by Lenora Bell
“She tumbled me on my arse like a public house brawler,” James said.
Dalton sprayed brandy on the library carpet. “We’re speaking of Lady Dorothea? That diminutive thing?”
“The very one. Quite a grip on her. Arms like a sailor. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were covered in ink tattoos.” James rested his aching neck on the chair cushion. “You can stop laughing now.”
“Can’t. It’s too droll. The great Goliath felled by a dainty David.”
“I was trying to frighten her off. I thought since I was dressed as a footman, if I was unforgivably rude, she’d faint and be declared unwell and have to go back to London, or at least be confined to her chamber.”
“And you did that, why?”
“I told you. I can’t afford any distractions. I want a sensible wife, one that won’t cause me any trouble. And Lady Dorothea is trouble. You can see the storm brewing in her eyes from twenty paces. One moment I was staring into those tempestuous eyes, and the next, bam! Flat on my back with her wrists locked around my neck and my feet kicking like I was hanging from a noose on Snow Hill.”
It had been wholly unexpected, and inexplicably arousing.
“Clearly Lady Dorothea knows how to make an impression,” drawled Dalton. “I’ve never noticed her before. Seems a quiet, nervous sort of girl.”
“Said she’d developed a passion for Roman wrestling in Italy.”
“Roman wrestling?”
“That’s what she said. It’s so implausible, it can only be true.”
“D’you suppose we could persuade Lady Dorothea to wrestle Lady Augusta before she leaves? Just one round? I know gents who would pay a great deal to see that.”
James reached over and punched Dalton’s shoulder.
“Ouch. What was that for?” Dalton asked.
“This is a business arrangement. Not an erotic prizefight.”
Land him on his arse. He’d teach her a lesson. Yes, that is exactly what he had to do. Charm and disarm her and then, bam! Flat on her back. See how she liked it.
Of course there would be a bed to catch them. And she’d be wearing a chemise and nothing more. Of the very thin, very transparent variety.
James clutched his forehead. Absolutely not. Business transaction. Rational. Bloodless.
Lady Dorothea was enigmatic, delectable, and completely distracting. More capable of inflicting further ruin than of salvaging his reputation. What if she went about pitching barristers? Or wrestling matrons whose bonnets she disapproved of?
“Well, what of the other contenders?” Dalton asked. “What do you make of them?”
James checked the ladies off on his fingers. “Lady Augusta practically plastered herself to my chest.”
“I saw that. She likes footmen, apparently.”
“My future wife can’t like footmen. Chaste. Biddable. That’s what I need. Lady Vivienne sailed across the courtyard like the Queen of Sheba—she’d certainly silence the gossips. And Miss Tombs is quite promising.” James drained his glass. “Those dimples are adorable.”
But it wasn’t Miss Tombs’s dimples that plagued him.
He kept revisiting that oddly perfect moment as he drowned in Lady Dorothea’s stormy gaze.
The moment right before she tumbled him arse over elbow.
Get a hold of yourself.
What kind of wife would she make? The dangerous kind. The kind that would never be content with a business arrangement. The kind that would want to change him, bend him to her purposes. He needed a pleasant wife, refined and subtle, attractive, but not outrageously so, someone to redeem his reputation and counterbalance his recklessness.
“Since I was unsuccessful in deterring Lady Dorothea, I’ll ignore her the remainder of the visit,” James announced.
Dalton smiled knowingly. “Hurt your pride, eh? Not every day a man is thrown by a little chit like that.”
“My pride is not hurt. She’s not the bride for me, that’s all. I’ll be living in the West Indies most of the time. I have to know my wife is living a staid, blameless existence.”
He might not have been fit to be a duke, but he needed a wife fit to be a duchess. And duchesses did not practice Roman wrestling.
James swirled the brandy in his glass, remembering the feeling of being pressed against her soft bosom.
One gentle tug on that bodice and her breasts would have spilled into his mouth.
He groaned.
Lady Dorothea and her lush curves and lethal elbows had to go.
