“One question.” His fingers snapped like a bracelet around her wrist. “Why have you been at such pains to arouse my jealousy of this weakling whom now you seem to despise?”
Deliciously she smiled. “Ah, you humorists who cannot see the joke on yourselves! Once you said that I was humorous only in that I had no humor. Since, you have taught me. Tell me, is not jealousy the rough stone that whets an edge of love on attraction?”
“I’d sort of hate to part with the Littlest Devil,” His Highness tentated. “It has seemed almost like having a child of one’s own in the palace. If she were a boy, I don’t believe I could. Strange, that hankering in the heart of the worst of men and devils to reproduce himself in a son!”
He glanced up at his coat-of-arms, then back at her. The peculiar intensity of his look was unendurable. Her lids drooped over the consternation which she feared would show in her eyes. But she pressed her advantage.
“I’d like the babe to go along, for her sake as well as my own. Her crime was her parents’. You wouldn’t fancy that third-to-fourth generation rule if you’d ever had a child. Come, dear Devil, acknowledge that my reasons are good. Let me have my way this once. Afterward you may have——”
“Exactly what?”
She lifted her face, pale as a night flower, to the strong light of his gaze.
“There is a question between us,” her lips murmured reminder. “You can compel me, but you want my consent. You spoke just now of a sporting proposition. Very well, I’ll make you a bet. This favor I ask you against——”
She could not control the shiver that seized her. The spit of fork-tongued lightnings excused the droop of her face. For a moment the growl of thunder silenced her voice.
“I can keep promises, too. This favor against—anything—you want—of me.”