Damn it all to hell.
She sighed. “Very well, Bunton. Do what you must.”
Lucien wondered if he should have armed himself prior to joining Miss Montgomery for dinner. He watched her attacking the food upon her plate with a vigor he had never before witnessed. His curious house guest and unwanted partner-of-the-moment was overdressed in a silk evening gown, her hair worn in a more becoming style, which was captured at her nape. The lush femininity of her form and the extravagant gown were at odds with the voracious manner in which she consumed her dinner.
Right now, he very much pitied the haricot verts.
Her gaze met his, delivering a shock he felt to his core. She raised a brow, as if in challenge. “Is something amiss?”
Yes, something was amiss. He had an American interloper seated across from him at his dinner table. A strange, rude woman, who had either never been taught not to spear her vegetables as if she were harpooning a whale upon her fine porcelain plate, or just did not give a damn. She was yet another punishment he had suffered in the wake of The Incident, along with the surrendering of his pride and self-respect. He could not look upon her without being reminded of his own faults.
But he, too, had been rude, he realized belatedly, for he had been staring at her in horrified fascination. He cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Miss Montgomery, but I could not help but to note the intensity with which you consume your repast. Are you angry with this course in particular, or is it all the courses in general?”
More rudeness from him, but he could not help it. Miss Montgomery irked him. Her presence at his dinner table, within his very home, nettled him. He resented her. In truth, he resented himself.
Her cheeks flushed, an embarrassed tinge of red stealing over the creamy skin. She stared at him for an indeterminate span of time, long enough he had to tamp down the urge to squirm in his seat, much like a lad whose nursemaid had caught him sneaking his dinner to the family pet.
“Hungry, Mr. Arden, not angry. I am merely hungry,” she said at last.
And he felt, instantly, a sharp, stinging sensation he recognized at once: Shame. He wanted to say something remorseful. To fill the silence with an apology. But his lips refused to form it.
“This is the first meal I have had the occasion to partake in today,” she added, flummoxing him even more. “Between my arrival, my time at the Home Office, and my visit to you, I have been kept quite busy. I had not realized how famished I had become until I sat down. I do realize I am more…vigorous than most females. But my constitution has always stood me in excellent stead, so I’ll not apologize for it now.”
She was vexed with him. Lucien saw it in the way her mouth tightened and her eyes darkened. Rightfully so. For the first time since her unexpected arrival in his study—Miss Montgomery, that was, rather than the gentleman he had prepared himself to meet—it occurred to him she was not to blame for her interference in his life. After all, the Home Office had offered her the position aiding him in leading the League. The Home Office had courted her, had brought her over the sea, had landed her in his midst like a bloody pestilence.
He clenched his jaw, stemming the disastrous tide of his thoughts. Lucien could not bring himself to apologize, but he knew he must swallow his bitterness and offer something.
“Do not let me stand in the way of your vigor, Miss Montgomery,” he said, his tone stilted. He noted her plate was empty, and he turned to a footman, who presided over the entire odd affair. “The next course, if you please.”
When the servant had taken his leave, Miss Montgomery took a healthy gulp of her wine at last. Lucien had noted she had yet to touch it during the course of their meal, though she had shown great enthusiasm for every morsel of food. When she was finished, her tongue flicked slowly over her upper lip.
Once drawn there, his attention remained riveted upon the perfect bow of her pink pout. The sight of her tongue should not have affected him, and yet, his cock twitched. He swallowed, reaching for his own wine, then poured a healthy portion down his throat.
“How can there be yet another course?” Miss Montgomery asked, providing him a source of distraction he appreciated.
“That was but the relevé,” he told her. “The entremêts are next. Shall I call them off? If you are famished, however, surely you would wish to partake?”
She smiled at him, and that rare transformative curve of her lips hit him squarely in the chest. “Of course I wish to partake, Arden. My mind works best when my stomach is happy.”
He blinked, taken aback by her artless honesty. “Very well then.”
“Have you perused my notes?” she asked, assessing him in that frank manner she had. Utterly guileless.
Maddening, really.
The woman before him was no lady. If Great Aunt Hortense had not been dining that evening with the ladies of her beloved hospital charity, she would have been properly horrified by Miss Montgomery’s manners. Of course, she would also be horrified to know he was dining alone with an unwed female. But he would deal with his aunt’s indignation later, when the time came. Procrastination was his favorite form of art when it came to the beloved dragon.
For now, back to Miss Montgomery’s notes.
“I have read a portion of them,” he told her, having no intention of discussing the matter over the next remove while a servant hovered. “They are…copious.”
In truth, he had not perused them beyond the initial glance he had cast over them earlier during their awkward interview. And he had no intention of reading them either, for he was not about to share his duties with Miss Montgomery. Indeed, the mere notion of seeing the frothy tiers of her silken skirts as she entered a carriage on her way back to America filled him with a searing sense of satisfaction.
“Copious,” she repeated now, disrupting his fantasy of her exodus.
“Would you prefer voluminous?” he asked, as the next dishes were laid before them.
