The Serpent Prince

“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” She switched pencils.



Hedge wrinkled his brow. “What d’you mean, glass houses? I’m talking about her nose.”



Lucy sighed. “Never mind.”



“Humph.”



There was blessed silence for a moment while Hedge regrouped. She started sketching in his right arm. The house was quiet today with Papa gone and Mrs. Brodie busy in the kitchen baking bread. Of course, it always seemed quiet now that Simon had left. The house was almost lifeless. He’d brought excitement and a type of companionship she hadn’t known she was missing until he went away. Now the rooms echoed when she walked into them. She caught herself restlessly wandering from room to room as if she unconsciously searched for something.



Or someone.



“How about that letter to Master David, then?” Hedge interrupted her thoughts. “The captain asked me to post it.” He rose.



“Sit back down. Papa posted it on the way to Doctor Fremont’s.”



“Awww.”



Someone banged on the front door.



Hedge started.



Lucy glanced up from the sketch to pin him with her stare before he could make a move. The manservant slumped. Lucy finished the right arm and started on the left. They could hear Mrs. Brodie’s quick footsteps. A murmur of voices, then the footsteps neared. Bother. She was nearly finished with the sketch, too.



The housekeeper opened the door looking flustered. “Oh, miss, you’ll never guess who’s come—”



Simon walked around Mrs. Brodie.



Lucy dropped her pencil.



He picked it up and held it out to her, his ice eyes hesitant. “May I talk to you?”



He was hatless, his coat wrinkled, and his boots muddy as if he’d ridden. He’d left off his wig, and his hair was a trifle longer. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the lines bracketing his mouth were deeper. What had he been doing in London this past week to make him look so tired again?



She took the pencil, hoping he wouldn’t notice how her hand trembled. “Of course.”



“Alone?”



Hedge jumped up. “Right, then, I’ll leave.” He darted out the door.



Mrs. Brodie looked at Lucy questioningly before following the manservant. She shut the door behind her. Suddenly Lucy was alone with the viscount. She folded her hands in her lap and watched him.



Simon paced to the window and gazed out as if he didn’t see the garden at all. “I had . . . business to do this last week in London. Something important. Something that’s been preying on my mind for some time now. But I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus on what needed to be done. I kept thinking of you. So I came here, despite vowing I wouldn’t bother you again.” He threw a look at her over his shoulder, part frustration, part puzzlement, part something she didn’t dare interpret. But it made her heart—already laboring from his entrance—stutter.



She took a breath to steady her voice. “Would you care to sit?”



He hesitated as if considering. “Thank you.”



He sat across from her, ran his hand over his head, and abruptly stood up again.



“I should leave, just walk out that door and continue walking until I’ve put a hundred miles between us, maybe an entire watery ocean. Although I don’t know if even that would be enough. I promised myself that I would leave you in peace.” He laughed without humor. “And yet, here I am back at your feet, making an ass of myself.”



“I’m glad to see you,” she whispered. This was like a dream. She’d never thought to see him again, and now he was pacing agitatedly in front of her in her own little sitting room. She didn’t dare let herself wonder why he had come.



He swung around and suddenly stilled. “Are you? Truly?”



What was he asking? She didn’t know, but she nodded anyway.



“I’m not right for you. You’re too pure; you see too much. I’ll hurt you eventually, if I don’t . . .” He shook his head. “You need to be with someone simple and good, and I am neither. Why haven’t you married that vicar?” He was frowning at her, and his statement sounded like an accusation.



Lucy shook her head helplessly.



“You won’t speak, won’t tell me,” he said huskily. “Are you taunting me? You taunt me in my dreams sometimes, sweet angel, when I’m not dreaming of . . .” He sank to his knees before her. “You don’t know me, don’t know what I am. Save yourself. Throw me from your house. Now. While you still can, because I’ve lost my determination, my will, my very honor—what little of it I had left. I cannot remove myself from your presence.”



He was warning her, she knew it, but she couldn’t tell him to go. “I won’t turn you away. You can’t ask that of me.”



His hands were at either side of her on the settee. They bracketed her but did not touch her. He bowed his head until all she could see was his crown of shorn pale hair. “I’m a viscount; you know that. The Iddesleighs go back a fair ways, but we only managed to pocket a title five generations ago. I’m afraid we have a tendency to pick the wrong side in royal wars. I have three homes. A town house in London, one in Bath, and the estate in Northumberland, the one I told you about when I woke that first day. I said it was a wilderness, and it is, but it’s also quite beautiful in a savage way, and of course the land’s profitable, but we needn’t ever go there, if you don’t wish. I have a steward and plenty of servants.”



Lucy’s eyes were blurred with tears. She muffled a sob. He sounded as if he were . . .



“And there are some mines, copper or tin,” he continued, staring at her lap. Was he afraid to look her in the eye? “I can never remember which, and it doesn’t really matter because I have a man of business, but they pay quite well. There are three carriages, but one was my grandfather’s and is getting rather moldy. I can have a new one made, if you want one of—”



She caught his chin with her shaking hands and tilted his face up so she could see his pale gray eyes, looking so worried, so alone. She placed a thumb over his lips to still the river of words and tried to smile through the tears coursing down her cheeks. “Hush. Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”



She could feel the beat of his pulse against her fingers, warm and alive, and it seemed to echo the wild fluttering of her own heart. She’d never felt joy such as this, and she had the sudden fierce thought, Make it last, please, Lord. Don’t ever let me forget this moment.



