by Erica Ridley
“I wasn’t showing off my…excessive consumption.” Except he supposed he had been, if inadvertently. Why did all of his attempts to make a positive impression end up having the opposite effect?
She pursed her lips. “Then what are you doing?”
He appraised the contents of his cup. Was it possible to turn tea into marmalade? A dash of lemon, four hundred and thirty-two lumps of sugar…
He pushed his saucer away. “Can you keep a secret?”
“When I want to.” She lifted her brows. “Do you have a good one?”
“A terrible one,” he admitted. “One I hoped to take to my grave. A duke must maintain a certain reputation. Especially when clawing out of his father’s shadow and trying to avoid ridicule at all costs.”
She set down her cup. “All right, I’m intrigued. I promise to keep your dirty secret.”
He hoped so. “I hate tea.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I hate tea.” He shuddered. “It’s as British as I am, but I cannot stand it. I add sugar to mask the flavor, but that only makes it horrid and syrupy instead of horrid and bitter.” He swallowed. “No one knows but you.”
She gazed at him.
He turned red.
She burst out laughing. “You…haven’t heard many dramatic confessions, have you.”
“It is dramatic,” he protested. “Hating tea is my deepest shame.”
“You must try to live a more interesting life. If you were a Wynchester…” She wiped tears from her eyes. “What is your second-deepest shame? Stirring in a circular motion instead of back and forth like a true gentleman?”
He crossed his arms. “You don’t understand the pressures of my position.”
“You’re right,” she confirmed. “I would be a terrible duke. And it would have nothing to do with my tea consumption at parties. Was that why you were hiding in your carriage? Or do you not even like society events?”
“I wasn’t hiding…exactly.” He leaned back. “What does ‘liking’ society have to do with anything?”
“Nothing? Everything?” She lifted a shoulder. “What is the point of being a duke if you cannot at least conduct your own life as you please?”
“That’s not the point of a peerage. Privilege is not about oneself. It’s an honor bestowed upon one’s line and the solemn duty to—”
“Good God.” She shuddered. “All of that may be true, but you cannot believe ‘responsibility’ means no longer being oneself.”
“Publicly,” he clarified, lest she misunderstand the entire point. “Publicly I must be perfect in all things, but privately I have never seen this teapot before in my life.”
Her head tilted to one side. “What else are you hiding?”
His muscles froze. “Nothing.”
“Everyone hides something. What else are you stifling to be more palatable to your peers?”
Art.
The thought came to his head unbidden. Lawrence had always dreamed that if he hadn’t been a duke, he would have been a painter. Not a Royal Academy artist, but something experimental. He might not become famous, but he’d be happy and carefree. He wouldn’t have to be perfect.
And he wouldn’t marry Miss York. Not just because her family would never condone a courtship with a common painter, but because there would be no need for political allies and strategic marital dynasties. Instead, he could pursue whomever he wished. He’d be perfectly free to lean forward and—
“That.” Miss Wynchester’s voice was like warm honey. “Whatever you’re thinking at this very moment. That is what you should be doing.”
He’d been thinking of her. Of devouring her kiss by kiss, lick by lick, until she was limp and sated in his arms.
It was highly improper dinner party behavior.
His voice was hoarse. “I don’t think you understand what I…”
“Don’t I?” Her eyes were on his, her gaze intense and unwavering.
He tried to calm his runaway pulse, his carnal desires straining to be set free. She meant this. That he should be and do as he pleased.
But what he wanted would lead them both to ruin.
“My father…” His voice was too low, too rough. A rumble of thunder on a spring day. “Father was emotional and impulsive. It made him a laughingstock.” It had made Lawrence a laughingstock. “I will not compound his mistakes.”
Even if there was nothing he wanted more than to end this conversation by covering her mouth with his.
Her gaze searched his face. “What if it’s not a mistake? How will you know, if you keep yourself gaoled inside your head?”
