by Eva Devon
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. She was well aware that Kathryn, once free of her now deceased husband, had gone on a mad whirl of freedom. Apparently, the fellow had been the sort of man who believed that a woman should behave like a virgin, even after her wedding night. Kate’s life had changed entirely when he had vacated this world. In fact, it had been her determination to embrace a naughty life that had led her into the arms of her present husband, the Duke of Darkwell, formerly known as the Duke of Debauchery.
Kathryn shrugged her shoulders, her breasts pressing at the square cut bodice of her green gown. “I thought it best to ease you into the news rather than have you read such details in the sheets.”
“You thought?” she echoed. The room spun and she felt suddenly quite ill.
Kate turned to Smythe. “Bring a bottle of brandy. I think Her Grace has had quite a shock.”
“Splendid!” cheered Lady Gemma, clapping her gloved hands together.
“None for you,” warned Cordelia. The last thing she was going to have was Lady Gemma three sheets to the wind when her mother arrived.
Lady Gemma lowered her chin and said mischievously, “I thought you didn’t want to be my sister.”
“That’s not exactly—”
“So, you need not censure my behavior.”
Cordelia threw herself down into the nearest chair and placed a hand over her suddenly throbbing eyes. “Fine. Drink brandy. Drink the bottle and dance a jig in the square.”
“What a spectacular proposition,” teased Kate. “I say we all do it. Three bottles, Smythe.”
Smythe didn’t even wrinkle his forehead or bat a lash at the extravagant and ill-advised request. “The 83 madam, or the 76?”
Kate gasped, fluttering her hand over her bosom in mock horror. “Need you ask?”
“The 76 then,” Smythe said flatly before he bowed and exited with the fleet feet needed when heading after the special vintage reserved for moments of disaster such as a dramatic spat with her duke, or the ever threatening death of the monarch.
“Would you like to see it?” proposed Lady Gemma with a decided hint of breathless anticipation.
Cordy lifted her head, a Herculean task, for the moment and dared herself to open her eyes. “See what exactly?”
Lady Gemma brandished her reticule. “Snodgrass’s comments,” she gushed with a note of worship that one often sees in those who are about to scamper over burning coals.
Cordelia goggled. “You have them with you?”
“Oh, I never go anywhere without something sensational to read, and I’ve already read your report several times. Its quite inspiring.”
“Dear God,” groaned Cordelia.
“For all your years of unrepressed living,” Kate turned slightly and readjusted a flounce on her skirts, “you aren’t taking this very well, Cordy.”
“Cordy?” piped Gemma. “May I call you Cordy? I wish I could have such a delightful nick name.”
“Yes. Yes, you may call me Cordy,” Cordelia said quickly before the girl could start in any further on the marvelousness of her name, and then swung her gaze to Kate and narrowed her eyes. “And I am not taking this well as it runs contrary to all my plans.”
Kathryn waggled a ruby ringed finger at her. “As a good friend once told me, plans are made to be changed.”
Cordelia sat up straighter. “I do not concur. To be freed from my husband—”
“Oh, please don’t!” wailed, Gemma.
The sound was enough to shatter glass or unman a regiment. “Gemma. . .” Cordelia began slowly, “May I call you Gemma?”
Gemma smiled graciously. “Please do.”
“Gemma, you must begin to accept—”
The doorknocker sounded with a resounding thud on the front step.
“It’s Mother!” crowed Gemma. “You shall love her. You two are birds of similar a feather, after all.” Gemma fumbled with her reticule. “Shall I read the Snodgrass’s bit over our brandy? I know she would love it—” Lady Gemma’s brow wrinkled, “Though she would prefer champagne to brandy. She says ladies only drink champagne and as long as one adds a bit of fruit it doesn’t matter the time of day—”
A whimper filled the room. Her whimper? Cordy winced. It certainly sounded so. She had stood toe to toe with Arab princes, cracked brained archeologists, and French aristocrats pudding brained on absinthe. The Hunt family? They’re madness dwelt in a whole other realm of madness.
