The Dissolute Duke(12)

‘Cris is lucky with his family and is happier than I have ever seen him.’ The flower had wet the fabric of his coat where water seeped through the paper, but he only wiped it away.

Edmund Coleridge was a kind man, a good man with high principles and moral worthiness. She caught Eleanor watching them with a smile on her face and thought briefly how easy it might have been had she chosen a man like this one. Her family liked him, society lauded his goodness and he observed her as though he was inclined to know her better.

When a waiter passed with a tray of drinks in tall and fluted glasses she picked one up and drank it quickly before returning for a second.

‘My brother knows his wine. French, I should imagine, and very smooth.’

The first flutter of warmth stirred in her stomach, the drink relaxing a tension that was ever-present in her life. More usually she stayed away from anything that might not allow her control, after her last débâcle, but tonight she felt able to risk it.

She nodded as Edmund Coleridge took her hand and asked her to dance. A waltz, she realised, as he led her to the floor, the slow languid three-beat music swirling across her senses.

He was thinner than his clothes suggested, but as her fingers came across the superfine of his jacket a sense of masculine strength made her breath come faster. It had been so long since she had touched a man like this.

Taylen.

Swallowing, she made herself stop. Alderworth was not here and would never be so. He had gladly gone to the Americas, paid handsomely by her brothers to abandon any husbandly duty. The ache in her chest made her breathe faster.

‘We can sit this out if you would wish to?’

Concerned dark eyes washed across her own.

‘No. I would like to dance.’

The music of the orchestra was beautiful and the smell of the gardenia wafted up from her gown. She had to learn to live again, to laugh and to dance and to touch a man without pulling back. The wine was beginning to weave its magic and at the side of the room she could see Asher and Emerald watching her without worry marking their eyes.

Two years of dislocation. The silk of her chemise felt cool against her skin and Edmund Coleridge’s fingers curled with an increasing pressure around her own.

Claimed. Quietly. She did not look up at his face. Too soon. Too quick. She wished the fingers that held her own were covered in golden rings, an old scar visible just beneath the crisp white cuff of shirt.

Taylen.

Sometimes she could smell him, at night when everything was still and when she reached into the deepest place of memory. Lemon, woodsmoke and desire. She bit at her bottom lip and sent the thought scattering, leaf-green laughing eyes and short dark hair dissolving into nothingness.

‘Will you come back to London soon?’

Another voice. Higher.

Edmund.

‘I am not entirely certain. My brothers think that I should, but …’

‘Come with me, then. Let me take you to the Simpson Ball.’

Now his interest was stated and affirmed, the perhaps that Lucinda had been enjoying transformed into certainty. The game of courtship had begun, all chase and hunt, and her heart sank.

‘I am a married woman, my lord.’

‘A married woman without a husband.’ The dimples in his cheek made him look younger than he was, an amiable and gracious man who had taken the time and effort to try to humour a woman of little joy. Cristo’s friend, and a man that her other brothers approved of, all the parts of him adding up to a decent and honest whole.

She allowed him the small favour of bringing her closer into the dance so that now his breath touched her face.

‘I should like to see you laugh, Lucinda.’ When his thighs pushed against her own, the pulse in his throat quickened. Coleridge was so much easier to read than Alderworth had ever been, his secrets hidden in an ever-present hardened core of distrust.

Breaking off the dance when the music finished, Edmund led her into the conservatory at the head of the room. Stars twinkled through the glass overhead and myriad leafy plants stood around them in the half-light.

She knew he would kiss her even before he leaned down, she could see it in his eyes and on his face, that desire that marks even the most timid of men. She did not push him away, either, but waited, as his lips touched her own, seeking what it was all lovers sought, the magic and the fantasy.

A light pressure and then a deeper one, his tongue in her mouth, finding and hoping. She felt his need and tried not to stiffen, understanding his prowess, but having no desire for a mutual understanding. Just flesh against flesh, the scrape of his teeth upon her lip, his wetness and the warmth. Ten seconds she counted and then twenty until he broke away, a flush in his cheeks and a hoarseness of breath.

