A Duchess to Remember

by Christina Brooke

  Everyone knew who he was but no one seemed to know much about the man himself. Upon learning that the Promethean Club met here, Cecily had inquired about Ashburn. But when she tried to delve deeper into his character, she was stymied at every turn. The duke was a private man, it seemed, known to many but intimate with few.

  Ashburn was an enigma. He was fast becoming an obsession with her—and not only because he and his colleagues might hold the key to her brother’s death.

  And here she was, stealing into his house at dead of night.

  With excitement pulsing through her veins, Cecily crept inside.

  She found herself in a kind of mudroom filled with pattens and boots and cloaks, umbrellas and walking sticks and other outdoor wear. She hadn’t dared bring a lantern with her, but her luck held. A faint wash of light from the kitchens beyond this room allowed her to see well enough to avoid obstacles in her path.

  She listened until she was satisfied no one stirred. Then she moved carefully through to the narrow passageway.

  She’d memorized the rough map the footman drew for her and found the servants’ stair without difficulty. Once on the first floor, she quickly located the saloon where the footman had told her the meeting would be held. There was a vestibule leading to the dining room, he’d said. There, she might conceal herself and spy on the proceedings.

  The door to the vestibule stood slightly ajar. Cecily darted a glance around her, then stole up to the door to listen.

  She couldn’t hear anything. No murmur of voices or clink of cutlery on plate. Cautiously, she peered into the room.

  A large hand gripped her shoulder. Another hand covered her mouth. With a muffled shriek, she struggled to free herself.

  She was clamped against a hard male chest. A deep, cultured voice murmured in her ear, “At last. I’ve been expecting you.”

  * * *

  Cecily froze. Confound that blasted footman! He’d betrayed her.

  It had all been too easy, hadn’t it? But good God, how could she have guessed he’d tell the duke of her plans? How many servants would remain loyal to their masters when offered the kind of bribe she’d intended to pay?

  Or perhaps the footman hadn’t informed on her, and the rumors were true. Perhaps the Duke of Ashburn was omniscient.

  He was certainly exceedingly strong.

  All this passed through her mind in an instant. She fought him, twisting ineffectually in his iron grip, jabbing with her elbows, kicking back with her heels. If she could get free, she’d make a dash for it. She was fast when she needed to be and tonight, garbed as a footman, she didn’t have skirts to hamper her.

  His hold was not vicious but it was implacable. Seeming not to notice her struggles, her captor swept her into a room that was not a vestibule, as the footman had informed her, but a library. With not a member of the Promethean Club in sight.

  Once inside, he released her. She whipped around to face him, her lungs straining for air.

  Ashburn.

  He was very dark and very tall and he had the most uncompromising mouth she’d ever seen. His strange eyes regarded her intently, sending an unwelcome chill through her body. Then he moved to close the door and lock it.

  When he turned back to face her again, she refused to show him fear. Instead of quaking or begging, she folded her arms across her chest and waited.

  His grim lips relaxed slightly. Holding up the ornate brass key, he said, “A precautionary measure,” and slipped the key into his pocket.

  That almost imperceptible change in the forbidding coldness of his expression made her less apprehensive of physical harm. But the preternaturally acute way his eyes assessed her was far from reassuring. She’d never been more conscious of the close fit of her breeches, nor of the footman’s peruke wig that perched, askew now, on her head.

  He was hard and lean and broad shouldered. Not an ounce of frivolity or decoration softened the harshness of his aspect. Dressed soberly in a black coat and gray trousers and waistcoat, white shirt and cravat, he wore no jewelry save a heavy gold signet ring on the third finger of his right hand. His close-cropped black hair seemed to emphasize the hawkish lines of his nose and the sharp, almost Slavic contours of his cheekbones.

  And his eyes. They were a stunning golden hazel with dark brown flecks, framed by thick black lashes. Amber ringed with onyx.

  Unsettling, almost feline, those eyes. She wondered if they glowed in the dark.

  “Take off your wig,” he drawled.

  The instruction was not quite a command but it was not a request either. More a suggestion with overtones of intimidation.

  Of course he knew she wasn’t a footman or a page boy. The disguise was never meant to fool anyone except at a distance and in the dark of night. Besides, his manhandling had brought him into contact with the softer parts of her person. The notion sent a hot spear of … something through her body.

  Forcing herself to give a casual shrug, Cecily lifted the peruke from her head and set it on a piecrust table nearby.

  His brilliant gaze flicked over her.

  She’d worn breeches enough times to feel neither shame nor embarrassment that he’d caught her in them. But somehow his impassive regard made her want to leap to the defensive, to justify her actions to him.

  As the Duke of Montford’s ward, she’d long since mastered control over such inclinations. Instead, she studied Ashburn as dispassionately as he studied her.

  He was far younger than she’d supposed when she’d seen him at a distance. The harshness of his features, his arrogant air of authority, and the deference more senior members of the ton paid him had deceived her.

  She resented that illusion, as if it had been a deliberate ruse on his part. Older gentlemen were so much easier to handle.

