by Erica Ridley
A tendon pulsed in Faircliffe’s neck. He turned to his butler, who had been hovering behind him. “Hastings, would you have the formal dining room set for a party of, say, twelve?”
“At once, Your Grace.” But the butler slid Chloe an appraising look.
She smiled back at him blandly.
He disappeared to do his master’s bidding.
“I suppose we should begin by pretending I’m your escort.” The duke raised his elbow toward Chloe, then frowned over her shoulder. “Does your aunt require assistance?”
“I don’t want your arm,” Tommy quavered. “I’m old, not incapable. Now, if you’ve got a pair of handsome footmen to spare…”
“Ignore her,” Chloe whispered. “She blusters to salve her pride.”
“Pride? I don’t know what I did with mine,” he muttered. But he left his elbow proffered for her to take.
Her breath was unsteady as she slid her fingers around his upper arm. She was touching him just as she’d imagined doing. A shiver spread over her flesh, weakening her knees. She held tighter. Memorized the feel of him beneath each fingertip.
His arm was warm through the layers of shirt and jacket, and well-defined due to the musculature he’d earned doing…what? Did he swim or practice a sport like boxing?
Chloe tried not to imagine Faircliffe stripped to his shirtsleeves, dodging blows and throwing sweaty punches, before emerging from the ring triumphant and proud. Her pulse jumped at the idea of watching his muscles ripple, of pressing the soft tip of her tongue to his hard chest to taste the salt of his skin.
“Are we there yet?” Tommy barked.
Faircliffe glanced over his shoulder. “I’m taking the shortest path.”
Chloe held on tight.
A tour of his town house would have saved them a bit of reconnaissance, but she and Tommy had both agreed it was best for the duke to believe them uninterested in the details of his residence. Besides, none of these terraced homes was particularly large.
Not that there appeared to be any reason to worry. Faircliffe had accepted Great-Aunt Wynchester’s frightful lack of manners without question and believed that a woman of Chloe’s age could grow up under the tutelage of a baron and somehow not know which fork to use with the fish. All because their last name was Wynchester.
It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
At the open door to the dining room, Faircliffe launched into a long explanation of the order in which guests would enter and who would sit where.
She pasted on a wide-eyed Oh dear, you’re talking so fast, this is confusing me expression, and nodded encouragingly at each tedious new tidbit.
He believed in her utter ignorance and complete incompetence so fully, it was difficult not to throw up her hands and scream. Perhaps invisible was better. She would rather keep believing she could fit in if given a chance than to have the idyllic fiction snatched away.
“All right,” Faircliffe continued. “Because of my rank, I would be one of the first to enter and be seated, whereas you—”
“Would be dead last,” she finished dryly.
Faircliffe rubbed his chin. “Let’s pretend I’m a younger son of an ordinary, untitled man.”
“The horror,” Chloe murmured.
“In that case, we might sit next to each other. I would lead you to the table like this.”
She locked her knees as they walked, allowing her wooden gait to make the short trip more awkward.
Tommy already sat at the head of the table and was inspecting her pristine glasses and cutlery for spots. A nervous footman stood just behind her.
Faircliffe joined Chloe in the middle, then motioned to the footman. “Jackson, if you’d pretend to serve…”
Tommy placed her hand on her stomach and gave a loud groan. “Ohhh, this pernickety gut. I cannot even glimpse an empty table without… Have you a water closet, young man?”
“‘Your Grace,’” Chloe hissed. “Faircliffe is a duke.”
“He just said he wasn’t,” Tommy pointed out belligerently. “He said if he were a duke, he’d have the best seat at the table, but instead he’s over there by you.”
“We’re acting, Aunt.” Chloe tossed Faircliffe a chagrined expression. “His Grace is still a duke. This is the only time he’ll ever sit with me.”
“Acting!” Tommy clutched both hands to her belly. “Well, does this theatre have a retiring room or not?”
“I’ll take her,” Chloe whispered.
Faircliffe nodded. “Down the hall, first left, second door.”
“I heard the instructions.” Tommy pushed to her feet. “And I don’t need a chaperone. I am the chaperone. Don’t you two get up to anything but spooning and forking until I return.”
Chloe gave her a quelling look.
Tommy widened her eyes innocently and hobbled out the door.
Chloe turned back to Faircliffe. To buy Tommy time, Chloe needed to funnel all of the duke’s attention into explaining how one ate supper at a supper table. Easy. Innocent. No spooning or forking. Just a nice, long, boring speech about proper etiquette and table manners.
“What comes next?” she prompted with excess zeal, as if she were deeply invested in how best to unfold one’s serviette.
His attention was not on the place settings.
Faircliffe was staring at her as though what he’d most like to dine on was not dinner but Chloe. She could feel not just the heat of his gaze but the heat of his body.
Their chairs were placed too near. The folds of her skirt flirted with his ankle. They were close enough that their shoulders would touch if they were facing the table. Instead, they faced each other and breathed the electric air, feeling it crackle within their veins. He was much too close. Much, much too close.
“Fork,” she stammered. “Spoons.”
She wasn’t making any sense. He didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was on her parted lips, her flushed cheeks, her…hair?