The sooner the better.
Chapter 5
“Hold your breath,” Manon urged.
Charlene sucked in her breath, and Manon attempted to button the back of the bodice again. Lucifer take Lady Dorothea and her sylph-like figure. Her gown wasn’t going to fit Charlene. “I can’t understand it, I’ve laced your stays as tightly as they will go,” Manon said.
Charlene let out her breath. “It’s not going to work. The bodice is too tight.”
“No. It. Isn’t.” Manon shoved her knee into the small of Charlene’s back. “Think slender thoughts. Imagine you are a dancer at the ballet, or a willow tree.”
Willowy. She’d never been willowy. Even as a child.
“There,” Manon crowed. “It is fastened.”
“But I can’t breathe.”
“Good. Then maybe you will faint and the duke will have to carry you to your chamber.” Manon turned her to face the mirror.
The evening gown was made of delicate peach silk with an embroidered lace net overlay. The puffed sleeves were caught up with ribbons and satin rosettes.
Charlene glanced down. Her breasts were pushed nearly to her chin. Lady Dorothea had to be considerably smaller on top.
Somehow this gown seemed more wanton than the red and purple silks the ladies at the Pink Feather flaunted. Something about the way the lace clung to the flesh-colored silk. As if she’d been naked underneath. Manon had liberally dampened Charlene’s petticoats with rose-scented water so they clung to her, outlining her form.
Charlene always kept covered in serviceable gray cotton or worsted, discouraging the wrong attention from the wrong kind of men. Now here she was with her bosom spilling out and her limbs on display.
“Is this quite decent?” she asked.
The maid shrugged. “It is French. We know how to dress for men. The mounds on top, they will make the duke want to use you for his pillow.”
This is wrong.
No, no regrets. A chance like this only came along once in a lifetime. If she had to mimic the girls at the Pink Feather, she would. She had to be alluring enough to win a marriage proposal from the duke.
You are living on borrowed time, Charlene. Wearing borrowed dresses. Using a borrowed name.
And a good thing, too. Despite the oil of roses and the fine silk, she was still Charlene.
Illegitimate. Raised in a bawdy house. Charlene.
No amount of expensive dusting powder could cover that.
Manon fastened a necklace of diamonds and seed pearls fashioned into a spray of flowers around Charlene’s neck. It had to be worth a fortune.
“I’m liable to break this.”
Manon laughed. “Don’t worry, you won’t. It’s sturdier than it looks.” She tucked peach tea roses and curling ostrich feathers into Charlene’s upswept curls. A pair of exquisite, openwork gloves to cover hands that were far from milky white completed the transformation.
Charlene wasn’t accustomed to wearing feathers. They drifted down and tickled her nose.
“The feathers are very suggestive, non?” asked Manon. “They sway and entice. They will draw the duke’s eyes to you.”
Charlene stared at the expensive lady in the mirror. “That’s not me,” she whispered.
“It is. You’re ready to hunt a duke. Come.” Manon drew her
toward Lady Desmond’s room.
The countess clutched both chair arms. “Astonishing. You could be Lady Dorothea.”
For one brief moment, Charlene glimpsed a doting mother, soft with pride, but then the countess’s face hardened into its habitual expression of untouchable grandeur. “She will do nicely. Well done, Blanchard.”
Manon curtsied. “Thank you, your ladyship.”
The countess turned to Charlene. “Remember, one hint of commoner and all is lost. Stay as silent as possible. Say nothing to Lady Augusta. She will try to bait you. She’s a foolish, vindictive girl. Remain intent on the duke. Do not, on any account, eat anything. You need to reduce if you are to fit into the blush velvet tomorrow.”
The countess floated from the room, still lecturing, and Charlene had to rush to keep up. She wasn’t accustomed to satin slippers that laced around her ankles.
How was she supposed to seduce the duke if she couldn’t speak, eat, or even walk?
It promised to be a wonderful evening.
They descended the stairs and crossed into the drawing room.
