by Bell, Lenora
“Honestly, I didn’t even notice,” Mina said.
“Thank you for saying that. I know it’s not true but I appreciate the sentiment. And I appreciate that you’re not staring. Most people stare.”
“You’ll have to point out Lady Millicent so that I may find some appropriate torture for her. She’ll never see me coming. Stealth is one of my talents.”
“She’s there, dancing with the Earl of Mayhew. And the best torture for her would be to steal her coveted prize, ergo my brother, the duke. I saw you dancing with him. He appeared to be entranced.”
“He was not entranced. It was loathing at first sight, I’m afraid. For both of us.”
“Oh dear, I’m very sorry to hear that. I know we just met but I quite like you, Miss Penny. I don’t want him to marry Lady Millicent, though she is this Season’s reigning beauty.”
“Don’t you have another brother?” Mina asked casually.
“No respectable girl speaks about Rafe these days if she doesn’t want to be tarnished by association.”
That’s precisely what Mina wanted. Bring on the tarnishing! Bring on the adventures.
“Will he be attending this evening?” she asked, keeping her tones admirably modulated.
“He usually arrives around midnight with his inebriated friends. They dance with a few ladies, say scandalous things, and then leave again for the night’s real entertainment in the demimonde. That goes on until he stumbles home to his nearby town house in the early hours of the morning. Repeat ad nauseam.”
“You don’t think very highly of your brother.”
“You obviously haven’t met him.”
“I have met him. That is, he visited my uncle’s estate from time to time.”
Lady Beatrice gave her an alarmed look. “I do hope you’re not thinking of reforming him.”
“Of course not.”
“You can’t, you know. Many have tried. All have failed.”
“I’ve no interest in reforming your brother.” At least not in the sense Lady Beatrice meant.
“Do reconsider my brother Andrew—Thorndon—won’t you? He may be brusque and he may appear to be unfeeling, but he improves upon acquaintance, I promise. I know he has a good heart, be it buried ever so deep. His life has been . . . troubled.”
Mina hadn’t read the Duke Dossier closely enough to uncover any troubles.
Peering through the fronds, Mina searched the room for Lord Rafe. He wasn’t there, and neither was Thorndon, not that she was looking for him.
Now was her chance to escape. “If I go back out there, Marmont will claim me for another dance,” she said.
“You can hide here with me, I don’t mind,” Lady Beatrice offered.
“That’s very kind but I think some air would do me good. Is there a way for me to access the gardens from here without being seen by everyone?”
Lady Beatrice nodded. “There’s an entrance to the gardens directly behind us. You can hide there until Marmont loses interest.”
“Thank you, Lady Beatrice. It was very nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. I do hope we’ll see each other again soon.”
“I would like that.”
It was nice chatting with Lady Beatrice but Mina had urgent plans.
She was still wearing the demure gown Grizzy had chosen for her, but not for long. She had a transformation to complete. She must be ready to make a truly memorable impression when Lord Rafe arrived.
She’d made her plan carefully, considering all of the variables. She’d followed the path of logic, written everything out, every possible outcome, and then burned the paper.
If she stayed at Sutton Hall she would die slowly inside and go dull, and eventually flicker out. Lord Rafe was her escape route.
He would be the handsome face of the operation, and Mina would do what she excelled at: keeping thorough records, cracking ciphers and codes, piecing together small tidbits of information into a greater whole, and modifying and inventing weaponry.
With Mina at his side, they couldn’t lose. They would become even more celebrated than her parents had been. Together they would defeat Le Triton and Mina would finally have her revenge.
He’d thought he could do this. He’d thought he’d banished the memories.
Drew pressed his forehead against the rough wood walls of the gardening shed at the back of his mother’s rose gardens, where he used to retreat as a child. Normally he didn’t like small, enclosed spaces but this one was familiar. Comforting.
A small thing had happened—inconsequential to everyone else in the ballroom. The candles had sputtered overhead and one small drop of wax had hit his cheek.
Smell of beeswax filling his nostrils.
Only it wasn’t beeswax, but tallow. The cheapest, foulest tallow, which smelled of burned animal hair. Tallow mixed with the odor of bilgewater. Floor beginning to sway.
Irrational fear intruding on his mind.
It was London that dragged this out of him, this lingering edge of madness.
London, gossips, large gatherings of people, unfamiliar carriages, unfamiliar small spaces.
A drop of wax on his cheek.
Many things triggered his attacks, or had triggered them until he left London and built a new life. He thought he’d mastered his emotions, that nothing could take him back over the side and plunge him into the storm waters again.
He ran his hands over the walls. He hadn’t brought a lantern. There had been enough moonlight to walk along the garden path. Cold metal. A three-pronged gardening fork hanging on the wall. A good, sturdy shape for his palm to enclose.
He pressed harder with his fingertips on the sharp tines of the fork. If the gossips could see him now they would have their proof that he wasn’t right in the head, that he’d gone mad.
When he’d left London for Thornhill House, he’d only been dimly aware of the army of servants it took to keep his life humming along smoothly.
As far as he’d known, food had arrived on the table in seven courses prepared by a French cook. He’d certainly known nothing about growing and harvesting plants.
