Dukes, Actually: 12 Dukes of Christmas #5

by Erica Ridley

  For the next hour, she patiently showed him basic shot after basic shot, repeating the same movements dozens of times and then demanding the same from him.

  It might have been easier to concentrate on the instructions if she hadn’t placed her hands just below his waistband to arrange his stance, or settled her hands over his to guide his shot. With Carole’s soft, curvy body brushing against his at every turn, Adam had about as much chance of flying to the moon as managing to hit the right cue ball.

  Between shots, he tried to conceal his fractured concentration by jotting notes in a special journal he’d purchased just for this reason, but capturing a motion in words proved impossible. Once she realized what he was about, she took pity on him—and took control of the journal. After explaining each shot, she’d sketch the table in his book, complete with all three balls, the correct position of the cue, and little arcing arrows with notations as to the proper angles for each shot.

  Adam nodded sagely and tried to pretend he could feel the difference between a twenty-degree angle and a thirty-degree angle, but mostly he was doing his best just to hit the ball he was aiming for.

  “My cue ball has a black dot,” she explained. “Yours does not. If this was an actual game, we would score ‘cannons’ by knocking our cue ball into the red ball and the other ball, in any order.”

  He frowned. “They don’t have to go into the pockets?”

  “Not for a cannon. You’re thinking of hazards.” She demonstrated. “A ‘winning hazard’ means potting the red ball by striking it with your cue ball. That shot is worth slightly more than using your cue ball to pot your opponent’s.”

  “How much more?”

  “That depends.” She shrugged. “There is no official rulebook. Players agree on points and rules before they begin. In my experience, potting the opponent’s cue and making a cannon are each worth two points. Potting the red ball is three. Fouls subtract two in my family, but many players add two to the opponent’s score instead. And then there are ‘losing hazards.’”

  “How many points do ‘losing hazards’ take away?”

  “None. Striking your cue into your opponent’s so that you pot your own ball is two points. Doing it to the red one is three. You keep going until there are no balls or you make a foul, such as hitting no balls at all or making more than fifteen hazards in a row. Understand?”

  He stared at the table in bafflement. “Clear as crystal.”

  She burst out laughing. “Don’t worry. I remember what it felt like not to understand how anything worked. Back then, I could barely lift my own cue.” She gave him a crooked grin. “You can do this. Put down the journal. Take a shot.”

  “At the House of Lords, I feel invincible and all-knowing,” he grumbled as he lined up what he hoped was a cannon. “Essentially the opposite of how I feel at this moment.”

  “Proficiency comes with practice,” she said as she returned the balls to their original position and motioned for him to start again. “I doubt you were the Dukest of All Dukes your very first day in Parliament.”

  “You weren’t there,” he answered with fake hauteur. “I was legendary.”

  “You are now,” she agreed, peering up at him sideways from her cue stick. “So am I.”

  She proceeded to jump her cue ball over the top of the red ball in order to pocket Adam’s.

  “How did you…” He floundered wordlessly. “Shouldn’t witchcraft be a foul?”

  “Go and make a law against magic,” she teased, and sashayed around the table to take her next shot.

  Chapter 11

  Carole did her best to keep her posture perfect as Judith fashioned her hair into a series of interlocking twists.

  It wasn’t that she was impatient—although, yes, sometimes she was that. But today she was keeping extra still because Judith had insisted on a complicated hair arrangement, despite spending the first hour of the morning surreptitiously trying to loosen her gnarled fingers.

  An uneasy sensation twisted in Carole’s belly. She now suspected that Judith’s recent preoccupation with pins and curling tongs wasn’t because of some feminine standard for lady billiard instructors, but because Judith feared there would not be many more years in which her arthritic fingers could plait hair at all.

  Carole gazed in the looking-glass at her maid’s beloved lined face. Hair didn’t matter. Who cared if a spinster’s locks closely resembled a rat’s nest? Judith was irreplaceable. The closest thing to a mother Carole had experienced in fifteen long years. Judith deserved to grow old any deuced way she pleased. Even if that meant curling tongs every morning and stolen moments with the neighbor’s butler every afternoon.

  When Azureford had returned to London last autumn, Swinton had stayed behind. When the party had passed and Azureford once again left their village behind, Judith at least would not be brokenhearted. Carole would coax her father to reduce Judith’s working hours, so that she had more time to live her life.

  As for Carole… what did her heart have to do with anything? She’d be too busy running the household and taking care of her father to have time to even daydream about anyone else.

  She hoped.

  “Parcel for you, miss.” Rhoda popped into the room to set a brown-paper parcel on the dressing table.

  “I’d wager that’s the geometry tome you’ve been waiting for.” Judith wrinkled her nose and grimaced. “Don’t know how anyone can be more excited about dry old numbers and lines than the pretty fashion plates in La Belle Assemblée.”

  Carole eyed the crisp brown rectangle. She’d wager Judith was right. That was definitely the book she’d been dying to possess all year. Yet its charms paled against the pleasures awaiting her next door. Reading could wait. There would be plenty of time for Pythagoras once Adam was gone.

