Princess Charming (Legendary Lovers 1)

He suspected Skye was feeling a similar poignancy, for she tucked her smaller hand in his.

“I don’t want a new mama, Ash,” she said in a low voice.

“No one can ever replace our mothers, love,” he tried to reassure her not for the first time. Yet evidently he had misjudged her reasoning.

“No, I meant that you needn’t find us a mama and marry for our sakes. You should only marry for love, Ash.”

To his surprise, her chin no longer quivered with her effort to hold back tears. Instead, Skye looked up at him with a quiet, trusting smile.

At her obvious desire to comfort him, Ash smiled in return and squeezed her hand. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

After another moment, he swallowed the ache in his throat and slid his arm around her delicate shoulders.

“Everything will be all right, Skye,” he murmured … and for the first time in many, many months, he could actually believe his own empty promise.

London, May 1816

The flash of amber silk intrigued him, although not as much as the lovely woman wearing it.

Lounging negligently against a column in his crowded ballroom, Ashton Wilde, eighth Marquis of Beaufort, narrowed his gaze in speculation. The blond beauty had followed one of his noble male guests through the French doors onto the terrace beyond.

Maura Collyer, his sister’s bosom friend. What the devil was she up to?

Curiosity warred with odd disappointment as Ash considered her intent. It appeared that Miss Collyer was trysting with Viscount Deering.

For all her beauty, he would never have taken Maura for the scarlet woman sort. As far as he knew, she didn’t even like most men, and at four-and-twenty she was long on the shelf. And yet she had accompanied Lord Deering onto a moonlit terrace in the middle of a grand ball for what looked like an assignation.

His boredom suddenly evaporating, Ash pushed away from the column and forged a path through the glittering, bejeweled sea of company. He had expected better of Miss Collyer—

Wry amusement twisted his mouth at the quaint thought. That the leading member of the passionate Wilde clan could condemn a lady for flouting propriety with a lovers’ tryst was the height of irony. The Wildes had long been legendary for their scandalous exploits, their surname synonymous with a blatant disregard for the rules governing the Beau Monde, and Ash himself was currently his family’s worst offender.

Still, he couldn’t banish his contrary stab of displeasure at the notion of Katharine’s closest friend taking Deering as a lover.

The terrace doors had been flung open to alleviate the heat from the chandeliers and the crush of perfumed bodies. Upon reaching the threshold, Ash paused to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light on the terrace and focus on the couple near the stone balustrade.

Although not embracing, they were standing close together—or rather the lady was standing before the gentleman. Her position offered Ash a view of her profile, so he could see that her delicate jaw was set while her hands were tightly clenched.

It did not appear to be a romantic tryst but a confrontation, he decided. He could overhear her low, impassioned voice imploring the viscount, although the noise from the chattering, dancing throng behind him drowned out most of her words.

Ash moved a step closer just as a momentary lull in the music brought Miss Collyer’s urgent declaration to him.

“Emperor did not belong to her, I tell you! She had no right to sell him to you.”

“I have a legal deed of sale that says otherwise,” Deering responded in an arrogant drawl that evidently grated on the beauty’s nerves.

She inhaled a deep breath, as if striving to maintain control of her emotions. “Then allow me to buy him back … Please.”

“You cannot afford my price, Miss Collyer.”

“I can raise the funds somehow. I will sell the entire stables if I must.”

When Deering laughed in that supercilious way of his, Ash felt the same grating irritation.

He knew Rupert Firth, Viscount Deering, fairly well. Of similar age—a year past thirty—they had attended Cambridge at the same time. Like Ash, Deering had dark curling hair, a noble title, and a significant fortune. But there the similarities ended. Most notably, the viscount was a head shorter, with a body that was turning to flab from an overindulgence of fine port wine.

Ash had never liked Deering, mainly because of his attitude of snide superiority. That dislike only increased as the discussion continued:

“I might be persuaded … for a price,” Deering said with a smirk that made Ash itch to intervene.