The Serpent Prince
Page 7

“Impudent young bounder,” Papa growled, pushing his chair back from the table suddenly. “Did you see the insolent look he gave me as he left? Damn his eyes. And fleshpots. Ha, London fleshpots. I don’t like that man, poppet, viscount or no viscount.”
“I know that, Papa.” Lucy closed her eyes and wearily laid her head in her hands. She felt the beginnings of a migraine.
“The entire house knows that,” Mrs. Brodie proclaimed, banging back into the room.
CAPTAIN CRADDOCK-HAYES HAD IT RIGHT, the old bombastic bore, Simon reflected later that evening. Any man—especially a shrewd, eagle-eyed father—would do well to guard an angel as fine as Miss Lucinda Craddock-Hayes against the devils in the world.
Such as himself.
Simon leaned against the window frame in his borrowed bedroom, watching the night outside. She was in the dark garden, apparently strolling in the cold after that delicious but socially disastrous supper. He followed her movements by the pale oval of her face, the rest of her lost to the shadows. It was hard to tell why she fascinated him so, this rural maiden. Perhaps it was simply the draw of dark to light, the devil wanting to despoil the angel, but he thought not. There was something about her, something grave and intelligent and harrowing to his soul. She tempted him with the perfume of heaven, with the hope of redemption, impossible as that hope was. He should leave her alone, his angel entombed in the country. She slumbered innocently, doing good works and managing with a steady hand her father’s house. No doubt she had a suitable gentleman who called upon her; he’d seen the trap and horse pull away the other day. Someone who would respect her position and not test the iron that he sensed lay underneath her facade. A gentleman entirely unlike himself.
Simon sighed and pushed away from the window frame. He’d never dealt very well with the shoulds and shouldn’ts of his life. He left his temporary room and stole down the stairs, moving with ridiculous care. Best not to alert the protective papa. An angle on the dark landing caught him on the shoulder and he swore. He was using his right arm as much as possible, trying to exercise it, but the damn thing still felt like the very devil. The housekeeper and maid were working in the kitchen when he passed through. He smiled and walked swiftly.
He was already through the back door when he heard Mrs. Brodie’s voice. “Sir—”
He gently shut the door.
Miss Craddock-Hayes must have heard it. Gravel crunched beneath her feet as she turned. “It’s cold out here.” She was only a pale shape in the dark, but her words floated toward him on the night breeze.
The garden was perhaps a quarter acre. What he’d seen of it in daylight from his window was very neat. A low-walled kitchen garden, a small lawn with fruit trees, and beyond, a flower garden. Gravel walks connected the different parts, all of them properly put to bed for the winter, no doubt the work of her hands as well.
By the light of the dim sickle moon, though, it was hard to get his bearings. He’d lost her again in the dark, and it bothered him inordinately. “Do you think it cold? I hadn’t noticed, really. Merely brisk.” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets. It was bloody freezing in the garden.
“You shouldn’t be out so soon after being ill.”
He ignored that. “What are you doing here on a chilly winter night?”
“Looking at the stars.” Her voice trailed back to him as if she were walking away. “They’re never so bright as they are in winter.”
“Yes?” They all looked the same to him, whatever the season.
“Mmm. Do you see Orion over there? He glows tonight.” Her voice dropped. “But you should go in, it’s too cold.”
“I can do with the exercise—as I’m sure your father would point out—and winter air is good for a decrepit fellow like myself.”
She was silent.
He thought he moved in her direction, but he was no longer sure. Shouldn’t have mentioned the father.
“I’m sorry about Papa at supper.”
Ah, farther to the right. “Why? I thought his story quite clever. A trifle long, of course, but really—”
“He’s not usually so stern.”
She was so close he could smell her scent, starch and roses, curiously homey and yet arousing at the same time. What an ass he was. The crack to his head must have addled his wits.
“Ah, that. Yes, I did notice the old boy was a bit testy, but I put it down to the fact that I’m sleeping in his house, wearing his son’s clothes, and eating his very fine food without a proper invitation.”
He saw her face turn, ghostly in the moonlight. “No, it’s something about you.” He could almost feel her breath brushing against his cheek. “Although you could have been nicer, too.”
He chuckled. It was that or weep. “I don’t think so.” He shook his head, though she couldn’t see it. “No, I’m certain. I definitely can’t be any nicer. It’s simply not in me. I’m like that snake in your father’s story, striking when I shouldn’t. Although in my case, it’s more that I quip when I shouldn’t.”
The treetops moved in the wind, raking arthritic fingers against the night sky.
“Is that how you ended up nearly dead in the ditch outside Maiden Hill?” She’d crept closer. Lured by his studied frankness? “Did you insult someone?”
Simon caught his breath. “Now why do you think the attack was any fault of mine?”
“I don’t know. Was it?”
He settled his rump against the kitchen garden wall, where it promptly started freezing, and crossed his arms. “You be my judge, fair lady. I shall set my case before you, and you may pronounce sentence.”
“I’m not qualified to judge anyone.”
Did she frown? “Oh, yes, you are, sweet angel.”
