Definitely the eyebrows, Hope decided. They were painted black and far too thick for the princess’s round, ruddy face.
“Your Majesty.” Hope cocked his lips into a smile. “You look ravishing, as always.”
A grin broke out on Caroline’s face, the wrinkles about her eyes deepening with genuine pleasure. She smoothed the bodice of her gown with a wide, fat hand. “I am glad you have come to visit, Mr. Hope. So few friends I have now in London, and the gossip.” She sighed, looking away. “It is worse than ever. Please, do sit.”
Mr. Hope and Sophia sat on a settee across from the reclining Bavarians. One of them had fallen asleep, his head thrown back over the sofa’s edge, and was snoring softly. The princess lifted a dog into the crook of her arm, cooing to it, and took a seat in a chair beside Mr. Hope with a frown.
“There, on your face.” She peered at the cut, dry now, that made his whole cheek sting. “Whatever happened?”
Hope resisted the urge to bring his fingers to his face. “An unfortunate run-in with. Ah. A fork?”
Caroline wrinkled her nose. “A fork?”
“Yes.” Hope swallowed. “A fork.”
“Indeed.” Caroline leaned forward, the chair gasping beneath its burden, to get a closer look at Sophia. “And who is this? A pretty one.”
Hope cleared his throat and glanced at Sophia. “I’ve some news, Majesty. Though I haven’t a clue what I did to deserve her, this lovely woman has agreed to be my wife. Miss Sophia Blaise and I shall be married come June.”
Princess Caroline gasped. The dog dropped from her arm with a dissatisfied yap, and the princess clapped together her hands in a show of childlike joy. “Oh, lovers, let them love! How marvelous! Miss Blaise, you have my sincerest congratulations. Mr. Hope shall prove a wonderful husband.” She sighed. “There must be no greater happiness in life than making a love match.”
Sophia smiled, warmth radiating from her features. “He is very kind, and decently handsome.”
“Decently?” Hope turned his head to look at Sophia. “Not terribly? Wholly? Drop-dead?”
The little minx shrugged her shoulders. “Decently should do, don’t you think, Majesty?”
Caroline tittered in a fit of giggles. “Look at the two of you, squabbling like children in the nursery. It tickles my poor old heart.” She glanced down at Sophia’s hands, clasped neatly in her lap. “But you have no ring! Of all men, Mr. Hope, you should know better than to wed without a diamond! My jewels may be the only companions I have left in this world—aside from Gunter and Frederick there, of course—but they have never disappointed me. Nor has their beauty faded to fat, like a certain gentleman of our mutual acquaintance.”
Sophia coughed, covering her mouth with a fist to hide the smile that rose unbidden to her lips. Watching her smother her laughter made Hope want to burst with his own.
He cleared his throat. Hope moved to cover Sophia’s hands with one of his in her lap. He felt her start beneath his touch but just as quickly warm to him as her laughter faded.
“That is why we have called upon you,” Hope said. “You see, Majesty, I was struck very low by Cupid’s arrow the moment I laid eyes upon Miss Blaise.”
“Love at first sight.” Princess Caroline closed her eyes and, clutching a hand to her ample chest, sucked a loud breath through her nose. “Oh, it slays me, this love! I didn’t think you capable of such romance, Mr. Hope, what with the bad numbers and worse news you usually bring me.”
“I wasn’t. Not until I met Miss Blaise. I loved her from the moment we met, and set out to find the most perfect, most flawless gem, for only such a stone would be worthy of her beauty.”
Understanding unfurled across Princess Caroline’s features. She grinned. “You have not yet found such a stone. And so you come to me.” She fingered the emerald at her neck, and batted her eyes. “Tell me what you are looking for.”
Hope settled back into the settee. For a moment he contemplated stretching out his arms and legs in a yawning show of nonchalance, but decided against it. Not only did it smack of melodrama, even in the midst of one of Lake’s schemes, it would make an even bigger fool of the princess. She was strange, certainly, but kind, and her happiness for Hope and Sophia’s pretend engagement was touching. He hated the idea of pulling the wool over her eyes, especially on behalf of that fat gentleman of their mutual acquaintance—the prince regent.
