"That'll leave a scar for sure," Con grunted when he and Dalton were a safe distance away and headed home.
"Would have spurted my life out on the cobblestones if I hadn't dodged. He was aiming for my jugular."
Con's huge hands curled into fists. "I should have gone with you."
"This is my battle."
"I'm your hired guard."
"I hope so, because you're a damned sorry excuse for a valet."
Con gave an amused snort. "Ungrateful gobshite."
Dalton grinned, wincing as pain forked across his jaw. It was one of their little rituals, the gallows humor that kept Dalton from losing his mind.
They melted into the shadows, knowing which lanes to avoid. Changing the route every time. Keeping the pattern unpredictable.
The beasts among beasts.
Slouching and hugging the dark places.
As he sped toward home, Dalton's thoughts turned to Lady Dorothea asleep in her maiden bed. Tomorrow's penny papers would crown her this season's Incomparable, a butterfly forced from her wallflower chrysalis.
He'd done her a favor.
Widened her prospects.
She deserved far better than the likes of him.
Not for him, the marigold silk of her hair.
The sweet summer scent of roses.
His, the cold that snarled and bit like a cornered wolf. Yawning doorways leading to dark gullets of rooms warm with stale breath and spilled gin and dark as the belly of a whale.
One miscalculation and a knife slid home.
Crawl home like a cur. Use the back stairs.
And try not to bleed on the carpet.
Fate had been very clear about one thing-whether lingering, or in one agonizing blow, love died.
Brothers drowned. Mothers faded into wraiths.
And melting blue-gray eyes couldn't dull his pain any better than a bottle of brandy.
Chapter 3
Nothing can make me popular, Your Grace. Not even you.
Care to place a wager on that, Lady Dorothea?
Thea would have lost that wager. It was the morning after the ball and the Desmond town house was overrun with roses.
Great big bunches of hothouse roses. Pink, white, yellow, they clustered on every surface, crowing gleefully that after four seasons she was an overnight success.
All because of one waltz with an arrogant, manipulative duke.
He'd toyed with her as a lion taunted a lamb, rearranging her life to suit his whims. And she, knock-kneed creature, had succumbed to his velvety caress, heedless of the razor-sharp jaws waiting to rip apart her plans.
If only she'd caused a scene. Tripped over her skirts. Stepped on his toes. Done something customarily disastrous.
What followed after the waltz had been a nightmare.
The avaricious gleam in the elderly Duke of Foxford's eyes when he'd asked her to dance had made Thea's skin prickle with foreboding.
Being a failure had its rewards, one of those being that men never looked at you like that. As if you were displayed in a shop window and they were contemplating making a purchase.
The gloves or the girl.
She was not for sale.
The aged peer hadn't given her a chance to demur, pulling her into line so fast she'd had to trot to keep pace. The relentless tide of twenty years of good breeding had been the only thing that swept her with him.
"Where shall I put these, my lady?"
There must be a footman somewhere in the hall. Thea could hear him, but she couldn't see him because of all the dratted flowers.
A lady never swears. Never. Not even blast. Or drat. And certainly not bugger. Or blast.
Blast it all! She didn't want to be a lady anymore. And she didn't want all these tokens of intent to purchase. "Don't put them anywhere, John," she called. "I won't accept them."
A startled, youthful face with raised dark eyebrows appeared from behind an enormous bouquet of yellow roses. "Beg pardon, my lady?"
Thea swiped a hand through the air. "Take them all away." She didn't want the roses and she didn't want the success. Really, the flowers should have been sent to the duke, not to Thea, since her sudden popularity was entirely due to him.
Now there was an idea.
"John, I want you to have every single one of these flower arrangements delivered to the Duke of Osborne's residence. I believe he still lives in his bachelor apartments, and not at Osborne Court."
Ha! That would teach him to make her popular. See how he liked his home transformed into a flower market.
"Excuse me, my lady, but did you say the Duke of Osborne?" John's voice held the awe all young men reserved for their masculine heroes.
"That's right. These roses were meant for him, not for me."
"Are you quite sure, my lady?"
"Quite. Now I don't want to see a single petal left behind."
"Very good, my lady." John hoisted the yellow roses.
