Duke Du Jour

by Petie McCarty

  “Desperate to marry you off, is he?” Dexter asked, not unkindly.

  “I am afraid so.”

  “Don’t you want to get married?”

  “Of course—eventually. I want to come up with my own list, however, and not be forced to choose from Father’s list.”

  Dexter threw his head back and laughed, which forced a grin from Ariana though she had been quite serious.

  “You are a delight, Lady Ari. Unique, true. But a delight nonetheless.”

  They reached a small clearing, and Dexter slowed them to a stop. A glance around told her they had surpassed the acceptable torch-lit are near the terrace, but she could still hear the musicians as they struck up another waltz.

  “May I have this dance, my lady?” Dexter turned, sketched a perfect bow, and extended his hand.

  “What? Out here?”

  “In the ballroom, I had to compete for your time with all the young dandies in the county. I admit, I wanted to have my dance in private. Is that so bad?”

  She glanced about the small clearing. Wakefield’s gardeners had created the open area with a circle of paving stones and two benches at the perimeter.

  “Some women would find it quite romantic,” he enticed.

  She gazed into his eyes and was surprised to see an earnestness there rather than the smugness of an acknowledged rake. A waltz could work, she supposed, and took the hand he offered.

  With a grin, he tugged her into his arms and swept into the first turn with the strains of the waltz filtering out from the manse. She giggled at his flourish, could not help herself. Dexter would always have a bit of the rake in him. He glided them along the stone pavers, as at ease out here as in the finest London ballroom.

  “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”

  She grinned. “Yes, Lord Dexter, you have.”

  “Are we back to that? You promised to call me Dex like all my friends do.” He spun her in a perfectly executed turn, careful to keep her gown from touching shrub or bench.

  She laughed with delight. “All right…Dex.”

  Ari loved to waltz, and Dex was superb at it. He hummed the music along with the musicians playing in the ballroom and kept his cheek close to hers. Yet, she could not help but compare this waltz with Jared’s waltz years earlier and the giddiness she had felt in his arms.

  “A penny for your thoughts, Lady Ari.”

  “Hmm? Oh, just remembering my first waltz years ago.”

  His shoulders tensed. “So that’s the way of it?”

  “The way of what, my lord?” she said, almost breathless from his series of rapid turns in the clearing.

  “You are still in love with Reston,” he said, his expression shuttered.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  He whirled her into another swift turn. “Silly, am I? I had hoped you’d outgrown your infatuation.”

  “There was no infatuation, Lord Dexter.”

  It was all-out love. More’s the pity.

  “Lady Ari, you forget. I too was at Barwood’s Ball for your first-ever waltz. Jared had invited me as his guest that evening.”

  She inhaled sharply. “Were you? I am sorry I did not recall.”

  “I’m not surprised.” He slowed their pace with the final strains of the waltz. “You only had eyes for Jared that night.”

  Dear Lord, had everyone at the ball noticed as well?

  As though answering her thoughts, he said, “Worry not, my lady. I am certain my perception was a solitary one. Jared was my best friend, and I kept an eye on him.”

  “What you saw means nothing now. That was years ago, and I was just a girl.”

  He swept them to halt when the music stopped and lifted her chin with his gloved hand. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me you are no longer in love with Reston?”

  His intense gaze pinned her. His gloved hand held firm when she attempted to turn away.

  “Of course I can,” she said but unable to meet his gaze.

  “I think not,” Dexter whispered and brushed a light kiss across her lips.

  Before she could protest, he disappeared into the shadowed garden.

  “Fool, fool, fool is what you are, Ariana Hart,” she muttered. “The most handsome peer in all of England waltzes you in the moonlight and expresses interest, and you moon over a six-year-old infatuation with the man who broke your young heart.”

  Thinking herself the greatest fool in all England, she stomped back toward the terrace. She tried for a shortcut to one of the better-lit paths, protecting her gown from errant shrubs. Only yards into the venture, she heard voices and halted her progress, unwilling to interrupt some romantic tryst in the garden.

