A Dance with the Devil (The Devilish Devalles)

by Gayle, Catherine

  “I don’t understand why you are so resigned to the likelihood of being challenged to a duel over this. Or why you would have suggested this arrangement in the first place.”

  She drew up short and waited for him to do so, also. He stopped and turned, his near-black eyes fixed upon hers in the moonlight.

  “I’m not sure I’ve sorted it all out myself,” he said. “I just know that you’ve intrigued me from the moment we first met, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you ever since.” Then he started walking again.

  Not being able to stop thinking about her was a good enough reason to risk his life? She’d hardly stopped thinking about him, either, but that was due to her own inability to remove her feelings from their situation. She would be much better off if she could stop herself from falling prey to his charms, but it was far too late to stop that tidal wave.

  The longer she knew him, the more the thought of actually marrying him and not merely faking this engagement appealed to her. Julianna wouldn’t try to fool herself. Even though he had placed the ultimate power in her hands over their future, she wouldn’t trap him into it. After all, their initial meeting had come about because she was attempting to rescue him from a similar fate with another lady. What sort of hypocrite would it make her if she were to do precisely that to him only a week later?

  The very worst sort.

  No, she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t. Lord Blackmore had done her a great service by offering this solution to her conundrum with Lord Medeley. She would have to be a rather poor sport to repay him by insisting they marry even though it wasn’t at all what he wanted.

  As they entered the Chinese pavilion, he slowed his pace. Hundreds of people were milling about in groups, filling the space with their movement and their voices in equal measure. They could disappear in a crowd like this and no one would know the difference. Either that or they could become a spectacle, the center of all the attention surrounding them.

  For some reason, this moment felt monumental. Her breaths came in short, staggering shudders, and her heartbeat was pounding in time with the footsteps nearby.

  He did nothing to draw the attention of the crowd. Instead, he kept his voice low and smooth as he said, “You asked what would happen if you didn’t cry off.”

  Julianna could only nod her head, encouraging him to continue.

  “Do you not want to end this?”

  That was when her heart well and truly stopped beating within her chest. She couldn’t swallow. All she could do was stare up at him and wonder where this all was leading.

  “Because I do not want it to end.”

  Her head shot up so she could meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, but what?”

  “I don’t want you to come to your senses,” he said, and he sounded as serious as she could ever remember hearing him in the brief time they’d known one another. “I want you to marry me when this is all finished.”

  Her heart was beating so hard it might have fractured into a thousand pieces, but she couldn’t care about that at the moment. All she knew was that Lord Blackmore had just put into words the very thing she’d been feeling all night—and indeed for the past several days—when she hadn’t been able to give voice to it at all.

  “Are you certain?” Julianna asked, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t come to his senses and realize the absurdity of their situation.

  “Not in the least. And at the same time, I’m more certain than I’ve ever been about anything in my life.”

  She looked so beautiful, standing there with the moonlight bathing her in its glow, making her porcelain skin seem almost ethereal and her blue eyes as wide and clear as the sky on a summer day. The shock on her features matched what was racing through his mind.

  “You’re mad, you know,” she said finally.

  Mad didn’t come close to what he must be to have spoken aloud such thoughts. Fit for Bedlam would be far more appropriate.

  Every day Luke had spent in Miss Selwyn’s presence had brought him closer to that madness, though, until he couldn’t bear the thought of allowing her to walk away from him. His bet with Gabriel didn’t matter anymore.

  Granted, he couldn’t stop her from crying off. If she didn’t want to marry him, she couldn’t be coerced into going through with it, and he wouldn’t attempt to do so. But it would devastate him if she did.

  Early on in their courtship, when he’d told all the ladies at her at-home how he’d fallen head over ears in love with her, it had all been for show—a way to put their plan into action. But bit by bit, day after day, it had become more of a reality.

  He loved the wicked gleam that would come into her eyes when her parents weren’t looking, a sure sign that she was planning something just a little bit inappropriate that she could share with him and him alone. He loved how she felt comfortable enough with him to conspire together. And that jealousy he’d felt at the ball had turned into an ugly monster, where the thought of her doing any of the things he’d done with her over the last while with some other man tightened his chest until he couldn’t breathe.

  Luke wanted to be the man in her life that she could always conspire with, and more.

  “I might be mad,” he replied with a smile, “but I’m more than all right with being mad as long as you’ll share in my madness.”

  She had to be thinking along those lines already. Surely. Why else would she have asked what would happen if she didn’t cry off? She didn’t want to end their relationship any more than he did, so why should they?

  “I already stepped across the line into madness that first night we met, when I first agreed to go along with your plan.” She gave him a timid smile, not the bold, playful one he was so accustomed to seeing, the one he was so very much in love with. “I don’t see how I could possibly go back now.”

  “Don’t give me false hope,” he said. “I can’t bear to be teased by you.”

  Her eyes widened, and she raised a mocking brow. “Oh? Perhaps I should end our engagement after all, then, Lord Blackmore. I can’t imagine how I could manage to be married to you and avoid teasing you.”

  Luke let out a bark of laughter loud enough to draw the eyes of a few people milling around them in the Chinese pavilion. “Touché,” he said when the glimmer of mischievousness returned to her eyes. “That sort of teasing I can handle, but only if you agree to marry me and start calling me Luke.”

  He still wasn’t entirely sure when the thought of actually marrying her had taken hold of him and become something enticing instead of something to be avoided. He’d always known he would have to marry someday, but someday had always seemed so far off in the future that he’d had no desire to rush into a marriage with a woman he didn’t love.

