Dukes to the Left of Me, Princes to the Right

“I knew you wanted me to kiss you,” he’d said halfway through the brazen encounter, “but not on top of a church.” And he’d busied himself caressing her hips and bottom and teasing her mouth mercilessly with his own.

She’d abhorred that he was such a mind reader.

“It was shocking, absolutely shocking,” Lady Gastly was saying now. “Do tell the details.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Poppy said awkwardly, still lost in her own kissing-outside-St. Paul’s details.

“The murder,” Lady Gastly explained. “Ducal intrigue. I’d never even heard of the Drummond line, and now I’m all agog, thanks to my cook.”

“Your cook?”

“Yes, she’s friends with another cook in Town who told her an uncle went missing.”

“Right,” said Poppy weakly. “That’s just a silly rumor. He ran off to sea, is all.” She vowed to go home and tell Cook to stop spreading tales about the Duke of Drummond, even if she suspected some of them might be true.

She had no idea if they were or not. She took a peek at him conversing with Natasha, his expression polite but cool. Drummond was a man of mystery. She certainly couldn’t trust him, even though he was a most interesting companion. She’d gone to bed yesterday evening wishing she were thinking of Sergei, but she hadn’t very well been able to do that when her spectacular evening with Drummond at St. Paul’s had dominated her thoughts.

She couldn’t think of Sergei until this morning, when she’d fortuitously rid herself of thoughts of the duke by dreaming about him all night.

But now, even though Sergei was sitting right next to her humming under his breath (she wasn’t sure why), those dreams were coming back to her. And in them, Drummond was kissing her and running his hands all over her body again and—

“I hope they start the program soon,” she whispered to Natasha.

Natasha arched a brow. “You look ill, Lady Poppy, and I believe Sergei should take you home. I’ll need Drummond to stay with me in the event I’ll require a translator. You’re flushed redder than a pomegranate, I’ll have you know.”

“I am?”

Natasha nodded. “Sergei, stupid as he is, has a wonderful cure for the muck sweats he learned from his last mistress, a hag named Zoya. He has the worst possible taste in women.” She eyed Poppy up and down with a scornful curl to her lip.

“I’m feeling fine,” Poppy murmured, aghast at Natasha’s personal revelations about Sergei and her tendency to insult him. She leaned down and petted the corgis in the princess’s basket. One of the dogs growled at her, the one with the missing eye.

I’m just fine, she told herself, eyeing Nicholas’s muscled calf out of the corner of her eye and ignoring the subsequent skittering of her heart. Nicholas’s legs were, um, attractive, to say the least. She’d noticed them last night when he’d been sprawled on the floor of the Golden Gallery, his thighs tight in his breeches and his boots molded to his calves.

Sergei kept humming.

Hmm. She didn’t remember him humming in St. Petersburg.

“What song is that?” Poppy asked him, really to make him aware that he was humming a bit loudly, not because she cared about the song.

“No song,” he said with a shrug. “Just humming.”

Poppy tried not to grit her teeth. He was her beloved, after all. If this were a new habit of his, she’d learn to love it. Humming would become one of those signature things that reminded her of him. Her heart would soften, and then she’d even start making requests—for different songs.

But definitely not this one.

“Perhaps you should hum a song everyone knows,” she whispered.

Sergei shook his head. “I told you. This is not a song. I am humming, nothing more.”

And went back to it.

Poppy put a discreet curl over her ear to mask the noise, and then she grew ashamed of herself. The poor man was nervous, no doubt, being in a new country. Humming must bring him a sort of comfort.

Thankfully, however, he stopped when Lady Gastly finally stood and called the room to attention. “Today we shall meet the former housemaid of a terribly shocking poet named John Keats,” she announced.

The housemaid sat at the front of the room, her nose red and her mouth small and pinched.

“Very few know of his work,” Lady Gastly went on. “And probably for good reason.”

A trifle bored already, Poppy suppressed a yawn. This John Keats probably would be dull if no one had heard of him. And then she found herself stifling another yawn. Now that she thought about it, she’d slept very little last night, thanks to Drummond appearing in her dreams.

She took a peek at him sitting on the other side of Natasha and felt slightly annoyed.

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