Dangerous Dukes 01 - Zachary Black - Duke of Debauchery

by Carole Mortimer

  And his interest was most assuredly piqued.

  To the extent that he no longer felt the least effect from the wine and brandy he had enjoyed with his friends earlier on.

  So much so that he had no intentions of allowing this young woman to leave his carriage without first ascertaining exactly who she was and how she came to know things about him she should not have known.

  He glanced out of the window to see that dawn was just starting to break over London’s rooftops.

  ‘Then might I suggest…’ he turned back to the young woman, just able to discern the pale oval of her face beneath that veil now ‘…as we will reach my home in just a few minutes, that now might be as good a time as any for you to confide at least a little of that information?’

  Her hands twisted together beneath that veil. ‘I— It concerns the movements of a…a notable personage, currently residing on an island in the Mediterranean.’

  It took every ounce of Zachary’s considerable self-control not to react to this statement. Not to show, by so much as the twitch of an eyelid, that her information might be of interest him.

  Who in hell was this woman?

  And what exactly did she know?

  He turned once again to look out of the window, as if bored by the conversation. ‘As far as I am aware I do not have any acquaintances currently residing on a Mediterranean island.’

  ‘I did not say he was a personal acquaintance of yours—’

  ‘Then I cannot see what possible interest any of this can be to me,’ Zachary cut her off harshly; even mentioning that the noble personage in question was a he could be dangerous.

  Having chosen his servants himself, Zachary trusted them implicitly. But that did not mean he wished to test that trust by allowing any of them to overhear the details of his conversation with this woman and her implication that he was an agent for the Crown.

  A young woman whose eyes now glittered across the width of the carriage at him from beneath that veil. Dark eyes. Brown or possibly a deep blue, he could not tell.

  ‘I assure you, it will be of great interest to…’

  ‘You have run out of time, I am afraid.’ Zachary returned her gaze coldly as the carriage came to a stop outside Hawksmere House. ‘Perhaps you would care to come inside and finish the conversation there?’

  Said the spider to the fly, Georgianna mentally added as she gave another shiver of apprehension. Being alone in this man’s carriage with him had been more than a test for her nerves. Entering Zachary Black’s home with him would push her well beyond her limits of daring.

  Although many might think otherwise, she acknowledged heavily, knowing her reputation was beyond repair as far as society was concerned. And most assuredly so in Hawksmere’s cold and condemning gaze.

  What would he say or do if he were to learn exactly who she was? Would he shun her, as all of society now shunned her? Or would he exact the revenge she had long been waiting for? That Sword of Damocles which she had felt balanced above her head for so many months now.

  Zachary Black, with his reputation as the coldly ruthless Duke of Hawksmere, was not an enemy any sane person would voluntarily wish upon themselves.

  And yet Georgianna had done so.

  And done so willingly at the time, in the belief that she had no other choice in the matter. It had only been in the months since that she’d had time to reflect, as well as deeply regret, her previous actions. To appreciate exactly what manner of man it was she had chosen to make her mortal enemy.

  After just a few minutes spent in the company of Hawksmere, and being made totally aware of the dangerous edge beneath his smooth urbanity, was enough to confirm that he was the type of man who would never forget a slight or an insult.

  And Georgianna had insulted him most grievously.

  ‘I think not, thank you,’ she now answered him coolly.

  ‘I really wish you had answered differently.’

  Georgianna was not fooled for a moment into thinking that Hawksmere’s words of regret were because he was still under the misapprehension she was a lady of the night and he wished to bed her. His tone had been too unemotional, too calmly conversational, for that to be true.

  She pressed back against the shadows of the carriage as the groom opened the door and the duke rose to his feet before stepping down on to the cobbled road, placing his hat upon his head before turning to hold out a hand to her.

  ‘Our conversation is far from over,’ he murmured pointedly as she made no attempt to take that hand.

