Penelope and Prince Charming (Nvengaria #1)(10)

If he did not, Grand Duke Alexander would win, and Damien, in some grand, dramatic Nvengarian fashion, would die.

Penelope with her sunshine hair mussed and her chest rising against her loosened bodice, suddenly made all of it seem so trivial.

I need this, Damien thought. I need her.

“Your Highness,” Sasha said breathlessly. “We thought you were lost.”

He spoke Nvengarian, but his first cry had been in English, to warn the country girl in Damien’s arms that he was not for her.

“Well, here I am,” Damien said in clipped tones.

Sasha looked confused. “I feared for you, Highness. Was that wrong?” He glanced at Penelope.

“She is no assassin, Sasha,” Damien said impatiently then quieted his tone. “But you are right to be afraid, my friend. Alexander will always try.” He put his hand on Penelope’s shoulder. “But not through her.”

Sasha did not look as certain. “Who is she?”

Damien switched to English. “Penelope, this is Sasha, my royal advisor.”

Penelope’s green eyes had lost their softness, her wariness returning. “Royal?”

“Your Highness.” Sasha continued in Nvengarian, admonishing. “You know she is not the one. Nedrak told you—”

“Nedrak is a charlatan,” Damien said impatiently.

Sasha was horrified. “No, no, sir. He is a sage, and a great seer. He is never wrong.”

“Well, he was wrong in this case.” Nedrak, the highest of the Council of Mages, had told Damien that when he found the woman he was to marry, he’d fall immediately in love with her. The prophecy was never wrong, Nedrak said.

The prophecy must be a bit off, because Damien had just met the woman he’d die for, and she was not Lady Trask. Lady Trask’s Christian name was Simone.

“Royal?” Penelope repeated, bewilderment in her voice. “Your Highness?”

Sasha bowed to her and switched to English. “May I present his Imperial Highness, Prince Damien Augustus Frederic Michel of Nvengaria.”

Penelope stared, her moist lips parting. “Prince—”

“Call me Damien,” Damien said, his voice cooling. “It will save time.”



* * *



Penelope led Damien and the man called Sasha the rest of the way to Ashborn Manor, her thoughts spinning but her emotions numb. Damien guided the horse, the reins looped in confident hands, his movements as graceful and natural as the animal’s.

It was not often a handsome prince popped out of nowhere and kissed you, Penelope reflected, dazed. Never, in fact.

Even in the fairy tales she transcribed the prince was preceded by fanfare and pageantry. The country girl he fell in love with usually turned out to be a long-lost princess, something Penelope was not.

Penelope had read of Nvengaria, the tiny country hugging the western border of Moldova, near the Black Sea. It sat in a deep fold between mountain ranges, following a river gorge a few hundred miles long but not even one hundred miles across.

She’d come upon this information in a book while researching Nvengarian folktales, part of her interest in the folklore of Moldova, Transylvania, and the northern part of the Austrian Empire. No one in England knew any stories from Nvengaria and Penelope had hoped to be the first to offer a collection.

But the books she’d read had been sketchy—only one mentioned an obscure tale she hadn’t well understood, and that was all. She’d never met anyone from Nvengaria, nor known a person who’d traveled there.

The likelihood that this man was its prince was remote. He was most probably a confidence man or similar kind of trickster, ready to prey on an unsuspecting spinster.

With kisses that took her breath away …

Penelope glanced at Damien, only to find him looking sideways at her. When their gazes met, he gave her his smile. It confused Penelope, and frightened her, how hot she grew whenever he smiled.

They neared the house, a wide-winged Palladian manor built a century before and ruthlessly modernized by Penelope’s mother. At the same moment they approached the door, the large carriage pulled by the gray horses with purple plumes turned onto the drive. Behind the carriage came several heavily laden carts.

Damien did not seem inclined to wait for them. He tossed his horse’s reins to one of the Trask grooms who’d appeared and strode toward the front door, which stood open to the spring air. The tails of Damien’s black coat moved as he walked, revealing the lean muscles of his inner thighs and how very tightly his breeches molded to him.

Penelope and Meagan, while sitting as wallflowers in London ballrooms, would make a game of deciding which man in the room had the finest-fitted trousers. TTs, Meagan called them. Tight trousers. If Damien appeared at a tonnish ball in the breeches he wore at present, he would win hands down.

Damien disappeared into the shadow of the house. Penelope scuttled after him, her breath hitching, pretending she could care less about his breeches.

Lady Trask and Michael Tavistock were nowhere in sight. The butler, Mathers, a man devoted to Lady Trask, stopped in astonishment as Damien strode unimpeded into the hall.

“Ah …” Mathers began.

“I have come to see Lady Trask,” Damien said. “Fetch her for me at once. I shall wait in the drawing room.”

Mathers’ mouth dropped open further. “But …”