Questions raced through her mind about Nick Tallings, the Duke of Huntly. What had he been doing at Gipsy Hill? A powerful peer, just below royalty, didn’t come to these streets filled with gypsies. No, those predictable nobles didn’t deviate from their fine clubs and their Bond Street shopping and their morning rides in Hyde Park.
Yet, this man had.
Nick. She silently rolled that name around her mind, testing it. Strong. Powerful. Bold. Like warriors of old. How perfectly it suited him. Justina fiddled with the curtain and directed her attention outside the lead windowpane. Be nonchalant. “So, what do you know of the duke?” she asked, infusing a deliberate boredom into her query.
Andrew glanced over and his perplexed brow reflected back in the glass panel. “I just told you, he’s a duke, fat in the pockets.”
She swallowed a sigh. Of course, a young gentleman of one and twenty, he didn’t see much of the world beyond those irrelevant details. Someday, there would be a young lady who set his world on its ear and she would quite delight in his befuddlement. Justina released the curtain and it fluttered into place. “Is there a lady who has earned his affections?”
Her brother scratched at his forehead. “I…I haven’t heard mention of a lady.” Then he flashed a smile. “A duke, with his choice of ladies, he could choose anyone. But he could choose you,” he hurried to reassure. “After all, there is no accounting for the heart’s desire.”
She snorted. “Why, thank you.”
He flushed. “That isn’t to say you aren’t a good match for some gentleman.” In a show of brotherly devotion, he leaned over and patted her knee. “He’d do well to attach himself to you.”
“I wasn’t asking because of…” Why else would I be asking?
Andrew lifted an eyebrow.
“I was merely curious, is all,” she finished lamely.
“Ah, of course.” He nodded. “Well, as I said, you could do far worse than a gentleman like Huntly.”
Yes, even only having met him but a handful of minutes on the street, she could say with certainty she could do far worse. Lord Tennyson’s visage slithered around her mind. Yes, a bounder who’d keep company with her father would certainly never risk his neck, as the duke had, all to save her. A man who’d not been condescending of or toward a tale written by a female.
She gasped and glanced frantically about.
“What is it?” Andrew asked, looking back from the passing streets he’d been staring out at.
“I… my belongings,” she yanked the curtain back once more and assessed the fashionable end of Mayfair they now journeyed through. “My book.” That same volume she and the Duke of Huntly had forged a slight bond over.
“Ah, well, just a reason for you to return shopping next week,” he said with a wink.
Swallowing back her disappointment at the loss, she returned her thoughts to the young, golden-haired duke. Every last romance novel she’d ever read warned a lady of the perils of a rogue, rake, or scoundrel. And yet, never more had she truly understood the glorious appeal of those wicked men—until now.
As the carriage rumbled slowly through the clogged London streets, questions whirred around her mind about the man named Nick Tallings, the Duke of Huntly. The greatest wondering: would she see him again?
Some minutes later, their conveyance rolled to a stop outside the front of their stucco townhouse. The carriage dipped as the driver climbed from his perch, and then he opened the door.
“Thank you, my good man,” Andrew called jovially.
Stevens returned the smile and offered a bow. “Mr. Barrett,” he said, as he helped hand Justina down. As soon as her feet touched the hard pavement, a sharp jarring pain traveled from her lower back up to her shoulders. “Are you all right, Miss Barrett. From your fall?” Concern wreathed his wrinkled cheeks.
For his benefit, she smiled through the pain. “It will take more than a runaway horse to hurt me, Stevens,” she said with a wink. And as she walked toward the townhouse, her skin still tingling from where the duke had held her, she rather believed herself incapable of feeling any hurt on this day.
Chapter 4
“What’s the meaning of this, gel?”
The following morning, curled up on the windowseat overlooking the London streets, Justina glanced up from her book, and her heart sank. Her father stood in the doorway, brandishing a copy of The Times.
Ignoring the sharp twinge in her hip, she climbed to her feet. “Father.”