Cordelia drew in a deep breath. Everything was going to be well. She’d soon have the situation back into her usually very confident and capable hands. She smoothed her palms down the front of her frock determined to find the bright side and she rose from her chair, as ready as she’d ever be to meet her mother-in-law. At least, small favors, Gemma had yet to begin imbibing. She wouldn’t have to explain a soused young lady to her mama.
Smythe entered, a tray laden with three decanters of brandy balanced easily upon his snowy gloved hand as he announced, “His Grace, the Duke of Hunt.”
Cordelia dug her nails into her palms, willing herself to disappear. She’d been wrong. So very wrong. Things could get worse. Because clearly, the Gods of Fate had decided to take her situation from bizarre to hell in the space of one English tea time.
Chapter 6
Jack strode into the well appointed, if feminine, room, ready and eager to shock his astonishing young woman with his deft skills in teasing out her location. Once she was suitably impressed, they could continue their rather odd yet captivating meeting. As sure as he’d been that he should stay away just the night before, he couldn’t drive her from his thoughts and felt certain that by meeting with her once more, especially in the light of day, he would be able to allay his curiosity and discover she was indeed average in every way. Or at least not worth his considerable interest.
Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of his good friend the Duke of Hunt’s wife, Kathryn, and his young woman, looking decidedly primmer even than when he had first set eyes upon her, and his sister all in animated female chatter.
In the same room.
“What the hell are you doing here, Gemma?” he roared, completely disregarding a reasonable approach. Reason and his sister did not mix.
He knew his mother was out to ruin the girl, but this? This was too much. Gemma’s being in the presence of these two women, their feet firmly planted in scandalous behavior, was nothing short of corruption. Kathryn, though a duchess, had been one foot away from total ruin this time last year, and his young woman clearly was not far behind given that she’d been alone at night in a tavern.
Gemma squared her shoulders, the frills of her frock trembling, and arched her black brow in the infamous Hunt fashion. “I was merely greeting your wife. I’m glad to see you’ve come to do the same.”
“You know grandmama is going to have a fit at—” his voice died off abruptly.
Wife.
He most certainly wasn’t married to Kathryn or his sister so the only possible lady in question was Cordelia. His eyes swung too her, waiting for her to deny it. Praying with every fiber of her being that she would.
She did not. In fact, she stood stoically, her face a most fascinating mask of chagrin and seeming annoyance that he had appeared.
He blinked. Searching through the mire of memory to that date he had been shackled to some young chit in a far off land all because his father thought it a lark to gamble his most abhorred son away.
Cordelia.
The name.
He should have remembered it, but he’d been trying to forget it since the first day he’d heard it proclaimed in that dry and boring ceremony some odd fifteen years ago. He’d said it once and never uttered it or gave thought to it again. No one else had either, thusly driving it to the furthest and dustiest corner of his recollections.
Now the name thundered forth like the booming of a Beethoven symphony.
She stood so straight one might have thought she’d had a poker rammed up her lo
vely backside. She looked as pained as if someone had indeed done such a thing to her gorgeous posterior, a posterior which he had found himself fantasizing about in a voracious manner.
His mother’s words rattled through his brain like the gunshot of a firing squad. Cordelia Basingstoke was in a marriage where the husband wasn’t present.
A neglected wife.
How interesting that his mother should refrain from mentioning that neglect wasn’t even the half of it. It was hard to treat a woman badly when he’d never met her or spoken of her, except in a sort of vague boyish understanding that he could never ask a girl of his choosing for her hand. But neglect? He’d entirely pretended that she wasn’t in existence. So thoroughly pretended that he’d succeeded in forgetting all pertinent facts about her.
