Chapter 5
The only silence amidst Lady Westmoreland’s entire hall happened to be with the five people seated in the very last row.
Mother broke the awkward pall. She rose in a flutter of silvery-grey skirts. “Your Grace,” she tittered behind her hand. “What an absolute pleasure.”
Anne winced and reluctantly came to her feet wishing she could dissolve into a puddle of embarrassment at Mother’s clear grasping.
Polite greetings were exchanged between Katherine’s husband, the Duke of Bainbridge and the young Duke of Crawford.
She waited for a hint of jubilance at the duke’s seeming interest, yet as she studied him conversing with her brother-in-law, she felt only a bored disinterest in what matters the two young dukes cared to discuss.
The heart of a duke. This is what you want. You’ve dreamed of the title of duchess and with it the security and stability represented in that lofty ascension of rank.
With pleasantries aside, the Duke of Crawford turned the full force of his ducal regard on Anne. She shifted at his intent scrutiny, while fingering the ribbon woven through her hair. The duke’s gaze drifted lower and her cheeks burned.
She released the satin striped fabric. “Your Grace,” she murmured and sank into a deep, respectful curtsy.
The duke claimed her hand. “Lady Anne,” he said quietly. His lips hovered above the inner portion of her wrist and he raised it to his mouth.
Disappointment surged through her at her body’s total lack of awareness of that slight caress. He released her hand and she fisted the fabric of her skirts. From the corner of her eye she detected Harry’s hot, furious stare. What did he have to be angry with? He was the cad who’d been eying her sister in the midst of the recital, which only mattered because he was supposed to be feigning interest in Anne.
The Duke of Crawford looked between them.
Liar.
He settled his autocratic gaze on Harry. “Not your usual entertainments for the evening, Stanhope, eh? I thought you made it a rule to avoid all respectable events.” He chuckled at his own charge.
Annoyance churned inside her. She knew the man was a duke and surely had been reared to believe he could say anything without fear of rebuke, but really, his words were borderline crass.
Harry’s hard muscles went taut, straining the fabric of his expertly tailored black coat. But then his firm lips turned up in a half-grin, an insolent smile for the other man, proof that she’d merely imagined his reaction to the duke’s words. “Some rules are meant to be broken. And,” he looked to Anne. “Some people are worth breaking rules for.”
Her breath caught. And she knew his words, the look in his eye was merely part of his efforts to help her secure the duke’s hand, yet, in that moment everything, everyone melted away so that just they two remained.
“Indeed,” the duke murmured. He shifted his attention to Anne, promptly dismissing the earl. “My lady, may I request the pleasure of calling on you?”
Anne looked around, uncertain why her sister, mother, and Harry were staring at her. Then it occurred to her. “You want to call on me?” Embarrassment twisted in her belly. “I…that is—”
“What my daughter means to say, Your Grace,” Mother interjected with a pointed glance for Anne. “Is that she would very much welcome your visit. Isn’t that right, Anne?”
Anne managed a jerky nod. “Er, yes.” This is exactly what she wanted. “I would welcome a visit, Your Grace,” she finished lamely. Perhaps Harry would need to instruct her on the art of communicating with an eligible lord on the marriage mart, as well.
The duke appeared amused by her confounded response. His lips twitched and he captured her hand. “Until tomorrow then, my lady,” he murmured. He placed a final kiss on the top of her hand.
Couldn’t there be shivers of awareness, like she felt at Harry’s touch?
Couldn’t there be the warm fluttery sensations in her belly she’d read about in her Gothic novels?
Couldn’t there be—something?
“I look forward to your visit,” she said softly. All the while, Harry’s hard gaze fairly burned a hole into her person.
The Lady Westmorelands returned to the front of the hall, signifying the beginning of the next set of performances was to begin.
The duke released her hand after a longer than appropriate amount of time. “Stanhope,” he said, his tone harder than before. He bowed to the other gentleman and then bid the remainder of her party a good evening.
“Well,” Katherine said, a smile on her lips.
Anne sank back into her seat. “Well, what?”