And so he decided on the second best option: candor.
“The French Blue,” Hope said, meeting the princess’s dark eyes. “I dare not presume you are in possession of that infamous jewel, but if you are, I’ve twenty thousand pounds in my pocket I’d give you in exchange for that diamond.”
He reached into his jacket for said pocket and produced a fresh, if slightly wrinkled, note. He placed it on the marble-topped side table between himself and Princess Caroline.
Silence clouded the chamber as the Princess of Wales surveyed the note. Her expression was inscrutable. Hope’s heart began to pound, and the room suddenly felt scorching, airless. He glanced at Sophia. She was playing with her lip again, damn her, and now the room felt unbearably hot, sweat breaking out under his collar and along his temples.
He squeezed her hand in his own and the lip popped free of her teeth. She glanced at him, eyes widening as they fell upon his stricken face, then turned her attention to Princess Caroline.
“I told Thomas that he needn’t gift me a diamond, for his affection and attentions—” Sophia stopped as her voice tightened. He watched in fascination as she closed her eyes and cleared her throat. “Well. They have been gift enough, your Majesty.”
Sophia then proceeded to burst into sobs.
Hope froze.
What in hell? Either he’d done something to offend Sophia, or she was a much better actress than she was a shot.
“Oh, my dear, dear girl.” Princess Caroline hurried to Sophia’s side and nestled her head into her rather epic bosom. “There there, there there. Ah, el amor, it is bittersweet, no? But the lovers. We must let them love!”
She released Sophia with a kindly pat on the cheek. “Stay right here, my dear, and I shall return straightaway. No more tears, only happiness!”
The princess swept out of the room in a flash of pearlescent satin and sour perfume, the dogs’ nails tinkling as they followed her out. Hope stared at Sophia, unsure what, exactly, he should do next.
Across from them on the sofa, either Gunter or Frederick snorted in his sleep, while the other drooled on a fine tasseled pillow. Whoever these men were—Caroline’s lovers, her cousins, the dukes of Bavaria—they were not very good company.
Hope turned to Sophia, who was sniffling beside him. He offered her his handkerchief. “Are you all right?”
She took the handkerchief but did not use it, and instead picked at it with the fingers of one hand while she held it in the other. “Yes. Quite all right. It was your story of Cupid’s arrow that got me. Laid very low, indeed.”
And then they were laughing, their heads bent together as they tried to suppress the sounds of their mirth. If he’d realized how ridiculous he’d sounded, Hope would never have said the words; but then again he and Miss Blaise wouldn’t be laughing just now, hard, over the shared joke.
Just as real lovers would do.
Lovers, let them love. It did have a nice ring to it.
As Hope and Sophia were gasping for air, Princess Caroline returned, the posse of tinkling dogs at her ankles.
Her face was grave. In her portly hands she grasped a large, exquisitely carved lacquered box, black with looping curls set in silver.
Hope’s heart turned over in his chest as a pulse of excitement shot through him.
The French Blue. After all this time, his misadventures, and the implausible, sometimes tragic, history of which Hope had been a part—after all that, was he at last to lay eyes upon the jewel th
at had fascinated first his father, then him, for years? And in the Princess of Wales’s close, puce-colored drawing room, no less!
Caroline settled into her chair and unclasped the box’s tiny gilt lock. With bated breath, Hope watched as she opened the lid and held out the box for Sophia and Hope to see.
“My God,” he heard Sophia murmur as they straightened in unison to get a better look.
The box was lined in finest white velvet, so fine and silken as to appear pearlescent in the molten light of the room. Against this background the diamond glittered very clear and blue, a transparent color that reminded Hope of the open-air pools in the sultan’s palace in Constantinople, gleaming beneath a wide, hot sun.
The jewel was somehow smaller than he’d imagined, but much more beautiful. Seductive even, like a woman with a wicked smile and sphinxlike eyes. He sensed trouble. He knew he couldn’t, shouldn’t, could never have her; but this desire, it was unlike anything he’d ever known, and the impulse to indulge it was overwhelming.
