The Princess and the Duke by Allison Leigh Read Free Book Online Page A

shoes until he found them. “Give me your foot.”
    “What every woman dreams of hearing,” she murmured. But he heard the rustle of silk and tormented himself with images of her lifting it.
    Then her foot butted his thigh. “Sorry,” she said on a soft laugh.
    “Admit it. You’ve wanted to kick me since you were ten.”
    She giggled.
    Definitely too much champagne, he thought as he reached for her foot. Slowly slid the shoe into place. Her ankle felt delicate. Narrow.
    “Are you certain that isn’t a glass slipper there?”
    He took his hand away from her ankle, aware that his hold was too lingering, and rapidly slid the other shoe on for her. “You’ve no need for fairy godmothers or glass slippers. You’re already a princess.”
    “One without a prince,” she said. Then laughed lightly, as if her voice hadn’t sounded utterly melancholy. “Thank you for playing shoe man, Colonel. I’ll just have to give away this pair, I think. Beautiful as they are, they’ve been torturing my toes the entire day.”
    “Your Royal Highness.”
    She turned on her heel so abruptly she swayed, and he put a steadying hand on her back. Was she as startled by the appearance of Lady Gwendolyn behind her as he’d been?
    “Yes?”
    “Your father is asking for you.”
    Meredith nodded. “Of course. Thank you.” She looked over her shoulder at Pierce. “Colonel. The dance was…delightful. If I don’t see you before you leave, I hope you’ll have a safe trip home.”
    “Thank you.”
    With a sweep of her skirt, Meredith glided toward the terrace doors. As she neared, the light haloed around her, glinting off her hair, her dress, her ivory skin.
    Pierce was glad for the relative darkness in which he stood. Lady Gwendolyn studied him silently for amoment. It had been a lot of years since he’d gone to Gwendolyn Corbin on the occasion of her husband’s funeral to express his condolences at her loss, only to end up having to lie to the young woman when—tears flooding her lovely blue eyes—she’d asked him the most natural of questions. What her husband’s last words had been.
    Pierce still felt awkward in her presence.
    The woman, with no smile whatsoever on her classically beautiful face, nodded briefly. “Good night, Your Grace.” Then she turned and glided away.
    Pierce turned around and stared over the wall into the night, his hands tight on the stone ledge. He hated the noble title.
    There was nothing noble about him. Nothing at all.
    He stood there, drawing in the increasingly crisp, sea-scented air, until his tension abated. Until he could be sure he wouldn’t betray himself when he went into the ballroom. Only then did he turn and follow the women’s path inside.
    He immediately noticed Meredith in conversation with her father. She was smiling as she greeted the people in the group surrounding the King, but Pierce could see how tired she was.
    If King Morgan were any kind of father, he’d have seen it, too. But the man standing beside Meredith wasn’t any type of father. Not to Meredith. Nor to anyone else.
    Because the man standing beside Meredith, foisting her off into dancing with one of the men, was not her father, King Morgan of Penwyck.
    It was Morgan’s twin brother, Broderick.
    And Pierce was one of a very small handful of people in the country who knew it.

Chapter Four
    A s he circled the grand ballroom, Pierce’s attention kept straying to Meredith. She was being passed from one gentleman to the next, barely managing two minutes of dance between the lot of them.
    His hands curled. It was nearing two in the morning. She was tipsy on champagne and nerves. It was none of his business with whom she danced away the hours.
    She’d always been out of his reach. Never more so than now.
    Even the King’s family didn’t know about the health crisis that had necessitated bringing in Broderick to act as king.
    And it was that secret, right now, that ate most at Pierce’s conscience. He wanted to go