The urge to discomfit her, to ruffle her feathers, could not be dismissed. Even if he had no intention of working alongside her, he could not deny a part of him found her an oddity. Intriguing, even.
“They are detailed and rife with important information,” she informed him coolly, before turning her attention to the dish before her and attacking it just as surely as she had her haricot verts.
The remainder of the dinner continued in polite silence. When the dessert course had been whisked away, Lucien dismissed the footman, leaving himself and Miss Montgomery alone in the drawing room. It was deuced odd, sharing the table with a female other than his aunt and his sister, Violet. But Violet was now the Duchess of Strathmore and damned unlikely to be sharing his table any time soon, thanks to The Incident. He sipped his port, drowning the disagreeable thought with spirits, an ineffective panacea though it was.
Miss Montgomery had accepted port and had remained at the table along with him, as if she too were a gentleman. She watched him now, that icy gaze of hers assessing. “You did not read my journal, did you?”
The warmth which had begun to unfurl within him from the port died. Blast the woman. He took another sip, returning her regard frankly.
“No.”
Her lips compressed. “Nor do you have any intention of reading it.”
The last was a statement rather than a question. She seemed an intelligent woman. Indeed, if the list of successful cases she had completed was an indication, she was quite smart. Therefore, he would not prevaricate.
“No.” He savored another sip of port.
Her spine stiffened, her eyes blazing with irritation. “Do you doubt my abilities because I am a woman, Mr. Arden?”
Again with the bloody mister nonsense.
He sighed. “You may call me Arden, madam.”
“I do believe I already informed you the circumstances required for me to refer to you by your silly title.”
He placed his glass on the table with more force than necessary, the sound echoing through the chamber. “Need I remind you that y
ou are a guest in my home, madam?”
“What has that got to do with me calling you Mr. Arden?” she returned.
He ground his molars. The woman certainly knew how to goad him. “If I did not respect you, I would not be seated here at the table with you now. I would not have seen you comfortably settled in a guest chamber for the evening nor provided you with an attendant. I would not have listened to you natter through the soup course.”
“I did not speak a word during the soup course.”
Perhaps she had not. His mind was heavy with troubles, and the vexing female before him was the last complication he needed to add to his burdens. All he knew was, at some point, she had returned to the topic of her damnable journal once more, and they had not left it ever since.
He frowned. “You may as well have. Your eyes speak for you.”
That much was true. Her unusual light-blue gaze was everywhere, always observing, and seeing far too much, he had no doubt.
“What a strange man you are, Mr. Arden,” she said, her tone contemplative.
He bristled. “You will call me Arden, madam, or I shall throw you over my shoulder and cart you to the carriage myself.”
“Let us strike a bargain,” she suggested, seemingly unaffected by his threat.
Perhaps she did not think he would manhandle her. Certainly, the gentleman within him would not dare to commit such a sin. But as he watched her now, pique swelling within him, he could not help but to believe himself capable of it.
And worse, that he would savor the moment.
For a beat, he imagined himself rising from his chair, then closing the distance between them, hauling her from her seat, and sending her over his shoulder. His hands would settle upon her rump, and he would stride to the door while she protested. Perhaps she would squirm, attempting to escape him as she continued to refer to him as Mr. Arden, and he would be forced to deliver a swat to her bottom to make her still…
Damnation. He drained the remnants of his port. She was speaking, he realized, whilst he had been fantasizing about her removal from his home. And how his fantasy had become so suddenly sensual in nature, he did not wish to know.
“What do you say, sir?” she asked, watching him expectantly.
Her bloody bargain. He had drowned out the sound of her proposal with his own disgraceful thoughts.
Lucien cleared his throat, as irritated with himself as he was with Miss Montgomery. “Repeat the bargain, if you would, madam.”
“Of course.” Her smile widened knowingly. “I promise to call you ‘Arden,’ and in return, you promise to read my journal.”
Oh, she thought she was clever, his determined American thorn-in-the-side. But he was far craftier than she supposed. Far more skilled in the art of dismantling his opponents, tearing them apart, piece by piece. And there was no mistake here; this woman, lush and feminine and unassuming though she appeared, was very much not just his opponent, but perhaps even his rival. It had occurred to him the Home Office, whilst in the midst of making the Special League an official branch of Scotland Yard, may be looking for a replacement.
That perhaps H.E. Montgomery would usurp him, unthinkable though it was.
For he had only just begun.
“Let us drink to the bargain,” he said, smiling into her eyes as he refilled his glass, before raising it aloft.
For if he had to guess, he would wager Miss Hazel Elizabeth Montgomery did not imbibe often. Everything about her neat precise scrawl and rigid attention to detail, suggested a woman who very much needed to be in control of herself and others at all times. And she had failed to touch her port thus far.
But she lifted her glass now, because her pride would not allow otherwise, just as he had suspected.
“I will indeed drink to that, Arden.”
And then she did, swallowing nearly half the contents of her glass in one go, before suppressing her shudder, though her effort was obvious to him. He grinned at her. At long last, he had found the solution to his problem. He was going to make certain Miss Hazel Elizabeth Montgomery was thoroughly in her cups before the night was over.
