Then she did something that truly baffled him. She placed her hands on her hips, slowly, deliberately. Then lifted a black, perfectly plucked brow in a rather chastising way. She held that position for exactly ten seconds before clucking her tongue, and saying, “It occurs to me, Your Grace, that you must have some nefarious and scandalous reason for summoning me here tonight. Truth be told, I’d far rather you simply spit it out than keep me waiting.”
Lucien gawked.
“If I am incorrect, of course, then tell me otherwise. If, perhaps, Lucy sent me word of her plight through you, then I would rather hear what is wrong.”
What? No screech? No pointed fingers? No, “You horrible rake,” yelled at him? Granted, he hadn’t had a private tête-à-tête with her in almost a year, but the last time they’d parted company he’d been sure she despised him. Not surprising. He despised himself.
She waited, left brow lifted.
He said, “You think your friend would actually ask for my help?”
She shrugged, those small breasts of hers plumping as she did so. “Why not? She seems to like you, though I’ve no idea why. She trusts you. So, yes, she would do something that unbelievably silly.”
Lucien didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. And it wasn’t her condescending attitude that threw him. It was her belief that someone in London might actually like him that stymied him.
“So, what is it, Your Grace? Why have you brought me here? I know it can’t be my charming company you seek.”
“You think not?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know how little I like you.”
Indeed, he did. Unlike most of society, she didn’t hide it. He supposed it had something to do with his brother’s death, but he wasn’t sure. Who knew the workings of the female mind?
“Well?” she prompted.
Good God. She actually tapped her left foot, giving him a look of impatience.
“I brought you here to give you my kiss of death,” which, of course, wasn’t what he was here to do at all, but he felt the sudden urge to see how she would react to those words.
She didn’t. She just pursed her lips in an impatient way, saying, “I would recommend you save those for your courtesan, whomever that unlucky woman might be.”
Unlucky? And by now Lucien had grown a bit miffed. He straightened, putting on his best I-am-the-Rake-of-Ravenwood-and-I-am-here-to-steal-your-virtue look.
She didn’t flinch.
Damnation. Very well. Let us see how she reacted to spoken words. “I brought you here to seduce you.” Once again he waited for her reaction.
He had it a moment later.
She snorted.
Chapter Two
Elizabeth couldn’t help herself. Certainly it was an unladylike sound, but what he said sounded so ludicrous. “You want to seduce me?” she repeated sarcastically.
“I do,” he said.
“And why,” she asked, “have you decided to seduce me?”
He shrugged, appeared to consider his words, then said frankly, “Because you despise me.”
The words settled over her slowly. But it was the look on his face that finally convinced her he might be telling the truth. “You, duke, are a demented fool.”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
“You heard me correctly. What is more, my words are true. Witness your behavior of late. Oh, yes,” she said when she noticed his upraised brows. “It may have been over a year since that debacle of a scandal wherein rumors of your ruining me on that awful ship surfaced, rumors, I might add, that you never bothered to deny. But during that time, I have kept my eye on you, mostly in the hopes of steering clear of you. As a result I know of the horse race down Durry Lane. The fisticuffs at the opera. Even the cockfights you attend. What is more, I know the cause of it all.”
“Indeed?” he asked. “Pray, enlighten me.”
“You are bored, Your Grace. Utterly and completely bored. You like to bully society with your arrogant looks and outlandish behavior, and now you have apparently decided to bully me. Well, I will have none of it, for I am leaving. Forgive me for spoiling your plans for my seduction.”
She turned, lifted her nose, and made to exit the room.
He was at her side in an instant, and for the life of her Beth didn’t know how he managed to move so fast. But a hand shot out to stay her, lightly clasping her forearm. She gasped at such forward behavior, then stared at that hand pointedly, telling him without words to unhand her that instant, yet oddly lost for a moment as she stared at his tan fingers against her pale flesh. She looked up at him sharply, disconcerted to realize how close he was.
“You truly do despise me, don’t you?” he asked softly, those tarragon-colored eyes of his looking at her in a way that startled her. He almost seemed to care about her opinion of him. Ridiculous.
“I do,” she admitted, though, truth be told, she didn’t really hate him. Elizabeth didn’t hate anybody.
He still hadn’t let her go, and so she was conscious of that hand on her flesh, oh how she was conscious. It irritated her to the point that she jerked out of his grasp.
“How utterly surprising,” he murmured.
“What is surprising, Your Grace, is that someone has not put a ball through your heart.”
“Are you volunteering for the job?” he asked, looking almost hopeful.
“The only thing I would volunteer for is to beat you with a club. Now. Let me go.”
He did. She felt buoyed by her triumph. But it was a triumph that was short-lived, for he stared down at her intently, his gaze sweeping her up and down yet again. “I must say, your hair looks quite pretty like that.”
“Indeed, sir. I am most flattered. Coming from a man whose wardrobe most likely consists of red capes and pitchforks, I will take the compliment to heart.”
“I wonder how you manage to keep it in place. Sewing pins, perhaps?”
He was jesting, of course, but she could jest right back. “Certainly, duke, the same pins you must use to keep your horns in place.”