His breath emerged as a rattling rasp from his exertions. The viscount waddled into the room and hurled the newspaper so it landed in a fluttery heap at her feet. Fury filled his beady blue eyes. “Yesterday, I told you Tennyson was coming. I was left making excuses for you.” He grunted and hooked his thumbs into the waist of his blue satin breeches. “And now he and all of London find out about you and the Duke of Huntly in the scandal sheets?”
Justina retrieved the paper and her gaze snagged on her name paired with the duke’s. Of course, the gossips would take that one meeting and weave it into something so much more. “Nothing happened with the Duke of Huntly,” she said between tight lips. Even as she wished it had. “I was shopping,” she said curtly. “And a horse nearly trampled me.” It was a testament to the emptiness of her father’s heart that he didn’t bat even an eyelash at the possibility of her untimely demise. Once, that indifference had gutted her. Now, she’d found peace with who he was, and the understanding that he’d never, ever, no matter how many times she’d willed it or wished it or begged it from the stars overhead, be the father she wanted him to be.
Her father rubbed a palm over his mouth, contemplating her with a hard stare. “That’s all?” he said at last.
Indeed, it is beautiful. But I was not speaking of the book.
It was so much more. “That is all,” she snapped.
“Never sat down to a game with Huntly,” he groused, his meaning clear. Unless a gentleman could forgive his debts, then he served little interest.
Her father was so very determined to see her enter into an advantageous marriage for him, loveless for her match. He’d have her be a pawn. Expected it. No doubt with good reason. She’d always been the weaker, more obedient of the Barrett girls. Well, she’d sooner lob off her right arm than sell her soul to settle her father’s gaming debts. Justina firmed her lips. She’d have love…or nothing at all.
They remained locked in a silent battle, when footsteps sounded in the hall.
Manfred appeared in the entrance, bearing a silver tray.
“What is it?” her father barked.
“The Duke of Huntly has arrived to see Miss Barrett.”
Her heart jumped a beat and she fluttered a hand to her chest.
He’d come.
“Huntly?” he snapped, scratching at his paunch.
The butler looked back and forth between father and daughter. “I took the liberty of showing His Grace to the Blue Parlor. Should I tell him Miss Barrett is not receiving—”
“No!” Justina exclaimed and her father narrowed his bushy eyebrows.
Think, Justina. She schooled her features. “I expect it would make a Diamond,” she curled her toes into the soles of her slippers, “even more sought after if a duke courted her favors.”
Her father captured his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Hmm.” Then, he gave a slow nod. “I expect it would raise your value in Tennyson’s eyes.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” she said with a biting edge he either failed to hear or care about. “If you’ll excuse me?” She forced her steps into a sedate pace. Then, as soon as she’d stepped into the hall, she hastened her step.
He is here. Why is he here?
Questions ran riotous through her mind as she reached the Blue Parlor. Justina pinched her cheeks and then taking a deep breath, stepped inside.
The Duke of Huntly stood at the floor-length window with his back to her, surveying the streets below. Through the drawn curtains, sunlight spilled into the room and cast a
glow about his golden curls. With his broadly-muscled frame and towering height, how very different he was from the Marquess of Tennyson.
She’d wager her very life before another wild horse that Lord Tennyson would never risk his life and limb to save anyone other than himself. From within the crystal windowpane, her gaze collided with the duke’s. Heat exploded on her cheeks at being caught staring.
He wheeled slowly around. “Miss Barrett,” he greeted on a mellifluous baritone that set butterflies dancing in her belly.
“Your Grace,” she returned softly.
Justina cleared her throat and motioned to the chairs. “Would you please sit?”
The young duke, who’d earned the ton’s note and favor, waited until she’d claimed a chair. Then he strolled forward with a languid elegance that sent her heart beating into double time and sat beside her.
