Read Betina Krahn for Free Online Page B

and reaching for the teapot. He sat down opposite her, gripping his knees under the tablecloth.
    After pouring in silence and serving him, she reached for the envelope on the table and opened it to peruse the names inside with a frown.
    “So, you’re to be both minder and matchmaker.” She didn’t look up.
    “And you’re to be cooperative.” He sipped his tea, wishing to hell it was Scotch whiskey.
    “I intend to be, Mr. St. Lawrence. I must say, that name sounds wrong to me. I feel I should call you Jack.”
    His smile faded, then returned as if force-marched back.
    “You may call me that if you wish, Mrs. Eller. Most do. In truth, I was the one true ‘Jack’ in the room that night.”
    “You could have saved me a great deal of grief if you had been truer still.” She sipped her own tea with an accusing expression.
    Those damnable blue eyes. Don’t look, he told himself.
    “Men loyal to the future king—” he began, focusing purposefully on the wheezing hearth.
    “Refuse to tell him the truth?” she inserted. “His reign won’t be one for the history books if that is the kind of counsel he depends upon.”
    He straightened and met that gaze full-on.
    “You were in the room and clearly willing. What does it matter that your kiss found lips other than his?”
    For a brief moment he thought he saw actual flame in the dark centers of her eyes.
    “Yes, of course,” she said with a razor edge. “A woman who will kiss one man will surely not scruple about kissing another. And a woman who enters a man’s sleeping room will surely bed any man she finds there. For men are all the same in the dark, are they not?”
    He scowled at her twist on the well-known saw: Jane is the same as milady in the dark. She meant to torture him with verbal thumbscrews. Lord, how he hated clever women.
    “I did not mean to imply that you have no discrimination, Mrs. Eller. I merely pointed out that it could as easily have been the prince you kissed.”
    “No, it could not,” she said, her cheeks pinker. “It may shock you to hear, sir, but I actually have standards. And bedding married men destined to rule my country is definitely outside them.” She reached for the list of potential husbands and scowled at it. “With such an attitude, I am surprised that you bothered to include so many names.” She set the paper down and picked up her cup, giving him an arch look.
    “I wonder…what was your criteria for selection? Whatabout these men made you think any of them would be suitable as a husband for me?”
    He expelled a quiet breath, feeling her gaze roaming him as his had just wandered her. An unwelcome heaviness was settling in his loins.
    “All are unmarried and have an income of two thousand or better.”
    “And?” she prompted.
    “And all would be willing to marry a comely young widow if it would win for them the future king’s favor.”
    “So, I marry one of these men and serve both the prince’s and this husband’s carnal demands?” She seemed genuinely taken aback. “If so, I am going to be one very well-buttered bun.”
    He was jarred by her blunt language. “I believe it is understood that the marriage will be in name only until the prince foregoes his relationship with you. Your husband will be free to enjoy his marital rights at that time.”
    “Oh. Well. How fortunate for him. I am on loan to the prince for as long as he wants me to pleasure him, after which I am given back to my legal lord and master to serve his pleasures.” She leaned forward, searching his face. “Forgive me, Jack, but I’m having trouble figuring out just what I get out of all this pleasuring.”
    Pleasuring. The way she said the word sent a tongue of heat licking up the inside of his belly. A phantom vignette of burying his face in her hair and sliding his hands over her warm breasts flashed through his senses.
    “I believe you know very well what you will get, madam. Income…gifts…connections…” Running out of