Princes Trilogy: The Leopard Prince Part 9

d.i.c.k grabbed all three mugs in one fist and stood up. He hesitated. "You might try Annie Pollard's family. I don't know what went on there, but it was bad, and Granville was in the middle of it. And, Harry?"

Harry had risen and put on his hat. "Yes?"

"Stay away from aristo ladies." The piggy eyes were sad and old. "They won't do you any good, lad."

IT WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT, the moon hanging high and full like a swollen pale pumpkin, when Harry crossed through the Woldsly gates later that night. The first thing he saw was Lady Georgina's carriage standing in the drive. The horses hung their heads, asleep, and the coachman gave him a dirty look as Harry turned into the track leading to his cottage. The man had obviously been waiting a while.

Harry shook his head. What was she doing at his cottage, the second night in a row? Was she bent on plaguing him into an early grave? Or did she see him as something to amuse herself with here in the country? The last thought made him scowl as he stabled his mare. He was scowling still when he walked into his cottage. But the sight that met his eyes made him stop and sigh.Lady Georgina was asleep in his high-backed chair.

The fire had died to glowing coals beside her. Had the coachman lit it for her, or had she managed on her own this time? Her head was tilted back, her long slim throat exposed trustingly. She'd covered herself with a cloak, but it had slid down, pooling at her feet.

Harry sighed again and picked up her cloak, laying it gently over her. She never stirred. He took off his own cloak, hung it on a k.n.o.b by the door, and advanced to stir the coals. On the mantelpiece above the hearth, the carved animals had been placed into pairs, facing each other as if they were dancing a reel. He stared at them a moment, wondering how long she'd been waiting. He laid more wood on the fire and straightened. He wasn't sleepy, despite the hour and drinking two pints.

He went to the shelves, took down a box, and brought it to the table. Inside was a short, pearl-handled knife and a piece of cherrywood about half the size of his palm. He sat at the table and turned the wood over in his hands, rubbing the grain with a thumb. He'd thought at first of making a fox from it-the wood was the reddish-orange color of a fox's fur-but now he wasn't sure. He picked up the knife and made the first cut.

The fire crackled and a log fell.

After a while he looked up. Lady Georgina was watching him, her cheek cradled in one palm. Their eyes met, and he looked back down at the carving.

"Is that how you make all of them?" Her voice was low, throaty from sleep.

Did she sound like that in the morning, lying in her silk sheets, her body warm and moist? He pushed the thought aside and nodded.

"That's a pretty knife." She shifted to face him, curling her feet on the chair. "Much nicer than the other one."

"What other one?"

"The nasty-looking one in your boot. I like this one better."

He made a shallow cut, and a curling strip of wood fell to the table.

"Did your father give it to you?" She spoke slowly, sleepily, and it made him hard.

He opened his fist and stared at the pearl handle, remembering. "No, my lady."

She raised her head a little at that. "I thought I was to call you Harry and you could call me George?"

"I never said that."

"That isn't fair." She was frowning.

"Life seldom is, my lady." He shrugged his shoulders, trying to relieve the tightness. 'Course, the tightness was mostly in his b.a.l.l.s, not his shoulders. And shrugging sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't help that.

She stared at him a minute longer, and then turned to look into the fire.

He felt the moment her eyes left him.

She took a breath. "Do you recall the fairy tale I told you, the one about the enchanted leopard that was really a man?"

"Aye."

"Did I mention that he wore a golden chain around his neck?"

"Yes, my lady."

"And on the chain there was a tiny emerald crown? Did I say that?" She'd turned back to him again.

He frowned at the cherrywood. "I don't remember."

"Sometimes I forget the details." She yawned. "Well, he was really a prince, and on his chain there was a tiny crown with an emerald in it, the exact green color of the Leopard Prince's eyes-"

"That wasn't in your story before, my lady," he cut in. "The color of his eyes."

"I did just tell you that sometimes I forget the details." She blinked at him innocently.

"Huh." Harry started carving again.

"Anyway, the young king had sent the Leopard Prince to get the Golden Horse from the evil ogre. You do remember that part, don't you?" She didn't wait for an answer. "So the Leopard Prince changed into a man, and he held the emerald crown on his golden chain . . ."

Harry looked up as she trailed off.

Lady Georgina was staring into the fire and tapping a finger against her lips. "Do you suppose that was the only thing he was wearing?"

Oh, G.o.d, she was going to kill him. His c.o.c.k, which had started subsiding, leaped up again.

"I mean, if he was a leopard before, he couldn't very well have been wearing clothes, could he? And then when he changed into a man, well, I think he'd have to be nude, don't you?"

"No doubt." Harry shifted on his chair, glad the table hid his lap.

"Mmm." Lady Georgina pondered a moment more, and then shook her head. "So he was standing there, evidently in the nude, grasping the crown, and he said, 'I wish for an impenetrable suit of armor and the strongest sword in the world.'And what do you suppose happened?"

"He got the armor and sword."

"Well, yes." Lady Georgina seemed put out that he'd guessed what any three-year-old could've. "But they weren't ordinary weapons. The armor was pure gold, and the sword was made of gla.s.s. What do you think of that?"

"I think it doesn't sound very practical."

"What?"

"Bet a woman made this story up."

Her eyebrows arched at him. "Why?"

