The Duke

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Younger brother?” Thompson lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “That would mean you’re—”

  “A bastard,” Hamish finished darkly. “Want to find out just how much of a bastard I can be?”

  “Enough,” Trenwyth clipped quietly, the command effectively ending all conversation. “Scotch for the table, and a gin for my friend the major.”

  Hamish threw a grateful, if brooding, glance at Trenwyth from beneath his dark brows. The tension dissipated as Imogen was forgotten by the surly, middle-aged Hamish Mackenzie.

  “We can only afford the younger Scotch, mind you, but it’s yours for the taking, as is anything else my establishment can offer you.” Del Toro gestured at the women posing across the bar with far more practiced and inviting smiles than hers aimed at the men.

  “Excellent.” Trenwyth’s brusque way of speaking appealed to Imogen, though she couldn’t say why. “It seems the lads are eager for companionship.”

  Murmurs of enthusiastic agreement passed around the table as the famous “kittens” of Lower St. James’s Street wound their way to the table with audible purrs. To Imogen’s surprise, Heather gave Major Mackenzie a wide berth and look of reluctance, choosing to lean across a young man on the opposite side of the table. Imogen couldn’t think of a time she’d truly seen the bawdy woman afraid before. Major Mackenzie had spoken of the place as though he’d been here often, though Imogen couldn’t say she recognized him. Perhaps Heather did. Perhaps she’d even had a negative experience with him. Imogen’s own intuition jangled uncomfortably in his presence, alerting her that he was a man capable of the most terrible things.

  And yet, so was Trenwyth, of that she was certain.

  “You heard him, Ginny,” del Toro said tightly, breaking into her thoughts. “Fetch the drinks.”

  Imogen nodded, eager to comply, but remained trapped by the iron grip of Trenwyth’s arm about her waist.

  “She stays where she is.” Trenwyth’s statement, delivered pleasantly enough, brooked no argument. Though his accent was that of the noblest of men, a cold note of steel threaded through the highborn gentility. He was a man who needn’t raise his voice to be obeyed. “She serves no one but me tonight.”

  Imogen could feel her eyes widen and her lips compress in alarm as Trenwyth tugged the serving tray out of her talonlike grasp and idly handed it to del Toro.

  “As you wish, Your Grace.” Her employer bowed over his large belly and snapped his fingers at the staff. He turned away without giving Imogen a second look.

  She hadn’t been aware of her trembling until Trenwyth leaned forward, pressing his lips very close to her ear.

  “Ginny.” The word rumbled all the way down her spine and skittered along her skin until every hair rose to vibrating attention. “That is your name?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” She whispered the lie. It was her “kitten” name. It was who she became at night in this dim, overwrought, and garish place frequented by poor bohemians, soldiers, and wealthy merchants alike. But rarely nobility. His sort had places like Madame Regina’s and other such pleasure palaces that certainly didn’t reek of absinthe and stale tobacco.

  “Don’t let’s use formalities, Ginny.” He exhaled against her ear again, and she had to bite down on her lip against the strange and shivery sensations he’d elicited. “Don’t call me Your Grace again tonight, everyone else has agreed not to.”

  She lowered her chin in what was supposed to be a nod. “What should I call you then?” she queried, instinctively turning her head toward him, not realizing how close it brought their lips to one another’s until they almost met.

  “Those closest to me call me Cole,” he informed her mouth.

  “But … I am not close to you.”

  Tightening his arm around her once more, he grasped her hip with his other hand, and pulled her up his startlingly long and muscled thigh with a slow, languid move, until she straddled him as high as his leg would allow. Even through her skirts and petticoats, the movement created an unfamiliar friction against her sex that elicited an alarming but not unpleasant pressure. He didn’t stop until the curve of her bottom settled against his lap. She was aware of a surprisingly insistent cylindrical shape pressed against her. She’d worked at the Bare Kitten long enough to know exactly what it was.

  “Far be it from me to contradict a lady, but I beg to differ. You and I are very close, indeed.”