It was a foreign country. Great swathes of green and blue carpet spread before her like an uncharted sea. On the other side, the inhabitants perched on velvet sofas and sipped something amber out of slender glasses.
“The gilt ceiling was commissioned for King James I,” whispered the countess in Charlene’s ear, continuing her lessons as they approached the ladies. There was no sign of the duke or Lord Dalton.
All eyes turned to Charlene. They knew she was a stranger in their land. She couldn’t do this. It would never work.
Run away. Before they throw you in prison for trespassing.
“Lady Dorothea, darling,” cooed a gorgeous blonde whose smile didn’t ascend to her frosty blue eyes. “I haven’t seen you in simply ages. I hear you’ve been in Italy? Come, sit by me.” She patted the sofa next to her.
“Careful, that’s Lady Augusta,” the countess whispered urgently in Charlene’s ear, giving her a shove forward.
Lady Augusta. Reigning beauty of the ton but unmarried after three seasons. Family’s becoming desperate. Charlene recited the countess’s lessons in her mind. She’s Lady Dorothea’s rival. Use extreme caution.
“My heavens.” Lady Augusta stared at Charlene’s bosom as she sat down. “How the sea air agreed with you. Why, you are positively bursting with health. Isn’t that so, Mama?”
Lady Gloucester, Lady Augusta’s overly feathered and bejeweled mama, used a quizzing glass to stare at Charlene’s bounteous cleavage. She sniffed disapprovingly.
Silly woman. Former opera singer. Married scandalously above her station.
Lady Augusta put her arm around Charlene’s waist. “Do tell us about your Roman tour. It appears you sampled much of the cuisine.”
Charlene added spiteful witch to Lady Augusta’s description.
“Do tell us all about it,” said a girl with deep dimples, unusual, pale blue-green eyes, and light brown hair. “I long to travel.”
“Hush, Miss Tombs. Better to stay by hearth and home, I always say,” said Lady Tombs.
What had the countess said about Lady Tombs? A grasping social climber who married a wealthy baronet.
Miss Tombs smiled, and the genuine warmth in her eyes bolstered Charlene’s courage.
“If I couldn’t visit Paris at least once a year, I’d simply die,” yawned a willowy brunette, who had to be Lady Vivienne. She’d certainly never had to think a thin thought in her life. “Thank goodness that silly war is over.”
“I couldn’t agree more, Lady Vivienne,” said her mother, the Marchioness of Selby, who was equally brunette and willowy. “One simply cannot find the same quality here in England. No, it is Paris for modistes, and Switzerland for spas. You really should try a spa, Lady Tombs. I know a charming one in Baden. It would vastly improve your complexion.”
“Well,” huffed Lady Tombs.
Thinly veiled insults volleyed back and forth, requiring nothing more than a nod from Charlene.
They weren’t so different from the girls she knew. Measuring themselves against one another, vying to be purchased, protected. How did the sanctity of marriage make it any less objectionable? The lady the duke purchased would be owned just as fully and cast aside just as easily if he tired of her or if she didn’t produce an heir.
Charlene would never give herself to a man—for money or for a marriage contract—because it was the same the world over, on the most respectable streets or in the worst hellhole. Men rutting to make themselves feel powerful. Girls pretending to smile, pretending to laugh, feeding egos that craved dominion and control.
She would never be owned. She was here to earn freedom for herself, her sister, and her friends at the Pink Feather.
She mustn’t relax her guard for even one moment.
She glanced longingly at a tray heaped with frosted biscuits. Lady Desmond’s eyes flashed the don’t you dare warning. She hadn’t said anything about not drinking, though. Charlene accepted one of the dainty glasses from a servant. The drink was sweet and left an almond taste in her mouth.
She could only take shallow breaths in the constricting bodice, which made her feel light-headed.
Kyuzo’s training had prepared her to throw men twice her size and maintain mental serenity during a physical attack.
It had done nothing to steel her against the dangers of an empty stomach and an overly constrictive bodice.
