Thwarting the Duke

by Ava Stone

  “I think he was afraid Mama would kill him if she knew he let me drive.”

  “And if she didn’t, Braden or Quent would.”

  True enough. Both of their brothers would be furious if they ever learned the truth of the matter.

  Grace collapsed onto the bed beside Hope and rested her head on her sister’s shoulder. “If you don’t come to the theatre with everyone tonight, what will you do?”

  “Pick a tome from the library perhaps?”

  Grace snorted. “You know, once upon a time, you were the most adventurous and carefree of all of us. And now you’re—”

  “If you say docile,” Hope complained, “I will punch you right in the nose.”

  “Even if it’s true?”

  It was true. But that didn’t mean Hope wanted to hear it. She knew she wasn’t the same since Henry’s death, but there was nothing she could do about that. And being reminded of it all the time didn’t help matters in the least. “I am still quite adventurous. Today I even toppled over a phaeton.”

  Thad couldn’t quite believe his eyes as he looked across the theatre. Good God. What were the odds of seeing her twice in one day? And what was she doing with Daniel Lacy of all people? That bore seemed an even less likely match than Lord Elston had. In fact, it was odd to see Lacy outside of a library, honestly. One would think the theatre was too adventurous for his soul. Must be Lady Hope’s influence that had dragged the man from his usual habitat.

  She did look tortured now that he studied her. Was it the play she objected to? Or her companion? Contrarily, Lacy looked completely enamored, gazing down at the blonde next to him as though she’d personally hung the moon and each star in the sky. Thad couldn’t truly blame the man. Lady Hope was stunning. Her flaxen curls framed her face, giving her an ethereal glow. And she had the most beautiful green eyes, almost like rarest emeralds one couldn’t help but admire, even from afar. He could still hear her infectious giggle as she’d splashed through the Serpentine with Henry last year. And when Thad thought about her, that gleeful sound always invaded his memory. She’d sounded so genuinely happy, so warm, so very appealing. That such a delightful sound should be in any way connected to Henry was as irritating as it was memorable. Henry had been a duplicitous jackass, and the world was well rid of him. What in the world had Hope Post seen in Henry? And what did she see in Daniel Lacy for that matter? The two men had to be the polar opposites of each other. Was that the appeal?

  “The, uh, stage is below.” Thad’s brother-in-law nudged him. “Not across the way.”

  He glanced at his sister’s husband out of the corner of his eye. “Kindly keep your own council, Lawrence.” But he pulled his gaze from Lady Hope back to the stage anyway just in time to see Romeo marry Juliet and for the curtains to close as intermission began.

  Thad wasn’t certain what had gotten into him, but he didn’t give it very much thought. He just felt the strongest pull to see the lady again, perhaps figure out what she saw in Lacy. He pushed out of his chair, nodded to his sister and her husband and excused himself from his box.

  Patrons filled the corridor and various colors of ostrich plumes bounced above the sea of people, but Thad still spotted her, taking Daniel Lacy’s arm and smiling up at him. And for some reason he couldn’t explain, Thad found himself closing the distance between himself and the mismatched pair. Honestly, he should warn Lacy. That was the decent thing to do. A lady like Hope Post would not be conducive to the scholar’s usual lifestyle.

  And then he was right there and Lady Hope looked up at him as though she’d never seen him before, like she hadn’t upended his phaeton outside the park that very afternoon. And something inside him snapped. After all, how could he have thought about her for hours and she didn’t even remember him?

  “Do be careful, Lacy, your companion is a menace.”

  Lady Hope’s face turned a rather satisfactory shade of red. Then she gasped. “I beg your pardon?”

  Lacy frowned as he looked from Thad to the blonde and then back again. “I say, Kilworth, what do you mean by saying something like that about Lady Grace?”

  And then Thad’s cheeks stung with embarrassment. Lady Grace? Damn it all. Lady Hope was a twin or a triplet, wasn’t she? Damned idiot. He hadn’t even considered that Lacy’s companion wasn’t Lady Hope, not when she looked exactly like her. His mouth fell open slightly as words completely escaped him.

