Read To Pleasure a Prince for Free Online Page B

stares. Decidedly not.
    When she drew out her fan, a note fell into her lap. Drat it, she’d forgotten about that. With a glance at Cicely, who was now pulling down the shade to block the afternoon sun’s unrelenting rays, Regina unfolded the paper. She stared hard at it, praying that this time she’d magically be able to make sense of the letters that other people claimed formed words.
    But as usual, the magic eluded her, and no words that she could understand would form. A d, then a p, then an l…or perhaps an e. What sort of word was that? She turned the note sideways—or at least she thought it was sideways. But she couldn’t even make printed letters form words properly—how in God’s name was she supposed to make sense of this scrawl?
    When her head began to throb, she tossed the note aside with a curse. Lifting her gaze, she found Cicely watching her with concern.
    “What’s that?” her cousin asked.
    Regina shrugged. “A note I’m supposed to take to Lady Iversley. His lordship didn’t even seal it—he showed it to me for my approval.”
    Cicely’s eyes went wide. “Oh, dear, what did you do?”
    “I pretended to read it, and that seemed to satisfy him.”
    Cicely donned her spectacles. “Shall I read it to you then?”
    Gritting her teeth, Regina handed it over. “If you don’t mind.”
    “Of course I don’t mind, dear.”
    As Cicely scanned the note, Regina suddenly felt six again, watching her cousin and childhood tutor read easily what she couldn’t read even with a struggle. “I did try, you know,” she said.
    “Uh-huh,” Cicely murmured, absorbed in the note. Then Regina’s words sank in, and she lifted her gaze. “You don’t have to try. I’m always happy to read for you.”
    “I know, but I fear I don’t try hard enough. If I really worked at it—”
    “Oh, but you mustn’t!” Cicely’s face showed clear alarm. “Didn’t it give you the headache?”
    “Well, yes, but—”
    “What if it hurts your brain permanently? Who knows what could happen? Remember what the doctor said—it’s not worth trying to read if you tax your brain so much that you injure it. Do you really want to risk losing your facility for speech or thought, too?”
    Regina gazed out the window. “Of course not.”
    Despite the claims of the private doctor Cicely had secretly consulted when Regina was young, neither of them had any idea what might happen if she braved the headaches. No one else seemed to suffer pain merely from staring at a few words. No one else looked at letters and saw them backwards or upside down.
    Why was her brain so different? She generally understood spoken words, and whenever someone read to her—and she’d grown very clever at convincing them to do so—she understood what they read. She enjoyed hearing a good story, and she absolutely delighted in attending the theater.
    So why did her brain fail her when she opened a book or even tried to read music? Why must the letters and notes always look wrong?
    Cicely believed it was because of the terrible fever that had struck Regina when she was two. Regina had been told that her nanny had nearly despaired of her living through it. And she had taken longer than most children to learn to speak.
    “Well, what does it say?” she asked, as Cicely continued staring at the paper.
    “His lordship doesn’t have the finest hand I’ve ever seen, but if I read this correctly”—she flashed Regina a smile—“then you succeeded in changing his mind about Miss North and your brother. He asks that Lady Iversley invite Simon to a soiree at her home tomorrow evening.” Cicely gazed at it more closely, a puzzled frown creasing her brow. “And he says that he’ll be attending as well. With you? Surely I can’t be reading that correctly.”
    Regina drew herself up. “Yes, I agreed to let him…er…accompany me.” She didn’t dare tell Cicely the true nature of her arrangement with Lord Draker; Cicely would faint dead away.
    As it