Julia London – The Princess Plan (страница 9)

“Do you intend to dance?” Matous asked after Sebastian had told him that he would not accept another introduction and had proceeded to walk away.

“No.” Sebastian looked around for a waiter. What were they serving? Was it the punch?

“I would highly recommend it, sir. If you don’t, it will be remarked and your identity revealed.”

“Have I not already been remarked?” Sebastian complained. “You introduced two dozen young women to me in the corner of the ballroom.”

“Two dozen out of what could potentially have been two hundred,” Matous said with a deferential incline of his head. It was a habit of his; he sought to appear deferential when he was disagreeing or correcting Sebastian.

Sebastian groaned and looked around for a footman.

“Is there a...type...that would please you, sir?”

Matous was not asking after Sebastian’s favorite type of dance. The “type” that would please him was a naked one, preferably on a bed somewhere far from this madness. “Red hair,” he said. “I made her acquaintance at Windsor, do you recall? Widowed or separated or something like it. And a drink, man. Wine, punch, I don’t care. I must have something.”

“As you desire, sir,” Matous said crisply, and with a flick of his right wrist, sent one of the four guards, who were dressed identically to Sebastian, hurrying off to find something for him to drink.

The guard returned a moment later with a glass, which he sipped before wiping the rim clean with his handkerchief and handing the drink to Sebastian.

Sebastian downed the drink. It was the rum punch, and it was as good as the first time he’d sampled it. A thought flitted through his mind briefly—was the woman whose foot he’d mangled the same woman in the passageway? He mentally shrugged and thrust the glass at the guard. “More,” he said.

While he waited for the guard to return with more of the drink, Matous went off to find the woman with the red hair. At about the same time as the guard returned with a second round of punch, Matous returned with a woman on his arm. She was wearing a deep blue gown. Her auburn hair looked quite stunning, and her green catlike eyes glittered at Sebastian from behind a mask. She sank into a very deep curtsy.

“Your Highness, may I present Mrs. Regina Forsythe,” Matous said.

“Mrs. Forsythe,” Sebastian said. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance again.”

“The pleasure is assuredly mine, Your Royal Highness.” She accepted the hand he’d offered and rose up with a pert smile.

“You intrigued me so with your conversation at Windsor,” he remarked. “I hope it is not an imposition to resume it?”

She smiled coyly. “Which conversation was that? About the soup? Or the fact that my husband is stationed in India at present?”

She was saucy, and Sebastian liked that about her. At Windsor, when he’d asked why she had not accompanied her husband to India to give him comfort, she had slyly explained that her husband saw to his comfort, and she to hers. “Both,” he said to her question. “May I have the honor of this dance?”

“The honor would be mine.”

He presented his arm. She laid her hand lightly on it and allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor. The musicians played a waltz, and Sebastian bowed, then took her hand in his, placed his other hand high on her back, and led her into the dance.

“How are you finding London?” she asked.

“It has been a privilege.” Never give an answer that could be in any way misconstrued.

“How do you find your rooms at Buckingham?” she asked, her eyes glittering.

A clever little inquiry. “We are not housed at Buckingham. The queen has graciously accommodated our large party here.”

“How fortuitous.” Her coy little smile went a little deeper. “I am familiar with all the hallways and rooms at Kensington. It’s quite a complicated little palace, is it not?”

Sebastian smiled. “Quite.” He understood her as well as she understood him, as well as she and Matous and he all understood one another. Sebastian knew, without having to ask, that arrangements for private accommodations would be made.

At the end of the dance, he whispered an invitation in Mrs. Forsythe’s ear and how she might go about it if she were so inclined. The lady did not so much as blink. She slid him a look from the corner of her eye, flicked open her fan and whispered her response.

He bowed, escorted her from the dance floor, thanked her, then walked back to his group of men. He looked around for the ever-present Matous and spotted him across the room in an animated discussion with one very round Englishman. But Sebastian was quickly distracted by a couple sailing toward him at what looked like thirty knots. One of his guards stepped in front of him before the couple could accost him.

