The Impostor Prince

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Ryo peered up at him. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it, as though reconsidering his words. He again focused on the painting, placing his hands behind his back. After a moment of silence, he said, “You were very pleased that day.”

  Ian cast Ryo an irritated glance. Of course Merrick would be pleased. He hadn’t had to concern himself with his best friend dying of starvation or his mother sobbing herself to sleep every night.

  Ryo’s black eyes were sparkling. “Do you remember?”

  As if the question conjured it, an image materialized in Ian’s head. For an instant, he forgot it wasn’t he who was depicted in the painting.

  In fact, he remembered releasing his newly acquired bird from his arm, watching it soar high, laughing as he chased it across the field. He remembered his mother watching from a distance, her expression melancholy. And he remembered the joy he’d felt when the bird had returned to him of its own free will.

  For a long moment, he was lost in reverie.

  “It was painted just a few days after your thirteenth birthday, from the loft inside the carriage house,” Ryo disclosed. “The year before it burned down.”

  Ian’s lips curved at the memory. His mother had been convinced the carriage house was haunted. She claimed to have spied strange faces peering down at them through the upstairs window.

  Ian blinked in momentary confusion.

  It took him an instant too long to realize the images in his brain were real.

  His focus snapped downward to find Ryo had slipped away.

  If there had been a chair nearby, he would have sat down, so unsettling was the realization.

  The carriage house had, in fact, burned down, the year after his thirteenth birthday. His mother had ordered the building destroyed to make room for her expanding garden.

  Where did the lies end?

  As much as he had uncovered, he still knew nothing at all.

  What had his father done to anger his mother so that she would refuse him a presence in her life and in the life of their child? That she would burn down a building out of spite or out of fear?

  Had she once been his mistress?

  Had he discarded her?

  Ian just couldn’t imagine that his mother would allow herself to be entangled in such a sordid affair. She was entirely too proper, and far too proud, to be someone’s kept woman.

  But if the fault were entirely his father’s, why would his mother allow him to raise even one of her children?

  How could she have allowed Ian and Merrick to be separated?

  Where did the truth begin and the lies end?

  Chapter Eleven

  Standing in the receiving line, Ian turned to look at his father’s profile.

  The Duchess of Kent—the influential Victoria—stood beside him, introducing guests as they arrived.

  “Welcome,” his father was saying. “Welcome.”

  He shook the hands of arriving gentlemen and patted the ladies’ hands. To one he showed particular interest.

  “Lady Stanford! So nice to see you again. And this—this cannot be your daughter!” he said, gesturing to the child hiding behind her. “My, how she’s grown!”

  He turned to Ian. “You do remember young Lady Margaret, Merrick? Isn’t she absolutely delightful?”

  “Indeed,” Ian agreed.

  And she was.

  In fact, he would have been quite besotted by her, if only he were twelve.

  Ian extended his hand to the woman, and then to her child. “Very good to see you again,” he said without feeling.

  And so it progressed, one guest after another moving through the receiving line, until the room behind him was a crush of human life and the chatter of conversation drowned out the band.

  He stood there, listening to the incessant drone, and wondered what the devil he was doing in this place, wearing his brother’s clothes, his brother’s shoes and his brother’s name, when he could simply look his father in the face and ask the old man what he wished to know.

  Because it isn’t that simple, he reminded himself.

  Someone led him away from the receiving line to the dais, so that he could better inspect the females being paraded before him. As he watched the procession—skinny women, fat women, young women and some who were long in the tooth—he was suddenly struck with a sense of regret so deep that he wanted to walk away not just from this wearisome party, but from London.

  For all he knew, Merrick would have sent his father to the devil before subjecting himself to such a travesty. In fact, his brother’s decision to leave London had very likely been, in part, due to these circumstances. And here Ian was about to choose a bride his brother would likely abhor.

  His only comfort was in the fact that he wasn’t about to walk anyone down any bloody aisle, and Merrick didn’t have to go through with the farce if he didn’t wish to.

