No Dukes Need Apply (The Impossible Balfours Book 4)

by Gemma Blackwood

  Let alone what the movement of his muscular arms against her body was doing to her.

  “Take care to lock the library door, Caversham,” said George. “I’d hate to think of you being disturbed again.”

  “Really, Streatham.” Malcolm’s jollity was growing ever more forced. “I’m hardly a novice, you know.”

  George let out a brief chuckle quite unlike his usual easy laughter. Malcolm guided Selina out of the doorway. Brighter light filtered through his jacket; someone had left candles lit in the empty library.

  Malcolm let her go, gently pulling the jacket to keep her face concealed, and reached around her to close the door.

  “Safe,” he said, as it clicked shut. Selina knew before she pulled the jacket from her face that he would be sagging against the doorway with relief.

  Malcolm was leaning, forehead pressed to his wrist, against what appeared to be an ordinary part of the wall. The entrance to the secret passageway was hidden beautifully. Nobody would ever have guessed it was there if they did not already know where to look.

  He turned to her, one arm still pressed against the secret doorway, amusement curving his lips.

  “That was a great deal more exciting than I had anticipated.”

  Selina was certain that the warmth inside his jacket had turned her face pink and sweaty, mussed her hair, and left her looking a frightful state. But Malcolm was eyeing her with an expression that suggested he preferred his finery rumpled, rather than pristine.

  “I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did,” he said.

  “There was nothing to enjoy.” Selina turned on her heel, pressing one hand to the curls that had half-fallen from their pins, and marched past the bookshelves to the library door.

  Malcolm took a step towards her. “Wait –”

  She turned the key in the lock, and glanced back at him, enquiring. Relief flickered across his face.

  He wanted her to stay. He wanted them alone, together, just a little longer. Why, she couldn’t be sure. Or rather, she suspected a great many things, but did not wish to be proven right about any of them.

  As though reading her thoughts, Malcolm straightened himself up, tugging his jacket on again. Not meeting her eyes. “You ought to fix your hair before you leave. I’ll hide away in here a while, so no one imagines we’ve been together. Streatham’s eyes are a little too sharp for my comfort.”

  “He’s my sister’s husband. Even if he recognised me, he wouldn’t tell a soul.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t entrust your honour to a man I hardly know.”

  Selina could hardly keep from rolling her eyes again. How like Malcolm, to tempt her into a compromising situation and then have a fit of nobility when said situation put her in entirely predictable danger. “George is family. That means something to me.”

  He winced. She’d struck a blow there, without meaning to. “You are fortunate. Family has never meant a great deal to me. Even when I had one.”

  Her lips parted, trying to form an apology, but he waved it away. “There doesn’t seem to be a mirror in here,” he said. “Let me help you with your hair.”

  She lowered her hand, pulling the loose hairpin with it. The curls her maid had arranged so precisely tumbled down to her shoulder.

  Malcolm touched one of the fallen locks, winding it around his finger. “You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

  She handed him the hairpin, trying to pretend that his face was not far too close to hers, that his hand on her hair was not far too intimate. “Take a section from the front and twist it around itself, then pin it to match the other side. It doesn’t matter if it’s uneven. I doubt anyone will be looking at me closely enough to notice.”

  “You are badly mistaken there,” he said. The catch in his voice drew her eyes to his, and then she could not tear them away. She was lost in his cool, watchful blue, like a moth hypnotised by a flame.

  There was no more pretending that nothing lay between them but rivalry. No more ignoring the heat the proximity of his body sparked in hers. Malcolm’s fingers ran through her half-fallen hair, deliberately sensual, stroking sensitive lines across her scalp. His chest heaved with a rush of breath.

  “You won’t let me kiss you, will you?”

  It was barely a question. He spoke as though he already knew the answer. As though he deeply regretted it.

  But he was wrong. Selina realised it with a mix of pain and surprise. If he had tried to kiss her then, she would not have pushed him away. She would have welcomed it.

