Page 33 of Innocent in the Prince's Bed

‘He will want to marry before his uncle passes. If he does not marry before, he’ll have to wait until after mourning. It would delay him.’

‘Yes.’ Dove felt the panic rise in her when she allowed herself to think about how that affected her. She wouldn’t have even the Season of her childish fairy tales. They would marry in June, barely a month after her debut, or sooner if his uncle showed signs of worsening. ‘I know it’s silly, but I have these images of being awakened in the middle of the night and rushed downstairs in my nightclothes to marry Percivale in the drawing room before his uncle breathes his last.’

‘Every girl dreams of her wedding being a beautiful occasion,’ Illarion prompted. He wasn’t empathising with her, she knew, he was forcing her to admit to the real fear.

She shook her head. ‘It’s not the lack of a grand wedding that panics me, it’s the suddenness, the not knowing. My life hangs by a thread.’ It was her very own sword of Damocles. She tried to explain it was her freedom being cut without warning, being bundled into a life not of her making without a chance to protest, that terrified her.

Illarion had gone still while she spoke, his words quiet and urgent when she finished. ‘Then you will have to speak up before it’s too late or what you fear, Dove, will absolutely come to pass.’

She gave a bleak laugh. ‘That’s not the reassurance I hoped for.’

He turned her to face him, tipping her chin up to meet his gaze. ‘No, but it’s the honesty I’ve promised you.’ From inside, the soprano had been replaced by a string quartet. Strains of a Vivaldi Adagio wafted out into the garden. ‘Dance with me, Dove, beneath the stars and forget about Percivale for a night.’

His hand was warm and natural at her back as if it belonged there, as if she belonged there, with him. It was a slippery slope to seduction, then. She didn’t stop him from moving her into an improvised waltz, she didn’t stop him when he whispered provocative rebellion in her ear. ‘You don’t have to choose Percivale. It can be different.’ She certainly didn’t stop him when his mouth took hers in a kiss designed to show her how different it could be.

She was ready for him this time, hungry for him even in ways she’d not anticipated. Her lips opened for him, her arms reaching about his neck, the form of their waltz giving way to a more intimate posture, their bodies melding as the kiss deepened. She felt the hard planes of him beneath his clothes, the strong press of his hand at the back of her neck, the sensual flick of his tongue tasting her in slow teasing strokes that brought heat low in her belly and a dampness between her thighs.

‘Illarion.’ She ventured his name in a tiny, breathless gasp, as if saying his name, that one single word, expressed the sum of her feelings. This was what she’d dreamed of when she’d thought of her Season, of being swept away, of seeing her future in a single kiss.

‘You deserve this,’ Illarion whispered, hushing her with another kiss, another bout of intoxication. She breathed in the scent of him, savoured the touch of him, his hands on her, her hands on him; it was too easy to let her senses overwhelm her thinking, especially when thinking was too dangerous here in the garden. A woman might do anything if she believed those words, if she believed that kiss. It would change everything.

* * *

If he cried foul, it would change everything. Percivale crushed the remains of his cheroot under a heel with some force as he watched the scene in the garden. He’d come out for a smoke and this was what he’d found: Lady Dove waltzing with Prince Kutejnikov; Prince Kutejnikov kissing her with little regard for restraint! The damnable thing about it was that he could do nothing. If he called attention to it, Lady Dove would be compromised. She would be required to marry the Prince and that was precisely not what Percivale wanted. She was lovely and fine, well bred and precisely what he wanted in a duchess. She would run his home and raise his children, his heir, and do him proud at every turn. Although, at this particular turn, she’d momentarily been led astray by the guile of a more experienced man with no honour. But he wondered, watching her with the Prince, if she would ever gaze upon him with that same look, as if the stars were in his eyes instead of the sky. Fear of losing came to Percivale, who had never been denied anything in the entirety of his perfect life, for the first time. Something must be done about the Prince. Surely Lady Dove wasn’t the first woman he’d led astray. Heatherly and the others were right. The Prince must be stopped. He posed a danger to them all. But it must be done carefully, quietly, so as not to alienate the women folk who were so desperately taken with him, even if it was being done to protect them.

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