“Let me have one more page of the fairy tale, Penelope,” he said. “Before I must close the book.”
She could not imagine what he meant. She did know that if the gossipy ladies of the village learned that she’d come back here all alone with a handsome stranger, she’d be ruined.
A very naughty part of her, which had never spoken before, whispered, Then why not enjoy it?
Was she mad? He must have cast a spell on her. She thought of the villagers, dancing in a line down the high street. He must have done that, as well.
“What did you do to them?”
He looked momentarily puzzled. “Who?”
“The villagers.”
“Ah.” His smile returned. “I bought them ale. I made many friends.”
Now for some reason, she wanted to laugh. “You must have.” She looked at him in exasperation. “Really, who are you?”
“Just Damien. For now.”
“Who will you be later?”
“I do not know.” He looked off into the distance. “I do not know, Penelope. Someone you will not like, perhaps.”
She gave a weak laugh. “I have known you ten minutes, and already you are the most baffling man of my entire acquaintance.”
His gaze returned to her, a sharp focus like a wolf on a rabbit. “And you are the most beautiful woman of mine.”
She so wanted the words to be true. Everything within herself wanted to be beautiful for this man, though deep inside, she knew she was plain Penelope, with wheatcolored hair and green eyes and a figure not willowy enough for London standards. This man likely had the pick of beauties wherever he went. He had to be flummoxing her.
“I cannot possibly be,” she said.
“I am afraid you are. And I believe I have fallen in love with you.”
“In ten minutes?” she asked, amazed.
“I think it would make no difference were it ten minutes, ten hours, or ten days. I am in love with you. Which makes what I must do very difficult.”
“I think,” Penelope said, “that you are completely mad.”
“As do I.”
He gently untied the ribbons of her small bonnet and pushed it from her head. She, the ninny, sat there and let him.
He brushed his gloved fingers over her hair. “It is like gold in the sunlight.”
His touch was warm and gentle and started a shaking deep within her.
“I have read stories,” he said, “in which a magician makes time stand still.”
So had Penelope. She’d transcribed one such story in her book of fairy tales.
“Have you ever wished you could do so?” he asked.
She swallowed. “Yes.”
He smiled, as though surprised she agreed. “I wish I could stop time now. I would stay here in this place forever, in the moment I fell in love with you.”
“Too much sun,” she murmured.
He looked perplexed. “What do you say?”
“Too much sun. It is a warm day. Your brains are addled.”
He stared at her a minute, then burst out laughing. The horse, startled by the noise, danced sideways.
He calmed it with a touch. He swung from the saddle, then lifted Penelope down with him.
She grabbed her bonnet and jammed it back on her head. He removed it again, smiling as he did so. She reached for it, but he pulled it away, then tucked it into a bag strapped to the saddle.
She stared, baffled. “Now my brains will be addled.”
“Will you kiss me, Penelope?”
His hands went to her waist. He stood over her, tall and strong, his hands warm through her cotton frock.
This could not be real. She’d landed in the pages of one of her own fairy tales. But no, such things did not happen in Little Marching. He’d kiss her, and she’d be labeled as fast, and people would say, “Poor, foolish Penelope, she let flattery go to her head. You see, my dears, why you should never trust a man?”
He lowered his eyes, black lashes hiding them. “I beg you.”
She placed her hands on his arms. She meant to push him away, but she could only rest them there, feeling his strength. “I do not think—”
He touched his forehead to hers. “Please,” he whispered. “Please kiss me, Penelope.”
Without waiting for answer, he touched his lips to the side of her mouth, just barely, then drew back.
Warmth gathered at the base of her spine. She closed her hands over his arms, holding the rock-solid strength of them.
He touched kisses to her cheek, his lips smooth like warm satin, then moved to the curve of her neck, nuzzling the pulse points there. She let her head drop back, and he gently licked the hollow of her throat.
She closed her eyes. The join of her thighs felt hot and wet and strange. “Damien?” she whispered.
“I would like to see you bare.” He slid his hands from her waist to cup just under her bosom. “I would like to see you in the sunshine, with your hair down, and your gown open.”
Fire raced through every nerve. She was mad, she must be. And for this moment, strangely, she did not care.
“My brains are addled,” she breathed.
“Will you do this for me, Penelope?”
His voice was dark, his body so warm against hers. His arousal touched her softly through his tight breeches; he made no pretense of hiding his desire.
No, this was nothing like Magnus. Damien smelled good; he was clean and strong.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Let me see you. Let me have that one little thing. Please.”
His smiles had deserted him. His face was drawn, almost as though he were in pain. He asked it because he needed to.
“I cannot,” she whispered.
He slid his palm over her breast, driving more fire through her. “Please, Penelope.”
Tears stung her eyes. She shook her head.
He wiped the moisture from her eyelashes with his gloved finger, the leather cool and soft. “Do not cry.”
Her decision should be so easy. She should either be frightened of him, or she should strike him and declare him not a gentleman and walk back to the road in a huff. But for some reason, it felt right to stand with him, to let him softly touch her face.
She reached up and rested her fingers on his cheek, and he turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm.