  She broke away from him, not knowing how else to respond to the desire that he had awoken inside her.

  “Why?” Malcolm’s voice had a rough edge to it that he stopped to master before continuing. “I’m not suggesting that I’m your ideal match, but it seems you won’t consider letting anybody court you at all. Why not, Selina? Why deny yourself such an elemental part of life?”

  “I have been courted,” she said. “Courted, and won.”

  “And then you lost him. What would it take to persuade you that there is more than one man on the face of the earth?”

  She shrugged, too aware of the way his hungry eyes followed the movement of her shoulder. “I wasn’t only won, I was loved. And the chances of that happening again are infinitesimal. Lightning doesn’t strike twice.”

  “The chances are non-existent if you refuse to let anyone near you.”

  “I prefer it that way.” She crossed her arms over her chest, chilled by the finality of her own words. “I prefer it.”

  Malcolm waited, wordless, leaving a void between them that Selina knew she would have to fill with a proper explanation.

  She had never thought Malcolm was a patient man, but his resolute silence undid her.

  “When Jeffrey died,” she said, “it felt as though a limb I never knew I had was severed from my body. I felt it here.” She touched her chest, right in the centre. “I felt it bleed. I felt the loss of it. I still had my arms and legs, but something just as fundamental had been cut away from me, and I was not whole anymore.”

  “Do you still feel it now?”

  She pressed her hand flat against the place, right in the centre of her breastbone, where she always half-expected to find a ridge of hard scar tissue beneath the soft fabric of her dress. “Over time, the bleeding lessened. The wound healed over. But I still feel the place where something is missing. It’s like an old scar. It might not hurt me anymore, but what was lost can never regrow.”

  Malcolm took a step towards her again, his face unreadable, and placed his hand on top of hers. “Here?”

  “There.” She breathed lightly, aware of the way his hand rose with the movement of her chest.

  Malcolm lowered his hand. “Jeffrey,” he repeated, slow and thoughtful. “Jeffrey Overton?”

  “You remember him?”

  “A little. I didn’t know him well.”

  “No.” She smiled, despite herself. “Jeffrey and I moved in quite a different crowd to yours.”

  “He died in a fall, didn’t he?” There was a calm practicality in the way Malcolm spoke. Selina knew he was trying to draw her out, to learn more without causing her pain.

  It was too intimate. Too easy to confess to him. Heaven help her, she’d never truly spoken about Jeffrey with anyone before. Now she was spilling her soul to, of all people, the Duke of Caversham. His Gorgeous Grace. The flirt, the rake, the power-hungry cad.

  She was giving him entirely the wrong impression. But that would not matter much longer. She knew exactly how to destroy his interest in her.

  “He died falling from my bedroom window. As he climbed out.”

  She raised her chin as she said it, refusing to be ashamed. What did it matter if Malcolm knew the truth? She had no need to prettify her past for him. If he considered her spoiled, perhaps at last he would leave her alone.

  She was expecting him to turn away, disgusted, or let out an exclamation of surprise. But his only response was a softening of his sharp feature
s, a wrench of empathetic pain in his eyes. “That must have been terrible.”

  The last thing she wanted was his sympathy. “It was a long time ago.”

  Malcolm shook his head, neither backing away from her nor seeking a way to bring their encounter to an end. In fact, he smiled, self-mocking and full of his usual charm. “Heaven help me, I’m jealous of a dead man.”

  “I’ll add that to the list of your sins.” Selina began to breathe again, her chest working hard to overcome the tight band that had been squeezing it. She did not know what she had thought she would feel after opening up so much of herself, but the overwhelming emotion that washed over her was a welcome one: relief.

  She was relieved, and she did not regret telling Malcolm any of it.

  The dangerous tension there had been before, as he stroked her hair and gazed at her, had dissipated. Enough to let her turn her head to one side as he parted out a section of her hair. She stole a glance at his face, nearly laughing when she saw the agony of concentration on it.

