There was no comparison. Not her warmth. Not her sweetness. Not his princesse.
The blonde’s lips reeked of smoke and wine. He broke away, closing his eyes. “Merde…” he breathed, low. The two women only laughed, thinking it part of his drunken heat.
“Poor thing,” one crooned. “Does your wife not please you? Not like we can, or you wouldn’t be here, eh?”
“Wife?” His voice was a mumble, thick, slurred. The room spun.
The brunette caught his hand. “This ring—means you’re married, don’t it?”
Dash blinked at his hand. The ring.
The one Ambrosia chose for him in Joseph’s Well.
The ring.
He lurched forward, pushing the girls aside, not gently.
“Say, what’s your problem? You want to go upstairs?”
But Dash would not be going upstairs tonight. Not with a blonde, not with a brunette, and certainly not with both.
Ambrosia had been wearing her ring when he’d made love to her on the worktable in the hot house. On her left hand.
If she truly wanted to forget him, if she thought to give herself to another man…
That ring would not have been there.
Which meant…
Elle m’aime encore.
She still loves me.
“Hawk!” Dash waved to his friend, who was entertaining himself at one of the gaming tables. “I need to go...” But whereas the world had been spinning slowly before, it suddenly leapt and then tilted from side to side.
Where did he need to go? And why?
He dropped back onto the chaise and the last thing he remembered was being straddled by a woman with golden hair… or was it more of a reddish blonde?
“Ambrosia, princesse…” Consciousness stole away and, unable to rouse himself, Dash slipped into a dark, empty void.
BLAME
Someone had plunged knives into his skull. Dash squeezed his eyes shut and groaned.
Mistake. The sound ricocheted inside his brain like a musket ball.
Familiar laughter drifted across the room.
“If you’re the picture of nobility, England is doomed, my friend.”
Dieu me damne.
Dash cracked one eye open.
Another mistake.
Sunlight slanted mercilessly through the tall windows of the study at Hawkins Place, and there was Hawk—pressed and dressed as though he were about to depart for one of the ton’s many parties. Of course he was—it wasn’t as though the lout had drunk anything but his beloved tea last night.