“How do you do,” the gentleman said, and bowed, exposing the bald spot on his head. “We should like to welcome His Royal Highness.”

Sebastian’s guard said nothing.

“We’d like to invite him to join us for cake,” the woman trilled. But she didn’t look at Sebastian when she said it, and he realized that they didn’t know who he was. They were hoping he or his guard would point out the prince to them.

His guard clucked his tongue at the lady. “I beg your pardon, madam, but the prince does not care for cake.”

Well, that wasn’t true at all. Sebastian very much liked cake and he could do with some now. He was starving.

“Would you be astonished to learn that my father, Mr. Cumbersark-Haynes, was acquainted with your king when they were lads at Oxford?” the man said. “Jolly good times they had, and I’m certain His Highness would enjoy the tale if you’d be so kind to point him out.”

Another guard moved discreetly to stand beside the first, blocking the couple’s view of Sebastian.

“Ah, I see. Yes, my lord,” the guard said, “the prince is just there,” and pointed across the room.

Both English heads swiveled around in the opposite direction of where Sebastian stood.

“Splendid, thank you very much indeed,” the man said. And then he leaned in close to Sebastian’s guard. “Is it true what they say? Is there to be war between Wesloria and Alucia?”

“In Alucia, we do not listen to rumor,” the guard said.

“Oh, of course not,” the woman said quickly, nodding her head so adamantly that the feathers atop her mask looked as if they were bracing against a gale force wind. “And neither do we listen to rumor.”

Except, perhaps, the rumor that war was brewing with Wesloria.

“If you will excuse us,” the guard said, and the couple were both nodding like a pair of dumbledees, the Alucian word for idiot.

The woman put her head next to her companion and began to whisper in his ear as they hurried off in search of the crown prince.

The first guard turned around to Sebastian. “I would recommend, Your Highness, that we adjourn to another part of the ballroom.”

“I recommend we adjourn to the dining room. I’m famished.”

“A private dining room has been set,” the second guard said, and indicated with his chin the direction they were to walk.

As they made their way toward the door of the ballroom, Sebastian looked around again for Matous but did not see him. The Englishman he’d seen talking to his secretary was now in the company of other Englishmen, all of them laughing together at something.

He did not see Matous again until much later, after he’d been served in a dining room and had drunk more of the delicious rum punch. He was in better spirits, looking forward to his clandestine meeting with Mrs. Forsythe. He’d even danced again, this time in complete anonymity with a young woman who focused on her feet. And when the Alucian dances were played, he joined the line with Lady Sarafina Anastasan, his foreign minister’s comely wife.

At half past midnight, Matous appeared at his side. He looked harried, a bit disheveled, and his hair was mussed. All quite unlike Matous. He said low, “All is at the ready, sir.”

Sebastian nodded. As they made their way from the ballroom, Matous said, “If I may, sir, is there some place we might have a word?”

But Sebastian had availed himself of punch and was feeling randy and desperate to be out of the mask. Visions of Mrs. Forsythe’s fair green eyes and unbound auburn hair had begun to play in his head in anticipation of what was to come. “Will it not wait?”

Matous hesitated. He glanced at the guard and pressed his lips together. “As you wish, sir.”

Sebastian took pity on his secretary and said in Alucian, “Come to my suite in two hours. We can speak freely there.”

Again, Matous hesitated. It was not like him at all—he was generally eager to please. Sebastian studied his face a moment. “Will that suit?”

“Je,” Matous said in Alucian. Yes. He bowed his head.

Sebastian carried on, his thoughts already on his tryst.

Mrs. Forsythe was waiting just inside the vestibule of the entrance marked by a clock. She smiled when Sebastian jogged up the steps.

“You must be freezing,” he said.

“I will be warm soon enough. Come.” She boldly reached for his hand. “I’ve the perfect room.”

Oh, he was certain she had the perfect room, probably procured for her by spies in the English government or perhaps even by rebels. He was well versed in all the ways someone might try and catch him in a compromising situation because he’d spent his life learning to subvert such ploys. He pulled her into him, caught her chin with his hand and touched his lips to hers. She sighed longingly.