  Words did not, apparently, escape Lady Grace who sucked in a breath and narrowed her pretty green eyes on Thad. “Hope said you were cruel. She didn’t say you were daft.”

  “What is going on?” Lacy asked. “Has he insulted you, my dear?”

  Lady Grace’s eyes could have speared Thad where he stood. “Lord Kilworth has apparently confused me with my sister, Mr. Lacy. It’s Hope he’s insulted, not me, not on purpose in any event.”

  “I see.” Lacy’s frown deepened though it didn’t seem as though he saw at all, not as quickly as Lady Grace had done anyway. Cruel. She’d called him cruel, hadn’t she? Or Lady Hope had called him such and her sister had merely repeated it.

  “I do apologize,” Thad stammered. And, truly, those were words he rarely uttered to anyone. How unfortunate to have put himself in a position where he had to say them now.

  “It’s my sister you owe an apology to,” Lady Grace said rather loftily. “As I can quite assure you she is not a menace in the least.”

  Thad wasn’t quite in agreement about that. For some reason the lady in question had certainly plagued his thoughts the majority of the day. Spirited and pretty. How could he think about anything else?

  “I am sorry,” he said again, hating the taste of those words on his lips. “Please do excuse me,” he added, turning on his heel and making an escape into the sea of other theatregoers.

  What the devil was wrong with him?

  Chapter 3

  “Just go talk to her.” Hope sighed. Honestly, Jamie wasn’t himself at all these days, and it was slightly annoying.

  But her cousin shook his head, his eyes still on the willowy blonde across the ballroom. “She won’t talk to me.”

  “Why? What did you say to her?” She tapped him on the chest until he looked down at her.

  He twisted up his face. “I didn’t say anything.”

  Clearly, he was lying. He must have said something incredibly stupid. “What did you say, Jamie? I can’t help you unless you tell me.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” he protested. “I kissed her.” And then he turned slightly red at the admission.

  Hope’s eyes widened in surprise. She had not been expecting that. “You kissed her?” she whispered, moving closer to her cousin.

  But Jamie closed his mouth and shook his head.

  Heavens. Why was he behaving so strangely? Had he attempted even more liberties than a kiss? Is that why Alice Humphreys wasn’t speaking to him? What in the world had he done? “James Woodward.” She folded her arms across her chest. “What did you do to that girl? Tell me right now.”

  Jamie’s brow furrowed. “I kissed her. That’s all.”

  That couldn’t be all. “A girl does not stop speaking to a gentleman simply because he kissed her. She—”

  “It was a bad kiss, Hope. Leave it alone, will you?”

  A bad kiss? Hope’s mouth fell open. Was there such a thing as a bad kiss? She’d only ever been kissed by Henry, and it hadn’t been bad in the least. In fact, it had been so blindingly wonderful, she could still remember every moment of each and every kiss. What in the world made a kiss bad? “How was it bad?”

  Jamie sagged a bit. “Please leave it alone.”

  “I just don’t understand how it could have been bad. You have to tell me more than that.”

  “It was like kissing a dead fish,” he said hastily. “Slimy, clammy, no feeling whatsoever.”

  Heavens! A dead fish. That just sounded awful. Hope turned back to look at Alice Humphreys from across the ballroom. She’d never thought the girl was terribly inte
resting. She was chatting with Mr. Archibald Chapman who was mind-numbingly dull in his own right. “If there was no feeling whatsoever, Jamie, then I hardly think she’s the girl for you.” She might, in fact, be the girl for Mr. Chapman. Two perfectly boring individuals.

  “Hardly helpful,” Jamie complained. “At least I know Alice.”

  Oh, for pity’s sake. He knew lots of girls. And maybe kissing one of them wasn’t like kissing a dead fish. “I hardly see why that matters.”

  Her cousin snorted. “When we get summoned to Danby Castle at Christmas, there is no telling who our great-uncle will have picked out for me instead. At least I know Alice.”

  Of all the ridiculous—

  “The Earl of Kilworth and Lord Richard Cole,” the Wolverlys’ footman announced, and Hope’s stomach knotted into a ball.

  She instinctively turned toward the entrance at hearing the name. Old habits, she supposed, not that the current earl was anything like Henry. A menace. He’d called her a menace. The awful man.

