Dukes to the Left of Me, Princes to the Right (14 page)

He looked back.

“Yes?” he asked dryly.

She could hardly tell him the scandalous things he’d done to her in her dreams, but she
could
purse her mouth disapprovingly and return her attention to the front of the room.

Which was what she did, and somehow felt sad and lonely of a sudden. She
did
want to go home. Natasha had been right. Perhaps she was ill. She wondered if her face were still as red as a pomegranate and then determined it couldn’t matter. She must stay and endure Drummond’s handsome profile, as well as Natasha’s sharp elbow in her side, and Sergei’s humming if, God forbid, it started up again.

“Who
is
this John Keats?” Lady Gastly asked the housemaid. “And why have I never heard of him until you came knocking on my door?”

The housemaid scratched the side of her nose. “He’s a poet,” she said in a thick Cockney accent. “Most people never ’eard of him. It’s because he’s a bit of a rebel.”

There were excited yet disapproving gasps from all around—but not from Poppy. She was too busy thinking about Drummond again and wondering what would have happened if she’d taken her gown all the way off at the Golden Gallery. For a moment there, she’d been
so
close.

Good thing she hadn’t.

Yes, very good thing. Because then she would have possibly wrapped her arms about his neck and pressed her breasts against his chest and …

And moaned.

One didn’t moan at the top of St. Paul’s. Not unless one wanted to go to hell. Which was why she was so glad Drummond had kissed her in the street instead. When she’d moaned there, only two horses tied to a post had heard.

“I beg of you, Lady Poppy,” Natasha leaned over and said, “please allow my recalcitrant brother to take you home. I could swear you just whimpered, and you’re wriggling about like a small child. Boris is getting quite frantic.”

Poppy gave Natasha a pinched smile. “I’m fine, thank you. I’ve simply a stitch in my side.”

But she wasn’t fine. She’d felt so
alive
last night! She wanted more of that feeling, and sitting here in this stuffy drawing room was doing nothing to help.

She only wished she could show Sergei the intensity of emotion she felt for
him
.

Somehow she would convey to him with her eyes that she adored him.

But he didn’t look her way. He sniffed. She noticed his nostrils were quite large. Larger than … larger than she’d remembered.

He sniffed again.

“Have you a cold?” she whispered.

“No,” he said, and gave a long, slow sniff.

“Of course you have one,” she found herself insisting in a calm manner, just like a doctor.

But inside she was reeling.
Please, God
, she was thinking.
Please let it be a cold
. And not another annoying habit she’d never noticed in St. Petersburg.

She shifted in her seat and touched her hair, hoping no one thought
she
was sniffing so loudly and often. And then she felt terribly guilty. She should be thinking about making the prince a special punch to help him recover from his cold rather than be embarrassed about his sniffing.

What kind of true love took exception to a cold?

Because surely, that’s what it was.

He sniffed again.

She almost giggled—a trifle hysterically. Natasha directed another scowl her way, but Poppy ignored her. The housemaid had pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and was handing it to Lady Gastly.

“ ’Ere’s Mr. Keats’s poem,” the housemaid said. “I dare you to read it.”

“I suppose I will.” Lady Gastly winced and held the paper by one corner. She cleared her throat and looked over her captive audience.

“ ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,’ ” she intoned. “ ‘Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold. And many goodly states and kingdoms seen…”

While her hostess ploddingly read the poem, Poppy sat up straighter. Miraculously, her annoyingly persistent thoughts of St. Paul’s and Nicholas’s kisses and Sergei’s sniffing faded. The poem simply took over.

She was shocked.

And stunned.

Keats’s poem was magnificent. It spoke of amazing discoveries and how life-changing they are. It affected her the same way her experience at the Golden Gallery had. Like the explorers in the poem who’d overlooked the Pacific, she’d overlooked London last night with the same “wild surmise,” seeing possibilities she hadn’t known existed.

Lady Gastly folded up the paper and handed it back to the housemaid. “Who here has a comment to make?”

Sergei sat stone-faced. Poppy wondered if he’d even understood the words in the poem, so she asked the prince in quiet Russian.

He yawned. “Yes, I like to ice-skate. Why do you ask?”

“Oh,” Poppy replied, blushing. “I’m so sorry. I thought I asked if you understood the poem.”

He gave a careless shrug. “It was boring.”

Boring?

Poppy heartily disagreed, but perhaps because Lady Gastly hadn’t read in the prince’s native tongue, he couldn’t appreciate it.

Natasha elbowed her hard. “Why don’t they read a Russian poet?” she asked. “Someone should tell them so.”

“I shall.” Sergei stood, looking regal and commanding. His brow was firm, his chin was noble, and he wore many medals on his chest. “I would prefer to discuss a Russian work,” he announced loudly. “Something by Aleksandr Pushkin will suit.”

Poppy gulped and slid just a tad lower in her seat. She loved him, but she’d really have to talk to him about becoming “one of the people” when he was out socializing.

Lady Gastly laid her hand on her cheek. “Oh, dear. Perhaps we should forget about Keats, Your Highness. He
is
a shocking fellow.”

There were murmurs of agreement.

But then a familiar voice spoke.

“I completely disagree.” Poppy swung around and saw Nicholas standing. His voice was low but fervent. “Mr. Keats’s poem is well worth discussing. He taps into man’s intrinsic desire for adventure, something for which every soul yearns.”

He made eye contact with Poppy, and she felt a rush of connection. He could tell she craved adventure, too, couldn’t he?

“All of us can be grateful to have heard it,” he concluded, and sat down.

