The Duke's Daring Debutante (Regency Historical Romance)

by Ann Lethbridge

  ‘Oh, my,’ Nicky said, her eyes alight with joy and admiration. ‘You will outshine them all.’ Her hands went to her stomach.

  A self-conscious laugh left her lips when she realised Minette’s gaze had followed the movement. ‘The baby has quickened,’ she said a little breathlessly. ‘Little flutters deep inside. The doctor said it is quite normal, but honestly they are quite startling.’

  An ache pierced Minette’s chest. By falling for the wrong man she had given away the chance to know such joy herself. She shook off the feeling of loss. She would revel in her sister’s happiness and be the best aunt any child could have. She crossed the room and hugged Nicky. For several years she had thought she might never see her sister again. The joy of their reunion had been tempered by the knowledge that she had thrown away all that her sister had sacrificed. But she would make amends.

  They broke their embrace. ‘Turn around,’ Nicky said. ‘Let me look at you.’

  Minette spun around and her skirt gently swayed with her movement.

  Christine discreetly withdrew.

  ‘Freddy will be dazzled,’ Nicky said. ‘I can’t believe you two...’ Her words trailed off and she cast Minette an enquiring look. A look of concern as well as love.

  ‘I know,’ Minette said, putting all the joy and lightness in her words and expression she did not feel deep inside. ‘It came as quite a shock to us, too. Who would have guessed that what we thought was dislike was something else entirely?’

  She could not bring herself to say the word ‘love’. It would be too much of a lie. Even for her. She let her gaze take in her sister, who was dressed in the high fashion of a married woman. The deep turquoise suited her and disguised the coming of a child. ‘You look lovely.’

  Nicky smiled. ‘Gabe loves this colour.’ She gave Minette a sly smile. ‘And when you are married you won’t be stuck with boring old white.’ She tipped her head. ‘Though I must say you are one of the fortunate few who has the colouring to carry it off.’

  They linked arms and headed downstairs.

  At the foot of the staircase, two men looked up at the sound of their steps. Both men were dark. Both men were undeniably handsome in their own way. Gabe an absolute charmer with a smile that could melt the hardest of hearts. Naturally he had eyes for no one but Nicky.

  Freddy was a very different story. Although his gaze showed approval as he took Minette in from her head to her feet, there was little warmth in him. He used to smile when they had first met years ago. Not at her, but at things Gabe had said. Male humour at things unspoken but understood. He’d even smiled at Nicky from time to time, like a brother at a sister. But where she was concerned, for the most part she’d felt only cool distance.

  A layer of ice like a wall to keep her out that seemed to have grown thicker over time.

  She wanted to take a hammer to it. Shatter it. Find the man beneath. She’d prefer active dislike to this chilly indifference.

  As they reached the bottom step, both men stepped forward, Gabe to take Nicky’s arm, his eyes awash with his love as he gazed at his wife, and Freddy to present her with a small posy in a silver holder. The flowers matched those in her hair, but these were real. She took the offering with a curtsey. ‘Thank you. How clever of you to find exactly the right shade.’

  An expression flashed across his face and if it hadn’t been impossible she might have thought he was pleased. ‘Lady Mooreshead offered her aid.’

  Disappointment flickered to life. No doubt Nicky had arranged the whole thing. ‘Thank you, Nicky.’

  Her sister gave her an odd look. ‘I merely informed His Grace of the colour. No more.’

  Gabe was frowning at them as if he sensed something wrong. Minette brought the posy to her nose. ‘They are perfect.’

  Freddy leaned forward and kissed her cheek, a brief hot brush of his lips across her skin. ‘You are welcome,’ he said silkily.

  As she met his blue-black gaze she had the impression of heat flaring in their depths. An act for the benefit of others? Or something more?

  Coolly, deliberately, he set her away. ‘I believe it is time we left.’

