Leo laughed heartily.
“I would hate to see you displeased.”
“Keep up with that tone, and you will soon find out.”
“Your threat is noted.”
“More as a challenge, I suspect,” Prim looked ahead.
Leo looked down at the woman wrapped reluctantly around his arm. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows were permanently scowled, and her lips a thin line. He preferred her lips to be like they were last night. Soft, pliant, testing.
Leo thought of that kiss. Oh, he had kissed a lot. In shadows, in seedy rooms and bars, opera dressing rooms. If he thought hard enough, he had probably kissed on that terrace in one of Edwin’s house parties before his friend found his happiness.
But not one of the kisses before felt like a conquest. He relished the way Prim gave up slowly in his arms, the fact that this was obviously her first kiss, that he took as much as she gave.
“My investigation bore fruit,” Leo dropped suddenly.
He was in need of an immediate change of subject because his mind was winding down to paths that would test his restraint. Prim looked up and suddenly her fierceness dissolved into hope and fear at the same time.
“Did you find who was behind the sheet?”
Leo opened his mouth, but another couple passed them by and stared at them so openly that Leo bowed and kept his mouth shut. The woman turned a wicked eye onto Prim, a gesture that had much to do with the dreadful sheet and the rumors around it. Or the fact that Prim looked exquisite in this shade of pink, while the woman looked positively dreadful.
“Let’s head this way,” Leo led Prim into a path less frequented.
Prim looked at the couple retreating with a sad look. She needed that nasty business resolved as much as he did. Perhaps even more.
“This is distressing,” Prim said to herself, mostly with a sad look, her look lingering on the retreating couple.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Leo said. “That shade of pink looked absolutely hideous on her. And to parade that in Kensington Gardens on such a lovely day.”
Prim chuckled, her discomfort alleviated, a fact that brought some levity to Leo as well. Which was strange. Leo didn’t feel anything but mild annoyance at the looks he and Prim got on this walk. Why would the sound of Prim’s laughter make his shoulders relax?
“So, Your Grace,” Prim said, looking up at him. “Tell me what you found out.”
Leo’s look got darker even under the sun dancing between the leaves. He owed Prim an honest answer, but that meant sharing more than he would like.
“Your Grace?”
“I traced the author of the article. It is someone a lot closer than I’d like.”
Prim frowned. Leo continued as the gravel was the only sound around them.
“I suspected as much, but still… One reserves the right to hope that reality is not as foul.”
Leo inhaled and steeled his face. He looked down at Prim, who had slowed her pace as if she knew that the situation affected Leo.
“The one behind the sheet is a member of my family,” Leo deadpanned.
Prim brought her palm to her mouth in shock. Leo saw realization dawn upon her, and she looked at him with a mixture of surprise and empathy. She didn’t have the most loving of families, but at least hers didn’t go around backstabbing her while dragging innocent people through the mud.
“It is either my mother or my half-brother,” Leo said with a tight jaw. “They didn’t pen the article but paid good money for someone to do so.”
“Are… Are you sure?”
Leo smiled at her heart that was not as cold as she projected. She still held on to the idea that one’s family wouldn’t plot his downfall with such devious means.
“I was sure the moment I read the sheet. It’s the evidence that eludes me,” Leo’s look got even darker.
