Darling Duke (Heart's Temptation Book 6) Page 8

  “I cannot, Lord Harry,” Lady Boadicea said into the silence he couldn’t seem to puncture with words. “I’m so sorry.”

  Spencer’s tongue felt heavy. His pulse pounded. His emotions remained a confused jumble, ricocheting off his chest. And yet, he couldn’t speak.

  “I’ll never forgive you for this, Spencer,” Harry growled in his ear.

  He wanted to face his brother, but he couldn’t.

  Lady Boadicea’s blue gaze burned into his. He fell into it, needing to focus his mind and stave off the clamor within. She seemed to sense his wildly fluctuating thoughts, for she gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze. “Bainbridge, you look as if you’re about to cast up your accounts.”

  Her grim—though likely apt—pronouncement wrung a startled laugh from him. He released her hand, dispelling the clouds from his mind. How had she known what to say? It seemed almost impossible that this fierce, improper female before him should have only been a part of his life for the span of a day.

  He forced himself to look at his brother, who stood ready, like a knight of old, to defend his lady love. “Harry,” he said calmly. “Stand down.”

  Harry sneered at him. “I’m attempting to save the lady from folly.”

  “It is decided.” His tone was flat but firm.

  “I’m sorry, Lord Harry.” Lady Boadicea’s voice was strong and clear, the throaty rasp sending a fresh arrow of lust directly to Spencer’s groin against his will. “You are a treasured friend whom I should not like to lose.”

  Treasured friend. That rather had a dampening effect on his ardor. His eyes narrowed. The soft expression on her face for Harry nettled him. A sharp, unfamiliar stab of emotion wrenched through his gut. Envy. Bloody hell, what ailed him?

  “You’re making a scene,” he growled at his brother, taking out his vexation on him “For the final time, stand down and let the lady do what she must or risk making this night even worse for her.”

  Harry gritted his jaw, clearly wishing to argue, but in the end, his common sense won the inner war and he bowed. “My offer stands, Lady Bo. Good evening.” With a parting glare at Spencer, he took his leave.

  He took note of at least half a dozen guests eying the exchange with curious gazes, and he knew that his brother’s ire would have been readily spotted. He could only hope that wagging tongues would put it down to two brothers fighting to win the hand of the same lady rather than what it truly was.

  A horrible muck.

  Not so far removed from the rest of his thirty-three years.

  An ominous sense of foreboding rising in him, he turned to the woman he would marry. How odd that two days ago, she had been nothing more than a lovely menace in danger of luring his brother into an ill-advised alliance. Odder still that the thought of making her his duchess didn’t disturb him as much as it ought.

  It must be the shock mingling with the suddenness of his downfall. Perhaps the champagne could be added to the blame as well. Regardless, he had but one task this evening, and it wasn’t to argue with his brother. Staying the course and making everyone believe he’d lost his head for Lady Boadicea Harrington was.

  Where was a servant with more goddamn champagne when he needed it? A surreptitious glance proved nowhere near, and the orchestra was readying a set.

  “Dance with me,” he demanded of her before she could say anything that would further ruin his mood.

  “Duke,” she protested, as though he’d asked her to leap a horse over a wall of flames. “I do not care to dance at the moment. Can you not see I am distressed?”

  “Bainbridge,” he corrected as he slid her arm through his and led her into the throng. They needed to maintain appearances for the evening to unfold with aplomb. “Or Spencer, as you prefer. And I do not give a damn if you don’t wish to dance, Lady Boadicea. You will dance and smile at me and call me anything but Duke.”

  She remained quiet as they took up their positions, her full lips firming into a line of displeasure. Her eyes sparked up at him. “I prefer Duke. Or Your Insufferable Arrogance. The last rather has an agreeable sound to it, does it not? Quite pleasing to the ear.”

  One of his hands anchored her waist as her hand settled on his lower back, their palms pressed together. Every part of him was keenly aware of the places where their bodies made contact. He looked down at her, trying to make sense of the way she undid him, and caught a heady whiff of jasmine.

