He winced and shook his head, quickly banishing that thought. He’d seen queens. Known several, including his own mother and grandmother. Miss Grier Hadley was nothing like them. Not at all refined and distinguished. She’d never be deferential to her husband. She’d never speak with slow gentle tones that charmed audiences.
He would keep searching until he found a woman like that. He’d promised his grandfather as much. He’d keep searching until he succeeded in finding a suitable female to be the future queen of Maldania. That was the foremost concern. Who would be the future queen. Not who would be the woman he’d bind his body and soul to before God. He doubted such a woman would ever exist for him. Nor did he have the luxury of finding her.
Even knowing this, believing it with every fiber of his being, he found himself walking away from his shadowed corner, away from the library full of men eager for his company.
With hard, firm steps he followed in the wake of Miss Hadley.
S hortly upon fleeing her father, Grier quickly realized she was lost in the labyrinth of hallways. With her head spinning and temper high, she hadn’t paid much attention to which corridor led to her bedchamber.
Biting her lip, she studied each door. She seemed to recall that her bedchamber had been toward the end of a corridor and on the right. Yes, definitely the right. Selecting a door she imagined looked familiar, she closed her hand around the latch and eased it open to peer inside.
She was mistaken. The chamber was not hers.
In fact, it was not a bedchamber at all. Several instruments stared back at her, nestled among furnishings of faded and worn fabric.
Moonlight bathed the room, streaming through the parted draperies. She stepped more fully into the pearlescent light, her steps muffled on the carpet. A reverent hush lingered in the room, as if every instrument within waited in anticipation for her to attend them and create music. As if they’d been waiting years for someone to care about them again.
A wistful smile curved her lips. She drifted further inside the bereft room, letting her fingers stroke the strings of a beautiful harp. Papa had loved music. Almost every household in Wales possessed a harp. Many an hour he sat before the fire and played either the harp or his hornpipe for her.
Her smile wavered a bit as thoughts of him rushed over her. She missed him. Especially on an evening like this—when faced with Jack Hadley and the glaring reality that he would never be that kind of father to her. Never doting and affectionate. That was something she’d lost and could never reclaim.
A lump thickened her throat as she accepted that she may never know that kind of unconditional love again. She fought to swallow, but try as she might, she couldn’t dislodge the thick lump.
Without lifting the instrument, she strummed a few chords of the harp, closing her eyes against the surge of emotion rising within her.
Papa, if you were still here none of this would be happening. I’d be safe with you at home. I wouldn’t so desperately crave acceptance and respectability because the love you gave me always meant more than any of that. I could tolerate it all when I had you.
She couldn’t help the pathetic thoughts from winding through her head. It was weak and useless thinking, but she allowed herself the feelings. For now. Tomorrow she would be her stalwart self again and forget that deep down she longed for something as ephemeral as love.
Footfalls sounded behind her. Grier whirled around, almost expecting to find Jack returning to castigate her further.
It wasn’t Jack. No, worse than that.
She inhaled thinly through her nostrils and blinked burning eyes, determined that he not see the evidence of how close to tears she was.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Following me now? Haven’t you someone else to bother?” She blinked free the lingering burn in her eyes. “Someone who might welcome your attentions? You’re a bloody prince after all. You shouldn’t be caught speaking with me.”
He stared, saying nothing. Her chest tightened as she gazed upon his face, his features starkly handsome in the room’s gloom, even tense and brooding as usual.
She gave a harsh laugh, shaking her head. “What do you want?”
He merely stared.
She stared at him in frustration, wondering why he did not speak . . . wondering why he was here at all. Had he come to insult her with another indecent proposition? An ever so helpful reminder of where he thought she belonged in the order of things? Or had he come to bewilder her further by treating her almost kindly—as when he complimented her singing.
The prince slid a hand inside his deep black waistcoat and pulled out a handkerchief, extending it to her with a steady hand. She stared at the pristine white square rather resentfully.
“What’s that for?”
“There appears to be a . . . glimmer in your eyes,” he explained, his words stoic, like he was uncomfortable pointing out the fact that she was on the verge of tears.
“There is not,” she snapped.
Just the same, she snatched the fabric from his hands, careful not to brush those blunt-tipped fingers. She turned and dabbed at her eyes.
After a moment, she peered over her shoulder, tensing, waiting, dreading for him to ask why she was upset. The last thing she wanted to do was unburden herself to him. As if he would care.
She dropped her gaze to the soft patch of linen in her hands and looked back at him curiously. Well. Perhaps he cared a little . At least enough to extend her the courtesy of his handkerchief. A fact which did not mesh with the opinion she’d formed of him.
Frowning, she motioned back toward the doors. “Any number of individuals would gladly grovel at your feet. You are wasting your exalted company on me.” She offered him back his handkerchief.
He shrugged, and accepted it, replying with an idleness that set her teeth on edge, “One can only abide so much groveling.”
“So you seek someone who will not pander to your ego, is that it? Is that why you’ve followed me? You wish to consort with someone who will denounce you for what you are?”
