Page 28 of Triumph at Pemberley

“And you, madam,” Prinny continued. “I understand you are more accustomed to court life than your husband.”

Mrs. Hartung fluttered her eyelashes, something Jack had never seen her do. “I confess, sir, to being unfamiliar with English court protocol, but I have spent time in both the Kaiser’s and the Czar’s courts. And, to my misfortune, I was forced to attend Napoleon’s court when I was a hostage.” She looked around the horribly over-decorated room. “I must compliment you on your taste, sir. Your home outshines the palace of Versailles.”

“Ha! I designed it myself.” Apparently Prinny had never heard of modesty, even in response to what had to be abject flattery. “Well, your experience will be an asset as we bring young Jack here up to snuff.”

Up to snuff. Prinny really meant it.

“Thank you for getting me out of there,” Jack murmured to Mrs. Hartung once they were safely back in the sitting room at Darcy House. He had been careful to say nothing until they were behind closed doors. “I do not know how I would have managed without you.”

She patted his hand. “I never thought I would be grateful for my experience as a hostage, but it taught me how to flatter and flirt with a powerful man I detest. Napoleon expected as much from any young woman. What will you do?”

“Damned if I know. Forgive my language,” he said. “It is treason, what he suggested about making me his heir.”

Mrs. Hartung went to the sideboard and poured him a glass of his favorite brandy. Somehow the gesture warmed him, that she had been thinking about what he might need. He thanked her and took an appreciative sip, rolling it around in his mouth.

She said gently, “He is as much as offering you a crown. Are you at all tempted?”

Jack almost spat out his brandy. “Good God, no. Dispossess Princess Charlotte? Never. Even if it were not treason, I would hate it. Being a dragon companion was enough of a responsibility for me, long before the King’s Bond. No. Let Princess Charlotte have it, and I will serve her.”

“Many men would kill for this opportunity.”

“God knows the woman who birthed me did!” He still could not refer to Lady Catherine as his mother. “I am ill-suited for a public life.”

She poured herself a glass of wine and sat across from him. “What sort of life are you hoping for, then?”

“Now? I cannot even think of one. Before the King’s Bond snapped this yoke around my neck, I suppose I wanted a life much like my brother’s. Like Will, who I thought was my brother.” How he hated having to correct that! “Living in the country, having a family of my own and Gentiane nearby, with the chance to travel a little, to attend neighborhood entertainments. Did you hope for a husband with greater ambitions than that?” he asked brittlely. Was this when he would find out she was not who he thought?

She shook her head, smiling. “I have had my fill of courts and powerful men. I could have had more of that by marrying whomever my cousin wished, but all the court balls in the world could never bring me the sort of joy my children do.”

Abruptly he said, “I do not know what the King’s Bond will do to me once the war is ended. They say it can do more than fight off enemies. The king may expect me to travel all over England helping people with it. At least as long as he lives, but when Prinny becomes king…”

How could that man be his father?

Perhaps it would not be a tragedy if he died fighting Napoleon.

Mrs. Hartung must have seen something in his face, for she came to stand behind him and rested her delicate hands on his shoulders. “You will find a way,” she said. “He cannot force you to follow him.”

God, he hoped she was right.

“You have certainly thrown the cat among the pigeons,” Richard announced. “I have never seen such scurrying and combing through all the records! Whitehall is abuzz.”

“What has happened?” Jack asked. “More trouble?”

“No, it is this matter of your purported wife. Did you know she is related to half the royal houses of Europe?”

“I suppose there must be some connection, but she is far from any lines of inheritance.”

“What matters is that it looks like a dynastic marriage, and very much as if you are trying to solidify a claim to the English throne.”

“What?” Jack yelped. “That is ridiculous!”

“Clearly, since if you had married her in France, you would have known nothing about the King’s Bond. But why did you tell them such a bouncer, anyway?”

Jack rubbed his hands over his face. “They are trying to force me to marry Sophia Fitzclarence and impregnate her immediately with little royal mages.”

“Have they no decency?” Richard sputtered.

“Apparently not when it comes to the King’s Bond. If they want to make me run off and desert England to her fate, they are going about it the right way. Has the government always been run by such fools?”