  Damn her.

  “If you wish anyone to believe our charade, you must call me either Bainbridge or Spencer.” He refused to take her bait.

  The defiant minx raised a brow. “Are you always this way?”

  It wasn’t lost on him that she’d thrown his earlier words back at him. He clenched his jaw. For some reason, he wanted to hear his Christian name in her throaty voice, needed for her to acknowledge that their circumstances had changed, and not just for the sake of fooling the revelers around them.

  He waited as the music began, but she maintained her silence.

  Very well. He could play her game. “This way?” he asked in an echo of her.

  His future duchess was only too happy to elaborate. “Demanding and pompous.”

  “Only when in the presence of maddening ladies who trespass in my library with a filthy book and then kiss me in a misguided effort to regain said book.” He was careful to keep his voice low, lest anyone else hear, but she had pushed him too far.

  Her cheeks flushed. “I daresay it was a horridly flawed plan. You are correct, Duke.”

  Yes, it had been. But his reaction had been even worse. “If I could take back the incident yesterday, I gladly would. But I cannot. Now smile, my lady, for half the ballroom watches us.”

  She stiffened beneath his touch, but the smile she gave him dazzled even as he knew it was false. “We must give the ballroom their show, then, must we not?”

  His lips stretched with a smile that was equally feigned, for the sight of so many inquisitive stares accompanied by the inevitable whispers affected him. In truth, it affected him far more than it should have, but he realized in that moment that this was the first time since Millicent’s death that he’d ever ventured into a dance at a ball. And everyone had noticed while he had not until that precise moment as the orchestra struck up their tune.

  He didn’t even have time to wallow in the familiar old hell that reminders of his dead wife inevitably produced. The music had begun. He could either freeze and give in to his demons or move. The woman in his arms was vibrant and warm and lovely and infuriating all at once. But she was here, and she would be his.

  He moved. He forced the ugliness from his mind. Here, beneath the heat of the old gas lights and crush of guests, with Lady Boadicea, he felt shockingly, brazenly alive. Millicent’s death and three years of isolation from London had robbed him of the ability to feel. But now, his heart thumped wildly in his chest.

  They whirled into a waltz, and he pulled her a bit nearer to his body than was necessary. He’d been half afraid that he wouldn’t recall the steps, but with Lady Boadicea in his arms, her beautiful face tilted upward, her sweet scent enveloping him, he did not even falter. One, two, three, one, two, three, and away they went, gliding over the polished floor with such synchronicity that it took his breath.

  She was an accomplished dancer. He supposed he should not have been surprised by this discovery—after all, she was the daughter of an earl, even if the Harrington family name was plagued by scandal and eccentricities. She moved with a lissome grace that he couldn’t help but admire.

  By the time the set almost reached its completion, his smile was no longer forced. He pulled her a scant inch closer on another twirl, setting his mouth near her ear. From this proximity, he discovered that her hair possessed not just glorious hues of red but shots of sun-kissed gold as well. It was utterly transfixing, and he could say in all honesty that he had never even noticed the precise color of any other lady’s hair before.

  “You are an exceptionally gifted dancer, Lady Boadicea,
” he said, his voice rough. It was the sort of compliment he may have paid years before, when he’d been innocent and unjaded and had never learned the bitter, abject despairs of failure, guilt, and loss. Something about the evening and the lady and the champagne buzzing through his veins made him want to believe in the fiction they would present tonight.

  Indeed, he could almost forget, with the glitter of the lights and the whirling colors, the alluring melody of music. A primitive and foreign urge made him want to snatch her up in his arms and carry her far away from the din of the ballroom where they could be alone and he could press his lips to that delicate patch of silken skin where her jaw met her throat.

  “You are a fine dancer as well, Duke,” she murmured at last, determined as ever to needle him by refusing to do as he’d asked and call him either by his Christian name or his title.

