What I Did For a Duke

by Julie Anne Long

Ian was helpless not to stare back.

  There were dark purple crescents under Ian’s eyes, as though he hadn’t slept since . . . oh, since the duke had arrived, likely. Likely had pushed a chair beneath his doorknob. Perhaps slept surrounded by loaded pistols and knives.

  Moncrieffe smiled.

  Ian flinched.

  Harry probably interpreted the startling silence as the usual reaction to Moncrieffe.

  “I was discussing Italian art with the duke. It was a pleasure to discover we share a common interest,” he said politely. What lovely manners the boy had.

  With a rich and heady subtext that the common interest might very well be Genevieve Eversea.

  “Your family should be proud of the comprehensiveness of your library, Eversea,” the duke said gravely.

  “Thank you,” Ian said reflexively.

  The duke pondered again the manners of the Everseas. Breeding wasn’t something that could ever be vanquished entirely, he supposed.

  “I’ll just go and quickly get into my hunting clothes and meet you in the courtyard. I’ll come back to finish my reading later this evening.”

  “Splendid,” Ian lied. The word sounded gargled.

  Moncrieffe nodded at the two young men. He idly stacked the books he’d pulled from the shelf on the table next to the settee and strode off down the hallway.

  “I thought I’d settle in for a read of this later.”

  And when Moncrieffe had left the room, Ian took a few steps into the library and read the title:

  Poisonous Plants Native to Sussex.

  Chapter 15

  I’m not certain I approve of the duke.”

  This startling confession came from her mother, who was, like Genevieve, Olivia, and Millicent, embroidering. Stabbing needles with skilled precision in and out of various projects stretched over hoops. They’d congregated in the green salon, arranged on the settee and cross-legged on the carpet, firelight warming their skin.

  The men had taken out guns and horses today, leaving the women to their own devices, and coming home with a brace of birds each. All apart from Ian.

  “Would have thought the boy had drunk his breakfast,” his father complained. “He couldn’t get off a single decent shot. As though he’d suddenly acquired the palsy. I was embarrassed for the boy. The duke, however. I’ve never seen such fine shooting. Told Ian he ought to take a lesson or two.”

  The result of that fine shooting had been artfully prepared by Harriet and had served as dinner.

  Of which Ian fed bites to a cat beneath the table before he fed bites to himself.

  And then they had somehow found the lure of the company of other men more appealing than an evening around the fire with the ladies.

  All in all, from Genevieve’s point of view, the day had been a respite from wondering whether Harry had proposed to Millicent. She was almost in a giddy mood, as time for sleeping was nigh and another day would have passed without anyone being proposed to. And she’d been with Millicent for most of the day, reading, writing letters, gossiping. Harry’s name had scarcely been mentioned, though each time it passed Millicent’s lips her stomach knotted painfully.

  “Well, that makes you and everyone else in London, Mama. No one approves of the duke. Though I scarcely think it matters to him.” She hadn’t quite finished her vase of flowers. She considered whether there was room for yet another color in the vase.

  “Oh, it’s not that. I don’t believe a word of any of the gossip—I shouldn’t take it as gospel, anyhow—and I’m hardly in a position to judge a man for his transgressions.” Which was such a fascinating thing for her mother to say that Genevieve looked up sharply, but her mother was sailing on blithely. “But for heaven’s sake, I thought the men were smoking cigars and playing billiards and talking about horses and other relatively harmless pastimes every night. I’ve left them to it. It was the housekeeper who saw fit to tell me that instead they’re playing five-card loo for money. And this came about because she informs me your father has put in an order for more brandy and port. We’ve emptied more decanters this week than we have in the past year. They’ve turned our withdrawing room into a veritable gaming hell. And apparently it was the Duke of Falconbridge’s idea.”

  Genevieve and Olivia exchanged smiles.

  “Is Papa winning?”

  “Only occasionally.”

  “Is the duke winning?”

