One Fine Duke

by Lenora Bell

  “There are too many books. How are we to narrow the search?” he asked.

  “Sort through the books to see if any of them have any marks, any letters underlined or papers stuck between the pages. Or perhaps you can think of a book that had a special significance to your brother?”

  “I told you he wasn’t much of a reader.”

  “May I keep the diary for now, Your Grace?”

  “You obviously have a talent for this sort of thing. Please do keep it. Perhaps you may be able to determine the pattern of the cipher, even without the key.”

  “Thank you.” Her heart warmed at the thought that he recognized her talents and asked for her help. He really should stop being the exact opposite of what she’d imagined him to be.

  “And perhaps my sister can assist you. She certainly loves torturing words until they reveal their origins,” he added, making it even more difficult for her to distance her emotions.

  A gentleman who recognized the talents and capabilities of young ladies, didn’t feel threatened by them, and actively sought occasions for encouraging those talents to be put to use.

  Oh dear. Mina was going to have to work much harder to protect her heart. He was launching quite the attack on her defenses.

  She couldn’t lose her head, or her heart. He was a means to an end.

  She was glad to have the opportunity to crack the code. If this diary held the information she thought it did, it wouldn’t be safe for anyone else to read it. She fully expected to find that Lord Rafe was after Le Triton.

  “We ought to go and find Lady Beatrice now,” Mina said. And then she’d go home with Grizzy—she couldn’t wait to begin attempting to decipher the code.

  They walked back through the corridor. “What’s that room with the closed door?” she asked.

  “A storeroom.”

  “In the center of the hallway? Seems a more likely place for a sitting room.” She tested the knob. “It’s locked. Do you have the key?”

  “I searched that one already this morning. There’s nothing there.”

  “That’s what you said about the study. I think we’ve already established my usefulness at finding things you may have missed—it shan’t take but a moment.”

  “It’s just a storeroom where Rafe keeps odds and ends.” His gaze shifted away from her.

  “You don’t want me to go inside. Why?”

  “I misplaced the key. We can’t go in.”

  “That’s no impediment.” She knelt in front of the door and plucked a hairpin from her hair. She wedged it inside the lock and jiggled the mechanism until she heard the telltale click. “There. It’s unlocked.”

  Drew was unlocked . . . unmoored. His mind still murky. He’d nearly had one of his attacks. The dark specks had started dancing before his eyes, his breathing had grown ragged and then . . . and then she’d placed her palm on his chest.

  Her hand over his heart, warming his skin through layers of linen.

  The dancing specks had receded. Vision had returned. Her hand over his heart like sunshine on his face.

  Their bodies linked.

  Her hand warm, melting the ice over his heart. He shook his head, pushing away these dangerous thoughts.

  “It’s just an ordinary sitting room,” she announced.

  If Miss Penny didn’t examine the room too closely, there would be no harm done. He walked past her. “You’re right. Just a storeroom that used to be a sitting room. Ordinary chair. Ordinary lacquered cabinet. Some unremarkable lamps.”

  “You’re acting strangely.”

  “I’m not.”

  “There’s something you don’t want me to see in this room.”

  “Oh look,” he said. “It’s a perfectly mundane clock on a completely normal chimneypiece. It says a half hour has passed since I joined you. Should we be getting back to the other house?”

  He should have known that wasn’t the right tack to take. But if he let her explore, she’d notice the unusual features of the room that he’d discovered during his search this morning.

  The reason he’d locked the door. He hadn’t wanted her stumbling upon the evidence of Rafe’s depravity. Even Drew had been shocked by the contents of the room, and he wasn’t easily shocked.

  “Beatrice won’t come to fetch me for another fifteen minutes. She thinks I want to become better acquainted with you.”

  “I’d like to become better acquainted with a plate of ham. I’m famished. Aren’t you? Let’s raid the larder.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re hiding something.” She walked around the room. “There’s not another secret chamber because there wouldn’t be anywhere to put it. And it’s sparsely furnished. Red silk on the walls is a bit much. Rather garish, actually.”