  * * *

  As the carriage rocked through the night, Freddy relaxed against the squabs and contemplated the woman he was to marry. Lovely. Beautiful. The words didn’t do justice to the vision he’d witnessed walking down the stairs of Gabe’s townhouse. Freddy didn’t have the words to express what he had felt inside him. She was, of course, both of those things, but she was so much more. Warmth. Light. Joy. And there was also darkness. A shadow that lingered around her as if waiting to blanket her inner glow.

  If only she would trust him enough to tell him what caused those shadows. To let him help overcome her dragons. But then again, he didn’t have the right to her trust. They might be getting married, but they would never be a husband and a wife in the truest sense.

  It was his cross to bear.

  How he had managed to hide the jolt of lightning that had coursed through his blood the moment his lips had touched her silky skin, he wasn’t sure. He was still reeling from the effects of their other physical contacts. His body wanted her. Hungered for her. And now she was his. Or would be soon.

  He didn’t deserve her. In the years since he had been Gabe’s apprentice, he’d washed his hands in so much blood he’d become insensitive to death and destruction. He’d become a tool for the use of his country. Of Sceptre in particular. Weeding out spies and traitors without fear or favour. It was his role. His purpose. He needed it or he’d be nothing.

  And now he was to be a husband to a young woman who, while stubborn and reckless, had always seemed to embody what was right and good with the world. The world of youthful hope for the future. A world in which he’d never belonged. She’d always looked at him in a way that made him think she could see right into his darkness. His unworthiness. No wonder she talked of crying off as soon as the dust settled. A kiss in the dark with a dangerous man in the hope of bending him to her will was one thing, but marriage to such a man was a very different matter.

  It was too late for second thoughts.

  Honour required that he offer marriage. Honour required that he see it through no matter what. At least he had that much honour left.

  The glow of the streetlights flickered across her face, her expression changing with each pass of the light so that it was like watching a disjointed progression of thoughts. Thoughts he could only guess at.

  His task was clear. He had to make her want to marry him. Use her passionate nature against her reason. Woo her. Blind her to his faults. Once they were wed, she could do as she pleased.

  He realised his hands had curled into tight fists. Anger. Frustration. Regret. So much emotion, when he usually experienced none. Minette made him feel too much. And feelings hurt. He relaxed his hands, glad of the deep shadows inside the carriage.

  ‘How on earth did you manage to extract an invitation from Lady Craddock?’ Nicky asked her husband. ‘I know she didn’t plan to invite us, because the invitations went out weeks ago and we didn’t receive one.’

  ‘Craddock belongs to my club,’ Gabe said. His teeth flashed white with a smile. ‘I put him in the way of a good investment.’

  ‘I wager Lady Craddock was none too pleased,’ Freddy said. The Craddocks, like Sparshott, were part of his mother’s clique. They and their high-stickler friends saw themselves as the most important in the land because their roots went far back in the annals of England. Above even the royal house of Hanover, which had thrown its full support behind Mooreshead on the occasion of his marriage to a woman who could have been considered an enemy.

  ‘Let us hope she is too well bred to show her displeasure,’ Gabe said, and there was something dangerously protective in his tone. He’d proved before he wouldn’t tolerate any insult to his wife. A word in the right quarters coul
d be very damaging to even the wealthiest family, when power was their preferred form of currency.

  ‘Dommage,’ Minette said. ‘We will dance and talk with our friends. No one will care what the stuffy Craddocks think. Indeed, they will wish they were part of our circle, if they have any sense at all.’

  Nicky laughed.

  Amused despite his better judgement, Freddy mentally shook his head. Spirit. That was the indefinable quality of Minette. The spirit of a goddess of war.

  And that was what made her so damned dangerous.

  * * *

  Freddy didn’t dance. Ever. And everyone knew it.

  Minette wasn’t sure if he didn’t because of his lameness, or because he didn’t want to. His leg, whatever was wrong with it, didn’t stop him from doing anything else, even if he did have a bit of a limp. She’d seen him walk across the deck of a pitching ship without losing his balance or stumbling. She’d seen him play cricket on the lawns at Meak the first summer she’d arrived in England. Then he’d stopped visiting.