The tool in his palm reminded him of the work he had to do at Thornhill. When he had first arrived there he hadn’t known the sharp end of a spade from the handle.
Old Caleb, the gardener here when Drew was a child, was buried and gone, but his roses lived on, unfurling every year in brilliant crimson, waxy white, and a heated fuchsia color that seemed to pulse when you looked at it.
Most of the bushes were naked right now, snipped to the bone so that the ballroom could be festooned for the night.
The new gardener wasn’t so careful with his tools as Caleb had been. Things were scattered about. Seeds in muslin bags not put away in their proper wooden boxes.
He sifted through the seeds, as if sorting them into piles would do something similar in his mind, every thought in its place, orderly and neat.
Nothing mixed up or out of place.
Just a little longer in the velvet caress of utter solitude.
A few more breaths and he would go back inside.
Think about the life of a seed, how if it rains and then the sun shines, it can seem like a fresh green seedling appears overnight, so eager and hopeful, stretching thin fibers to the sun.
For some unaccountable reason, instead of a green seedling his mind’s eye pictured Miss Penny. She’d been the most interesting thing to happen to him tonight. While he’d been talking to her he’d forgotten to be wary, forgotten all of the people watching them.
He pressed his cheek against the rough wall and thought about the smooth line of her profile, that plump lower lip, and the mystery in her blue-gray eyes.
Why had she been so intent on making him dislike her? Had he lost his charm, along with his sanity?
The door of the shed scraped open. For a moment he wondered if he’d imagined it, but then a slight figure dressed in shimmering white appeared.
He flattened against the back wall, hidden by
the wooden shelves.
The woman carried a small lantern, which she placed on the hook near the door. When she turned toward him he nearly betrayed his presence with a surprised sound.
Miss Penny.
He could almost believe her to be a ghost . . . except that she glowed with life. She was so very alive. She was muttering to herself. She made these little impatient gestures. He couldn’t make out all the words but she was angry about something.
“Phlegmatic ailments,” she muttered. “Really? You think that’s a scintillating topic of conversation? Pah.” She removed her shawl and folded it carefully, setting it on the low bench that flanked the wall closest to the door. “And beds. Let’s talk about beds, shall we? Do you often picture ducal beds?”
Her mimicry of his voice nearly made him laugh aloud. He’d managed to get under her skin in the same way she had lodged under his. It was good to know that the feeling was mutual.
“Why did he have to be so handsome?” Miss Penny peeled off her gloves and set them atop the shawl. “And that delicious almond-y scent of his. I can still smell it in the air. I have to stop thinking of him.” She removed the garland of white and pink silk flowers from her hair and flung it to the floor. “Damn all dukes to a specially created duke hell.”
She grabbed a spade from the wall and used it to open the bench seat. She reached inside. What the dickens was she doing?
“Replaceable. I’ll show him who’s irreplaceable.”
She knelt down on the wooden floor of the shed in front of the bench, in her pristine white gown, and reached inside, bringing up a linen-wrapped parcel.
She stood up and unwrapped the parcel. Lantern light caught shimmering scarlet silk.
A gown by the looks of the bows and frills.
She hugged the gown to her breast. “There you are, my beauty. You’re not replaceable in the least.”
Mystified, all Drew could do was watch as she danced a few steps of a waltz with the dress as her limp partner.
She set the gown on top of the bench. And then she did something truly unexpected.
She began unfastening the white dress she wore.
“Demure,” she said as she unhooked the back of her gown, twisting and contorting to reach the buttons. “Charming and countrified.” Another button. “Biddable and decorous.” The gown slipped down her shoulders.
He should turn away. Stare at the wall. Stare at anything other than the smooth expanse of flesh she’d just revealed.
“I am. None. Of. Those. Things.” Each word meant another button undone.
He couldn’t look away now. The sight of her captivated him. Her hair escaping her coiffure and falling around her face. She bit her lip, twisting her torso to reach the final buttons.
Every loosened button made her gown slip lower.
He really should leave. If only there was a back exit out of the shed. If he revealed himself now, she would be mortified.
She wriggled and danced. “Devil take it,” she swore. The last button was giving her trouble.
Do you require a hand with that? he nearly asked.
Finally the gown came loose. She tugged it over her head and tossed it aside.
She reached inside her bodice and plumped one breast higher over her corset and chemise. Then did the same on the other side.
Blood raced away from his brain and made a rush on his cock.
She had beautiful breasts. Lush and full for her slight frame.
He shouldn’t be looking at her breasts, but damn it, he’d come to this shed first and he’d come here to escape from all the scrutiny.
A terrible thought struck him—what if she was preparing for a tryst? He could be stuck here while Miss Penny and her lover, the lucky bastard, made use of the garden shed.
Then he would feel like a complete lecher. He had to say something. He had to stop her from disrobing any further. There was only one honorable course of action.
Spying on a young lady changing clothing was not good form.
Though this was his garden shed. On his London estate. At his ball.
Who was the trespasser here?
How was he supposed to know that his childhood haven would be invaded by a debutante changing from her virginal gown to what could only be described as a Covent Garden confection?
