The Duke of Desire

by Michaels, Jess

  She did not. Instead, she kept her gaze firmly on his and said, “Because you are a cad, Your Grace. Someone who cruelly uses others for his own purposes and doesn’t care a whit about the consequences because he is too spoilt and cruel to ever experience them.”

  His mouth dropped open and she stepped from his arms, performing a curtsey as the song ended, as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary to him.

  “I hope that settles this, Roseford,” she said. “And we do not have to have this conversation again. Good evening.”

  She pivoted then, walking away to leave him on the dancefloor, staring after her in shock. At least for a moment.

  And then…he followed her.

  Katherine’s hands would not stop shaking as she burst onto the terrace behind the ballroom and fled to the wall. She rested her palms there, pressing hard so that the rough surface would dig into her flesh and remind her to be grounded. She had not been grounded with Roseford.

  She had been emotional. She had lashed out. How he would laugh at that, she knew. And how he could turn it against her if that became his whim. He was good at that: twisting circumstances. Just look at the waltz they’d shared. His fingers had pressed so warm into her skin, his gaze had held hers with such intensity. That was seduction and she had been forced to fight not to be wrapped up in it like a little fool.

  She would have to be a fool to believe in his attentions when she knew the purpose behind them. That bargain he’d made with his friends, the one that said he would win her…as if she were a twisted prize!

  “Arrogant bastard,” she muttered into the wind.

  “Why all the vitriol, my lady?”

  She froze. She’d been so focused on her tangled emotions, she hadn’t heard Roseford come out onto the terrace behind her. Now she pivoted and found him a few steps away. They were alone. Just as they had been all those years ago.

  Her heart stuttered at the moonlight slashed across his face. At the longing his expression created in her lonely body. She despised this man for what he had done and not done. She couldn’t forget that. Ever.

  “Must you stalk me across terraces all over London?” she snapped.

  One brow arched as he took a step toward her. He looked confused and the irritation she felt toward him ratcheted up another notch. That long ago night on another terrace had been a pivotal part in her life, as had the one after. He didn’t even remember it or her. She was just another in a long line of ladies he’d discarded.

  “Please, just go away,” she said, her voice sounding as heavy as it felt, as everything felt in that moment.

  He shook his head. “No. I want to know why you are so against me when I have done nothing to you.”

  She pursed her lips. Done nothing to you. That was an apt way of putting it. Done nothing for you would have also been accurate.

  “Why am I not allowed to simply think ill of you? Are you so concerned with having the love of every single person that you cannot allow someone the space to disagree?”

  A flicker of something crossed his face. Something dark and painful. She caught her breath at the sight of it, for it was entirely unexpected. Had she hit a nerve?

  But then the reaction was gone. His smirk was back. Perhaps she had imagined his pain, wanted to see it there so badly that she’d placed it where it didn’t belong.

  “I’m sure plenty of people think ill of me,” he said with a shrug as he moved closer again. He stepped around her and set his hands on the terrace wall next to where hers had been before she turned. She edged away slightly, not wanting to be too close. Just in case.

  Why did he have to smell so good? Something leathery and male.

  “Do you pursue all of them across ballrooms, then?” she asked. “Demanding to know why they don’t count you as a friend? You must spend a lot of time shouting at the wind.”

  He laughed. “First you accuse me of believing everyone must and does love me, then you say I must spend my time trying to convince the naysayers. It is very confusing, trying to parse out exactly what it is that offends you so about me.”

  She folded her arms and glared at him.

  If anything, his smile widened. “Did I tread on your feet while we were dancing?”

  She refused to respond.

  It did not deter him. “I forgot an appointment we once had?”

  Her lips tightened. He was teasing her, and the worst part was that some piece of her liked it. His charisma was a weapon of the worst kind.

  “You hate my eyes?” he asked.

  She darted her gaze to those eyes. Dark brown, sharp and intelligent. She swallowed hard as she gazed into them, lost in their depths for a moment. Then she caught her breath and backed up another step.

  “It is your attitude, Your Grace. Your history. Your reputation. Must I go on?”

  “I would think you, of all people, would not judge someone so harshly based on gossip,” he said, this time his voice was soft and there was no longer teasing in it.

  Her lips parted and she felt the color draining from her cheeks. “How dare you say such a thing to me?” she choked.

  “At least I am doing it to your face and not behind your back,” he said. There was no cruelty to his voice, but she felt every word as if they were daggers stabbed to her heart.

  She dropped her head. She had been trying to be strong so that no one would see how much she was broken by their judgment. By their unkindness. But in that moment, she couldn’t be. And she hated herself for losing her mask in front of this man, of all men in the world.

  “So you wish to laugh in my face then. Am I supposed to thank you for being bold about it rather than surreptitious? Is that meant to reduce my humiliation?”

  “Why should you be humiliated?” he asked, and she jerked her head up. He was closer somehow. Bigger. “You did nothing wrong.”

  She caught her breath. A few years ago when they’d stood together on a terrace like this one, she had not understood the flutter low in her belly. She hadn’t recognized what the dilation of his pupils meant. Now she did.