  “Do you see that young lady standing by the door?” the duchess was asking.

  Ian turned his head in the direction she pointed but saw nothing but a sea of sashaying gowns. “Yes,” he lied.

  The duchess smiled. In her late thirties or early forties, she might have been handsome but for the plump figure and the ever-present censure upon her too-round face, and jowls that constantly jiggled in disapproval.

  “That,” she informed him, “is Von Munching’s daughter. Her papa has a baronetcy in Germany and her mother is the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. Very proper family, indeed.”

  Ian hadn’t a bloody clue to which woman the duchess was referring. Everyone looked precisely the same. By the light of a dozen chandeliers, everyone was aglitter, like tiny fireworks winking insistently in his eyes.

  And then he saw her.

  She was a like a sultry shadow slipping through a rainbow. For the first time in more than a day, he felt the blood begin to pulse through his veins.

  Gone was the peasantlike garb. She was dressed in black velvet—a black so rich it bordered on blue—with ebony lace spilling like Spanish moss from her sleeves. Her hair was twisted into a lovely but simple coif, with curls tumbling about her face. Her ears and neck were unadorned and her bodice was modest, though he did spy a hint of her creamy breasts from his perch high above the floor.

  His reaction was immediate. His body heated with desire. His breath burned in his lungs, until he reminded himself to exhale.

  God help him, if he’d thought her lovely before, she was unparalleled at this moment.

  In fact, he couldn’t recall seeing a more incredible woman in all his day.

  It was all Ian could do to stand and pretend to listen to the duchess as she prattled on about barons and dukes and earls while his father listened.

  “What about her?” Ian asked, interrupting the duchess in the midst of her monologue.

  The duchess lifted her fan to her breast. “Who, dear boy?”

  Boy? Ian thought, taking mild offense, though he smiled. If she thought him a boy, let her slip a hand inside his trousers and see if she still believed it. He was hard as a bloody stump.

  “That one,” he said, nodding in Claire’s direction. She stood beside a woman dressed in mauve.

  “Do you mean the lovely young lady standing next to the display?”

  Ian realized, with a private smile, that Claire had chosen a spot in perfect view of the crown jewels.

  “Yes,” he said, watching her. She hadn’t even bothered to look his way. And he didn’t recall her coming through the line. She must have arrived late.

  “That would be Lady Alexandra, Lord Huntington’s only child,” the duchess revealed. “She’s quite lovely, I agree, and her lineage is impeccable, as well.”

  Ian frowned. “The girl in black?” he asked. “Her name is Alexandra?”

  The duchess reared her head back. “The girl in black?” she repeated, looking befuddled by the question. Then she shook her head. “Oh, no, no, no, dear boy! That would be Lady Claire Wentworth.” She turned to look more directly at Claire.

&nbs
p; Claire was still studying the jewels, oblivious to their regard.

  “Poor child,” the duchess said. “Her mother passed when she was but a little thing, and her father turned his toes up some months ago.” The duchess raised her fan to cover her mouth as she stretched up to whisper in Ian’s ear, “I hear tell they are in quite deep.”

  So she was in debt.

  That would explain much.

  Ian turned to look at the duchess, and she nodded, fanning herself as she peered back at Claire. “She’s lovely, I suppose, though her brother Ben inherited all the wit and charm—if nothing else, poor dear boy.”

  Ian couldn’t disagree more. If Claire’s wit were any sharper, he’d be six feet under by now.

  “As I understand it, she’s quite the bluestocking and keeps mostly to herself,” the duchess added with unmasked disapproval.

  “Really,” Ian said. “No husband?”

  The duchess gave him a shrewish glance and cackled. “What man would shackle himself to a penniless woman who cannot even abide by the rules of propriety? Why, look at that dress! I simply cannot believe she wore velvet tonight,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s quite disrespectful of her father, though I suppose it’s to be expected with that one.”

