Tanya Crosby - The Impostor Prince

“I never get over the resemblance myself,” commented the servant at his side, obviously resigned to Ian’s moment of sentimentality. “Though I must say, His Majesty resembles him so much more.”

Ian nodded, clenching his jaw. It was becoming more and more apparent that his entire life had been a bloody sham. Your Highness? His Majesty? What the blazes? The title had been embossed upon Merrick’s carte de visite, but Ian hadn’t believed it. It seemed incredibly absurd to think Ian had spent his entire life scraping for copper while his flesh and blood dined on pheasant and fine wines.

The portrait hanging before him called his mother a liar. The blue eyes of its subject seemed to be smirking at him, taunting him with long-kept secrets, secrets he was determined to discover.

And God save everyone who’d had a hand in deceiving him—his mother included—because there was going to be hell to pay.

“Sir,” the man prodded again, “I don’t mean to hurry you, but His Majesty wishes an audience in one hour. Perhaps we should refresh ourselves?”

Ian cocked a brow and looked down at the servant, amused by his choice of words. “We should refresh ourselves?” he asked.

Did the man plan to crawl into Ian’s bath along with him?

The man fidgeted under Ian’s scrutiny. “Yes, sir.”

“Very well, then…we wouldn’t wish to keep His Majesty waiting,” Ian relented, taking pity on the man.

He started once more down the hall. “Lead the way,” he directed the servant, walking slowly so the man could overtake him.

But the man also slowed his gait to keep at Ian’s heels. Damn, what was he—a wretched dog?

By now, their multitude of followers had fallen away, dispersed to the four corners of the gargantuan house, leaving only two sets of footfalls to echo along the hall.

Ian stopped, gave the man an impatient wave and said again, more firmly, “Lead the way.” He hadn’t a clue where to go in this bloody museum.

The servant nodded and scurried ahead of him. All the way down the hall, the man continued to look back uncomfortably over his shoulder.

As they made their way through a maze of corridors and stairwells, all dotted with closed doors, Ian examined the portraits he passed along the way—all similar faces with similar expressions. None seemed the least contented with their lot in life.

Halting before an open door, the servant turned him to the wall, clasping his hands behind him in a military fashion. “Here we are, Your Highness! I shall have your bath drawn at once,” he promised, without looking again at Ian. “Welcome home, sir.”

Welcome home.

To a place he’d never set eyes upon.

What a damned hum.

“Thank you—” Ian hesitated, uncertain what name to call the servant.

“Harold,” the man supplied, still without looking at him.

“Sorry,” Ian said automatically. Where he was raised, men respected other men—including one’s servants—by learning their names.

“Not to worry, sir,” Harold replied, meeting Ian’s gaze briefly. “I hardly expected you to recall; it has been three years, after all, and you’ve hundreds in your employ.”

Hundreds.

Glen Abbey had merely a handful of employees.

Though he hadn’t a clue why, his thoughts returned to the girl from Grosvenor Square. Did her employers treat her well? Did her mistress know her name?

Ian wished she’d shared it. Now, she was destined to remain a nameless face in a memory bound never to fade. Regret would have lowered his mood, if it could have gone any lower.

“Right,” Ian said, and gave the man a rueful smile that went unnoticed.

He stepped into the room assigned to him and the door closed behind him, allowing him the first moments of privacy he’d had in a week.

Like the rest of the house, this room was big, but the style was indefinable—not Mediterranean, precisely, not Arabic, nor Oriental, but some odd mixture of every culture.

The iron-and-wooden bed was like something out of an Arabian tale, with fine, pale blue fabric draped over it from a wrought iron-wheel suspended from the ceiling. The muted midnight-blue satin spread stretched upon the bed was unmarred by even a single crease.

Oversized blue-and black-satin pillows gilded with Far Eastern symbols were littered across an uncarpeted, dark-wood floor, lending the room a sense of calculated chaos.

The draperies, too, were pale blue and sheer, flowing into the room like a billowing moonlit mist.

On the far side of the room sat a dark-wood table that was too low for chairs. Gathered at its center were half-a-dozen fat candles of various heights and widths—a luxury to his people. And surrounding the short, stocky table were more pillows in shades of blue and black; these were plain, without the gilded symbols.

Two sets of double doors led from the room; one set at his back, another to his left. He made his way across the room and opened one set, revealing a closet in which every nook and cranny was filled with hanging black, blue and white garments. It wholly embarrassed the single, freestanding wardrobe that occupied Ian’s room in Glen Abbey.

In fact, this was not a bedroom at all, he decided. It was an apartment. And when he thought of all the bellies that could have been satisfied for the cost of a single item within it, it made his belly churn.

Unbidden, the memory of Rusty Broun’s little Ana accosted him. The child would have been three years old the week after her death. Her face, gaunt with hunger, would bedevil him for the rest of his days. It was for her, as much as for anyone, that he had come seeking answers—for Rusty’s sweet Ana, and for all of Glen Abbey’s wee innocents who depended on Glen Abbey Manor for support.

He turned his back on the luxurious fabrics hanging in Merrick’s closet and went to the bed, settling down on it as he glanced about the room.

How could any man surround himself with so much rubbish when babies were literally starving to death?

Ian experienced an unholy stab of guilt merely standing in the midst of it all.

He collapsed on the bed, wondering how Merrick could lie amidst the cool satin sheets and not feel…

Devil hang him, but it did feel good, he thought, as he dragged himself backward and stretched out on the massive piece of furniture. Hell, his feet didn’t even reach the edge, and he was taller than most men.

He shook his head in disgust over his lapse in character, but guilt fell at the heels of exhaustion. God save his rotten soul, but it couldn’t hurt to wallow in a wee bit o’ comfort for just a bit.

He was fagged to bloody death.

As he sprawled in the silky bed, closing his eyes, Ian thought not of little Ana, nor of Glen Abbey, nor even of his mockery of a life, but of a green-eyed beauty with disheveled hair and a wit as sharp as his grandfather’s claymore…and lips that looked to be as soft as the satin caressing his cheek.

What he wouldn’t give to have a taste of that mouth.

He drifted toward sleep imagining his mystery woman in the most wicked of positions, her mouth coaxing him to climax.

So what the blazes if she wouldn’t even give him her name? His thoughts were his own and she couldn’t very well slap him in his dreams.

N o longer was the preservation of honor a luxury to be considered. The contents of the box—a severed finger and a threatening note—necessitated that even the lowliest of solutions must be weighed.

Until now, Claire had not resorted to begging, but today she would add that particularly distasteful endeavor to her growing list of embarrassments.

To that end, her greatest opportunity lay with Lord Huntington, Alexandra’s father. Though he was known to be a frugal man, he was kind at heart, and if anyone might feel compelled to help her, it would be he. He had, after all, known her most of her life.