“Your Royal Highness,” she greeted. “I thought you were still confined to your sickroom.”
“Mercifully, I’ve escaped.” The smile he sent her way melted something deep inside her.
She ignored it, summoning all the inner ice that dwelled in the darkest corners of her ragged heart.
“Her Royal Highness Princess Emmaline and Her Royal Highness Princess Annalise are no relations of yours,” she pointed out coolly, irritated with him for appearing when she had spent the last few days happily avoiding him.
And pretending he—and his sinful, smoldering, wondrous kisses—hadn’t occupied her every waking thought since she had foolishly allowed herself to be alone with him that last time. He’d been dangerous then. She’d seen it. No longer on his sickbed, pale and wan from loss of blood, mind befuddled by the laudanum. Rather, he’d been sharp and clear. Beautiful and masculine and painfully compelling. The air between them had fairly crackled with fire. She should have run at the first opportunity. Yet, she’d remained, knowing what would happen.
Wantingit, to her everlasting shame.
But she couldn’t say any of that aloud. So instead, she had chosen to comment upon the prince’s ridiculous claim that he was a cousin to the princesses.
“We may as well be,” he said easily, offering a gallant bow. “Their sister was practically married to my brother. We were very nearly almost siblings by marriage.”
“And how does that make you their cousin, Your Royal Highness?” she asked despite herself.
He straightened to his full, maddening, handsome height. “I’ll admit I am woefully inept at understanding familial ties, particularly in the English language. However, the princessesarefamily to me.”
“Nando,” Emmaline greeted, closing the distance between them with such exuberance that she nearly bounced as she floated to the prince. “Stasia refused to allow me to come to you. How is your wound?”
“Healing quite nicely,” he announced, his gaze traveling over the princess’s head and melding with Eleanora’s. “I owe an eternal debt of gratitude for the angels at my side during my convalescence here.”
There was an underlying, pointed aspect to his tone, and Eleanora knew he was referencing her absence from his sickbed these past few days. She had missed him—she wouldn’t lie to herself, even if she had to lie to everyone else. But she also knew all too well what would have happened if she had gone to him again after those breath-stealing and mind-numbing kisses.
She would have returned to his chamber again and again until she had finally surrendered to what the prince wanted—namely, her in his bed. But Eleanora knew how damning such a choice would be. She could resist him. Shehadresisted him.
And he had been irritated by it. Good. Let him be. Perhaps if his vanity were sufficiently damaged, he would decide to pursue someone else.
“Angels at your side,” Princess Emmaline repeated, casting a sly glance in Eleanora’s direction. “Never say Miss Brett was attending you.”
“I wasn’t,” she hastened to say, hoping the look she sent the wicked prince was suitably hard and discouraging.
“Of course she was,” he said, dashing her hopes as he continued to smile knowingly in her direction. “And pray, do not let the humble Miss Brett dissuade you that her loving ministrations were anything other than miraculous.”
She nearly swallowed her tongue.
Loving ministrations.Why, she ought to box his ears, the scoundrel!
Eleanora’s gaze frantically swept the chamber for a weapon she might take up and use against him, just to keep him from speaking. There was a poker by the fireplace. An accommodating vase filled with hothouse flowers. An ormolu clock on the mantel. She didn’t want to murder him, however. Merely stun him.
“What are you looking for, Miss Brett?” he asked.
She clenched her jaw and forced a smile that felt more like a grimace. “Something I misplaced.”
It was yet another lie in a seemingly endless string of so many.
For this one, she felt no guilt. He had brought it upon himself with his ceaseless flirting and innuendos and his casual grace and his gorgeous blue eyes and sinful lips and those kisses that had seared her to her soul.
“Your pleasant disposition is perhaps what you’ve lost?” he asked innocently.
Princess Emmaline chortled. Princess Annalise gasped, the sweet child.
Eleanora forced her expression to remain at ease, quite as if Prince Ferdinando weren’t the most irksome, handsome, frustrating man she’d ever met.
And she had crossed paths with rather a lot of handsome, maddening men. The prince before her was simply incomparable.
“Is there something you require, Your Royal Highness?” she asked through clenched teeth.