Gaol. That was exactly what he should do with the urge to take her, kiss her, taste her. Lock those libidinous urges behind bars and throw away the key. It was the only way he would be strong enough to resist temptation.
“I…” Had he leaned closer? Had she? Their forbidden kiss was a breath away.
Her eyes sparked with challenge. “What would you do, Your Grace? If you were the sort of craven rogue who indulged his every desire. What impulse are you trying to fight?”
He reached up to touch her cheek. He should not have. Its softness was his undoing.
With no gaoler to stop him, there was only one thing Lawrence wanted…and she was right in front of him. He was done fighting. For the moment he would allow desire to break free from its chains.
He grasped her face, his fingers delving into the softness of her hair, and brought her to him. Heaven. Hell. His lips upon hers were less a kiss and more two souls crashing into each other, shattering and melding at the same time.
She smelled like honeysuckle and tasted like fresh tea. Had he thought he hated the flavor? He adored it when it came from her lips. No amount of sugar could compare to the sweetness of her mouth, the fierce rush of her fingers twisting in his hair.
Something fluttered in his chest, an unfurling, a rebirth. He explored the contours of her mouth, mapping each hidden corner to remember later, to revisit in his mind when he could not have her in his hands.
Both palms now cupped her cheeks. Not to keep her in place but to stop himself from skimming his eager hands down the column of her neck, the hollow of her back, the flare of her hips.
If he touched her there, he’d be tempted to pull her closer. To leave no doubt that kissing her was no fleeting impulse but a gale-force temptation he barricaded himself against every time he thought her name or saw her face. This was what he had hungered for. Her. Beneath his fingers.
Kissing her was as inevitable as the rain falling from swollen clouds, and just as impossible to hold in one’s hands forever.
He forced himself to wrench his mouth from hers, panting. He touched their foreheads together and tried to regain his breath. It was no use.
“Now you know.” The words were a growl, a plea. “All I can give is a moment’s passion. Do not ask me to uncage myself again, unless that is what you want.”
15
Chloe’s pulse skittered unsteadily as her carriage ferried her toward the Ainsworth residence. Her lips were tender and still tasted of the Duke of Faircliffe’s kiss. Her head swam every time she let herself remember the feel of his strong hands holding her face, the sensation of her own fingers rumpling his hair as though he were hers to dishevel.
“I ‘accidentally’ wandered into two different rooms,” Tommy was saying, “and not only haven’t I found our portrait, I have glimpsed no art at all. Does Faircliffe despise creativity? He wouldn’t have tossed our painting into the fire, would he?”
Ah, yes. This was what Chloe was supposed to be thinking about: pillaging the duke’s estate, not offering him her body.
“Why would he burn it?” she mumbled.
“I don’t know. Because peers are madmen?” Tommy toyed with the stolen key ring, then shoved it back into the basket. “Maybe he didn’t read our letters because he anticipated our logical request and could not possibly respond, ‘Sorry, dropped your family heirloom into a fire. Saved the ashes in a
nice tin, though.’”
“I really don’t…” Chloe frowned. “Tommy, are you all right?”
“I’m frustrated,” Tommy admitted. “I thought this would be easy—that the painting would be hanging on a wall. You’d distract him by whatever means necessary—clever touch with the kissing—and I’d filch the canvas. What if he’s hidden it? Searching nooks and crannies will take forever, even with a set of keys.”
Chloe’s cheeks burned. She had heard only part of the explanation. “You saw us kiss?”
“I’m so sorry.” Tommy patted her hand. “It must have been torture.”
A wondrous, delicious, toe-curling torture. Chloe’s skin heated at the memory. She would be replaying every moment to herself tonight, and the next night, and the next. Her skin still tingled where he had touched her.
“By the by, wherever did you find this stupendous overdress? And these baubles!” Tommy admired the pearl comb in Chloe’s hair. “I thought I was supposed to be the master of disguises, but you’ve outdone me by far.”