Her sister sat and whispered, “The heart of a duke. It appears you are on your way to the title of duchess, sister.” She made a face. “Oh, dear. That sounded rather mercurial. I’d not have you wed a duke unless your heart is engaged. Nor any gentleman for that matter or—”
“Hush, Kat. This isn’t the place.” Her sister appeared ready to launch a full-defense of her earlier words. Then something only twins shared, passed between them and Katherine gave a solemn nod.
As she settled into her uncomfortable chair, she thought she should feel a giddy sense of victory, yet all she felt at the duke’s interest was oddly hollow. He did not know her. He’d not even spoken but a murmured greeting at all the functions they’d attended together. Until the ribbon.
Until Harry and his blasted advice.
Advice she’d sought.
And welcomed…
But… She didn’t want the duke to want her for her…her…endowments alone. “Silly,” she mumbled.
“What was that, sweet?”
“Don’t call me sweet, Harry,” she said, not taking her gaze from the front of the hall where Lady Leah Westmoreland reclaimed the pianoforte bench.
“What would you have me call you? Duchess?” Thick sarcasm underscored his question.
She flinched at his deliberately placed barb. “Must you be so odious?” She blinked back foolish tears of hurt and glared at him.
Instead of properly chastised, Harry quirked another golden eyebrow. He leaned close so his brandy-scented breath fanned her lips. “Isn’t that what you want, sweet?” he said, almost tauntingly. “Title of duchess and by Crawford’s interest in that,” he jerked his chin at her satin ribbon, “golden ringlet—”
“Which is not silly,” she cut in.
“Which is silly. Well, then I’d wager all my coffers in the book at White’s that you’ll be carrying the duke’s heir by next Christmastide season,” he said, a biting edge to his prediction.
She gasped. Her fingers twitched with the urge to slap his smug, rude, arrogant, condescending face. Katherine looked over with a question in her eyes. Anne shook her head and her sister returned her attention to the performance.
A spark glinted in Harry’s hazel eyes.
With his roguish cynicism, Harry judged her interest in the duke and sought to taunt her for those efforts. She’d not allow him that satisfaction.
Anne relaxed her fingers. “Then your lessons on seduction should come in quite handy, my lord.” She sat back in her seat and promptly dismissed him.
~*~
At Anne’s rebuttal, fury thrummed through Harry’s veins, hot and volatile. By God, that he should school her in the ways in which to use her body and charms to catch another gentleman while he himself remained ignorant as to the color of the nipples atop those generous swells, or the pleasure of her touch, or the sound of her damned laughter, infuriated him.
He steeled his jaw. This sudden, inexplicable interest in Lady Anne was merely about sex. He’d never before noticed her lush form and now, well hell, now he did, and he wanted to know all of her. In the physical sense. Margaret’s deception had shown him there was nothing else to know of a woman outside of the pleasure to be had in her arms.
He might mock Anne’s efforts to land Crawford, but the reality was Harry had well-learned the way of their calculated world eight years ago. He’d given in to the emotion of love, given his fool’s heart to the sweetly innocent, beautiful Miss Margaret Dunn. He’d risked his very life, his reputation in a duel against Lord Rutland for the honor of the lady’s love. In the end, she’d chosen neither of them. She’d chosen wealth and status. And Harry? He had pledged to neither love nor feel again.
He didn’t care about the damned Lady Anne, tempting vixen with her sharp tongue. He pulled out his watchfob and consulted the time. He should leave. Hell, he should have left when Anne herself had made the suggestion a short while ago. A steady staccato pierced his thoughts. He dropped his gaze to the floor.
The tip of Anne’s slippers peeked out the front of the gown and beat a rhythm in time to the current song selection. All the hardened anger he’d carried since Crawford had come over and interrupted whatever this was between him and Anne, lifted. An odd shift occurred. There was something so whimsical, so endearing in Anne’s innocent gesture.
The lady enjoyed music.
Other than the fact that silver-flecks danced in her eyes when she was annoyed and that a little muscle ticked at the left corner of her lip when she frowned, Harry knew next to nothing about Lady Anne Adamson. But with her talk of contraltos and lyric sopranos, and her fixed interest in even the horrid performance of the Westmoreland girls, he found she cared about music.
He who made it a habit of not learning anything about a lady’s interests, outside of the bedchambers, that is, knew this of her. When one knew a lady’s likes and dislikes and what made her smile or laugh, and even frown, then one could no longer see merely a supple body to bed.
