Page 22 of The Duke Who Loved Me (The Duke's Estates 1)

The ladies began to eat. James kept his eyes off the delicacies, though he was rather hungry.

“Would you like a lobster patty?” asked the one with fearsome eyebrows. She speared it with a fork and held it out to him.

He wasquitehungry, actually. He took it.

After that, all four of Cecelia’s friends began to offer him food, as if he was a zoo animal or a pet dog. Cecelia refrained. She was suppressing laughter though. James could tell. Itwasridiculous. This was why he never sat in the midst of a group of young ladies.

Lady Tate approached with a tall, muscular young man in tow, clearly intending introductions, and they were all obliged to stand. “Prince Karl von Osterberg, may I present to you…” And she reeled off all their names with an ease that left James in awe. But she was the hostess, after all. She would know who she’d invited.

The man clicked his heels and bowed. “You have the best place to sit,” he said to James. His appreciative gaze took in all the ladies.

Blond, with pale skin, jutting cheekbones, and hazel eyes, he had a deep voice and spoke with a slight Teutonic accent.

“Prince Karl is visiting London as part of his tour of Europe,” said Lady Tate. “And he was kind enough to join us this evening.”

“A pleasure,” said the newcomer. He gazed at Cecelia. “You are the daughter of Nigel Vainsmede?” he asked her.

Cecelia nodded. She was still bemused by James’s appearance at this gathering, when he certainly had no interest in this evening’s discussion. And to see him sitting in a cluster of debutantes and accepting tidbits from their plates! He never did such things. He never offered her silly compliments. And yet here he was, and so he had. Did he actually intend to pursue the idea of marriage? She would not have believed it. But she could see no other reason for his presence.

“I was most impressed by your father’s commentary onGrund und Erfahrung,” said Prince Karl.

He was ruddy, muscular, and confident. If the prince had been English, Cecelia would have put him down as one of the hunting, shooting, hard-drinking fellows who infested the countryside. But his hazel eyes were sharply observant. There was compelling intelligence in them. And Lady Tate chose her company for mind not rank, though she did not mind the latter, of course.

Prince Karl certainly looked much more like a prince than the aging Regent, whom Cecelia had met when she was presented at court. The foreigner had the face and frame for a fairy tale, craggy and resolute. He was nearly as handsome as James in quite a different style.

“Perhaps I may sit with you?” the prince added, including all of them with a gesture.

Lady Tate signaled a servant, and another chair was brought. Once the prince was installed on Cecelia’s right, their hostess drifted away. James shifted his seat a bit closer on her other side.

“Your father told me that you help with his work, Miss Vainsmede. You are a German scholar?”

“Papa was being overly kind. I merely do fair copies for him when he has finished his essays.”

“You are too modest, I am sure.”

She was not, actually. Cecelia was no kind of scholar. But she was rather enjoying his appreciative gaze. And even more, the sense that James was practically…simmering on her other side. The combination was exhilarating. “Are you also a student of Kant, like tonight’s speaker?” she asked the prince.

“Indeed I am,” he replied.

“Who is Kant?” asked Sarah.

“Perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time,” the prince replied, only slightly pompously. “He sought to determine what we can and cannot know through the use of reason.”

“And what did he decide?” asked Charlotte with her customary touch of irony.

“That our knowledge is constrained by the limited terms in which the mind can think. We can never know the world from the ‘standpoint of nowhere,’ and therefore we cannot conceive its entirety, neither via reason nor experience.”

“Pure gibberish,” James murmured.

For a moment Cecelia was concerned that the prince had heard. But he gave no sign.

“Standpoint of nowhere?” Sarah looked confused.

“I think it means we are constrained by our personal points of view,” Cecelia told her. “We cannot get outside them.” She had learned this much from her father.

“Bravo,” said the prince. “You are interested in philosophy.”

“I’m not really.”

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