  Imogen hadn’t been aware how tense and inflexible she’d remained until the aching tremble of her muscles became unbearable. “I am not a lady.” She’d meant it as a statement of fact, but it escaped as a lament.

  “That is precisely why I’ve picked you.” Gently, he brushed the curls of her raven wig to the side, and dropped a casual kiss on her bare shoulder as a bottle of Scotch and a couple of pristine glasses were placed in front of them.

  Imogen felt that kiss with every part of her body.

  “Your job tonight is to make certain I don’t see the bottom of that glass and to disagree with everything I say, can you do that, Ginny?” The good-humored manner in which he delivered his orders was underscored with something else. Something desperate and dismal.

  “Disagree with you?”

  “Yes,” he murmured, his eyes again arrested by her lips. “It’ll be quite novel for someone not to do everything I tell them to.”

  “Of course, Your—” She caught herself in time. “Of course … Cole.” Saying his name lent even more intimacy to the moment, so she turned away and poured him a healthy glass of whisky.

  “There’s a good girl,” the lieutenant called to her. “Get him soused enough to tell us where he’s off to.”

  “Knowing would be your peril, not mine,” Trenwyth quipped, tossing back his drink with one great swallow. “All I can say is that Major Mackenzie is going with me.”

  The lieutenant laughed. “You’re a spy, admit it,” he cried good-naturedly. “Secret missions, the matchless uniform, and they’re not letting you stay home despite…” The man seemed to catch himself before he brought up the funeral. “Despite the circumstances. I mean, you’re a duke now, dash it all.”

  “I thought we weren’t discussing that.” Once again Trenwyth’s tone was deceptively mild, but the lieutenant blanched. “Besides,” the duke continued wryly. “They’re not secret missions if everyone apparently knows about them.”

  “We find out after the fact,” another officer stated. “You’re gone, and then we catch wind of the assassination of a tribal warlord in the desert and you return looking quite brown claiming to have been on holiday.”

  “And don’t forget!” The lieutenant was back in the conversation, encouraged by Trenwyth’s enigmatic smirk. “That time you left and the frightening business in the Alps suddenly resolved. I was told by a friend at the military hospital in Switzerland that you were treated there for frostbite just then.” He made noises as though he’d won some sort of athletic competition, receiving congratulations from his compatriots.

  “I heard the Demon Highlander, himself, claim that you were just as deadly as he was and twice as skilled,” someone else jibed.

  “He was being kind,” Trenwyth said modestly.

  “Have ye met my brother?” Hamish asked around a tittering Devina, who’d draped herself across his lap. “He’s never kind.”

  Trenwyth let out a sound that could have been mirth or bitterness, it was impossible to tell. When he leaned forward to have his glass refilled, Imogen had the bottle at the ready. “You don’t believe them, do you?” he whispered to her as though they shared a private joke while she poured him another.

  “Not a word,” she replied, granting him the first genuine smile she’d given all night.

  “I knew you were clever.” She didn’t tense half so much as he again brushed his lips across her shoulder, this time closer to her neck.

  Over the course of the next hour or so, Imogen’s back relaxed by incremental degrees Eventually, she allowed her shoulders to lean against him as the men turn
ed guessing his next assignment into a drinking game. The large buttons of his coat dug into her back, so she straightened again. Shifting her effortlessly, he unfastened the buttons with one hand and divested himself of his coat, settling her back into the circle of his arms as though she’d often been there. The movement increased her body’s awareness of him a thousandfold. Also, she noted, most men of her acquaintance weren’t half so thoughtful, and her opinion of him rose incrementally.

  Against her back, his wide chest was hard as iron and warm; with every movement she could feel naught but honed muscle bunch and flex beneath her. She even caught herself enjoying the way he smelled, like the cedar chest where he, no doubt, stored his dress uniform and good sharp whisky, underscored by something she couldn’t at all place. Something that couldn’t strictly be identified nor reproduced, like the scent of a rainstorm or a perfectly ripe berry.

