How to Dazzle a Duke

by Claudia Dain

  However, George was her nephew and she wasn’t going to allow him to become a pastime for a bored woman who distracted herself from unhappiness by romping from bed to bed.

  “George, I’m certain Miss Prestwick’s brother will want to know that she has left the drawing room with Lord Iveston. Will you find him and tell him just that, please?”

  Without another word, George Grey left to find George Prestwick, which would not be at all difficult as Sophia was certain he was still in the reception room.

  “You got rid of him quickly enough,” Lady Paignton said. “Did you think I would devour him?”

  “Lady Paignton,” Sophia said, “what I think is that a woman with as carefully constructed a reputation as you have should choose a man who will add to her luster.”

  “And your nephew won’t?”

  Sophia looked at Lady Paignton almost studiously. She was a tall, well-formed woman of exotic good looks. She was a widow of questionable fortune. She was almost devotedly in pursuit of any man of likely age who happened to pass before her gaze. In short, she was a woman who was misusing every advantage she had and failing to gain advantages she didn’t have, which was very nearly criminal of her.

  “Darling, certainly there are more worthwhile men to entertain yourself upon. George is simply too primitive for your tastes, I assure you, and as he is leaving England shortly, how can he be made proper use of?”

  Bernadette, Lady Paignton, looked somewhat surprised by Sophia’s question, and then she smiled briefly. “You think my reputation has been carefully constructed, Lady Dalby?”

  “But of course. Every woman’s reputation, in fact. What else is a woman to do with her reputation but to manage it until it produces the desired result?”

  “And my desired result?” Bernadette prompted, lifting her chin and staring with her remarkable green eyes into Sophia’s.

  “Darling, don’t you know?” Sophia said gently. “To be desired. Are you succeeding, Lady Paignton? Are you as desired as you want to be?”

  Bernadette chuckled, a brief burst of air, and then shook her dark chestnut head at Sophia. “I’m afraid not, Lady Dalby, but then I am not done yet.”

  “BUT I’m not done yet,” George Prestwick said to George Grey, who stood at his elbow, looking quite as dark and dangerous as an Indian should look. That he looked it in such a refined environment as Lady Lanreath’s pink and white reception room was something of a feat.

  George Prestwick, who was as dark of hair and eye as George Grey, but who didn’t look dangerous in the least, was playing cassino at a table that had been arranged for play in the corner of the reception room. Lord Dutton, Anne Warren, and Lady Lanreath played with him. It was a most interesting grouping of players as it was perfectly obvious to the most naïve of observers, which Anne Warren was not, that Lord Dutton was trying very obviously to seduce Lady Lanreath. He was doing it to annoy her, of that she was equally certain. That Lady Lanreath was considering succumbing to seduction by Dutton was almost certain. Lady Lanreath was a very cautious player, both at cards and at seduction, which Anne knew by both rumor and observation.

  That Dutton was not a bit cautious at anything she knew by experience.

  What George Prestwick knew of the situation as it was being played out before him, she had no idea whatsoever. If he had any intelligence at all, it should be perfectly obvious to him. Lord Dutton was punishing her for marrying Staverton by seducing within her sight, sound, and scent the completely lovely Lady Lanreath. That Lady Lanreath was a widow practically confirmed it. That Lady Lanreath had nothing to lose by an arrangement, however brief, with Lord Dutton made the whole thing a fait accompli. That Lord Dutton had been trying to seduce Anne for the past month made it very nearly intolerable.

  But she would tolerate it and she would do so without any signs of distress to delight Lord Dutton. Because that’s what he wanted, to distress her, obviously and perhaps noisily. He would laugh for a week if she displayed any sort of temper over his behavior. And she, she would lose Lord Staverton, whom she genuinely cared for and to whom she would devote her life.

  Lord Staverton was an honorable man. He was good and kind and gentle. He was generous. He was willing to marry her, a poor and insignificant widow with a questionable past. Questionable because her mother had been a courtesan. On her better days she had been a courtesan; on her worse, she had been … desperate.

