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      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      COMING NEXT MONTH

      PROLOGUE

      “OH, DEAR,” Mrs. Abigail Smith stammered, “Oh dear, indeed.”

      Mrs. Abigail Smith was not a woman easily ruffled. For forty-three years the graduates of Mrs. Smith’s Academy of Fine Nannies had been eagerly sought by business moguls, financial wizards, movie stars, the old money and the nouveau riche.

      Famous people did not fluster her. Au contraire! She specialized in dealing with the sometimes difficult and eccentric people of substance, and she considered it her special gift to cater to the needs of their children.

      Still, for all that, Mrs. Smith had never been in the same room as a real live prince.

      Prince Ryan Kaelan, House of Kaelan, Isle of Momhilegra, more commonly known as the Isle of Music, sat before her radiating presence.

      Though she had sat across this very desk from many of the world’s most powerful people, or at least their representatives, she had never quite felt this before.

      Awe.

      She was awed by him. He was an intimidatingly handsome man, dressed in a long, black cashmere coat, the pristine white of a silk shirt collar showing beneath. But even without the obvious expense of those tailored clothes showing off the broadness of his shoulder, his amazing height, he would have been arresting. His physical appeal cast what Mrs. Smith’s generation would have called the spell of the black Irish. He had hair the color of night, thick and manicured. The prince also possessed amazing skin, faintly copper-toned, golden, and his features, from high cheekbones to straight nose, to clefted chin, were unreasonably attractive.

      But it was his eyes that were arresting. Midnight-blue mingled with the color of sapphires, they were ridged by sinfully sooty lashes, and they were the deep, dark eyes of a man much older than the twenty-eight years the prince had walked the earth. The prince’s eyes held command, charisma…and sorrow.

      “Oh dear,” Mrs. Smith said again, of his request.

      “Is there a problem?” His voice was the voice one would expect from a man of such stature: educated, composed, full of certainty, and yet mysterious and elusive music, the Gaelic accents of his homeland, were threaded through it. The result was, well, sensual.

      Sensual? She was going to be seventy-three on her next birthday, but she felt herself blushing like a schoolgirl.

      “Yes!” she said, grabbing a trifle desperately onto his own turn of phrase. “A problem! Miss Winslow is, er, otherwise engaged.”

      He nodded, a slight incline of his head, but his gaze locked on hers, and he tapped his leather gloves lightly against his coat sleeve, ever so faintly impatient. She felt her state of fluster grow. He was a man who expected the world to bend to his will, who was used to his every request being granted.

      But Prudence Winslow for his nanny? As the royal nanny to his two motherless children, a five-year-old boy, and a baby girl, just over a year? Impossible!

      “We have many nannies who are imminently suitable for this position,” Mrs. Smith rushed to assure him. “In fact—” she began to go through the papers on her desk, aware that she was pawing in her haste to please him “—I have—”

      His hand came to rest on top of hers, to stop her, and she nearly fainted at the intensity of that single, brief touch.

      “I want her,” he said.

      Mrs. Smith felt like a fish, beached, her mouth moving, but not a sound coming out. A statement like that could be left open to wild misinterpretation!

      “Her,” he repeated, almost gently, gesturing to the picture in front of him, but there was no mistaking he intended to get what he wanted.

      The picture he was pointing to was part of a newspaper article, the story that had put Miss P. Winslow—not to mention Mrs. Smith’s Academy of Fine Nannies—on the map.

      The photo looked like a heap of dark clothing collapsed in front of a car. In fact, it was Prudence Winslow, moments after she had shoved the stroller she was pushing to safety after some maniac in a stolen car had run the red light where she was crossing the street.

      It had, of course, been an act of singular bravery, so far above and beyond the call of duty that the whole of New York City was proclaiming Prudence a hero. It seemed everyone now wanted nannies who were willing to place their lives on the line for their young charges.

      Prudence herself, to her great credit, was annoyed by the fuss, and eager to leave the incident behind her.

      And sadly, save for that one incident, Prudence was not exactly the poster child Mrs. Smith would have selected for her academy.

      Prudence was simply a little too everything: too tall, too flamboyant and too rebellious. Too redheaded, Mrs. Smith thought though she knew to judge temperament by hair color was hopelessly old-fashioned. Still, that hair said it all: wild, cascading curls of pure copper, that refused to be tamed into a proper bun. And the girl’s eyes: green, snapping with spunk, with spirit, with that certain mischief that made her a huge hit with children. The eyes, the hair, the height and the mischief added up to an unfortunate distraction to any male member of the household over the age of puberty.

      Prudence’s first two postings had not been great successes. Will not wear a uniform, the first had said as a reason for dismissal. Reading between the lines, Mrs. Smith suspected the man of the house had probably noticed Prue just a little too much. In a stroke of genius, when Prue’s second posting had ended as badly as her first, Mrs. Smith had placed Prue in a single-mother home.

      Still, Mrs. Smith knew she was uncharacteristically indulgent of the girl’s defects, possibly because Prudence had been raised by one of her very own nannies.

      When Marcus Winslow had died unexpectedly last year, it had quickly become apparent he had been holding together a house of cards. Not a penny left. And that house of cards had toppled right on top of his unsuspecting—and totally spoiled—only daughter.

      Really, after the unhappy endings of those first two placements, Mrs. Smith shouldn’t have given her any more chances, but she admired how Prudence had risen to the challenges tossed at her. It was very hard not to admire a person who, when handed lemons, made lemonade.

      And Prudence did love children! One day, Mrs. Smith was determined, that with patience and practice, Prudence Winslow would make a fine nanny.

      But to test her optimism on a prince? One that the whole world watched incessantly? Whose every tragedy, triumph—whose every breath—was so documented?

      “Dear—” She blushed, realizing dear was not the proper form of address for a prince. “I just don’t think Prudence would be a good match for your household.”

      “Prudence?” he said, and then smiled as