“Most young ladies frame their entire faces with curls. You’ve just got the one. It should be unfashionable, but it suits you.”
She’d left a curl?
Chloe swatted at her hair in horror. She’d spent the morning daydreaming in her dressing room as she always did, and she was certain she’d remembered to uncurl every single painstaking ringlet she’d arranged in her hair.…
“Here,” Faircliffe said softly.
She froze, pinned in place like a trapped butterfly. She could not have moved if he paid her.
He reached up toward her ear. She could sense his hand long before she felt it. It was big, large enough to nestle her cheek into as he dragged his thumb across her lower lip or sank his fingers into her hair. She kept her neck as rigid as possible.
She felt the slight lift in pressure as her ringlet fell across his fingers. His gaze was not on the rebellious brown curl but on her mouth. She sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep it from parting in anticipation.
He tucked the curl behind her ear. That should have been all. But then his knuckles grazed her cheek once, twice. She became light-headed. It took all of her strength not to sway into his touch, just as she’d imagined.
“Your skin is so soft. I could—” Faircliffe seemed to collect himself and dropped his hands in his lap before clearing his throat. “I don’t subscribe to Ackermann’s Repository, but you might find it in a lending library for a better idea of the current style.”
Chloe clenched her teeth to keep from retching. Of course she was not an irresistible siren. She was his project.
He was the overbearing, holier-than-thou nob who was helping.
She fiddled with her serviette and ignored the itch of embarrassment. This entire Show me how spoons work ruse depended on him continuing to believe her a lost little fawn, helpless without his guidance. She would flounder through every social encounter, eternally unsuccessful in her alleged matchmaking endeavor, until Puck & Family was home safe and sound. That was the plan. It was working.
So why did
it make her want to overturn the table?
“The ton is governed by rules, just like the rest of England,” Faircliffe was saying. “One needn’t like these rules. One needn’t even believe them good rules. But one must follow them.”
Chloe contemplated him in silence.
She’d long believed the pomp and circumstance of which rank preceded which into a dining room, and who sat where, as blatant examples of the “betters” keeping the “lessers” in their place.
She hadn’t considered that those same strictures might feel like a prison, even to the betters.
“Why must you follow the rules?” she asked, her voice quiet but curious. “Cannot even a duke do as he pleases?”
He gazed at her as if there were very many things he wished to have but could not.
“Very little that I do is to please myself. I must think first and foremost of my position. The estate, the staff, the tenants, the upkeep. And I must ensure everything passes on in the best condition I can make it.”
She hesitated. “To…your son or to the next cousin in line? Do you want children?”
“I want dozens,” he said passionately, then colored. “That is, I would settle for one or two, of course. My role is to beget an heir, not to populate a circus.”
Chloe had a feeling he was repeating a quote someone else had oft cited.
“Let me guess,” she teased. “Circuses are against the rules?”
He stared at her without responding.
She took pity on him. He might always know what to say when giving speeches in Parliament, but that did not mean he would know how to talk about personal matters…with her.
“I like circuses,” she offered. “My brother used to live in one. Some say we still do.”
“Dukes don’t have circuses,” he said at last. “But the fortunate ones might start a family.”
The fortunate were born to a family, Chloe corrected in her head. Or welcomed into one with open arms. Waiting half one’s lifetime in the hopes of one day having a family seemed…
Lonely.
She tried to imagine being constantly surrounded by sycophants and the crème de la crème of high society without having a true connection with anyone—and then realized she didn’t have to imagine. She slipped into his world whenever she pleased, as easily as pulling on a bonnet, but it was never her world, her friends, her place.
The orphanage had been worse. She would never forget the exquisite torture of yearning for somewhere to belong. No…of longing for people to belong to. Craving someone to claim her, to want her, to miss her, to need her.
It had never occurred to her that someone like Faircliffe might feel the same way.
“I shall cross my fingers for you to be the most fortunate duke in all of England.”
His answering smile caused a strange flutter in her belly. “I wish as much good fortune to you.”
“I am lucky,” she said, “whether or not you believe it.”
The ladies and misses and wallflowers Chloe pretended to be were bound by society’s rules, just as Faircliffe was. But at the end of the day she could go home, toss the current alias aside, and just be Chloe.
The things Faircliffe pitied about her—lack of rank and her unusual family—were what gave her the most freedom. Bean’s Balcovian barony was sufficient status to gain access to certain people and places, but not so lofty as to need to please the patronesses of Almack’s.
Chloe didn’t require a husband for any practical reason. She had a home, she had a family, and she had her own money. Unbeknownst to the public, Bean had created a legal trust for each of the siblings rather than provide dowries for the girls. He was clever like that.
Dowries were funds bestowed upon a future husband, not on the bride herself. Chloe and her sisters would have had no say in how it was spent, because the money would not belong to them.
A legal trust, on the other hand, was held in the name of the beneficiary. Chloe’s money was hers to do with as she pleased. It would still be hers even if she married. Her husband would not be able to touch a single farthing.
Not that she would marry some fortune hunter who prized gold over love. She had a life she liked just as it was. She had fun.
