Princess in Love Read Free Page B

in a thousand years break
     her heart.
    If only she could be more indifferent toward Lord Cavanaugh and his extraordinary
     charisma.
    She feared this was going to be a bumpy ride.

 
    Chapter Two
    As the coach prepared to depart, Leopold sat across from Princess Rose and wondered
     irritably if this was some sort of test of his Royalist allegiances, for what the
     devil were the odds of running into a Sebastian on a deserted country road on a night
     like this, when he was on his way back to London to meet a Tremaine?
    Rose of all people. Rose.
    Discreetly he watched her while she arranged her skirts in the most enchanting manner
     and unbuttoned the top of her cloak to reveal her lavish bosom beneath. She should
     have looked ragged and weary after what she’d been through this evening, but somehow
     this rather remarkable princess always managed to appear delicious and fetching in
     pretty silks and ribbons and lace. One more gust of wind a few minutes ago, and he
     might have ended up in the ditch lamenting his damned inconvenient carnal desires.
    For he had no business desiring a Sebastian.
    The coach lurched forward unexpectedly, and Rose reached out to grab at something,
     as if she half expected to be tossed to the floor.
    A rather unfortunate metaphor for her future, he supposed, which did not help his
     mood in the slightest.
    Nevertheless, Leopold frowned as he watched her wrap a hand around her wrist and wince
     in pain.
    “You’re hurt,” he observed.
    “Not at all,” she replied, which prompted the duchess to speak on her behalf.
    “Princess Rose is very brave, Lord Cavanaugh, and too proud to describe how she was
     thrown about with such violence, it is a wonder she still lives.”
    His eyebrows drew together with concern. “You must see a doctor, then.”
    “I am sure that’s not necessary,” she casually replied. “It is a mild sprain, nothing
     more. I am perfectly well.”
    He sat back, unconvinced she was telling the truth. “We will send for a doctor nonetheless,
     as soon as we reach the inn. Best not to take chances.”
    “Quite right,” the duchess said, while the coach picked up speed.
    Rose lifted her compelling blue eyes to meet his, and despite their polite discourse
     when he entered her coach a few minutes ago, she was now regarding him with an unmistakable
     note of disdain.
    He couldn’t pretend not to understand why, for he remembered all too well how he had
     treated her so shabbily a few years back.
    His thoughts meandered a bit further into the past … to that bright sunny day when
     they went riding together during a shooting party on his father’s estate. The Sebastian
     royals of the New Regime were the guests of honor, which had been a carefully plotted
     ruse to prove Leopold’s loyalty to the crown and secure greater power for him in the
     Sebastian court.
    Rose had just turned twenty, and he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes—or his hands—off
     her, for she was an exquisite beauty with unparalleled intelligence and a boatload
     of charm to go along with it.
    During the hunt, her brothers—the princes Randolph and Nicholas—had raced ahead with
     the hounds barking at their heels. Leopold and Rose chose to follow at a more leisurely
     pace and flirted up a storm while discussing books and theater and the latest gossip
     at court.
    Rose was coquettish that day, and if he’d wanted to, he could have bedded her before
     the week was out, for there was an undeniable spark of attraction between them that
     exploded like cannon fire each time they met. She aroused him to a wicked degree,
     and he knew the feeling was mutual. They had been wildly attracted to each other,
     and despite the look she’d given him just now, he suspected not much had changed.
     And he still wanted to bed her, goddammit.
    Growing increasingly sensitive to the heady scent of her perfume inside the close
     confines of the coach and the enticing curves of her appealing body, he turned