Page 60 of To Pleasure a Prince
“About what?”
“Youwerebehaving badly to break Simon and Louisa apart. Courting me was only a tactic to provoke one of them into breaking off their courtship.”
He searched her face. “Let’s just say I didn’t see the need to exert myself.”
Though he was finally being truthful about his aims, his honesty rankled. “And you do now?”
Covering her hand with his, he smiled. “You should know the answer to that. What man has ever stayed immune to your charms for long?”
His words too closely echoed his flattery of Lady Hungate. She wasn’t sure she liked this insincere version of Marcus. “Do not insult my intelligence. I know you never intended this to be a real courtship.”
“Didyouintend it to be?” His gaze narrowed, burning into hers. “If you want truths, madam, perhaps you should offer some yourself. Your only reason for agreeing to the courtship was to help your brother. For all I know, you are part of his scheme to bring Louisa under Prinny’s influence.”
“Louisa is my friend—I would never betray her friendship.” She lifted her chin. “And if that was my aim, I would certainly never have let you kiss me.”
“You did that to satisfy your dangerous taste for adventure.”
“That wasn’t the only reason I let you kiss me,” she whispered.
His fingers tightened painfully on her hand. “Wasn’t it?”
Although her cheeks flamed, she forced herself to meet his gaze. “No.”
He looked as if he meant to say something else, but then Cicely appeared and launched herself fully into her role as chaperone.
Leaving Regina to wonder at her own boldness. How could she have been so foolish as to admit his effect on her? She shouldn’t give him reason to believe she might welcome his attentions. It was one thing when she’d been sure he intended the courtship to annoy her and Simon. But if his miraculous change genuinely stemmed from his desire to please her, if he truly meant to court her…
She imagined herself as his wife. In town, they would attend the theater and the opera, sharing kisses in the boxes, sneaking caresses in the carriage. At his estate, she would be his lady of the manor, dining with him, managing his staff, consulting with his steward on household accounts—
As if she could even read them. Her heart sank. What a futile fantasy. She could never have such a marriage. And what about her children? Even if they were spared her affliction, how could she endure the humiliation of not being able to read to them, or having them think her stupid? Havinghimthink her stupid?
She could never marry Marcus or anyone else. But for the first time in her life, she wished she could.
Chapter Thirteen
Nothing keeps a young lady on her best behavior around young gentlemen better than the threat of a loose-tongued brother.
—Miss Cicely Tremaine,The Ideal Chaperone
That wasn’t the only reason I let you kiss me.
The statement clamored in Marcus’s head for the next hour. He’d come here to prove once and for all that Regina’s friends were too heartless for Louisa; now that had all gone to hell. Initially, he’d received the same condescending glances, sly asides, and cruel treatment he’d come to expect whenever he went into public, but that had faded before long. Now he found only deferential curiosity, a grudging acknowledgment of his right to belong.
At the center of it stood Regina, in white lace and blue silk. For once, her golden hair was adorned with flowers instead of a hat. She glowed like spring at its warmest, and her public manner toward him matched her look. She glanced at him long and often, on the dance floor and at the lemonade table. From far across the room. And now from right beside him, where she’d stayed ever since they’d returned from their waltz.
She stood surrounded by the usual crowd of fawning admirers, both male and female, yethewas the one she graced with her smile,hewas the one with whom she conversed the most.
He didn’t know what to make of it. Had he been wrong, not only about her, but about the rest of the lot? Might he even have been wrong about Foxmoor and Louisa?
No, he could not believe that. While Regina might not have anything to do with Foxmoor’s scheme, he knew Foxmoor had one.
“What doyouthink about the war, Lord Draker?” Regina asked. “Is Boney beaten at last?”
He dragged his attention back to the conversation between her and an assortment of her friends who seemed astonishingly content to stand in the same circle with him.
His first impulse was to admit that he didn’t give a damn about the war one way or the other. But he was already growing used to squelching such “ungentlemanly” responses. “Boney can hardly escape Elba with a phalanx of English soldiers guarding him.”
“Especially if the English soldiers are as big as you, my lord,” said a young woman with a heavy Spanish accent, the cousin of one of the other ladies. When he glanced at her, she lowered her eyes shyly. “And as strong.”