Bean’s infamous eccentricity, more than his wealth, allowed Chloe and her siblings to get away with nonsense like Great-Aunt Wynchester. When no one expected any better of you, either you went home and cried about it or you turned it to your advantage. You let people underestimate you, because their dismissal gave you power.
So why was she peeling back the mask, if only a little, with Faircliffe?
“I believe you.” His words rasped oddly. “Lucky people always show it in their eyes.”
Her blood rushed so loudly, it sounded like waves pounding ashore. “What do my eyes look like to you?”
“Happy.” He reached up, not to hide her errant ringlet, as Chloe presumed, but to graze his thumb across the side of her cheek. This time he did cup her face, for no reason except that he wanted to. “Inviting.”
Yes. She was definitely inviting him to look closer. All this waiting and wishing had every nerve alive and prickling with awareness. This touch was different than the ones before. This time something momentous was going to happen.
His gaze lowered to her mouth.
She could not help but lick her lips in response. His eyes were no longer ice, but rather as hot and dangerous as the flicker of blue at the center of a flame. She was the moth who could not help but fly closer to danger.
“You look…” Her voice was breathless, her pulse fluttery. “…hungry.”
“Perhaps I am.”
He still hadn’t taken his hand from her cheek. His fingers curled gently behind her neck, supportive, possessive. He lowered his head until his breath tickled the corner of her lip, right where she could imagine his.
She tilted closer. “Hungry for what?”
He smiled as though they both knew the answer. “Hungry for—”
“Well, that’s the last time I eat beans for breakfast,” came Tommy’s nasal shrill as she clomped back into the room.
Chloe and Faircliffe jerked apart and guiltily inspected opposite sides of the room.
“Or was it nuncheon?” Tommy blathered on. “Was it beans or was it broccoli? Niece, did you make me eat vegetables today, or was that yesterday?”
“We serve vegetables every day, Aunt,” Chloe answered automatically. She could not bear to look at either of them.
Tommy leaned on Chloe’s shoulder as though to catch her breath and dropped a folded square of foolscap into Chloe’s lap.
“I don’t know what kind of gentleman you’re playing at,” Tommy quavered at Faircliffe, “but is it the kind that helps an old woman into her chair?”
He leapt up at once and set about seeing to Tommy’s comfort at the head of the table.
Chloe lowered her eyes to her lap and unfolded the message.
“Keys” was written at the top. Underlined three times. “Housekeeper on holiday. Can’t get inside. Maid saw me. Has to be you.”
Underneath was a rough map and a sketch of where the keys hung in the room.
She slid the missive into a hidden pocket and turned to Faircliffe, who was just finishing with Tommy.
Chloe resumed a look of naïveté. “Are there likely to be beans and broccoli at supper tonight?”
He nearly choked. “No, no. The Ainsworths have a prized French chef. What they’ll likely serve…”
As he exhaustively explained the composition of the same dishes she and Tommy ate at home on any given Tuesday, Chloe went over the map again in her mind. Even if there was a servant strolling the corridor, palming the keys would be child’s play.
All she needed now was an excuse to slip away.
14
Once Great-Aunt Wynchester had settled into Lawrence’s rightful place at the table, he turned his attention back to her great-niece.
She was again wearing layers of pale brown—if one was fee
ling generous, one might go so far as to discern a wheat hue, with accents of…burnt biscuit? This mix of tannish chaff did not lend itself to waxing poetic, yet its very nondescriptness served to make her dark brown eyes stand out all the more.
When he looked in her eyes, the rest of the world fell away. He forgot he was a duke; he forgot she was a Wynchester. They were just a man and a woman, trapped in each other’s gaze, the kiss he had almost taken inevitable rather than narrowly escaped.
Why did he allow himself so close to temptation?
He told himself that if Miss Wynchester ran amok, making a cake of herself at society events, her presence at his gala could cause quite the stir.
Lawrence hated causing stirs. That was true and best kept in the forefront of his mind. The way to deflect future gossip was to avoid complicating the situation he found himself in now.
Starting with not kissing Chloe Wynchester under any circumstances. No matter how soft her skin or how plump and juicy her berry-pink lips. Her mouth was not his to taste, her kisses not his to steal. There was a plan, and she was not part of it.
No matter what his aching loins might think.
“I need to rest my eyes,” Great-Aunt Wynchester announced as she placed her spectacles on her dinner plate and closed her eyes. “But I can still hear you, children.”
“Yes, Aunt,” Miss Wynchester said calmingly.
Lawrence had remembered her dislike of reflective surfaces and selected her seat accordingly, but he doubted she’d fare so well at the Ainsworth party.
Should he attend? He definitely should not. What would his presence accomplish? He’d disrupt the seating, for one thing. Dinner parties were carefully calculated to feature an even number of men and women. If he showed up willy-nilly, he’d cause more problems than he could solve.
Of course, he could send a note over now to let the hostess know. An extra guest at the last moment was not ideal, but a duke at the last moment…well, his title counted for something, did it not? Adding another female to balance the numbers would be effortless.
“Jackson”—he glanced over his shoulder at his footman—“bring pen and paper.”
Miss Wynchester’s eyes widened. “Should I be taking notes?”