The owner of the delicious sight straightened and placed a hand on her hip to smile alluringly at him. Her companion, who was better garbed in a high-waisted purple silk dress, was also smiling welcomingly at him. She boldly beckoned to him with a dip of her head in the direction of the private rooms the club offered for private gaming.
“I repeat, Danvers,” the duke inserted in the highly charged moment, “you are one lucky bastard!”
Grinning from ear to ear, Hudson observed the women with something akin to wariness. Playing against women wasn’t something he had done in the past, for he feared the drama they might cause when they lost. He hesitated.
“Why the reluctance?” the one in a daring dress asked and gave a short laugh.
Scrutinising him from behind her mask, the second woman saucily added, “Are you scared of being beaten by women?”
The other men at his table chortled. A sharp glance at them got their faces straightening and focusing their attention on other things on the table. The Duke of Devonshire, however, didn’t hide his humour.
Hudson could see it dancing in his eyes.
“Really, Danvers, I never pegged you down to be afraid of women,” the man lightly threw the jab at him and then turned to the women. “Can his place be taken?”
“Oh, yes, we’d like to know,” the earl chipped in.
Sir Roderick simply guffawed.
Hudson sighed. What the devil was he dragging his feet for anyway? This would most likely be the last time he would be entrenched in a room with women playing cards. Irrespective of the fact that it wouldn’t be frowned at by society for him to take a mistress after he had succeeded in producing an heir, he wouldn’t engage in such pursuit some men seemed to enjoy. One woman was enough for him. Well, except something changed, he planned on being faithful to Valerie.
Pushing back his chair, he deftly rose to his feet. Affording the men a grin, he nodded at them.
“Gentlemen.”
He followed the women out of the main parlour, down a narrow dimly-lit corridor into one of the rooms. He could hear dice being rolled and people commenting as they played cards from the other rooms.
A large billiard table occupied the centre of the room. His shoes dipped into the thick wine-coloured carpet as he headed for one of the chairs by the table. A deck of cards and some chips were neatly arranged on the table. A large chandelier hung low over the table, causing him to dip his head as he helped the women with their seats before pulling one for himself.
A small oaken table with a decanter of whisky and some glasses had been placed beside the gaming table. Thinking it was best if he was clear-eyed while playing with the women, Hudson ignored the offering even though the women encouraged him to partake of it.
“Shall we begin?” he questioned the women who he noted shared a glance he termed as mischievous.
“Ladies, why did you invite me here?” Hudson questioned a quarter of an hour later when he had swiftly won the second game. The women appeared to be terrible at cards.
The women turned to look at each other with the same mischievous smile that had been playing at their lips since they entered the room.
“The truth!” he snapped, losing his patience when none of them said a word. “Out with it!”
Instead of the women telling him what actually made them lead him to the room, they uniformly rose to their feet. And right before his scandalised eyes, they took off their dresses which Hudson got to realise weren’t actually dresses but robes styled that way.
“Good God!” Hudson shot to his feet after glaring at the allure of red and black corsets that left nothing to the imagination.
He stabbed a finger in the air in the direction of the door with a thunderous look on his handsome face.
“Out!” he barked menacingly. “I want the two of you out of here this minute!”
The one with the ample bosom which was closer to him reached for him. Hudson hastily jerked out of her reach as if she were a snake that just uncoiled to strike at him.
Seeing the futility of ordering the women out of the room when he could just leave, he strode to the door with determined strides.
Horror covered his face when he tried the brass doorknob and it refused to open. It appeared as if a boulder had been placed beside it to prevent him from leaving.
He whirled around just in time for the women to shadow him and throw their arms around him.
“Who put you up to this?” he rasped in between clenched teeth. “Tell me!”
“No one. We want you!” one of the women said and curled herself around him like a rope.
Hudson, realising now that this was a set-up, pushed the women from his embrace and tried the doorknob again. He placed his shoulder against the door and heaved with all his might. It just wouldn’t budge.
Raising his fist, he pounded heavily on it. “Whoever is there, I demand you open the door this minute!”
“Why do you want to leave when you can have us for the night?” the busty brunette whispered into his ears.
Jerking around, Hudson, with his face reddened with anger, shook his fist at her. “I have never struck a woman in my life, but so help me God, I’m prepared to do so now if you don’t stay away from me.”
The women threw back their glorious heads and laughed him to scorn. Hudson squelched the urge to put his hands around their necks and wring them.
