Page 135 of The Ladies Least Likely

“And there is the duchy to consider,” she went on after a moment.

“My aunt has brought me up on the history. After Frederick II of Prussia stole most of Silesia from the Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa, he set up provincial ministers to oversee it. But the dukes remain, at least in name, and many are still the overlords of their lands, reporting to the minister and the king. The minister will see to the king’s needs but not those of the people.

And my aunt says Silesia is undergoing a great modernization under Prussian rule.

A duchy whose governors are absent or uninvested may be left behind as the wealth grows everywhere else. ”

She was promised to another. To marry another. And she had to return to her homeland, a place he’d never heard of. Silesia was not on the Grand Tour of the glories of Western culture and civilization; it was a backward region of farmers and miners and the poor.

She would leave the country. Leave him. Be entirely out of reach.

“When do you have to go?” The words came from him strangled, barely audible.

She sat up and slid her hands over her face, wiping her tears into her hairline. “When my betrothed comes to fetch me, no earlier. And not until I have this painting done of you, Lord Renwick. I want at least one thing I dreamed of to come true before everything changes.”

He couldn’t help himself. She was so dear, so sensible and brave, and her carmine-red lower lip quivered so beautifully in her distress.

He bent his head and gently kissed that lip, then the enchanting corners of her mouth.

It was unforgiveable, considering she’d just told him she was betrothed to another, but the urge to comfort her in any way he could overcame the need to be a gentleman.

She pressed her fingers to his chest, not to push him away but to deepen their connection.

Perhaps she sensed what was on his heart.

Her eyelids remained closed when he paused, and he couldn’t help kissing her again.

For solace. Reassurance. But comfort flamed all too quickly into passion and her mouth opened beneath his, a trove of searing heat.

She curled her hand into his neckcloth and kissed him hungrily, desperately, as if for the last time. It was for the last time.

He was instantly lost. He slipped a hand into her loose waves of hair, cupping her head as she let it fall back in shameless surrender.

With his other arm he hauled her against him, crushing her breasts against his chest. She gave a small whimper at the pressure and he eased his embrace, dragging his hand from her hair down the side of her neck and over her chest. Her nipple pearled in his palm, and in thoughtless greed he dipped his hand beneath the fabric, closing it around one soft, perfect globe.

He reeled at the bolt of pleasure and her small gasp.

She squirmed on the stool, pushing her breast into his hand and at the same time tilting her hips so his cock slid into the curtain of fabric between her legs, nestling in the warm crevice, just where he wanted to be.

He groaned at the ease with which she offered him access.

She was as shameless and greedy as he was, drowning in the passion that roared up between them like a ravenous flame.

There was some reason he should pull back.

Something about being a gentleman and respecting her wishes.

But when her body urged him on, when she leaned her breasts into his circling palm and groaned as he thumbed one diamond-hard nipple, when she rolled her hips against his and the rustle of fabric alone brought him nearly to release, he couldn’t think of one earthly reason he shouldn’t devour her right here, take what she offered, drive his tongue into her warm mouth and pull aside her skirts and plunge his cock into her open and ready?—

“Milord’s painting will never be finished at this rate, Liebelein .”

The amused drawl fell between them like the sword of Damocles, shattering the grip of lust. Ren lifted his head and withdrew his hand, but paused a moment before he stepped back, afraid the slightest friction of her skirts along his erection might urge him to an embarrassment.

Harriette groaned but didn’t seem embarrassed at all, only regretful, dazed, and then slightly annoyed as she drew up her drawstring neckline and pulled down her disordered skirts.

“You’d better have Sorcha’s scones and some fresh clotted cream on that tray, Princess,” Harriette grumbled as her friend processed into the room in a fanfare of silken skirts and ruffles. “And a bottle of my aunt’s favorite port.”

“Nothing stronger?” Princess sounded amused as she set the tray she carried on a small mahogany table with lion’s paw feet. “You’d shock anyone else who found you like this, Hari.”

“Why is she here?” Ren rasped. He was ashamed, not at being caught, but that Harriette had just explained to him why they couldn’t do as they wished, and he had nevertheless pawed her like an eager puppy.

He couldn’t hide the betraying bulge in his breeches as he stepped away, and Princess looked her fill, with an approving smile.