When next he saw his mother, the woman was going to be laughing her beautiful head off, and he might just have to commit matricide, but that was for later. Right now, he wanted to hear what the hell Cordelia was doing in London, acting like a woman out to ruin herself, and having the gall to meet him and not disclose their relationship immediately. She’d let him believe they were complete strangers. . . Which they were and yet . . . Damn it. This wasn’t to be tolerated. “Explain yourself, madam,” he boomed.
Her face flushed and anger snapped in her shockingly blue eyes. “You sir are behaving like an ass,” she ground out. “And I will not explain myself to an ass.”
“Ass?” he repeated dryly, fairly sure she could not have just laid down such a hot-blooded challenge. No. Not even she would have the gall to act the wounded party in this absurd situation? She’d come to London to make his life hell and she’d made a fool of him last night, that whole meeting, where she held the upper hand, knowing their relationship whilst she left him in the dark. What a fool she must have thought him, when he asked if she were married.
“Yes,” she said tightly, her whole body suddenly shaking with fury. “You have no right to ask me anything given your irresponsible behavior since I have come of age.”
Rights? He had more rights than she had hairs on her head if she was indeed his wife. He could chuck her into their coldest castle in the most northern tip of Scotland and never ever think on her again and be perfectly within his rights. There were one or two other rights that suddenly occurred to him and caused his entire body to tense with a sudden awareness.
Even as he considered that he could send the other two women from the room and shag her senseless as her husband, he couldn’t ignore the fact she had a valid point. He had indeed left her to her own devices.
However, that didn’t stop his lack of intention to yield in the face of her sudden appearance. “Leave us,” he commanded his sister and Duchess Kathryn without letting his gaze trail from his opponent. He couldn’t think of a more appropriate word for her in this circumstance.
“But I wish—”
“Gemma,” he said, her name a low warning. As much as he loved his sister, he didn’t wish her to be present at the destruction of a non-existent marriage between two people obviously capable of such duplicity, lack of caring, and neglect to propriety. He knew his excuse, he couldn’t possibly imagine what Cordelia’s could be, a supposedly well-bred woman.
“Not until I have your assurance you won’t make Cordy hate you,” Gemma huffed.
“Cordy?” he echoed. His sister had not just called his. . . his. . . Damnation, he couldn’t say it. “Out,” he ordered.
“It’s for the best,” Cordelia, Cordy, said kindly to his sister making him seem a complete and utter bear. “Truly, all shall be well.”
Gemma’s chin wobbled slightly and then she stormed up to him and punched him sharply on the shoulder. “I like her.” Her violet eyes glittered with truth and warning. “Don’t let her divorce you.”
He gaped down at his sister wondering if there was anyone else who could blast away with such a font of shocking information in so short a span of time.
Divorce?
Which could only mean one thing. His. . . That woman had definitely had intimacy with other men. It was the only reason she would request a divorce, because they most certainly had never consummated their marriage. Not that her fornicating about should be any sort of surprise. Nor should he be so profoundly out of sorts about it. He had left her to her own vices for years for Christ’s sake, and it wasn’t as if he had thought she’d be some sort of nun. . .
But the full knowledge she had been with other men drummed his sense into the corner of his brain, letting some other far more dominant beast out. He should have known she wasn’t innocent.
A virgin would have declared herself immediately in the bold light of day in the presence of some toad of a chaperone not brazed her way into his presence in such a scandalous place.
Jack’s breath tightened in his throat at the slow dawning that in all aspects of society, she belonged to him. The growing realization of this point and the contemplation of her lush body wrapped in such a chaste gown was heating his loins in a most infuriating fashion.
She belonged to him.
There was even a paper in his parish church to prove it.
With an audible sniff, Gemma bolted from the room, Kathryn in her wake. However, Kate paused and threw him a knowing glance. A glance which made him long to throttle the woman for taking his. . . his. . . (He still couldn’t say the word). . . into her house. Kathryn was a scandalous woman but one who wouldn’t hesitate to go into battle for a friend. She might even try to enlist her husband to side with Cordelia. The idea of being at odds with his closest friend, Ryder, only enraged him further. He answered her look with a haughty rise of his brow.