  Thank goodness he hadn’t married after Father died, when Mother had tried to rush him into it at every turn. She’d been determined that he needed to start filling his nursery, and he had merely been trying to sort out how to go about running the earldom on his own and doing the best he could by Gabriel and Amelia.

  And now he might have found love—real love, the sort he had been unsure he would ever experience. It was difficult to believe he could be loved when his own mother couldn’t bring herself to love him. But he knew the love that was growing within him for his intended would only continue to blossom as they got to know one another better over the years.

  “Luke,” she murmured, the corners of her lips curling up in a shy smile. “I suppose then you should also call me Julianna.”

  Her given name alone was enough to draw a smile from him. It would roll off his tongue with ease. “So you will marry me, then?” he asked. “You won’t cast me aside in a few days, never to be seen again?”

  “I suppose that could be arranged,” she said with a cheeky grin. “But only if you do one thing for me.”

  At the moment, he was willing to give her anything or do anything for her, as long as she would agree to toss out their original plan. “What would you have me do?”

 
; “Kiss me,” she said, her cheeks flushing in the moonlight.

  Granting her that request wouldn’t even be a hardship.

  Luke closed the small space between them, putting both his palms on Julianna’s cheeks and tilting her head ever so slightly. His lips touched hers at the precise moment that the Vauxhall fireworks lit up the night sky.

  He angled his head and deepened the kiss, drawing her closer with an arm around her waist, and she breathed a hum of satisfaction against him.

  When he pulled away, the fireworks were still exploding overhead, the bright colors raining down on them and washing over Julianna’s devious smile.

  “What are you plotting now?” he asked.

  “I’m not plotting a thing,” she responded, her tone turning saucy. “I was merely thinking that I might have just entrapped you.”

  It might be more accurate to say that he had entrapped her. Either way, Luke couldn’t be happier—even though his pockets would soon be ten quid lighter.

  “You will take me with you to Essex, won’t you?” Amelia asked Luke. She passed a glance across the drawing room at Blackmore House toward Mother, and then to the opposite side of the room where Gabriel and Miranda were seated cozily together near the hearth before returning her gaze to her eldest brother. “There’s no reason I have to stay with Mother now that the Season is over. She doesn’t have to chaperone me in Town any longer.”

  Now that Gabriel and Miranda had married, they would be heading off to the Continent for a honeymoon. Either Amelia must go with Luke until he and Julianna married or she would have to stay with Mother—something he wouldn’t wish on even his worst enemy.

  Whether she came with him while they were waiting for the banns to be called or not, she wouldn’t be able to stay with him for long. In only a few weeks, he would be taking his own bride for a honeymoon, and that was not something he intended to have his younger sister along for.

  “Do you not have a bosom beau hidden somewhere whom you can visit in a few weeks?” he asked.

  She arched a brow at him. “Have you ever known me to have a bosom beau?”

  He chuckled. “I’ve never known you to have what I would even consider friends.”

  “I have friends,” Amelia said with a wicked grin. “And I can arrange for a visit somewhere, I’m sure. Please just don’t force me to spend the entire summer with Mother.”

  “Of course not.”

  Luke had already decided he would send his mother off to live in his Westmoreland estate, well away from the rest of them. The more distance, the better. Amelia would abhor staying in Westmoreland, especially if she could have avoided it. She’d always far preferred to be in the southern part of the country.

  “You are a dear,” Amelia gushed just as the doors opened and Julianna came in with two of her brothers, Phillip and Jack, at her side.

  “Try not to be too excited when you tell Mother,” he said to Amelia’s back. She was already rushing across the room to steal the chair that Gabriel had just abandoned when he stood to greet their guests.

  Only a few minutes after she’d arrived, Julianna had joined his sister and soon-to-be sister-in-law. The two Selwyn brothers took up seats close to the front window and kept to themselves, much as Luke would have expected. They seemed to still be waiting for Luke to make a huge mistake that they could then correct by challenging him to a duel. Someday in the not too distant future, they would realize how wrong they were, although it might not happen until the very day that Luke and Julianna were wed.

  After fixing himself a snifter of whiskey from the sideboard and pouring one for Luke, as well, Gabriel made his way over to stand beside his elder brother. He passed Luke the glass and held his own up.

  Luke nodded before taking a sip. The liquid burned a trail of fire down his throat.

  Gabriel mimicked him, sucking in a breath after he swallowed. He looked over to the three ladies seated together near the hearth. “I do believe you owe me ten quid,” he said after a moment.

  Luke let his eyes pass over Julianna. She glanced up and caught his gaze and then smiled, that playful glimmer he now knew so well causing her entire expression to light up. It warmed him through to his toes.

  “Yes,” Luke said slowly. “I suppose I do.”

  “It’s a rare thing, to win a bet against you.”

  This was a bet he would happily lose to anyone, over and over again.

  Catherine Gayle is a bestselling author of Regency-set historical romance and contemporary hockey romance with a New Adult feel. She’s a transplanted Texan living in North Carolina with two extremely spoiled felines. In her spare time, she watches way too much hockey and reality TV, plans fun things to do for the Nephew Monster’s next visit, and performs experiments in the kitchen which are rarely toxic.

  If you enjoyed this book and want to know when more like it will be available, be sure to sign up for Catherine’s mailing list. You can find out more on her website, her blog, at Red Door Reads, at Hockey Romance, at Facebook, on Twitter, and at Goodreads. If you want to see some of her cats’ antics and possibly the occasional video update from Catherine, visit her YouTube account.

  A DANCE WITH THE DEVIL is the second novella in the Devilish Devalles series. The first novella, THE DEVIL TO PAY, can be found at all major ebook retailers.