  The men settled on Afghanistan as his next target, due to the trouble erupting there between Russia, Britain, and the Ottomans, and the drinking games dissolved into drunken stories, then into an abnormal amount of toasts. They toasted the queen, of course, and fallen comrades, living comrades, battles they won, battles they lost, ships they’d sailed on, and, most vehemently, women they’d loved. Imogen found it strange that they didn’t toast the new Duke of Trenwyth, or his recently deceased family. Though, she supposed, he seemed to very much want to avoid the subject altogether.

  Of course, it was not her place to say anything, but she found herself sneaking surreptitious glances over her shoulder at him. He didn’t join the toasts, but he certainly drank to all of them. He didn’t tell any stories, but he made the appropriate noises. He seemed pensive. Withdrawn. But his stunningly handsome features were always kind when he looked at her, and his touch was more casually sensual than demanding or tawdry.

  That in itself was a pleasant change. Most men tended to become heavy-handed when they drank, pinching, slapping, or squeezing bits of her until she wished she had nothing feminine with which to draw their attentions. But Trenwyth’s hands, while uncommonly large, were caressing as they occasionally tested her curves. He’d rest them in her skirts on her thighs, or slide them up her waist causing her heart to trill in her chest, though he’d stop just shy of her breasts, his fingertips barely grazing beneath them.

  Still, it set her teeth, but not with disgust. With … something else altogether.

  By now, half the men had disappeared through the curtain adjacent to the bar, behind which a long hallway with many doors stretched the length of the building. Those who went through those doors with one of the kittens paid del Toro first.

  When Trenwyth adjusted his position, his leg rubbed against her so intimately, a stab of sensation caused her to gasp and clench her feminine muscles.

  His thigh instantly tensed beneath her and, for a moment, Imogen was terrified that she’d offended him.

  Until he did it again.

  She had to reach out a hand to the table to steady herself against an assault of wicked pleasure.

  His sex hardened against her backside once more, and he leaned up to gather her close. “I have a distinct feeling that you’re quick tinder to set ablaze, aren’t you?” His words slurred a little, but his movements were steady as one hand drifted down her waist and the other up her thigh, angling to meet in the middle.

  Imogen caught his wrists, and he allowed her to hold him as though she had the strength to do so. “I’m compelled by your earlier directive to disagree,” she said solicitously, mostly because she had no idea what he’d meant. His mouth quested behind her ear, down her neck, until he nibbled the slight rise of her muscle as it angled south down the column of her back.

  Delicious shivers again erupted over her entire body, and she was unable to control the clenching of her thighs as a concerning rush of warmth pooled between her legs.

  “It makes no matter to me.” His voice was deeper than before, rougher, and her nipples tightened in response. “You could take as long as you like.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Swallowing around a tongue gone suddenly dry, Imogen tried with everything she had not to pant, though her lungs felt heavy. “Would you … like another drink?” Failing that, she handed him the half-full glass he’d set on the table, hoping to distract him.

  He paused and pulled back, as though pondering the question.

  “No.” He answered with the careful diction of a man aware of his own inebriation.

  “Then … is there aught else you need?” she queried. “I really should be getting back to my … to my duties.”

  “I’ve kept you for quite a while without recompense for your time,” he said ponderously. “That must be why your … employer keeps glaring.”

  “Not at all,” Imogen rushed to soothe him. Del Toro had been sending her warning looks, reminding her not to cock this up or it would be her hide.

  Trenwyth’s strength astounded her once more as he lifted her bodily and settled her on the bench beside him as though rearranging a sack of potatoes. “Excuse me,” he muttered, then stood and made his unsteady way toward del Toro.

  Imogen was surprised he could walk at all, as he’d imbibed enough Scotch to drown an elephant. Every tense moment he and del Toro conversed was an eternity, but they seemed to come to an understanding that pleased them both. Trenwyth paid, and disappeared behind the curtain without a backward glance.