He pushed himself away from the door. “Who put you up to this? Tell me!”
Stepping away from the door, Hudson later acknowledged turned out to be a huge mistake. The women again drew close and put their arms around him just as the door was flung open.
The innocent man turned around to meet the rage-filled eyes of his potential father-in-law. Apoplexy seemed not to be far from the man as he struggled for the right words to use against him.
Hudson turned white as he realised this was the motive behind the seduction. Valerie’s father was to find him in a compromising position with these semi-clad women. He ran a hand through his already tousled hair, lost for words.
What could he say to the man that would make him believe this was all planned by someone who didn’t want to see him married to his daughter? What explanation could he give for Valerie’s father to believe him? Even he wouldn’t have believed such an outrageous tale.
“Why, you … you rascal!” the man, at last, placed his emotions into words. “I’d rather see you in hell than in a church marrying my daughter. When Valerie told me you were nothing but a scandalous libertine, I thought she was telling childish tales to get out of the marriage. I should have known better. I don’t think I need to tell you that the betrothal is off! If I had my gun with me, I would gladly shoot you in between the eyes and cheerfully go to jail, you lecherous pig! Valerie is too good for the likes of you!”
The two women, having succeeded in their plan and adorned their clothes, hurried after the furious man who stalked out of the room after delivering his speech laced with fury.
For minutes on end, Hudson stood there, questioning what just happened. Perhaps he was passed out in the main parlour after indulging in too much whisky. This surely was too dramatic for it to be real; maybe it was an illusion. When he still found himself standing there some minutes later, rage began to steal up his features. Someone had contrived to rid him of his bride, and he could take a wild guess who it was.
Most people mistook him for a laidback kind of man, a dandy who seemed not to have a care in the world. Little did they know that when he was crossed, he turned into a dangerous wolf. The person who thought up the plan to make him look like a fool and a philanderer before Valerie’s father was sorely mistaken if he thought he would take this lying down. This was no gentle tap on the wrist, which he could easily forgive.
Straightening to his full height, face bland, he made his way out of the cursed room. In the main parlour, he glanced around, trying to ascertain if the debacle that just took place was heard by all and sundry.
When he noted that e
veryone was going about their gambling as if he never left the place, he thanked God for small mercies. Settling down on the chair he had earlier relinquished to run the fool’s errand, he told his companions to deal him a set of cards. His expressionless face belied the plotting wheel turning inside his head.
Chapter 8
If she were still a little girl, Tempest was certain she would have lifted her skirt and skipped happily to her establishment the following evening. When she had hatched out her plan, she had never believed that it would work so well.
As her cousin, in her distress, had narrated what she would go through if she were forced to marry Hudson, the plan had started coming in bits and pieces. That night as she prepared for bed, the full plan had been laid out in her mind, waiting for execution.
Tempest halted in her happy strides when her eyes took in the figure of a man who suspiciously looked like Hudson. Surely the man couldn’t be here again just a day after his disgrace.
Last night when she had seen him walk into the parlour with no expression whatsoever on his face, she had assumed that the effect of what just transpired hadn’t yet sunk in. But here he was, drinking and gambling at the tables. Valerie was right, after all. No good could come out of Hudson Danvers.
A fond smile spanned her beautiful face when she recollected the joyous way her cousin had rushed into her room only that morning. Bubbling with too much excitement to sit still in the drawing room to wait for Tempest to come downstairs, she had raised her skirt and sought her cousin herself.
Tempest had been startled when the door to her room burst open. Her maid had been in the act of pulling a brush through her red tresses. Both of them had turned in alarm to regard the joyous girl with shocked eyes.
Valerie had covered the distance between them in seconds and had thrown her hands around Tempest in a tight hug.
Pulling away, she placed kisses on her smiling cousin’s cheeks. The girl was so much aglow with euphoria; it was catching. Even Tempest’s maid was smiling brightly when she excused herself from the room.
Valerie reached for Tempest’s hands and drew them to the bed, where she flounced herself with joy.
“Oh, Tempest, you did it! Father came home last night very furious. I was so scared of him, I thought to hide when he summoned me to his study.” Valeria laughed heartily. “Imagine my shock … and joy, if I might add, when he told me I was never to see or speak to Hudson Danvers again! Oh, my, I thought I was dreaming.” Her eyes danced with pleasure. “He told me all the things I said about him were true. Hudson was indeed a blackguard. And the most wonderful of all the news; that the engagement was off!”
