The Princess And The Duke. Allison Leigh

      “Your father is asking for you.”

      Meredith nodded. “Of course. Thank you.” She looked over her shoulder at Pierce. “Colonel. The dance was…delightful. If I don’t see you before you leave, I hope you’ll have a safe trip home.”

      “Thank you.”

      With a sweep of her skirt, Meredith glided toward the terrace doors. As she neared, the light haloed around her, glinting off her hair, her dress, her ivory skin.

      Pierce was glad for the relative darkness in which he stood. Lady Gwendolyn studied him silently for a moment. It had been a lot of years since he’d gone to Gwendolyn Corbin on the occasion of her husband’s funeral to express his condolences at her loss, only to end up having to lie to the young woman when—tears flooding her lovely blue eyes—she’d asked him the most natural of questions. What her husband’s last words had been.

      Pierce still felt awkward in her presence.

      The woman, with no smile whatsoever on her classically beautiful face, nodded briefly. “Good night, Your Grace.” Then she turned and glided away.

      Pierce turned around and stared over the wall into the night, his hands tight on the stone ledge. He hated the noble title.

      There was nothing noble about him. Nothing at all.

      He stood there, drawing in the increasingly crisp, sea-scented air, until his tension abated. Until he could be sure he wouldn’t betray himself when he went into the ballroom. Only then did he turn and follow the women’s path inside.

      He immediately noticed Meredith in conversation with her father. She was smiling as she greeted the people in the group surrounding the King, but Pierce could see how tired she was.

      If King Morgan were any kind of father, he’d have seen it, too. But the man standing beside Meredith wasn’t any type of father. Not to Meredith. Nor to anyone else.

      Because the man standing beside Meredith, foisting her off into dancing with one of the men, was not her father, King Morgan of Penwyck.

      It was Morgan’s twin brother, Broderick.

      And Pierce was one of a very small handful of people in the country who knew it.