Page 60 of A Royal Kiss & Tell

“You’re right.” She turned to him, reluctantly pouring her coins into his palm, then carefully closing his fingers around them. Her hand lingered on his. “Don’t drop them.”

He covered her hand with his free one and squeezed. “I would rather die,” he said gravely, and with a soft smile let her hand go.

She gathered her skirts, and they resumed walking up the stairs. “When will you return to Alucia?” she asked as she looked up at a portrait of an ancestor glaring at them from above.

“I can’t say for certain, but I’d wager sometime after I’ve been catatumpously chewed up by England.”

“Oh!” she crowed with delight. “Catawamptiously, Your Highness.”

“Leo.”

“Pardon?”

He smiled at her. “I like when you use my given name. My close friends call me Leo.”

“Then I shall call you Leopold.”

He shook his head. “For the sake of quenching my curiosity...areyou the most obstinate woman in this land?”

She giggled. “Thank you for your confidence in me, Your Highness, but I think not.” She leaned toward him and whispered, “I think Lady Norfolk can be rather obstinate when she’s of a mind.”

One of his brows rose above the other. “I had that feeling.”

She laughed.

“Why do you ask about my return to Alucia? Are you so eager for me to be gone?”

“Oh, in the worst way,” she said with a winsome smile. “And I feel it is my duty to warn Eliza when the time comes. I write her every week without fail. I tell her everything.”

“I certainly hope not everything.” He winked. And then delighted at her blush. “Why bother writing? Her sister can send her gazette, in which, I may vouch, no stone of gossip is left unturned.”

“You are wrong about that. There arealwayscertain details left out of the gazette,” she said as they reached the next floor. “Details the three of us keep to ourselves.” She paused. “Would you like to know what they are?”

“I would.”

“I thought you might! But I can’t tell you.” She laughed and turned into a wide corridor.

“Can’t you? I might have to employ my technique of teasing information from the most reluctant beings,” he warned her.

“It won’t work. My lips are sealed.” She mimed locking her lips with a key and throwing it away.

A maid hurried by them, also in the opposite direction. They both paused in their walk and watched her practically jog down the hall. They looked at each other; Caroline shrugged.

They carried on.

“What sort of things do you write to Eliza?”

“Everything! I wrote her about my illness and how my funeral had all but been arranged, and that no one had thought to ask me what I should like to wear to my own burial.”

Leo laughed.

“I write her about you,” Caroline said with a saucy little glance at him.

“About what? Are you spying on me?”

She clucked her tongue at him. “Spying is hardly necessary.Everyoneknows your news.”

“This may come as a shock, madam, but much of what you think you know of me is not true. Most of it, I’d wager.”