  He twisted a lock, held it in place, and pinned it.

  “Too gentle,” she said. “It’ll fall out.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Beauty is pain.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He removed the hairpin and tried again, pressing it through her hair firmly. Then, not seductively, but with almost professional care, he took hold of her chin and guided her face from side to side so that he could compare the two. “I’ll never have a career as a lady’s maid.”

  “It’ll do.” She patted the flat of her hand lightly against her head, feeling the shape of it. “At least no one will see me with my hair down and call me a wanton.” An ironic smile pulled at her mouth. “Even though it may be true.”

  “Selina…” He sighed, folding his arms across his chest and drumming the fingers of one hand lightly on his elbow. “Would it comfort you to know that nothing you have told me will ever leave this room?”

  “I have done nothing to earn your silence.”

  “Do you think I am in the habit of ruining women for sport?” He heard his own words and shook his head, lips tightening. “Good lord. Please don’t answer that.”

  “Caversham…”

  He caught the change in address instantly, though she had hoped he wouldn’t. She had meant to keep to her usual chilly formality. Your Grace was distant. Deferent. Safe. But Caversham had slipped from her lips without her permission, and she could not unsay it now.

  “Wait,” he said, holding up a hand, though she had not moved. “Don’t leave yet. You have given me something precious, and I… I have nothing to match it. It’s easier to be a gentleman than a lady, I suspect. None of my sins will ruin me.” He hesitated, swallowed heavily, and pressed on. “But I can tell you a secret I don’t want shared. Collateral. A weapon for you to wield, if I should break my word.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “Nevertheless.” He gestured to a chair, one of the sweeping, lordly gestures he made without appearing to notice. He was so used to command that he behaved as though his whims could not be denied.

  She sat. Malcolm stood before her, thrusting his hands into his pockets. Oddly diffident, now. An entirely different man to the Gorgeous Grace the girls thought they’d catch, if they chased him hard enough.

  He cleared his throat. “Let me tell you why I hate the rain.”

  10

  He really intended to tell her. He did.

  What he meant to do was strip his soul before her, as she’d stripped hers.

  But when they were interrupted, he did not try to salvage the moment. He ran from it, like a coward.

  Like the weak boy his father had always told him he was.

  The handle of the library door rattled again. Selina got to her feet, alarm flaring on her face.

  “It’s locked!” exclaimed a puzzled voice from behind the door. “It’s been locked from the inside!”

  “Back into the passageway with you,” said Malcolm, taking Selina by the arm. “Wait there for ten minutes. I’ll get rid of whoever this is by then. And then come out and make your way back to the ballroom. We shouldn’t try to speak again tonight.”

  Coward, coward, the voices chimed in his head. He found the hidden panel, twisted the secret handle, and bundled Selina into the waiting darkness.

  “What about George?” she asked, as he closed the door on her lovely face.

  “He’ll be long gone.” Malcolm prayed he was correct. He rested his forehead for a moment on the hidden door, collecting his thoughts.

  Imagining Selina pressing a hand to the other side of it. Imagining the touch of her, soft and tempting, through the impenetrable wood.

  He shook his head, casting the foolish images away, and went to the real door of the library, unlocking it with his best ducal glare affixed to his face.

  It was so effective that Lucius Whitby took a step back, crashing into his father, who stood behind.

  “Caversham! I do apologise.”

  Malcolm softened his features to a smile. “It is I who should apologise, Whitby. I only wanted a moment’s respite from the crowd. You have a very interesting collection of books here.”

  Lucius exchanged a knowing glance with his father and winced. “Ah. I take it my youngest sister and her friends have made their presence known?”

  “Those girls have no sense of propriety,” grumbled old Mr Whitby. “It’s my wife’s fault.”

  Malcolm stepped out of the library, closing the door behind him, and clapped a hand to Lucius’s shoulder. “Not at all. They are charming girls, every one of them. In fact, I should very much like to dance with Miss Georgiana again, if you can help me find her.”