  Anne was not going to live a life of desperation. No, she was going to be more clever and more sensible than her mother. She was going to marry well and she was going to be a contented wife to Staverton.

  She would. No matter who Dutton seduced, no matter how his blue eyes twinkled, no matter what roguish blather fell from off his lips. No matter. She was going to marry Staverton, lovely Staverton, and if Antoinette, Lady Lanreath, wanted to tumble into Dutton’s arms, lips, bed, then that was her choice to make. Anne had already made hers and Dutton had no place in it.

  If only she could tell him that. If only she could get him alone, stare up into his handsome face and tell him that she didn’t want him and didn’t want him to want her.

  She couldn’t tell him, and she wouldn’t. And so she told him the essence of her thoughts and plans by sitting down to table with him to play at cards and sat quietly and docilely by while he seduced another woman right in front of her.

  She didn’t care.

  By every bone in her body, she didn’t care.

  Now, if only he would acknowledge it by breaking out in hives or something equally dramatic. He had been developing a strong tendency to drink since her rejection of him and acceptance of Staverton, but he seemed sober enough now.

  Pity, that.

  A drunken Dutton was quite, quite entertaining, purely as a subject of ridicule, you understand. Whatever had happened to turn him from that profitable path?

  “Your sister needs you,” George Grey said, pulling George Prestwick’s chair practically out from under him. “Go to her. Now.”

  “Oh, bother it,” George Prestwick said, rising to his feet. “I ask you to excuse me,” he said to the players.

  Dutton barely looked at him as he was so very busy staring heatedly into Antoinette’s wide green eyes. She was a remarkably beautiful woman. Anne felt positively dowdy, and she was dressed most prettily in a modestly cut muslin gown with a simple silver cross at her throat. Lady Lanreath was spectacularly arrayed in a low cut gown of white silk with an absolute fountain of pinked topaz around her throat and dangling from her ears.

  “It is a lovely thing you do, Mr. Prestwick,” Anne said. “A woman does require so very often to be protected from men who are too casual in their address and too fervid in their manner. I can assure you that Miss Prestwick will be most glad of your assistance.”

  “Do you think so, Mrs. Warren?” Mr. Prestwick asked.

  “I’m quite certain she does,” Dutton answered in her place, vile man, “as Mrs. Warren feels very much put upon by the slightest attention paid to her.”

  “How very unusual,” Lady Lanreath said softly. Lady Lanreath had a very soft, very calm demeanor that was quite exceptionally attractive. It was hardly possible for Lord Dutton to resist her. “I so very seldom meet a woman who is as shy of attention as I, Mrs. Warren. Perhaps you will come and visit me some afternoon so that we may discuss it?” Lord Dutton looked ready to pop.

  Anne felt better than she had in an hour. What a lovely woman Antoinette was, how astute and how supremely generous. Perhaps she would not tumble into Dutton’s bed after all. Anne nearly sighed with satisfaction. But she didn’t, for that would satisfy Dutton too readily and she had determined weeks ago that Dutton should, for as long as possible, be starved of satisfaction. Perhaps for as long as he lived. It was possible, wasn’t it? He might even deserve it.

  “I should love to, Lady Lanreath,” Anne said, smiling.

  “Your sister,” George Grey said again, though he was staring at Dutton and looked very close to smiling.

  It was
rumored that George Grey had struck Dutton a blow to the belly not over a week ago. What delicious fun that must have been.

  “Yes,” George Prestwick said with a sigh. “If you’ll excuse me?” and with a bow, he and Mr. Grey left them.

  “May I join you?”

  Anne looked up to see Lord Ruan standing with his hand upon the chair previously occupied by Mr. Prestwick. Dutton looked entirely comfortable with the notion. Lady Lanreath, on the other hand, did not. How very interesting.