  “Why do you say that?”

  Ari heard the male voice clearly.

  Jared.

  A softer feminine voice whined a protest, and Ari groaned inwardly. She would know Lucilla Tartley’s voice anywhere. Ari’s hackles went up. So, the two were back in the garden again at another ball.

  “She has plenty of suitors,” Jared was saying.

  Who? Her?

  Ari edged nearer, crackling twigs in the process. Drat them!

  Lucilla must have moved closer to Ari’s position for her whiny voice rang clearer now.

  “Suitors her father could only corral with a large dowry,” she crowed. “Little Ariana needs all the help she can get. You always said so yourself.”

  The voices ceased, and a chill crept up Ari’s spine. Were they kissing? Unable to stop herself, Ari eased forward. She had to know. More twigs crackled under foot, but she no longer cared. Was Jared kissing that wicked Lucilla after he had kissed Ari in his curricle only days before?

  “Lady Wilder, I prefer women a bit more…”

  Lucilla’s laughter muffled Jared’s voice, and Ari could not make out his words. Not so Lucilla.

  “No, you do not,” the witch said. “You always said you preferred my experience and zest to the naïveté of the debutantes in the London and country ballrooms, especially like your little country bumpkin neighbor.”

  The chill spread from Ari’s spine to her arms and legs, freezing her in place when she knew she should run. Jared might have mumbled something else. Ari could not hear from the pounding of her heart.

  “You even laugh at the way Ariana blushes when someone asks her to dance.” Lucilla’s grating whine floated through the darkness. “You ask her to dance just to watch her cheeks turn as pink as her father’s prized roses.”

  Ari could not stifle her gasp at that last barb, and she squeezed through a line of shrubs and hustled back to the garden path.

  Damn Jared for making fun of me behind my back! And damn that witch Lucilla, too!

  Why couldn’t he have come upon Ari in Dexter’s arms instead of her repeating history all over again? Jared had not just broken her heart again—he had stomped on it as well.

  Footfalls sounded on the garden path behind her, so she lifted her skirts and ran.

  ****

  Bloody hell! How much had Ari heard?

  Jared considered strangling Lady Wilder as he sprinted down the path, intent on capturing Ari. The thought of hurting her feelings felt like a punch to his gut. The surroundings grew darker with every step as she raced toward the rear of the garden with him in hot pursuit. He had to catch her. What if she tripped on the path and hurt herself out here in the dead of night?

  Lord bless the moon for escaping its cloud cover and keeping their path visible. Wakefield’s servants had placed no torchlights back here. Squinting in the moonlight, he caught a flash of color at the next bend in the path. He sped up and careened around the turn, almost plowing into Ariana whose flight ticket had been canceled by a wicked-looking pyracantha hedge at the path’s end. Lucky for him that particular hedge sported nasty thorns.

  Breathing hard, she executed a spirited glare and gave him her back.

  Sucking a bit of air himself, he blustered, “Glare if you want, but I’m not going anywhere until we talk.”


  The path had opened into a clearing just in front of the hedge. The intimate area had been set with marble pavers and a circle of tall Doric columns alternated with several statues, now glaring bright in the gray moonlight.

  Jared’s gaze rested briefly on the closest statue, a reproduction of Michelangelo’s David, and he wondered at the incongruity of the statue’s appearance in a Regency garden. David was naked, after all. Wakefield evidently thought himself a modern-thinking man.

  He shifted when Ari moved to step around him. “How much did you hear?”

  “Enough.”

  Where did he start with his explanation? He had never said the things of which Lucilla had accused him. Seven held that honor. How did Jared explain that to Ari?

  When all else fails, try the truth.

  “I never said those things Lucilla accused me of.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It is the truth.”

  He stepped forward. She backed up but was still close enough he could grab her.

  She now stood between him and the statue of David.