  ‘If you will just agree to speak to—speak on my behalf, your Grace,’ she corrected as he frowned darkly, ‘then I will return in a day or so for your answer. For now I choose to wait here a few minutes longer, before quietly leaving. I believe it preferable if we were not seen leaving the Hawksmere ducal carriage together.’

  He raised one dark and mocking brow as he turned from dismissing the listening groom. ‘Are you perhaps under the misapprehension that your preferences are of any interest to me?’

  ‘On the contrary, I am sure they are not.’ Georgianna continued to press back into the shadows. ‘I was thinking of your own reputation rather than my own.’

  Hawksmere gave a humourless smile. ‘I am informed by my closest friends that my reputation is that of a gambler and an irredeemable rake.’

  And Georgianna now believed that to be a reputation this man had deliberately fostered, as a way of diverting attention from the fact that he worked secretly as a spy for the Crown.

  Oh, he was also undoubtedly both a gambler and a womaniser. He had more than enough funds to accommodate a liking for the former and both the arrogance and dangerous attraction to ensure he could satisfy the latter. He could surely have any woman who might come to the attention of those piercing silver eyes.

  Well, almost any woman, Georgianna reminded herself, knowing that one woman, at least, had escaped the attentions of both that silver gaze and the man himself.

  ‘No doubt you are,’ she conceded softly. ‘I would nevertheless still prefer to remain in the carriage until you are safely inside the house.’

  Zachary was not a man known for his patience. Or his forbearance. Or, indeed, any of those admirable qualities that made certain gentlemen of the ton so acceptable to both the young débutantes and their marriage-minded mamas. The opposite, in fact; he and his four closest friends had earned the sobriquet The Dangerous Dukes amongst the ton this past ten years or more, and one of the reasons for that had been because they were none of them amiable or obliging. Or in the least interested in marrying any of those irritatingly twittering young women who appeared year after boring year on the marriage mart.

  Zachary’s brief flirtation with the idea of marriage had been out of necessity rather than inclination, his father’s will demanding that he be married and have an heir by the time he reached the age of thirty-five, or forfeit the bulk of the Hawksmere fortune. The scandalous end to that betrothal meant that Zachary had delayed repeating the experience as yet. Although, now aged two and thirty, he appreciated that his time was assuredly running out, and he would soon be forced to once again take his pick of the Season’s beauties.

  Worthing was to marry later on today, of course, but as he was to marry the younger sister of another of The Dangerous Dukes, it did not signify; the beautiful Julianna Armitage was neither twittering nor irritating.

  So far in their acquaintance, Zachary had not found the earnest young woman behind the black veil to be either of those things either, though.

  ‘You consider I am in some danger, then?’ he enquired mildly. ‘From yourself, perhaps?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ she gasped. ‘I assure you, I did not come here to cause you any more harm—’ She broke off abruptly even as she seemed to cringe even further back against the carriage seat.

  ‘More harm?’ Zachary’s eyes narrowed even as he leant forward until his shoulders filled the doorway of the carriage, his gaze searching on that veiled figure. ‘Who are you?’ he prom
pted harshly.

  ‘I am no one, your Grace.’

  ‘On the contrary, you are most certainly someone.’ He reached into the ever-lightening gloom of the carriage to grasp one of her arms before pulling her along the seat towards him. A soft and slender arm that answered at least one of his earlier questions; the young woman beneath the veil was slender, very much so.

  ‘Let me go.’ She struggled against his hold, her gloved hand moving up in an effort to try to prise his fingers from about her arm. ‘You must release me, your Grace.’ There was now a distressed sob in her voice as her attempts failed to secure her release.

  ‘I think not,’ Zachary said slowly.

  It had never been his intention to just allow this young woman to leave. Not since she had mentioned having information on Bonaparte, not by name but by implication.

  Besides which, his curiosity to know more about this woman had only deepened with her comment about inflicting more harm.

  The implication surely being that she had caused him some personal harm in the past?