  Lucius lowered his brows suspiciously, but his father’s eagerness overrode him.

  “Of course, Your Grace! Nothing would please her more. Come with us, please. We’ll track the girl down in a jiffy.”

  Malcolm allowed himself to be led back to the ballroom, nodding with polite interest as Mr Whitby enumerated every one of his youngest daughter’s accomplishments.

  It was as good a birthday gift as any, he supposed, to dance twice in one night with a duke. And whatever Lucius and his father had been looking for in the library was forgotten. Selina would be able to make her escape.

  He did his best to dissipate the churn of emotions swirling through his chest in the surface-level pleasures of the ball. Georgiana Whitby fluttered her eyelashes after him most obligingly, enjoying her unexpected present to the full. There was no end to silly young girls to distract himself with, if he had cared to look at any of them.

  He found Isobel Balfour sitting in a corner beside the musicians, her eyes half closed as she listened to the music.

  “Good evening, my lady,” he said, speaking softly so as not to startle her.

  Isobel’s eyes opened fully, round and pale, unlike Selina’s, and far too intelligent – just like her sister’s. “Are you going to ask me where my sister is? Or invite me to dance, in the hope of winning her approval, like you did before?”

  He winced. “And people call you the quiet Balfour.”

  “Wallflowers have eyes, you know.” Isobel held out her hand. He blinked with surprise, not realising for several seconds too long that she intended him to take it.

  “Don’t tell me you are throwing your support behind my quest to make Lady Icicle notice that I exist.”

  “I have reasons of my own to be seen dancing with a duke.” Isobel rose to her feet and marched towards the dance floor, all but dragging him behind her. “There’s a certain gentleman who would benefit from knowing that I am not the sad wallflower he imagines.”

  “Is he here tonight?”

  “No. But people are certain to talk.” She took her place opposite him in the dance. “And, Caversham? Call Selina Lady Icicle again and I’ll…” She stopped, frowning. “Well, I don’t know what I can do to make you sorry for it, but I’ll find something. I promise you that.”

  “I’ll
take you at your word.”

  The music began, and Malcolm moved through the steps of the dance out of habit rather than enthusiasm. Isobel left off her duke-baiting and made the polite conversation required of the moment, and he answered her mechanically.

  He was unable to tear his thoughts from Selina. The sensation of her hair in his fingers, as soft and precious as a blessing. Her brutal honesty. How wonderful she’d looked with her hair half-fallen, her customary haughtiness forgotten.

  The heat of her, as she’d pressed her face to his shoulder, hiding from ruin.

  He owed her a debt, now, and he intended to pay it. He was not sure when he’d get the opportunity, but he was accustomed to making things happen. When he wanted something, it usually fell into his hands before long.

  Though he could no longer deny that he wanted Selina, and she seemed as far out of his reach as she had ever been.

  The dance came to an end. He bowed as Isobel curtseyed.

  “It would go down well if you kissed my hand,” she said, with an excess of practicality and a total absence of passion. He obliged, pressing his lips perfunctorily to her white glove.

  “Your friend Miss Whitby will be distressed. I did not kiss her hand after we danced.”

  “Georgiana will recover.”

  “And, with any luck, your mysterious gentleman will not?”

  Isobel shook her head, golden curls bobbing. “You will not get a name out of me, Caversham. Suffice it to say that he deserves to suffer.”

  Malcolm offered her his arm as they left the dance floor. Isobel Balfour perplexed him. She was exactly the age and temperament of the type of girl his presence usually reduced to a giggling mess, and yet she treated him with straightforward familiarity. She induced in him feelings of unfamiliar fondness, a desire to protect and support. The closest comparison he could make was his affection for Percy the dog, which Isobel would certainly find less than flattering.

  If he had to choose a word for the way he thought of Isobel, it would have been fraternal. Brotherly. But that seemed a step too far. Malcolm had never had any siblings.