In the Prince’s Bed by Sabrina Jeffries (28)

Chapter Eight

Katherine followed Alec’s gaze. They had indeed arrived.

But how strange that he would not discuss his riding. Most men loved to boast of their superior skills. By now, they would have thrice retold the story of how they’d rescued the fair damsel.

Either Alec was inordinately modest…or he was hiding something. But what? And why? He was amazingly reticent about his years abroad—surely that wasn’t typical of world travelers.

Unless, of course, most of his time abroad had been spent doing things no decent Englishwoman should know about. She colored. That was probably it.

Alec leaped easily from his mare and tied it off before helping her dismount. But when her feet touched the ground, and he didn’t immediately release her, all her curiosity about his years abroad vanished. His warm hands on her waist stopped her breath in her throat, especially when he then fixed his gaze on her mouth with dark intent.

Lord preserve her. Did he mean to claim his kiss here, in the street?

She held her breath. Then his hands dropped away, and he offered her his arm. She took it, her heart thundering in her ears. She was glad he hadn’t kissed her—yes, glad. What wanton would allow a man to kiss her in public? And someone might see and tell Sydney, incensing him enough to break with her. No, it wouldn’t have been wise.

As they entered, a smartly dressed young woman thrust programs at them that read “A Gathering of New Poets” and directed them to a large room adjoining the foyer. When they slipped inside and every eye turned their way, Katherine smiled weakly. Alec ignored them as he led her along the back of the crowded room, his hand resting intimately on the small of her back.

At least Sydney hadn’t looked up to see them enter so rudely. He was reading over his poems, oblivious to the voice that droned from the podium.

As soon as they settled into the back row, the only one still empty, Alec bent his head to whisper, “Do these things usually draw so many people?”

“If Sydney is reading, they do.” She added with a little burst of pride, “Gentleman’s Magazine recently lauded him as ‘the new Wordsworth,’ you know.”

“I must have missed that astounding news.”

A bookish young man in front of them turned around to glare at Alec. With a roll of his eyes, Alec leaned back against the hard bench and removed his riding gloves. Then he busied himself with looking through the program, shifting position on the uncomfortable oak every few seconds.

She bit back a smile. Poor man, he would never make it through the whole reading. This must be awfully dull for a man of action. She expected to find most of it dull herself. The other poets paled next to Sydney, and he’d only agreed to participate because one of them was his closest friend. In fact, Julian Wainscot, the Baron Napier, sat next to Sydney looking unusually cheery. Generally he was a peevish sort, at least whenever she was around. But now he seemed to bask in the glow of the audience’s attention.

Then the slender fellow caught sight of her, and his face fell. She smiled at him anyway, but Alec leaned over to complain that her “precious Sydney” was last on the program, and she was forced to answer.

When she returned her gaze to Lord Napier, he was nudging Sydney. As Sydney spotted her, a sunny smile broke over his face…until he saw who was with her. Though she smiled back, his pleasure rapidly turned into a sullen frown.

Meanwhile, Lord Napier looked smug. Curse that wretch. He probably agreed with Lady Lovelace that Katherine wasn’t good enough for his best friend. Too bad. No matter what Lord Napier or Lady Lovelace thought of her, she meant to marry Sydney.

Alec’s rumbling voice broke through her thoughts. “A gathering of poets,” he murmured as he brandished the program before her. “Is that like a herd of horses? Or better yet, a gaggle of geese?”

“Shh,” Katherine whispered.

The doe-eyed Lord Napier was coming to the podium, and she wanted to hear him. With a self-important air, he cleared his throat. “The title of my poem is ‘The Discus Match.’ ”

As he began to read, she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. All this gushing over an athletic event—how silly. But what else could one expect from a man who oiled his whiskers and dithered over the starch in his cravats? He ought to learn from Sydney, who wrote about important things like love and history and tragedy. But Lord Napier had never been deep.

He intoned:

From beside her, Alec asked, “Exactly what constitutes a matchless sigh? How quickly the breath leaves the lips? How loud it sounds? Or is it a certain musical quality in the exhalation—”

“Hush,” she whispered, struggling not to smile. “People are staring.”

Actually, no one was staring but Sydney. Chastened by his frown, she sat up straight and tried to look impressed. Thankfully, Lord Napier’s poem was as brief as his mind was frivolous. Even better, Alec stayed quiet through the rest of it and the next two poems.

Then the worst poet of the lot took the podium. In a quavering voice that Katherine knew was meant to signify deep emotion, he launched into a poem so gushingly awful that even Sydney winced.

Alec bent close to whisper, “Didn’t ‘thee’ and ‘thine’ go out of fashion with the Renaissance?”

“You forget that poets pay no attention to fashion,” she whispered back. When Alec’s eyes gleamed at her, she regretted encouraging his nonsense. Forcing her gaze back to the stage, she added, “But he’s really not so bad.”

Alec snorted, but at least he said nothing more. Until the fifteenth verse, when the poet read:

“And pray they don’t ignite your pretty lashes,” Alec finished under his breath.

She couldn’t help it—she laughed. Out loud, drawing every eye her way. With a blush, she shrank into her seat and hissed at Alec, “Do be quiet, for goodness sake.”

But it was too late to close that Pandora’s box. Now that he’d discovered how much his witticisms amused her, Alec lobbed them at her with appalling regularity. Soon she was weak from holding back her laughter, sure that she would perish of repressed hilarity.

“Remind me never to let that man near my horse,” Alec whispered as a particularly dreadful poet finished. “If he orders ‘my noble steed’ Beleza to ‘peregrinate along the Elysian plain’ with her ‘fortuitous fetlocks shimmering’ and her ‘mane aglow,’ she might just trample him underfoot. She hates it when her mane glows and her fetlocks shimmer—all the other horses poke fun. And exactly what pace is ‘peregrinate’? Something between a trot and a canter, I suppose—”

“Stop it, I beg you,” she hissed, futilely trying to restrain her giggles. “When this is over, I’m going to kill you.”

