Page 12 of The Princess and the Rogue

Long Meg, a ravishing natural redhead, chuckled. “Wonder what ’e likes? I bet ’e’s a right handful, big manlike that. Think ’e wants a five fingered handshake?” She made a crude gesture with her hand, fingers meeting thumb as if encircling a pipe.

Jenny gave a theatrical shiver. “’Ave you seen the size of ’is ’ands? I tell you, girls, I’d do ’im for free.”

Anya snatched up her bonnet and gloves and made for the door. She truly didn’t want to hear any more of the conversation, but she couldn’t help looking back as Charlotte came in.

“What does he want, Charlotte?” Jenny asked.

“Letmetake care of ’im!” Amy pleaded.

“I’ll do whatever ’e asks,” Long Meg declared.

Charlotte looked unusually harried. Two small lines had appeared between her brows. “Not the main course,” she said briskly, sending Anya a speculative look that Anya couldn’t begin to decipher. “Just something to take the edge off.”

The girls let out a collective sigh of disappointment, but Anya’s stomach tumbled in dismay. For all his protestations of wanting only her, it seemed Lord Mowbray was prepared to accept the ministrations of any female after all. She told herself she wasn’t disappointed.

Charlotte turned to the brunette on her right. The girl had the most captivating mouth Anya had ever seen, with pouting lips and a fetching beauty mark on one cheek.

“Nan, you’re best with your hands. You go.”

The rest of the girls started to protest, but Nan looked like she’d been handed the keys to paradise. Anya quashed a sudden twinge of—jealousy? Surely not. She had no desire to dothatto a man. The whole thing had sounded quite disgusting when the girls had first described it to her in the spirit of “broadening her education.”

But the question of what Sebastien Wolff might looklike, naked,aroused, intruded upon her brain and refused to leave. What might have happened if she’d said yes?

Impatient with herself, she waved her gloves at Charlotte over the heads of the fluttering horde. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlotte!”

She heaved a sigh of relief as she trotted up the back stairs to her own apartment. Her lips were still tingling, her blood pounding in her ears.

So. She’d met Sebastien Wolff.KissedSebastien Wolff. It had been wonderful. Extraordinary. But one thing was very clear: she must never encounter him again.

Chapter 7.

A week after her unsettling encounter with Wolff, Anya slipped into the library of his great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Winwick.

“Oh, there you are, Anya,” the duchess said, glancing up from her seat at a handsome rosewood writing desk. “I have a present for you.” She indicated a large, leather-bound book in front of her. “It’s a collection of Russian fairy tales. Just look at these marvelous illustrations!”

Anya crossed to the desk. A lump of emotion balled in her chest at the bittersweet pleasure of seeing her native language. Cyrillic was such a beautiful alphabet. She stroked her finger over a gilt-enhanced picture of a golden prince in a garden with a flame-colored bird perched in an apple tree. It was as richly decorated as a medieval manuscript.

“Thank you,” she stammered. “I don’t know what to say. It’s wonderful.”

“The whole thing’s in Russian,” the dowager said, witha glint of challenge in her eye. “I got it from a rare book dealer on Publisher’s Row. I thought you could translate it into English, and I’ll have it printed and bound. I like the idea of being a literary patron. We’ll make a special edition and I’ll give copies to all my friends.”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

The dowager nodded. “I thought of it last week, at the Russian ambassador’s reception.” She gave a dismissive sniff. “Much as I hate to disparage your fellow countrymen, the food was rather inferior. And Dorothea Lieven is the most dreadful gossip alive. She wants to know everything about everyone. You should have seen the way she was clinging to Lord Castlereagh. Like a vine over a trellis.”

Anya hid a smile. The newspapers and caricaturists often lampooned the ambassador for having a wife far more skilled at maintaining diplomatic relations than himself.

“A whole bunch of your countrymen were there, in fact,” the duchess said. “Tsar Alexander’s sent some kind of trade delegation. I’d be surprised if you didn’t know some of them.”

She sent Anya a quizzical look that was supposed to be innocent, but fooled Anya not a bit. The dowager was fishing for any hint of scandal.

“One chap was particularly popular with the ladies,” the duchess said with studied casualness. “A war hero, so they say. Count Petrov, his name was.”

Anya felt the blood drain from her face. “What?”

The duchess was watching her closely, a shrewd gleam in her eye. “He’s been telling a fantastical story. Says he’s searching for his missing fiancée who disappeared just after he proposed. No ransom note was ever received, but he firmly believes she was kidnapped and brought here, to England. He’s been looking for her for months.He’s never given up hope that she’ll be found alive. Isn’t that romantic?”

“No!” Anya practically shouted.

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