Oh, saints in Heaven. She stole a sideways peek at him. Of all the seats he might have taken—the King Louis chair directly opposite, the shellback chairs on the opposite ends of the rose-inlaid table—he’d sat next to her. He shifted slightly and his broad, oak-like thigh brushed her leg, crushing the fabric of her skirts in a noisy rustle of muslin.
“I trust you are well following your fall, madam?”
“Oh, quite,” she lied. Her entire body throbbed and ached from her wicked tumble onto the cobbles. He reached inside the front of his jacket and Justina followed those precise movements. She gasped as he withdrew a small, tattered volume. “You rescued it.” With her gaze, she briefly studied the now rippled and worn leather.
“I could not very well leave it,” he murmured. “It needed to be restored.” He handed the delicate piece over and Justina accepted it with trembling fingertips. She ran her index finger along the wrinkled spine.
So, this was why he was here. She couldn’t battle down the disappointment.
“It is a shame that it has been marred.”
Justina glanced up from that mark. “Oh, no. It’s not been destroyed,” she corrected. When he furrowed his brow, she explained. “You see,” she flipped the pages, fanning through the book. “People expect a cover to be flawless leather, etched in gold.” Just as Society expected of a lady. “But it hardly matters what is on the cover, but rather, what is on the inside,” She turned the open volume toward him. “These words, they tell a tale.” She closed it and indicated the marked spine. “As do the marks left that day in the street.”
“And what tales do they tell?” he urged, shifting closer. His breath tickled the sensitive skin of her neck and she struggled to attend that question.
With tremulous fingers, Justina set the book down on a nearby side table “I expect it is a different one, depending on the person telling it.”
Since he was a boy, he’d developed an innate ability to read the details around him.
It was how he’d known as a child of fourteen that his family had been steeped in financial ruin. How he’d known Lord Rutland, with that ruthless gaze, had come to wreck his family that night, long ago.
Nick assessed the cheerful space that showed the age of faded upholstery. The copies of aged poetry volumes scattered about a side table perfectly suiting a lady who made more of a timely rescue in the streets. It was how he also knew Justina Barrett was a hopeful dreamer, even with her family on the cusp of dun territory. He picked up a copy of Camilla from the side table and turned it over in his hands.
As a boy, he’d been voracious in his readings. There had been no work he’d left unread in his late father’s once-vast library. What rot it had all been, poems and tales of love and works honoring nature. All of it had proven meaningless diversions that could never truly detract from the ugliness that was life.
“Have you read that title, Your Grace?” Justina ventured hesitantly. He blinked, glancing up. She gestured to the volume in his hands.
His gaze involuntarily returned to the cover. There had been a time when he’d hungered for his days in the schoolrooms and longed for his days at Harrow. “I have,” he said gruffly. All of that simplicity had been ripped from him. After his father’s death, he’d discovered the uselessness of all those frivolities. Books and poems couldn’t save a person. They could only distract one. “Many, many years ago,” he added as a quiet reminder to himself.
There was no need to let this woman inside. His only goal was to shatter her defenses, capture her heart, and destroy her family. Then, he could finally be at peace, knowing he’d brought about the same destruction to all those Rutland loved, just as the marquess had wrought hell on Nick’s own family.
Heart in her eyes, she scooted to the edge of her seat, coming nearer. Her contagious love of the literary word was an unwanted connection that made Justina Barrett real in ways that hadn’t mattered. In ways he didn’t want to matter. “You do not take exception to female authors?”
Guilt settled uncomfortably in his belly and he shoved it away. Had Rutland ever shown any such weakness to either Nick’s father or anyone thereafter? His father’s gap-mouthed body, limp upon that rope, flickered behind his mind’s eye. Nausea turned in his belly. “On the contrary,” he said truthfully and she glanced up with surprise in her blue eyes. “I’d not be so small-minded as to pass judgment on a literary work because of the author’s gender.” She touched a hand to her heart. “But neither do I read them anymore,” he felt inclined to add, severing that thread between them.
“But why?” she asked, her delicate features wreathed in disappointment.