Preferably, so soused she could not bear to rouse herself from bed—and for their all-important meeting with the Home Office—the next morning. No more abomination, no more bloody journal.
He raised his glass to his lips, taking a small measured sip, and damn it if his port didn’t taste just a bit like victory.
Chapter Three
Hazel groaned, opening her eyes slowly, before blinking the room around her into distinct objects rather than hazy blurs. Her mouth was dry and bitter. Her stomach heaved. Her head pounded. In all, she felt as if her body had been relentlessly trampled by an invading army. She felt…miserable. That was the word.
What had happened? Where was she? When would the world cease swaying as if she were on a ship?
Lord God, was she still aboard that infernal ship? Was not nine days at sea, handsome cabin on a White Star Line steamer aside, enough?
No. Remembrance descended upon her mind with the torpidity of a lame mare. She was in an elegant chamber at the Duke of Arden’s townhome, Lark House. Not to be confused with his many vast country holdings, of which there were no doubt legion. Because he was a duke, and he was icy and arrogant, and of course he owned more than one home—stately and extravagant though this one was.
She, meanwhile, had never called any place home since she’d been a girl. In truth, she had never possessed a home at all. Sometimes, not even a roof over her head or a dry place to sleep.
Her stomach rolled once more, much as it had when she’d been aboard the ship. Perhaps this was a lingering effect of her sea voyage, which had been merciless and punishing. She had cast up her accounts so many times during the arduous trip over stormy waters, she could still taste her own bile on her tongue even now.
Or was that her own bile she was tasting at this very moment? Had she vomited recently? The disgusting taste in her mouth certainly suggested she had. To corroborate, along came a murky reminiscence of the Duke of Arden procuring a chamber pot for her. Of his worried, yet still unbearably handsome, countenance, and of her clutching him before she lost her balance…
She had not vomited upon him, had she?
She searched her mind for the memory, for the answer, as she cringed and her stomach clenched yet again. Her mind was blank. What was this malady she suffered? Belated or prolonged seasickness? Perhaps the combination of her travel and her interactions with the condescending Duke of Arden had simply worn her out. There had been the seemingly endless sea voyage, followed by a seven-hour train ride from Liverpool to London; all more than enough to drive anyone to the edge of madness.
Surely those were the sole explanations for her failure to rise at dawn as was her customary habit. Those were the only reasons why she instead had awakened—good sweet God—with the sun bright and high on the other side of the window dressings.
What time was it? She had a meeting with Arden and the Duke of Winchelsea from the Home Office this morning, the first in her official capacity as Arden’s partner. She could not afford to be late. And if there was one thing Hazel loathed more than deceptions, it was tardiness.
Her head thumped with increased vigor, her wretchedness mounting. How much wine had she consumed with dinner and its endless courses? And afterward, following the Duke of Arden’s lead, not just sampling his port, but attempting to keep paces with him? Had he not asked her to toast to their bargain? And what else had he asked of her?
A surge of new memories returned to her then, hazy and indistinct. What a cake she had made of herself. Shame and regret stung her as if she had twin live coals in her belly.
She recalled laughing uncontrollably. Hiccupping into her hand. She remembered leaning upon Arden for support, the seemingly infinite journey up a set of stairs and down a never ending hall to her chamber. The smell of him, she recalled that as well, citrus and musk, with a hint of soap. Delightful, really. Not at all like hair grease and unw
ashed armpits like most of the men she had been in proximity with over the years.
The reminder of those disagreeable scents made her stomach lurch painfully now, as if she were smelling them in truth. Clutching her abdomen, she rolled over with another groan. Dear Lord, she needed a chamber pot. Had Arden given her one, offering it to her much like an olive branch the night before? Or was that memory born in her fanciful imagination, a product of her dreams?
Hazel swallowed against the sickness threatening to unburden itself from her throat. There was no mistaking her reaction, she feared. Her physical ailments, coupled with the fragments of lucid memory she possessed from the night before, all pointed to one inevitable truth.
The night before, she had been drunker than the husband of a temperance woman who had just been laid into the ground. Yes, she had. The time for denying her egregious lack of control and gross misconduct was at an end. She must face the truth of what she had done.
And what she had done was drink herself silly. She had been unprofessional, even if goaded into it by Arden. Which she had, undeniably. She had allowed him to provoke her, and she saw it so plainly by the ugly morning light: her weakness, him taking advantage of the vulnerability in her defenses, as any opponent worth his salt would. As she would have done in his stead, had their situations been reversed. But that was rather a moot point.
Because the damage had already been done, the battle lines distinctly drawn. Hazel rolled from the bed, falling clumsily to the floor, and landed upon her hands and knees. The Axminster was thick, although not plush enough to blunt the sting of pain. But there was no time for pain. A more fervent need rolled up from her gut, demanding an answer.
She required the chamber pot her faded recollections had Arden proffering to her the evening before. How humiliating. He had been in this very room with her, the room where she would sleep, the room containing a bed.
Shameless Duke Page 3