The Dollar Prince's Wife Read Free Page A

an enormously rich Yankee, fascinating Violet without even trying.’
    Of course, Sir Ratcliffe had been right to be jealous—and so had Susanna, which was why she was reproaching Cobie for being the man he was and not the man he had been.
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    Susanna had been only too well aware that Cobie would take up Violet’s two o’clock invitation at the earliest opportunity—which he promptly did, that very afternoon. At the Kenilworths’ town house in Piccadilly he enjoyed, for what it was worth, what a famous actress and beauty had once called the hurly burly of the chaise-longue rather than the deep peace of the marriage bed. One disadvantage being that one remained virtually fully clothed.
    He also, a little reluctantly, agreed to visit Moorings several days before the rest of the guests arrived. Violet had smiled at him confidentially, and drawled, ‘As early as you like so that we can enjoy ourselves in comfort.’
    Cobie was not sure that he wished his affair with her to be more than a passing thing. Violet had not improved on further acquaintance, and to some extent he was regretting having pursued her at all—but he could not refuse to visit Moorings without offending her—and he had no wish todo that. It was plain that she saw him as a trophy, and was determined to flaunt him before the rest of society. He wondered a little what the Prince of Wales would think of Violet taking a second lover, but she made nothing of that.
    â€˜I understand that your nickname in the States is The Dollar Prince,’ were her final words to him, ‘which means that I now have two of such name.’
    He was tempted to say, ‘No, Violet, you certainly don’t have me,’ but he was well aware that it would be unwise to make an enemy of her, so he merely bowed in acknowledgement of her mild witticism when taking his leave before the bores arrived at four o’clock.
    Well, at least he would be able to enjoy living for a few weeks in one of the most spectacularly beautiful country houses in England, even if he did have to pay for it by pleasuring Violet!
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    It was for that reason, but not for that reason alone, that two evenings later he left the ball which she and her husband were giving at Kenilworth House long before Violet wished him to. He had bidden her ‘goodnight’ with all the charm which he could muster, but it was not enough to mollify her.
    â€˜Leaving already!’ she had exclaimed, her beautiful brows arching high. ‘The night is yet young, and many who are years older than you are will not be giving up until dawn.’
    â€˜Alas,’ he told her untruthfully, ‘I have been busy in the City all day, and such a concentration of effort carries its own penalties—I am sure that Kenilworth will have told you that.’
    Cobie had always wondered at the workings of chance, and that it might be unwise to ignore them. Chance had ledhim to overhear something odd that night, something which had stayed in his memory. It was for that reason only that after leaving Kenilworth House, he did not go straight home to the Winthrops’. Instead he dismissed his carriage and walked down the Haymarket, which was so brilliantly lit that it might as well have been day.
    The usual stares at his splendid self from both men and women followed him: he ignored them all and carried on his solitary way until he came to an alley about a hundred yards beyond the Haymarket Theatre. Looking down it, he could see a group of top-hatted men of fashion standing and smoking under a swinging lantern over an eighteenth-century doorway.
    It must be Madame Louise’s: the brothel where the quality went, where discretion and high prices reigned. The conversation which he had overheard at the Kenilworths’ ball had him intrigued enough to consider going in. He had been leaning against a pillar, half-hidden, tired of the nothingness of the whole business, when he had heard two