  “There.” Judith fluffed Carole’s sleeves. “If he hasn’t stolen a kiss by now, he will today.”

  Carole’s cheeks flushed bright red.

  “Oh?” Judith wiggled her silver eyebrows, blue eyes crinkling with mischief. “Excellent work.”

  “I suppose you’ve been ‘working’ with Swinton?” Carole asked archly.

  “Eh? What’s that? These ears aren’t what they used to be.” But a pretty flush covered Judith’s face, too. “Come along, come along. Haven’t you a billiard lesson to teach?”

  Grinning, they raced from the bedchamber to the front door.

  Mrs. MacDonald stood there waiting, a scrap of paper in her hand. “Miss Quincy, the menu—”

  —was always the same, with only minor variations due to the changing seasons. After her mother died, Carole had taken over the role of approving each day’s course, but she’d never had cause to tell the housekeeper no. Whatever was on that paper was perfectly fine. And if it wasn’t, Father was unlikely to notice anyway.

  “Whatever you suggest, Mrs. MacDonald.” Carole gave an encouraging smile. “You know the kitchen as well as I do. I trust your judgment.”

  And she was in a hurry. Judith was right. There was a billiard lesson to teach.

  “Thank you, miss,” the housekeeper stammered in wonderment, and stepped away from the door.

  Carole and Judith flew next door to the Duke of Azureford’s summer cottage. Swinton opened the door wide before they were halfway up the front path. Adam stood right beside his butler, neither bothering to hide that they’d been awaiting the ladies’ arrival with just as much anticipation.

  “I ought to…” Swinton began, and cleared his throat.

  “I can help,” Judith said quickly.

  Carole and Adam were already almost at the billiard room and missed the rest of whatever fictional explanation they were making up on the spot.

  He stole a kiss the moment they were out of sight.

  Every moment in his arms was like spring after a long winter. A riot of color, of scent, of taste. Everything seemed to bloom at once, filling her with a desire so sharp and so sweet she thought she might swoon from the headiness.

  When
she regained her breath, Carole shook her finger. “That’s the last of the free kisses, Your Grace. If you want more, you’ll have to earn them.”

  “Can I earn them with the extremely clever opening lines I’ve been practicing?” He asked innocently.

  She selected a cue. “You’d better hope you’ve been practicing billiards. Any other questions?”

  His eyes twinkled. “If I were to ask you for one more kiss, would your answer be the same as the answer to this question?”

  “Beast.” Laughing, she shoved a cue into his hands. “Show me a cannon.”

  “You have no idea how much I’d like to,” he murmured.

  Carole arranged the three balls on the baize. “You first. Three in a row earns a kiss.”

  “Three in a row?” His cockiness turned into dubiousness.

  She took pity. “Can you do two in a row?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “Watch.”

  He chalked the leather tip of the cue, aligned himself at the far end of the table, then struck his ivory so that it hit Carole’s first, and then the red ball.

  She clapped her hands. “Do it again.”

  He strutted to the opposite side of the table, carefully arranged his cue, then hit first the red, and then Carole’s ivory.

  “Two in a row, as promised.” She lifted her gaze from the table. “Now what?”

  He pulled a face. “Now is when it falls apart. The second cannon takes a fair bit of luck, and a third is all but impossible. No one could hit a cannon with the balls all spread out like this.”

  “Exactly.” She returned them to their original position and picked up her cue. “This is how you hit both balls and send them only as far as you want them to go.”

  Although he was inexperienced with billiards, Adam copied her motions with control and grace. Not only was he physically in fine form, his grace and coordination were impressive. He was more than a quick study. He was talented. It wouldn’t be long at all before he no longer needed her.

  Her stomach twisted with dread at the impending loss. She would have to try even harder to maintain emotional distance.

  This flirtation is just a game, she reminded herself sternly. You might not be thinking of anyone but him, but Adam is practicing in order to woo someone else.

  She could play along. She’d been playing games her entire life. It was all she had.

  “Afternoon post, Your Grace.” A footman entered the billiard room with a silver tray, and headed straight toward Adam.

  “Leave it on the table, please,” Adam responded without looking up from the shot he was aligning.

  The footman started with obvious surprise, then did as requested. He sent one last intrigued look over his shoulder before disappearing back into the corridor.

  Carole watched with interest. It was obvious the footman had fully expected Adam to immediately drop whatever he was doing to attend to his correspondence. Either Adam regularly received letters of utmost importance and urgency… or he was breaking a long-held habit simply because he preferred to spend his time with Carole. Although her stomach fluttered, she tried not to read too much into it.

  She cleared her throat. “If you need to pause our lesson to review your correspondence…”

  He glanced up, brown eyes wide and a little confused, as if he’d already forgotten the footman’s interruption.

  “I already know what it is.” He shrugged a shoulder. “A few different committees want to nominate me as leader, but I barely have enough time to dedicate to them all as it is. They’re trying to convince me otherwise.”

  She arranged the balls in a new configuration. “Are their causes worthy?”

  “Very.” He frowned at the new lineup. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “When the red ball and your ivory are equidistant from the side, aim to hit here—” She touched a point exactly between them. “—and your cue ball will hit its mark.”

