Read Realm 07 - A Touch of Honor for Free Online Page A

harmonize with their varied personalities.”
    She said softly. “It grieves me you have accepted a less than agreeable situation.”
    John brought her knuckles to his lips. “I assure you, Miss Aldridge, claiming you was always my intention. The situation is not ideal, but we will find our way together.”
    *
    Satiné stared out her bedroom window upon the shared gardens below. Before looking in upon the boy, Miss Neville had seen John out. Satiné had yet to hold her son. Even when the midwife had placed the boy into her arms, she had not embraced the child. For well over a fortnight, she had convinced herself her lying in had been a nightmare. Before the pain of the delivery had subsided, Miss Neville had whisked the child from Satiné’s room and had made little or no comment on Rupert’s existence since.
    Satiné had been a fool to accept Prince Henrí’s attentions, but she had thought Henrí had meant his words of endearments. “I burn for you.” and “I have never known a woman of such exquisite beauty.” and “A man must have a woman of your grace and intelligence by his side.”
    She had held aspirations of claiming the prince as her own–of returning to England as Henrí’s princess. After the scandal she had encountered in Scotland, Satiné had seen their relationship as an opportunity to claim a superior place in English Society: To prove to both Velvet and Cashémere that she was equal to her sisters. Naught did not describe her years of training to be a lady of distinction. Only after Satiné had succumbed to Henrí’s charms had she discovered the prince possessed a wife, and not only a wife, but also an expected heir.
    When she had confronted him, Henrí had spoken of a loveless marriage. Of an arranged joining, but also of his duty to his country and his people, and, without rancor, Satiné had forgiven him. She had continued to accept his attentions. That is, until she realized she carried Henrí’s child. At the time, he had been in Rintoul and she in Vienna, and she had cursed him with every vulgar name she had ever heard uttered by her Uncle Charles’ stable hands.
    In a panic, she had withdrawn from Society and had prayed for her nightmare to disappear, but it had not. Earlier, Satiné had argued with her only ally in Vienna. Lady Fiona had discovered Satiné’s secret relationship with Henrí and had thoroughly disapproved.
    “You think yourself the perfect choice for Henrí, but the prince has desires you can never fulfill with your proper English manners.” At the time, Satiné has searched for Henrí to deny the former baroness’s spiteful accusations, but, as was customary, he was with his male companions in the card room, playing deeper than was necessary for a man of his position.
    “How would you know what Henrí requires in a woman?” she had asked innocently.
    Lady Fiona laughed heartily. “How Johnathan thought you worthy of my notice, I shall never understand.” The baroness had snarled, “You may practice your manipulative ways upon the beau monde , but Prince Henrí possesses more stylish tastes.”
    “And what of you?” Satiné had fumed. “You flit around younger men hoping to retain your youth. You think Viennese society awaits your command, but you are nothing more than a bitter old woman.”
    “Remove yourself from my sight!” Lady Fiona had hissed, while the veins in her neck had turned dark blue. “Heaven help you if you ever cross my path again!”
    Now, in frustration with her lack of choices, Satiné leaned against the window. With her situation, as well as Henrí’s being recalled to his country, she had spent the previous five months behind doors, and she longed to be among the fashionable set again. “I wonder,” she asked her reflection in the glass, “what the baron would say if he knew his mother had ruined my reputation, as easily as had Lachlan Charters?” With a discreet whisper in the ear of key players in Viennese society, Lady Fiona