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“I cannot imagine how overwhelmed you must feel,” cooed an openly poisonous member of the lesser aristocracy. Married to a minor lord, she nonetheless carried herself as if she had the consequence of a queen.TheQueen.
From this, Melody was given to understand two things. First, that Lady Breanna was very beautiful. Second, that Breanna was not happy to discover that Melody was not disfigured, as some had liked to whisper to explain her absence from public events over the years.
Expectations were power, too, if a person knew how to use them. Melody did.
“How lovely of you to worry about me,” Melody replied sweetly. “But there is no need for concern. I like to think that I’ve been training my whole life to step into this role.”
“It appears that the Skyros family took theireducationfar more seriously than some,” came the arch reply. “I assume there were more opportunities to...ah,studythan the rest of us were accorded.”
Even if Melody had not received a morning-long crash course in how to handle just that sort of elegant poison masquerading as a conversation, she would have known that she was being attacked.
“Surely it is the role of any Idyllian citizen to support the royal family.” She kept her voice friendly, as Madame had advised. Because it was always better to keep them guessing, the other woman had said. Making Fen guffaw, then pretend it was a cough. “That was how my sister and I were raised, in any event.”
The only interest Aristotle Skyros had ever had in the royal family was how to rope the previous King into marrying off Orion. To Calista, so that Aristotle might therefore wield a greater influence over King and country. But that did not fit with Melody’s performance here, of virtue masquerading as patriotism, all wrapped up in a shy smile.
“Indeed,” trilled Lady Breanna. “As were we all. But I will confess, I don’t think there’s a soul on the island who is notenchantedto discover that Prince Griffin truly has the heart of gold we always suspected he did.”
It was the same checklist that, by now, had been waved in front of Melody a thousand times today already. Her family was grasping and unworthy. She was out of her depth to a laughable degree. And, not least, Griffin himself had only condescended to stoop to taking a creature likeMelody Skyrosas his bride as an act of selfless charity.
Granted, that was all true. Particularly the last, but that didn’t mean Melody had to like the way these horrible women threw it in her face.
Each and every one of them. With glee.
She leaned in. “I’m not sure he was thinking with hisheart, Lady Breanna.” She could feel the other woman’s bristling outrage, so she decided she might as well stick the knife in. “I suspect it was a rather different organ altogether.”
And it wasn’t until the doors closed behind Lady Breanna and her sputtering indignation—likely because she had designs on Prince Griffin’s organ herself—that Melody allowed herself a deeply inelegant cackle.
Madame would not approve.
The doors opened again and Melody tried to compose herself.
But she knew, almost instantly, that it wasn’t another insipid well-bred lady come to offer her a raft of backhanded compliments.
She could feel the sheer male power, ruthless and intoxicating, like an abrupt change in temperature. It emanated from him, so that even if she hadn’t heard the particular cadence of his steps—so familiar to her now—she would have known.
“Do not stop laughing on my account.” Griffin’s voice was low. Deep. Rough in a way that made her think of decidedly un-aristocratic things. And made her body hum in response, as if they were already doing them. “It makes you sound like a different woman altogether.”
Melody knew she should have wilted. Curled into a soft little ball in need of his care, the way she was supposed to do. But something in her rebelled.
Maybe it was all the hours she’d spent today playing princess games. Maybe it was Griffin himself, bringing all that brooding, stormingmalenessin with him as he flung himself onto what she knew was a frilly, feminine little settee across from her.
She tried to imagine that. A man like him, so big, so hard, so deliciously male, overpowering that frilly piece of furniture without even trying.
A shudder seemed to come from deep inside her, wrecking her.
Or it would have wrecked her, she corrected herself. But she couldn’t be wrecked. Not by hours of polite torture and not by him.
“As it happens,” she said, because she couldn’t resist, even when she knew she should have, “I believe I am a different woman, Your Royal Highness. I’ve been required to sit here for hours, smiling merrily while all your ex-lovers lined up to make sure I knew the precise length and breadth of your...”
She paused, deliberately.
He went still.
Dangerously still, but her trouble was, she liked that.
“Reputation,”Melody supplied, at last. Innocently. “Your reputation. And better still, how true it still is today.”
CHAPTER SIX