Cut into an irregular oval, the French Blue was about the size of a small rose bloom. Hope wondered how large it had been when Jean Baptiste Tavernier had brought it, rough and uncut, to France from India some two centuries before. The Sun King’s jeweler had done the diamond justice, however; it was brilliant and near flawless. Hope understood where the curse had come from, understood why emperors had toppled kingdoms to possess the jewel; understood why the French Blue meant so much to Lake, and how much it would mean to Napoleon. This power the French Blue possessed over men, it was nothing short of hypnotic.
At last Princess Caroline spoke, breaking the diamond’s spell.
“Will this suit my young lovers?” She glanced down at the note on the table beside her. “I do believe it is a fair bargain.”
Hope pried his eyes from the diamond and looked at the princess. “The French Blue went missing some twenty years ago in Paris. Some believed it lost forever to the wars that followed. How did you find it?”
The princess blinked and looked away, her smile small and knowing. “Your twenty thousand only goes so far, Mr. Hope. Suffice it to say I came into possession of the French Blue through channels that shall forever remain unknown to history.”
Hope swallowed his curiosity. They were so close—so very close to getting what they’d come for. He knew that if he pushed Princess Caroline any further she might renege on the deal.
Still. Something told him that the story of how Caroline came to own the diamond was an intriguing one, a missing piece of the puzzle he’d been trying to solve for years.
Beside him, Sophia squeezed his hand. He met her eyes. Let’s go, she pleaded, before she changes her mind.
Hope looked back at the princess. It bothered him, this glaring gap in the jewel’s history—what if she’d stolen the diamond? Bought if off a French spy? Was working as a French spy?—but he knew there would be time to unravel it later.
He smiled so wide it hurt. “It’s perfect. Wouldn’t you say, darling?”
Sophia demurred, her cheeks a convincing shade of pink. “You are too generous, Thomas. I shall have my wedding gown made to match it, though it’s too large for a ring. Shall I wear it as a necklace or a brooch?”
“Oh, a necklace, definitely a necklace. You shall look ravishing, my dear.” The princess closed the box and handed it to Hope. She picked up the note, and without looking at it folded it twice lengthwise and tucked it into the puckered crease between her breasts.
Mr. Hope’s pulse skittered as he held the box in his hands. The French Blue. Here, right now, in his very hands. Hands that began to shake. He squeezed the box, willing them to be still.
“Thank you, Majesty, you have made a dream come true this night. You may contact me at the bank tomorrow to arrange the transfer of funds.”
“I am sorry to see it go, but as you can see, my husband keeps me in penury.” The princess flapped a hand at her surroundings. “Your note brings me comfort of mind and of purse, and for that I must thank you. Perhaps you shall name your firstborn after me? Oh, lovers.”
The princess beamed at them. Hope shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his jaw beginning to ache from smiling.
“Well, your Highness,” he began, “it’s been a pleas—”
“Aren’t you going to kiss?” Caroline asked, looking from Hope to Sophia. “It is no small gift, the French Blue, wouldn’t you say, Miss Blaise?”
Hope laughed nervously and glanced at Sophia. Her cheeks had gone from pink to persimmon, but her hazel eyes slanted invitingly, sparking with something akin to curiosity.
This was trouble.
“Kiss?” Hope said. “Well. That would hardly be proper, given the circumstances—”
“Not proper? Why, there were never more proper circumstances for a kiss in the history of mankind! Now go on. Kiss!”
Hope swallowed for what felt like the hundredth time that night. He turned his head to Sophia and met those warm, inviting eyes of hers. His heart raced, his blood wild.
It’s only a kiss, he reminded himself. King and country, saving lives, for England, Harry, and St. George—he could kiss Sophia for all those reasons.
But kissing her for his reasons—reasons that now danced in that wild blood of his—that was another matter entirely. He’d already broken a promise he’d made to himself by joining Lake in this wild goose chase. Hope wouldn’t—couldn’t—break another by seducing Miss Sophia Blaise.
