Dangerous Duke

by Scott, Scarlett

  It was only as they were en route to her brother’s study that an odd thought occurred to her. The man she had seen on the streets, the man she believed to be the shooter, had rather resembled the slight, sandy-haired form of Mr. Swift.

  Chapter Six

  Nearly an hour after she had arrived back at Lark House, Violet found herself at last approaching her bedchamber and the beckoning solitude it contained. The incident in the carriage had shaken her, and she could not deny it.

  But what had shaken her even more had been Lucien’s reaction to the news. It had been subtle, but over the course of the interview she and Aunt Hortense had suffered, she had seen the depth of his concern. Though he had schooled his featured into the mask he wore each day, she knew her brother better than anyone else on God’s great earth.

  And the shots that had been taken at the carriage bearing his crest and containing herself and Aunt Hortense frightened him.

  It was Lucien’s fear, along with his announcement there would be additional guards scattered outside and within Lark House, that settled beneath her skin, worrying her. Filling her with apprehension. It was the pallor of her brother’s skin, the sudden drawing of his mouth into a grim, flat line, the lack of certitude with which he had spoken, invading her mind as she made her way over the threshold of her chamber, closing the door at her back.

  She sighed within the familiar confines—wallcoverings in striped purple and cream damask, lace everywhere—her initial terror as the bullets had torn through the cab of the carriage returning tenfold. Now she was alone, the silence palpable, and she had no distraction. All she could think of was what had happened. All she could do was wonder when it would happen again. What might occur next time. To worry next time the villains behind it would not miss their mark.

  Would she be killed? Wounded? Who had shot at her carriage, and why?

  She needed a pistol, and she did not care what Lucien said of it. She would not go forth in this mad world of theirs without the ability to defend herself or Aunt Hortense if necessary. She was a female, yes, but she was not helpless, and she refused to be treated as if she were. As if she could not possibly be taught to shoot a weapon because she was a lady.

  Why, it was nonsense. Ludicrous. Old-fashioned thinking. Her brother being far too protective as usual. She did not give a fig for the conventions of society. She wanted a pistol, and she wanted to know, if she found herself on the floor of a carriage again, she would have the means to—

  A creak on the floorboards sounded then, just behind her, and the overwhelming sense of another presence, the feeling she was not alone, hit her in the next breath. Panic swirled through her.

  “Lady Violet.”

  She jolted and let loose a scream that was swiftly muffled when a large, masculine hand clamped over her mouth. She was about to kick and claw and bite until she recognized the musky pine scent and felt lips grazing the shell of her ear.

  “Hush, my lady. It is Strathmore, and if you insist upon caterwauling, you shall bring all five hundred of Arden’s guard dogs down upon us.”

  Strathmore.

  Her fight fled, and she sagged against his strong lean form, relief rushing through her like a warm current. Of course it was him. She ought to have known from that deliciously deep baritone, from that sinful voice. Her head was upon his chest, one of his arms wrapped around her waist.

  For a moment, as her madly galloping heart gradually returned to its normal pace, she found herself reveling in being held against him thus, enveloped by his heat and power. He removed his hand, and she found her voice, recalling belatedly where they were, where she had been earlier that day, and why this was altogether wrong, even if it felt altogether right.

  “What are you doing in my chamber, Strathmore?” she demanded, extricating herself from his grasp, even though she longed to remain where she was, and turning to face him.

  “I heard about your carriage. The household is abuzz with the news.” He frowned at her, his expression severe, his jaw rigid. “I wanted to see for myself that you were indeed uninjured, and given my jailer’s decree to remain within my rooms, I decided awaiting you here would be the most efficient method.”

  She took a more detailed inventory of him. He wore shirtsleeves only and dark trousers with bare feet. A man’s feet ought not to be a thing of beauty, but of course his somehow were. He looked sinfully handsome and disheveled, and for a moment, she could do nothing but drink him in.

  Had he been worried for her?

  Close the distance between the two of you and kiss him, ordered Wicked Violet.

  Wicked Violet was a wanton wretch, and Violet ignored her.

  “As you can see, I am perfectly hale and hearty.” She held out her hands, palms up, and spun in a slow circle that set her skirts fanning out about her.

  When she stopped where she had begun, his expression was just as hard as it had been. Menacing, almost. She could not imagine anyone meeting this man in battle and not cowering before him.

  “Tell me about what occurred. Where were you?” His voice was tight, his blue gaze dark and impenetrable, the color of the sky before a ravaging storm.

  “I was returning from a visit to Charles when it happened.”

  Charles, she reminded Wicked Violet sternly. Your betrothed. The man who loves you.

  Do you suppose he will ever love you more than his mother and his orchids? Wicked Violet asked snidely.

  Oh dear.

  This was truly getting out of hand. She could not forever be two people, the Violet who longed for Strathmore, and the Violet who knew she should settle for the life she could build with Charles, a man who already loved her. Even if his kisses did nothing to instill even a speck of longing within her.

  “You were visiting Flowerpot,” the duke gritted. “How lovely. Tell me, were the two of you counting his orchids and admiring his hothouse lemons? Discussing the rituals of bees? Did he regale you with tales of toiling amidst bulbs and soil?”

