To Redeem a Rake (The Heart of a Duke Book 11)

by Christi Caldwell

  How many others had waved off that effort on her part, to spare her the exertions? The lovely woman with her midnight curls and soft eyes merely smiled. “I often tell myself it is not Society’s fault that they speak without the proper words or respond in the right way.”

  The lady spoke as one who knew. Which was an impossibility; flawlessly beautiful and elegant in her movements, she exuded ladylike perfection.

  “It just means you try to teach them the right ones,” the marchioness said with a smile.

  A young lady with golden curls rushed over, capturing the marchioness’ arm, commanding her notice. Daphne retreated, watching the other woman until she disappeared among the other guests.

  She’d earlier thought that a woman could not have love and a purpose outside of the household, but had been incorrect. The Marchioness of Guilford was proof that a woman could have love, purpose, and family.

  Daphne sought Daniel out again with her gaze. There would never be that complete dream, as long as Daniel failed to see more.

  Chapter 16

  The townhouse at last empty and quiet ringing in the halls, Daniel strolled through the corridors. In his hands he carried a bottle of brandy and glass.

  By the terms set forth by his uncle, tonight had been a resounding success. He had rebuffed the advances of several eager widows. Widows who at any other time, he would have gladly entertained and buried himself between their welcoming thighs, as Polite Society carried on their proper events, just out of ear-shot.

  His sister had danced every set. Those honorable gentlemen who’d partnered her, as dull as the plaster on his walls, men whom Daniel would never keep company.

  There had been no scandals.

  If all continued along this placid trajectory, Alice would be married off, he would be free—and Daphne gone. A pit formed in his belly.

  Daniel paused and drew a long pull from the bottle, shaking his head with a grimace at the fiery trail it blazed. He reached the ballroom, the flower garland draped about the pillars now wilted and petals littered the floor like floral teardrops.

  His gaze instantly found her, perched on the edge of the rise. Where she, of course, should be. How harmonious they’d been in thought as children and, now, even after the passage of time, those thoughts were the same still. Yet, how was a gentleman to act around a lady after she’d professed her love and he’d run like the Devil was nipping at his heels? “Miss Smith,” he called out, his quiet greeting echoed around the room.

  “My lord,” she returned. It may as well have been last evening, when he’d lain her on that very surface and wrung cries of ecstasy from her full lips.

  Strolling with bottle in hand, Daniel came forward. With a slower, deliberate stride, he allowed her time to stand and make a proper exit.

  Instead, she fixed on his every movement, until he came to a stop beside her. Her eyes briefly went to his decanter. He braced for her stinging rejection of his company or her abrupt departure. Alas, this was Daphne—unlike any other woman he’d ever known. She ran guarded eyes over his person; lingering her stare on his chest. “You are missing some garments, my lord,” she drawled, the wariness in her gaze made a mockery of that casual tone.

  He despised her being guarded. He preferred her as she’d always been—his friend. Just…the friend he now also wanted to take as his lover. Daniel hitched himself up onto the seat beside her and she scooted over, making space for him. “Bah, cravats are overrated.” He abandoned his bottle, setting it on the dais next to him. In this moment, he didn’t want to be soused or numbed. He just wanted to be with her, remembering what it was to laugh and tease.

  A smile played on her lips and just like that, the easy calm they’d always enjoyed was restored. “I take it you are of like opinion on jackets and shoes?” She tipped her chin meaningfully at his white shirtsleeves and stockinged feet.

  “Oh, certainly. Those, too.” He angled his mouth close to her ear. “And breeches.”

  She snorted. “You’d have us walk around like Adam and Eve, in a veritable Garden of Eden, then.”

  Her vivid words conjured a tantalizing vision, an image more tempting than the apple those first sinners had thrown away paradise for, of him and Daphne naked, twined in one another’s arms, with her hair cascading about them. It was a sin that she should tuck those strands away so tightly and leave him to wonder about their length and feel and—

  Daphne shot him a questioning look. “Are you unable to sleep, Daniel?” she asked. A wave of desire went through him at how effortlessly she wrapped his name in her husky contralto.

