The woman’s hair was pale as snow and fell to her hips in elegant waves, the ends of it sweeping into the pond. She wore a thin white gown that billowed in the water, the fabric so sheer that her figure beneath it skimmed the edge of visibility. Foxes crept in the grass behind her, their golden eyes watching through towering ferns. The image felt like a moment captured in time, so real that Blythe kept waiting for the woman to look up. Kept waiting to see whether her eyes were brown or blue or green…
“They’re silver.”
Blythe nearly tripped into the portrait at the voice behind her—brisk, deep, and decidedly masculine. She turned at once, and, given the man’s height, the first thing she noticed was not his face but that he wore a coat of ivory and gold, with fitted trousers to match. From the quality and color of the material alone, Blythe understood at once whom she was speaking with and dropped into a practiced curtsy.
“Your Highness.” She dipped her head, heart in her throat. For while she may have found society and all its customs to be silly, she could behave long enough to impress a prince.
“You were trying to look at her eyes, weren’t you?” the prince asked. “They’re silver.”
Ever so slowly Blythe straightened, eyes trailing up and over the beautiful stitching of his coat, then toward a ruffled white cravat that climbed so high on his neck it appeared to be strangling him. And then she looked even higher, to his face, and her breath caught.
Two familiar amber eyes looked past her to the painting, sparing no concern for Blythe, whose mouth had fallen slack. The man before her was the very one she’d cursed in her bedroom several nights prior. The same one she’d planned to give a piece of her mind the next time she saw him. The man who had condemned her father was the very same prince she was meant to charm, yet the thought of sparing him a single kind word made Blythe want to cut off her own tongue.
“You.” The word slipped from Blythe before her mind could catch up with her mouth. She had to clutch her skirts to keep her hands from shaking. “You’re Prince Aris?”
She couldn’t be certain whether he recognized her, for the prince made only a low grunt beneath his breath and stepped toward the painting. His face was expressionless as he inspected it. “What do you think of her?”
So jarred was she by the question that Blythe turned and followed his gaze to the painting, giving her mind a moment to process the fact that it would be in her best interest to excuse herself before she said something she’d regret. She sucked in every foul word burning her tongue; she knew she’d already made a piss-poor first impression by practically shoving herself into the man and condemning him at Thorn Grove. Just as she knew that someone like him could change the fate of her family with a single word.
“She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Blythe answered truthfully, steadying her temper.
The man grunted again but didn’t turn away. “Is that all?”
So that he wouldn’t see her annoyance, Blythe stepped in front of the prince as she tried to look at the painting not as a consumer impressed with it on the surface but as an artist.
“She is gentle,” Blythe said, “but sad. There is a weight to her smile, and creases near her eyes that make her seem older than she appears. She has much love for wherever this place is, though she’s very tired. Perhaps from standing too long in a frigid pond that smells like duck droppings and dead fish?”
When she drew back, a sly grin on her face, Blythe found that the prince was no longer staring at the painting but at her. She’d hoped that he’d have at least a smidgen of humor somewhere beneath his rigid demeanor, yet his expression remained surly. He kept his hands behind his back, and with even more of a bite, said, “You are the girl who threw herself at me like a wild boar.”
Blythe had to press her lips together to keep from saying the first thing that came to mind; calling him a bitter and resentful brute who had potentially ruined her life would only get her so far. Still, she couldn’t help biting back. “And you are the man who publicly condemned my father to prison with no proof.”
He clicked his tongue, and Blythe hated that she couldn’t for the life of her decipher the vague look on his face. Boredom? Intrigue?
“Your father was the one to give Lord Wakefield that drink, was he not?” The way he phrased the question made it sound so enragingly simple that Blythe clenched her skirts tighter.
“My father would never have killed Lord Wakefield. He was wrongly accused.”