The Serpent Prince (Princes #3)(22)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“Have I thanked you for your charity in rescuing me from a ditch?”

“I believe you have.” She darted a glance at him, then turned again to the road so that he couldn’t see her face around the brim of her hat. “Did I tell you we thought you dead when I first saw you?”

“No. I am sorry for your distress.”

“I’m glad you weren’t dead.”

He wished he could see her face. “As am I.”

“I thought . . .” Her words trailed away; then she started again. “It was so strange finding you. My day had been very ordinary, and then I looked down and saw you. At first I didn’t believe my eyes. You were so out of place in my world.”

I still am. But he didn’t speak the thought aloud.

“Like discovering a magical being,” she said softly.

“Then your disappointment must’ve been severe.”

“In what way?”

“To discover me to be a man of earthen clay and not magical at all.”

“Aha! I shall have to note this day in my diary.”

He rocked against her as they bumped over a rut in the road. “Why?”

“December the second,” she intoned in a grave voice. “Just after luncheon. The Viscount of Iddesleigh makes a humble statement regarding himself.”

He grinned at her like an idiot. “Touché.”

She didn’t turn her head, but he saw the smile curve her cheek. He had a sudden urge to pull the reins from her hands, guide the horse to the side of the road, and take his angel into his clayish arms. Perhaps she had the spell that could turn the misshapen monster into something human.

Ah, but that would involve degrading the angel.

So instead Simon lifted his face to the winter sun, thin though it was. It was good to be outdoors, even in the chill wind. Good to be sitting beside her. The ache in his shoulder had subsided to a dull throb. He’d been lucky and not reopened the wound, after all. He watched his angel. She sat with her back upright and managed the reins competently with very little show, quite unlike the ladies of his acquaintance who were apt to become dramatic actresses when driving a gentleman. Her hat was a plain straw one, tied underneath her left ear. She wore a gray cloak over her lighter gray gown, and it suddenly occurred to him that he’d never seen her in any other color.

“Is there a reason you always wear gray?” he asked.

“What?”

“Your dress.” He indicated her apparel with his hand. “You’re always in gray. Rather like a pretty little dove. If you aren’t in mourning, why do you wear it?”

She frowned. “I didn’t think it was proper for a gentleman to comment on a lady’s attire. Are the social conventions different in London?”

Ouch. His angel was in fine fettle this morning.

He leaned against the seat, propping his elbow behind her back. He was so close he could feel her warmth at his chest. “Yes, actually they are. For instance, it is considered de rigueur for a lady driving a gentleman in a trap to flirt with him outrageously.”

She pursed her lips, still refusing to look at him.

That served only to egg him on. “Ladies not following this convention are frowned upon severely. Very often you will see the elder members of the ton shaking their heads over these poor, lost souls.”

“You are terrible.”

“I’m afraid so,” he sighed. “But I’ll give you leave to disregard the rule since we are in the benighted country.”

“Benighted?” She slapped the reins, and Kate rattled her bridle.

“I insist on benighted.”

She gave him a look.

He stroked one finger down her ramrod-straight spine. She stiffened even more but didn’t comment. He remembered the taste of her fingers on his tongue the night before, and another less polite part of his anatomy stiffened as well. Her acceptance of his touch was as erotic as a blatant display in another woman. “You can hardly blame me, since, were we in the city, you would be compelled to say suggestive things to me in my blushing ear.”

She sighed. “I can’t remember what you asked me before all this nonsense.”

He grinned even though it was gauche. He couldn’t recall when he’d last had this much fun. “Why do you wear only gray? Not that I have anything against gray, and it does lend you an intriguing ecclesiastical air.”

“I look like a nun?” Her terrifying brows drew together.

The trap bumped over another rut in the road and jostled his shoulder against hers.

“No, dear girl. I am saying, admittedly in a roundabout and rather obscure way, that you are an angel sent from heaven to judge me for my sins.”

“I wear gray because it is a color that doesn’t show dirt.” She glanced at him. “What kind of sins have you committed?”

He leaned close, as if about to impart a confidence, and caught a whiff of roses. “I contest the word color used in reference to gray and submit that gray is not a color at all, but rather a lack thereof.”

Her eyes narrowed ominously.

He drew back and sighed. “As to my sins, my dear lady, they are not the sort that may be spoken of in the presence of an angel.”

“Then how am I to judge them? And gray is so a color.”

He laughed. He felt like throwing wide his arms and perhaps breaking into song. It must be the country air. “Lady, I concede to the power of your well-thought-out argument, which, I think, would have brought even Sophocles to his knees. Gray, therefore, is a color.”

She harrumphed. “And your sins?”

“My sins are numerous and irredeemable.” The image flashed through his mind of Peller desperately flinging out his hand and his own sword slicing through it, blood and fingers spangling the air. Simon blinked and painted a smile across his lips. “All who have knowledge of my sins,” he said lightly, “shrink in horror from the sight of me as if I were a leper revealed, my nose falling off, my ears rotting.”

She regarded him, so grave and so innocent. Brave little angel, untouched by the stink of men. He couldn’t help stroking her back again, cautiously, furtively. Her eyes widened.

“And so they should,” he continued. “For instance, I have been known to leave my house without a hat.”

She frowned. He wasn’t wearing a hat at the moment.

“In London,” he clarified.

But she wasn’t worried about hats. “Why do you think that you’re irredeemable? All men can find grace if they repent of their sins.”