At her probing, he snapped. “Because life ultimately proves that those hopes for happiness are elusive dreams that children fill their heads with to usher them through the darkness of life.”
Her mouth parted slightly. He forced the tension from his body and relaxed the muscles of his face. His skin flushed under the force of her stare. “I don’t believe that,” she said softly.
“That is because you still hope and dream,” he countered. Why did he debate her on the merits of romance novels and poems? Bent on stealing her heart and ultimately shattering it, he should be filling her head with inanities and lauding the great romantic poets. Instead, he gave her the very real truths that had shaped him into the hardened man he’d become. Eventually, all dreams died. “What happens when your father loses all his wealth?” Which Nick would see carried out. As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished to call them back.
The lady recoiled as though he’d struck her and it spoke to his weakness since he wished to erase the evidence of her hurt; a hurt he’d inflicted. But she was fearless and that mark of strength momentarily alleviated his guilt. For, when he’d seen this through, Justina Barrett wouldn’t be wholly wrecked. Not the way Cecily had been, relegated to the role of wife to an ancient, cold nobleman.
“What of the ladies in your family?” she pressed. He welcomed the reminder of his sister and niece who, when this was done, would be avenged. “Would you deter them from reading such books because it is nothing more than fanciful drivel?”
“I would not,” he answered with an automaticity born of truth. His every move for thirteen years had been carefully measured with the purpose of ensuring what happiness and innocence he could for those two ladies.
A wistful smile hovered on Justina’s plump lips. “Then they are very fortunate.” What accounted for the sad glimmer in her expressive eyes?
He swallowed a sound of frustration. It mattered not what kind of existence, happy or otherwise the chit had known. It mattered that she was Rutland’s naïve sister-in-law, beloved by Rutland’s wife, and cared about by the demon marquess himself. She was destined to suffer and from that, break Rutland. The question slid forth, anyway. “Have your parents been less forgiving in your reading selections, then?”
“Oh, never.” A golden curl fell over her eyebrow and his gaze went to the strand. Memories of those long tresses wrapped about them in the streets of Gipsy Hill thundered inside his mind and he hungered to see them fanned about his pillow. “Well, my father doesn’t bother wi
th what I read.” Her lips twisted in an aberrantly cynical grin. “He so often doubts my intelligence he likely doesn’t even trust I can read.” The lady had more intelligence in her left littlest finger than Waters had in the whole of his body. “My mother would never dare limit what I read,” she chatted, swatting at the curl. “She lives to see her children happy.”
A mother who, even married to a reprobate like Waters, had not given up on life; who’d instead coaxed joy where she could from her children. Unlike his own mother who’d merely subsisted and then ultimately willed herself to death with her husband’s passing. That juxtaposition should serve as a stark reminder of Nick’s goals for the Barrett family and, yet, there was this unwitting and unwanted desire to hear more. For reasons he didn’t understand. For reasons that had nothing to do with Rutland or revenge.
“My sister always read books of exploration and dreamed of travel,” Justina said, opening the door further into her world. Letting him inside, the minds and dreams and hearts of her, as well as Rutland’s wife. “My mother never demanded she abandon those dreams.”
“What of your dreams?” he asked quietly, his inquiry born not of the seeds of revenge, but of a true need to know what a lady who wore her heart in her eyes yearned for. His belly knotted viciously and he hated himself for wanting those revelations from her.
Justina wetted her lips. For a long moment, he believed she’d ignore his question. Then, she stole a glance about. “I have always wanted to hold a salon within my own home, a place where young ladies can speak freely on literary works and exercise their minds without worry or recrimination.” She blushed. “Of course, I don’t think I’ll be an Elizabeth Vesey, or an Elizabeth Montagu, but I do dream of having young ladies and gentlemen come to share ideas and works. As I share mine, Your Grace.” Justina swiped the black leather journal from the table and looked at it for a moment. She held it out.
To Enchant a Wicked Duke Page 6