Sadness swamped her as he brought her in against him. Nothing. An empty nothingness. Wiping away the taste of him when he was not looking, the weft of cotton felt hard against her mouth.

‘Thank you.’ His words. Honourable and kind.

Even as she tried to smile an aching loss formed, the mirthless harbinger of all that she had wasted. Alderworth had ruined her in more ways than he knew. Edmund Coleridge was exactly the sort of beau she should wish to attract and yet …

‘Perhaps we should go inside. It is chilly out here.’ The shaking she had suddenly been consumed by was timely.

‘Of course, my dear. A dress of silk is no match even for a summer evening. I should have realised.’

Manners and courtesy. The smile on her face made the muscles in her cheek ache as she accompanied him into supper.

‘Edmund seems more than taken with you, Lucy.’ Cristo approached her as she returned from having a word with Beatrice. ‘He is a good man who has long wished to know you better.’

‘Well, I am sure he is besieged by all the lovely young women in society. His manners are faultless and he is such congenial and unaffected company.’

Cristo frowned. ‘Such vacuous praise is usually an ominous sign …’ His dark eyes watched her, the gold in them easily seen in the light from the chandeliers above.

Lucinda rapped him with her fan. ‘I am not in the market for a … dalliance.’

He laughed at that, tipping his head up with mirth, the sound booming around them.

‘I hope not. It was something more permanent Edmund was angling for, I would imagine.’

Taking one of her hands, he chanced offering advice. ‘If you do not choose to move on with your life soon, Lucy, the opportunities may not keep coming.’

‘You speak of suitors as if I were a widow, Cris.’ Anger tinged her words and she was surprised as he shepherded her from the salon and down the corridor to his library. Once there he poured himself a generous brandy, restoppering the decanter when she turned down the chance of the same.

‘Another letter has come.’

The words shocked her. She felt the blood drain from her cheeks and her heartbeat race.

‘From Alderworth? When?’

‘Last week. The mark on it is from Georgia.’

‘Yet you did not think to give it to me sooner?’

‘I knew Edmund would come tonight and he had asked me for the chance to court you. I had hoped …’

‘Hoped for what? Hoped that the law might have dissolved all that was between me and Alderworth? Hoped that I might finally find a man that you all approved of? Hoped that the scandal of my disgrace may have been watered down by the pure goodness of your friend? That sort of hope?’ Her voice had risen as she shook away his excuse. ‘Where is it?’

Digging into a drawer at the back of his desk, Cristo laid an envelope down on the table. The writing was large and bold and not that of her husband, for the hand was completely different from the one correspondence she had received. Her excitement faded.

Lady Lucinda Ellesmere.

Graveson.

Essex.

Lucinda held her fingers laced together so they would not snatch at the paper. Was Taylen dead? Was this a missive to tell her of an accident or an illness or of the wearying of soul and a final resting place?

Had he married again, had children to a new lover, found gold, lost a hand, suffered a horrible and gruelling death in the throes of dysentery or smallpox or the influenza?

Finally she moved forwards and picked it up. ‘Have you told Ashe of this?’

He shook his head.

‘Then please do not.’

‘You need to be careful, Lucy. Alderworth is a reprobate and a liar. He uses women for his own means and does not look back over his shoulder at whom he has hurt. Coleridge, on the other hand, is trustworthy.’

The sound of the orchestra winding up an air and the deep voice of Asher took them from the moment.

‘The speeches.’ Lucinda was glad for the interruption.

‘We need to return to the ballroom.’

Folding the note, she stuffed it into a small compartment on one side of her reticule. Cristo made no comment as he gestured her to go before him and doused the lamp on his desk.

As soon as she was able to escape the party without raising any eyebrows Lucinda did so, climbing the steps to the room she had been allotted at Graveson with a mixture of hope and trepidation.

She could feel the presence of the envelope in her bag almost as a physical thing, prickling inwards.

Gaining her bedroom, she asked her maid to unhook the buttons at the back of her gown and, feigning tiredness, dismissed her. Locking the door behind the departing woman, Lucinda sighed with relief as she leaned back against heavy oak, free at last to see just what the letter from Georgia contained.