Jane smiled. “By the look of things, she will be well amused for a minute or two. If not, I have my own ways of providing a distraction.”
Chapter Nineteen
How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery, without feeling the most poignant grief?
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
Harriet had succeeded in eluding her persistent suitor by sending him off twice to fetch her champagne, which she covertly emptied into a potted fern. If she had her way, he’d be toasting himself in the dark and not even realize she wanted to escape him. He was a sweet boy and an utter bore. She would have to sneak back to Lady Powlis through one of the rooms off the garden. She stifled a yawn. She hoped her employer would sleep late tomorrow morning. Her feet hurt from dancing. She had taken but a few bites at supper, and she needed nourishment to keep up with the Boscastles. She fled down the torchlit terrace steps and onto a small path.
As she approached the statue of a beheaded Hermes that was her guidepost, she heard laughter and low whispers drifting from the garden depths. She paused, narrowing her eyes in concentration. Other than Edlyn, only three students from the academy had been invited to tonight’s affair, and they were all on their best behavior.
She drew behind the headless statue as the voices grew nearer. She knew instinctively that this was a conversation she should not interrupt.
Even if she would learn a few love secrets by listening, a love that could be revealed only in stolen moments was not what Harriet desired. Passion, yes. But only with a promise of forever. The gutter girl had her morals.
“I don’t care if he does see us together,” a woman said, and not quietly, either.
The gentleman escorting her replied, “But you will care if you lose your chance to become a duchess. There are few dukes for an ambitious lady to marry in England. Fewer yet are those in their prime.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps he is not worth the sacrifice,” her escort mused. “If he was capable of murdering his own brother, imagine what might happen to his wife.”
Harriet stared up at the moonless sky, wondering why the failings of human nature never ceased to surprise her. She should have developed a tougher hide by now. She didn’t move. She could have jumped out, grabbed Constance by her pretty curls, and shoved her, heels over arse, into the dirt where she belonged. But ladies did not engage in fisticuffs. It was common. Gentlewomen vented their spleen with veiled insults and whispered hurtful things behind one another’s backs. Harriet would have to learn the proper protocol for vanquishing a rival.
“He doesn’t have any brothers for you to marry, does he?” the man asked thoughtfully.
“None that will become duke, unless he dies.”
“Well, he looked damned healthy to me.”
“He is uncouth,” Constance said, her voice rising. “He has ignored me yet again tonight. And he stares at that little companion of his aunt’s with such obvious desire that I shall have her drowned like a cat in a well should I marry him.”
Harriet unfolded her arms. Protocol and fisticuffs be damned. This called for pistols at dawn. Of course, she could hardly run back to the duke with what she’d overheard. Lady Constance would deny everything and accuse Harriet of malicious mischief. His aunt was another matter.
The voices receded.
She edged around the statue and proceeded in silence through the garden to a service door where a bored-looking footman stood guard.
“Miss Harriet,” he said, perking up at the sight of her. “Protecting a lost lamb, are you? Guard yourself while you’re at it.”
Protecting a lost beast was more apt, she reflected. She slipped by the footman with a grateful smile and stole through a dark antechamber. She made a quick survey of the hallways and alcoves where an unseen guest might hide. It would be too ironic if she caught the duke in the midst of his own indiscretion. She must never tell him. It would make her look spiteful. She put her hand to her eyes. Yes, she must, but not in the middle of a party.
“Harriet,” a stern voice said from the end of the hall. “Is anything wrong-you aren’t crying, are you?”
The duke strode toward her, black and white, sin and wicked sweetness. She lowered her hand and stood watching him as if she, like the statue in the garden, had been turned to stone and lost her poor head besides.
“Were you just out on the terrace?” he demanded.
She nodded, looking up slowly into his eyes. How could anyone believe he had murdered his brother? Yes, that hard face of his would not lay any suspicions to rest, and he was a frustrating man to understand. But Harriet thought he liked it that way.
His dark gaze searched the shadows behind her. “You’ve been all this time by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“And the other gentleman?” he asked, his brow furrowing.
She hesitated. The other gentleman. “You mean the one I danced with?”
He regarded her in a long unsmiling silence. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Drinking champagne, I think. I’m not his keeper.”
“Alone?” he asked dubiously. “He left you alone while he went off to drink? Why?”
She swallowed. If he kept interrogating her and staring at her with his irresistible blue eyes, she’d be tempted to blurt out the truth. She would have to tell him exactly what she had overheard in the garden. And while she would dearly love to show Lady Constance in a bad light, she reminded herself that this wasn’t the proper time or place to test his temper.
“I don’t know why he left me,” she said again. “Maybe my dancing drove him to drink. Maybe he saw you staring at us like some big ogre. I hope you don’t take offense, but you do have a scowl that goes right through a body.”
“I thought I was being very subtle.”
She snorted. “You can’t be serious. My poor dance partner was shaking in his buckled shoes.”
He smiled, not making any effort at denial.