  Her tenacity should have vanquished the rogue feelings simmering within him. He must be in his cups. Had he consumed more champagne than he’d realized? Two flutes, he could recall. That hardly seemed enough to lay a man of his size low or render him witless enough to be charmed by a lady with a dogged need to oppose him at every turn.

  The set concluded. He found the Marchioness of Thornton waiting on the periphery and steered them in her direction. “One more dance,” he warned Lady Boadicea. “And then the announcement.”

  Her fingers tensed on the crook of his arm in the only betrayal of emotion she gave, for her profile remained serene and her step didn’t falter. “How grim you sound.”

  “Accepting,” he corrected with a smile he little felt. “I want this forced union no more than you do, my lady.”

  “Of course not,” she muttered. “Why should a vaunted Marlow wish to marry an unacceptable Harrington who reads filth? I wonder, do you hate me, Your Grace?”

  They were almost within earshot of the lady’s sister, so he slowed his steps, as much from shock at her question as from a desire to keep their words private. “The same could be asked of you, Lady Boadicea. Do you hate me?”

  She stopped, midstride, and faced him, her vibrant blue gaze seeking his. “I hate having no choice.”

  He thought it must have been the truest statement he’d heard from her yet. “You are not alone in that sentiment. But I’ve lived more years than you, and I can assure you that life is a deception. None of us, regardless of rank or birth, will ever have a choice in anything.”

  Her lips compressed. “That is where we differ, Duke. You accept that you have no choice.”

  Spencer didn’t know what the hell to say to that, so he tugged her along toward her sister. “Allow me to return you to the marchioness. Save another dance for me, my lady.”

  “Yes, Duke.”

  Her submissive response grated, as he knew it was disingenuous, and it sounded wrong. For all her wayward notions, he found that he actually preferred the way Lady Boadicea spoke to him, like an equal.

  “Spencer,” he corrected her as they reached the marchioness, whose wide smile didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Duke,” Lady Boadicea said.

  He gritted his teeth as he greeted Lady Thornton, who was lovely and kind and an older, gentler version of Lady Boadicea sans the glorious hair. “Lady Thornton.”

  “Duke,” said his betrothed’s sister in greeting, her voice and tone so similar to Lady Boadicea’s that he would have almost mistaken it.

  The sisters exchanged a telling glance. Well, hell. At least he knew where he stood.

  he cold dawn wind battered Bo’s cheeks as the sleek Arabian mare beneath her thundered across a field. The sun—orange and fiery this morning—peeked over the distant horizon, and she and Damask Rose were fast proving kindred spirits. Both a bit on the wild side, with a love of freedom and the need to go as fast as they could possibly go, yes indeed, they were a matched pair.

  She had been warned away from Damask Rose by the duke’s head groom the day of her arrival when she’d attempted a much-needed ride. And that was why, when she’d been unable to sleep after the wretched ball and even more wretched marriage announcement of last evening, she’d snuck away to the stables, saddled Miss Damask Rose herself, and galloped away.

  No one knew she’d gone, and she had no one to answer to. Not the guests with their shocked expressions and curious glances following the betrothal announcement, not the supercilious Duchess of Cartwright or the dowager, and definitely not the icy Duke of Bainbridge himself.

  They had danced twice. The second time had been notably more staid than the first, though perhaps it was down to the set itself rather than the duke. She couldn’t be certain. But what she did know was that beyond feigning a smile and standing at her side for the obligatory half hour following the Announcement of Doom, the duke had promptly disappeared from the gathering.

  Naturally, there had been whispers aplenty. Speculation abounded. Ladies offered her their contrived felicitations before no doubt retreating to the shadows and tittering amongst themselves about the hasty nature of the betrothal.

  It had been the most lowering four hours of her entire life, though she refused to admit it to anyone. His withdrawal should not have affected her. She didn’t wish to be his duchess any more than he wanted to take on a wife he’d deemed too unsuitable for his brother, let alone his august self. They didn’t suit. They’d make each other miserable. She resented him already. Masterful kisses were well and good, but they didn’t merit saddling herself to an icy, judgmental husband for the rest of her days.