“And what am I?” His gold cat eyes danced with something dangerously akin to merriment as he stopped before her. Close. Too bloody close. “Do enlightenment me.”
She could smell him. He smelled like no man she’d ever smelled. Not that she went about sniffing men, but she’d stood close to a few. He smelled clean and crisp and . . . and manly . Was that a scent? A faint whiff of brandy teased her nose. Was this what a prince smelled like, then?
She swallowed, suddenly unable to speak. His nearness rattled her. Her tongue struggled to form the words.
“Come now, you claim to possess the courage to denounce me.” His gaze looked her up and down.
His seductive, rolling accents stroked like velvet against her skin. His voice was an aphrodisiac, impossible to resist. She took a hasty step back. She must. Otherwise she would be just what he judged her. Not a lady at all—no better than a light-skirt.
” I do! ” she retorted. “You’re a bounder—and a snob!” She lifted her chin a notch. Not such a simple task when he stood so much taller than she. “You’ll not see me making a ninny of myself simply because you were born with a golden spoon in your mouth.”
Wrong, perhaps, but he became the perfect target for her ire—for the despondency that had filled her the moment she stepped within this room. He never knew what it felt like to be lost or lonely . . . or rejected for the circumstances of his birth. Indeed not. The circumstances of his birth afforded him great advantages.
“And why is that, Miss Hadley? Why are you so opposed to showing me the due reverence everyone else does?” he prompted, his keen eyes fixed on her in that ever unnerving way.
“Aside from the boorish things I overheard you say about me upon our first encounter?” For some reason she couldn’t make herself bring up the reminder of his proposition. Just the two of them, alone in a room no one would likely enter . . . it seemed a bad idea. As though she perhaps wanted him to remember. Wanted him to recall that he’d found her attractive and put his hands on her . . .
“Why should you take my words so personally? You are illegitimate. Daughter to a man with a most unsavory reputation.” Even as he spoke, his expression remained cool and impassive . . . as though he were not being the least insulting. “Fortune withstanding, you are exceedingly unsuitable.”
“And what are you?” she shot back, her temper simmering at a dangerous degree. She inhaled a deep, angry breath that lifted her chest high. “You’re nothing more than a penniless prince with a country drowning in debt!”
His mild expression dissolved. A steeliness entered his eyes, but still she pushed on. “Oh, indeed! I’ve heard the tales. Gossip flows both ways. Just as you’ve heard the rumors about me, I’ve heard the whispers about you. Your ego and arrogance are certainly without justification given your dire straits, and yet you still act the haughty prince—”
“I am a prince—with all the responsibilities and duties that accompany the title,” he countered. “It’s not an act , Miss Hadley.”
The tightness of his formal address should have alerted her to his sudden turn of mood, but still she could not hold her tongue.
Abruptly, he became the cause of it all—everything that was wrong in her world.
“A prince of a lost kingdom,” she shot back. She knew she was being unkind, but he had not been particularly kind to her. “I heard you lost half the men in your country to your war.”
His expression altered. The carved mask of stone cracked, and she knew she had pushed too far.
He grasped her arm and yanked her close, thrusting his face near hers. “It was never my war. I didn’t start it. I was scarcely a man when it began, but I had to face the hard reality of it. I sure as hell didn’t want it, but I ended it. Take heed, you know nothing of which you speak,” he hissed.
She glared down at where he gripped her arm. “Perhaps ladies in your country find primeval manhandling charming, perhaps even the delightful Lady Libbie would enjoy such treatment. Why don’t you seek her out and unhand me?”
He said nothing. Simply stared—clung to her arm with hard fingers.
Grier inhaled raggedly, her chest rising and falling with deep breaths. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so angry. And truth be told, it wasn’t all entirely at him. She found herself frustrated with this whole wretched scenario. Finding a husband . . . a man who only wanted to marry her for her sudden fortune . . . It was becoming quite the distasteful task, contrary to the hope she had felt when she started this whole endeavor.
She shook her head. This night had simply been too much. Her temper had gotten away with her.
She glared down at his hand on her arm. He followed her gaze before lifting his stare back to her face. “Perhaps Lady Libbie is a lady who doesn’t go about casting aspersions on those whom she does not know.”
“Perhaps,” she returned, not about to argue that she was more ladylike than the elegant Lady Libbie. Garbed in her silks and satins, Grier felt about as out of place as an elephant in the dowager’s drawing room.
The moment stretched interminably, so unbearably intense as they stared at each other that Grier thought she could hear the rush of blood in her ears.
She felt the clear shape of his hand, each press of his fingers on her arm. Awareness of their closeness, the shocking intimacy of the situation, came crashing down over her. Her gaze flicked around the empty music room with its lonely instruments.
Her skin snapped, awake and alive. In fact all of her felt alive.
More alive than she had felt in quite some time.
Her gaze drifted, settled on his perfectly carved lips. Temptation incarnate. A man’s lips should not look so beautiful. He was as seductive as the princes of all her girlhood fairytales. For a moment she allowed herself to forget that this prince lacked the heroic qualities to accompany such looks, that he thought her unsuitable, a mere nobody rubbing elbows with her betters.