  She already knew the answer, since his reputation preceded him, so she wasn’t surprised when her mother said dryly, “Nearly all the time, apparently.”

  “If Papa were, you might think more kindly upon it.”

  Olivia snorted a laugh.

  “Your papa is hardly wanting for money, Genevieve. It’s the principle of the thing,” her mother reproved, but not without humor. “I shouldn’t like our home to be the place where all the neighbors from miles around lose their inheritances. Wives and mothers will descend upon us with pitchforks and flaming torches.”

  “Olivia will simply stand up and give a speech about abolition and frighten them all away.”

  “Genevieve Marie Eversea!” Her mother was shocked. And she was difficult to shock.

  Genevieve was surprised. Hmm. It really was rather a heretical thing to say; it violated one of the unwritten rules of the Eversea household, which was that Olivia’s causes were to be endured. She wondered that it had popped from her mouth. Her family didn’t regard her as humorless but it most certainly wasn’t her role to foment any more . . . events.

  As the duke had so astutely pointed out . . . when one’s family is so eventful, it was restful to regard something as static as a painting. Or a sampler of a vase of the sort of flowers that . . . awaited her in her room upstairs.

  And look where kindness had got her.

  She glanced across at Millicent, who was no more forthcoming about matrimony than she was yesterday.

  “It’s true, Mama. I should welcome the opportunity to lecture angry villagers,” Olivia said complacently, with a glint in her eye. “You’re just angry that I abandoned you to the duke, Gen.”

  “Nonsense.” Though life might have been a good deal simpler at the moment if she’d been able to dilute the duke’s presence with Olivia’s. Though he’d had an objective, and when that man undertook something, resistance was futile.

  “Are you ever going to tell us who sent the flowers to you, Genevieve?” This came from Millicent.

  “I did tell you. Mars,” she said lightly.

  “She claims the duke isn’t courting her,” Millicent teased, directing this to the entire room. “But he smiles a good deal around her.”

  It was still unbearable to be teased by Millicent about courting. And what a thing for Millicent to notice.

  “Because he isn’t courting me.” Not strictly speaking, anyhow.

  “Isn’t he?” Her mother sounded a bit disappointed. And she’d believed me just a little too quickly, Genevieve thought, perversely.

  “Who’s courting you, Millicent?”

  Oh God. Olivia had asked the question. She’d been teasing. Probably. But Genevieve froze. Because any moment could be the moment Millicent finally said, “Well, I hadn’t wanted to talk about it just yet as I was savoring the happy news, but Harry and I . . .”

  And then the sword of Damocles overhead would drop and cleave Genevieve in two.

  But Millicent simply said complacently, “Oh, everyone, to some degree, judging from my dance card the other night. But no one in particular.”

  Not for the first time did Genevieve wonder whether Millicent was going to be surprised when—if—Harry actually issued a proposal. It was grotesquely unfair.

  “It isn’t like you to be so cryptic about the flowers, Genevieve,” her mother noted correctly. “You may trust us, you know. Unless you’re ashamed? They’re not from Simon Mustlethwaite, are they?”

  Simon Mustlethwaite had yearned futilely for Genevieve for years. He had spots and a stammer and a title and a fortune. He possessed little
conversation. She was kind, but her kindness knew limits.

  She sighed. “Oh, in all likelihood they were sent by someone who danced with both Olivia and I and simply confused our names. Because why else would anyone send a bouquet quite like that to me?”

  It was the sort of sarcasm the duke would have enjoyed.

  “Oh, that sounds reasonable.” Her mother sounded both relieved and resigned. “Of course that’s what happened.”

  She stared at her mother. Searching for a sign of doubt, for . . . anything that indicated a shred of suspicion that such flowers might have been directed at her. And as for Olivia, she hadn’t even bothered to look up, let alone disagree.

  And no one had noticed her sarcasm. Because doubtless no one wanted to see anything but what they wanted to see. What they’d always seen.

  For God’s sake.