  Seventeen

  “I think you should know that I’m not going to find this at all enjoyable,” Penelope said as Iveston escorted her out of the drawing room and into the wide and well-lit stair hall, “but I might find it excessively interesting. As an experiment, you understand. A sort of comparison study. I do find it logical to assume that all men kiss very much alike, allowing for differences in the shape of the mouth, but once that is accounted for, how different can one man be from another?”

  “I quite understand,” Iveston said cheerfully. “I’ve come to quite the same conclusion about women, and given the fact that I’ve kissed more than a few, I can assure you that your suppositions are, in general, correct. One woman is very much like another. Nearly indistinguishable, actually.”

  “More than a few? How many?” she asked.

  “I haven’t counted.”

  “Why not? That lacks a certain precision, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose it does. There simply have been too many.”

  Penelope felt the shock of that statement, which could certainly have been a lie and most likely was, penetrate her bones.

  Too many? How on earth had Lord Iveston kissed even one girl? He never left the house!

  He was peculiar in the extreme. Everyone thought so. There was not even any dispute about it. Every rumor of him, and she had listened to every one, naturally, as he had been on her very informal list of possible husbands, was firmly and resolutely clear that he was both odd and excessively retiring. How could he have kissed a girl?

  Of course, if she were being honest, and she was always scrupulously honest with herself, he had kissed rather well. It did imply some small bit of practice on his part. Perhaps he had kissed a distant cousin once. Or a harlot. That made sense. He had more money than manners. He would have to pay to attain any female attention at all.

  She felt immeasurably better.

  And then felt profoundly worse.

  A jade? He had paid to be kissed by a woman of the town?

  What had that been like? And could she do any better?

  Of course she could. She was better than any strumpet. Every strumpet. She was completely certain of that.

  But she eyed Iveston as he pulled her along, her hand clasped in his, barely taking notice of her as he decried the stair hall as too peopled, the servants hurrying up and down in their duties to the Lanreath guests, then pulled her without due care down the stairs and out a rear door to the small garden behind the house.

  It was raining, lightly, but still raining.

  Iveston was clearly an imbecile at this sort of thing. Her groom had been much better suited to an out of doors rendezvous; at least it had been warm and dry with a solid roof overhead. What sort of seduction was it to be in these conditions?

  A very brutal one, apparently, for Iveston, without another word to ease her into it, or a gentle caress to announce his intentions to approach her, turned upon the flagstones, caught her in his arms, and kissed her with all the delicacy of a … of a … well, she couldn’t think what. Couldn’t think at all, actually, as his kiss quite swept her up and out of all thought.

  How had that happened?

  Before she knew what she was about, and she wasn’t completely sure she’d ever know what she was about again, she’d lifted herself up onto her toes, clasped her hands to his head, and was returning his kiss in full measure.

  Tongues were fully involved.

  Heated breath.

  Smooth lips.

  Hands that held her against him with such force and such determination that she could do nothing but respond in kind. To be polite, most likely. Just meeting him halfway, really, that’s all it was.

  It was a kiss. She was supposed to be kissing him, showing some warmth about it. That had been the bargain.

  And she was going to be found fully as accomplished at it as any common doxy.

  Yes, that sounded ridiculous and completely off point, but it felt entirely on point and that’s all she cared about at the moment, how she felt.

  She felt glorious.

  He was quite good at it, kissing, that is. Holding, too. It was quite astounding.

  She was responding quite … enthusiastically, and it might not have all been to do with their bargain, not that he needed to know that. The only thing she was determined that he know was how well she kissed.

  This ought to do the trick nicely.

  Just for a bit of variety, and to show him she knew her way around a man’s mouth, she moved his head in the other direction with her hands, lifted him off her a bit, and nibbled his lower lip.

  He made a noise very much like a growl, which was very nice indeed, and clasped her more firmly against him and kissed her very much more deeply than before.

  It was very nice. She might have moaned. She did hope not.

