us to use this house in his absence, we should find ourselves returned to Nottingham, where you would be obliged to simper at Squire Barnston. You take my meaning very well, I am sure.”

Lucy’s fingers trembled where she grasped the branch of the hedge. With a deep breath, she stepped from behind the shrubbery. “Yes, madam. We all take your meaning quite well. We always do.”

“Lucy!” her stepmother shrieked and grasped Bertha’s arm for balance.

“Lucy!” her stepsister echoed, her face pale. At least Bertha had the grace to appear shamefaced at the sentiments they’d been expressing. Her stepmother, however, recovered quickly, drawing herself up to her full height.

“You have gone too far this time, Lucy Charming.” She dropped her grasp on Bertha and seized Lucy’s arm instead. “As if your father had not blackened the family name sufficiently, you will bring scandal down upon us all. We can only hope that you were not seen fleeing my home with a servant.” Her fingers dug into the flesh of Lucy’s upper arm. “If you are compromised, if you ruin my daughters’ prospects, I will beat you black and blue. I swear it.”

Lucy winced at her stepmother’s grip and stumbled along the path behind her as the duchess towed her toward the house. “I have not been compromised,” she protested, although her heartbeat skipped with guilt at the lie. If her escapades of the last day and night were known, society would indeed consider her virtue beyond repair. They entered the kitchen, and Cook looked up in surprise, her pale, rheumy eyes widening when she saw Lucy in the duchess’s grasp.

“Lady Lucy,” she said, smiling. “‘Tis good that yer back.”

“Yes, it is very well that she has returned,” the duchess barked, “but it is no concern of yours. I am afraid that Lucy will not be able to help you today, Cook. I have need of her elsewhere.”

Lucy sputtered a protest, but her stepmother continued up the stairs, dragging Lucy in her wake. It was only when they had climbed to the attic, the duchess having ordered Bertha to return to the sitting room, that Lucy realized her stepmother’s intentions.

“No.” She strained against her stepmother’s grip, but the duchess’s hand had the strength of a vulture’s claws.

“Yes, indeed. And you will remain here until you are prepared to give a full account of your whereabouts since yesterday.”

The duchess threw open a door and thrust her into a dark, narrow room. “Here you shall stay until you divulge the secrets you have been hiding, Lucy Charming.” Her eyes must have widened in surprise, for her stepmother smiled with evil satisfaction. “You think me unobservant, but I, too, have my tricks and stratagems. Something is afoot, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.”

Lucy swallowed. Thank goodness the Selkirks had departed. “There is nothing to tell.”

“Indeed. I seem to have made a grave error in leaving you so much to your own devices. Are you prepared to tell the truth?”

Lucy hesitated. Despite Nick’s abominable sentiments about reform, she still felt the need to protect him. Likewise, there was no possibility of admitting to her stepmother what had been going on beneath her very nose for the past three years.

“Any truth I have is my own, and I choose not to share it.”

Her stepmother’s eyes narrowed. “Very well, then. I shall leave you with your precious truth, and you may dine and drink upon it. I daresay when it fails to satisfy your hunger or your thirst you will be ready enough to give it up.”

The duchess backed out of the room and shut the door behind her. Lucy heard the key turn in the lock. With a large sigh, she flung herself on the bed. She was utterly tired of the sound of doors slamming, for somehow she always seemed to be on the wrong side of them.

FOR AS LONG as
he lived, Nick was never going to rescue anyone again. Especially not blue-eyed scullery maids who tasted of a volatile combination of temptation and suffrage.

Seated on a wooden crate, he leaned against the casks of port in the anteroom, the discarded walking dress wrapped around his bare shoulders for warmth. Crispin had yet to return, but when he did, Nick was ready to give him an earful.

Complete, unmitigated disaster. Day and night from Hades. Humiliation and wounded pride. And those were the good parts of his encounter with the hellion disguised as a kitchen maid.

No, that was a lie. He loosened the dress about his shoulders, warmer at the thought of her. To be brutally honest, the best bits had been when she’d been so close he could smell the unique scent of her, and he could feel her body pressed against his own. Even now, angry and disillusioned, he could scarce forget the sensation of her arms wrapped around his neck and her breasts soft and enticing against his chest.

It should be easy to let her go. Her desertion was motivation enough, but given her political views, he should have no problem relinquishing this quest for her safety. Call it reform or revolution or any manner of names, her cause was still what had killed his mother and sister, and he wanted no part of it. There was no point in trying to change the world. He knew that deep within, which was what made his penchant for rescue so ridiculous. It was like trying to empty the English Channel with a teacup. The Channel remained eternally full, and the teacup ended up dashed to bits.

Nick shivered. Long minutes, and he was on the verge of tapping a cask of port when the lock turned in the anteroom door, and it swung open.