She let out a huff, muttering about stubborn asses as she left the room.
When at last they were completely alone, the tray of brandy on the small table between them, he allowed himself to take her in. He was expecting a pert creature with an odd sort of sensuality about her. The same creature who had so engaged him before.
Terse words, cutting eyes, and an underlying presence of continual questioning made one long to be in her presence despite her bold and blunt nature. Too bad she was such a liar.
Jack ground his teeth down in an attempt to direct his growing frustration to some outlet. Her uncanny allure was far worse than the night before, if only because of her dress.
Her dark blue frock, which should have made her seem a dowdy, clung to her curves like a second skin. The austerity of the costume only emphasized the snapping intelligence in her eyes and her innate confidence.
It was utterly clear that though she was not beautiful and quite possibly unaware of her true potential to effect the male sex, Cordelia Eversleigh, Duchess of Hunt, did not need adornment to rip a mans soul out and hold it in her hands.
With her governess inspired gown and her haughty gaze, her very presence announced she would not be cowed before him. Quite the contrary. She was an insurmountable height that could only be climbed by the most intrepid and determined of men.
In other words, she was that thing which men prized above all else. . . A challenge. A bona fide intelligent and simultaneously, sensual challenge.
She lifted her chin a notch, not even a hint of weakness or intimidation in her as she demanded quietly, “Did you come here for the woman you met last night my lord, or your wife who you have doubtlessly now read or heard about, a prepossessing harlot?”
Her harsh words slapped him. Slapped him hard enough he had no ready reply. But the more he imagined her entwined in the arms of other men, their cocks deep within her hot sheath, the angrier he became. It didn’t matter that it was irrational, that he had never claimed her, that she deserved a lover, or that she looked like a fiery seraphim.
All that mattered was the all consuming, sanity stealing knowledge that she was his, and she had given herself to others. So he found himself wishing to be cruel rather than kind. . . To think with his outraged masculinity rather that his rational self. As an unfortunate result, he shrugged. “Both women seem to be strum
pets, madam, do they not?”
He’d barged into this abode for that wildly intelligent young woman with the wicked eyes. He’d found her and his ruin in one fell swoop. As last night had worn on, he’d been consumed by the desire to find her, strip her bare, and give himself over to her. He didn’t want the Duchess of Hunt, his wife. He wanted the woman who worshipped rocks.
But his words, hanging in the air between them, came out cutting like the sharpest sword.
In the briefest of moments, a half breath even, everything changed. That open, unrestricted nature of hers vanished, replaced by a wall so high about her heart and soul, manifesting in her stormy eyes, it was clear that no army, no matter how fierce, could scale it.
Her face blanched, a strange pallor under her slightly golden skin. “Thank you.”
Her thanks gave him another pause. The words should have caused him to retract his venomous fury. They didn’t. They just seemed to stir his brain about until he didn’t know what he felt. For reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, anger was still at the forefront and anger’s brother, stupidity of speech, reared it’s ugly head. “I beg your pardon?”
“For your honesty,” she drawled evenly before taking in a slow breath, clearly gathering herself for imminent battle. “Let us always be honest.”
“Given your performance during our last encounter and what you say is being declared about you, I doubt you capable of honesty.” He wanted to punch himself. Why did he keep saying such provocative drivel? Full-fledged war did not appeal to him. When it came to women he was a seducer not a fighter.
Yet, for reasons unfathomable to him, he couldn’t stop himself. It was one thing when she’d been a woman to exchange pleasure with, but she was something else now. She’d come to London to make a fool of him. He shouldn’t care. All men were inevitably made fools of by women, he’d seen it often enough. Because it was her, a woman his black heart had dared to momentarily ache for, he cared. He cared with the burning force of a thousand suns and the fact that he cared only infuriated him further. . . pushing him down the verbal road of doom.