Lady Dorothea’s clothing was as provoking as her wrestling maneuvers.
Her peach silk gown was covered in lace that cleverly suggested she was wreathed in clinging cobwebs and all James had to do was brush them away to reach warm, naked flesh.
She was seated halfway down the sixteen-foot-long dining room table.
Not far enough.
James turned to his left to avoid the cobwebs and was nearly blinded by one of Lady Augusta’s floating feathers. Had it really been his idea to invite eight females to dine? There was enough waving plumage to stuff a feather bed.
Lady Selby, seated at the far end of the table as the ranking female in the absence of relatives, stared down her severe nose.
“I must say, Your Grace, I’m surprised to find there are no other gentlemen here this evening.” Her cultured tones cut across the room like a knife. “I’ve always said that one must have an equal number of ladies and gentlemen so that the conversation may be sufficiently varied.”
“I provided Lord Dalton. He should serve as well as a dozen.”
Dalton turned to the marchioness, employing the full force of his dark blue eyes and cleft chin. “Is that a new brooch, Lady Selby? So fetching. It sets off your eyes to perfection.”
“Humph,” said the marchioness, but her expression softened and a spark appeared in her eye.
“I know several eminent gentlemen with nearby estates,” offered Lady Gloucester. “Lord Grant, for example.”
Lady Dorothea made a strangled noise.
“He’s only recently returned from his estate in Scotland,” continued Lady Gloucester. “Yesterday he made a sizable donation to the Gloucester Female Asylum, my charitable institution for the maintenance and education of indigent young girls, after Lady Augusta and I conducted a tour of the premises.”
Lady Dorothea coughed into her napkin.
“Do you know Lord Grant, Lady Dorothea?” asked Lady Gloucester.
“I wouldn’t let him near a young g—” Lady Dorothea winced and sucked in her breath as if someone had kicked her under the table. Someone wearing purple velvet and answering to the title Lady Desmond. “That is . . .” She pasted a smile on her face. “Only in passing. I only know him in passing.”
What had she been about to say?
Lady Augusta caught the duke’s eye and smiled. “Are you a patron of charitable concerns, Your Grace?”
“Not in England.”
“Then you’ll have to visit our asylum. Your heart will be moved to generosity like so many before you. The girls are models of pious docility.”
When she said the word heart, she clasped both hands to her bosom, no doubt with the hope of drawing his gaze. Her ivory gown was nearly as revealing as Lady Dorothea’s. There was no denying she was pretty, but her cornflower blue eyes and ample curves left him unmoved.
He nodded noncommittally and continued attacking his stewed pigeon, avoiding the enticing fare displayed farther down the table. Lady Dorothea’s bodice appeared entirely too small to contain her sumptuous breasts.
In fact, she appeared to be one deep breath away from disaster.
He could only hope the fabric held, or he might be forced to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to the nearest bed, which wouldn’t lead to a prudent and passionless marriage.
“I do find the country so charming this time of year,” said Lady Vivienne. “The leaves will turn soon, so picturesque.” She was wearing a cool silver silk that set off her sophisticated beauty. Her bodice was quite reserved by comparison with the others. Quite duchess-like.
“The oaks are splendid at our estate in Somerset,” commented Miss Tombs. “They march along as far as the eye can see, cloaked in vermillion and gold.” She stared at the wall, clearly far away from the dining room.
The ladies moved from oak trees, to pheasant hunting, to the possibility of an unseasonable frost, while James grew ever more uncomfortable.
The walls seemed to be closing in on him, and the ladies’ mingled floral scents were giving him a headache. How many excruciating dinners had he endured in this room when he’d been old enough to dine with his parents? The old duke had loved to hear himself talk. They’d been expected to endure his rants in silence.
When James was older, meals became full-scale wars, James playing the provocateur, the rebel, to anger his father, and William caught in the cross fire.
“I’ve no idea how you could have stayed away from England so long, Your Grace,” the marchioness said. “The society can’t have been as congenial in the West Indies. Was there even a season?”