Tierney had extracted a cheroot and took a long puff. “Her Royal Highness? No. Why do you ask?”
“Her cloak is on your chair,” Theo said, nodding in the direction of the garment.
“That cloak doesn’t belong to her,” Tierney said smoothly.
The devil it didn’t.
“The color,” he said. “It is Boritanian royal. Quite unique.”
Tierney gave him a thin smile. “I’m afraid not. It belongs to a doxy I found at a house of ill repute.”
“Tierney, if you are dallying with my sister, I’ll carve your heart from your chest with my bare hands,” he warned grimly.
Stasia was almost betrothed to King Maximilian. Theo thought again of her familiarity with Tierney. Of her use of his carriages. Her comfort at his town house. And Theo didn’t damn well like it.
“I would never dally with your sister,” Tierney responded, raising a brow. “I’m afraid that spoiled Boritanian princesses are not to my taste.”
He didn’t believe Tierney, but the plans had been set into motion, and he needed the man’s help to secret him out of London so that he could board the ship bound for Boritania as arranged.
“She has suffered greatly beneath the dictates of my uncle,” he warned his friend. “She is sacrificing herself for the good of Boritania. She is far from spoiled.”
Tierney took another puff of his cheroot, seemingly unaffected. “The garment doesn’t belong to her, St. George, and prince or no, you’re overstepping your bounds. You’ve far more important matters to attend to, aside from a discarded cloak. The carriage has been prepared for you, and your time is limited.”
His friend was not wrong about Theo having more important matters to fret over. His journey to Boritania loomed before him, lengthy and dangerous. He would not breathe easily until he had reached the delegation King Maximilian was sending to escort him to Boritania. But he was still leaving the woman he loved behind, and his sister as well, and that was not without its own upheaval.
“Tierney, promise me you’ll look after Stasia whilst she is in London and Lady Deering as well,” he said, voice rough and raw with emotion. “Are you any closer to learning who was responsible for the attacks on Ridgely?”
“We are,” Tierney confirmed, not bothering to elaborate. “And you needn’t worry. Your womenfolk will be well looked after.”
He clenched his jaw so hard it ached, but he forced himself to nod. “Thank you.”
Tierney inclined his head and tossed his cheroot into the fireplace. “God go with you, St. George.”
Theo knew he would require all the assistance—heavenly or otherwise—he could get.
CHAPTER20
FOUR MONTHS LATER
Pamela was on her knees in the Hunt House gardens, harvesting the first of the spring season’s rosemary, heedless of the damp earth soaking her gown and petticoats. The sun had chosen that morning to pierce the fog which had been lingering over London with extraordinary persistence the last few days. And the sky was blessedly free of rain.
But more than that, she needed the distraction, even if ghosts lingered in these gardens.
For Theo was everywhere. In her heart, in her memories, in the sketches she kept in her folio. He was in the candlelight and in the darkness. In the rain and the sun, the day and the night. Everything she saw reminded her of him and the precious, stolen moments they’d had together.
She clipped a sprig of rosemary, the fragrance perfuming the air and chasing the scent of wet soil. It fell lightly upon its predecessors in the basket, and she moved on to the next, cutting away. She would hang the rosemary in tidy little bundles again this year, drying it. Next would come the sweet marjoram.
The cutting garden, like her drawings, kept her idle hands busy. Kept her mind from wandering too far. And with Virtue and Ridgely on a honeymoon at Greycote Abbey, which her smitten brother had purchased as a surprise for his duchess, Pamela needed all the diversion she could find. She hadn’t been prepared for how empty and quiet Hunt House would be without them, but she well understood their desire to go.
It was a source of great solace that the woman who had been behind the attempts on Ridgely—a mad former mistress—was now imprisoned after she had intended to hurt Virtue as well. The woman was no longer capable of causing anyone harm. Gone were the bodyguards who had once prowled the halls.
Pamela was utterly alone.
Alone with nothing save the tiny fragments of news she read of Theo inTheTimesto placate her.
She snipped another herb and placed it in the basket, then plucked an errant weed from the soil. His uncle the king had been killed by revolutionaries, and Theo had come swiftly to power. And if the article she had read just that morning was any indication, the new king was in search of a bride.
The news stung, even if it was not surprising. She had known, from the moment he had left her, that his life would no longer be his own. She was merely grateful that he had lived. That his evil uncle had been removed from the throne and that he hadn’t been able to inflict any further pain on Theo, his family, or Boritania. Her time with him seemed almost as if it had been naught but a fairytale, but it was one she would forever hold in her heart and treasure.