It wasn’t a disguise: these prized treasures from her secret collection were the closest to the real Chloe any family member had ever seen.
“Poor dear, you look miserable.” Tommy added another pin to her white-haired-grandmother wig. “It might take an age to exhaustively search each room for hiding places, but I’m working as fast as I can. As soon as we find Puck, life will return to normal.”
Huzzah?
Chloe clasped her hands in her lap. Before she could examine her complicated thoughts on the matter, the carriage pulled to a stop before the Ainsworths’ house.
She took a deep breath and shoved her basket to the floor.
When the door swung open, it was not their tiger Isaiah ready to hand her down from the carriage, but the Duke of Faircliffe.
A chill breeze whipped his dark hair asunder, but his blue gaze was targeted on her. Knowing, now. Possessive. He had learned things about her she had never divulged to anyone. How her heart skipped when he touched her. How her mouth was his for the taking.
“Allow me.” He offered his arm.
This time she knew how it would feel beneath her fingers. The warm contours of his muscles were no longer a mystery but a favorite memory. She had touched his shoulders, his face, his hair. Surely her fingertips could curve about his elbow.
Yet she hesitated. “Are you certain you should walk me to the front door at all?”
“My coach happened to arrive right before yours. I’m offering aid to a fellow guest, as any gentleman worth his salt ought.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t worry, no one will imagine the two of us arriving together on purpose.”
Ah. Chloe lifted her chin. Tommy was right. The sooner things went back to normal, the better.
When they were ushered into a parlor, “Great-Aunt Wynchester” hovered protectively at Chloe’s side while the fashionable attendees surrounded Faircliffe.
That was it, then. The last time they’d speak for the rest of the evening. She wouldn’t have bothered attending the party had she not needed the excuse to drop by the duke’s town house. Was it bad form to grab her sister and flee home the moment the dessert plates were cleared?
“I’m bored,” Tommy whispered. “It must be stultifying to live like this.”
“You’re bored because no one is speaking to us,” Chloe whispered back.
Good breeding required a formal introduction before gentlemen could speak to a young lady, but she doubted any such introductions were forthcoming. Once any reputable gentleman heard “Wynchester,” he’d have the only detail about her he wished to know.
A familiar figure came their way.
“You did come.” Philippa’s smile looked as though she meant it. “I wasn’t certain you would.”
“How could I stay away from all this?” Chloe gestured toward Tommy. “My great-aunt Wynchester adores a dinner party. What were you saying about how lovely Philippa looks tonight, Aunt?”
A wordless gurgling sound came from Tommy’s throat, followed by the slightest flush of her skin beneath her wrinkled-old-lady cosmetics.
“Oh dear, I have to go.” Philippa made an aggrieved expression. “My mother just looked this way. Will you both be at the next reading circle?”
“We wouldn’t miss it,” Chloe promised. “I’ll even leave Tiglet at home.”
Philippa’s eyes sparkled. “Please don’t. He’s the only reason you’re invited.”
Chloe grinned back at her. “Warn your mother: Tiglet has siblings.”
“Let it be a surprise.” Philippa winked and hurried off into the crowd.
“I like her,” Chloe murmured.
Tommy cleared her throat. “Me too.”
“She’s the best of this crowd by far.” Then again, Chloe supposed she didn’t know anyone else in the beau monde well enough to judge.
Her eyes searched the room. As a child, she had wondered if her birth family shared her features. Perhaps they were also overlooked, wherever they were. Invisible to everyone’s eyes but hers. They would recognize each other at once, according to the fantasy, and thus would fall into each other’s arms with smiles and tears.
None of that had ever happened. Chloe was as out of place in society as she was in a rookery.
After Bean, her hope gradually turned to fear. She adored her new life. She was loved. The last thing she wanted was to stand out and risk having it all ripped away from her. Chloe’s parents hadn’t wanted her back then, and she did not want them now.
Being recognized would be a nightmare.
“Ah, here they are.”