  She dropped her reticule on a low, velvet-cushioned chair.

  He cast about for a topic to distract her from opening any of the cabinets. “Speaking of red silk, when I entered her apartments, Miss Flynn was posed like one of the famous portraits of Nell Gwyn, the infamous mistress to Charles the Second, in a red silk negligee. Have you seen the portrait?”

  “I should like to visit museums and view scandalous artworks but, as I mentioned, my great-aunt kept me under lock and key while she attempted to drum decorum into my head.”

  “How did that work for you?” he asked, keeping his expression bland, though he wanted to laugh.

  “It didn’t. As evidenced by the fact that I’d very much like to share a meal with Miss Flynn.”

  “Young ladies of good family don’t dine with courtesans.”

  “Why not? It seems to me they might have a lot to teach us about men. About how to control them.”

  “I don’t think you require lessons in controlling men. You seem to know exactly how to wrap everyone you meet around your finger. Take me, for example, I’m not the sort of gentleman to hunt for secret rooms. I prefer hunting hare and pheasants. I have my daily routine, which I never deviate from, and it doesn’t include cracking codes or stealing kisses from troublesome young ladies . . .” As he talked, he led her out of the room, relieved that she appeared willing to leave.

  She paused in the doorway. “I left my reticule.”

  “Allow me to fetch—”

  “I’ll get it.” She darted back inside the room and bent over the elongated velvet chair. “How very odd. This chair has mechanical gears along this side. Why would a chair have gears?”

  “I’ve no idea.” And that was the truth. He’d noticed the modifications to the furniture but hadn’t investigated. As soon as he’d seen the contents of the cabinet, he’d known precisely what this room was used for—and it wasn’t used for anything that should be viewed by young ladies.

  “I think I hear Beatrice coming,” he said.

  She ignored him, intent on studying the levers on the side of the chair. “I’m quite adept with mechanisms of all kinds. This appears to be a gear that might raise or lower the chair. An ingenious idea, if one thinks about it. A chair that could work equally well for both tall and short people.”

  That wasn’t exactly the use Lord Rafe put the chair to. “You have your reticule, shall we go?”

  “I wonder what happens when I pull on one of these?” she mused.

  Drew held his breath, hoping nothing depraved happened. He exhaled. Nothing had happened.

  “How odd.” She sat down on the chair. “A gear must have a purpose.”

  “I wouldn’t sit there if I were you, Miss Penny. We really should be going.”

  “It’s remarkably comfortable.” She leaned her head back against the cushions and laid her arms against the rests. The chair began to move, as if the pressure of her wrists had activated a spring.

  Metal bands emerged from underneath the chair arms and legs and closed over her wrists and ankles before she had a chance to move. She stared up at him. “Your Grace. This chair just trapped me.”

  Drew groaned. “I was afraid something like that might happen.”

  “Why would a c
hair have mechanized metal restraints?”

  Drew could only conjecture, and what he conjectured was that his brother was a no-good bastard. “Let’s free you from those manacles, Miss Penny.”

  She attempted to free herself but the bands only tightened. She lifted her ankles and thumped them against the metal bands.

  Another mechanism ground to life. The top of the chair began to tilt downward, and the bottom to elongate and lift until her legs were higher than her head.

  “Get me down from here,” yelped Miss Penny.

  He sprinted to the chair and attempted to stop it from tilting any further but it just kept going. “I can’t stop it.”

  As the chair rose higher, her skirts slid downward, revealing frilly petticoats and white drawers. He was a man, not a saint. The sight of Miss Penny stretched on the chair with her skirts over her ears was undeniably arousing. She was so perfectly proportioned, all feminine curves and alluring hollows.

  Her abundant golden hair had tumbled loose from its pins, and the ends brushed the carpet.