Alec shot her a devilish grin. “Would that be with the ‘trenchant sword of Damocles’ or the ‘impenitent smoke of Vesuvius’s wrath’?”

“The linen handkerchief of Merivale. I shall strangle you with it.” She glanced at the dais. “Now hush—they’re introducing Sydney. Try not to be rude when he reads, will you?”

“Me, rude?” Alec retorted. “What’s ‘rude’ is the arrant nonsense these idiots call poetry. And if your Sydney—”

She reached over and pinched his bare hand as hard as she could.

“Ow!” He scowled at her.

“Don’t say another word, or I swear I’ll turn your hand black-and-blue before this is over.”

When she started to draw her hand back, he caught it in his. “I’ll be quiet…but only if you let me hold on to this.” His gaze hot on her, he enfolded her gloved hand in his large naked one, then drew it to rest scandalously on his thigh. His well-hewn, buckskin-clad, and exceedingly warm thigh.

Her breath caught somewhere in the vicinity of her lungs. Lord preserve her…he should not…she should not…

She cast a furtive glance around, but no one paid attention to them. Since they were alone in their row, their hands were hidden from anyone’s view. The very idea stopped her heart.

Private. Secret. Forbidden. Why must that hold such an allure? Guiltily, she glanced to the podium, where Sydney was arranging his sheets of paper.

Never mind. She didn’t want anything to ruin Sydney’s presentation, and if that meant letting Alec hold her hand, she would sacrifice. It had nothing to do with this cursed fluttering in her chest. Or the breathless anticipation of wondering what Alec would do with her hand.

Sydney cleared his throat at the podium, and only then did she realize she’d been watching Alec’s hand, caught up in the wildly exciting sensation of having her flesh sandwiched between the hard muscle of his thigh and his heated fingers. She forced herself to turn her attention to Sydney, to smile at him, to pay attention.

Sydney was to read two poems, one about the Fall of Troy and one listed only as “title to be announced.” He began the Troy poem by explaining which version of the tale he’d relied on.

That’s when Alec’s hand moved on hers. At first he contented himself with skimming his bare thumb along the contours of her gloved one, but that didn’t satisfy him for long. Shifting their joined hands so that hers lay atop his, he began to drag her glove off with his other hand.

“No!” she hissed under her breath.

“Yes.” He smiled, the way Boney must have smiled when he chose the first prime bit of Prussia to conquer.

She tried to jerk her hand free, but he held on to it.

When she glared at him, he added in a whisper, “It’s only fair, sweetheart. You took away my other source of entertainment.” He tipped his head toward the dais. “Of course, if you want me to return to commenting on the verse…”

Gritting her teeth, she let her hand go limp in his.

“That’s better,” he murmured, then reached for her glove once more. He stripped it off each finger inch by inch, the way Alexander the Great himself had probably stripped the female captives he’d made his wives.

Heat rose in her cheeks as she stared at the dais, vainly trying to absorb Sydney’s words. Unfortunately, Sydney had read this poem to her before, so her mind readily drifted to the thrill of Alec baring her hand.

He tossed her limp glove into her lap. Then began the real distraction. Turning her hand up so that the back rested on his thigh and the soft palm lay exposed to him, Alec traced her fingers.

She swallowed hard. No man had ever touched her like this. Who could have guessed it would be so…so…

Erotic. This seemed every bit as naughty as the pictures in Papa’s book; especially since it was actually happening to her.

She could hardly breathe as he burrowed lightly in the crevices between her fingers, drew circles in her palm, then dragged his thumbnail up until he reached the pulse beating frantically in her inner wrist. Pressing his thumb against it as if to relish the throbbing of her blood, he stretched his other fingers wide over her open hand to multiply his caresses fourfold.

Lord preserve her, she might just faint. No, that was silly—what ninny would faint simply because a man stroked her hand…caressed her flesh…made love to each of her bare fingers…

“Did Helen grow to hate Paris’s touch / As she observed the smoking ruin?” Sydney read from the podium.

Not for one minute, she answered. Not if Paris’s touch had been anything like Alec’s.

Katherine wanted to hate it. She wanted to hate him for doing it. But how could she? It wasn’t all that improper. And The Rake’s Rhetorick had never mentioned hand fondling as a tactic for seduction—though clearly it was.

Each sweep of his fingers was a whisper, each press of his thumb an endearment that inflamed her senses. She might actually burn a hole in the bench before the reading was over.

The longer it went on, the more she ached to explore him. Casting him a furtive glance, she stilled his hand, then began her own discovery.

His gaze locked with hers. If there’d been even a trace of arrogance on his face, she would have tossed his hand aside. But his eyes shone with need and heat as her fingers moved tentatively over his rough masculine flesh.

He sucked in a harsh breath as her touch grew bolder. His hands were certainly not those of a gentleman. His skin bore hard calluses, and a scar split the knuckle of his thumb. When she stroked the raised ridge with her forefinger, Alec curled his fingers into hers, stroking, seeking.

By the time Sydney finished his Troy poem, her blood was thrumming wildly. She’d never been so aware of a man as a man in all her life. What would it be like to have Alec’s strong hands on her shoulders, her ribs, her breasts—

The applause began, and the blood flamed in her cheeks. Quickly, she tugged her hand free of Alec’s so she could clap.

And break his spell, before he turned her completely into mush. Because if she wasn’t careful, she’d soon be begging for his kiss—and that would not do at all.