  He worked for Sceptre, a secret organisation that carried on the war with Napoleon in the dark world of espionage. She wasn’t supposed to know about it, but she’d been there the day Nicky and Gabe had been carted off to appear before the head of the organisation. To Nicky’s everlasting gratitude, Gabe had been relieved from active duty. Freddy continued to serve. No one said he did, but there could be no other explanation for why he had disappeared from their lives.

  And neither Nicky nor Gabe had ever commented on his absence. It had been as if they had forgotten he existed. Until she’d gone to find him and they’d ended up engaged to be married. She still didn’t quite believe she was betrothed. In some ways it was a dream come true. He was a handsome, if aloof, man to whom she had been instantly attracted. Had he shown interest all those years before, she would have been tempted.

  Tonight, he had encouraged her to dance every dance with any young man who asked, including Granby, who seemed to have recovered from his funk. She was dancing with him now, while her gaze sought out a very different man. A man so cold that sometimes she thought he would chill her to the bone with a look.

  The music came to a close, and Granby walked her back to Nicky, seated among the matrons and chaperones, no doubt having grown tired of standing.

  ‘May I fetch you some refreshment, Miss Rideau? Or you, Lady Mooreshead?’ Granby asked.

  ‘I would love some lemonade,’ Minette answered.

  ‘Not for me,’ Nicky said.

  When the young man was out of hearing, Minette scanned the room. ‘Where is Freddy?’

  ‘He and Gabe went to the card room.’

  Minette frowned. ‘Do you think he gambles as much as everyone says?’

  Nicky sighed. ‘I don’t know. His fortune is vast. I would hate to see him lose at the tables the way so many others have done.’ She glance around and lowered her voice. ‘It may be a front for other activities.’

  Surprise that Nicky would mention such a thing must have shown in her face.

  ‘I don’t want you to think the worst of him,’ Nicky said.

  She didn’t know what to make of him. So often she had felt as if he didn’t like her. At other times she thought he also felt the same wild spark of attraction she did, especially when they kissed. Until he looked at her with that chilly expression. Clearly he was set on this marriage. Except tonight he seemed to be avoiding her. Perhaps he had changed his mind.

  The disappointment that hollowed out a painful space in her chest didn’t make any sense. His changing his mind would make it so much easier to cry off once they found Moreau.

  As if her thoughts had conjured him up, Freddy appeared across the other side of the room, listening to something Gabe was saying, his expression austere, his eyes intense. He looked up and his gaze caught hers. She froze in the intensity of that look, so dark, so cold, until a hint of a smile quirked the corners of his mouth and caused flutters low in her belly.

  ‘There they are,’ Nicky said, and the connection was gone as if it had never existed. Remoteness fell over his expression like a shutter as he and Gabe sauntered over.

  Gabe smiled down at his wife. ‘Are you too tired to dance?’

  ‘Never.’

  He walked her into the set.

  ‘I am surprised to find you not up on the dance floor,’ Freddy said, clearly not caring one way or the other.

  ‘I sat out because I want to know how Nicky was faring.’

  ‘You care for your sister.’

  ‘Of course. She is my family.’

  He looked less than convinced.

  ‘You care for your family, surely?’ Wasn’t that why he undertook deeds society would frown on? To save his country and his family from being crushed beneath the boot of a tyrant?

  ‘It is my duty to care for them.’

  Cold duty. As it was his duty to marry her after they’d been caught in the library. The man seemed to have no heart, no passion. Yet his kisses had been more than passionate. They had been searing.

  ‘Would you care to stroll in the gardens?’ he asked. ‘I am told they are something to see.’

  ‘Someone mentioned they were lit up like Vauxhall Gardens.’

  ‘Worse.’ He gave her an odd sort of look. ‘There isn’t a shadow or a dark walk to be found and a footman at every corner.’

