The Serpent Prince (Princes #3)(44)

But he searched her eyes, neither triumphant nor happy, only waiting. “Are you sure?” His lips caressed her thumb with the words.

She nodded. “Yes.”

He closed his eyes as if terribly relieved. “Thank God.”

She leaned down and kissed him softly on the cheek. But when she would’ve pulled back, he moved his head. His mouth connected with hers.

He kissed her.

Brushing across her lips, teasing her, tempting her, until she finally opened to him. He groaned and licked the inside of her lower lip. She brought her tongue forward at the same time and tangled with his. She didn’t know if she was doing it right. She’d never been kissed like this before, but her heart beat loudly in her ears, and she couldn’t control the trembling of her limbs. He grasped her head between his hands and held it, angling his face across hers to deepen the embrace. This wasn’t like Eustace’s gentlemanly kiss. This was darker—hungry and almost frightening. She felt as if she were on the verge of falling. Or of breaking apart into so many pieces she’d never be able to put them back together again. He took her lower lip between his teeth and worried it. What should’ve been pain, or at least discomfort, was pleasure that went to her very center. She moaned and surged forward.

Crash!

Lucy jerked back. Simon looked over her shoulder, his face taut, a sheen of moisture on his brow.

“Oh my goodness!” Mrs. Brodie exclaimed. A tray of demolished china, oozing cake, and puddling tea lay at her feet. “Whatever will the captain say?”

That’s a good question, Lucy thought.

Chapter Nine

“I don’t mean to pry, Miss Craddock-Hayes,” Rosalind Iddesleigh said nearly three weeks later. “But I’ve been wondering how you met my brother-in-law?”

Lucy wrinkled her nose. “Please, call me Lucy.”

The other woman smiled almost shyly. “How kind. And you, of course, must call me Rosalind.”

Lucy smiled back and tried to think whether Simon would mind if she told this delicate woman that she’d found him nude and half dead in a ditch. They were in Rosalind’s elegant carriage, and it turned out that Simon did indeed have a niece. Theodora rode in the carriage as well, which was rumbling through the streets of London.

Simon’s sister-in-law, the widow of his elder brother, Ethan, looked like she should be gazing from a stone tower, waiting for a brave knight to come rescue her. She had gleaming, straight blond hair, pulled into a simple knot at the crown of her head. Her face was narrow and alabaster white with wide, pale blue eyes. If the evidence wasn’t sitting right next to her, Lucy would never have believed she was old enough to have an eight-year-old child.

Lucy had been staying with her future sister-in-law for the last sennight in preparation for her wedding to Simon. Papa had not been pleased by her match, but after grumbling and shouting for a bit, he’d reluctantly given his blessing. During Lucy’s time in London, she had visited a bewildering variety of shops with Rosalind. Simon was insistent that Lucy get a completely new trousseau. While she was naturally pleased to have so many fine clothes, at the same time it gave Lucy a niggling worry that she would not make a proper viscountess for Simon. She came from the country, and even dressed in lace and embroidered silks, she was still a simple woman.

“Simon and I met on the lane outside my home in Kent,” Lucy hedged now. “He’d had an accident, and I brought him home to recover.”

“How romantic,” Rosalind murmured.

“Was Uncle Sigh in his cups?” the little girl beside her wanted to know. Her hair was darker than her mother’s, more of a gold, and curly. Lucy remembered Simon’s description of his brother’s curly locks. Theodora obviously took after her dead father in that respect, although her eyes were her mother’s wide blue.

“Theodora, please.” Rosalind drew her brows together, creasing two perfect lines into her otherwise smooth forehead. “We’ve discussed the use of proper language before. What will Miss Craddock-Hayes think of you?”

The child slumped in her seat. “She said we could call her Lucy.”

“No, dear. She gave me permission to use her Christian name. It wouldn’t be proper for a child to do so.” Rosalind darted a glance at Lucy. “I’m so sorry.”

“Perhaps since I’ll soon be Theodora’s aunt, she might call me Aunt Lucy?” She smiled at the girl, not wanting to offend her future sister-in-law but feeling sympathy for the daughter as well.

Rosalind bit the corner of her lip. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Theodora gave a small wiggle in her seat. “And you can call me Pocket, because that’s what my uncle Sigh calls me. I call him Uncle Sigh because all the ladies sigh over him.”

“Theodora!”

“That’s what Nanny says,” the little girl defended herself.

“It’s so hard to keep servants from gossiping,” Rosalind said. “And children from repeating it.”

Lucy smiled. “And why does your uncle Sigh call you Pocket? Because you can fit in one?”

“Yes.” She grinned and suddenly resembled her uncle. She glanced at her mother. “And because I look in his pockets when he comes to visit.”

“He spoils her terribly,” Rosalind sighed.

“Sometimes he has sweets in his pocket, and he lets me have them,” the child confided. “And once he had some lovely tin soldiers, and Mama said that little girls don’t play with soldiers, and Uncle Sigh said then it was a good thing I’m a pocket and not a girl.” She took a breath and glanced at her mother again. “But he was teasing because he knows I’m really a little girl.”