Princess Charming Read Online Free

seldom-seen Lady Lucinda Charming, daughter of the late Duke of Nottingham and stepdaughter to the aging schemer next door who styled herself the duchess.
    Lucy Charming. Hmm. Crispin rubbed his chin and looked toward Nicholas St. Germain, Crown Prince of Santadorra, who was softly pounding his head against the garden wall.
    Or might it be  . . . Princess Charming? He smiled at the delicious irony. Just as Nick always played the hero, Crispin could never resist acting as matchmaker. He dropped the curtain and rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation. Any addlepated fool could see that Nick and Lucy Charming were a match made in heaven—or at least in his grandmother’s garden. Now they only needed to realize it.
    And perhaps a bit of help from Crispin.

Chapter Two
     
    LUCY RACED ACROSS the garden of Nottingham House, her cheeks aflame. Anger and attraction combined to fuel her embarrassment. Her heart still pounded, more from her encounter with Lady Belmont’s new gardener than from the contretemps with Sidmouth’s spies. Of all the arrogant, wrong-headed, interfering  . . . She had no need of a champion, and she refused to depend upon anyone but herself. What’s more, she would not succumb to the lure of a handsome face, even if he looked more like Guinevere’s Lancelot than a gardener. Nor would she be drawn in by a strong pair of arms, never mind that they offered shelter in a world spinning out of control.
    Lucy paused outside the kitchen door and listened. None of the servants would mention her clandestine comings and goings, but still she was careful. Her stepmother was no fool. Lucy sank onto the bench outside the doorway to catch her breath.
    With the toe of one half boot, she scraped mud from the leather of the other. She would put the gardener from her mind entirely, even if his brown eyes had been as seductive as her morning cup of chocolate, and his defense of her had created a beguiling warmth in her heart. Above all, she would not recall the delicious shivers that had raced through her when he’d looked into her eyes. No, she would not think of any of that. She need only remember that she was no princess, and he was no prince.
    Lucy sighed, rose from the bench, and entered the kitchen. For eight years since her father’s scandalous death, she had depended on her own ingenuity and resourcefulness. Nevertheless, that traitorous part of her that still felt the clasp of the gardener’s hands on her shoulders wished that she had someone to share her burdens.
    She slipped through the kitchen door and descended the stairs to the lowest regions of her father’s Mayfair town home. Please let them be here. While her birth and family lineage might offer her the smallest of protections against Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, and his persecution of the reformers, her friends would have no such shield.
    “Mr. Selkirk?” She lifted her candle higher and peered into the dim corners of the little-used storage room. “Tom?”
    A soft rustle came from behind a row of casks, and then two figures emerged into the light: an older man and a boy on the verge of manhood, both of whom shared a strong chin and a decided family resemblance.
    “Lady Lucy.” The younger of the pair doffed his cap and ran his hand through an unruly shock of hair. “Is it trouble?”
    Her stomach twisted. “Sidmouth’s men followed me as far as Lady Belmont’s. There was an altercation.” She forced herself to ignore the disturbing images of the gardener who had come to her defense. “They are indisposed, for the moment, but there isn’t much time.”
    “You are well, Lady Lucy?” Tom twisted the cap in his hands.
    “Yes. Please, do not worry. Help arrived from an unexpected quarter.” Unexpected and unwanted. Definitely unwanted.
    Mr. Selkirk frowned. The older man had been her father’s gamekeeper until her stepmother had turned the family off the Charming estate. Now the family eked out a meager existence in the