Javier lifted his eyebrows. “She’s become a jealous lordling? Sacha-” The prince straightened, curious dismay wrinkling his forehead. “Is that why none of you have married? Because of me? Because you think you need my… approval?”
“Oh, God, Jav, don’t tie the noose yet. There are moments when you’re our only line to freedom. Marriage beds will come soon enough. They’re political machinations, not full of love and romance. It won’t make any difference if you like our wives. Hell, it won’t make any difference if we like our wives. A woman’s got no strength to come between the four of us anyway. Which,” Asselin said, “brings us back to Eliza, Jav. Again.”
“All right, all right! God in Heaven, Sacha. What’s the problem?”
“Her father’s found her out, Jav.”
Javier’s eyes shuttered, light in them turning black. “Then I’ll protect her.”
“She won’t let you, Jav. She never has.”
“Don’t be absurd. She has rooms here-”
“She’ll refuse them as long as Irvine is here.”
Javier came up short. “Is she as jealous as that? Beatrice is-”
“A distraction? A toy? Easier to believe when she’s not on your arm every evening and in your bed every night. Are you going to introduce her to your mother?”
“God,” Javier said with feeling, then exhaled. “I’ll have to, if I continue with her. Mother’s absence has been-”
“A gift?”
“Not unwelcome.” Javier glanced at the stool where Belinda sat, as if imagining her there. She caught her lower lip in her teeth, watching with interest. After a moment he shook his head and turned his attention back to Sacha. “But once she’s returned, I’ll have to make the introduction. I can’t put Beatrice aside right now.”
Fascinated horror lit Asselin’s eyes. “Good God, man, you haven’t gotten her pregnant, have you?”
Javier blanched and shuddered. “No. My God, no. It’s-There are other things. Other reasons.” He shrugged, making an end of it. Sacha sighed explosively.
“You’re bewitched, Javi. Look, Liz won’t come to my home, either, but if she goes home her father will likely-”
Javier lifted a hand. “I think I have a solution. One she won’t like, but it may appeal. Sacha, don’t tell her you were here talking about her, all right?”
“Do I look like a complete fool?” Asselin demanded. Javier gave him a slow grin and Sacha laughed. “Some friend you are. All right. All right, Jav, but make quick work of it, because she’s got nowhere to go.” He looked around. “What the hell happened to Irvine? I thought she was bringing more drink.”
Belinda cocked an eyebrow curiously, then gathered her skirts and stood to slip through shadow in search of wine.
Dawn came on before Javier brought the subject around to Eliza and offered up his plan. Belinda sprawled across his bed, hair twisted over her shoulder into a mocking semblance of propriety. Javier stood at his window, watching the mist-coated palace grounds as sunlight struggled to break through the grey. “So your women will all be under one roof?” Belinda murmured. “Convenient, my lord.”
He scowled over his shoulder. “It’s not like that between Eliza and myself, Beatrice. I thought you knew that.”
“I do. I was only teasing, my lord.” She stood and crossed to him, putting her fingertips on his shoulders. “Then why?”
“Eliza’s father doesn’t like her friendship with me.”
Belinda’s eyebrows shot up. “Doesn’t like a friendship with the prince?”
“He thinks I…” Javier turned his head, uncomfortable. “Abuse the friendship.”
“Abuse. A powerful man, a beautiful woman.” Belinda’s eyebrows remained elevated. “Few would call it abuse.”
“They are very poor.” Javier’s jaw set. “Poor enough that a father might only see his daughter as a victim in such a relationship.”
Belinda stepped back, letting surprise stiffen her movements. “Poor…? She speaks so beautifully, my lord.”
Disdain flashed through Javier’s expression. “High-born tones can be learned. We’ve been friends a long time.”
“Yes.” Belinda stiffened further, flushing as she glanced down. “Of course, my lord.” She knotted her fingers together in front of her belly, turning her palms up. “Another father might use such a relationship as leverage into a good marriage,” she suggested. A glance at Javier through her eyelashes found him shaking his head.
“It might’ve if she wasn’t as stubborn as the day is long. Her mother and three sisters died five years ago of a bad fever. Eliza was the only one who survived. She refuses to grow her hair back out and behave like a proper woman. Her father’s hand…is growing heavy.”
A shiver spilled down Belinda’s spine, making the hairs on her arms stand up against the light fabric of the dressing gown she’d stolen from Javier. “Then why come to me, my lord? You must know…” She hesitated. “Eliza considers me a…rival.” She chose her words with delicacy, watching the prince for his reactions. Javier let out a breath that bordered on laughter.
“I’m aware. But I can hardly place her with Sacha or Marius, can I? A woman at least has the gloss of appropriateness. Besides,” he finally met her eyes again, “it would divert talk from our relationship.”
“Or compound it, my lord.”
Javier flashed a grin. “Which might do as well. Please, Bea. I don’t ask favours that often.”
Belinda lifted her eyebrows again as she offered Javier her hands. “Is she going to want to murder me in my sleep, my lord? Ought I sleep with one eye open every night from now on?”
“You sleep enough nights with me that I think you’re safe.” Javier lifted her hands to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. “Perhaps sleep with both eyes open those nights you don’t.”
“So you’d have me get no sleep at all,” Belinda teased. “Very well, my lord. But I warn you: we may become fast friends and both toss our heads and laugh when you come calling. Women are strange creatures.”
“Then I’ll have gotten what I deserved for putting the two of you together. That dress, Beatrice. The one you wore to the opera.”
She tilted her head, curious. “Aye?”
“It was Eliza’s design. It’s her true talent, making beautiful gowns. With your help, she might soon be able to begin a business of her own. It’d be good for both of you: she wouldn’t be under your roof anymore, and she wouldn’t be under her father’s.”
Belinda frowned, shaking her head. “If it’s her design, my lord, why on earth hasn’t she begun a business already? Certainly with your patronage-” Her chin came up. “Ah.”
Javier quirked an eyebrow. “Ah?”
“She won’t take your help, will she? Too much pride.”
Javier inclined his head. “I remember, as a child, the beggars who flung themselves at mine and my mother’s feet as we walked into church. I thought then that pride was a provenance of the wealthy. When I met Eliza I realised that the poor have an even more desperate pride than the rich. She’s never let me help her, except when she was too ill to object.”
“The fever?”
Javier nodded. Belinda’s chin lifted again in new understanding. “Your doctors saved her but not the rest of her family.”
Javier nodded a second time. Belinda stepped back, pressing her fingers over her lips. “Her mother. Her sisters.” She didn’t wait for the prince’s nod, though it came again. “No wonder her father hates you, my lord. Four for one. I wouldn’t trust your intentions, either.”
“They wouldn’t let me help,” Javier murmured. “Her mother allowed me to take her, but not the rest of them.”
“You are a prince, my lord. How could one poor woman stop you? And how could one wretched man beg your mercy for the rest of his family when you had shown preference to one?”
Javier met her eyes, helpless. “I didn’t want to offend them. Does my rank give me the right to disrupt the
