Free Penelope & Prince Charming by Jennifer Ashley

eyes, he opened the door and walked out of the room.
    “Michael!” she cried.
    The door clicked closed. “Michael, I didn’t mean—”
    His footsteps faded as he moved down the hall.
    Raw pain washed over her. She couldn’t lose him. She could not.
    Lady Trask had never learned how to handle emotion with dignity. She’d never had to. She’d been spoiled as a girl, and her husband had ignored her. Her daughter treated her gently, but deep down, Lady Trask knew that Penelope did not really like her.
    She burst into wild tears. She swung to the dressing table and swept bottles, brushes, cosmetics, and perfumes to the floor. Then she sank down amid the broken glass and stench of perfume and beat her fists on the carpet until her hands were cut and bloody.

Chapter Seven
    Down the hall, Damien, sitting before the fire in pantaloons and lawn shirt open to the waist, heard the sudden commotion and Lady Trask’s weeping.
    Petri stepped to the door and looked out as hurried footsteps converged on Lady Trask’s room. He watched a moment, then closed the door and returned to his task of carrying a glass of brandy to Damien. “Lady Trask, Highness,” he said. “Upset at the loss of the rubies, no doubt.”
    “Mmmph, I do not think so.” Damien took the brandy and cradled the goblet in his palm. He had heard the quiet opening and closing of the door beforehand and imagined that her lover Tavistock had gone to have a word with her. “I believe there is one thing more important to her than jewels.”
    Petri looked unconvinced.
    Petri, Damien’s valet, was only a few years older than Damien himself. The two men had been raised together, Damien to rule, Petri to serve. Petri had followed him intoexile, finding a young Damien shivering and half-naked in the woods where the Imperial Prince’s men had unceremoniously dumped him. Somehow Petri had gotten them over the pass and down into the Danube Valley before the wolves had found them. Damien knew he would have been dead many times over had it not been for Petri.
    Despite their differences in station, Petri was closer to Damien than any brother could be. They could read each other’s moods and almost knew what the other would say before he said it.
    Petri pursued women with enthusiasm. Being valet to a prince gave him a certain cachet among the servants of the noble classes of Europe. While duchesses and countesses vied for Damien’s notice, Petri busily seduced their maids.
    “Behave yourself while you are here,” Damien had told Petri when he’d arrived.
    Petri had widened his blue eyes in innocence. “When have I ever not? Do I not know discretion?”
    He did, Damien had to credit him with that. Damien never once had to extricate him from a delicate situation, not even when Petri involved himself with more than one woman at a time. He knew how to woo and seduce, and then withdraw with no anger on either side. Damien had to admire him.
    As Damien sipped his brandy—purchased in Paris and lovingly carried by Petri the rest of the journey—he listened to the sounds of a household trying to control its weeping mistress. The walls were thick, but when doors opened and closed, voices drifted down the halls to him.
    “My lady, my lady you must not—”
    “She is hurt. She is bleeding!”
    “Whatever is the matter?”
    The last voice was Penelope’s. Her gentle tones rose in exasperation, then the door closed, shutting out her words.
    He smiled into his brandy. Penelope made his blood sing.
    He wished she didn’t. Damien had survived all this time by not letting himself feel. Flirt, yes. Seduce, yes. Feel, no.
    Enchant a woman, enjoy every moment with her, cut the tie, was his rule. Most women with whom he had affairs—upper-class, nobly born widows and married women or high-class courtesans—did the same to him. They did not have the energy to waste letting Damien break their hearts, and he did not have time to cultivate an affair lasting more than a few days.
    All