Tempest had just sat there with an identical smile in her eyes and on her lips. No greater pleasure could one receive than seeing a loved one so happy.
Even at the detriment of another’s joy? A tiny voice had asked her as she watched her cousin rise and twirl all over the room. The realisation that in trying to save Valerie from Hudson, she had put him in a distasteful position no man would love even his enemy to be found in, blotted a little of the joy she had felt.
But what could she have done? Stand back and do nothing while Valerie married a man who was only after her dowry; a man who would have continued his liaisons with his mistresses even before the ink on his wedding certificate was dry? Maybe some other woman, not Tempest.
“Well, you could have minded your business,” her aunt gently reproached her when she related the events of the previous evening to her that afternoon.
Aghast, Tempest had felt the need to justify her actions. “She came to me for help. I couldn’t have sent her away knowing my views about marriage and handing over the woman’s wealth to her husband.”
Untroubled by her niece’s submission, Aunt Beth had mainly sipped from her tea and remarked, “You could have told her to marry him. I believe as we speak, the little lass already has her sights on another fool.”
Tempest usually understood her aunt’s reasoning, but on this one topic, she failed to accept what the woman was saying as true.
“You should have seen how distraught she was, Aunt Elizabeth.” Tempest tried to make her see things her way. “It would have been a hellish marriage for her.”
“Bah! It would have been no more than she deserved.”
“Aunt Betty!”
The old woman waved a nonchalant hand. “I always speak my mind; you already know that. Had she come to me for help, I would have given her the cut!”
Disappointed that her aunt would turn away a sobbing Valerie when she had been there for her, Tempest had begged to take her leave.
An amused smile had slashed across her aunt’s wrinkled face. “You always see the good in the wrong people, and the ills in the right people.”
In the carriage on her way home, Tempest had pondered on her aunt’s parting statement. What did the woman mean by that? Had she been wrong to plot against Hudson for Valerie’s sake?
Remembering how distressed Valerie was some days ago and her joy that morning, Tempest agreed that she had done the right thing. Denying the vagabond of a wife to leech on was the just thing to do. Maybe if he found himself in a debtor’s prison, he would change his ways.
Observing as Hudson gulped down the rest of the golden liquid in his glass and win what appeared to be yet another hand, Tempest shook her head. It was worth it. The man was an unrepentant gambler who sooner or later would find himself in a debtor’s prison or fleeing the country to hide from his creditors.
Not bothering to avoid him this time around since she had achieved her aim, she strode by his table on her way to her office. Shock stopped her movement when Hudson snaked out a strong hand to catch her wrist as she walked by.
Tempest felt all the colour drain from her face. A chill went through her at the thought that he might have recognised her. But how? She had on her mask. She wasn’t the only redhead in the place. Besides, they hadn’t seen each other since he walked out of her drawing room five years ago.
No. He didn’t know who she was. She just happened to be the woman who had caught his fancy. She would have to act the part of a fellow customer in any case.
Putting on the poker face that she had mastered over the years, she stared down at him. God! Hudson had the most striking of eyes she had ever seen. The blue depths reminded her of the sky after a rainy day; clear and beautiful.
“Begging your pardon, my lady, would you be so kind as to join me in a game of tryst?”
Tempest opened her mouth to tell him he already had playmates, but as if on cue, the two men pushed back their chairs, tipped their heads at her, and told Hudson they were going to call it a night.
Appalled at what to do now so she could escape his clutches, she replied in one of the accents she loved mimicking to throw any suspicious person off her trail.
“Blimey! fank ye, kind sah, but am afraid I must decline yer offer. Ad aready set me eyes on joinin’ me fellow customers on an overtabow.” She pasted what she hoped didn’t appear as a fake smile on her face because that was what it truly was.
Alarm snaked inside her when Hudson shook his head. “I insist you join me. As you can see, I need company at my table, and the other tables are fully occupied.”
Biting her lip now to hold back from snapping at him to let her go, she replied, “One game.”
“One game it is,” he concurred, a smile making his face devastatingly handsome.
Tempest forced her eyes to lower from his face. This was the first time she had been this close to him in years. Indeed, he had grown to become a handsome man. From the richness of his blond hair to his striking aristocratic face, he was no longer her ‘Hud’. Who would have thought that the lad she had wrestled and won on some occasions would turn out to be this man who exuded strength and masculine allure?
The Irresistible Lady Behind the Mask Page 7
