Linda Needham Read Online Free

definitely intact.
    Caro brushed at her palms, hoping there might still be time for her errand. “That will be all, Wexford. Please take your leave.”
    She heard the shadowy branches shifting as he stepped back into the moonlight, as tall as a bear and just as threatening. “Not even a thank-you, Princess?”
    “For what? For pushing me into the bushes in the first place?”
    “For saving your silky hide from ruin amongst your loyal subjects.”
    She hadn’t any subjects, loyal or otherwise. Not that the man needed to know this. “Good-bye, Wexford.”
    “Aren’t you forgetting something, Your Worship-fullness?” He was holding out something to her.
    A circle of glittering bits of light.
    “My tiara!”
    “Yes, and what’s a princess without her crown?” He sketched a bow toward her.
    “Or a libertine without his conceit.” Caro grabbed her tiara out of his hand and pressed it against her chest. Imagine if she’d lost it out here in the bushes while she was dallying with this phantom bandit who smelled of danger and the whispers of night.
    Feeling suddenly horribly exposed to those darkly glittering eyes, she turned away and replaced the circlet, but when she looked back, the man was gone. Vanished without a sound.
    Her wish had come true. Though he’d left his heat and his scent to linger on the misty moonlight, a memory which she planned to forget in the next five minutes.
    “Blast it all.” She’d been away from the ball too long by now. Too late to work her way through the maze for a look at the statue in the center.
    A statue which, according to her exhaustive research had been stolen from her. From her family. From her dear Boratania, when it had been at its lowest ebb.
    Not that she was accusing the Duke of Bradford of looting her kingdom himself, he wasn’t old enough. However, if the statue was the one she believed it to be—from the rotunda of the Villa Rosa—then he had at least accepted stolen goods—knowingly or not—and she would have every right to reclaim it in the name of Boratania.
    If the statue was here at all.
    Well, then, she’d just have to see that the duke invited her back for another garden party. A party that would hopefully exclude the brutish Earl of Wexford.
    Caro hurried back toward the conservatory, certain that she was being watched by someone, so distracted that she nearly jumped out of her skin when she pulled the door open.
    “What have you been doing out there, Princess Caroline?”
    “Lucinda! Sylvia!” Her two very best friends in the world stood blocking her way. “What are you doing here ?”
    “You invited us to the ball, remember,” Lucie said, hooking Caro by the arm and pulling her inside the conservatory.
    “Yes, I know! But how did you know where I was?”
    Sylvia brushed at Caro’s sleeve. “He said we’d find you here looking a mess, and you certainly do!”
    “He who?” Caro’s heart took a guilty leap, though she was perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing and knew exactly which man Syl was talking about.
    “A tall, handsome fellow,” Sylvia said, her eyes sparkling bright in the pale light. “Handsome actually doesn’t begin to explain the way he—”
    “Sylvia McCallvern!” Lucie giggled like they all had done when they were girls at school. “Don’t tease! Oh, but Princess, he was soooooo lovely.”
    “What man exactly, Sylvia?” Caro hadn’t really seen Wexford’s face, beyond the steely planes of moonlight.
    “He found us at the dessert table and asked if we were your friends, Lucinda de Taitville and Sylvia McCallvern. We said we were. Then he said that youwould be needing our help before you came back to the ball. And indeed you do.”
    “I’m fine, Syl.” Except for the unsettling question of how and why Wexford knew the names of her best friends.
    “You don’t look very fine, Princess,” Lucie said, tucking a strand of hair behind Caro’s ear.
    “You look like you just had a fight with a cat. And lost.”