CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PALL MALL, LONDON – EARLY MAY, 1814
Grace hesitated outside the entrance to Harding Howell & Company, dreading having to enter the drapers. She’d much rather visit the unfamiliar bookshop a few doors down, but Emmeline had decreed they needed new gowns. “We cannot keep wearing the same tired old things. We simply must look our best this Season.”
Grace was so weary of the social whirl, the constant demands to attend the theater or dinner parties or, heaven forbid, another ball. Why did people feel the need to constantly be with one another? Was it so awful to want an evening or two with nothing more to do than curl up with a good book? Or perhaps even retire early instead of staying up all hours of the night?
As Emmeline passed through ahead of her, Grace lingered in the doorway, casting furtive glances down the street.
“Would you like to go?”
“What?” Rebecca’s voice had startled her.
“To the booksellers. Would you like to go?”
“You know I would.”
Emmeline was already fingering through fabrics, paying no attention to the fact that her two sisters still remained outside.
“Go. Take Bess. Emmeline and I won’t leave the shop until the both of you have returned, and since she and I are here together, we are suitably chaperoned.”
How much the restrictions placed on women’s movements irritated Grace. Who would it hurt to wander down the street alone and look at a few shop windows? Surely no ruffians lay in wait on a bright, sunny afternoon, especially not in this part of town?
She’d rather go by herself, but Emmeline and Rebecca would never allow it. She looked into the drapers. Bess was now examining fabrics alongside Emmeline, and was as completely entranced. When Rebecca called her over to accompany Grace to the bookshop, Bess’s face fell before she quickly smoothed it over.
Guilt settled on Grace’s shoulders like a heavy shawl. If only she didn’t have to pull the maid away from something she enjoyed.
What choices did servants have with their time, after all? Fewer than she did. That was a sobering thought; she lamented her own constrictions, but she faced fewer than many of the people she lived with day in and day out.
Should she stay for Bess’s sake? I’ll only go for a moment or two. We’ll be back in plenty of time for Bess to see the fabrics.
“Thank you, Bess,” she said.
The maid bobbed her head, and the two made for their destination.
Grace had never been in this particular shop. It was quaint, stacked to the rafters with books. Volumes even lay piled haphazardly in a few of the aisles. The place charmed her instantly. How had she not heard of it before?
She strolled the aisles, running her fingers over the book spines. Bess, with her permission, had opted to stay near the front of the shop. At least there, the maid could look out the window. Did Bess not care to read? The thought saddened Grace. How could anyone not love the worlds books opened up?
She pulled an ancient copy of Gulliver’s Travels off the shelf and was thumbing through its pages when a deep voice spoke in hushed tones quite near her ear. “Lady Grace. What a pleasant surprise.”
She whirled around and nearly fell into Damon’s arms. He stood mere inches away, a wolfish grin on his face. Had Bess noticed him? Grace tried to peer around him, but the man was so big she couldn’t see anything but his chest and shoulders, delineated nicely under a well-fitted coat. Black, unsurprisingly, as was his undershirt, though Grace suspected it was not mourning that drove his sartorial choices. He’d affixed a skull stickpin to his cravat, as usual, though this one was winking.
“Your—Damon. I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“We seem to frequent the same places.”
“Indeed.” Balls. Bookshops. The park.
Their repeated encounters shouldn’t surprise her; though London was a large city, members of the ton and indeed those of ducal families moved in smaller circles, frequenting the same social affairs, the same entertainments. The same shops. As she and Damon were both book lovers who preferred to eschew company for the sake of printed words, did it not make sense they should find each other in a bookshop again?
She looked at the large volume clasped in his hand. “Oh, what are you reading?”
He held up the book. “Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Volume One. I’ve always wanted to read the set, but we didn’t have it at the abbey.” He gestured toward the tome she held. “And you?”
“Gulliver’s Travels.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Never cared for that one.”
“No?” She set the book back on the shelf.
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” he said with a chuckle.
She walked a few steps away, running her fingers along the titles.
He followed.
His nearness was overwhelming, intoxicating, and she wanted to inhale deeply to absorb the delicious, masculine scent of him.
“I trust you,” she breathed, looking into the clear blue of his eyes.
“Those are perhaps the sweetest words anyone has ever spoken to me,” he said, his voice husky. He reached forward and traced the edge of her ear before dropping his hand back to his side. “Forgive me. I cannot seem to resist touching you when I am in your presence.”
Grace should make her excuses and leave. That’s what her mother would want. For the sake of the family. But as she soaked in his face, his smoldering eyes, she couldn’t. She didn’t want to. Her fingers trembled. Oh, to reach out and caress him, to run her fingers through his ebony hair, over those admittedly devilish eyebrows, along his high cheekbones, and across those lips, those sensuous lips.
