I blink back to consciousness, unsure of how long I’ve been under, to find a shadowy figure sitting beside me in a carriage.
“I’ve got a knife,” I whisper, terrified. I don’t mention that it’s a kitchen knife shoved in my boot, too dull to cut through anything and too difficult to reach now anyway.
“Are you going to stab me?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
My vision obscures as something warm pours over my left eye. I reach up to wipe it, and my hand comes away sticky with blood.
The figure swears and shrugs off his coat. “Take this. You can stab me later.”
He presses his coat to my temple. It’s still warm with his body heat, and I resist the urge to sigh in relief at even the smallest reprieve from the cold.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“You hit me with your carriage,” I reply weakly.
“I didn’t hit you, you tripped.”
“I tripped to avoid getting trampled by your—” I pause to look around. The carriage is massive, at least a six-seater, with thick velvet upholstery and polished brass fixtures. “Behemoth,” I finish.
“I wasn’t the one skulking around in the dark.”
“I wasn’t skulking. I was lost.”
“Where were you headed? Maybe I can help you?” The stranger taps on the window to the driver’s seat and it slides open.
“Where to, miss?” the driver asks gruffly.
Even I can admit when a mission has failed. “Belgrave Square,” I answer, giving him my home address.
The horses whinny, and we’re off with a lurch. As we make a wide right turn onto a main thoroughfare, a beam of yellow lamplight streams in through the carriage window.
The boy brushes his unkempt hair from his forehead, and recognition hits me like a blow. I’m dizzy from the trauma to my head, but that’s not why it feels as if the world has suddenly tilted.
Sitting opposite me, concern sketched across his fine features, is a face I’ve seen in portraits and across crowded concert halls my entire life. He looks younger tonight than any time I’ve seen him previously. He’s usually in stiff cravats with well-coifed hair. Tonight it falls in dark waves over his forehead, partially obscuring his hazel eyes, but the high cheekbones, sharp jaw, and sullen mouth are the same.Prince Emmett.
“It’s you.” I blink.
A bemused smile crosses his face. “Who?”
“You’re Prince Emmett.”
“You must have hit your head rather hard,” he replies. There’s a crackle of fragility in the edge of his voice.
“I know who you are. There’s no point in hiding it.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “We’ve met.” It isn’t a question.
We haven’t, not really, but I’ve seen him from a distance at enough events to be certain—and then there was that thing with Lydia.
“Lady Benton.” I nod my head in some semblance of a bow, but he senses the sarcasm in the gesture and his mouth quirks up in a half smile. “Second daughter of the Marquess of Townshend.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be missing?” Emmett asks. “I’ve heard the rumors.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m the other one. I was looking for my sister, that’s why I was out.” I feel the sharp stab of failure as the carriage carries us farther from Kensington Palace. I’ve just tossed Lydia’s necklace into the dirt for nothing.