  The silence lengthened between them until it became an object with her not to be the first to break it. She let her attention wander around the room, over bookshelves and tables, globes and maps. As if she’d appraised him, found him tedious, and now sought some other source of amusement.

  “Your accomplice betrayed you,” he said at last.

  “I’d rather gathered that at the start of our acquaintance.” She tried to make her tone cordial, but it came out with something of a snap. Now that her initial fear had abated, chagrin at her failure took its place.

  Though perhaps she’d not failed entirely. She surveyed Ashburn with a speculative eye. Might she discover what she wished to know directly from him? If she was clever about it, then perhaps …

  Drawing herself up, she donned her most regal air and waved a careless hand. “But I am keeping you from your guests, Your Grace. Do go ahead. I shall find my own way out.”

  * * *

  Rand nearly laughed aloud at this summary dismissal. Who the Devil did the chit think she was? She couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty, but she waved him away with the careless aplomb of a dowager duchess.

  “My guests go on most happily without me,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the door and folding his arms. “Besides, you interest me far more than a meeting of the Promethean Club.”

  “I’m so happy to provide you with entertainment,” she said.

  Better and better.

  He allowed his gaze to drift over his captive’s person, lingering at the lush bosom that jutted unmistakably from her blue velvet coat, pausing again at the womanly flare of hips that made her knee-breeches stretch a shade too tightly across her thighs. He imagined her bottom would be as round and female as the rest of her and experienced a sharp tug of curiosity on that account.

  It really was a very poor disguise.

  He regarded her face. Wide brown eyes with a slight tilt at the corners, a pert little nose and the rosiest bud of a mouth he’d ever seen. Her lips reminded him of the dimpled lushness of a cherry when the stalk is plucked. Ripe and plump and sweet, begging him to bite.

  “What is your name?” he said.

  She watched him for a few moments without replying; it oc
curred to him that she scrutinized him quite as critically as he examined her. From her expression, he did not meet with her approval.

  A novel experience. A not altogether comfortable one.

  Breaking off her inspection, she wandered over to a set of globes that stood by the desk. Tracing the arcing frame of the celestial globe with a fingertip, she said, “If I tell you who I am, will you let me go?”

  “I’m more likely to convey you home to your papa so he can beat you,” said Rand.

  “But I don’t have a papa,” she said on a note of false mournfulness. “I am quite alone in the world, you see.”

  Quite alone. He suppressed a pang of predatory opportunism that was entirely out of character for him.

  Ah, but she was lying, of course. And even if she wasn’t … He’d never been the sort of evil lecher who took advantage of helpless, friendless maidens. He’d never ruined a woman in his life.

  But he wanted her. And what the Duke of Ashburn wanted, he would have.

  One way or another.

  “If you won’t give me your name, at least give me your direction and I’ll take you home.” He did not intend to take her anywhere, at least not before they became rather better acquainted. “You’ll not walk the London streets alone at this hour.”

  “If I tell you,” she said, “will you tell me something in return?”

  Her effrontery knew no bounds. She didn’t seem to comprehend that he had her at his mercy. That he had not even asked her what she was doing stealing into his house.

  Rand angled his head and said in a soft, menacing voice, “I don’t think you’re in a position to bargain with me.”

  He wished she’d take down her hair. It looked dark and rich as mahogany, thick and soft and luxuriant. The kind of hair a man dreamed about trailing over his naked body, following the path of those cherry-sweet lips …

  But she’d scraped her shining tresses back from her face and twisted and pinned them in a fat knot at the crown of her head. Little curling tendrils had fallen free, however, gleaming darkly against the pale, delicate skin at her forehead and temples. He wanted to reach out and twist one of those mad little springs around his finger.

  Not at all disconcerted at the way he openly admired her charms, she strolled toward him. “Well, that depends. If you were an ordinary man, perhaps I wouldn’t dare. But you, my lord duke, suffer from the eternal ennui of the pampered aristocrat. You’re intelligent enough to perceive that I am no common housebreaker. I, in fact, am a novelty.”

  “You, in fact, are a criminal,” he said.

  “But you are curious about me,” she murmured, staring up at him with those big brown eyes. “Admit it.”

  She was wrong. He was never bored. His interests were wide ranging and intensive. But … he failed to remember a time when he’d felt so enlivened by a woman’s presence. Furthermore, his curiosity about her nearly consumed him.

  He could have her hanged twice over for attempting to bribe his servant and breaking into his house. Quite apart from that, he had her here, alone, in circumstances that were entirely to his advantage. Who was this girl? She wasn’t even slightly afraid.

  “You are very sure of yourself,” he commented.

  She spread her hands. “Why go through all of this if you intend to hand me over to the law? Why not simply order one of your minions to deal with me? You do have minions, don’t you, Your Grace? You look like the sort of man who has minions.”

  He favored her with an unpleasant smile. “Perhaps I merely seek to toy with my prey before I devour it—or in this case, hand it over to the magistrate.”

  She snorted. “No, I don’t believe that. You are intrigued.”

  “I am,” he admitted, his voice dropping deep and low. “Most intrigued. But you do yourself an injustice if you think it is your novelty that excites my interest.”