  “I do not believe you because you have said those things before.” Her voice quavered a bit at the last, and she cleared her throat. “I heard you myself.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  Now what? Jared wished Seven were here, so he could pummel him. “Are you certain?”

  Ari looked at him as though he were daft. He felt daft, trying to make excuses for things he had said that he had never said.

  He was about to ask when she had heard such things, but Ari beat him to the punch. “I heard you at the Barwood’s ball. My very first ball.”

  So this is what she meant by all those comments about that fellow Barwood.

  “Who was Barwood?”

  “James Trenton, Viscount Barwood, and an old friend of my father’s.”

  “You have mentioned the ball before.”

  As long as she was talking about this Barwood fellow, Ari would not be thinking about Lucilla’s accusations. He stepped forward, his arm out to reach for her, but Ari’s glare slid his arm back in place. Had her glare been a dagger, Jared would be dead. Maybe talk of the Barwood chap was not such a good idea after all.

  “It was my very first ball, and you danced my very first waltz with me.” She gave him a pointed look. “In case that is one of the many things you can no longer recall.”

  That doesn’t sound so bad. Jared relaxed and almost smiled until he noticed Ari kept her glare.

  “Later after our waltz, you winked at me and then left through the terrace doors to the garden. I thought you wanted me to follow, so I did.”

  Dear God!

  Knowing what he did now of Seven’s skirt chasing, Jared could almost guess how this story ended. Ari had no doubt caught Seven kissing another woman, but what had she expected? He, or rather Seven, had been seven years older than her.

  Another thought stabbed at him, and he felt sick. Had Seven made a pass at Ari when she was only seventeen?

  She turned away and chose to face a naked David rather than a clothed Jared. This was bad if she could not look at him when she revealed his antics that night. Bollocks, but he would love to box Seven’s ears right about now.

  “You met Lucilla Tartley in a summerhouse in Barwood’s garden.”

  Her voice grew soft in the moonlight. He had to strain to hear her.

  “Lucilla was jealous of how happy you had looked when we waltzed that night and complained to you about…Wakefield’s brat.”

  “And well she should have been jealous,” Jared said confidently, seeing a way out. “I am quite sure I enjoyed my waltz with you that night, almost as much as the waltz you and I are going to share this night.”

  Ari turned back toward him—the look on her beautiful face so stark with sadness, it pierced Jared to his very soul. Had he caused that sadness? No! Hell no! It was Seven. Not him. He wanted to roar that aloud, but he could not. He waited in abject horror for what would come next.

  Her voice, though haunted by the visible sadness, quavered only once. “You told her she was being ridiculous, that I’d had a crush on you since I was ten years old, and you only dallied with women, not little hoydens who ran unchecked about the county.”

  “But you were—”

  “You said to Lucilla, ‘That little hoyden is the last female on Earth you should worry about.’ ”

  “Then you should slap me now,” he said abruptly and closed the distance between them, “since you did not get a chance that night. I was a bastard to say that, and I deserve it.”

  This was no ploy to get her forgiveness. He would take the hit on behalf of Seven for Ari’s sake. She deserved retribution.

  Ari spoke not a word for several long, torturous moments. The sadness faded from her eyes, replaced by something he could not recognize.

  “You do not remember any of that?” she whispered.

  “No, and I cannot imagine hurting you like that. I am not that man,” he said with every bit of the anger and sorrow he felt.

  How could Seven have said that about this beautiful, remarkable woman?

  Surprise crossed her beautiful features, and she said, “I was only seventeen and too young for him—that Jared.”

  Dear God in heaven, had he said those words aloud? He had just punched his ticket to Bedlam if he had. Wait. She had said “that Jared.”

  He swallowed hard and repeated, “I am not that man. I am—will be better than that.”

  “I believe you.” The look in her eyes made him want to be a better man, a man this exquisite beauty could look up to.

  “I would never, ever willingly hurt you, Ariana.” He tilted her chin up and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips.