But he searched her eyes, neither triumphant nor happy, only waiting. “Are you sure?” His lips caressed her thumb with the words.



She nodded. “Yes.”



He closed his eyes as if terribly relieved. “Thank God.”



She leaned down and kissed him softly on the cheek. But when she would’ve pulled back, he moved his head. His mouth connected with hers.



He kissed her.



Brushing across her lips, teasing her, tempting her, until she finally opened to him. He groaned and licked the inside of her lower lip. She brought her tongue forward at the same time and tangled with his. She didn’t know if she was doing it right. She’d never been kissed like this before, but her heart beat loudly in her ears, and she couldn’t control the trembling of her limbs. He grasped her head between his hands and held it, angling his face across hers to deepen the embrace. This wasn’t like Eustace’s gentlemanly kiss. This was darker—hungry and almost frightening. She felt as if she were on the verge of falling. Or of breaking apart into so many pieces she’d never be able to put them back together again. He took her lower lip between his teeth and worried it. What should’ve been pain, or at least discomfort, was pleasure that went to her very center. She moaned and surged forward.



Crash!



Lucy jerked back. Simon looked over her shoulder, his face taut, a sheen of moisture on his brow.



“Oh my goodness!” Mrs. Brodie exclaimed. A tray of demolished china, oozing cake, and puddling tea lay at her feet. “Whatever will the captain say?”



That’s a good question, Lucy thought.



Chapter Nine



“I don’t mean to pry, Miss Craddock-Hayes,” Rosalind Iddesleigh said nearly three weeks later. “But I’ve been wondering how you met my brother-in-law?”



Lucy wrinkled her nose. “Please, call me Lucy.”



The other woman smiled almost shyly. “How kind. And you, of course, must call me Rosalind.”



Lucy smiled back and tried to think whether Simon would mind if she told this delicate woman that she’d found him nude and half dead in a ditch. They were in Rosalind’s elegant carriage, and it turned out that Simon did indeed have a niece. Theodora rode in the carriage as well, which was rumbling through the streets of London.



Simon’s sister-in-law, the widow of his elder brother, Ethan, looked like she should be gazing from a stone tower, waiting for a brave knight to come rescue her. She had gleaming, straight blond hair, pulled into a simple knot at the crown of her head. Her face was narrow and alabaster white with wide, pale blue eyes. If the evidence wasn’t sitting right next to her, Lucy would never have believed she was old enough to have an eight-year-old child.



Lucy had been staying with her future sister-in-law for the last sennight in preparation for her wedding to Simon. Papa had not been pleased by her match, but after grumbling and shouting for a bit, he’d reluctantly given his blessing. During Lucy’s time in London, she had visited a bewildering variety of shops with Rosalind. Simon was insistent that Lucy get a completely new trousseau. While she was naturally pleased to have so many fine clothes, at the same time it gave Lucy a niggling worry that she would not make a proper viscountess for Simon. She came from the country, and even dressed in lace and embroidered silks, she was still a simple woman.



“Simon and I met on the lane outside my home in Kent,” Lucy hedged now. “He’d had an accident, and I brought him home to recover.”



“How romantic,” Rosalind murmured.



“Was Uncle Sigh in his cups?” the little girl beside her wanted to know. Her hair was darker than her mother’s, more of a gold, and curly. Lucy remembered Simon’s description of his brother’s curly locks. Theodora obviously took after her dead father in that respect, although her eyes were her mother’s wide blue.



“Theodora, please.” Rosalind drew her brows together, creasing two perfect lines into her otherwise smooth forehead. “We’ve discussed the use of proper language before. What will Miss Craddock-Hayes think of you?”



The child slumped in her seat. “She said we could call her Lucy.”



“No, dear. She gave me permission to use her Christian name. It wouldn’t be proper for a child to do so.” Rosalind darted a glance at Lucy. “I’m so sorry.”



“Perhaps since I’ll soon be Theodora’s aunt, she might call me Aunt Lucy?” She smiled at the girl, not wanting to offend her future sister-in-law but feeling sympathy for the daughter as well.



Rosalind bit the corner of her lip. “Are you sure?”



“Yes.”



Theodora gave a small wiggle in her seat. “And you can call me Pocket, because that’s what my uncle Sigh calls me. I call him Uncle Sigh because all the ladies sigh over him.”



“Theodora!”



“That’s what Nanny says,” the little girl defended herself.



“It’s so hard to keep servants from gossiping,” Rosalind said. “And children from repeating it.”



Lucy smiled. “And why does your uncle Sigh call you Pocket? Because you can fit in one?”



“Yes.” She grinned and suddenly resembled her uncle. She glanced at her mother. “And because I look in his pockets when he comes to visit.”



“He spoils her terribly,” Rosalind sighed.