Christ. What was next? He’d begin sprouting sonnets about the sun-kissed golden hue of her silken ringlets?
He gave his head a hard shake and stood.
Anne looked up at him with a question in her wide-blue eyes.
He gave a curt bow and without a backward glance took his leave. The echo of his boot steps blended with the squawking squeal-like song of Lady Marissa Westmoreland. When at last he exited the palatial townhouse, he tugged at his cravat and sucked in a much-needed breath of air.
His driver hopped down from atop the black lacquer carriage and opened the door.
Harry strode over as fast as his bachelor legs could carry him and leapt inside. “To my clubs,” he said curtly.
The driver closed the door behind him and then the carriage shifted as he scrambled onto his perch.
Harry pulled back the black curtain and peered at the white stucco townhouse bathed in candlelight, unable to account for this desire to return to the too small, prim Klismos chair beside Lady Anne. The carriage sprung forward and he let the velvet fabric flutter back into place. He drummed his fingertips on the tops of his thighs, suddenly reminded of a different tapping. Specifically, two delicate slippered feet beating away a staccato rhythm upon the Italian marble floor.
He dragged a hand across his eyes. Slippered feet did not earn his notice. Bare naked toes used for wicked deeds, however, did.
As his carriage approached the front of Forbidden Pleasures, one of the most disreputable of the hells in London, Harry exited the coach resolved to put the innocent Anne from his thoughts once and for all. He strode up the three stone steps. The majordomo pulled the door open and Harry swept inside.
Raucous laughter and a cloud of thick cheroot smoke hung over the crimson-red establishment. Harry eyed the room a moment and then moved deeper into the club.
He strode over to an empty table and sat, absently viewing the debauchery before him. A liveried servant rushed over with a bottle of brandy. Harry accepted a glass and waved the man off. He splashed several fingerfuls into the tumbler and then filled it to the brim, determined to get well and fully soused. He took a sip and when that did little to diminish Anne’s disapproving eyes from his mind, he downed the entire contents.
“Well, well, Stanhope,” a voice drawled. “I thought you’d never arrive.”
He glanced up.
Lord Alex Edgerton grinned down at him. He and Edgerton went back to early days at Eton and Oxford. Theirs was the manner of friendship in which they would risk their life for the other. Harry should know. When he’d fought that foolish duel, Edgerton had been his second. Known for carousing, gaming, and over-indulging in spirits and ladies, the two were remarkably similar and good friends for it. “May I?”
Harry motioned to the chair opposite him.
Edgerton, the second son to the Marquess of Waverly tugged out a seat. A servant rushed to set down a bottle of brandy and an empty glass for the other man. The liveried footman reached for the bottle, but Edgerton waved him off. He poured himself a glass and shoved the bottle toward Harry. His friend quirked an eyebrow. “Lady Anne Adamson?” he drawled without preamble.
Harry grabbed the bottle and poured himself a third glass. He’d not come here to discuss Lady Anne but rather to bury thoughts of her in the arms of some nameless beauty with sweet lips and a clever tongue.
“Well?”
“I didn’t think there was a question there,” Harry said over the rim of his glass.
“Oh, there most certainly is a question. First Lady Katherine, now the lady’s sister.” Edgerton chuckled. “I am, of course, imagining all manner of delicious ways to entertain twin sisters.”
Harry’s fingers tightened almost reflexively about the glass, so hard he threatened to shatter the thick, crystal tumbler. “Don’t be crude, Edgerton.” He eased his grip. After all, would he not have had similar, outrageous thoughts if they’d involved anyone other than Anne?
“Crude?” Edgerton guffawed. “Never tell me you’ve gone all priggish on me.” Harry lifted one finger in a vulgar gesture. His friend laughed. “No, I suspect one wouldn’t fear you’d go all proper.” He set his elbows on the table in front of him and leaned close. “Rumor has it you were at Lady Westmoreland’s musicale.”
Rumor traveled faster than a purebred stallion on an empty Roman road. He took another sip. With Edgerton’s unwavering loyalty there was little Harry kept from him, and yet something froze all discussion of Anne on his lips. Sharing his pledge to help her felt like a betrayal of sorts.