The bodice barely covered her corset.
“Blast,” she cursed, wiggling with her hands behind her back, attempting to fasten the gown.
It was the most erotic show he’d ever seen. He had to leave. Now. Or she had to leave. He backed away and his heel must have hit a rake, because the handle flew up and smacked him in the back of the head.
I suppose I deserved that, he had time to think, before he realized there was a pistol pressed against his chest.
“Don’t shoot.” Drew raised his hands, palms outward. “I’m a duke.”
Chapter 4
Precisely the statement most likely to make Mina fire.
Especially when she realized which duke she held at pistol point.
Thorndon towered over her, huge and solid, so near she could smell his cologne—a faint trace of almonds and spicy musk.
Eyes glowing gold in the lamplight. Eyes which had seen her disrobe.
She dug her pistol into his chest, over his heart.
He’d seen her disrobe. Had he heard her mutterings? And, most importantly, had she said anything incriminating about his brother, Lord Rafe? She quickly tried to remember everything she’d said from the moment she’d entered the shed.
She wished she could swallow the last few minutes like the torn-up shreds of a secret message no one but she would ever read.
Talking to oneself was a dangerous habit. She’d spent so much time alone at Sutton Hall that it was ingrained behavior.
Lord Rafe didn’t like innocent debutantes, so Mina had planned to transform herself into a sophisticated woman of mystery by wearing her mother’s scarlet silk dress, which she’d paid to have altered according to today’s fashions.
Only now Thorndon was ruining everything.
Great big barrier of a duke.
“What are you doing, lurking out here in the shadows, Your Grace?” She got the sense that he’d been hiding. But why would a duke hide from his own ballroom?
“I could ask the same of you, Miss Penny. It’s my shed, after all.”
He didn’t seem terribly concerned about the firearm targeting his heart. She was embarrassed and it made her want to throw him off balance.
“I assure you I know how to use this weapon.”
“I didn’t suggest otherwise. I’m sure you’re skilled with a gun, having been raised in the countryside, and being so fond of the hunt.”
“I was raised in the countryside but I’m no simple country miss.”
“Not in that gown. No one would mistake you for anything simple. That’s a complicated gown.”
“This is a stunning gown,” she huffed.
Wearing her mother’s gown was the closest Mina could come to touching her mother. She’d even purchased the same rose scent her mother had worn.
She wanted to become just as glamorous and sophisticated as her celebrated mother had been.
“Has too many ruffles,” said the duke. “It looks like a rose mated with a bawdy-house sofa. I liked the other one better.”
Now he was insulting her mother’s dress. He was the most irritating man in the world, and she had to be stuck in a garden shed with him. “You would, wouldn’t you?” She nudged his chest with her pistol. “You want young ladies to be demure, biddable, and silent.”
“I didn’t say that. I only thought the other gown suited you better. You looked sunny and pretty, like a daisy.”
“A daisy?” she sputtered. “I’m nothing so ordinary or conventional as a daisy. Take that back.”
“As you say, Miss Penny. You have the pistol. You’re not a daisy. There’s no air of the country about you. You’re not sunny or fresh or pretty.”
Not pretty. Why did tha
t upset her?
Everything about him was infuriating, especially that smirk, as if he knew the effect his proximity had on her. The way the backs of her knees wobbled and her belly tightened.
He had to be in control, didn’t he? Well. Who was the one with the pistol?
“Despite the firearm, I’m at a decided disadvantage here, Your Grace, wouldn’t you say? You’ve seen me in my chemise, and you’re still fully clothed. I think we should even the playing field, don’t you agree?”
Some demon was shaping her words. It’s just that he was so very in control, even when she had a pistol pressed against his chest.
She wanted him at a disadvantage. She wanted to dictate the tenor of this encounter.
“Remove your coat, Your Grace.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Miss Penny?”
“I demand retribution. A . . . chest for a chest. You saw mine.”
“This is my garden shed. I was here first. You’re the trespasser. Why did you hide a change of clothing in my gardener’s work bench?”
“No questions until we’re on even footing.”
“Very well, I agree that I had you at a disadvantage. Shall I remove my coat?”
His words spoken with a mocking inflection that clearly insinuated he thought that she’d back down easily.
She wasn’t going to back down, be silent, hide away. Not anymore.
“If you please,” she said boldly, if a bit breathlessly.
“You’ll have to move your pistol, Miss Penny.”
“Oh, of course.” She took one small step away from him. Not too far. She wasn’t born yesterday.
He removed his tailcoat and hung it on a peg. His waistcoat was plain black silk but there was a thin band of gold around the edges that matched his eyes. She hadn’t noticed that before, because she’d been too busy staring into those eyes while they waltzed.
“There, are you happy?” he asked.
“The cravat, if you please.”
He loosened the knot of his cravat and undid the elaborate bow until the ends dangled down his chest.
She swallowed. Perhaps she hadn’t thought this all the way through. Watching Thorndon disrobe was disconcerting and rather . . . addictive. She wanted to see more of him. The well-defined arm muscles she’d felt beneath his shirt as they danced.