"Wait," Thea cried. "Wait a moment. I'll be right back with a note." She snatched a creamy, gilt-edged card from one of the flower arrangements.
As she hurried toward her chambers she was stopped by the sound of an argument emerging from the parlor.
"Foxford!"
"Marwood!"
"I say Foxford. He has three castles." Thea recognized the far-from-dulcet tones of the dowager countess and her heart plummeted into her slippers. That never boded well.
If her grandmother was here the situation was dire indeed. The dowager visited them only in times of great upheaval.
When her elder brother Andrew had nearly gambled away his portion but had been saved from ruination at the last possible moment by a sobering encounter with the mysterious Hellhound character the papers made such a fuss about.
When Thea had thrown away her chance to marry the Duke of Harland by telling him the truth during the wedding ceremony.
Or today.
Because Thea had achieved the unthinkable. She'd finally, finally taken.
And it was her worst nightmare.
She'd counted on being a failure. One more lackluster season, an unobtrusive exit back to Ireland, and then blessed, blissful freedom.
The duke had ruined everything. Perish his seductive smiles.
Thea poked her head into the parlor. Just as she'd thought. It was a war council with the dowager facing off against her daughter-in-law the countess. The names of potential husbands volleyed back and forth between them like canon blasts at Waterloo.
It didn't bother them a bit that Thea wasn't there to express her opinion.
It had always been like this with her family and with society. Everyone moving in rehearsed, choreographed precision, delivering their lines to perfection, while Thea stood, watching from behind the curtain, unconsulted, ignored.
The dowager wore fine black merino unrelieved by even a hint of color, her dark hair scraped back from her forehead and covered with a black turban finished off with waving black ostrich plumes.
She was flanked by her daughter, Thea's spinster aunt Henrietta, or Hen, the earl's youngest sister.
Thea's father, the Earl of Desmond, sat in a chair by the window, his upper body completely obscured by the London Times.
"Foxford," the dowager insisted. "He's the better catch."
Thea's mother shook her head. "He's nearly seventy. He has less than a dozen teeth to his name."
"Who needs teeth with three castles?"
Aunt Hen caught sight of Thea in the doorway. "Oh, hello, dear." She waved and the bow of her white lace cap bobbed against her double chin.
Thea reluctantly entered the room.
"Who would you prefer to marry, my dear?" Aunt Hen's kindly gray eyes scrunched up as she smiled. "The Duke of Foxford or the Marquess of Marwood?"
"Neither," Thea replied.
"Desmond," the dowager countess huffed. "Please impress upon your daughter that she'll marry whom we choose."
Silence from behind the newspaper.
"Desmond!"
The paper rustled and lowered a couple of inches. "Er, what was that, Mother?"
"Tell your daughter she's wrong."
"Lady Dorothea, your grandmother is always right." Desmond flipped the paper back open.
And that's what Thea had always received from her father: casual dismissal.
"Thank you." The dowager pursed her thin lips. "Now then. Back to the subject at hand."
"It's early yet," Thea said. "Many of the other ladies are still at their country seats. I'm merely the novelty of the moment." One could always hope.
"Nonsense. You were selected by the Duke of Osborne for the first waltz of the season. You are thoroughly ensconced as a success. Nothing will dethrone you." The dowager narrowed her eyes. "Do you understand me? Nothing."
"We must give her some credit," Lady Desmond said, with uncustomary softness in her voice. "She was the one who secured the dance with the Osborne."
"One of the only intelligent things she's ever done," the dowager sniffed.
"Excuse me," Thea said. "I'm right here, you know. I can speak for myself."
"Absolutely not." Her grandmother frowned disapprovingly. "Speaking for yourself is what caused Harland to run. Or have you forgotten?"
Lady Desmond tensed on the edge of her seat. She didn't like the Duke of Harland's name spoken in her presence. She was still deeply wounded by the fact that Thea had been so close, so very close, to marrying a duke and had thrown her chance away.
"Wait just a moment." Aunt Hen tilted her head. "Are you telling me that our little Thea danced with Osborne? The Osborne? He of the deep blue eyes and delicious cleft chin? He of the thousand broken hearts and impeccably tailored coats?"