Time had stopped. It froze into this moment when she looked at him and thought that maybe, just maybe, fairy tales could come true.
He kissed her brow, smoothed her eyelids with his lips. He kissed her mouth, coaxing it open, and to her shock, dipped his tongue inside. She tasted the bite of ale, and hot spice.
He tugged her lower lip between his teeth and gently sucked. Her knees would have buckled, but he slid his arm across her back and held her steady.
He drew away, his face an inch from hers. “Why did I meet you today? If I had waited a little longer in the tavern, we would not have passed. This is—”
He threaded his fingers through her hair, stroked his thumb over her temple. His eyes were downcast, brows drawn.
“Madness,” he finished.
Madness, yes. It had to be. She was mad, and he was. Maybe the horse, who’d moved away to crop grass, was mad, too.
“Have you stopped time?” she asked him.
A smile tugged the corners of his mouth. “Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
She put her hands on his shoulders. His body was warm and hummed with strength.
“I will for you, if you want,” he promised.
He kissed her again, his tongue sliding across her lips. He leaned and kissed her throat, and tugged at the top hook of her bodice with his teeth.
She tried to say “Damien,” but nothing came out. Her throat was parched, and she could not swallow. She felt white heat in the depth of her belly, and her female juices wetting her legs.
She wanted to pull off her bodice and lie down for him, as he asked her to, while he sank to the
ground beside her and covered her breast with his mouth. He’d suckle her, teeth scraping her aureole, while she’d rise to his touch.
She’d never, ever had such naughty thoughts in her life. She’d never known what fun they were. She smiled, and he caught the smile on his own lips.
Let this moment go on forever, she thought. No regrets, no remorse. Just this feeling of hot happiness in the middle of Holden’s meadow, in the arms of a man called Damien.
She felt as though she belonged in his arms. Had always belonged, and would always. She wet her lips. “I like madness.”
“Good.” He pulled her close and kissed her again, lips against lips, the moisture of hers letting his slide easily across her mouth.
She was falling, down into the grass, where her vision would come true. He’d open her bodice and let his kisses fall on her bare flesh. She would not mind, no, not a bit. She’d thread her fingers under his long dark hair, and let him have anything he wanted…
“Your Highness!”
The cry echoed from one end of the meadow to the other.
“Damn,” Damien said without moving. “Damn it all.”
Time started again. The horse lifted his head, turning curiously to watch a small, dark-haired man lope toward them from the trees.
Damien abruptly released her. Penelope drew in a long breath, like she’d not had air in several minutes.
“Er,” she ventured. “Did he just say Your Highness?”
Damien took a step away from her, one of the hardest steps he’d ever taken in his life. The world came hurtling back at him in the form of Sasha, who sprinted toward them, holding his sash high out of the tall, damp grass.
His mission, the prophecy, Grand Duke Alexander, everything Damien had wanted to forget for a moment in this woman’s arms, rushed at him again.
Let her go, his common sense told him. She is only one woman.
His heart told him differently. She was delectable and sweet, and he’d never tasted anything like her. Her golden hair was like summer wheat, strands of brown and gold rippling round one another. Her eyes were jade, light and translucent, with flecks of gold swimming in them. The top hook of her bodice was undone, drawing his eyes and making his fingers itch.
He could not have her, and he knew it. A dalliance, perhaps, but no more. He’d come here to find Lady Trask, to explain that she’d have to leave England and travel with him to Nvengaria to save his kingdom.
Because if he did not, Grand Duke Alexander would win, and Damien, in some grand, dramatic Nvengarian fashion, would die.
Penelope, standing next to him with her golden hair mussed and her chest rising against her loosened bodice, suddenly made all of it seem so trivial.
I need this, he’d thought. I need it.
“Your Highness,” Sasha panted. “We thought you were lost.”
He spoke Nvengarian, but his first cry had been in English, as though to warn the country girl in his arms that he was not for her.
“Here I am,” Damien said in clipped tones.
Sasha looked confused. “I feared for you, Highness. Was that wrong?” He glanced at Penelope.
Damien relented. “No. Thank you for your concern.” He put his hand on Penelope’s shoulder. “But she is no assassin.”
Sasha did not look so certain. “Who is she?”
Damien switched to English. “Penelope, this is Sasha, my royal advisor.”
“Royal?” Her green eyes had lost their softness, returning to the wary light he’d seen there before.
“Your Highness,” Sasha continued in Nvengarian, “you know she is not the one.”
“Yes, I do know.”
“Nedrak told you—”
“Nedrak is a charlatan,” Damien said impatiently.
Sasha looked horrified. “He is a sage, and a great seer. He is never wrong.”
“Well, he was wrong in this case.” Nedrak, the highest of the Council of Mages, had told Damien that when he found the woman he was to marry, he’d fall in love with her. The prophecy was never wrong, he’d said.
The prophecy must be a bit off, because Damien had just met the woman he’d die for.
“Royal?” Penelope repeated. “Your Highness?”
Sasha bowed. “May I present his Imperial Highness, Prince Damien Augustus Frederic Michel of Nvengaria.”