  Imogen didn’t take the time to wonder why a pang of disappointment deflated her before she rose and made her way toward the sideboard, meaning to pick up a tray and a cloth with which to start cleaning up.

  Del Toro intercepted her, and the gleam in his eyes sent her heart plummeting into her stomach with a suspicion he quickly confirmed.

  She cut him off at the pass. “You gave your word that I’d never have to—”

  “That was before he gave me a twenty-pound note,” del Toro marveled.

  “Twenty pounds?” Imogen’s legs gave out, and she plopped heavily into an unoccupied chair. “Surely you mean two pounds.” Even that sum was an unheard-of price for a place like this. Only those at Covent Garden or Madame Regina’s could charge two pounds a night.

  Scratching at his thinning hair, del Toro produced the note, but wouldn’t let her touch it. “I’d sell my own daughter for twenty pounds,” he said without a modicum of shame. “Just think, this pays close to a third of what your father owes me.”

  Imogen glanced at the men playing the gambling tables, seized in the grip of a desperate hope. Twenty pounds was more than half a year’s wages at the hospital. It would take her more than a year to earn that here. She had seventy and four pounds left of her father’s debt to remunerate. It would save her a year of her life working in this miserable place. Leaving her sentence, as she’d come to see it, only two years rather than three.

  It would only cost her virginity.

  Though Trenwyth was ridiculously handsome and desirable, Imogen shook her head before she’d quite made the decision to refuse. By now, she’d given up all her childhood dreams of Continental travel and artistic exploration to care for her family, but she hadn’t lost all hope of being able to live a normal life, eventually. She wanted to marry someday. Though he was an obsessive gambler, her father had once been a wealthy and respectable textile merchant. Her family still had many of his contacts, and she’d always thought that perhaps she’d marry a banker or a doctor, someone respectable.

  But if she was no longer a virgin …

  “I can’t.”

  “You will.” Del Toro was generally a soft-spoken man, but once his temper flared, he showed a dark and violent side that illustrated just how little he cared for the women in his employ. He beat them sometimes, if they fell out of line, and Imogen had lived in fear of the day he ever raised his hand to her.

  “You don’t understand, if I find myself … in trouble I’ll lose my other position, and thereby my way of supporting my family.” Supporting a child at this point was completely out of the question.
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  Del Toro shrugged, his chins wobbling with a disgusting ripple. “My kittens will teach you a few new positions, and you can work here.” He chuckled at his own terrible pun before sneering at her with derision. “Oh, I forget, you are too good for us, too reputable to be seen with us during the day.”

  “That isn’t what I—”

  “I wonder if Isobel would think herself too good for this place. I could send Bartolomeo and Giorgio to fetch her to me, just like I did you.” Del Toro slid the bill beneath his nose, testing the scent of so much money.

  “She’s only just fifteen,” Imogen gasped, a desperate fear winching the breath from her lungs. “You said you wouldn’t bring her into this, that she and my mother would never know—”

  “I’ve employed girls as young as thirteen before. And I made you that promise before I was handed twenty pounds.” He shrugged. “What does your family think you do all night? Are they so stupid they don’t already suspect that you are a whore?”

  “I told them I work extra shifts at the hospital and give the money to you.”

  “It’s you or your sister.” His voice and color began to rise, heralding his dangerous temper. “You are getting old to be of much use to me for long, perhaps I will not need you for the two years it would take to work here, but Isobel is young and supple … It would be easy for me to turn her out, and there would be nothing you could do.”

  A sick weight landed upon her shoulders, compounding the exhaustion caused by working and living under such stress. At three and twenty, she was indeed beginning to age out of the profession. Not only that, she was dangerously close to becoming a permanent spinster.

  Reaching down, del Toro grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet, his fingers digging into her flesh with a painful pinch. “Get back there,” he snarled, shoving her toward the curtain. “You do whatever he wants, and if he doesn’t leave the most satisfied customer ever to pass through this door, I’ll have my men ugly your face after they teach you some humility, so you’ll be of no use to anyone.”