The Serpent Prince (Princes #3)(27)

“Is there a reason you always wear gray?” he asked.

“What?”

“Your dress.” He indicated her apparel with his hand. “You’re always in gray. Rather like a pretty little dove. If you aren’t in mourning, why do you wear it?”

She frowned. “I didn’t think it was proper for a gentleman to comment on a lady’s attire. Are the social conventions different in London?”

Ouch. His angel was in fine fettle this morning.

He leaned against the seat, propping his elbow behind her back. He was so close he could feel her warmth at his chest. “Yes, actually they are. For instance, it is considered de rigueur for a lady driving a gentleman in a trap to flirt with him outrageously.”

She pursed her lips, still refusing to look at him.

That served only to egg him on. “Ladies not following this convention are frowned upon severely. Very often you will see the elder members of the ton shaking their heads over these poor, lost souls.”

“You are terrible.”

“I’m afraid so,” he sighed. “But I’ll give you leave to disregard the rule since we are in the benighted country.”

“Benighted?” She slapped the reins, and Kate rattled her bridle.

“I insist on benighted.”

She gave him a look.

He stroked one finger down her ramrod-straight spine. She stiffened even more but didn’t comment. He remembered the taste of her fingers on his tongue the night before, and another less polite part of his anatomy stiffened as well. Her acceptance of his touch was as erotic as a blatant display in another woman. “You can hardly blame me, since, were we in the city, you would be compelled to say suggestive things to me in my blushing ear.”

She sighed. “I can’t remember what you asked me before all this nonsense.”

He grinned even though it was gauche. He couldn’t recall when he’d last had this much fun. “Why do you wear only gray? Not that I have anything against gray, and it does lend you an intriguing ecclesiastical air.”

“I look like a nun?” Her terrifying brows drew together.

The trap bumped over another rut in the road and jostled his shoulder against hers.

“No, dear girl. I am saying, admittedly in a roundabout and rather obscure way, that you are an angel sent from heaven to judge me for my sins.”

“I wear gray because it is a color that doesn’t show dirt.” She glanced at him. “What kind of sins have you committed?”

He leaned close, as if about to impart a confidence, and caught a whiff of roses. “I contest the word color used in reference to gray and submit that gray is not a color at all, but rather a lack thereof.”

Her eyes narrowed ominously.

He drew back and sighed. “As to my sins, my dear lady, they are not the sort that may be spoken of in the presence of an angel.”

“Then how am I to judge them? And gray is so a color.”

He laughed. He felt like throwing wide his arms and perhaps breaking into song. It must be the country air. “Lady, I concede to the power of your well-thought-out argument, which, I think, would have brought even Sophocles to his knees. Gray, therefore, is a color.”

She harrumphed. “And your sins?”

“My sins are numerous and irredeemable.” The image flashed through his mind of Peller desperately flinging out his hand and his own sword slicing through it, blood and fingers spangling the air. Simon blinked and painted a smile across his lips. “All who have knowledge of my sins,” he said lightly, “shrink in horror from the sight of me as if I were a leper revealed, my nose falling off, my ears rotting.”

She regarded him, so grave and so innocent. Brave little angel, untouched by the stink of men. He couldn’t help stroking her back again, cautiously, furtively. Her eyes widened.

“And so they should,” he continued. “For instance, I have been known to leave my house without a hat.”

She frowned. He wasn’t wearing a hat at the moment.

“In London,” he clarified.

But she wasn’t worried about hats. “Why do you think that you’re irredeemable? All men can find grace if they repent of their sins.”

“So speaketh the angel of the Lord.” He leaned close to her, under her flat straw hat, and smelled again the scent of roses in her hair. His cock twitched. “But what if I am a devil from hell itself and not of your world at all, angel?”

“I’m not an angel.” She tilted her face up.

“Oh, yes, you are,” he breathed. His lips brushed her hair, and for a wild moment he thought he might kiss her, might debauch this lady with his foul mouth. But the cart shook as they rounded a curve, and her head turned to mind the horse, and the moment passed.

“How independent you are,” he murmured.

“Country ladies need to be, if we are to get anywhere,” she said somewhat tartly. “Did you think I sit at home doing the mending all day?”

Ah, this was dangerous ground. They’d been in this territory when she’d grown angry with him two nights before. “No. I am aware of your many duties and talents, not least of which is to help the less fortunate of the village. I have no doubt you would make an admirable Lady Mayor of London, but that would involve quitting this lovely hamlet, and I am sure that the inhabitants would not survive without you.”