  If that was the case, then Zachary intended to know exactly who she was and in what way she might have caused him harm.

  To that end he leant inside the carriage and pulled her easily towards him, until she fell forward across his shoulder despite her struggles.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious.’ Zachary backed out of the carriage before straightening to heft his feather-light burden more comfortably on to his shoulder, his arm tight about the backs of the young woman’s thighs. He shot the curiously observing Lamb a grimly satisfied grin as he stood beside the horses’ heads, holding the reins to keep them steady. ‘The lady has expressed a fancy to pretend she is being kidnapped by a lusty pirate and carried off to his lair.’

  Georgianna gave an indignant squeak at the deliberate and mortifying fabrication, before turning appealingly to the stoic-faced groom. ‘Do not believe a word of it,’ she pleaded desperately, the blood having rushed to her head and now causing her to feel slightly dizzy. ‘I am certainly being kidnapped, but not by any lusty pirate.’

  ‘Quiet, wench.’ The Duke of Hawksmere gave her a hearty slap on her backside to accompany the piratical instruction. ‘Wish me luck with my plundering, Lamb,’ he added drily, ‘for I am certain I shall need it.’

  ‘Not you, your Grace.’ The groom grinned his enjoyment of the entertainment. ‘Women are much like feisty mares and I’ve never known of one of ’em as you couldn’t tame to the bridle.’

  Georgianna’s cheeks were aflame with colour, her light-headedness giving the whole situation a dreamlike quality. One in which she felt like the spectator at a theatre farce.

  What other explanation could there possibly be for the way she now dangled over one of the wide and muscled shoulders of Zachary Black, the dangerous Duke of Hawksmere?

  To now be jostled and bounced as he carried her up the steps of his town house, through the open doorway, before taking the three-pronged and lit candelabrum from the surprised and haughty-faced butler into his other hand?

  The duke continued on through the entrance hall before taking the steps two at a time as he carried Georgianna easily up the wide staircase to the bedchambers above.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Remove the veil.’ Zachary looked down grimly at the young woman he had just seconds ago dropped unceremoniously on top of the covers on his four-poster bed. The lit candelabrum he had placed on the bedside table allowed him to see the way her petticoat and the skirt of her black gown rode up and revealed slender and shapely ankles. Catching him looking, she hastily pulled the garments down again. Unfortunately that concealing veil had remained irritatingly in place. ‘Now,’ he ordered uncompromisingly.

  Georgianna looked up warily through her long lashes at her towering adversary as she scrabbled further up the bed, as far away from the ominously threatening Duke of Hawksmere as it was possible for her to be. ‘I have no intentions of removing my veil.’

  ‘Are you in mourning?’

  Was she? Her father had certainly died in the past year, but even so that was not her reason for wearing the veil.

  ‘If you have to think about it, then obviously not,’ the duke dismissed coldly. ‘Remove the veil. Now. Before I lose what little patience I have left,’ he added warningly.

  Georgianna’s response to Hawksmere’s dangerously soft voice was to sit up straighter in the lush pile of snowy white pillows at the head of the four-poster bed. ‘You cannot treat me in this high-handed manner.’

  ‘No?’ His tone was low and menacing. ‘I do not see anyone rushing to your rescue.’

  Her cheeks flamed with heat as she continued to look at him from beneath lowered lashes. ‘That is because you told your groom… Because your servants now think…’

  ‘That I am continuing to play my part in your erotic fantasy and am now ravishing you?’ Hawksmere completed derisively.

  ‘Yes.’

  The duke gave a grimly satisfied smile. ‘And can you tell me truthfully that you have never had such a fantasy? That you have never dreamed,’ he added, sensually soft, ‘of a swashbuckling pirate carrying you off to his ship before having his wicked way with you?’

  Of course Georgianna had once had such fantasies. What young and romantic girl had not dreamed of being carried off and ravished by a wicked pirate, or perhaps a dashing knight, who would then fall instantly in love with her and keep her for ever?

