Page 101 of To Pleasure a Prince

“Three days!” Her heart dropped into her stomach.

“With the rats, the dank cold, and the nights darker than coal.” A shudder wracked him. “At thirteen I was stubborn as the very devil, but even I could only endure so much. When Mother came for the third evening in a row to order me to apologize to Prinny, I couldn’t bear the thought of another night down there.”

He spoke through gritted teeth. “I swallowed my pride, and I apologized very prettily.” His angry gaze swung to her. “But I never forgave him for it. Never. And I finally got to tell him so, too, nine years later. I told him to his face how much I hated him. Then I ordered him to leave Castlemaine, take her with him, and never come back. And I got a poker across the face for my efforts.”

The pain in his voice cut her to the heart. “Oh, my darling—”

“I’m not telling you this to gain your pity.” The waning sun shone on his flushed cheeks. “I merely want you to understand that he’s not the man you think. I’ll do anything to keep Louisa out of his clutches. Anything, do you hear me?”

She nodded, but she still couldn’t conceive of Prinny—jovial, easygoing Prinny—ordering his son held in a dungeon for three days.

But neither would Marcus lie. And she remembered how reluctant he’d been to show her the dungeon this morning, as well as his anger the first time she’d told him what people were saying about his keeping women there. Clearly he was telling the truth. But…

“Are you sure the prince ordered it? Perhaps your mother—”

“My mother was completely in thrall to the man. She did nothing unless he commanded it, I assure you.”

“And where was the viscount?”

“In town. That’s why Prinny felt free to visit and act the petty tyrant.”

She ventured a question she knew he would not like. “Did you hear Prinny order you put into the dungeon?”

He scowled. “I’m sure I did. And he could hardly not have noticed that I disappeared for three days. And that I looked like the very devil when I came to apologize.”

Her throat constricted to think of a young Marcus locked up beneath the earth, no matter who had chosen to do it. “Did they starve you?”

He snorted. “They didn’t need to. Being in that miserable place was punishment enough. I had a bed and food and a chamber pot. I just wasn’t allowed to come out, that’s all.” He hitched up his shoulders as if to shrug it off, but it looked more a shudder than a shrug. “Anyway, it was a long time ago.” He leveled a hard gaze on her. “And my point is, the prince cannot be trusted. Nor your brother.”

“Simon most certainly cannot.” She sighed. “So what will you do now?”

“I want to hear what Louisa has to say before I make a decision.”

“Promise me you won’t fight Simon.”

He arched one eyebrow. “Worried about your brother, are you?”

“I’m worried aboutyou,”she cried, hurt that he could think she would care more about Simon than him.

His rigid jaw softened. “I can take care of myself with your brother.”

“If the two of you fought a duel, I would lose you both. One of you would die and the other would be forced to flee the country. I couldn’t bear it, and I know it would kill Louisa. Promise me you won’t call him out, Marcus.”

He swore under his breath.

“Promise me, Marcus!”

“Oh, all right. But only because I can’t very well keep Louisa safe if I have to flee England.”

She noticed he didn’t say anything about not wanting to leave his wife. Was that because he didn’t care? Or because he assumed that if he ever did have to flee, Regina would go with him?

A silence fell between them, thick with tension as she mulled over his revelations. She wanted him to care. She wanted it desperately. Every time she gazed at that dear, stubborn face, her heart flipped over in her chest. After sharing his bed these past few nights while he made love to her with a fierce tenderness that melted her, she couldn’t bear to have himnotcare.

Because she loved him.

Unshed tears pooled in her throat. Uncertain of his feelings, she’d kept her own under control, but he had crept around her heart anyway, as insidious as the dragon’s tail carved on her new harp.

How could she not fall in love with a man who’d given up his honeymoon to try to teach her to read? Who had endured a mountain of humiliation to squire her about in public? Who cared so much for his sister that he would do anything to protect her from harm?