Page 70 of One Night with a Prince

“Which is why we’ll use my French letters from now on. And you’ll use a sponge. I’m not taking any chances. I can’t believe I took one this time.” He stared down at her tumbled hair with an ironic smile.

“That’s what happens when a man goes days without a woman. He loses his capacity for logic.”

She eyed him askance. “That would certainly explain why you never fail to be logical. I doubt you’ve ever gone more than one night without a woman.”

For some reason, her assumption annoyed him. “I’ve gone weeks without a woman. I do have a life outside of the bedroom.”

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“I’d never know it, to look at Lord Stokely’s guests. How many of your former mistresses are here? Two? Three? Ten?”

“Four,” he grudgingly admitted.

She dropped her gaze from his, her hand tracing faint circles on his bare chest. “And…Lady Kingsley? How would you characterize ‘Anna’?”

He stiffened. “What did Stokely tell you? I know he told you something.”

“He said that you wanted to marry her, and she refused you.” Her voice lowered. “He said you wanted her fortune.”

“Damn the bloody arse. That’s just like Stokely to speak half the truth. I didn’t need her fortune, for God’s sake.”

“Perhaps he misunderstood her. He said he got the story from Lady Kingsley herself. Or perhaps that’s how she looked at it. Especially since you’d just begun your club, and—”

“If she said I was after her fortune, she lied,” Gavin ground out. “My club was already doing pretty well for the small concern it was, and she knew it. Nor did she refuse me, not at first. We were engaged. Secretly engaged. I’d already arranged for us to elope to Gretna Green, and she was ready and willing.”

He gritted his teeth, remembering. “Then the lofty Lord Kingsley came along, and her family pressured her into accepting his suit. And that was the end of our plans.”

He hadn’t realized how much bitterness was in his voice until she laid her hand soothingly on his shoulder. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

Somehow he managed a shrug. “I was a young idiot. I suppose I fancied myself in love.”

“And she loved you. She still does. I suspect she regrets letting her family convince her to choose Kingsley over you.”

“Then she’s a fool.”

She stared up at him, wide-eyed. “Why?”

“The world is made for men. Women only succeed by marrying well, and I could never have given her the status she instantly achieved by marrying Kingsley. She would have been Mrs. Byrne, the Irish bastard’s wife. Instead of Lady Kingsley, the Irish peer’s wife.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she persisted. “You loved each other, and a woman should always choose love over other considerations.”

“That didn’t exactly work well for you, did it?” Her stricken expression made him curse his quick tongue. “I’m sorry, lass, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s true.” She shifted out of his arms to lie with her back to him on the bed. “I loved Philip, and he trampled on my love. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps a woman should choose a man for more practical reasons, like money or status.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Or how good a lover he is.”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlYesterday, he would have exulted to hear those words. Now, all he could think was that he’d stolen something valuable from her—her wide-eyed belief in honor and beauty and…yes…love. He bit back an oath. He hadn’t stolen it—Haversham had. He was just furthering the education her husband had started.

That was a depressing thought.

“Byrne?” she asked.

He lay down beside her, tugging her body into the lee of his. “Yes, lass?”

“What happens now?”

“What do you mean?” he said, pretending not to know.

“With us.”