Page 14 of To Pleasure a Prince
“Well, yes, but—”
“What if it hurts your brain permanently? Who knows what could happen? Remember what the doctor said—it’s not worth trying to read if you tax your brain so much that you injure it. Do you really want to risk losing your facility for speech or thought, too?”
Regina gazed out the window. “Of course not.”
Despite the claims of the private doctor Cicely had secretly consulted when Regina was young, neither of them had any idea what might happen if she braved the headaches. No one else seemed to suffer pain merely from staring at a few words. No one else looked at letters and saw them backwards or upside down.
Why was her brain so different? She generally understood spoken words, and whenever someone read to her—and she’d grown very clever at convincing them to do so—she understood what they read. She enjoyed hearing a good story, and she absolutely delighted in attending the theater.
So why did her brain fail her when she opened a book or even tried to read music? Why must the letters and notes always look wrong?
Cicely believed it was because of the terrible fever that had struck Regina when she was two. Regina had been told that her nanny had nearly despaired of her living through it. And she had taken longer than most children to learn to speak.
“Well, what does it say?” she asked, as Cicely continued staring at the paper.
“His lordship doesn’t have the finest hand I’ve ever seen, but if I read this correctly”—she flashed Regina a smile—“then you succeeded in changing his mind about Miss North and your brother. He asks that Lady Iversley invite Simon to a soiree at her home tomorrow evening.” Cicely gazed at it more closely, a puzzled frown creasing her brow. “And he says that he’ll be attending as well. With you? Surely I can’t be reading that correctly.”
Regina drew herself up. “Yes, I agreed to let him…er…accompany me.” She didn’t dare tell Cicely the true nature of her arrangement with Lord Draker; Cicely would faint dead away.
As it was, Cicely’s head shot up so fast it nearly fell off. “My word, are you sure you should do that?”
“No,” Regina said wryly. “But I had little choice. It was the only way Lord Draker would agree to let Simon court his sister.”
Cicely sat back and fanned herself furiously with her reticule. “Oh dear, oh dear…the Dragon Viscount…and you…” She stopped fanning to remove her spectacles and hand the note back to Regina. “Are you sure Simon will allow it?”
Regina tucked the note back inside her reticule. “He will if he wants to see his sweetheart.” She smiled smugly. “Besides, he won’t find out until Lord Draker shows up at our town house, and by then it will be too late. Simon doesn’t even know I went out to Castlemaine to talk to the man.” When Cicely blanched, Regina’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“No! I-I mean…well…I did leave a note for him. But I doubt he’ll get home before we do, and as soon as we’re back I’ll retrieve it from his desk.” When Regina began to scowl, Cicely added hastily, “I merely wanted to make sure someone knew where we were in case something happened to us out there.”
Regina rolled her eyes. “What did you think Lord Draker would do—lock us in his famous dungeon?”
Cicely leaned close, her eyes feverishly bright. “You jest, but I’ve heard that he chains women down there and does unspeakable things to them.”
She bit back a smile. “What sort of unspeakable things?”
“Regina!” Cicely said, clearly horrified.
“I’m only teasing, dear.” Or half-teasing anyway. Because the thought of Lord Draker “doing unspeakable things” to a woman chained in his dungeon provoked an odd fluttering in her chest.
She could picture the scene—a woman bound and helpless before him…subjected to his unsettling gaze greedily raking her scantily clad body. Then his hands would follow where his gaze had traveled, touching and stroking until the woman sighed with pleasure—
She snorted. Pleasure, hah! How could she even think that such a thing would be pleasurable? And from that arrogant scoundrel, too—how absurd. She was as bad as Cicely with her fertile imagination.
“You’ve really got to stop reading those gossip rags,” she grumbled to her cousin. “They give you the wildest ideas.”And me, too, unfortunately.
Cicely flinched. “I only read them so I can keep you informed about what’s happening in society.”
Regina was instantly contrite. “I know, dear, I know. And I do appreciate the sacrifices you make for me. What would I do without you?”
That seemed to mollify Cicely, who drew out her netting with a hesitant smile.
Regina meant every word. If not for Cicely, all the world would know about the duke’s daughter whose brain was so damaged that she couldn’t read. People would pity her—and her brother. They would dredge up every inconsequential tale about her family and search for deficiencies in Simon and Cicely and—
No, it couldn’t be borne. No one must ever learn her secret.
Thank heaven for Cicely’s quick-wittedness. The minute she’d discovered Regina’s weakness, she’d scrambled to hide it, even from Regina’s parents. Cicely had known even then what Regina had taken years to learn—that the duchess demanded perfection from her children. The family honor must be upheld, after all.
Fortunately, Mama’s expectations for Regina had focused on womanly accomplishments over scholarly ones. Since Regina had learned to play the harp by ear and could sing well, Mama had been content right up until her death shortly before Regina’s come-out.