He smiled, a smile that looked genuine, his eyes appearing surprised. And intrigued. “Touché, my dear.”
“I bid you adieu, Your Grace,” she said, turning to the door when it appeared obvious that he wasn’t about to leave. “Do have a pleasant journey back to Hell.”
“Don’t you want to know what I planned to do once I’d seduced you?”
She told herself to keep walking. Told herself not to stop. But she did stop. Looking back on it, she realized it was that one action that changed her life irrevocably.
She stared up at him, waiting for him to tell her.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to become my mistress,” he explained.
She blinked, wondering what to say. Well, she knew what she’d like to say, or rather, what to call him, but the unladylike words would not cross her lips. “You must surely be the most base, depraved male of my acquaintance.”
“Do you think?” he asked.
“I do. But I would not be proud of the fact, Your Grace. I would look in the mirror. See what it is you have become. I fear you will not like what you find.”
“No?” he asked, his eyes appearing to be genuinely curious, then considering. “Do you not wonder what would happen if you did the same? Are you not tired of being such a perfect lady?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. What’s more, I do not care to know.”
“Ah, but I think you know well indeed what it is I am talking about.”
She drew back as his hand lifted.
“What is the matter, my dear? Would you rather I ply you with soft words? Perhaps tell you your lips look as soft as rose petals?”
She stared at his lifted hand, the skin oddly callused for a man who did no labor. “Do not flatter me, sir. It will get you nowhere.”
“But I’m not flattering. It’s true. You do have lips like rose petals.”
“And you are a poor liar.”
&n
bsp; “And you have a piece of petal stuck to you lower lip.” She drew up.
“Here,” he said, touching her, bending toward her, his lips mere inches away. “It fell from your hair when you turned.”
Elizabeth felt her whole body tense, then tingle, then, gracious, she didn’t know what. She looked up at him, so near, his breath drifting lazily across her face. She almost she closed her eyes, though she told herself to draw back. To pull away. To slap his lordship soundly across the face. Experience warned her that the duke was not a man to be trifled with. But wouldn’t you know it? She just stood there, motionless, as his finger dragged across her lower lip, leaving a trail of heat in its wake.
“Oh, I do beg your pardon.”
Elizabeth jumped. So did the duke. They pulled apart, both turning toward the door.
“Your Grace,” their hostess trilled, her haughty face filling with sudden, unmistakable malice. “I had no idea the business you needed to attend to was her ladyship.”
And Elizabeth knew. She knew what would happen once Lady Derby left the room. A whisper here, a hint of what she’d seen there. Elizabeth’s reputation would dissolve. For while the ton danced a mere few rooms away, she’d been alone with a man, unchaperoned, and that man had been touching her. Intimately touching her. And not just any man: Ravenwood. A man whose name had been linked to hers in the past.
She was compromised.
By the Rake of Ravenwood.
Chapter Three
A pall hung over the Montclair household the next day, a pall that could be felt in the very framing of the home. A stillness settled over everything. No boards creaked. No windows slammed. No voices dared to be heard.
Elizabeth pushed aside a heavy, blue velvet curtain as she stared out her bedroom window and down at the cobbled street below. The sun shone off stones that seemed to be glinting happily at the unexpectedly beautiful day. It glared into her eyes, prisming off the gossamer stands of a web a spider had spun on the other side of the glass. She felt rather like the mummified fly she saw in that web. Trapped. Helpless.
She inhaled deeply, the better to keep herself from crying. She wouldn’t cry, she told herself. She would not. It seemed ridiculous to cry when there was nothing she could do about what had happened.
Ravenwood.
That devil. No. Not devil. The Antichrist.
Bitterness made it hard to swallow. She turned away, unable to stand the sunlight a moment longer. Her reputation had been destroyed last night. Utterly and completely destroyed. And if Ravenwood behaved up to par, it would sink even lower, for she doubted he would marry her. The man would slither away unscathed, but she, she would be left to pick up the pieces of her damaged reputation, if such a thing were possible given her already low position.
And so now what? She had no dowry. No reputation, nothing to recommend her to a man. Not that she particularly wanted to marry, not after watching what Lord Ludlows had done to her aunt. But she knew her choices were few and far between. Her family was out of money. Nothing bore the evidence of that more than her room. Where once before the blue curtains had been new, now threads hung from the seams, the fabric unraveling near the bottom. The floral carpet looked worn, the coverlet on her bed that matched her velvet curtains having aged as poorly as the rest of the room. There would be no season for her next year, Elizabeth having assumed—and accepting—that she’d become a governess once her mother accepted defeat.
But not now. Not ever. Not with her reputation.
A sudden racket from down the street caught her attention. She turned back to the window and looked down the lane. Other faces peeked out of other windows as people in the brownstone neighborhood rushed to see what passed by.
A carriage came at them. Six dappled gray geldings, two outriders, and one red-and-purple-garbed coachman accompanied it. ’Twas the shiniest, biggest, most grandiose carriage Elizabeth had ever seen, and it jingled and creaked like a Mayfair parade. Gracious, but her father would give his left arm for such an equipage. A bird dived toward it, only to turn around at the last moment as if frightened away. The lead horse on the left tossed its white mane and swished its white tail as if to chastise that bird for such impertinence, the horse’s silver-and-black tack gleaming in the sun.
