The Dissolute Duke(2)

He laughed. ‘No. He gambled away his fortune and then lost his woes in strong brandy. My parents died within a day of the other, at different ends of the country, and in the company of their newest lovers. Liver failure and a self-inflicted shot through the head. At least it made the funeral sum less expensive. Two for the price of one cuts the costs considerably.’ His lips curled around the words and his green eyes were sharp. ‘I was eleven at the time.’

Such candour was astonishing. No one had ever spoken to her like this before, a lack of apology in every new and dreadful thing he uttered.

Her own problems paled into insignificance at the magnitude of his and she could only be thankful for her close and supportive family ties.

‘You had other relatives … to help you?’

‘Mary Shields, my grandmother, took me in.’

‘Lady Shields?’ My God, who in society did not know of her proclivity for gossip and meanness? She had been dead for three years now, but Lucinda still remembered her beady black eyes and her vitriolic proclamations. And this was the woman whom an orphan child had been dispatched to?

‘I see by your expression that you knew her?’ He upended his tumbler and poured himself another. A generous another.

He wore rings on every finger on his left hand, she noticed, garish rings save for the band on his middle finger which was embellished with an engraving. She could not quite make out the letters.

A woman, no doubt. He was rumoured to have had many a lover, old and young, large and thin, married and unmarried. He does not make distinction when appetite pounces. She remembered hearing a rumour saying exactly that as it swirled around in society—a diverting scandal with the main player showing no sense of remorse.

The Duke of Alderworth. She knew that most of the ladies in society watched him, many a beating heart hoping that she might be the one to change him, but with his having reached twenty-five Lucinda doubted he would reform for anyone.

Foolish fancies were the prerogative of inexperienced girls. As the youngest sister of three rambunctious and larger-than-life brothers she found herself immune to the wiles of the opposite sex and seldom entertained any romantic notions about them.

Surprisingly, the lengthening silence between them was not awkward. That astonishing fact was made even more so by the thought that had he pushed himself upon her like Richard Allenby, the Earl of Halsey, she might have been quite pleased to see the result. But he did not advance on her in any way. Outside the screams of delight permeated this end of the corridor again, women’s laughing shouts mingled with the deeper tone of their drunken pursuers. A hunting horn also blasted close, the loudness of it making her jump.

‘A successful night, by the sounds. The hunters and the hunted in the pursuit of ecstasy. Soon enough there will be the silence of the damned.’ He watched her carefully.

‘I think you are baiting me, your Grace. I do not think you can be half as bad as they say you are.’

His expression changed completely.

‘In that you would be very wrong, Lady Lucinda, for I am all that they say of me and more.’ A new danger cloaked him, a hard implacability in his eyes that made him look older. ‘The fact is that I could have you in my bed in a trice and you would be begging me not to stop doing any of the tantalising things to your body that I might want to.’

The pure punch of his words had her heart pounding fast, because in such a boast lay a good measure of truth. She was more aware of him as a man than she had ever been of any other. Horrified, Lucinda turned to the window and made much of looking out into the gardens, lit tonight by a number of burning torches positioned along various pathways. Two lovers lay entwined amidst the bushes, bare skin pale in the light. Around them other couples lingered, their intentions visible even from this distance. The intemperance of it all shocked her to the core.

‘If you touch me, my brothers would kill you, most probably.’ She attempted to keep fear from the threat and failed.

He laughed. ‘They could try, I suppose, but …’ The rest was left unsaid, but the menace in him was magnified. The indolence that she imagined before was now honed into cold hard steel, a man who existed in the underbelly of London’s society even though he was high born. The contradictions in him confused her, the quicksilver change unnerving.

‘I came to the party with Lady Posy Tompkins and she assured me that it was a respectable affair. Obviously she and I share a completely different idea of the word “respectable” and I suppose I should have made more of asking exactly where we were going before I said yes, but she was most insistent about the fun we might have and the fact that her godmother was coming made it sound more than respectable …’

He stopped her by laying his finger across the movement of her mouth. ‘Do you always talk so much, Lady Lucinda?’

