He eyed the coin, and she could see his interest. “You a princess trapped in a tower?”
She blinked. “N-no.”
“You look like a princess,” he muttered.
She looked down at herself in the fine gown, and sighed. It wasn’t even hers. It had belonged to the last princess who holed up in this tower with this man…prince or beast might he be.
“Will you do it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “No skin off my nose. Give the coin over then,” he said, and held his hand beneath the knot. She shoved the coin against it, and it wedged, but with a few taps of the edge, it pushed through. For a moment she thought he might just run with the money, but then he waved at her. “Now the letter.”
She rolled the folded pages into a scroll and pushed it through the opening, as well. “You’ll do it today?”
“On me way ’ome,” he said, though she wasn’t certain if that meant right away or later. Beggars, of course, could not be choosers, though, so she nodded.
“Thank you. I do appreciate it.”
He grunted some version of farewell and then rushed off again, racing down the alleyway behind the house and disappearing out of her sightline in the narrow hole.
She drew in a long breath once he was gone. She had no idea if he would truly post the letter, but at least she had tried. And knowing she could ease Aurora’s fears should have made her feel a little better.
Instead, she felt terribly guilty for going against the directive Oscar had given her a few hours before. She owed him so much. But he had made it very clear that he wasn’t meant to be a permanent fixture in her life. Aurora was.
She had to focus on that in the end, and not tell herself stories about the prince masquerading as a beast who had trapped her in his elegantly appointed tower and seduced her with his library. This fairytale could certainly not end well if she let herself forget that the final chapter would not be a happily ever after, at least not for the two of them.
Chapter 15
In the three days since Imogen had flounced out of his study, Oscar had been more confused than he’d ever been in his life. He felt her pulling away. During the day, she stayed out of his path. She read in the library, she worked in his garden, she sequestered herself in her room.
She was doing as he asked. She was keeping up a barrier between them. He should have been happy. But he wasn’t. He found himself shadowing her. Watching her from the window above when she was in the garden. Sneaking peeks of her in the library when she wasn’t looking. Standing at her chamber door, talking himself in and out of knocking.
And yet at night…oh, at night everything changed. She slipped into his room, never mentioning the gulf that lay between them. She came to his bed and sank into the pleasures they could share. When he dominated, she submitted. When he pressed her boundaries, she opened herself to him.
And when she occasionally took the lead, he found himself fighting all the urges within him to fall to his knees and spend the rest of his life worshipping her.
He shook those troubled thoughts away and continued on his way through the house. He hadn’t seen her since she left his bed last night to return to her chamber, and now it was late in the afternoon. The plans he had been formulating for days had finally come through and he almost vibrated with excitement as he exited the house and looked down from the terrace over the garden below.
She was there, a basket in one hand and clippers in the other, trimming his rosebushes. His heart leapt before he jerked himself back from the pleasure he ought not feel and made his way down the stairs to the garden to join her.
She lifted her gaze to his as he came down the last step and strode across the lawn. Her expression revealed nothing of how she felt to see him.
“Good afternoon, Imogen,” he said as he reached her. “What are you doing?”
She glanced at him again and then went back to trimming the dead heads off his roses, this time with a little more…violence than a moment before.
“I’m making the best of things,” she said as she wiped her cheek and left an adorable smudge of dirt in her wake. “I’ve been cooped up inside for nearly a fortnight and I feel I shall go mad. I hope you don’t mind my attacking your garden to fill the time.”
He looked around. Where once his garden had been a mess of brambles and weeds, interspersed with flowers worth looking at, she had really made progress in her short time here. There were paths under the mess, it seemed. And flowerbeds. And bushes.
“It’s wonderful, Imogen,” he said. “Truly lovely. I appreciate you spending your energy on this. And as for making the best of it, it seems you always do that, don’t you?”
If he expected her to smile at that observation or agree, he was taken aback when she made the most unladylike snort he’d ever heard and tossed the clippers down with more than a little force.
“Ah, yes,” she retorted. “That’s me. Accepting everything, no matter what the cost. From my family. From my husband.” She looked away from him. “From you.”
He stiffened at the comparison to those who had never had her best interests at heart. “It isn’t the same.”
“No,” she mused softly, and once again her gaze found his. “No, not entirely, I agree. At least you have my pleasure as a goal, if nothing else.”
