Wicked in Your Arms (Forgotten Princesses #1)(17)

Shaking memories of him away, she lifted her chin a notch and inquired after the dowager’s health.

The dowager offered a reply and smiled. Grier tried to detect artifice in the brittle curve of her ashen lips—the same artifice she met at every turn within the ton—but then she called a stop to such wonderings. Such thoughts were pointless. Of course the smile was a sham. The dowager didn’t want Grier or Cleo to wed her grandson. She merely wanted Jack’s fortune to save her family.

It didn’t take much to assess the direness of the dowager’s situation. The evidence was there, all around Grier. The faded wallpaper wouldn’t be so obvious but for the few squares of brighter, cleaner paper where paintings had once hung. Sold to fetch much-needed funds, she surmised. Grier’s gaze darted to the maids standing in attendance. Likely to pay for the servants required to run this mausoleum.

And there were other signs. The drawing room furniture, once of the finest quality, was worn and faded. Something she easily noted after residing with her father for the last month and being surrounded with the finest furnishings and most lavish decor.

The dowager snapped her wrist and the viscount appeared, lifting up from a chaise across the room, where he had been in close conversation with a pretty brunette. The girl’s eyes followed him longingly as he moved to his grandmother’s side and bowed over Grier and Cleo. On the other side of the girl, her plump friend patted her arm consolingly and stared sourly at Grier.

Grier frowned. Was the girl in love with him? Was he in love with her? Perfect. Another reason to feel uncomfortable.

The viscount did his part admirably though. He smiled and bowed over their hands with perfect grace. His boyish good looks betrayed nothing. He showed no sign that his heart was otherwise engaged. A gentleman to the core. Unlike a certain prince whose memory she could not seem to dismiss.

Grier angled her head and took a bracing breath, reprimanding herself for thinking of that brash scoundrel again. Would he never be far from her thoughts? Over the course of their journey to reach the dowager’s estate, his face and taunting words filled her head more often than not. Strange, really.

Holy hellfire. She almost imagined that one of the two gentlemen stepping inside the drawing room even now resembled him.

She blinked and looked again as he approached. The gentleman didn’t resemble him. It was he.

He was here. Her prince was here. No! Not her prince. She swallowed tightly, cursing herself for that slip. He wasn’t her anything.

Panic swelled up in her chest, tightening her throat. How was she to forget him when he attended the same house party with her? He would be here, underfoot the entire time. For well over a week. She would see him down the length of the dinner table, constantly hear his voice everywhere she turned.

His gaze found her, those gold eyes widening with recognition. Something akin to amusement flickered in his eyes before it was gone, banked. His well-formed mouth flattened into an unsmiling line.

She sniffed and held up her chin, struggling to appear unaffected. She stared coolly at him, through him, behaving like him—the austere, unfeeling royal. She behaved as though she didn’t know him at all. And she didn’t. Not really. Their one evening together scarcely constituted an acquaintance.

Her sister lightly touched her elbow, and she dragged her attention back to the viscount, focusing on what he was saying.

“. . . delighted you are here. When you did not arrive yesterday with everyone else, we feared the elements would keep you from joining us. Such wretched weather. I profess all the gentlemen present are heaving a sigh of relief at the arrival of two more such lovely ladies.”

“That’s kind of you to say, my lord,” Grier murmured.

The viscount pressed a hand to his heart. “I only speak the truth.”

“Quite so, quite so,” an elderly man exclaimed, banging his walking stick upon the floor as he swept both Grier and Cleo a lecherous look.

Lord Tolliver nodded. “The marquis was quite displeased at the lack of females present.”

“Now it shall be a true country party.” The old man’s leer deepened, revealing missing teeth and a wet, roiling tongue that seemed to have difficulty staying inside his mouth.

Cleo managed to get out a polite response, but Grier could only cringe at the old man. Surely she was not to consider him? The viscount was vastly more appealing.

“Eh, lovely.” The marquis crooked a finger at Grier. “Come sit beside me.”

Grier gave him a wobbly smile, eyeing the small settee upon which he sat with great reluctance. Never had she felt so out of place, wondering what the proper thing to do was.

She felt the prince’s gaze on her back, burning through her clothing, branding her, seeming to call her out for the impostor she was. At that moment, she had never felt the truth of that more keenly. She was an impostor, fighting for position in a world that didn’t want her. Resolve firmed her lips. A world that didn’t want her yet.

“Cease your flirting, Quibbly,” the dowager called. “Can’t you see you’re frightening the girl?”

Frightening wouldn’t be precisely accurate. Repulsing would be closer to the truth.

Grier smiled, but her lips felt brittle and tight on her face. Thankfully Jack provided a distraction just then, diving into a diatribe on their perilous journey across snow-laden roads.

Her father did not exaggerate. Cleo had come down with an ague, delaying their departure a day. A day in which a winter storm arrived. The roads had been nearly impassable, but that hadn’t deterred Jack. Not from a house party at the dowager’s estate.