  “I don’t recall meeting her,” his father commented.

  “You wouldn’t,” the duchess assured him. “She didn’t attend the last soiree—though for the life of me I can’t remember why.”

  It seemed to Ian that the duchess recalled quite enough. It was a wonder her nose hadn’t stretched clear across Britain, as she seemed to have it in everyone’s affairs.

  The duchess added somewhat absently, “I haven’t seen her brother around of late. I wonder where he’s off to.”

  “At any rate, she doesn’t appear to be the sort we are interested in,” his father interjected. His dismissive tone grated on Ian’s nerves.

  Ian could bloody well speak for himself.

  “Of course not,” the duchess agreed. “You’d fare much better with Lord Huntington’s daughter.” And then she laughed and smacked Ian’s arm with her fan. “But, you rascal, I’m certain you have no memory of your first encounter with the poor darling. You were—” she smirked, fanning herself a little faster “—less than interested, I should say. I heard it for months afterward from her mother—how you broke her daughter’s heart.”

  Ian found himself nettled.

  Devil hang him, he was sandwiched between two old shrews—one of the female variety and another who happened to have a bloody cock between his legs. No wonder they got along so famously.

  In Ian’s opinion, Claire was far more appealing than any ten women in this room together.

  He watched as she spoke to the guard. Even from this distance, her gaze and stance looked flirtatious.

  Something like jealousy pricked at him.

  Obviously, she hadn’t the least bit of interest in presenting herself to the prince; she had yet to even look his way.

  Her true motive for coming was apparent.

  She coveted those jewels.

  She might be a lady, in truth, but she was also a beautiful, conniving little thief at heart.

  He suddenly wanted nothing more than to drag her outside and slip his tongue between those sweet, red lips.

  He wanted her, damn it.

  And, in truth, this very instant, he wanted her more than he wanted the answers to all his bloody questions.

  He was deaf and blind to the guests who approached him, the mothers introducing their daughters, the widows introducing their breasts.

  He was focused only on Claire.

  Then, suddenly, he stumbled on a perfect solution for everyone.

  “Excuse me,” Ian said, and walked away.

  The jewels had been placed at center stage, inside a display case flanked by four guards. They were armed, though not in the conventional fashion—shiny scimitars were sheathed on ornate belts. All four guards were muscular, with billowing white shirts and loose black breeches that did little to hide their hulking forms.

  Claire listened to the guard who was speaking, trying to ignore Lord Huntington, whose smiles and winks and brushes against her person had suddenly taken on new meaning.

  “The queen, having lost her true love to the sea, was drawn to the shore where the lovers had spent so many hours together. Each day,” the guard continued, “the queen wept, her tears spilling into the tide, and each evening when she retired, her handmaiden knelt where her mistress had stood, scooping up the evidence of her sorrow…her tears, which had crystallized upon striking the water.”

  “She must have wept for months!” Alexandra exclaimed.

  Claire didn’t believe it, of course, but she thought the fairy tale charming. She wondered how many times the guard had recounted it this evening already.

  “There are so many jewels,” she said, examining the sapphires, which were all precisely equal in size and shape. The tiara itself was covered with the brilliant blue gems and detailed with sparkling diamonds. The ring was a tear-shaped sapphire framed by three tiers of tiny diamonds.

  Peering over her shoulder, Lord Huntington scooted nearer. He was so close now that Claire could almost feel the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck, and it repulsed her.

  Alexandra scarce seemed to notice her father, or how he was carrying on.

  “Alas, there was once a matching necklace,” the guard disclosed. “But it was stolen some thirty years ago.”

  “Really?” Alexandra asked. She clucked her tongue and fluttered her eyelashes at the guard. “What, pray tell, is this world coming to, that people can justify stealing what belongs to others? It’s simply a tragedy!”

  Claire felt a tiny prick of guilt.

