Free The Princess and the Duke by Allison Leigh

gives me a headache.”
    “Ought to stick to the unbubbled kind.”
    Lillian entered the room, and Meredith abruptly realized she was leaning on her arms toward him across the desk, smiling broadly. She hastily sat back, adjusting her expression.
    Lillian looked at Pierce. “Pardon my interruption, Your Grace,” she said, looking a little flustered at finding him in Meredith’s office. She turned quickly to Meredith and handed her a small cartridge. “I pulled the film from ten years ago,” she said efficiently.
    Meredith thanked her and set the tape aside, barely noticing when her secretary left just as quickly and quietly as she’d entered.
    “What’s interesting about ten years ago?”
    Meredith dragged her eyes from the very excellent cut of Pierce’s khaki uniform. Or, more likely, the very excellent cut of the man beneath the uniform. It was no wonder Lillian had been a little flustered. Pierceson Prescott could have that affect on anyone. “My uncle’s death,” she said absently. Did she know anyone who looked as good in a uniform as did Pierce?
    “Why?”
    She focused a little. Picked up the microfilm cartridge and turned it over in her fingers. “Well, actually, it was something you said yesterday.”
    “Me?” He looked disbelieving.
    “You know. About how I must have hardly known the man and all that. And truthfully, I don’t know the details of my uncle’s death. Not really. I’d just gone away for university. I know as much about Penwyck’s place in the world—economically, politically and socially—as it is possible to know, but when it comes to my own family…” She shrugged.
    “Ask your father.”
    “I will. If I feel the need. But I’d just as soon not trouble him with questions while he’s so consumedwith the alliances. And I don’t necessarily want to ask my mother. I don’t want to bring back bad memories for her. I’d just like to understand better what occurred. I feel as if I should know more. Does that make sense?”
    He made a noncommittal sound.
    Well, no matter. She would do what she wanted whether it made sense to anyone else or not. She propped her elbow on the desk and looked at him. “You know, Colonel, this is the most I—we’ve seen of you, well, ever. Two days in a row.” Her fingertips tapped her chin. “It’s almost enough to make a person suspicious.”
    He leaned his hip against the corner of her desk, looking utterly masculine and entirely at ease. “Because I had a meeting here this morning?” A faint smile flirted with his mobile lips. “I think lack of sleep is affecting your levels of paranoia, Your Royal Highness.”
    Paranoia? Hardly. She only wished that seeing him twice in as many days had something to do with her personally. But she knew better.
    Her gaze drifted from his long legs, over the way his uniform hugged his strong thighs and narrow hips. She was not prone to visualizing men without their clothes, but she realized with a mortifying flush that she was doing just that with the colonel.
    And wouldn’t her mother have a field day with that knowledge if she ever learned of it?
    It must be a hangover from the champagne, she thought rather desperately. Champagne always had given her an aching head. And last night she’d consumed more than her share.
    Meredith had no time for the frivolities of her set. She loathed the propensity for idle hands of some of the rich. She’d never gone in for the excesses of drink, the stupidity of drugs, or the mindless pursuit of as many bedmates as humanly possible.
    Yet last night, she’d nearly drunk herself into oblivion. All because she’d been vilely envious of sweet Juliet Oxford’s ability to get the colonel out on the dance floor.
    Pierce hadn’t danced with Juliet on the terrace. The thought snuck in, but Meredith resolutely ignored it. The colonel’s behavior the previous evening was as much a departure from the norm as was hers.
    She deliberately gathered her scattered thoughts. “You