“I don’t—”
“Hush. Listen. I got up that morning at a horribly unfashionable hour, dressed, after a small argument with my valet over the advisability of red-heeled pumps, which he won—Henry absolutely terrorizes me—”
“Somehow I very much doubt that.”
Simon placed a hand over his heart, even though the movement was wasted in the dark. “I do assure you. Then I descended my front steps, magnificently arrayed in a dashing blue velvet coat, curled and powdered wig, and the aforementioned red-heeled pumps—”
She snorted.
“Strolled down the street less than a quarter mile and was there set upon by three ruffians.”
She caught her breath. “Three?”
Gratifying.
“Three.” He made his voice light. “Two I might have bested. One, assuredly. But three proved to be my downfall. They relieved me of everything I had on, including the pumps, which put me in the embarrassing position of having to meet you for the first time both in the nude and—even more shockingly—unconscious. I don’t know if our relationship will ever recover from the initial trauma.”
She declined the bait. “You didn’t know your attackers?”
Simon started to spread wide his arms, then winced and lowered them. “On my honor. Now, unless you consider red-heeled pumps to be an unbearable temptation to London robbers—in which case I was certainly asking for a drubbing going out in broad daylight wearing them—I think you will have to pardon me.”
“And if I don’t?” So soft, the wind nearly bore the words away.
Such a cautious flirt. Yet even this little hint of laughter caused his loins to tighten. “Then, lady, best call my name no more. For Simon Iddesleigh will be naught but a wisp, an exhalation. I will expire and disappear utterly, were you to denounce me.”
Silence. Perhaps the exhalation bit was overdone.
Then she laughed. A loud, joyful sound that made something in his breast leap in reply.
“Do you feed the ladies in London this poppycock?” She was literally gasping for breath. “If you do, I think they would all go about with grimaces on their powdered faces to keep from giggling.”
He felt unaccountably put out. “I’ll have you know, I am considered quite a wit in London society.” Good Lord, he sounded like a pompous ass. “The great hostesses vie to have me on their invitation lists.”
“Really?”
Imp!
“Yes, really.” He couldn’t help it; the words came out sounding disgruntled. Oh, that would impress her. “A dinner party can be proclaimed a success when I attend. Last year a duchess fainted dead away when she heard I couldn’t make it.”
“Poor, poor London ladies. How sad they must be at the moment!”
He winced. Touché. “Actually—”
“And yet they survive without you.” The laughter still lurked. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps your absence has caused a rash of hostess faintings.”
“Oh, cruel angel.”
“Why do you call me that? Is that a name you give many of your London ladies?”
“What, angel?”
“Yes.” And suddenly he realized that she was closer than he’d thought. Within reach, in fact.
“No, only you.” He touched a fingertip to her cheek. Her skin was warm, even in the night air, and soft, so soft.
Then she stepped away.
“I don’t believe you.”
Did she sound breathless? He grinned like a demon in the dark but didn’t answer. God, he wished he could simply pull her into his arms, open her sweet lips beneath his, feel her breath in his mouth and her breasts against his chest.
“Why angel?” she asked. “I’m not particularly angelic.”
“Ah, there you are wrong. Your eyebrows are most stern, your mouth curved like a Renaissance saint. Your eyes are wondrous to look upon. And your mind . . .” He stood and ventured a step toward her, until they almost touched, and she had to turn her pale face up to his.
“My mind?”
He thought he felt the warm puff of her breath. “Your mind is an iron bell that rings beautiful, terrible, and true.” His voice was husky, even to his own ears, and he knew he’d revealed too much.
A lock of her hair bridged the scant inches between them and caressed his throat. His cock came painfully erect, its beat echoing the one in his heart.
“I have no idea what that means,” she whispered.
“Perhaps that’s just as well.”
She reached her hand out, hesitated, then touched his cheek lightly with one fingertip. He felt the contact sizzle throughout his body down to his very toes.
“Sometimes I think I know you,” she murmured so low he almost didn’t catch the words. “Sometimes I think that I’ve always known you, from the very first moment you opened your eyes, and that, deep inside your soul, you know me, too. But then you make a joke, play the fool or the rake, and turn aside. Why do you do that?”
He opened his mouth to shout his fear or say something else entirely, but the kitchen door opened, spilling an arc of light into the garden. “Poppet?”
The guardian father.
She turned so that her face was silhouetted against the light from the kitchen. “I must go in. Good night.” She withdrew her hand, and it brushed across his lips as she retreated.
He had to steady his voice before he could speak. “Good night.”
She walked toward the kitchen door, emerging into the light. Her father took her elbow and searched the shadows of the garden over her head before closing the door behind her. Simon watched her go, choosing to stay in the dark rather than confront Captain Craddock-Hayes. His shoulder ached, his head pounded, and his toes were frozen.
And he played a game he could not possibly win.
“I D-D-DON’T BELIEVE YOU.” Quincy James paced to Sir Rupert’s study window and back, his strides quick and jerky. “They t-t-told me he was bleeding from the head. They stabbed him in the b-b-back and left him in the freezing cold, naked. How c-c-could a man survive that?”