The Rogue Prince Read Online Free PDF Page B

after…
    It should not hurt quite so badly, but it did. And it shook what little confidence Maggie had. All these years she’d fooled herself into believing she had satisfied her handsome husband, when in truth she hadn’t possessed whatever it took—beauty, charm, sophistication—to keep him faithful. Or happy.
    Maggie swallowed back her tears. If Victoria was concerned that she would learn of Julian’s infidelities in some public place, then everyone must know. Her family and friends, the servants, maybe even shopkeepers…
    Mortification flashed through her. Julian’s disloyalty and dishonesty cut into her like a jagged knife. Her entire married life had been a lie.
    Her vision blurred by her tears, Maggie tripped, and would have fallen, but for a pair of strong hands that caught her.
    It was him. The prince.
    â€œMadam, we meet again.”
    â€œOh!” Maggie felt her cheeks go warm, and knew she was blushing bright red. She blinked away her tears and pressed one hand to her breast, feeling as sad and raw as a jilted bride. “Clumsy me.”
    â€œNot at all,” he said. “There is a crack in the pavement.”
    He could have released her arm then, but did not.
    Maggie took a shaky breath and looked up at him, into those lovely green eyes, and forced herself not to sniffle. She swallowed thickly. “You…You seem to be making a habit of rescuing my family.”
    â€œHow is your son? He is fully recovered from his misadventure, I trust?”
    She nodded, needing to escape, to find some private place where she could weep until she used up all her tears, but he continued to grip her arm. Somehow, she managed to answer the man. “But for a scolding and some time spent alone in his bedchamber, he is fine. Thank you for asking. And thank you once again, for intervening the other night. If not for you—”
    â€œThink nothing of it,” he replied. And still he did not release her. Maggie took another quaking breath, her earlier upset complicated by the attentions of the man who had occupied far too many of her thoughts since his daring rescue.
    â€œYou are distraught,” he said, frowning fiercely. He took her elbow and looked down the street. “Isthere anything I—Perhaps you would join me for tea?”
    â€œOh, I really should n—” she began, but everything had changed. Her world had shifted in Victoria’s parlor only a few minutes earlier, and her life would never be the same. She was a widow, no longer bound by the same constraints she’d known as a debutante or even a wife. There was no reason to decline an invitation from this man—a prince in every sense of the word. “Yes. I’d like that very much.”
    She sent her maid, Tessa, home, then stepped forward to place her hand in the crook of his arm.
    He slowed his gait to match hers, escorting her to Blakeley’s Tea Shop, then going inside to a small table near a window. He ordered their tea, then turned his full attention upon her.
    Maggie felt her heart flutter, much as it had the night before, when she’d knelt beside him and taken Zachary into her arms. This time, her panic was due to her lack of experience. Her sisters had decried her as a failure at flirting, but it had not mattered. Before she was halfway through her first season, she’d married Julian, and any attempt at flirting had come to an end, for he’d seemed oblivious to her attempts to engage him.
    Maggie was on her own now, in uncharted waters. If she were to have an affair of her own, she could not have asked for a more intriguing or attractive man to have it with. And yet she knew better to think he would even entertain such a possibility.
    â€œI hope it is nothing serious,” he said.
    â€œWhat?” came her breathy response. Of course it was serious, just the thought of sharing intimacies with—
    â€œWhatever has upset you.” He removed his