Page 8 of In the Prince's Bed

“I merely need time to bring Mother round,” Sydney went on.

“I don’t have time,” the woman said regretfully. “Mama has warned me that if you don’t offer in the next two weeks, she’ll tell everyone I’m free and take the best offer for my hand that presents itself before we return to Cornwall.”

Alec pricked up his ears.

“She can’t do that!” Sydney protested.

“Of course she can’t. She knows I’d never comply with such a Gothic maneuver. But until I do, life at home will be horrible. And we do need money—”

“I know.” Sydney gave a heavy sigh. “All right, give me the two weeks to bring Mother round. If I can’t, I’ll ask your mother for your hand anyway.”

Alec rolled his eyes.Offer for the woman and be done with it, or give her up and let someone else take the field.

“What difference will two weeks make?” the woman asked quietly.

Smart wench.

“Dash it all, Kit, what do you want from me?” Sydney’s voice turned bitter. “Unless you’re the one changing your mind. Perhaps you’ve decided you want to marry a more exciting man than a quiet poet.”

“Like who, pray tell?”

“Well, there’s Iversley, for one, and all his staring at you.”

Alec chomped down hard on his cigar to restrain his laugh. This was priceless. He ought to feel guilty for causing the poor blighter’s misery, but any man who let his mother run his life brought that misery on himself.

“Just because he stared—” she began.

“You stared back. Why, you had that devil toasting you, of all things. Right in front of everyone.”

“How do you know he wasn’t toastingyou?You’re his school chum.”

Alec frowned. Did he know a Sydney from Harrow?

“I was never his chum—he wouldn’t have toasted me. And you know it, too, or you wouldn’t have blushed so furiously.”

“How else should I react when a man you called ‘wild and reckless’ stares at me?”

Alec’s eyes narrowed. Wait a minute—wasn’t there a versifying twit at Harrow who’d always eyed him with contempt? Ah yes, Sydney Lovelace, heir to a baronet and a mama’s boy.

“You didn’t have to encourage Iversley,” Lovelace grumbled.

“I doubt a wicked fellow like that needs encouragement. Don’t his sort consider it their mission to debauch everything in skirts? Lord knows Papa did.”

By God, the woman was frank. But at least she understood society’s hypocrisies, another point in her favor.

“Honestly, Kit,” Lovelace said, “sometimes you know more than any respectable young lady should about…well…things like that.”

“Now we reach the heart of the matter—how much my character resembles my immoral father’s,” she said bitterly. “Well, you may be right. Because I want to know even more about ‘things like that.’ ”

Alec found this conversation more fascinating by the moment.

“Good Lord, what are you saying?”

That she wants you to show her those things, you clod-pate. Then you won’t have to accuse her of flirting with complete strangers.

“I’m saying I want to know how you feel about me,” the woman retorted.

“But you do. You’re the only woman I want to marry. Why, I’m dedicating my poem to you at the reading tomorrow. How much more do you need?”