  “Sleep?” He yanked out his timepiece. “It’s entirely too early to be abed.”

  “Daniel,” she chided, yanking the watch fob from his hand. She peered at the numbers. “It is nearly thirty minutes past four.”

  He waggled his eyebrows. “As I said, entirely too early.”

  She released the chain. Her startled laugh, clear and bell-like, pealed around the ballroom. A laugh wholly pure and unjaded like those false chuckles from the cynical women he bedded. He closed his eyes and breathed of her soft lilac scent, filling his lungs with it. And God, he would have traded all those other meaningless exchanges to have Daphne Smith under him right now. Her laughter subsided and she settled her palms behind her, leaning her slender weight back, away from him. The delicate planes of her face settled into a contemplative mask and with her distracted gaze trained on the mural overhead, he used it as an opportunity to study her.

  He’d never given thought to what a woman was thinking. All that mattered was the feeling of mutual bliss that came in mindless sexual surrender. Meaningless couplings that, in a fraction of time, allowed a man to forget the emptiness that his life, in fact, was. The emptiness he’d allowed it to become. Here, beside Daphne, with her total lack of artifice, he wanted to know what she was thinking.

  She turned slightly, looking at him. “What is it?”

  “I want to know what you’re thinking.” What she was feeling? What caused the little glimmer of worry in her eyes, or made her nibble at her lower lip as she did now?

  Daphne propelled herself upright. “And here I thought a rake didn’t much care about anything beyond his own self-interests and desires.” God, how in concert they’d always been.

  “No,” he murmured. “Generally, they do not.”

  She fell silent. For several moments, he expected she’d ignore his inquiry. “It will be nearly eleven years. Eleven years since I last attended a ball. Lord and Lady Ackerland’s and what a grand event it was. There were so many guests, a person could scarcely move.” Daphne trained her gaze on the pillar wrapped in ivory hydrangea and he hated that she saw in her mind’s eyes a time he’d never been part of.

  Daniel drew his legs up and wrapped his arms loosely about his knees. “The night was memorable enough that you remember it so clear,” he murmured, desperate to bring her back to him and the present.

  She grabbed her cane and tapped the marble floor in a broken rhythm. “A lady generally recalls the night she gave away her virtue.”

  His body coiled tight and he had the feel of a serpent poised and eager to strike. A hungering for the name of the bastard who’d robbed her of that gift filled him. Lowering his feet to the floor, he opened his mouth to speak but caught her sad eyes. He’d long shied away from any in-depth conversations, preferring talks of wagers, whores, and disreputable events. By that, he should grab his bottle, climb to his feet, and run as far and as fast as his legs could carry him.

  But she needed to speak of that long ago night. It was written in the beautiful freckled planes of her face. So he waited.

  “I wanted to dance.” She spoke so quietly. Was the admission spoken for herself, for him? “Instead, he asked me to meet him in our host’s library. Of course, I did not think of all the rooms and doors I’d have to open or the danger to my reputation,” she spoke so quickly, her words tumbled over one another. “I just felt this…” She turned one hand up. “Excitement. How t
hrilling it was. He wanted to meet me.” A high-pitched laugh bubbled past her lips. “It was wicked and clandestine, and unlike anything I’d ever done. Unlike anything, any gentleman wished for me to do.”

  And Daniel proved the soulless bastard he truly was and always had been. Because with that break in her telling, he wanted to silence her story. Wanted her to end it so he didn’t know what had transpired between her and some nameless blackguard. Didn’t want to think of his Daphne, a girl of seventeen, sneaking around a stranger’s townhouse, to meet a man who ultimately became her lover. God, how he despised himself. For having failed her. For having failed to be there for her.

  “He took me in his arms,” she went on softly. A burning, biting hatred stuck in his throat and he struggled to swallow past it. “He promised to show me far grander pleasures than dancing.” If Daniel was a proper rake, he’d be bored by a telling he already knew the end to. The rotters he kept company with bragged of their conquests and wagered on their next bed sport. Daphne lifted ravaged eyes to his and she may as well have splayed him open with the old broadsword that hung above his office at Winterbourne Manor. “He took me against a wall, with my skirts up like a whore.”