  The rain, a heavy mist of cool water, drifted over them. The droplets tangled in his golden hair, a shimmering veil of glistening beauty. His cheekbones stood out, his nose, the arching ridge of his brow, all illuminated in a silvery sheen. He looked nearly magical, otherworldly, and so very beautiful. His skin was cool beneath her fingertips, his hair slick beneath her palms. She felt hot and pulsing, a fire against his watery smoothness, her breasts aching, her breath ragged and thin, like upward flying embers struggling against a downpour.

  He pulled away from her, slightly, only slightly, and whispered against her mouth, “You did not learn this from a groom.”

  She snickered lightly and licked her way down his throat, nibbling the pulse point on his neck, pushing aside his cravat with her nose. “Have you ever kissed a groom? Don’t be so dismissive.”

  He let out his breath and pushed her down on her feet, stepping back a half step. Was any more proof needed that he was peculiar?

  She grabbed his lapels and pulled him to her, staring at his mouth. “I insist on meeting the conditions of our bargain, Iveston. You shan’t make me default.”

  And then, pulling at his coat, she made him kiss her.

  In truth, it wasn’t that difficult. She clearly had a knack for this sort of thing. One could only hope Iveston was intelligent enough to realize it.

  He didn’t have much strength to resist her to judge by his response. He grabbed her round the waist, pulled her against him, and kissed her quite savagely.

  It was quite wonderful.

  Her groom hadn’t been savage in the least. Timid and curious would be the best words to describe his lessons. Iveston was quite utterly ruthless.

  Who would have thought it?

  Not only regarding Iveston and his apparently instantaneous transformation, but she would never have suspected that ruthless savagery would be at all appealing to her. Yet it was. Very.

  “What else did you learn, Pen? Did you learn this?” and so saying, he ran his hand up the side of her body, the heel of his hand just brushing the side of her breast. It was most alarming. Her heart almost thudded right out of her ribs. She wanted more of it, immediately.

  “Oh, naturally. He was very thorough. A natural tutor,” she lied, her breath against his cheek, her mouth caressing his face, his jaw, his throat. He had such a lovely throat, so long and cool, his pulse pounding against her lips. It was quite extraordinary, what that did to her. She felt completely unlike herself. Certainly that must be a bad thing, yet it did not feel bad in the slightest. How very odd. She hadn’t thought a thing about her groom’s throat, once she’d seen it fully. Perhaps there had been something wrong with it. She ought to ex
amine Iveston’s more thoroughly, just to determine what it was that was so fascinating about it. “You aren’t shocked, I hope.”

  She slipped her finger inside his cravat and pulled it down, exposing his throat more fully.

  He slipped his hand over her breast, fully, and squeezed.

  She thought she might faint, if fainting meant lurching into his hand and moaning in the most outrageous manner imaginable.

  “Don’t,” she gasped. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t stop.”

  “Can’t,” he whispered, nibbling her lower lip, the heel of his hand rubbing over her throbbing nipple. “Won’t.”

  The rain had turned to mist, weightless and cold, yet it did nothing to cool her. Her skin ached for his touch. Could he feel that in her? Had his doxy taught him how to feel a woman’s longing?

  His mouth captured hers again, open and wet, cool mist and hot breath, his lips sliding against hers, his tongue tangling with her own. His hands swept up her back, his fingertips grazing over her bodice ties, snagging them, pulling at them, pressing her to him in silent demand.

  Silk had never before felt so thick. She might as well be wearing three layers of wool. She wanted his hands on her, skin to skin. She wanted more, everything, and she wanted it in the dark, with her eyes closed, with everything but the feel of his mouth and his hands washed from her thoughts. There was no thought to this, no reason, no explanation. There was only Iveston.

  No, not Iveston. She’d ruined it. She’d broken the spell of his hands.

  Not Iveston.

  It was Edenham she wanted. Edenham was the right choice.

  Edenham’s name was a bell in her mind, dulling and distracting from the impact of Iveston and his wicked mouth.

  And then Iveston grabbed her by the arms and pushed her away from him. She gaped, her mouth still reaching for him, her hands plucking at his shirt. He pushed her again, more forcefully, and turned his back to her.