  Hope’s breath caught in her throat when the grumpy earl met her gaze with those dark eyes of his. So she turned quickly back to her cousin, hoping no one else noticed. What had they been discussing? Oh, yes, Miss Humphreys. Dreadful topic, that.

  Hope forced herself to re-focus on the matter at hand. “You know that kissing her is akin to kissing a dead fish. You can do better, Jamie. Even Grace thinks so.”

  “Speaking of Grace, how did she bring Lacy up to scratch?”

  After Lacy thought Lord Kilworth had disparaged Grace at the theater, the man’s protective instincts had taken over and he confessed that he had quite fallen for her. But Hope was not in the mood to recant anything having to do with Lord Kilworth. “No clue. She doesn’t tell me everything.”

  Was there a way to leave the Wolverlys’ ball? Normally she could get Quent to agree to abandon a ball early, but Lord Wolverly was one of his friends and the two of them had been chatting up a storm for quite some time, as had Lila and Lady Wolverly. She wouldn’t get any help from either of them. She could make her way to the retiring room and hope the prickly earl left on his own accord while she was away. Or—

  “My dance, I believe.” Lord St. Merryn appeared before her.

  It was his dance. A reel. Drat it all. If only there was some way to put him off or suggest he stand up with that nice Miss Meredith Halliday who seemed to be hiding near the far window, but she had promised the reel to the man. There was nothing for it. Hope resisted the urge to blow out a breath of frustration. Escape from the Wolverlys would have to come after her reel with Lord St. Merryn.

  It truly wouldn’t have mattered who else was in attendance, not Castlereagh, not Liverpool, not even Prinny himself. There was no one in the world who could have dragged Thad’s attention away from Lady Hope, not at that moment, not with her blonde curls bouncing, not with the splash of color in her cheeks, not with the scooped bodice that kept drawing his eyes to her charms over and over as St. Merryn spun and turned her around during a reel. In all his life, he may not have ever seen anything more fascinating.

  Then again, she might not even be Lady Hope. She could be Lady Grace or…Wasn’t there another one of them? How did people tell them apart? Three stunning girls who looked identical? The lady’s yellow gown swirled about her feet and Thad’s mouth went a little dry. He’d—

  “There’s Draughton now,” Robert muttered under his breath.

  The Marquess of Draughton. The reason they’d come to the damned ball. The man was a veritable jackass, but he did hold sway over a contingency of other lords in Parliament. Thad glanced briefly at the man in the far corner of the room before his gaze returned to the beautiful blonde in yellow.

  Which one was she? Hope who’d upended his carriage and nearly killed his favorite horse? Grace who possessed a biting tongue? Or the other one? “Does Bradenham have two sisters? Or is it three?”

  “We’re not here for Draughton?” Robert heaved a sigh.

  “No, we are,” Thad replied, though his eyes were still on the girl in yellow. “Just humor me.”

  “Bradenham has three sisters, triplets. One is married to a doctor in Yorkshire. One has just become betrothed to Daniel Lacy, and—”

  “Which one do you think she is?” He tipped his head towards the dance floor.

  “I wouldn’t have any idea. Probably not the doctor’s wife. I’m certain she’s in Yorkshire.”

  “And probably not Lacy’s intended,” Thad mused aloud. Assuming Lady Grace was Lacy’s intended, she’d probably be with her fiancé, not dancing a reel with St. Marryn. So the girl in yellow had to be Lady Hope, at least if his process of elimination was correct.

  “Most likely Lady Hope,” Robert agreed. “I thought you’d meant to restore the Kilworth name, not go down the same path as your cousin.”

  And Lady Hope had made quite a spectacle out of herself with Henry last season. It would set tongues wagging if Thad were to take an obvious interest in the girl. Still…she didn’t seem quite the same as he remembered. “Didn’t she have a sparkle in her eyes last year?”

  A laugh escaped his friend. “I confess I have not spent an enormous amount of time inspecting Lady Hope’s eyes.”

  Thad had really only seen her from afar last season, but that sparkle was not one he’d forgotten. “Perhaps she finds St. Marryn a bore.”