He shrugged. "The sword would break the first time he swung it, and the armor would give to even a weak blow. Gold's a soft metal, my lady."

"I hadn't thought of that." She tapped her lips again.

Harry returned to his whittling. Women.

"They must've been enchanted, too." Lady Georgina waved away the problem of faulty equipment. "So he went and got the Golden Horse-"

"What? Just like that?" He stared at her, an odd sense of frustration filling his chest.

"What do you mean?"

"Wasn't there a grand fight, then?" He gestured with the wood. "A struggle to the death between this Leopard Prince and the evil ogre? The ogre must've been a tough bird, others would've tried to take his prize before. What made our fellow so special that he could defeat him?"

"The armor and-"

"And the silly gla.s.s sword. Yes, all right, but others would've had magical weapons-"

"He's an enchanted leopard prince!" Lady Georgina was angry now. "He's better, stronger, than all the others.

He could've defeated the evil ogre with a single blow, I'm sure."

Harry felt his face heat, and his words came too fast. "If he's as powerful as all that, my lady, then why doesn't he free himself?"

"I-"

"Why doesn't he just walk away from spoiled kings and ridiculous ch.o.r.es? Why is he enslaved at all?" He threw down his whittling. The knife skittered across the table and slid to the floor.

Lady Georgina bent to pick it up. "I don't know, Harry." She offered the knife to him on the palm of her outstretched hand. "I don't know."

He ignored her hand. "It's late. I think you'd better go back to your manor now, my lady."

She placed the knife on the table. "If your father didn't give you this, then who did?"

She asked all the wrong questions. All the questions he wouldn't-couldn't-answer, either for himself or for her, and she never stopped. Why was she playing this game with him?

Silently he picked up her cloak and held it out for her. She looked into his face, and then turned so he could drape it about her shoulders. The perfume in her hair reached his nostrils. He closed his eyes in something very like agony.

"Will you kiss me again?" she whispered. Her back was still toward him.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands away. "No."

He strode past her and opened the door. He had to occupy his hands so that he wouldn't grab her and pull her body into his and kiss her until there was no tomorrow.

Her gaze met his, and her eyes were deep pools of blue. A man could dive in there and never care when he drowned. "Not even if I want you to kiss me?"

"Not even then."

"Very well." She moved past him and out into the night. "Good night, Harry Pye."

"Good night, my lady." He shut the door and leaned against it, breathing in the lingering traces of her perfume.

Then he straightened and walked away. Long ago he had railed against the order of things that deemed him inferior to men who had neither brains nor morals. It hadn't mattered.

He railed against fate no more.

Chapter Seven.

"Tiggle, why do you think gentlemen kiss ladies?" George adjusted the gauze fichu tucked into the neckline of her dress.

Today she wore a lemon-colored gown patterned with turquoise and scarlet birds. Miniscule scarlet ruffles lined the square neck, and cascades of lace fell from the elbows. The whole thing was simply delicious, if she did say so herself."There's only one reason a man kisses a woman, my lady." Tiggle had several hairpins stuck between her lips as she arranged George's hair, and her words were a bit indistinct. "He wants to bed her."

"Always?" George wrinkled her nose at herself in the mirror. "I mean, might he kiss a woman just to show, I don't know, friendship or something?"

The lady's maid snorted and placed a hairpin in George's coiffure. "Not likely. Not unless he thinks bed-sport a part of friendship. No, mark my words, my lady, the better half of a man's mind is taken up with how to get a woman into bed. And the rest"-Tiggle stepped back to look critically at her creation-"is probably spent on gambling and horses and such."

"Really?" George was diverted by the thought of all the men she knew, butlers and coachmen and her brothers and vicars and tinkers and all manner of men, going about thinking primarily of bedsport. "But what about philosophers and men of letters? Obviously they're spending quite a lot of time thinking of something else?"

Tiggle shook her head sagely. "Any man not thinking about bedsport has something the matter with him, my lady, philosopher or no."

"Oh." She began arranging the hairpins on the vanity top into a zigzag pattern. "But what if a man kisses a woman and then refuses to do so again? Even when encouraged?"

There was silence behind her. She glanced up to meet Tiggle's gaze in the mirror.

The lady's maid had two lines between her brows that hadn't been there before. "Then he must have a very good reason not to kiss her, my lady."

George's shoulders slumped.

" 'Course, in my experience," Tiggle spoke carefully, "men can be persuaded into kissing and the like awful easy."

George's eyes widened. "Truly? Even if he's . . . reluctant?"

The maid nodded once. "Even against their own will. Well, they can't help it, can they, poor dears? It's just the way they're made."

"I see." George rose and impulsively hugged the other woman. "You have the most interesting knowledge, Tiggle. I can't tell you how helpful this conversation has been."

Tiggle looked alarmed. "Just so you're careful, my lady."

"Oh, I will be." George sailed out of her bedroom.

She hurried down the mahogany staircase and entered the sunny morning room where breakfast was served. Violet was already drinking tea at the gilt table.

"Good morning, sweetheart." George crossed to the sideboard and was pleased to see that Cook had made b.u.t.tered kippers.

"George?"

"Yes, dear?" Kippers started the morning so nicely. A day could never be all bad if it had kippers in it.

"Where were you last night?"