Free The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness by Tamara Lejeune Page B

“Miss ... er ... Waverly tells me she has been here before ... ?”
    “Oh, yes,” Pru said eagerly. “Max gave me the grand tour! It makes our little house in Clarges Street look like a mean little hovel! I won’t tell you what it makes our house in Philadelphia look like.”
    Max looked at her coldly, but Pru took no notice of that. “I thought I saw you in Bond Street!” she went on happily, seizing Max by the hand. “Did you not see me? Well, no matter! I knew you must come home eventually. I have been getting to know your dear, dear uncle! He kept you away from London so long that I was afraid he didn’t approve of me. You do like me, don’t you?”
    “I like all of Max’s friends,” the duke answered, casting his nephew a look of appeal.
    “Miss Prudence,” Max said coolly, “what are you doing here?”
    She blinked at him. “I told you: I saw you in Bond Street. At least, I thought I did. That was my first inkling that you were back in town. Perhaps I didn’t see you at all. Perhaps it was a sign from heaven!” She giggled.
    “It most definitely was not a sign from heaven,” said Max.
    “No, I suppose not. I just wanted to thank you,” she went on, “for the invitation to the first drawing room. You just don’t know what it means to me! You haven’t forgotten that you promised to give a ball, too?”
    “I have not forgotten,” he said coldly. “The ball will take place the night after your presentation. That is the done thing, I believe.”
    “Oh, heavenly!” said Pru. “I don’t mean to remind you of your promise,” she added quickly. “Lady Jemima says I should not remind you of any of your promises to me. But I did want to make sure that you had not forgotten. I wondered why you did not arrange for me to be included in the first drawing room before the invitations were sent out. You did say you would give me every possible assistance in society.”
    “It must have slipped my mind.”
    “I would not have minded the fourth drawing room,” she went on. “But Patience is invited to the first drawing room, and it hardly seemed fair ! Especially when she doesn’t even want to go.”
    “Miss Prudence, my uncle is very tired. Please allow me to show you out.”
    Pru smiled angelically at the duke. “Of course! I can come back tomorrow, when you are feeling better. Good-bye! Parting is such sweet sorrow, don’t you think?”
    “It would be better, Miss Prudence,” said Max, “if you would allow us to call on you in Clarges Street. My uncle’s health does not always allow him to receive visitors.”
    “Of course. I understand,” Pru whispered. Startling them both, she backed out of the room in a series of deep curtsys better reserved for the throne room at St. James’s Palace.
    “There’s no need for all that, Miss Prudence,” Max told her curtly. “A simple curtsy would have sufficed.”
    “I know, but I need the practice,” she replied. Outside, she drew his attention to the Waverly coat of arms painted on the door. “Isn’t it handsome? Patience calls it ‘the mystery of the missing lion’s paw’! She’s so impertinent. Honestly, I wish she would abdicate and let me be the baroness. I’d be so much better at it than she is.”
    With a curt bow, Max put her in the carriage and closed the door. Then he went back to the drawing room to face his uncle.
    “What a pretty girl,” the duke congratulated him. “Lively, too. She has such ebullience! Such joie de vivre! I—I quite like her. The two of you might have been made for each other!”
    Max was not in the least bit deceived. “Don’t worry, Uncle. I have no intention of marrying her.”
    The Duke of Sunderland heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank heavens!” he cried weakly. “Twenty minutes in her company and I’m quite done in! I like conversation as much as the next fellow, I’m sure, but there is such a thing as overdoing it.”
    “I am sorry she imposed on you.”
    The duke drew his shaggy