One could have heard a pin drop.

Natasha drew herself up and sucked in her cheeks. Sergei directed a long, cold stare Nicholas’s way. Even Lady Gastly appeared stunned into silence by the duke’s outburst.

Poppy didn’t know what to think. The Nicholas who’d just stood and spoken on behalf of Keats wasn’t the callous rake she knew but someone entirely different. Someone who’d been moved by a poem.

His reaction shook her. Was he—could he possibly be …
sensitive
?

She dared to glance at him, and he winked.

The scoundrel.

He was as sensitive as a log. She should have known he was merely amusing himself. What did he know of poets and poetry? And what was he doing alienating Sergei and Natasha that way? Wasn’t he supposed to make the Russian twins happy?

Poppy was so annoyed at his unapologetic air, she moved closer to the prince, who had resumed his seat. “Don’t worry,” she told him, “I shall discuss Pushkin with you.”

Was he to be blamed for caring so very deeply about his country’s poets?

“We have much to discuss,” Sergei said, his eyes smoldering with
something
.

“We
do
?”

He leaned closer to her. “Be ready, Lady Poppy,” he whispered in her ear. “Like the big Russian bear, soon I will roar at you with passion. The passion of Pushkin. And more.
Much
more.”

He pulled back and smiled slowly.

“Oh,” she said, and waited for that melty, shivery feeling to take over and for her heart to thump with wild abandon, but nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

CHAPTER 16

It was one of those moments when Nicholas wasn’t sure his Service duty was worth it. The day after the literary salon, while Prince Sergei attended to business in Whitehall, Nicholas found himself walking down an expansive wing at the British Museum with Poppy, Natasha, and her dogs. The princess had received special permission to bring the hairy yappers on their tour—in a pram, of all things.

Now Natasha came to a halt in front of a statue of a Greek goddess. “I must ask you to push the corgis now, Nicky,” she told him with a lazy yawn. “Only very dear friends are allowed to do so.” She cast a sly glance at Poppy, who fortunately was too busy examining the Greek goddess’s garments to notice the slight.

Already he’d lifted the pram up a massive set of stairs, which was no small feat with five dogs inside. And now he was to …
push
the pram?

Over his dead body.

A quick glance at Poppy showed she’d apparently heard every word, after all. Her eyes twinkled in amusement.

He gave Natasha a tight smile. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

She pulled in her chin. “Whyever not?”

It was too late for regrets, but for the umpteenth time, he wished he’d never gotten intimately involved with the princess.

“I can’t push
dogs
”—he felt as if he had a pair of stockings stuffed down his throat—“in a
pram
.” There was a slight snicker from Poppy. “I never have,” he went on, his voice rising, “and I never will!”

Damned dogs in prams.

What was the world coming to?

He refused to be chagrined at his lack of manners—a man could take only so much nonsense—and strode ahead of the two ladies, ignoring Poppy’s polite insistence to the princess that she push the pram while Natasha gathered her breath.

If Poppy was trying to make him feel guilty, it wouldn’t work.

Nevertheless, he looked straight through several celebrated oil paintings without really seeing them and realized with a start of shock that he wasn’t his usual assured self. Poppy was getting to him—far more than Natasha was with her silly attempts to capture his notice.

Yes, Lord Derby’s daughter talked too much and she thought she knew everything there was to know, but somehow she was different from all the other ladies of his acquaintance. He thought it might have to do with her total lack of regard for what he thought of her.

That was it. She didn’t give a tuppence for his opinion.

It was a refreshing change.

Yet lowering, too.

Not many people had ever been able to work their way under Nicholas’s skin, and especially no woman. Yet Poppy’s indifference to his masculine charms, the ones he wielded so well over the rest of the female population, was causing him to take notice of her more than he cared to.

Natasha glowered and Poppy beamed when they caught up with him in front of a large canvas by the English painter William Hogarth. It was obvious the princess couldn’t bear the fact that a lesser mortal was pushing her corgis about, and Poppy—naughty girl—was apparently enjoying the royal’s discomfiture.

“What do you call your primary seat, Drummond?” Natasha demanded to know. “And where is it located?”

He inhaled a silent breath and prayed for patience. He could swear she’d asked twice already. “Seaward Hall’s on the North Sea,” he replied with an equanimity he didn’t feel.

Poppy was so close. He could smell her hair—it had the scent of sunshine and fresh air, mingled with a trace of violets.

“Weren’t there Vikings there at one time?” his fiancée contributed to the conversation (what there was of it), her eyes still on the painting, her slender hands gripping the pram.

He couldn’t help feeling a rush of pleasure at her interest, as if he were some lovesick boy craving attention from an unattainable female. But he had her, didn’t he? Whether she liked it or not, she would soon become his wife.

“Legend has it,” he told her in as plain a tone as he’d spoken to Natasha, “there were stashes of Viking treasure buried along the shore. As a boy, I was constantly looking for it.”

“You were an adorable, mischievous child,” Natasha pronounced as if she’d been witness to his childhood herself. “Let us move on.” And she sauntered over to the next painting, her chin in the air.

Poppy glanced at him and giggled. “Yes, you adorable, mischievous duke,” she whispered to him, “let us move on.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Not many people could get away with making fun of him.

The remnants of a smile still curved her lips when she pushed the pram forward again and asked, “Did you ever find any Viking treasure?”

“No, I didn’t.” He couldn’t help smiling himself at the memory. “I poked the sand with hundreds of sticks, turned over thousands of rocks. And to this day, I wonder what precious loot I might have missed.”