She waited a few moments, and when he said nothing more, she made a quick attempt to slip around him.
He caught her by the elbow, pulling her to his side. “Something happened to you.” He studied her closely, lifting her face in his hand.
She let him look. She’d learned a long time ago that a guileless stare could cover a guilty conscience. Not that she’d done anything wrong. But, dear heaven, you wouldn’t know it by how fast her heart was beating.
His eyes traveled from her face down the front of her silvery gown to the tips of her dancing pumps. “I was on the terrace a few minutes ago myself,” he said, walking her into the wall. “I didn’t notice you.”
“I didn’t see your grace, either. But then, perhaps you missed me as I left the garden. It’s easy to get lost in this place.”
He frowned. “I walked through the garden, too.”
She shouldn’t ask. “Did your grace find anything of interest there?”
He lifted his brow. “Not as interesting as what I have found in the hall.”
“The marquess collects many priceless works of art.”
“I have heard,” he murmured, “that some of the rooms in this house have been designed with seduction in mind.”
“So the rumors go.”
His thumb stroked from her ear to her chin. “The family has been invited to stay for a private supper after everyone else leaves.”
She disregarded the inner voice that warned her of impending pleasure. “Then you’re obliged to stay.”
“I won’t stay unless you stay with me,” he said stubbornly.
“How old are you, your grace?”
He sketched his thumb along the bumpy lace that bordered the tops of her breasts. “What difference does it make?”
She had to smile. “Not much to a person who’s accustomed to having everything go his way. Why did you come to London if all you wanted was to be alone?”
“I never said I wanted to be alone,” he said with a cool smile. “I only ask to be able to
choose my company.”
“Some of us aren’t allowed even that.”
“Then you should never have let me touch you, Harriet. I cannot look at you now and not ache.”
“That’s life in London.”
His mouth hardened. “Don’t you know what happens to young women who wander off in the dark?”
Her laugh was bittersweet. “Better than you ever will.”
He swallowed hard. “I don’t want to imagine that part of your life.”
She laid her head back against the wall. A relentless hunger slowly pervaded her body. A craving he had awakened and only he could appease. “Aren’t you afraid to be alone with a man who might have murdered his brother?” he asked in a low, lilting voice.
“Are you making a confession, duke?”
His mouth curled in a smile. He took a step, and suddenly his free hand locked around her waist. A wave of faintness washed over her. Before she could draw another breath, he had trapped her between his hard body and the wall.
She felt the steel length of his phallus pressing through her thin dress and petticoat to her belly. Her woman’s place moistened at his unabashed sexuality. She had a notion what it meant. A prelude to a more intimate act. “I would very much like to be alone with you,” he whispered in her hair.
She wanted it to happen, here, now. The desire that flooded her veins silenced all her common sense. She wanted him more than air or dignity. His blue eyes flickered to her face. His nostrils flared. He knew.
He drew his hand up slowly between their bodies and unlaced the front of her gown before she could take another breath. A rush of bracing air stung her breasts as he caught a fistful of silk and tugged. His dark head lowered. She felt her will dissolve. His tongue teased back and forth at the tips of her breasts until she was shaking with the sharpest need she had ever known. If he didn’t stop, she would slide to the floor.
“Harriet,” he whispered, looking up into her face. “Harriet, please, I need you.”
She stared down into his eyes, falling into a darkness so endless she could barely hear his voice. “No,” she said, her voice clear and distinct. “Not this time. Have a temper if you like.”
He took a long breath. Still in a haze, she watched as he pulled her bodice back over her swollen breasts, relacing the ribbons with a look of burning regret. Then he lowered his head once again and branded her mouth with a kiss.
“If your door is ever left unlocked at night, I shall assume it is an invitation.”
She smoothed down her skirt. He backed away. They returned via separate doors to the ballroom. Her mind took forever to recover. In fact, it wasn’t until after the marquess’s private supper party began that she realized there was no lock upon her bedchamber door to discourage the duke’s advances.
Chapter Twenty
The wise want love, and those who love want wisdom.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
He danced the last dance of the evening with Constance, his sole intention to throw the scandalmongers off his true scent. He realized too late that he and Harriet could have made a more discreet return to the ballroom and that certain conclusions would be drawn. Did the duke find his aunt’s abigail more desirable than one of Society’s own? Such speculation amused the ton.
Constance found nothing amusing in his behavior and did not hesitate to say so. “This was meant to be our night.”
“Was it?” he asked in surprise.
“I thought our engagement might be announced.”
“Did you?” He noticed Harriet standing behind his aunt, their expressions of mutual disapproval rather delightful.
“My father has already had papers drawn for the wedding.”
“To my late brother, perhaps. But not to me.”
She smiled thinly, walking the steps of the last set as if they were opponents on a dueling field, not on a dance floor. “Your grace is too honest.”
He bowed in relief as the dance ended. “And, you, my lady, are only so in the moonlight.”