  She chuckled. ‘No chance for mischief.’ She grinned up at him. ‘Probably as well in our case. Who knows where temptation would lead?’

  His eyes widened a fraction and again the small flash of the smile she adored made an appearance, much to the consternation of her insides. He held out his arm. ‘Shall we go and see? After all, given the purpose of our attendance tonight, it wouldn’t do for us not to spend any time together.’

  A pang pierced her heart at the coldness in his words. A foolish pang that it wasn’t his desire to spend time with her but his need to make it appear as if he did. ‘Why not?’ She placed her arm on his sleeve and they left the ballroom by way of the French doors.

  ‘Is it too cool out here for you?’ he asked, as if he really cared. ‘Shall I fetch a shawl?’

  It was a beautiful June evening. The scent of lilacs and early roses carried on the warm breeze, the walks sparkling with lights strung from trees.

  ‘No, thank you. It is a relief to get out of the heat.’

  They walked in a square around the formal garden. ‘I am glad for a private moment,’ she said. ‘I have been wanting to speak with you alone. I thought you might have had some news of our quarry.’

  He gave her a considering look. ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because Madame Vitesse says someone has been walking around her neighbourhood, asking questions about her brother. She threatens to refuse to help us.’

  He frowned, and she had the feeling he had caught him by surprise. ‘Not my men. I am keeping to our agreement and so must she or find herself in dire straits.’

  His frown deepened, and he paused to pick a rose. He broke the thorns off the stem and handed it to her in what, under other circumstances, might be seen as a very romantic gesture. She inhaled the delicate fragrance.

  Once more he offered his arm, and they continued strolling. ‘It is not only us looking for Moreau.’

  Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Who else?’

  ‘The Home Office boys would very much to get their hands on him.’

  She understood from the small things Gabe had let fall from time to time that the Home Office and the organisation Freddy worked for were on the same side, working to save England, they were also in competition and their goals did not always align.

  ‘You think it might be them asking questions?’

  ‘Rumours of our man’s imminent arrival in Britain have been circulating for weeks. They
might be overly bureaucratic at the Home Office but they are not completely without ability.’

  ‘I should let Madame Vitesse know this. Warn her to be careful.’ She clutched at his sleeve. ‘What if they find him first?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who finds him as long as he is out of action.’

  Not true. Not true. She had to be first. Everything depended on it. ‘I will see her tomorrow. I have a fitting for the gown I am to wear for the ball at Falconwood. I will impress on her the urgency.’

  He stopped and turned her to face him. ‘Why is it so important that you speak to him?’

  ‘There is unfinished business between us.’ It was all she dared say.

  His mouth tightened. ‘Very well. Keep your secrets. For now.’

  For now. That sounded very much like a threat.

  They had almost arrived back where they had started when he led her down a path leading to a walled garden with a display of fountains, each one in its own pool. He didn’t linger, but he opened a gate hidden behind some creeper. The scent of lavender and thyme and other herbs filled her nostrils.

  And not a lantern in sight.

  ‘I don’t think we are supposed to be in here,’ she said.

  ‘No.’ He closed the gate and shot the bolt. Light from the moon was enough to see by. The party had been deliberately planned to take advantage of the moon for those travelling back to town. They were in a kitchen garden, the house, ablaze with light, only yards away, its top floors visible above the stretch of the wall. But no one inside the house would be able to see them among the shadows.

  Her heart gave a loud thump. Not a warning exactly but definitely excitement tinged with a touch of wariness.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ she asked.

  He tucked a hand beneath her chin, tipping her face up and looking down at her. One side of his face was in shadow, the other carved by moonbeams into hard, masculine beauty.

  ‘A chance to talk without interruption.’ He cast her a wicked glance that made her toes curl. Wicked and charming both. She had never seen him look quite so handsome or so devilish. ‘And besides, you look so lovely, so tempting, I couldn’t resist a few minutes on our own.’