  Yet one thing was similar to that night long ago. As he eased in a tiny bit closer, she recognized that he was going to kiss her. And just like that other night, she wanted him to. Even though she knew his ulterior motives, even though she’d already experienced how he would do as he pleased and not give a damn about how she was left in shambles, she wanted his mouth on hers.

  So she did the only thing she could. For the sake of self-preservation, she turned on her heel and walked away. Her hands shook as she waited for him to follow once more. To demand. To touch her and shatter any hopes she had to keeping these desires at bay.

  “Katherine,” he said as she reached the terrace door.

  She froze there, refusing to look at him. Refusing to let him see how just saying her name made her knees shake.

  When she didn’t respond, he continued, “You should not be so afraid of your nature.”

  She tensed. Her nature. Yes, that was the trouble in all this. It always had been. But she refused to say anything in reply. She just entered the ballroom and left him without daring to look back.

  As she stepped into her foyer, Katherine was still shaking from her encounter with Roseford, even though it had been over an hour ago. That damnable man was a menace. She had to stay far, far away from him or risk destroying herself even more than she already had been. She certainly needed to stop obsessing over his wager that he would win her body. She didn’t want that. Not in the slightest.

  “Wilkes, you do not know how happy I am to be home,” she said with a forced smile as her butler took her wrap and gloves. “I’m going to have a drink and turn straight in. Will you ask Evelyn to meet me upstairs in a moment to help me ready myself?”

  Her butler nodded slightly. “I will do that, my lady, but I must tell you that you have a visitor.”

  Katherine froze and stared at him. “A visitor,” she repeated in confusion. “At mid
night? Who in the world could be here at this hour?”

  “Mr. Montague, my lady,” he said.

  Any happy feelings she’d had at being safe and sound at home now fled. “My father,” she said softly.

  Wilkes pursed his lips. “I did try to dissuade him from waiting, as we did not expect you home from the ball until much later, but he was insistent. I hope I did the right thing in surrendering the parlor to him.”

  Katherine bent her head. “Yes, of course. He would not have been moved from his stubbornness no matter what you said, Wilkes. I’ll go see him. And I’ll ring for Evelyn myself when I’m ready—no need to find her for me now.”

  The butler nodded and she walked away, legs shaking just as they had been after her encounter with Roseford. But for very different reasons.

  She hesitated at her parlor door. It had never seemed so big and daunting before. She’d never dreaded opening it so much. And yet she did so because there was no other choice.

  Her father was standing at her fire, staring at the flames. He had never been to this house. She’d liked that about this place. It was hers, not Gregory’s or her father’s or anyone else’s.

  And now he stood in the middle of the room and somehow it was spoiled by his presence. At least for the moment.

  “Father,” she said softly.

  He pivoted and speared her with an immediate glare. “You look like a whore in that gown.”

  She lifted a hand to her chest at the slur, spreading her fingers as if to cover the skin that her dress revealed. It was current fashion, of course, nothing the world would judge her on. Her father was another story.

  “I’m surprised you are here,” she said, ignoring his glare and his heated, cruel words. “You don’t call on me, and certainly not at this hour.”

  “I had to come when I heard you have made a return to Society,” he said. “You are a little fool.”

  She set her jaw and crossed to the sideboard where she stared at the bottles lined up there. She had intended just a sip of sherry to calm herself before she went to bed. Now she grabbed for a bottle of scotch, Gregory’s best, one of the few things she’d brought with her when she departed his home months ago.

  She poured half a tumbler full and took a long sip. “I’m tired,” she said. “And in no mood to hear you go on about my many sins. Perhaps you could write them in one of your many warm and wonderful letters. Isn’t that how we communicate? Why change things?”

  His face twisted in anger at her impertinence and he took three long steps toward her. She braced herself, though she wasn’t certain for what. He had struck her before, of course, but not for a long time. He had very little power over her now, not when she had her own money and title and home.

  Over her heart…well, that was another story. His ugliness had always moved her, cut her, made her long for acceptance.

  “How can you go back after what you’ve done? You are a marked woman—they will never accept you. You will be seen as what you are and always have been. A wanton.”

  She bent her head for the second time that night and blinked against tears. The worst part was that her father wasn’t wrong. There seemed to be no going back to Society, just as he claimed. She was seen as dirty or broken or damaged because of how Gregory had died.

  “Please stop,” she whispered, willing herself not to break down in front of him. That would give him too much pleasure.

  “I know you’ve been seeing your aunt,” he snapped.

  She jerked her head up and saw that her father’s round face had gone purple in his anger. “Are you spying on me?”

  “Reports come back to me,” he growled. “Do not question me when you are the problem.”

  She almost laughed at that. The problem. Oh yes, she had always been that to him. Just as her mother had been. So many problems for a man with such piety.

  “Then wash your hands of me,” she said on a heavy sigh. “This is the perfect time to do it, isn’t it? You can tell everyone that you will not support your whore daughter who killed her husband in the most shocking way. That should keep your godly friends praying for you for years.”