Startled, she glanced up to find the Duke of Faircliffe striding toward her in triumph, as if it had been a struggle to locate her and her sister hovering by themselves against the parlor wall.
He stood next to a handsome gentleman with exquisite tailoring and friendly gray eyes.
“Mrs. Wynchester, Miss Wynchester, may I present the Earl of Southerby? He is a rascal, but not half-bad at a country-dance. Southerby, if you spy Miss Wynchester with a basket, back away slowly. There might be a tiger inside.”
Lord Southerby bowed. “How intriguing. I find tigers to be exhilarating animals.”
Chloe curtsied in reply. “Why, that’s just how I feel about rascals.”
Faircliffe suddenly looked as if he wished he hadn’t provided an introduction. His teeth were clenched, his eyes flashing, his muscles bunching alarmingly beneath his elegant jacket.
She tried to tamp down a strange new thrill in response. He was jealous. He did not want to be, but he was. And because of the rules they had set, he was forced to introduce her to eligible gentlemen who were not already promised to another.
Within an hour Faircliffe had presented her and Tommy to all of the other guests at the party.
Sometimes more than once.
Chloe was used to this reaction. Or non-reaction. She didn’t stick in people’s heads. They saw her, at least for the brief exchange of words during which she was right in front of their faces, but as soon as she stepped away, it was as though she tugged her memory from their minds in the process.
Faircliffe was not having it at all.
“Wynchester,” he repeated forcefully to the Marquess of Rosbotham. “As you may recall from my introduction less than ten minutes ago.”
Chloe kept her brittle smile in place. Even if someone didn’t forget her naturally, they did so purposefully once they learned her name. That was, until recently. She peered up at Faircliffe. It was heady to have someone as important as a duke outraged on her behalf.
Lady Ainsworth chose that moment to welcome her guests into the formal dining room.
As he had predicted, Faircliffe sat too far down the long table for them to overhear snippets of each other’s conversation, much less speak to one another.
As Chloe had both hoped and feared, he was still within sight.
She could not touch the contours of his lips, the hard lines of his jaw, but she knew how they felt, c
ould not rid the memory from her mind.
Unfortunately, her imagination was as close as she could get. He was seated next to Philippa, with whom he intended to share meals for ever after. The unwanted reminder ruined what was left of Chloe’s appetite. The wise thing to do was to keep her eyes on her plate. Nothing good could come of watching Faircliffe and Philippa in intimate conversation.
Chloe should definitely not spend the evening darting hungry glances toward the handsome duke.
Especially when she kept catching him gazing back at her.
Shivers of awareness tickled up and down her skin. Nobody knew he had kissed her. Perhaps nobody would believe it, even if she told them. But she knew. She remembered. She couldn’t close her eyes without feeling the hardness of his muscles beneath her palms, the heat of his mouth slanting across hers.
And she couldn’t lift her gaze to his face without wanting to do it all over again.
She had to get out of here before she gave herself away.
Somehow she survived all six courses. After the blancmange, she was ready to bolt, but then Lady Ainsworth clapped her hands and said, “Now for the dancing!”
A sharp burst of longing, white-hot and razor edged, sliced through her.
How she wanted to dance with Faircliffe—wanted to be fully in his embrace—but, more than that, wanted everyone else to see her as he saw her. Someone desirable, irresistible. Someone he could not prevent himself from kissing, no matter how valiantly he tried.
Not that he would admit to finding her kissable. Her throat grew thick. If his peers couldn’t imagine him attending a social event with her on purpose, they wouldn’t believe he’d want her in his arms.
She should go. She should definitely go. Watching him dance with everyone but her was a terrible idea.
But she stayed. Just in case.
There was one waltz. Faircliffe did not stand up for it with Chloe. He hadn’t spoken to her since being seated for supper. The waltz was reserved for Miss Philippa York.
Chloe couldn’t even hate her for it. Philippa was doing exactly what Chloe would do if Chloe were in Philippa’s dancing slippers.