  “He has oranges, not lemons,” she corrected before she could stop herself. “And we were not counting the orchids. He was explaining the recent troubles he has had with them. A green fungus on the bulb, which requires treatment.”

  “Christ.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Did he kiss you? No. Do not answer. I do not wish to know.”

  He had, and there was no reason why she should be ashamed to have kissed the man who would become her husband, or why she should feel guilty for having done so now, standing before a man who had no claims upon her. A man she had known for a mere handful of days.

  But she did.

  Her cheeks prickled and she resisted the urge to look away from his gaze. “What has any of this to do with my carriage being shot at?”

  He sighed, searching her expression, his posture going even more rigid. “So he did kiss you then. No need to protest, for I can see it in your telltale flush, my lady. Good God.”

  She owed no loyalty to the beautiful conundrum of a man before her, she reminded herself. He was not her betrothed. Charles was. She was destined to become the Countess of Almsley.

  Why did that knowledge leave her feeling nothing but empty?

  She frowned at him as much as at herself. “I fail to see why you should care what occurred between myself and Charles, Strathmore. He shall be my husband soon enough. It is no concern of yours.”

  The duke’s hands tightened into fists at his sides. “He is not worthy of you, damn it.”

  Her patience was growing thin. First, he had trespassed upon her chamber—at least when she had visited his in equally disastrous, wholly inappropriate fashion, she had knocked and waited for her invitation to enter—and now he was making demands of her.

  How dare he continue to disparage Charles?

  “Why is he not worthy of me?” she demanded, seizing on to her ire, for it was far less dangerous than the emotions Strathmore ordinarily provoked within her. “Is it because he enjoys horticulture?”

  “It is because he has neve
r kissed you properly, damn it, and I know it because of the way you responded to me.” He raked those long fingers through his hair now. “You are a woman who deserves to be kissed thoroughly and properly and often. A woman who deserves to be worshiped. But not by Flowerpot, for Christ’s sake.”

  His impassioned speech robbed her of the ability to form a coherent sentence.

  He thought she deserved to be kissed thoroughly, properly, and often? That she deserved to be worshiped? Her, plain Lady Violet West, who’d had no more than a handful of suitors her entire life, including Charles, and none of whom could hold a candle to the undeniable beauty of the Duke of Strathmore?

  She ought to defend Charles, surely. To deny everything the duke had just said. But the truth was, he was not entirely wrong. For she could honestly say no one had ever kissed her properly until the day Strathmore had first settled his mouth upon hers.

  She took a deep breath, attempting to gather her wits and wrangle her emotions. To control herself and her reactions to this man, however she could, however she must.

  “You have it wrong,” she said quietly. “For it is I who is not deserving of Charles. He is a good man, and he loves me, whilst I…”

  She did not love him in return.

  Violet had known it all along, but this was the first time she had nearly admitted it aloud to another. It remained her hope that, given time and the strength of a marriage—years of growing more familiar with Charles, and growing with him—she would learn to love him.

  “You do not love him,” Strathmore finished for her, sounding far more pleased with the revelation than he had a right to.

  “No,” she agreed sadly. “I do not love him yet. But that does not mean I will not, in time.”

  He raised a brow. “What food do you hate most?”

  His question and seemingly abrupt change of subject flummoxed her. She answered without thought. “I detest aspics.”

  “When did you know you did not like them?”

  She frowned, for she now knew where he was attempting to direct her with this dialogue. “The moment I first tried one, but Charles is not an aspic, Strathmore.”

  But one of Strathmore’s traits was persistence, and he showed no intention of slowing or stopping his analogy. His blue eyes glowed. “He may as well be. Have you ever changed your mind about aspics? Do you imagine that if you ate aspics each course of your meal, every day, you may one day, miraculously, grow to love them?”

  She did not care for the turn their conversation had taken. Not one bit. Violet turned and stalked away from him, irritated, needing some distance and space. Needing to no longer be ensnared in his vibrant gaze and his probing questions that made far too much sense.

  But he followed her, dogged in his determination, not far from her heels. “Why do you run, my lady? Can it be you cannot bear to face that which is before you?”

  “No,” she bit out, vexed at herself and at Strathmore for his powers of observation.

  Without thought for the impropriety of allowing the duke to see her hair unbound, she began plucking the pins from the braided coils at her nape. She pulled and pulled until braids fell heavy down her back. And still she found more, undoing her lady’s maid’s finest efforts.

  “Yet you did not answer my question.” He was close behind her. So close she could smell him, feel his heat, be tempted to settle back against that hard chest of his.

  “Also no,” she gritted reluctantly. “I would not grow to love aspics, even if I should eat them every day for each course. I cannot abide by the texture of them.”

  “As I thought.”

  His tone was triumphant. Nearer still.

  She turned back to him in defiance, her fingers on her braids, unwinding the carefully plaited strands. His gaze devoured her, sending a tingle to her breasts that ended in hardened nipples and a pulse between her thighs.

  “But Charles is not a food I dislike. He is a man I am fond of,” she defended. “I am certain that, in time, I will grow to love him as much as he loves me.”

