Page 51 of Innocent in the Prince's Bed

She answered him with a slow nod, silver-grey eyes saucer-wide, indicating she was fully cognisant of what she’d done. Two simultaneous thoughts struck Illarion. She was in trouble and he was naked. A hot rose-red flush crept up her pale cheeks as she recognised it too, her teeth biting into the fullness of her bottom lip. Her emotions being so thoroughly on display was a telltale sign of just how upset she was. Dove usually kept herself in perfect, emotional check. But not tonight. Tonight, whatever was bothering her had bothered her enough to risk scandal by coming to a man’s rooms, enough to risk ruination.

Illarion strode casually across the room to retrieve his banyan. There was no reason to rush and feign a modesty or embarrassment he didn’t feel. He liked being naked and most women liked him naked, too. Besides, it was too late to change the fact that he was probably Dove’s first naked man. She might as well look her fill. Who knew when she’d get another chance? Illarion shrugged into the banyan, unhurried. ‘I like to work naked. I think better. Clothes are so confining,’ he explained.

‘I must apologise for barging in on you like this.’ Dove’s recovery was laudable. She tried to look as if nothing unusual had happened; that she visited men at home after midnight, men in their altogether, all the time. But he knew better. She’d slapped him over a kiss. Protocol was everything to her. Except when she was with him. She’d slipped out to a garden with him. She’d come here… Yes, and look where that had led: to standing in a naked man’s bedroom.

‘I trust you have a good reason.’ Illarion trusted she’d also have the good sense to hold on to the reason until he dismissed the footman. The servants at Kuban House were trustworthy in the extreme, but Illarion felt that trustworthiness had been tempted enough for one evening. ‘Perhaps we should go downstairs.’

‘I’d rather stay here, if we could.’

‘All right,’ Illarion acceded. Why not? The damage was already done. She was here, where she shouldn’t be. It hardly mattered if they were in the rose salon or his bedroom at this point. Scandal was scandal, the degrees of it stopped being relevant after a point.

Illarion studied Dove as the footman busied himself around the room, stirring up the fire and trying to tidy. She was determined and desperate. It was there in her eyes, in the set of her jaw, as if nothing mattered any longer except moving forward. It gave her face a frantic strength, a reckless courage. The footman continued to putter around the room unnecessarily. There was very little anyone needed in a sitting room this late at night, except brandy, and Illarion noted, the decanters were full. Illarion finally dismissed him outright. ‘Please, return to your post and wait for the others to return.’ Which would hopefully be hours from now. By then he would have Dove’s problems resolved and Dove safely escorted back home where she belonged. Illarion didn’t relish having to explain this to Stepan.

‘Now…’ Illarion sat beside her on the sofa and reached for her hands, finding them cold ‘…tell me everything. Why are you here?’

‘Percivale proposed today.’

Now he felt cold. He could lose her in truth. ‘It was not unexpected.’ He said it as much for himself. ‘How soon?’ How much time did he have left with her? Damn the ailing uncle. He might have been able to manage a year if it hadn’t been for the uncle.

Dove shook her head. ‘No date has been set. I told him I needed time, that everything was happening so fast.’ Illarion gave a dry chuckle at that. He saw some dark humour in imagining the upstanding Percivale thinking he’d overwhelmed Lady Dove with his ardour in a whirlwind romance.

‘It’s not funny,’ Dove scolded. ‘There is no time, as you well know.’ Desperation took her features. ‘I don’t know what to tell him.’

That was the real surprise. ‘Yes, you do.’ Wasn’t it obvious to her?

She leaned forward. ‘No, I don’t. Do I say yes and simply accept him? Put all of this drama behind me and embrace what I was meant to be? Or do I refuse him?’ She didn’t bother to list the consequences of that. The look on her face said those consequences were too dire to mention. Beneath those words was lay a question: If I say no to Percivale, will you be there for me? He wanted her, but it was not fair to mislead her, to make her think that he’d be enough if she walked away from Percivale.

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