  He moved closer and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes darken with apprehension. One side of his mouth curled upward. He let his gaze sweep down her curvaceous little body in a manner calculated to intimidate and confuse a virginal, gently bred female. Or excite an experienced one.

  She gave a sudden gurgle of laughter, startling him so much that his attention shot back to her face.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, her brown eyes dancing with mirth. Her teeth were very white, framed by those deep red lips. “Pray, do not smolder at me so! You will set me off into whoops.”

  Disconcerted in spite of himself, he said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “You needn’t do that,” she replied generously. “Though it is quite improper for you to stare at me in that odious way, of course.”

  Now, the predator in him awoke, stretched, unsheathed its claws. “My attentions would not be welcome to you?” he murmured. Reaching out, he stroked one fingertip down her cheek. “Somehow, I don’t believe that.”

  Her skin was satin soft, and he let his fingertip linger at the hinge of her jaw.

  Something in the flare of her eyes gave him pause. For a strange, heart-stopping moment, time seemed to hold its breath.…

  As if a tautened thread snapped inside her, his fair intruder blinked. Then she put up her hand to lightly bat his away. “I am not one of your highfliers, Your Grace. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  Already, he missed the warmth and texture of her skin. A singular and unprecedented need filled him. He folded his fingers into a fist to stop himself giving in to it.

  Most men in his position wouldn’t hesitate. She was dressed scandalously in a footman’s garb. She was alone, unchaperoned in his house at night. Entirely at his mercy. He knew he affected her on a visceral level. Though she did her best to conceal it, he saw the signs. He could easily give in to his inclinations and make his best effort to seduce her.

  What stopped him? Not her clipped aristocratic accent nor her air of gentility. She might speak like a duchess but he’d known—and enjoyed—highborn ladies who were as earthy and sensual as any other woman.

  No, there was some quality about this girl, some innate core of resilience, of feminine strength, that intrigued him. He responded to it in a way that ranged beyond his physical reaction to her, even as it seemed to heighten his desire.

  And for some strange reason, it held her inviolate. At least for tonight.

  “Why are you here?” he murmured. And why hadn’t he asked that question sooner?

  He could almost see the cogs whirring in her brain as she decided how much information to give him. “I wasn’t burgling the place, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I think you came to find out about the Promethean Club,” he said. “Unless you have designs on my person,” he amended, giving her a flashing smile. “In which case, I’d be most happy to oblige.”

  She stared at him wonderingly. “Do you know, you are quite the most conceited man I’ve ever met? And that’s saying something when you consider my family.”

  “Ah. Yes. Your family,” he said. “And who might they be? I thought you were all alone in the world.”

  Challenge sparked in her eye. “No, you didn’t—and my family is every bit as powerful as yours, so I think you should let me go now.”

  Was it his imagination, or did he detect a slight squaring of her shoulders, a renewed courage when she mentioned her people? She was proud of her origins, then.

  “You interest me exceedingly,” he said, mentally sorting through any dukes he knew with daughters around this girl’s age. “And will you not tell me who this so powerful family of yours is? I shall discover the answer whether you do or not, you know.”

  She looked for an instant as if she was debating whether to trust him. Then her chin lifted. “I daresay you will. My name is Lady Cecily Westruther.”

  Well, now. This was a surprise. And she was correct. The Westruthers were every bit as old and powerful as his family. But surely she was one of the Duke of Montford’s wards. Two of the girls had married recently. Why, then …

  His stomach clenched. Suddenly it all
made sense.

  Slowly, he said, “I knew your brother. He was brilliant. Some called him a genius.”

  “He would have scoffed at that notion,” said Lady Cecily. Her voice was steady, her eyes dry. Only the convulsive movement of her throat betrayed any hint of grief.

  “Yes,” said Rand. “He could never be satisfied with the boundaries of his knowledge. There was always more to discover.”

  Her expression held a mixture of pride, sadness, and surprise at his understanding. That touched him as nothing had touched him in a very long time.

  Guilt licked like fire at his insides. If he’d considered the matter at all, he’d thought of Jonathon, Earl of Davenport, as alone in the world. But he hadn’t been alone. He’d had a sister. This plucky, clever-tongued girl who had dared to break into Rand’s house.

  “He belonged to the Promethean Club, didn’t he?” she said. “He’d been here, in this house, the night he died.”

  Where was she heading with this? “He attended a meeting here, yes. But the fire that took his life occurred in his laboratory many miles away. You know that.” Gentling his tone, he added, “I am sorry. More sorry than I can express. But it was a horrible accident. Nothing at all to do with his activities here.”

  His assurance didn’t seem to make an impression on her. What did she know to the contrary? Or think she knew?

  She licked her lips. “I want to know about this club.”

  Rand said, “I am surprised that your brother should have mentioned the Prometheans to you.”

  “He didn’t. I found his diary a few weeks ago and I—I read it.” She colored faintly, as if the admission embarrassed her.

  He experienced a hot flash of irritation, followed by a stab of horror.

  “The diary. What’s in it?” he said. “Do you have it? Is it safe?”

  Her bewilderment seemed genuine enough. “It is safe, yes. But all it contains are appointments. There are scarcely any entries in it at all.”