  “I have found him so myself from time to time.”

  The reel came to an end, and Thad started for the pair without giving the matter or Robert a second thought.

  “Thad!” his friend called after him, but he paid the man no attention at all. His eyes were focused solely on the lady in yellow who had captured his interest ever since he’d walked into the ballroom. And in less than a moment, the lady and St. Marryn were right before him.

  She appeared slightly nervous, her eyes not lifting any further than his cravat, and Thad frowned in response. How was he to judge the sparkle in her eyes if she wouldn’t even look at him?

  “Ah, Kilworth.” St. Marryn offered his hand to Thad. “Enjoyed your speech last week. Quite impassioned.”

  Thad’s speech to the Lords on the need to build new churches was the last thing on his mind at the moment, even if he had come this evening to discuss that very matter with Draughton. “Thank you.” He forced a smile to his face. “Lady Hope, is it not?” he said in greeting, even though they had never been properly introduced, broken phaeton shafts aside.

  And then she did lift her eyes to meet his. The sparkle was definitely gone. “Making certain it’s me before you warn Lord St. Marryn that I’m a menace?”

  Thad’s jaw tightened. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that Lady Grace had told her sister about their encounter at the theatre. However, it was still unfortunate that she had. He supposed he owed Lady Hope an apology, which was more than frustrating; but he’d be damned if he was to do so in front of St. Marryn.

  The first chords of a waltz began and, “Would you care to stand up with me?” flew out of Thad’s mouth before he could stop the words. Though it wasn’t an awful idea. In fact, he might enjoy holding the girl in his arms. There was something about her.

  Lady Hope, however, looked at him as though he’d sprouted horns and a forked tail. “I was just heading to the retiring room, my lord.”

  Well, that was poor timing. “I had hoped to speak with you about your ride in the park the other day.” And apologize for his comment to her sister, not that he’d say that bit out loud for St. Marryn to hear.

  Lady Hope’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I suppose we could take a turn about the room,” she clipped out.

  Beggars couldn’t be choosers. A turn about the room was better than her escaping to the retiring room. Thad smiled and offered her his arm, which she begrudgingly took.

  “Looking forward to your next speech.” St. Marryn nodded in farewell. “And you can count on my support—not nearly enough churches in Manchester.”

  “I appreciate that,” Thad
said, tucking his hand over Lady Hope’s and starting for the far side of the room.

  “Jamie’s already offered to pay your repairs,” the lady began petulantly. “So I can’t imagine what else you could possibly want.”

  He cast her a sidelong glance, finding her eyes downcast as though watching her steps carefully. She was a dichotomy. How was this lady the same as the one who had splashed through the Serpentine and driven that phaeton with abandon? Was she the same? Had one or both of her sisters participated in those other activities? “You were the one driving that phaeton, were you not?”

  Her gaze did shoot up to his then. “Are you trying to blackmail me?” she whispered.

  Blackmail her? What the devil? Thad stopped in his tracks. “I beg your pardon?” There were a great number of things he’d been accused of in his life, but blackmail had never been one of them.

  Her green eyes did have a bit of fire in them now, but still not that sparkle he’d once seen. “What do you want?” she ground out.

  “What do I want?” he echoed.

  Her eyes narrowed perceptibly. “To keep quiet that I was driving. What do you want?”

  Thad’s mouth dropped open. That was truly the last thing he expected her to say. Would she be in a heap of trouble if Bradenham or Lord Quentin found out she’d been driving? He’d always thought her brothers seemed lax, honestly. “What are you offering?” he asked, though he had no idea why he’d done so. He truly wasn’t a blackmailer. But he couldn’t help but wonder what the captivating beauty might offer in return for his silence.

  Her nose scrunched up. “It’s not supposed to work that way.”

  Thad shrugged, enjoying himself immensely. “Well, I’ve never blackmailed anyone before. How am I supposed to go about it, my lady?”

  “You’re supposed to tell me what you want, and then I decide if I am able to pay the price or not.”

  “Have you much experience with blackmailing?” he asked.

  At that, a smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “I have two sisters, my lord. We have been negotiating with each other nearly all of our lives.”