  She had made a grievous mistake, first in going to the duke’s private library and then in kissing him and allowing him to take such shocking—if delightful—liberties. She was to blame for her current predicament, and she knew it. Lady Lydia, who had set her cap for Bainbridge if her ceaseless prattle and moon eyes were any indication, was particularly snide in her congratulations.

  By grim morning light, Bo wasn’t certain how she’d managed to suffer it all. Back in the privacy of her chamber, she’d toed off her painful heels, let down her hair, and allowed herself a thorough session of self-pity after her lady’s maid had let out her tight lacing and gone to bed.

  The only way she could work out her frustrations now was by soaring over the earth with the magnificent mount beneath her. If nothing else, the Duke of Bainbridge was an excellent connoisseur of horseflesh. He had a stable of pure Arabian stallions and mares that put any other she’d seen before to shame. Not even her father, who was a dedicated lover of horseflesh, possessed such impressive bloodlines. Perhaps after her marriage to the Duke of Disdain, she could at least find solace in the stables at Boswell Manor.

  Dear God. Before long, she would be the mistress of this vast, palatial estate. She urged Damask Rose into a faster pace, needing more speed, more wind, more space between her and the duke and his insufferable mother and his equally insufferable guests…

  Oh, blast.

  Her heart pounded as she raced her mount straight into certain peril. Caught up as she’d been in the tumult of her thoughts, she’d failed to notice that the field dipped into a valley. At the bottom of the valley, a crumbling stone wall bisected the field. But she was galloping too fast, and the wall was too near for her to adjust. Her mind raced in the scant seconds before disaster. If she slowed Damask Rose, she chanced not clearing the wall. If she continued at this pace and jumped her mount, she risked being thrown.

  She could not put the beautiful, trusting horse in danger because she’d been too selfish and reckless to mind that she was riding on unfamiliar terrain. Bo had no choice, really. Time was running out anyway.

  “Three, two, one,” she whispered.

  Damask Rose leapt into the air with muscled grace, clearing the wall with ease. Bo knew a moment of pure, unadulterated joy as the height and speed of the jump rushed through her. And then, something happened that had never happened to her before.

  She lost control.

  Her horse landed. Bo’s momentum continued. She lost her seat on the saddle, the violence of the jump jo
stling her free of the stirrups. At the last moment, she released the reins before she went soaring through the air. Lord in heaven. Everything seemed to move slower for a moment as she twisted her body away from the horse to avoid being trampled.

  The landing took her by surprise, hard and bone-jarring. Her teeth gnashed together, her rump taking the brunt of her fall. Pain, sharp and angry, split through her from her bottom upward. She gasped for air, stars swirling in her vision.

  “Lady Boadicea!”

  Perhaps she had hit her head as well. That was the reason why, in this moment of anguish as she lay on the hard, cool ground, unable to catch her breath, she heard the voice of the Duke of Bainbridge, accompanied by hooves pounding on the earth.

  Or she had gone to her reward, which was clearly not heaven as one would have hoped. She’d landed in one of Dante’s circles of hell, where she was to be tortured by a contemptuous duke for all eternity. Was it the second circle or was it the eighth? Each seemed likely. She coughed out a groan as her lungs seemed to work at last, once more taking in air.

  Hands touched her shoulders. A dark shadow fell over her. A voice again. His. And that familiar, decadent scent of pine and musk and soap.

  “Lady Boadicea, speak to me.”

  She blinked, and he was there, his handsome face hovering over hers. His jaw was rigid, his expression severe. Unless she was addled, she detected concern in his emerald eyes and the frown lines bracketing his sullen mouth. Was it just a puzzling side effect of the fall she’d taken, or was he even more lovely to behold out of doors than he was within them?

  If she hadn’t gotten there already, the second circle, she decided, was where she was bound. How could she be capable of feeling such wicked warmth deep inside her at his proximity even when she could scarcely breathe? Why did she feel so drawn to a man who was as cold as ice?