And yet here she was, those eyes and those lips. Oh, those lips, they just begged to be kissed. His groin tightened as he remembered her working that bottom lip earlier that evening. How he’d longed to work it himself, the top lip, too, and—
Again the twist of desire between his legs.
The urge rolled over him as swift and sure as the tide. He couldn’t say no, not when she looked at him like that, confident and terrified and curious all at once.
Thomas set the box in his lap and reached out and cradled her face in his palm, his thumb gently holding her chin in place. His eyes never leaving hers, he leaned forward, wondering vaguely if he even remembered how to do it, and do it well.
Six
Thomas knew how to kiss very well indeed.
Not that Sophia had any experience with things like kisses.
But God above it was a special sort of heaven, the firm but sensual press of his lips to hers, the obvious care he took in applying just enough pressure but never too much.
It had all happened so quickly. She watched with bated breath as he’d leaned forward, his blue eyes suddenly serious and clouded. Something about the lean slant of his neck as he tilted his head, just so, made her entire being pulse with longing. Mr. Hope—Thomas—was deucedly handsome. Devilishly, deucedly handsome.
When he drew too close, and she could no longer bear the anticipation, her eyes fluttered shut. And then his breath was soft and sweet upon her face, and she felt herself leaning into him.
And then.
And then.
Their lips met. The kiss was tender; the warmth of it surprised her, the intimacy of it terrifying. She had to resist the impulse to pull away, and yet her body yearned for more.
Hope’s thumb grazed the line of her jaw, and suddenly the kiss deepened, so much so that Sophia could feel it all the way in her knees. Pleasure coursed through her when his lips moved against hers, slowly, skillfully, and she felt herself falling into the kiss, moving her mouth in time to his.
The assault was endless, and Sophia reveled in the sensation of being captured by him, her blood pounding as Thomas arched over her. With each stroke of his lips he turned his head, and with his hand turned her face so that that she matched his movements. For a moment the kiss slowed, and Hope’s hand slipped further toward her. She shivered as his fingers brushed the skin of her neck, his thumb tugging at her earlobe; and then those fingers were tangled in her hair, and he
was taking her bottom lip between his own.
All the while moving slowly, with great intent and concentration. His touch was sure but soft. She drank deeply, her belly turning over at his passion; hers, too.
Being kissed was wholly different, and God above so much better, than she’d imagined it would be. But even Sophia in her ignorance knew this was no mere kiss, not the kind a debutante would share with a beau. This kiss was too honest and bold. It spoke of forbidden things. Attraction. Desire. A curiosity to push further, and know more.
Through the pounding of her heart and lips, Sophia heard Princess Caroline making an odd, high-pitched sound. Her blood leapt in dismay at the realization her kiss with Thomas would end.
He slid his hand back to cup her jaw. He tugged at her lips one last time, his teeth lingering on her bottom lip before he pulled away altogether.
Sophia opened her eyes, chest heaving in an attempt to catch her breath. Thomas was looking at her, his blue eyes probing and full of concern.
As if he had anything to be concerned about. The kiss—his kiss—it was so deucedly good it left her all but shaking.
For a moment she was overcome by a sense of wonder. Where had Mr. Hope learned such sensual skill? And how did she get so lucky as to experience it?
Regardless, Sophia knew one thing for certain.
She was ruined. Not the kind of ruin that got everyone in the upper ten thousand, her mother especially, so excited. No.
She was ruined for whichever poor marquess or earl’s son whom she (hopefully) married. For there was no way on God’s green earth that anyone could possibly kiss as well as Mr. Thomas Hope, that any man could thrill her with his lips alone as he had done.
She wanted to throttle him for giving her a taste of something that could never be hers.
Looking into his eyes, she also wanted to beg him to do it again, right here in front of the princess, that diamond be damned. Beg him to kiss her again, and show her everything that came after.
She blinked, a small smile creeping to her lips.
The Millionaire Rogue Page 5