  While the sight heated his blood to boiling, the predominant emotion he felt was fury. He was going to kill Rafe. Drew could only imagine what depraved things went on in such a chair. How could he have something like this in the house so close to their mother’s house?

  “This is a very impolite chair,” said Miss Penny, her voice brave but muffled by her skirts. “Please make it stop.”

  “I’m trying,” said Drew, gritting his teeth as he attempted to bodily restrain the chair from moving.

  Chapter 16

  The chair stuttered to a halt. “Thank you,” Mina said. She couldn’t see Thorndon because her skirts were over her eyes.

  Her skirts were over her eyes.

  Which meant he could see her petticoats, her drawers, her ankles . . . damn this impolite chair!

  She pressed her thighs together.

  “I didn’t do that,” came the duke’s deep voice from somewhere nearby. “I think it reached its maximum tilt. I’ll have you down in a moment, Miss Penny. I do apologize. My brother’s indecency knows no limit.”

  “You did attempt to warn me.” Why hadn’t she listened?

  “I swear to you, I didn’t know about this infernal chair when I warned you away. I was only thinking of the other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “The contents of the cabinets. What the devil?” he swore under his breath.

  “What is it? Your Grace, is something the matter?”

  “The lever on the side of the chair, the one you tried earlier. In my agitated state I may have . . . broken it off.”

  “You may have what?”

  “Don’t panic, Miss Penny. Don’t panic. If anyone should come and see you like this I’d be taken to task.”

  “And forced to marry me by special license.”

  “Oh my God.” Strong fingers slid beneath the metal surrounding her wrist and attempted to force it open. “I’ll cut these damned restraints with clippers if I have to.”

  “Take a deep breath, Your Grace. It sounds to me like you’re the one who’s panicking.”

  Panicking at the idea of having to marry her. But then she would never wish to marry him, either. “The lever you broke didn’t control the restraints, though it may have made it possible for them to be activated by the weight of my arms and ankles. So there must be another way to open them.”

  “There is another lever. But it’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “Yes? Wherever it is you’d better try it.”

  “It’s in a sensitive location,” he said.

  “I don’t care. Do what you have to do.”

  Her breath went shallow and her heart beat wildly as his fingers brushed her inner thighs. Luckily, all the blood in her body was rushing to her head and not to . . . other parts.

  “I wish I could do this in a more delicate manner but it’s . . . there. I’ve got it,” he said.

  Nothing happened except that she experienced a longing for him to touch her again. Where his fingers had accidentally brushed. Her nerves were fraying. “This is the most ridiculous chair. I can’t believe anyone would take themselves seriously while using it.”

  “It’s a damned death trap,” said Thorndon, fumbling around the sides of the chair, accidentally brushing her thighs with his fingers. “Pardon my language, Miss Penny. But if we don’t find a way to free you soon, this could become extremely embarrassing for both of us.”

  “We’re well past embarrassing, don’t you think? It’s becoming very hot and difficult to breathe under these petticoats. Would you mind lifting them away from my face?”

  He rolled her skirts up and tucked them gingerly between her thighs.

  She sucked in the sweet air, giddy with relief. The sudden illumination from a nearby lamp made her eyes smart, and rendered Thorndon an indistinct blur, looming over her.

  Then a sensuous mouth appeared above a black silk cravat. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I can breathe better now and my modesty is more protected,” she responded.

  With her hands stretched over her head and her feet higher than her face, he could not fail to notice her bosom spilling over her bodice. Mina had never felt so vulnerable . . . so exposed. She must be a sight. No doubt her face was as red as a beet.

  “I’m going to set you free. I promise.” He ran his hands along the sides of the chair. “I don’t see or feel any more gears to try.”

  Perspiration slid down her forehead. “Have you tried directly under the chair?”

  He immediately dropped to his knees and ducked underneath the chair.

  “There’s a series of buttons,” he called.

  “Good. Try the first one.”