“Tsk, tsk,” Edgerton mocked. “Attending dull, societal recitals to see an innocent miss with ringlets and ruffled white skirts?”
What is wrong with my ringlets?
A growl rumbled up his chest at those last two mocking words. There was nothing wrong with her blasted ringlets. They suited her well. Too well. Whatever the hell that meant. They just did. He really wished Edgerton would close his blasted mouth. “Go to hell,” Harry muttered. He took another sip and set the partially drunk brandy down with a thunk.
His friend drummed his fingertips on the mahogany table. “Or is it merely that you have seen a hidden diamond ready to be plucked by an eager lord?” He chuckled. “It hardly matters if a lady is as empty-headed as Lady Anne when you have her underneath you.”
Harry’s legs jerked reflexively, knocking the table. The abrupt movement rattled the glass and sent brandy spilling onto the smooth wood surface. A servant rushed forward to clean the mess. He supplied Harry with a new glass.
Lord Alex stretched his legs out in front of him. “Ahh, you must have been soused before you attended Westmoreland’s.”
He didn’t bother to correct his friend’s inaccurate assumption that he was tap-hackled. Though he’d consumed several glasses, Harry was still dead sober. Certainly sober enough to feel the chill of rage run through him at the other gentleman’s disparaging of Anne. Instead, he said nothing. He reached for the bottle and sloshed several fingerfuls, thought better of it and filled the glass to the rim.
“I’m not in the mood for company,” he said curtly. He passed a glance around at the tableau of sin unfolding before him. Young, scantily clad women on the laps of some of the leading members of Society. Nubile females bent over the tables while others slapped at their well-rounded buttocks. He frowned. Once enticed by such depravity, Harry now battled a sense of tedium.
His friend followed his stare, “Ahh, so that is why you’ve come this evening.”
Harry reached for his glass.
“That is a good deal more reassuring than imagining you’ve become a stodgy chap at recital halls courting the vain Lady Anne.”
He knocked over his second tumbler.
Edgerton cursed and jumped back in his seat as liquid spilled onto his breeches. “Bloody hell, Stanhope. I never imagined I’d say this, but you’ve indulged in enough spirits for the evening.” He yanked his chin in the direction of a blonde angel eying Harry through sultry, interested eyes. “Time to lose yourself in a lush beauty.” He motioned the woman over. “You’re in a foul mood, which I gather has much to do with that recital you attended,” he said as the tall, Spartan-like vision sidled up to Harry.
He stiffened. His foul mood, as his friend referred to it, had more to do with the gleam of interest he’d detected in the bloody perfect Duke of Crawford’s eyes earlier that evening. The bastard had eyed Anne as if she was a berry dipped in champagne and he wanted to lick every last drop from her delectable frame.
He dimly registered an expert set of hands moving from his shoulders, over his chest. He blinked at the golden-haired angel. With her skin flawlessly white and her body curved in all the places he liked his women curved, he should be eager for her attention.
She layered herself against him. “Hello, my lord,” she whispered into his ear.
Only her voice lacked the cultured tones of a certain refined young lady. “Hello,” he said at last. Her blonde hair lacked the vibrant gleam of a scorching summer sun.
She smiled, taking that simple greeting as an invitation and trailed her fingers between the deep crevice of her breasts.
He jumped up.
Edgerton looked up at him with a quizzical expression. “Are you all right, Stanhope?”
No! “Fine…just too much drink,” he lied.
The young beauty shifted her attentions to Edgerton, climbing onto his lap.
Harry raised his hand in salute and hurried from Forbidden Pleasures. What madness had Lady Anne Adamson wrought upon him? In a handful of days he’d gone from a carefree rogue who lived for his own pleasures and the pleasure he could give any woman, to this snarling, snapping, furious beast enraged at the thought of Crawford and Anne together.
He made his way out the black double doors of the establishment and paused at the threshold, absently staring out the darkened, seedy streets of London’s underbelly. The sooner Anne could bring her duke up to scratch, the sooner he could be rid of her and return to his uncomplicated, blithe lifestyle.
And by the look in Crawford’s eyes at the Westmoreland recital, it really would only be a matter of days.
Harry growled, abhorring the idea for reasons he didn’t understand.