  She couldn’t breathe suddenly. The anger built slowly, but inexorably, burning hotter and hotter, and it drove her involuntarily to her feet as surely as if she were powered by steam. She was angry at herself as she was at them, though she could not have said why.

  She stood in the middle of the carpet, foolishly holding her embroidery of the enormous vase of lividly brilliant flowers. When she did that, mildly curious faces turned toward her. Mildly. For if Genevieve was standing she meant to do something ordinary.

  And if she’d been Olivia, she would likely have given a speech about how she was not only kind and gentle and clever. About how she was weary of being the one her parents needn’t worry over.

  But she still wasn’t given to speeches. And she wasn’t certain she wanted them to know the depths of her passion.

  Some things were too precious and ought to be protected.

  But she was very tempted to give them something to worry over.

  “I think I will go to bed. The bright colors on my embroidery are making my eyes ache a little.”

  This was sarcasm, too, but it, too, seemed to be received literally.

  “Sweet dreams,” they chorused at her as she abandoned her embroidery to the floor and left the room.

  She huffed her way up the stairs, and almost but not quite slammed her chamber door.

  She gave a start when she saw the roses in her bedchamber.

  They were another entire presence in the room. And not an entirely benign one.

  Despite herself, she smiled slowly. They really were outlandish, the product of a devilish sense of humor, and of someone who listened, and who . . . she dared believe . . . actually saw her for who she felt she was.

  She savored again the shock of the morning as she stared at him, and a glow lightly touched her skin, an echo of this morning’s blaze of emotion.

  A pity about him being Lucifer’s spawn.

  She was sardonic even in her own thoughts. Lucifer’s spawn wouldn’t have sent those roses.

  She’d stormed off, in her quiet way, but now she was committed to staying in her bedchamber and she wasn’t tired. Or rather, she was, but she had no faith that sleep would come easily, given the condition of her emotions.

  She pulled pins from her hair to let it down—you’ve stars in your hair—and rubbed at her grateful scalp, and combed the satiny length of it out with her fingers. She would brush it properly later.

  For now, she curled up in a chair in front of the fire, kicked off her slippers and tucked her feet beneath her and attempted to read a novel. A Horrid Novel, about an orphaned aristocratic girl wandering the dark corridors of an ancient manor house and encountering a ghost.

  Ironic, that.

  She lowered the book into her lap and looked toward her window, pensively.

  The curtains were drawn. She pictured the duke pacing the garden, his greatcoat whipping out behind him like a dark mist. She recalled him staring out the salon window at nothing, the very personification of loneliness, she realized now. She pictured him turning, slowly turning, half burnished in gold, to watch her watch him.

  One ghost recognizing another. He’d been calling her—she was almost certain he had—with his eyes.

  And that was the last thought she had until she woke with a start sometime later. She’d dozed off in her chair. The fire was low; the chill was what had penetrated her shallow sleep.

  She glanced at the clock. Just past midnight.

  She shoved her hair away from her eyes, and when she did those roses glowed at her from the corner of the room. And just like that, the respite from the drama her life had become was over, and all the memories locked into place again.

  Motionless, weary, but knowing sleep would continue to elude her, she looked past the bed, which was suddenly her enemy. To her dressing table, where her brushes gleamed, ready to put her hair to rights.

  To the window.

  And that’s where her restlessness sent her. A moment’s hesitation, and she parted the curtains . . . and looked out. Idly, she told herself.

  Nobody was in the garden.

  So she ought to unlace her dress and slip into her comfortable night rail and slide beneath her blankets. She fetched her book and her candle from near the hearth . . . and pushed her feet back into her slippers.

  And before she really knew she was doing it, she found herself, like the girl in the Horrid Novel, carrying a candle down the stairs, in search of a ghost.

  When she reached the foyer, she headed decisively for the library. Because she wanted to find a particular book, as the one she was reading wasn’t lulling her to sleep.

  This was the story she told herself to drown out the truth.