  “Of course you are certain of it.” His countenance went thunderous once more. “You must be, else you will not carry on. You must cling to some sliver of hope, however scarce.”

  “Why do you even care?” she demanded, aware her tone had risen in anger and unable to do a thing to control it.

  She resented his interference. While he was quick to point out the flaws in her world, he did not seem willing to offer any solutions.

  Strathmore stared at her, solemn. “Tell me about what happened in the carriage.”

  His abrupt change of subject and accompanying demand had her reeling once more. It was not an answer, and she deserved one.

  “First, tell me why you care,” she returned. “You are awfully concerned with my future for a man who will not have a part in it.”

  He stared at her, such intensity and fire in his eyes, she felt his gaze as if it were a touch. As if it were a possessive clasp, wrapping around her. “Must I have a reason for caring? You have been kind to me, my lady, when you need not have been. Indeed, in great peril to yourself, I would suspect, for Arden would fly into a rage were he to discover we have been alone together repeatedly.”

  Alone together.

  Those words leaving his lips should not affect her.

  Should not make her look at his mouth.

  But her gaze dropped. Her blood heated. A warm wave of pleasure, along with a burst of anticipation, slowly licked through her. They were alone again, and in her chamber of all places, her personal territory, a space she had never imagined him trespassing upon.

  Yet, now that he was here, she could not imagine him not being here.

  It occurred to her he was awaiting her response, and she was ogling his beautiful lips like a ninny who had just had her first sight of a handsome man. She had seen him before, of course, had even felt those lips move against hers.

  She ought to be unaffected.

  Violet swallowed, forced her mind to comply. To form coherent thoughts that did not involve her devoted inspection of his masculine beauty. “My brother would not be pleased if he were to learn of our interactions, naturally, Duke. But I am not selfless. I have been kind to you because I believe in your innocence, and because I am restless within my own life, needing to find meaning in it where there is seemingly none, and because I find you endlessly fascinating.”

  Oh dear. She had not meant to say the last bit aloud.

  But she had, and now there was no recalling it.

  Her foolish words hovered in the air between them like an electrical wire that had been suddenly cut, but still ran hot with live current. One touch, and she would be forever done.

  “Fascinating.” He stared at her solemnly.

  So solemnly, she could not read him, could not find an indication of how he felt about what she had just so recklessly admitted.

  “Fascinating,” she echoed softly, for there was no turning back now. No denying what she had already spoken.

  He took a step toward her, closing the distance between them even more. “Fascinating how?”

  She eyed him warily. “I was not aware there was a multitude of ways in which one can find someone fascinating.”

  “Oh but there are.” His voice was low, resonating with sin, and it glided over her skin like a caress. “There is fascinating in the sense of one’s eccentric uncle who invents oddities in his spare time. Fascinating, when used in conjunction with a book one is reading, for instance, is merely interesting. And then there is a different kind of fascinating altogether, the sort of fascinating that makes your drawers go up in flames.”

  He was so calm, so matter of fact in his dissertation, that by the time he had finished it with such wicked words, she could do nothing but gape at him. “My drawers?”

  The two words emerged from her as a squeak.

  That decadent mouth curved into grin. “Your drawers, my lady.”

  “I am certain I ought not to answer,” she said weakly, looking as if
she were half-tempted to either throw herself into his arms or swoon.

  He had not intended to discomfit her so fully, but he had to admit he was rather enjoying himself now that he had. The flush of pink on her cheeks, set against the backdrop of her midnight tresses, was far too tempting. Arden’s sister, and agent of Griffin’s retribution or not, Lady Violet was stunning. Her loveliness was not a standard English beauty’s boring similitude. She possessed a small, saucy nose with a pointed tip, and a pout that was too wide and full. Her chin held a small divot, and when she smiled, she could bring a man to his knees.

  She was an original, Lady Violet West. There was no other lady who possessed her unique, intrinsic loveliness, beginning with the kindness of her intrepid heart, and extending outward. He knew instinctively he would never meet another woman like her.

  Hers was the beauty of a cool autumn morning in the countryside; it took his breath and inspired him all at once.

  Lord, did it ever inspire him.

  To wicked thoughts. Thoughts he had no place thinking, even if he did intend to use her as a pawn in this game of chess he played with her brother. She was taller than most ladies, her legs a thing of mystery beneath her skirts, and he could not help but to envision them. How easily he could imagine those long, curvaceous limbs wrapped about him, after he had kissed and caressed every bit of them. As he plunged inside…

  Damn it, he was sporting a cockstand so sudden and fierce, he nearly pressed a hand to his trousers to readjust himself before he recalled such a thing was not done. Griffin was not much for niceties these days. Hell, he had not been much for them ever. But in recent months, he had been swept up in one Fenian case after another, and there had been precious little time for anything other than survival.

  Perhaps that was why resting on his laurels at Lark house smarted so much.

  That, and the heavy burden of suspicion presiding over him. He must not lose sight of what was most important and allow his admiration of Lady Violet to get the better of him. There was a purpose to this dallying. He had a reason for being within her chamber.