  His stomach roiled and he struggled to draw in an even breath. The image of her painted so real, it crept forward, insidious like poison; seeping into every corner of his being, threatening to consume him. “Daphne.” He didn’t even recognize that hoarsened voice as belonging to him. It was the gruff, gravelly sound of a stranger, with rage pumping through his veins.

  “When it was over,” she went on as though he’d not spoken, her words curiously hollow. “He grinned, this cold, empty smile.” That is not a smile, Daniel. That is an empty, dark expression that could never be disguised as anything good… Oh, God, how he despised himself. “He said…” She shook her head.

  Don’t ask. It does not matter. “What did he say?” he demanded.

  She wetted her lips and stole a glance about. “‘You should be honored, Miss Smith. I’ve never rutted with a cripple before.’”

  A black rage fell over his vision, momentarily blinding him, so all he saw, tasted, and smelled was the death of the man who’d broken her heart, used her body, and shattered her innocence.

  “That was the last ball I attended.” Daphne folded her arms at her chest, in a lonely embrace. He wanted to take her in his arms and drive back that dark solitariness that he knew only too well. She snuck a peek at him. “I’m surely scandalous to even speak of it. Especially with you,” she said, swinging her legs back and forth slightly over the edge of the dais.

  “Daphne Smith, you could not be scandalous if you ran through the king’s palace naked as the day you were born.”

  His admission startled a laugh from her and a lightness suffused his chest at being the person to bring back her smile. “You believe I jest?” A loose curl popped free of her chignon and he leaned over and brushed it back, deliberately grazing his fingertips over her cheek. Her breath hitched and he lost himself briefly in the green of her eyes. He caressed his knuckles over the satiny soft flesh. “One scandal does not make a person scandalous, Daphne. It makes you a person who made a mistake.” Whereas he, with a lifetime of sins attached to his dark soul, wore his deviltry as a second skin. Mayhap it was the late hour, but he was besieged with moroseness. Daniel absently picked up the bottle beside him, studying it.

  Daphne took it from him and their fingers brushed; a sharp charge like the one that lingered in the air during a lightning strike passed between them. Then, Daphne drew back and trailed her finger around the rim of the bottle. “You recently told me about the wonders that come from losing yourself in another body.” He winced. “I didn’t know that wonder. It was painful and awkward and I stood there looking at the door, waiting for it to end. There was no ecstasy, Daniel. No bliss.”

  He closed his eyes. There could never be any mistaking Daniel Winterbourne as a gentleman. With his vices and darkness, he was not a man to duel another. Instead, if he found the bastard’s name, he would tear him apart with his bloody hands and dance a jig upon his dead body with glee. Drawing in a steadying breath, Daniel faced her. “That is not how it has to be, Daphne.” That is not how it should be.

  She nodded jerkily. “You have said as much.” She briefly dipped her gaze to the gap in his shirt and then slowly lifted her eyes to his. “And now I want you to show me.”

  A dull humming buzzed in his ears like the swarm of bees they’d knocked from a hive, all those years ago. His heart paused its beat. Surely he’d misheard her. Surely with his lust-filled dreams, waking and sleeping ones, he’d conjured that breathy appeal in his mind.

  Daphne set aside the decanter and reached for his hand, twining their fingers together. She drew his hand close to her chest. “I want you to make love to me, Daniel.”

  Proper young ladies did not ask a notorious rake to make love to them.

  But Daphne was no longer a young lady. She was a woman. A woman who ached to know more than the glimpse Daniel had shown her last evening. Ached to know him in every way. To know the bliss he painted with his words and to block out the memories of that other time. To cleanse them from her and only know the beauty of Daniel’s embrace.

  “Daphne,” he said hoarsely, slipping his hand from hers. She went cold, mourning the loss of his touch. “I cannot.”

  All the greatest humiliations of that night in Lord Leopold’s arms ripped through her and her heart lurched. Of course. Gentlemen didn’t desire her. The man she’d given her heart and virtue to had only wanted it as a twisted game of conquest that came in bedding an oddity. Daniel would have too many scruples to shame her in that way, but neither could he bring himself to find the bliss he so spoke of in her arms. Her entire body was afire with mortified shame. Daphne reached for her cane. “I see,” she said, her voice hollow as she struggled to always unsteady feet. “Forgive me. I will allow you your spirits.” Never more had she wished for the full functional use of legs to carry her far and fast away from this humiliation. She took a step and Daniel shot a hand around her wrist, staying her movements.

