Almost a Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

Everyone owed him money, even the prince regent, if rumor was to be believed.
    Warm breath on her hand brought her gaze to her dog. Lance looked up at her with bright, intelligent eyes. Jane laughed and scratched behind his ears. “And she loves dogs,” she said, “so of course we are among her staunchest admirers. Now, let’s finish up here and run that errand for Lord Castleton.”
    As she polished the last silver tray, a picture of the earl formed in her mind. She remembered the quick flashes of humor in his eyes, the careless smile. The warning from Lady Octavia was unnecessary. His reputation with women was well established. He was a practiced flirt.
    Only . . . her brow knit in a frown, and she stared blindly at her reflection in the highly polished silver tray . . . only, the odd times she’d studied him at the opera, to his credit, he was an attentive escort. He didn’t let his eyes roam from one pretty woman to another as did some gentlemen she could name. His mistress, La Contessa, was just the opposite. She could not be satisfied until every man came under her spell. Maybe that’s why Lord Castleton and his mistress were no longer together.
    And maybe he’d grown bored, as was the way of men, and his wandering eye had alighted on a better prospect.
    She didn’t need to be told that he would marry well, but there weren’t too many princesses going around, not unless Prince Michael had a sister. He was the man Lady Rosamund had almost married before she was literally swept off her feet by Richard Maitland, Chief of Staff of Special Branch. Prince Michael’s courtship of Lady Rosamund was written up in the papers, too.
    That was the thing about the Deveres. Their names were never out of the papers. It seemed as though the public could not get enough of them. Lady Rosamund and her husband, for instance, were in Scotland, visiting Colonel Maitland’s parents; the younger son, Lord Justin, was in Italy on a belated grand tour, the war having interrupted his first attempt to take in Europe; and Lady Sophy Devere had come up from Hampshire to attend the opening of the New Ladies’ Library in the Strand, and was now residing with her nephew, the duke, in Twickenham House, the Deveres’ palatial home just outside London.
    It went on and on, and dolt that she was, she couldn’t get enough of the Deveres either.
    What wasn’t written up in the papers was the shady side to the Devere men. La Contessa’s name had never been mentioned in connection with Lord Castleton, except by word of mouth. Gossip. She knew it was spurious; she knew she shouldn’t listen to it, but how could she help it? If people didn’t talk about the Deveres, they’d have nothing to say.
    Nobody had ever taken any notice of her family, except their own friends. When she was a child, her father had taken a position at the university in Edinburgh, and that’s where she’d spent most of her life. In fact, those were the happiest days of her life, with her mother and father, and the friends who used to crowd into their little drawing room on a Saturday night to talk and play a little music and sing. Not that her father could sing a note. He was tone deaf. But her mother loved music, especially opera, and her father’s pleasure came from indulging his wife.
    Her father had been a good man.
    She wondered what kind of husband the earl would make. According to Lady Sophy, all the Devere men made the best of husbands—loyal, protective, faithful, and unfailingly kind.
    “Just like you, Lance,” Jane said. “But it’s my belief that a woman is better off with a dog.” Unless she could find someone like her father, of course, but in her experience, such men were few and far between.
    She gazed into space, remembering . . .
    Suddenly coming to herself, she gave herself a mental shake. She was beginning to feel sorry for herself and that set her teeth on edge.
    With a shake of her head, she cleared her brain and began to tidy things