Page 33 of In the Prince's Bed

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 Magazinerecently 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:

His sinewed arm draws back to throw.

The discus gleams, a moon on high,

And when it flies forth to slice the air,

The crowd doth give a matchless sigh.

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:

Thou lovely temptress, beautiful and wise,

Thou turneth my reluctance into ashes

I gaze into the embers of your eyes…

“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.”