For a moment she appeared not to understand what he meant. But then she gave a slight nod, not bothering to lie. “At least I do not engage in affairs with those beneath my station. Lord Hargrave is merely a friend.”
He walked beside her to the supper room, Constance calling back farewells to the other guests who had not been invited to stay. Her dark hair lay tightly coiled upon the whitest skin, aside from Edlyn’s, that he had ever seen. Her eyes shone like cold, distant stars.
She paused without warning, people crowding all around them. “You may kiss me now.”
“But everyone is watching.”
“I know. Just kiss me and be done with it.”
The thought held as much appeal as did a wasp sting. But since when did a Boscastle male refuse an offer to indulge a lady?
She tilted her face. “On the cheek. Lips closed.”
He stared down at her. She looked for all the world as if she were awaiting a guillotine to drop. “Why don’t we just shake hands and go from there?”
“If his grace does not pay me court tonight, the papers will report that we have become estranged.”
“Estranged? Before we are even properly engaged?” He laughed. “What a complicated world is London’s Society. I admit it does not interest me at all.”
“Your brother had an instinctive respect for the roles one must play. Your instincts, I fear, are far less refined.”
“And that is why you fear them?” he asked curiously.
“What I fear is that you shall make fools of both of us, your grace.”
“And if I do not care?”
She regarded him with contempt. “Ours is to be an arranged marriage. Whether you care or not is irrelevant.”
If Griffin had ever felt the slightest interest in pursuing a match between them, even for the purpose of breeding heirs, it dissipated. Disregarding the fact that his male parts did not exactly dance in her presence, he was repulsed by the unfeeling ease with which she was as willing to share his bed, his life, as she had been his late brother’s.
It was a well-known fact that a Boscastle could not survive without passion. Perhaps if Griffin had never come to London, he would have lived the rest of his days denying what his ancestry had ordained.
Perhaps he would never have met a woman with hair the color of a pagan bonfire and a spirit disciplined enough to becalm the beast he was afraid he had become.
Harriet slept late and not well, dreaming of a young duke who abducted her from her warm bed in a flying chariot and carried her into darkness. Her teeth chattered like a skeleton’s. It was perishing cold up in the clouds, despite what the poets might claim, and the duke had turned a deaf ear to her objections. Harriet’s dream counterpart was less impressed with romantic gestures than she was with practical matters.
She reached through the mist for his cloak, pulling it off the duke’s broad shoulders with a cry of shock. He was nude beneath, his chest and torso as hard and beautifully sculpted as the statues in the marquess’s garden. A work of art, Lady Hermia Dalrymple would announce when the girls at the academy took out their sketchbooks. The human body should reflect the hallowed perfection that its creator had intended.
In Harriet’s dream, as in her worldly experiences, not even a duke was hallowed. Nor did he seem to be entirely human. “I can’t find my heart,” he said, as she huddled deeper into his cloak and they ascended into his dark abode. “Do you happen to have a chisel on you, Harriet? I know they come in handy for housebreaking…”
She sat up in bed, the callused hand that shook her arm bringing her crashing straight back to earth. “His grace wishes to see you in the library, miss,” the chambermaid, Charity, hissed in her ear.
Harriet was quick. She’d woken to worse. She had grabbed her dead-drunk father by the ears and shoved him to his feet, the pair of them pounding through hidden alleys with the peelers at their heels. But she was properly employed now, if subject to the demands of
a duke. She stretched her arms and legs, wiggling her toes under the bedcovers. Who did he think he was to order a body half dressed out of bed at this hour of the day? “I haven’t done my hair or had tea. What’s the hurry?”
Charity shook her harder. “He said now. And he’s in one of those moods, if you know what I mean.”
“Is he?”
The last Harriet had seen of him, he was studying Lady Constance in complete absorption. Well, he could wait. She donned her morning frock, washed her face, and rinsed her mouth with rosemary water. But her hair-dear God. What a monstrous fright the looking glass reflected. Tangles of blazing red hair that took a good hour or so to tame before she could appear in polite company. Most of the time she braided it before bed. But last night she hadn’t bothered. The duke had half seduced her in the hall and then danced the last dance, right afterward, with the woman the ton expected him to marry.
Let him see her looking as though she’d been struck by lightning. Harriet took grim pleasure in the thought.
“Come on,” Charity urged, hauling her to the door. “Never mind your hair.”
“It looks that bad?”
“I’ve never seen the likes of it. But at least you still got your head and we still got jobs.”
Harriet lifted her chin. “I work for Lady Powlis.”
Charity pushed her through the door. “And who’s to say he won’t put that fussy old thing out to pasture once he takes a wife?”
He sat, unspeaking, as she entered the library and stood before him. Harriet knew the trick. She’d waited often enough before the magistrates to glean that when silence built, the person who wielded the least power-usually her-would break down. In this case, she was too annoyed to give him the satisfaction. She might have forgotten in time that he had danced with another woman last night. But she would never forgive him for insisting she appear before him with her hair as unruly as a gorse bush.
The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife Page 12