  Ari stiffened at first, and he feared he had gone too far. Seconds later, she melted into the kiss. Jared tugged her into his arms, and her lips parted on a gasp, leaving him the glorious opportunity to sample the whole of her sensuous mouth. She startled, just like the first time at his manor, and he felt certain he was the only man to ever French-kiss her. That thought heated his blood, and he fought the urge to deepen the kiss, desperate for a better taste of his little Regency beauty.

  Ari did not pull back as he had feared. Her small hands gripped his jacket lapels and tugged him to her.

  My little spitfire.

  He couldn’t help it—he smiled against her lips.

  She did pull back at that. “Why are you smiling?”

  “You delight me.”

  He could not have stripped the smile from his face if he had wanted to. He was just too damned happy. Ari wasn’t smiling, however.

  “I am honored you allowed me to give you your first French kisses,” he said quickly. At her confused look, he added, “A kiss with tongues is a real kiss.”

  “How did—” Her fingers pressed to her lips.

  “Trust me. I know these things.”

  Ouch. That sounded arrogant even to him.

  Evidently to Ari, too. “And only a rake would find it humorous to give a woman her first real kiss.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  He reached for her. She lurched back, just missing the statue of David.

  “I told you; I’m a different man now.”

  Stick to the truth. It is always best.

  Ari looked uncertain.

  With her gaze keenly settled on his face, he managed to slip a step closer. “I’m a reformed rake.”

  And Jared realized he felt like one.

  “You reformed me,” he whispered and leaned in to kiss her.

  “And when your memory returns, you will go back to the old Jared,” she said, easing back.

  His face followed hers in retreat, and he stumbled forward into David and knocked the statue over onto the pavers. David’s head parted company with his under-endowed body and rolled behind a hedge.

  Ari stared wide-eyed at the broken artwork.

  “Deuce take it! Ari, I’m sorry.”

  “For breaking
Papa’s statue or for laughing at my first real kiss?”

  “Dammit, I did not laugh. That was happy smiling. I was so bloody happy, I couldn’t help it.”

  Great. He had not meant to be quite that truthful.

  “I am going in.”

  “Wait! Do you believe me?”

  She was not smiling, but she was not frowning any longer either.

  “I believe you,” she said softly, “but I need time to think about things, and I cannot think when you are with me.”

  Best he could hope for at this juncture, and he watched her go. When she thought about their kiss, she would remember how good it felt, and she would believe him.

  Wait a minute!

  She had said she wanted to think about things, not think about their kiss. If she thought about things, she would remember what Lucilla had claimed. He had not had a chance to explain that he had tossed Lucilla aside. Jared had to get to Ari before she jumped to the wrong conclusions yet again.

  He jogged up the path toward the manor house, and someone knocked him hard from behind.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jared hit the ground hard and rolled to face his assailant. Or rather assailants. Two of the highwaymen who had attacked him and Ari on the road to Dolan now stood over him—wearing the same ugly blue and red kerchiefs. Blue Kerchief pointed a pistol at Jared’s head.

  “Get up,” the highwayman ordered, and Jared scrambled to his feet.

  Red Kerchief gave him a shove toward the clearing he and Ari had just vacated. “Move along.”

  “Ye just couldn’t stay dead, could ye?” Blue Kerchief hissed from behind him. “I shot ye m’self. In the heart.”

  Jared stumbled, and Blue Kerchief jerked him back on his feet.

  “You shot me?” Jared repeated.

  Is Seven dead after all?

  “Thas right. I shot ye.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “He had to stop ye,” Red Kerchief admitted. “The boss said ye wasn’t allowed to get back to yer home turf.”

  “Shut yer gob!” Blue Kerchief snapped. “Ye don’t say nuthin’.”

  He turned back to Jared. “Why are ye still alive?”

  “I suppose I moved at the last moment, and you only hit my shoulder,” Jared lied. He could not risk these cutthroats guessing he wasn’t Seven.