  The guard returned Alexandra’s smile. “Indeed, my lady. It’s terrible. In fact, for six hundred years, every Queen of Meridian has been portrayed wearing the entire set, except the last—Elena of Spain. The queen died very young, and His Majesty has never remarried. But, it is said that when the necklace is found, the king will find true love.”

  Alexandra sighed. “That is so romantic!” she declared. She elbowed Claire. “Isn’t it, Claire?”

  It was, indeed.

  Claire sighed, realizing that no matter what wicked thoughts had brought her to this place, she could never steal from these people—from anyone. Like her grandmother’s silver, and the sword hanging on the wall inside the pawnshop, these jewels were somebody’s history, somebody’s treasures.

  She smiled wanly, reconsidering Lord Huntington’s proposal.

  When Ben’s life was at stake, she had no room to bargain.

  “I see you’ve acquainted yourself quite nicely with the crown jewels,” a familiar voice taunted her.

  Claire gasped at the sound. Her eyes snapped upward. “You, again!”

  Those pale blue eyes seemed to penetrate her. “Do you find them to your liking?” he asked, his expression as mocking as ever.

  Still, God save her, his slow smile was devastating.

  Although her cheeks felt hot and her legs were liquid, Claire straightened her spine. “Sir, have you nothing better to do than to follow me and harass me?” she asked, hoping she sounded composed despite her private distress.

  “My lady!” the guard intervened. “You mustn’t—”

  “It’s quite all right,” her tormentor said to the guard, lifting a hand to silence him, though his gaze never left Claire’s face. And then he turned to the guard and demanded with palm outstretched, “Give me the ring.”

  To Claire’s shock, the guard didn’t argue. He opened the display case to retrieve it, and she had a sudden, sinking feeling.

  “There you are, Your Royal Highness.”

  Your Royal Highness.

  Claire groaned inwardly.

  She wanted nothing more than to sink into oblivion. Alexandra was staring. In fact, Claire was acutely aware that everyone was staring.

  She was too overwhelmed to speak. He seized her h
and and slipped the ring onto her finger. To her dismay, she hadn’t the wherewithal to resist.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He winked at her. “A beautiful ring deserves a beautiful bride,” he replied.

  Claire blinked in horror at the sight of the enormous ring on her finger. Her face flamed. “But you mistake—”

  He drew her toward the dance floor, out of Alexandra’s earshot, and forced her to dance, despite the fact that they couldn’t make out a single note of music over the sudden outburst of chatter.

  “I mistake nothing,” he said with great meaning as he drew her closer. “I am fully aware of the reason for your attendance this evening, Claire.”

  Claire didn’t dare pull away from his steely embrace—not with so many pairs of eyes fastened on them—but she longed to. The warmth of his skin made her feel weak. And her heart was tripping so hard that she feared it would burst through her breast.

  She said low, for his ears alone, mortified by her body’s response to him, by the attention forced on her, “You really haven’t a clue why I am here, Your Royal Highness. And it’s Lady Claire Wentworth to you, thank you very much. Now, I demand you release me. This is entirely inappropriate.”

  He smiled, stealing her breath away. “Of course I know why you’re here,” he whispered. “And you are in no position to demand anything from me, madam.”

  Claire’s face warmed.

  It was true. She had, of course, come to see the ring. But she truly wouldn’t have stolen it. She had only fantasized about doing so, hadn’t really done anything but look at the jewels, and he hadn’t a blessed thing to accuse her of. No matter what he thought of her, she wasn’t a thief.

  “I have a proposal for you, Claire,” he murmured. His raspy voice sent tiny tremors down her spine.

  No man had ever affected her so.

  Claire tried to remain calm, but panic bubbled up inside her. “And what, pray tell, might that be, Your Royal Highness?”

  No matter that he took liberties with her Christian name, she wouldn’t return the disfavor.

  “I’ve no desire to marry you any more than you wish to marry me,” he said, dropping all sense of pretense or tact. “In fact, I have no desire to wed anyone at all. And so, I’m willing to make you a proposal—one we will both profit from.”