“Respectability, you know,” Princess answered. “You must be chaperoned now that Hari’s betrothed. No more playing rantum scantum.”

Ren stared, not comprehending the term. She raised a brow and made an illustrative gesture. “The blanket hornpipe? Two-handed put? Amorous congress?”

“Not with you breaking in on us in full sail, no.” Harriette rolled off the stool and shook out her skirts, then walked over to the tea tray. Ren took small satisfaction in noting her gait wobbled slightly. She wasn’t able to shake off the drugging effects of their embrace that quickly.

He knew anything he tried to say would emerge mangled, so Ren kept his mouth shut and merely glowered at Princess. “You’ll thank me when Fritz doesn’t carve out your heart,” she advised him.

“Franz Karl,” Harriette said. She cut a scone and heaped it with cream.

“Every German is Fritz.” Princess sniffed.

“Happens this one calls himself Prussian,” Harriette replied.

Him . Harriette’s affianced. Ren retreated to the sitting nook and his marble pillar.

His boot scraped along the floor before he caught himself and thought about his gait.

Princess glanced his way but made no comment.

She merely accepted the dish of tea and the piled-high scone Harriette gave her, then glided over to a draped couch standing against a window on the sculptor’s side of the room, where she seated herself and dove into her refreshments with evident enjoyment.

“The King—king—kingdom of Galicia and Wodo—Lodomeria,” Ren managed, remembering their recent introduction. “Another takeover engineered by Fwed—Frederick, King of P-Prussia, as I understand. Are you fa—from the same region, then?”

Ren glared at Princess, blaming her for the way his tongue swelled and flailed in his mouth.

She put him off the ease he felt with Harriette, made all his self-consciousness rise to the surface.

He hated hearing his own voice, his stuttering.

He fully expected her to look at him with the pity, scorn, or horror he was used to seeing.

Princess licked her fingers and gave him a level look.

“Galicia is a crownland of the Hapsburg monarchy now,” she said.

“A consequence of Frederick the Great parceling out parts of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania—which is not his to give, I might add, but he thought to placate Austria and keep Russia off his borders. No doubt the vultures will pluck poor Poland down to her bones.”

“So you are P-Polish royalty then,” Ren said carefully.

“How lovely for me,” Princess said, enjoying her cream.

“And Rhette is Prussian nobility.”

“Not Prussian,” Harriette said sharply, moving his way with a dish of tea and a generously creamed scone. “Silesian.”

“Silesia was part of Poland in the Middle Ages, under Bohemian rule,” Princess said around a mouthful of scone. “Before the Hapsburgs scooped it into their great gaping maw and turned it into a backwater.”

“We are more Slav than German.” Harriette deposited his refreshments on Ren’s pillar and turned back to her stool. “We have our own language and culture.”

“I always thought you and your mother were speaking German to each other,” Ren said in surprise. The cream was delicious, the scone melting and yet tart. The treat helped remedy somewhat for Harriette’s being forcibly removed from his arms.

“It’s more like Polish,” Harriette said. “But a language proper, not a dialect.”

“Say something,” Ren prompted.

She searched about for her porte crayon and her sketchbook. When she settled herself on her stool, her look held a warmth that curled into his belly, dissolving the cream. He didn’t understand a word of what followed, but it wasn’t German.

Princess raised her eyebrows.

“What did you say?” Ren asked.

“I said it will be interesting to see where Frederick decides to throw his weight in the matter of the revolt in the American colonies,” Harriette said. “France will aid the colonists because they love to antagonize Britain. But Britain and Prussia were allies, at least until the Seven Years’ War.”

“Oh, is that what you said?” Princess murmured.

Harriette shot her a defiant look, and Ren decided not to press the issue. Let her have her small lie, if she were honest with him otherwise.

“So it will help when you go-go back. If you know—if you know the language.” He tried his best to sound casual, offhand.

As if he were merely a friend remarking on her future plans.

The subject of her work, the patron who had commissioned a painting for quite a hefty fee, as it were.

Not the man who would drop to his knees and beg her to stay with him, if his crippled leg would allow such a gesture.

“My aunt has made sure I kept it. Now I understand why. She knew of the betrothal all along.” She attacked her paper with long, savage lines.