She stared at him, her well-kissed lips parting. “Prince—”
“Call me Damien,” he said, his voice cool. “It will save time.”
Chapter Four
In a daze Penelope led Damien and the little man called Sasha the rest of the way to Ashborn Manor. Damien guided the horse, the reins looped in confident hands, his movements as graceful and animallike as his horse’s.
It was not often that a handsome prince popped out of nowhere and asked to kiss you, Penelope reflected. Never, in fact.
Even in her stories, the prince was preceded by fanfare and pageantry and the country girl he fell in love with turned out to be a long-lost princess anyway.
She’d read of Nvengaria, the tiny country hugging the western border of Moldova, near the Black Sea. It sat in a deep fold between mountain ranges, following a river gorge a few hundred miles long and not even a hundred miles wide. She had found this information in a book when researching Nvengarian folk tales. No one in England knew any tales from that country, it seemed, and she’d hoped to be the first to offer a collection.
But the books she’d read were sketchy; only one mentioned an obscure folk tale she hadn’t understood, and that was all. She never met anyone from Nvengaria, nor known a person who’d gone there.
The likelihood that this man was its prince was remote. He must be a strolling player or similar kind of trickster, ready to prey on an unsuspecting spinster.
With kisses that took her breath away.
She glanced sideways at him, only to find him looking sideways at her. When their gazes met, he smiled.
It confused her, and frightened her, how hot she grew whenever he smiled.
They neared the house, a wide-winged Palladian mansion built a century earlier and then ruthlessly modernized by Penelope’s mother. At the same time, the large carriage pulled by the gray horses with purple plumes turned onto the drive. Behind the carriage came several heavily laden carts.
Damien did not seem inclined to wait for them. He tossed his horse’s reins to Sasha and strode toward the front door, which stood open to the summer air, without waiting for Penelope. The tails of his black coat parted as he walked, letting her see the lean muscle of his inner thighs, and how very tight his breeches truly were.
Sometimes Penelope and Meagan, while sitting as wallflowers in London ballrooms, played a naughty game of deciding which man in the room had the finest-fitted tight trousers. TTs, Meagan called them. If Damien appeared at a tonnish ball in the breeches he wore now, he would win hands down.
Damien disappeared into the shadow of the house. Penelope scuttled after him, breathless, pretending she could care less about his breeches.
Lady Trask and Michael Tavistock were nowhere in sight. The butler, Mathers, a man devoted to Lady Trask, stopped short in astonishment as Damien strode unimpeded into the hall. He seemed masterful in her own house, in a way her father never had been.
“Ah,” Mathers dithered.
“I have come to see Lady Trask,” Damien said. “Fetch her for me. I shall I wait in the drawing room.”
Mathers gaped. “But…”
“It is all right, Mathers,” Penelope said quickly, then wondered if everything really was all right. “Please take him to the drawing room and serve him tea. I will fetch Lady Trask.”
Without waiting for reply, she turned away, heart thudding, and whisked toward the stairs.
She felt Damien’s gaze on her as she swiftly ascended. His eyes held caution, but they also held warmth. He looked at her because he wanted to look at her. It made her uncertain and unsteady on her feet.
She reached the top of the staircase without falli
ng, and hurried down the long hall to her mother’s chamber.
The corridor outside Lady Trask’s bedchamber door was deserted without a lookout. Penelope eased the door handle silently down and opened the door a crack.
She saw Michael Tavistock, naked, the sun shining on his dark red hair and muscular back as he faced the bed.
Swiftly, Penelope closed the door, her cheeks scalding. From inside, she heard her mother moan Michael’s name, and Michael say, “I love you.”
Penelope stopped, frozen, as his hoarse words caught in her throat.
I love you.
Michael Tavistock truly did love Lady Trask, Penelope knew that. She saw it in his eyes whenever he looked at her. For his own reasons, the handsome, forty-five-year-old man had become enchanted with Penelope’s rather featherheaded mother. Penelope was glad, for her mother’s sake as well as her own, because she very much liked Meagan’s father. He was a kind man, and looked upon Penelope with as much protection and benevolence as he would his own daughter.
Now she felt a strange pain in her heart. Damien had kissed her, had told her, with that same catch in his voice, that he’d fallen in love with her. But he could not be real. None of this could be real.
Penelope went back down the hall, counted to twenty, then walked to her mother’s bedchamber again, making as much noise as she could.
When she reached the door, all was quiet within. She knocked and said brightly, “Mama? Are you awake?”
After a time, the door opened a few inches. Michael stood behind it, in trousers and half-laced shirt, his hair mussed. “What do you need, Penelope?”
Michael had brown eyes and a strength and quietness that Penelope liked. His dark red hair had started graying at the temples, but still spilled from his forehead in thick waves. His face was not handsome like Damien’s, but square and plain, the face of a man who knew what he looked like and was not bothered by it.
Michael had a commonsense wisdom that counteracted Penelope’s mother’s flightiness, and Penelope quite looked forward to the day he would become her stepfather. He and her mother had not mentioned marriage to either of the girls, but Penelope and Meagan had already decided upon the outcome of their affair.