Her whole body jerked in response to the touch. ‘I do, your Grace, because when I am nervous I seem to be unable to stop although I don’t quite remember another occasion when I have been as nervous as I am right at this moment, so if you were to let me walk from this room this instant I should go gladly and find—’

His mouth came to the place where his finger had lingered, and Lucinda’s world dissolved into hot colourful fragments of itself, tipping any sense of reality on its head and replacing ordinariness with a dangerous molten pleasure.





Chapter Two


Tay just wanted her to stop talking, the edge of panic in her voice bringing forth a guilt that he hadn’t felt for years. The slight curve of her breasts fitted into his chest and he liked the softness. Usually he had to bend down to women, but this one stood only a few inches below him, her thinness accentuating her willowy figure in an almost boyish way.

Her nails were short and the calluses between her second and third fingers told him she was left handed and that she participated in some sort of sport. Archery, perhaps. The thought of her standing, aiming at a target and her blonde hair lifting in the breeze was strangely arousing. He should, of course, escort her from Alderworth posthaste and make certain that she was delivered home safely into the bosom of her family.

But he knew that he would not, and when he took her mouth against his, another feeling surfaced which he refused to dwell on altogether.

He did not imagine she had been kissed much before because her full lips were held in a tight line and, as he opened her mouth with his tongue, her eyes widened.

Eyes of pale blue etched with a darker shade—eyes a man could lose himself in completely and never recover from.

Softening his assault, he threaded his hands through her hair, tilting her face. This time he did not hurry or demand more as the heat of a slow burn built. God, she smelt so good, like the flowers in an early springtime, fresh and clean. He had become so used to the heady over-ripe perfumes of his many experienced amours that he had forgotten the difference.

Innocence. It smelt strangely like hope.

Sealing his mouth across hers, he brought his fingers behind her nape. Closer. Warmer.

The power of connection winded him, the first tentative exploration of her tongue poignant in a way that made him melancholy. It had been a long time since he had kissed a woman who watched him as if he might unlock the secrets of the universe.

Lust ignited, an incendiary living torch of need burning bright, like the wick of gunpowder snaking down through his being. Unstoppable.

‘Are you a virgin?’

He knew she was by the way she was breathing, barely enough air to fill her up, lost in the moment and her lips parted.

‘Yes.’

‘Why the hell did you come to this party, then?’ The layer of civilisation that he had tried to keep in place was gone with the feel of her, but there was no withdrawal as he asked the question. Rather she pressed in closer and shut her eyes, as though trying in the darkness to find an answer. He felt the feathery waft of her breath in the sensitive folds of his neck and wondered if she was quite as innocent as he presumed. If this was a game she played, then it was one that he had long been practised in and she would need to be careful. His hands went around her back of their own accord, like a pathway memorised.

Salvation.

The word came unbidden and blossomed into something that he could not deny and his pulse began to quicken. It had been years since he had felt like this with any woman and surprise spurred him onwards.

He twisted her and his mouth fell lower, laving at the skin at her neck, his attention bringing whorls of redness to the pale. Her breath matched his own now, neither quiet nor measured, for the power of the body had taken over and his thumb caressed the budding hardness of one nipple through crimson silk.

She arched back, thighs locked tight, her breasts twin beacons of temptation.

He wanted her as he had never wanted another in all his life, the feel of her, the softness, her hair light-spun gold against his dark. With a small motion he had her bodice loosened and his palm around the bounty of one breast, cupping flesh, stroking the firmness. He needed her devoid of clothing, wanting pure knowledge without a covering. If she had not been the lady he knew she was, he would have simply ripped the garment off from neckline to hemline, and transported her naked to his bed to take his fill. His mouth ached for the intimacy of her curves.

‘The taste of a lover is part of the attraction,’ he stated simply as he raised his head, watching as understanding dawned. Uncertainty chased on the heels of wariness, but still she did not pull away as he thought she might. Only a slight frown marred her brow, measuring intent without any fear whatsoever. A guileless allowance.