  The embers in the library hearth had burned low and the room, she could tell in an instant, was empty. Of humans, anyway. Though when she waved the stub of her candle in quick inspection she saw that the library decanter of brandy was half-emptied. As were, apparently, all the other decanters in the house, if her mama had it right.

  Well, then.

  The next story she told herself was she ought to bring her embroidery silks upstairs, and that’s why she took herself into the green salon. Which was also empty. Apart from Olivia’s exotic blooms—significantly smaller than hers, she thought with an unworthy frisson of pleasure—which still sat in the corner, throwing odd spiky shadows across the ceiling.

  She hesitated, and admitted to herself she could find no excuse to go into the gray salon.

  She went anyway.

  He was in the gray salon.

  He was standing at the window, looking out at nothing again. Arm upraised to hold the curtain aside. The line of him was eloquent, fine as any sculpture. Perfectly shaped, from shoulder to waist to thigh.

  She halted in the doorway. Her heart skipped painfully.

  And as if he could actually hear it beating, he turned. Very slowly.

  And he didn’t look at all surprised. He looked as though he’d been expecting her.

  Good heavens. The front of him was in disarray. His slightly-too-long hair was every which way. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. His cravat was untied and hung unevenly. His shirt seemed to have been unbuttoned and then rebuttoned crookedly, exposing a good deal of burnished bare skin and curling dark hair at the throat. His whiskers had got a good start on a beard.

  “Good heavens,” she blurted on a whisper. “What have you been doing this evening?”

  Moncrieffe stared.

  The muscles of his stomach tightened, and his lungs tightened, too. Her hair was down. She had miles and miles of it, all shining like dark water. Her face was small and delicate and white amongst all of it. She’d never undressed for sleep; her dress was rumpled.

  “Rescuing baby orphans,” he said softly. “What does it look like I’ve been doing?”

  “It looks like you’ve been set upon by thieves.”

  He winced. “No need to scream, Miss Eversea. I was set upon by thieves, euphemistically speaking. I prevailed. I generally prevail over five-card loo.” He grinned crookedly.

  “I spoke in a perfectly ordinary conversational tone. Mother says you’ve turned the
withdrawing room into a Den of Iniquity.”

  She was teasing him. And she was whispering now to protect his sensitivities, which he suddenly found unbearably touching. She was always so thoughtful.

  He also found the soft voice unbearably sensual. It was another texture of her, like that silken hair, and her luminous skin, and her hands that hinted she was everywhere soft. Whispers were the proper language for the dark, after all.

  “I divested a group of gentlemen of a good deal of money in five-card loo. Harry included,” he said with a certain mildly cruel satisfaction. “He’s a surprisingly determined and bold player, and I would warrant he oughtn’t be playing at all, given what you’ve told me of his straightened finances, but that could be the reason he does play. He does lose as often as he wins. We’re in the country, for God’s sake. Outside of shooting and walking about, what is there to do besides playing cards?”

  He was half-serious.

  A thought slipped through his brandy-weakened defenses: She was the reason he was staying in the country at all. That, and ensuring Ian Eversea went pale every time he saw him and flinched at every loud noise.

  He became aware that she was smiling.

  “We might have had a good deal to drink throughout the game,” he conceded. “And a good deal to smoke.”

  He won so frequently it had almost become dull. But then all the men present were able to go home with a story about how the Duke of Falconbridge bet chillingly large amounts and raked in astonishing winnings. Fearless, they’d called him. Ruthless. Cold. And etcetera.

  She took a step closer and was about to take another one when she paused with her slipper hovering off the ground. Then stopped abruptly and moved the candle pointedly away from him.

  “If I come closer you’ll ignite. I shouldn’t like you to become Duke Flambé. Did you drink the brandy, or bathe in it?”

  He gazed at her. “You’re so solicitous of my welfare.” He was again touched that she didn’t want to set him alight.

  “I’m more concerned about my mother’s curtains. That particular shade of velvet cost a fortune and I shouldn’t like to tell her I used a duke for kindling.”