Elizabeth, who thought she’d seen everything, felt her jaw drop. Gracious, it must be the Prince of Wales.
And then she saw the crest on the door.
Two black birds, each facing the other on a shield of red. Ravenwood.
Not a prince. A duke.
Her teeth clenched. She turned away from the window again, a myriad of emotions cascading within her. Relief. Anger. And oddly enough, hope.
So, he had decided to come? She’d wondered if he would. All night long she’d fretted, conjecturing on what would be worse: his grace proposing or his grace not proposing? She’d wanted to ask him last night as her mother had hastily shooed her out the door, but not one word had been exchanged, not one look from him that promised he would make things right. As such she didn’t know what to expect. She still didn’t know even though his carriage was outside. Why, he might be driving by, his face pressed to the window, thumbs stuffed into his ears, taunting her with his tongue as he drove by.
But the carriage had stopped. She could hear that it had. She looked toward the fireplace in the corner of her room and the clock that ticked on the mantel. Fifteen minutes went by before she heard a knock on her door.
“My lady?” a maid called.
Elizabeth turned back to the window, staring blindly out of it. She knew, she just knew Lucien St. Aubyn, the Duke of Death, the Rake of Ravenwood, had asked her father for her hand.
God help her.
She was to become his duchess.
“You will accept him,” her mother said when she was shown into the family’s private parlor fifteen minutes later. It had taken Elizabeth that long to compose herself. And yet still her hands shook. Still her mind spun with the disbelief of it all. “You will accept him and be grateful for it, for I do not need to remind you that we cannot afford to give you another season. This is the one reasonable proposal we’ve received, and you will accept it.”
It hadn’t been a proposal. She’d been ruined. But Elizabeth didn’t remind her mother of that fact.
“You should be pleased,” her father added from his corner. His horseshoe-shaped hair looked mussed, his blue eyes as hard as spearpoints. And even though he was shorter than she, he suddenly felt twice the size this morn. “For you shall become a duchess.” He stood near a suit of armor that had been purchased at auction and was meant to fool guests into thinking their lineage more noble than it was. “ ’Tis a title your mother and I could only dream of securing for you.”
The Duchess of Death. How lovely.
Still, she nodded, not looking either of them in the eye, especially her mother. She hadn’t been able to look her in the eye since Lady Derby had regaled her with all that she’d seen.
Ravenwood had been touching her lips, Lady Derby had hissed loud enough for half her guests to overhear.
Elizabeth would never forget the look on her mother’s face. Never forget the look of dismay followed by relief followed by triumph. It had obviously never crossed her mother’s mind that Ravenwood might not come up to scratch.
“Elizabeth, are you listening?” her father asked, his blue eyes, so like her own, narrowing.
She started. “Of course, Papa.”
Her father nodded, exchanging a look of approval with her mother before the countess went to the door connecting the two rooms. She motioned her in, Elizabeth doing as bid. Her mother didn’t leave the door open, as was proper. Elizabeth found that wildly amusing, although she was hard-pressed to understand why.
“My dearest Lady Elizabeth.”
She turned to her right as the door closed. The drawing room overlooked the street, and so she had a perfect view of his grace as he knelt on one knee before the massive bow window. He had a shiny, black top hat clutched to
his chest, a bouquet of hothouse roses in his right. A great black cape was thrown over his shoulders, his boot polished to such a shine she could see white bars of light from the reflection of the window.
“I have come to ask for your hand in marriage.”
Elizabeth blinked at the sight. Blinked, then gasped, then horrors upon horrors, felt tears build. She tried to stifle them, inhaling then exhaling then inhaling again, hands clenching. Oh, how she tried to stop them. But she couldn’t. She watched as he knelt there. A tear escaped. She wiped it away angrily. He must have seen it, for he slowly got to his feet. She watched as he stared at her for a second, then tossed the flowers and hat aside.
“Well, now,” he said. “I never expected my proposal to move you to tears.”
And the dam burst.
“You beast,” she said. “Have you any idea of how much I despise you?”
Lucien started. What was this? Tears? “Despise me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she sniffed.
She had the most damnable way of crying, he noted. They weren’t sobs. She didn’t whine. She made these little snuffle noises that sounded like a clogged waterspout.
“By why?” he found himself asking.
The snurfle noises increased. “Lady Elizabeth, please. I see no reason to carry on like this.”
“See no reason?” she all but shrieked.
He jumped, actually jumped like a frightened man. And who wouldn’t be frightened of the harridan coming at him? She suddenly looked like a character from The Taming of the Shrew. Her hand was outstretched as she came at him, little wisps of her upswept hair trailing behind her like smoke from her ears. Call him mentally challenged, but he actually had no idea what she intended until she came to a halt before him and slapped him full in the face.
His cheek stung from the force of it.
Her hand must have hurt, too, for she cried, “Ouch,” just before she shook her fist at him. “You have a face as hard as your fiendish head.”
Seduced Page 3