  The sound of gears beginning to grind. She was saved! Wait . . . no she wasn’t. Her ankles were being drawn farther apart. “Not that one!” The slit in her drawers. Everything would be exposed. Everything. “Do not, on pain of death, look at me.”

  “I would never do that. The person who’s going to die is Rafe. When I find him, he’ll answer for this.”

  “Press the same button again.” Her ankles moved closer together and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’m trying the middle one now,” he called.

  The chair arms began to rotate, taking her arms up with them and over her head. “Not that one either,” she groaned.

  Her hands moved back down.

  “Last one,” he said grimly.

  “Wait,” she said. “Don’t press it yet. If it controls the restraints, I could tumble out and hit my head. We’ll have to think of a way to do this. You could pile cushions beneath my head.”

  “My arms are long enough to reach the button and be ready to catch you if you start to slide.”

  Of course they were.

  A flood of relief swamped her mind as the restraints snapped open and began to recede back into the chair. She slid down the velvet cushions.

  “I’ll catch you, Miss Penny,” Thorndon said.

  She slid the rest of the way into the cradle of his arms, and settled against his chest, her weight supported by his body. She rested her head against his chest, breathing heavily.

  He stroked her hair. “It’s all over now. You’re safe.”

  Safe and surrounded by his strong arms.

  She clung to his chest, her shoulders shaking with . . . laughter. She had no idea where it came from. It just welled up inside her and had to come out.

  “Are you crying, Wilhelmina?” he asked, tilting her chin toward him.

  “I’m not . . . crying.” She was laughing so hard now she was nearly crying, though. “It’s just so . . . perverse, isn’t it? They say curiosity killed the cat. Well, in my case, curiosity strung the cat up arse over elbows.”

  He laughed, a rumbling sound that struck a chord in her heart. “I’m glad you’re unharmed.” His arms tightened around her. “No more exploring my brother’s secret chambers.”

  “You tried to warn me and
so did Crankshaw.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “He said there were things in this house that would make me blush.”

  She rested her cheek against the hollow between his neck and shoulder. She had a view of his starched collar and simple cravat.

  Shadow of a beard across his sharp-angled jawline.

  His hand moved to her back, sliding over her spine. Soothing her and at the same time awakening a deep need to be closer. Much closer.

  Soon they would separate, disengage. Soon he would become distant again, but right now he was all around her. Strong. Caring.

  Honorable. Too honorable to even look at her while she was trapped on the chair, yet she knew the taste of him, the things his lips did to her, the wicked desires he inspired.

  “Being stretched upon that chair may have given me ideas, Your Grace.”

  His hand stopped moving. “No more ideas, Miss Penny. Are you able to stand?”

  “Not yet.” A small lie, though her legs did feel quite wobbly. “And please call me Mina.”

  “Not a very British name.”

  “My mother was half Swedish. They thought I would be a boy and had already chosen the name Wilhelm.”

  “And I’m Drew.”

  “I couldn’t possibly call you Drew.”

  “Why not? I’ve seen your frilly undergarments.”

  She tilted her head up. “You have, haven’t you? Did seeing me on the impolite chair give you any . . . ideas?”

  “Of course it did.” His voice lowered. Roughened. “I’m only a man. And you’re so beautiful, Mina. I don’t think you know how truly beautiful you are.”

  “I’m seeing this room with entirely new eyes,” she murmured. She pointed at a velvet-padded wooden stool in the shape of an inverted V. “That’s not an ordinary stool is it? No one would sit on a pointed edge like that. So it’s for something other than sitting upon.”

  “Probably.” His voice held an amused edge. She liked the way his throat buzzed under her ear when he talked. She wanted to keep him talking.

  Her mind flew through the possibilities. “You . . . fit your knees into those hollows in the lower cushions, your belly goes over the cushioned hump, and your head hangs down nearly to the floor. Which would . . . put your bum in the air. Oh dear.”