  “Maybe,” he muttered, but did as she suggested.

  His ivory barely whiffed the red ball, lacking enough force to properly pot it, but making the promised contact all the same. Adam’s eyes lit with surprise and triumph. “Can you add it to the journal?”

  “With pleasure.”

  While he realigned the balls to try again, she sketched several similar shots into his journal, careful to annotate each with angles and degrees. He might tease her about the geometry, but Adam was as analytical as she was. Just as he did in the House of Lords, Adam would soon be able to look at a billiard table and see the whole picture, as well as how to change it.

  Her pencil faltered. Thinking of the House of Lords only reminded her that soon he would be gone. London claimed him more than half of each year. And Parliament wasn’t the only thing that called him. There were dinner soirées and cotillions and all the young ladies just waiting to be swept off their feet.

  The hour spent painstakingly pinning and curling her hair now seemed trite and silly. She was not competing. She’d lost before she’d begun.

  She closed the journal. “You’re going to do very well at your party. Well, you won’t beat the le Ducs, but nor will you embarrass yourself. That is, unless you use those horrid introductions.”

  “I hope they’ll make me memorable and interesting. Right now, no one knows anything about me.” His eyes met hers. “Except you.”

  “Which gives me the expertise to point out you’re already interesting.” Heaven knew, she could not cease thinking about him. “If you have to become something you’re not to attract the right person, then she’s not the right person.”

  “My parents prided themselves on not bending an inch for anyone else, not even each other, and all they gained from selfish stubbornness was misery.” His eyes shuttered. “They missed their chance. I vowed I wouldn’t miss mine.”

  She nodded in empathy. Her parents had been happy. Blissfully so. The misery hadn’t come until afterward. Her chest tightened with resolve. The best part of spinsterhood was never risking the pain of loss. “What will determine the right one?”

  His jaw tightened. “To me, ‘duchess material’ means so much more than social connections and a vast dowry. Our personalities need to match, too. I don’t want a marriage where each one ‘wins’ but ‘loses.’”

  Carole understood. She even agreed. So why did it feel like she was the one who would lose?

  Chapter 12

  Adam could not wait to show Carole how he’d mastered her latest challenge.

  When she’d first started spouting algebraic formulas such as, “If your ivory is three times as far from the rail as the red ball, aim for a point four-fifths of the distance to the red one,” he’d thought she’d lost her mind. It sounded like the sort of mathematics others had always hated: If two mail coaches leave London with odd numbers of horses, and each horse can travel at a maximum speed of…

  But she was right. It had taken three long hours and two pots of tea to finally master, but he could now pot the red ball whenever its distance from the side was a calculable factor of his ivory’s distance to—

  Adam chuckled and lined up another shot. Now even his thoughts sounded like Carole. It was as though the sight of a billiard table conjured her to mind.

  Or, really, the sight of anything. Or nothing. Even when lying in bed with his eyes closed, she was still all he could think about. Which was good, because it meant there was no space left in his brain to think about how it would feel when she was no longer about.

  As eager as he was to impress her with his latest billiard trick, she walked through the door looking so frazzled that he set down his cue and immediately rang for tea.

  He lifted her hands in his. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She wrapped her arms about herself and shuddered. “My father.”

  Dread encased Adam’s stomach as he reached for her. “Your father has fallen ill?”

  “I don’t think so. Not physically. He suffers attacks of melancholy.” She leaned her cheek aga
inst Adam’s chest, her voice taut to the point of breaking. “Father spends all day shut away in his study, except when he can’t even do that.”

  “Like today.” Adam stroked her hair.

  She nodded and burrowed closer. “Father will be himself again in a few days; or, at least, what’s left of himself. But he’s not truly living. He hasn’t since my mother died.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Adam tried to think of a solution. “Perhaps… perhaps what he needs is to meet someone new.”

  She pushed away from him. “Father did meet someone. The love of his life. There’s one special person out there for each of us. He met her; he married her; she died.”

  “I know people find the notion of ‘one’ true love romantic, but to me it’s just… sad.”

  “It’s not emotion,” she insisted. “It’s maths. Every problem has a perfect solution.”

  “Does it?” he said doubtfully. “I rather think the perfect match is two imperfect people who happen to be perfect for each other. Since we’re all imperfect, it’s stands to reason that there are plenty of fish in the sea—”

  “My mother was The One.” Her fierce voice cracked, and a glassy sheen coated her eyes.

  “Of course she was,” he agreed quickly. “She was absolutely the perfect and only One then, but your father lives now. Finding happiness a second time doesn’t cancel out the first time.” He tried to find words she would understand. “Love is addition, not subtraction.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way.” With trembling hands, she slid a finger under her necklace and pulled a slender golden ring up from her bodice. “This was my mother’s. I keep it next to my heart. It first belonged to her mother, and her mother’s mother, and the grandmother before that.”

  She dropped the necklace and the ring returned to its hiding spot.

  “I’m breaking the chain,” she said quietly. “On purpose. That’s the only way to be certain I won’t lose my daughter and my daughter won’t lose me.”