  He moved up again and caught her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh as he shook her. “This impertinence is entirely because of Bethany’s influence. You three are all alike. You, her, your mother…loose women who will not come to heel. It is in your nature to be lost. It is in your nature to be rotted to your very core.”

  Katherine tore her arm from his grip and fled across the room from him. “Go home, Father,” she said. “We have nothing more to say to each other.”

  “We do not,” he agreed. “This is the time for me to sever my ties to you. It’s the only way to my own salvation. You are no longer my daughter, Katherine. Goodbye.”

  She stared at his departing back, tears stinging her eyes. She wasn’t certain how much of them were tears of relief and how much were tears of heartbreak. Her father had declared her a lost cause many a time in her life, but this time there had been a finality to it. A clear break that she knew she would not make any attempts to repair. What was between them had never been whole and she had no intention of trying to make it so now.

  Still, though, his words rang in her ears even long after he was gone.

  He’d spoken of her nature. It was funny that he had used that phrase to describe what he saw as wanton depravity. Roseford had used the same words on the terrace not so long ago. And to describe what she supposed was much the same part of her. The part these men saw as…loose. Wild.

  Her father had hated that part of her. When she was a girl, he had railed on her for having too much fun or learning too much or wanting too much.

  Judging from the bet Roseford had made about her, he didn’t hate her for it. He wanted to use her for it. Harvest the desires she’d been harboring for so long. Cultivate them for his own pleasure and then crow that he had won her.

  The duke had said her nature wasn’t wrong. That she ought not deny those things that woke her hot and needy in the night. That they weren’t wrong as her father had said or her husband had said.

  But was he right? She didn’t even know anymore. Not when her mind was swimming and her heart was breaking. At any rate, she’d probably lost his interest when she walked away from him. Perhaps that was for the best.

  Chapter Five

  Robert watched as James leaned over the billiard table and took a careful shot. He had lined it up perfectly, as he always did, and the balls snapped together before one glided into the pocket. James stood and smiled at him.

  “I see it, I see it,” Robert grumbled. “You’ve always been better at this than I am.”

  “It is perhaps the only activity where I am superior,” James said with a chuckle.

  “Emma would likely disagree,” Robert said, looking over the table for a shot. To his frustration, he had few options. Sort of like his life at present.

  “Emma would argue that I am perfect in every way. Don’t you dare tell her the truth, for I’m certain she would run away.”

  Robert leaned his cue against the side of the table and faced his friend. “No, she wouldn’t. She adores you, flaws and all.”

  James’s expression softened. “She does at that. We are…she is with child again. She is due around the same time as Isabel, actually.”

  Robert’s eyes went wide. James and Emma already had a little girl, Beatrice, born just over eighteen months before. He had watched, rather shocked, as his dear friend had surrendered himself to the two women in his life. Emma and Bibi had James wrapped around their fingers like no one else could ever do to the powerful duke.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  “Do you mean that?” James asked as they shook hands. “You aren’t going to rail at me about how I’m becoming old and boring?”

  “Not tonight,” Robert said with a sigh. “Though I do wonder when you are going to start lecturing me. I know you know. I know Matthew told you.”
>
  James’s smile faded a little. “He told me you two quarreled,” he said. “And yes, he said why. Even if he hadn’t, Isabel told Emma everything.”

  “And all you couples are like units. If one knows, the other does,” Robert said. “I wrote Matthew a letter of apology and he wrote back with forgiveness. But I wonder if he told you something different. We’ll see each other before all of you leave for your country party and I’d like to know what I’ll face. I know I crossed a line.”

  He felt his face heat with that last admission, just as it did every time he considered what he’d said to Matthew. How he’d brought up the circumstances of his meeting Isabel, yes. But also what he’d said about Katherine and his plans for her. Matthew’s eyes had been so filled with…disgust.

  “Tyndale doesn’t hold a grudge,” James said softly. “You know him. At this point, I think he’s merely worried about you. As am I.”

  “And that is why you invited me here,” Robert said with a shake of his head. “All right, my friend, tell me what an ass I am. How ungentlemanly. How beneath me my plans for Lady Gainsworth are.”

  James blinked and held his gaze. “You have already decided what I would say. I wonder if it’s because those are the feelings in your own heart.”

  Robert pursed his lips. “You assume I am far better than I am. You’d think you’d know me after all this time.”

  “I do know you.” James moved toward him a step. “And I know about her. Gainsworth was…I didn’t know him well. He was far older than us, far older than her. What I did know was a rather cold, seemingly pious man, though there were rumors to the contrary. I have no idea if his wife loved him, but he has not left her in the best position.”

  “She has money,” Robert said. Oh yes, he’d had his man look into her since their last encounter. Isabel’s words had tweaked him. James’s were starting to do the same.

  “Yes, Emma said something about her having her own little home here in London. Charlotte thought she had a small inheritance to live on. But you cannot believe that is all a woman needs in life. To return to Society after such a scandal, to come into those rooms with one’s head held high.” James let out his breath. “That takes a strength of character I wouldn’t guess half of us have.”