  “What do you think you see?” he demanded.

  Glancing down at his fingers, she looked to him, and proudly met his gaze. “I am no beauty, Daniel,” she spoke with a pragmatism that came in knowing who she was and having accepted it. “I’m not a woman you’d take to your bed.” Unlike that gloriously lush figure from Madam Thoureaux’s who’d sidled up to him this evening; the pair of them, the picture of beauty personified.

  “Is that what you believe?” he asked gruffly. Never loosening his grip, he drew her slowly closer until only a handbreadth of space divided them.

  Heat poured from his broadly muscled frame, stealing her thoughts. Her mouth went dry. “I-Is it not true?” she managed, when she trusted herself to speak.

  Daniel filled his hands with her buttocks and dragging her close he pressed her against the vee between his legs so that his shaft prodded her lower belly. Her breathing grew shallow. “Make no mistake, Daphne Delilah Smith, I want you.” That husky avowal set off a wicked fluttering low inside. His brandy-tinged breath wafted over her; purely masculine and wicked, and wholly him.

  “Then make love to me.” Surely that sultry whisper did not belong to her?

  He sucked in an audible breath and his flesh sprung harder than ever. Mayhap she was more than just a little bit wicked, because a thrill of feminine triumph raged through her at his obvious desire—a desire for her. Her in all her flaws and imperfections. But then, he released her so quickly she stumbled, quickly righting herself with her cane.

  Daniel retreated a step, holding his hands up, as if to ward her off. “Damn it, Daphne, I’m trying to be honorable.”

  Warmth unfurled in her heart. At the furious and frustrated glimmer hardening his eyes, she fell even more in love with him. Yes, she would one day leave London and him…and they would carry on with their own separate lives as they once had. He’d marry and give another woman chil
dren. Grief scissored her heart. But she would have this from him. This moment, without apology or regret, just the pleasure he’d spoken of. Daphne limped forward. “I do not want you to be honorable. I want you to make love to me.”

  An agonized groan spilled from him. He closed his eyes tightly and his lips moved silently, as though in prayer. “You don’t know what you are saying. You have romantic dreams—”

  “Stop telling me what I feel or how I feel.” Capturing his hand, she drew it to her breast and he instantly cupped the small mound. A harsh groan rumbled in his chest. “This is what I want, Daniel,” she said resolutely, meeting his gaze. “One night of the pleasure you spoke of. I’m not asking for you to love me. I’m asking you to show me passion.”

  He stilled. Desire glazed over his eyes and then he caught her to him. The cane slipped from her fingers as he devoured her mouth. There was no hint of yesterday’s gentleness. His was the kiss of a man who sought to brand her as his. Parting her lips, he thrust his tongue inside.

  Daphne whimpered and met his movements with wild abandon, the heady taste of brandy and cinnamon swamping her senses. Retrieving her cane, he swept Daphne into his arms and she cried out as he broke the kiss. He is stopping? Her body screamed in protest. “What—?”

  “I’m not going to take you on a ballroom floor or against a wall,” he said on a silken whisper. “I am going to have you in your bed, spread before me, as I’ve ached to since you stormed my foyer.” He searched his gaze quickly over her face. “Do you want to stop? Tell me now.”

  She wrapped her arms about his neck and kissed him, letting her desire serve as her answer. They mated with their mouths in a primal dance until wetness pooled at her core. Daphne moaned in the pleasure-pain of his embrace. Yanking away, Daniel started swiftly through the ballroom. “Someone may see us,” she whispered against his chest.

  “They are all sleeping,” he said instantly, his voice gravelly from unfulfilled desire. He caressed the swell of her buttocks, toying with the flesh through her gown, until he’d worked another breathless whimper from her lips. “Take pride in your pleasures,” he commanded. “Let the world judge, for they do not know the wonder.”