A grinning Crispin peered around the corner. “Where is she?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper. “I trust you made good use of this opportunity, old man. I had a devil of a time convincing Grandmama’s footmen to leave you here. The poor lads thought they’d all be carted off to a Santadorran dungeon to rot.”

Nick stood. “The footmen have no cause for concern. You, on the other hand, might think long and hard before returning to Santadorra in the near future. For you, there just might be a spot on the rack.”

Crispin laughed. “Give over, Nick. You can thank me later. Now, where is she?” He looked genuinely puzzled, and, for a moment, Nick considered giving his friend a taste of his own medicine and locking him in the coal cellar. Fortunately for Crispin, Nick knew that his friend had meant to do him a good turn, however misguided his actions.

“The girl in question is gone.” Nick strode out the door without looking back. A moment later, Crispin followed.

“What do you mean she’s gone? There’s no way out other than the door.”

“She went out the window.”

Crispin sighed. “You must have helped her, then. Are you daft?”

Nick stopped in the middle of the hall and swiveled on his heel. “Don’t push, Crispin. I’m only inches from thrashing you as it is. Yes, she’s gone, and yes, I helped her, but she lied. She said she’d come back round and unlock the door for me.”

Nick would have liked to wipe away the broad grin that stole over his friend’s face, but at that moment, two scullery maids appeared at the other end of the corridor. With a look of understanding, he and Crispin took the shortest route to the kitchen, emerging onto the street just below the main entrance.

“So, she outsmarted you, did she?” Crispin chuckled. “You must be losing your touch, St. Germain. There was a day when women actually ran toward you instead of away from you.”

Nick stood in the shadow of the stairs, uncomfortably aware of his half-dressed state. “This one may run as far away as she pleases. In fact, the farther she runs, the better.”

Crispin’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Those didn’t appear to be your sentiments this morning at Madame St. Cloud’s.”

Nick refused to acknowledge the tightening in his midsection. “This morning, I didn’t know she was a revolutionary.”

“A what?” Crispin’s jaw dropped.

“Close your mouth, man. You heard me correctly. Actually, she called herself a reformer, but we both know there’s not a farthing’s worth of difference between the two.”

“A reformer? Are you sure?”

“I heard it from the girl herself. She’s for universal suffrage. Wants the vote for all the poor working men who’ve been trod upon by the aristocracy. Thank heavens she didn’t know my true identity. She’d probably have cracked my head open with a coal scuttle and been on her way.”

Crispin snorted in disbelief. “Hardly. I’ve seen enough females smitten with your charms to recognize the symptoms. Really, Nick, I thought you’d use this chance to full advantage. She’s a lovely girl.”

Nick lifted a hand in protest. “Even if she weren’t a revolutionary, she’s a kitchen maid, and you know my feelings about dallying with servants.”

Crispin was quiet for a moment. “Quite so.” He appeared to be lost in thought, and Nick debated for a moment whether it might not be the perfect opportunity to draw Crispin’s cork for the trouble he’d caused. He was, however, standing in the middle of Mayfair with a woman’s walking dress wrapped about his shoulders.

“Where’s your carriage?”

“Over there.”

“Then the least you can do is take me home.”

The two men crossed the short distance to Crispin’s stylish barouche. Once they were inside and moving, Crispin spoke.

“Look, Nick, I didn’t intend to cause trouble. I suppose I thought there might be a chance that—”

“That what?” Nick snapped, although he knew perfectly well what Crispin meant.

“You know. You and the girl, trapped together
 . . .
”

Nick turned away to look out the window. “Crispin?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t take any more chances on my behalf.”

EVIDENTLY IT WAS not sufficient humiliation for Nick to arrive at the Cromwell in such an outrageous costume. He crossed the foyer of the small hotel where he rented rooms and climbed the stairs, and with Crispin on his heel, opened the door to his sitting room only to be stopped by his valet. Phipps actually looked perturbed, and not by his master’s outlandish attire.

“You have a visitor, Your Highness.”

“A visitor? Did you not tell him I was away from home?” The valet was usually adept at rebuffing the toadeaters and other social climbers of the
ton.

“I did try, Your Highness, but I’m afraid he insisted.” The older man’s thin lips showed his disapproval, but Nick knew that he, as well as the unwanted visitor, was the subject of Phipps’s censure.

“I see, Phipps. Never mind. Our visitor, whomever he may be, will remove himself at my instruction, you may be sure.”

Nick was spoiling for a fight. For all his bluster, he couldn’t take out his frustrations on Crispin. His friend had meant well, and he’d had no idea that
she
was a
public nuisance who should be locked up at the earliest convenience. Nick pushed past Phipps only to find, much to his surprise, the King of Santadorra standing before the windows that overlooked the street.