Would anyone notice? The aisles were narrow and packed with books. The proprietor hummed to himself as he filed books an aisle or two away, but she couldn’t see him. Could Bess see her? She bit her lip in indecision.
“Am I disturbing you? Should I leave?”
“No, no,” she blurted out. “I just … that is … my mother has forbidden me to see you.”
“Forbidden? What, would she have you wear a blindfold, lest I cross your view at any given social event?” His tone was light, but the derisive undercurrent unmistakable.
“I—No. She fears your reputation might damage my sisters’ chances of making suitable matches.”
Damon’s mouth contorted in a grimace. “That bad, am I?” He settled the book under his arm and turned to go.
She grabbed at his elbow. “I didn’t say I felt that way,” she cried.
He turned to face her, her hand still on his arm.
“I don’t! You know I don’t. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hurt my family,” she said, her voice softer.
He stepped back, separating them, his face shuttered. “That is something you have to decide for yourself. Whether the Demon Duke is worth the risk.”
She jutted out her chin. “It’s not as if we are officially courting. There are no promises between us.”
He closed the distance between them instantly, leaning his head down so that their lips were mere millimeters apart. No part of them touched.
“Are there not?” His blue eyes trapped her brown ones. She dared not breathe. “Do you think I have ever pursued another woman the way I have pursued you? Do you think I have come calling on anyone else?” He scoffed. “Given my peculiarities, do you think I’ve ever dared to let anyone in, to share any of my secrets? Do you think I’ve risked that, or would risk that, with anyone else, Grace?”
She swallowed. “No,” she whispered.
“Say it again.”
“No,” she said in a firmer voice.
He heaved a heavy sigh. “I would like nothing else than to take you in my arms, right here and now, and show you just how much I am courting you.”
His eyes dropped again to her lips and then lower. “I would kiss you, yes, but I want to do so much more. I want to run my fingers through your hair, that gorgeous mahogany mass. I want to undo the buttons on the back of your dress. Slowly. Very slowly. I want to kiss your spine after every inch revealed. I want to slide my hands in and around your sides, feel the smooth satin of your skin, feel your—”
She put her hand to his lips, trying to stop him, trying to stop the flood of images and heat his words evoked. He licked her fingers, then pulled one into his mouth, sucking on it ever so lightly. The most curious current of sensation spread through her, down to her core. She gasped.
He released her finger and stepped back, dazzling her with an absolutely devilish grin. “I do hope you are attending the Smythington ball. I look forward to dancing again with you. And you alone.” Turning, he strode out of the shop without a backward glance, leaving Grace standing, her mouth agape.
“Lady Grace,” Bess called, hesitancy in her voice. “Are you ready, milady?”
Had Bess been watching her with Damon? Hopefully if she had, she hadn’t seen anything untoward, with Damon’s back to her, blocking much of the view. But would Bess tell her sisters? Her mother?
Grace squared her shoulders. As she’d insisted to her mother, she was no longer a child. She needed to stop acting like one. If Damon Blackbourne, Duke of Malford, wished to court her, the only sound reason for her to refuse him would be if she, not her family, didn’t wish him to.
Did she wish him to? The purpose of courtship was to secure an engagement. An engagement which led to marriage. Marrying meant giving herself to a man, subjugating herself to his whims and desires. It meant loss of what little independence she had. Didn’t it?
She’d thought so, until Eliza. Eliza and Deveric proved marriage could be a happy thing, a union of souls, each with their own freedom within the arrangement. A happy ever after not confined to the pages of a novel. But Eliza and Deveric loved each other. Mutual love was what made the difference between a happy marriage and one such as her parents had endured.
Could Grace love the Duke of Malford? Could he love her?
She was attracted to him, of that there was no doubt. But attraction was no basis for marriage. And their acquaintance had been of such limited duration, love was not yet part of the equation. It could be, however. Yes, given time to better know each other, time to form a true attachment, she might love Damon Blackbourne.
She wouldn’t marry for anything less.
But what of her sisters? As much as she’d like to dismiss her mother’s protestations out of hand, the harsh reality was, reputation mattered. If she were to marry the Duke of Malford, what further damage might it do to the Mattersley name? Or was it sullied enough that they needn’t give it further thought?
Damon ought not to sully it, however. The Demon Duke, indeed. What rubbish. He was a fine man, a gentleman through and through—more so than many a peer of her acquaintance. People merely needed to see that, to see him in a new and different light. To give him a chance.
Like the chance they never gave Amara?
“Milady?” came Bess’s voice again, closer.
“I am coming,” Grace called.
How could she explain her length of time there, her dawdling, that she had no book in her hands? She looked to the nearest shelf. Damon had at some point set the Gibbon book on it. She took up the leather-bound volume. She would purchase the set for him and give it to him at the next opportunity. A single woman presenting an eligible man with a gift was unheard of, scandalous, even.
Maybe her sister Amara wasn’t the only one capable of stirring things up in the Mattersley family.