Free What a Gentleman Desires by Kasey Michaels

go!”
    Lydia came scampering back down the pathway, clutching a small bouquet of roses she promptly thrust at Valentine. “Here, my prince. Tobias snipped off all the thorns for me.”
    Lydia’s girlish lovesickness was palpable. Daisy rolled her eyes. This was why, throughout history, men retained such swollen heads: women persisted in foolishly adoring them for no good reason. Just like poor, poor Rose. I have to get away from this man. I have to think. I don’t want to think...
    Daisy turned to the child in near desperation. “Where’s William, Lydia?”
    “His mud pies aren’t dry, and Tobias says they’ll fall to pieces if they aren’t allowed to dry. They’re very nice. Tobias showed him how to push colored pebbles in them to make faces, and tiny leaves for hair.” She looked up at Valentine. “Not that I would enjoy doing anything so young and silly.” She then quickly hid her hands, caked with drying mud, behind her back.
    “I’ll come back for them later,” Daisy promised, shooing the girl ahead of her.
    “Farewell, dear prince!” Lydia called back to Valentine, who once again demonstrated his finesse with a courtly bow—young, handsome, carefree—just as if words like rape and hellfire club had never passed his lips.
    Then he turned about, to depart the greenhouse, without setting a time or place for them to meet again. He’d probably just pop up like some jack-in-the-box when she least expected him. She watched as he took up a cane he must have rested against one of the other potting tables, gave it a twirl or two before tucking it beneath his arm.
    Truly, the man was insufferable. Yet she felt safer knowing he was here. Safer, but oh, so very much sadder. And even more determined to confront Charles Mailer, now that she knew what to ask him. Not where did you imprison my sister? but what did you do with her body? Because there was no more room for hope now, was there? She’d known that from the beginning....
    Willing her hands not to shake or her voice to waver, Daisy proceeded along the center pathway determined, and dry-eyed, to make an appreciative fuss over William’s mud pies.

CHAPTER FOUR
    V ALENTINE TOSSED THE bouquet on a table and the cane onto the bed before lightly hoisting himself up onto the high mattress and flinging himself down on his back to glare at the light summer canopy above his head.
    “Pouting, sir?” Piffkin said blandly, retrieving the cane and putting it, it would seem to the casual observer, out of harm’s way. “Lovely flowers, though. Shall I order you a sweet to help boost you out of the doldrums?”
    “You could fashion me a gag and then tie it tightly while you’re at it,” Valentine muttered, putting his hands behind his head and crossing his legs at the ankle. “Piffkin? Why have you never told me I talk too much?”
    “Couldn’t get a word in edgewise, I suppose,” the valet said, shaking his head. “You’ve drying mud caked on the soles of your boots. I’ll have them, please.”
    Grumbling under his breath, Val pushed himself upright and turned so that his legs hung over the edge of the bed. “Before you rail at me, there’s also a smudge on my left knee, rightly earned as I rescued a young princess.”
    “Huzzah. And may I add it is an honor to be in your employ,” Piffkin commented as, with Valentine’s foot in his back to assist him, the boots were removed. “I’ll have the buckskins now, sir.”
    Valentine complied, and was handed a dark blue silk banyan in return, tying it tightly about his waist. He did all of this without conscious thought. He’d been taking orders from Piffkin since he was in short coats, and some things shouldn’t change or else the entire world order could be turned upside-down. “Don’t you want to know why I was pouting?”
    “You’re done, then? Good. I would imagine, since you were heading out to confront the suspicious governess, that you were met with failure and, worse, may have given yourself