  But she was now twenty years of age and felt much older than that in her heart. Nor did she have any faith left in romance and love. She knew only too well that the reality did not match up to the fantasy, that the wicked pirate or the dashing knight invariably had feet of clay.

  ‘Those are the daydreams of silly young girls who do not know any better,’ she dismissed flatly.

  ‘And you do?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she assured with feeling.

  Hawksmere’s lids lay heavy over his eyes as he smiled down at her mockingly. ‘In that case, might I suggest you stop behaving like the ridiculous heroine in a lurid novel and remove your veil?’

  Georgianna did not see that she had any choice in the matter when the duke was so much bigger than she was and could so obviously force her to his will if he so chose. And his mocking assertions earlier as to his reason for bringing her to his bedchamber meant she could not expect to receive any assistance from Hawksmere’s servants, either.

  She had, Georgianna now realised, placed herself completely at the duke’s mercy.

  And those cold silver eyes, and the uncompromising set of his arrogant jaw, confirmed that this man gave no quarter, to man or woman.

  She slowly raised her shaking hands to where the pins held the veil in place. ‘You will not like what you see,’ she warned as she slowly began to remove those pins.

  Hawksmere raised dark brows. ‘Are you disfigured in some way? From the pox, perhaps?’

  ‘No.’ She sighed as she placed the pins on the night table beside the candelabrum of three flickering candles.

  ‘Ugly, then?’ he dismissed uninterestedly. ‘Something my bedchamber has certainly not seen before.’

  And such a richly ornate bedchamber it was, too, and entirely fitting for a duke as wealthy and powerful as Hawksmere. The curtains at the windows and about the four-poster bed were of a rich blue velvet and the furniture was heavy and dark and at the height of fashion. A thick, predominantly blue Aubusson carpet almost entirely covered the floor while a cheery fire burned in the large, ornate fireplace.

  The room was almost as magnificent as the duke himself, attired as he was in tailored evening clothes of black jacket and breeches, and waistcoat of fine silver brocade, his linen snowy white, a diamond pin glinting in the neckcloth at his throat.

  The same magnificent duke whose mistresses were rumoured to be some of the most beautiful women in the land.

  ‘I am neither ugly nor beautiful, I am merely a woman.’ Georgianna’s hands trembled even mo
re as she began to remove the concealing black veil.

  ‘Then I fail to see what it is you believe I shall dis—’ Zachary stopped talking as the veil came off completely and he was able to look at the woman’s face for the first time.

  She had lied to him because she was most certainly beautiful. Very much so. Her hair was raven-black beneath her bonnet, equally black and shapely above eyes hidden by the lowering of the longest, darkest lashes he had ever seen, her nose short and straight. Best of all was her magnificent mouth, the lips full and pouting, and surely meant for a man to kiss and devour? And other, much more carnal delights.

  That was Zachary’s first thought. His second was something else entirely as he eyed that pale face, that delicious mouth, in frowning concentration. ‘Do I know you?’

  Georgianna almost choked over the hysterical laughter that rose in her throat, at having Zachary Black, of all men, ask if he knew her.

  If he knew her?

  Not only was it highly insulting to have him look at her with such quizzical half recognition, but it also made a complete mockery of her having bothered to wear the black veil as a disguise in the first place; she had fully expected this man to take one look at her and remember exactly how, and why, he knew her.

  ‘Perhaps if you were to cast your mind back to last April, your Grace, it might help to jolt your memory?’ she prompted sarcastically.

  ‘Last April?’ Zachary’s lids narrowed as he studied her more closely. ‘Take off your bonnet,’ he ordered harshly.

  Her brows lowered as she looked up at him for the first time without that concealing veil and revealing deep blue eyes, the colour of violets in springtime.

  Unforgettably beautiful eyes, even if the rest of this woman’s appearance, apart from that tempting mouth, had changed beyond all recognition.