The Leopard Prince (Princes #2)(3)

“I think not.” Harry walked to the fireplace and found some half-burned logs. They were covered with cobwebs.

“Oh, come, Mr. Pye. You know you wish t-t-to.” Her teeth still chattered.

Four rickety wooden chairs stood around a lopsided table. Harry placed the lantern on the table and picked up a chair. He swung it hard against the stone fireplace. It shattered, the back coming off and the seat splintering.

Behind him, Lady Georgina squeaked.

“No, I don’t, my lady,” he said.

“Truly?”

“Yes.” He knelt and began placing small splinters of the chair against the charred logs.

“Very well. I suppose I must be nice, then.” Harry heard her draw up a chair. “That looks very efficient, what you’re doing there.”

He touched the lantern flame to the slivers of wood. They lit and he added larger pieces of the chair, careful not to smother the flame.

“Mmm. It feels good.” Her voice was throaty behind him.

For a moment Harry froze, thinking of what her words and tone might imply in a different context. Then he banished the thoughts and turned.

Lady Georgina held out her hands to the blaze. Her ginger hair was drying into fine curls around her forehead, and her white skin glowed in the firelight. She was still shivering.

Harry cleared his throat. “I believe you should remove your wet gown and wrap the rugs about yourself.” He strode over to the door where he’d dumped the carriage robes.

From behind him, he heard a breathless laugh. “I don’t believe I have ever heard such an improper suggestion made so properly.”

“I didn’t mean to be improper, my lady.” He handed her the robes. “I’m sorry if I offended.” Briefly his eyes met hers, so blue and laughing; then he turned his back.

Behind him was a rustling. He tried to discipline his thoughts. He would not imagine her pale, naked shoulders above—

“You aren’t improper, as well you know, Mr. Pye. Indeed, I’m beginning to think it would be impossible for you to be so.”

If she only knew. He cleared his throat but made no comment. He forced himself to gaze around the little cottage. There was no kitchen dresser, only the table and chairs. A pity. His belly was empty.

The rustling by the fire ceased. “You may turn around now.”

He braced himself before looking, but Lady Georgina was covered in furs. He was glad to see her lips were pinker.

She freed a naked arm from the bundle to point at a robe on the other side of the fireplace. “I’ve left one for you. I’m too comfortable to move, but I’ll close my eyes and promise not to peek if you wish to disrobe as well.”

Harry dragged his gaze away from the arm and met her clever blue eyes. “Thank you.”

The arm disappeared. Lady Georgina smiled, and her eyelids fell.

For a moment Harry simply watched her. The reddish arcs of her eyelashes fluttered against her pale skin, and a smile hovered on her crooked mouth. Her nose was thin and overlong, the angles of her face a bit too sharp. When she stood, she almost equaled his own height. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but he found himself having to control his gaze when he was around her. Something about the twitching of her lips when she was about to taunt him. Or the way her eyebrows winged up her forehead when she smiled. His eyes were drawn to her face like iron filings near a lodestone.

He shucked his upper garments and drew the last robe around himself. “You may open your eyes now, my lady.”

Her eyes popped open. “Good. And now we both look like Russians swathed for the Siberian winter. A pity we don’t have a sleigh with bells as well.” She smoothed the fur on her lap.

He nodded. The fire crackled in the silence as he tried to think of how else he could look after her. There was no food in the cottage; nothing to do but wait for dawn. How did the upper crust behave when they were in their palatial sitting rooms all alone?

Lady Georgina was plucking at her robe, but she suddenly clasped her hands together as if to still them. “Do you know any stories, Mr. Pye?”

“Stories, my lady?”

“Mmm. Stories. Fairy tales, actually. I collect them.”

“Indeed.” Harry was at a loss. The aristocracy’s way of thinking was truly amazing sometimes. “How, may I ask, do you go about collecting them?”

“By inquiring.” Was she having fun with him? “You’d be amazed at the stories people remember from their youth. Of course, old nursemaids and the like are the best sources. I believe I’ve asked every one of my acquaintances to introduce me to their old nurse. Is yours still alive?”

“I didn’t have a nursemaid, my lady.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks reddened. “But someone—your mother?—must’ve told you fairy tales growing up.”

He shifted to put another piece of the broken chair on the fire. “The only fairy tale I can remember is Jack and the Beanstalk.”

Lady Georgina gave him a pitying look. “Can’t you do better than that?”

“I’m afraid not.” The other tales he knew weren’t exactly fit for a lady’s ears.

“Well, I heard a rather interesting one recently. From my cook’s aunt when she came to visit Cook in London. Would you like me to tell it to you?”

No. The last thing he needed was to become any more intimate with his employer than the situation had already forced him to be. “Yes, my lady.”