Duke of Sin Page 9

  He folded his arms on the bath and laid his chin on them and simply stared at her, a gloriously nude man—a duke—his entire attention upon her, Bridget Crumb. His shoulders gleamed like alabaster in the candlelight and his golden hair curled damply about his neck.

  “You,” he murmured finally, “are an indecipherable puzzle. When did you read Kepler?”

  “When I was a maid in a country house there was a library that had been neglected. The worms had gotten to some of the books and the mistress said they were to be burned. I took them to read before they were destroyed. It wasn’t theft,” she added hastily. “I did burn them afterward.”

  “What else?” he whispered. “Besides Kepler?”

  She shrugged. “A history of the Roman Empire. A book on the fishes and aquatic animals of England. A book of cookery. And Shakespeare’s tragedies.”

  “How very eclectic.”

  “They were the only things I had to read.” If he made fun of her now, she’d walk out and damn the consequences.

  “So you read them—all of them?” he asked as if he was fascinated.

  “Yes.”

  “Every word? Even the bits about newts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my Séraphine,” he breathed, and what was strange was that he didn’t sound amused.

  He sounded admiring.

  “Well,” he said, sitting upright on a great splash. “No more shall you go bookless, Mrs. Crumb. From this day henceforth you have free run of my library with my compliments.”

  She stared. “I—”

  He grinned, looking not a little wicked. “Have you looked at my books? Glanced at my titles? Fondled my spines?”

  The heat in her cheeks returned, for of course she had. There were enormous volumes with gilded pages, tiny, delicate books with writing that looked like lace. There was shelf upon shelf of books that were shining new and books so old they looked ready to crumble at a single touch.

  The duke’s library was simply wonderful.

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” she said, meaning the words sincerely. “You’re most kind.”

  “No, Mrs. Crumb,” he said. “I am many, many things, but kind is not one of them.”

  She looked at him and knew she couldn’t refute his words. “Even so.”

  “Even so.” He clapped his hands, startling Pip, who came rushing out from under the bed, barking, his tail adorned with a ball of dust. “Hush, you,” said the duke, and the dog sat down.

  Bridget frowned at him.

  “And now the reason I asked for you, Mrs. Crumb,” the duke said, and her gaze immediately returned to him to find his eyes sparkling mischievously. “My plots have come to fruition, my foes are vanquished, I’ve had a nod from the King himself, and in return I’ve sent him his son’s letters—and because of all this I’ve decided to hold a victory ball to celebrate my return to London.”

  Bridget immediately came to attention. A ball on the scale that the duke would probably want would involve a month’s worth of planning and work.

  His smile widened into a grin. “And I’ll be holding it in two weeks’ time.”

  Chapter Six

  In time the old king died and King Heartless took his place. The new king decided his kingdom was too small, so he invaded his neighbors’ kingdoms, riding into battle clad in golden armor. And because he had no heart, he gave no quarter to the armies who fought him.…

  —From King Heartless

  Two weeks later Val paused a moment in the corner of his ballroom and drank in the sweet, heady liqueur of his success. Every person of import in London was here—some very much against their will, for he’d had to make gentle and not-so-gentle insinuations about the repercussions were they to refuse his invitations. Here was an elderly roué, tottering in heels, his macabre rouged face peering beneath a high periwig. The man had once whispered secrets into the ears of kings and queens and now was rumored to be dying of the dread disease. There the canny young wife of a member of parliament, much smarter than her husband, and the reason he’d been elected at all. She came from a prominent Whig family—her father and both brothers were members of Parliament—and she was rather interestingly too close to her sister-in-law. And in the corner, a French aristocrat watching carefully from behind a painted fan. He sold secrets to his own government—and to any other willing to meet his price.

  Val smiled and inhaled, breathing potential, breathing power. Oh, this was lovely. His ballroom was massed with pink and white hothouse roses, hundreds of them, making the air heavy with their perfume. Swaths of gold cloth were draped at the windows and tied at the tables placed here and there along the walls. The colors were repeated in the livery of the footmen, dozens of them, most hired especially for the ball.

  This. This was his.

  Val grinned and, employing his gold walking stick, stepped out into what he had caused to be created.

  He nodded ironically to the Duke of Kyle, drinking a glass of wine and maintaining a look of wary alertness.

  It was a popular expression tonight.

  Val exchanged pleasantries with a member of the royal family and then crossed paths with Leonard de Chartres, the Duke of Dyemore. The duke was a tall man, broad-shouldered when he’d been younger, but now beginning to stoop. He wore an elegant bag wig that only highlighted the wrinkled dissipation of the face beneath.

  Val swept Dyemore, a contemporary of his father’s, an elaborate bow and upon straightening found the elder man smiling at him, revealing long, coffee-stained teeth.

  Dyemore laid a liver-spotted hand on Val’s sleeve. “Montgomery! You’ve grown if anything more beautiful. I’m most pleased to find you’ve taken your rightful place in London society finally. You were gone so many years from our shores.” The last was said with a sort of sly twist of Dyemore’s purple lips.

  “Thank you, sir,” Val murmured. “I sailed near round the world, I vow, and returned to find everything changed, everyone aged, almost decayed some would say.”

  Dyemore’s smile didn’t falter at the admittedly unsubtle jab, but the corners of his mouth crimped, deepening the wrinkles there. “Have you decided to assume your rightful place in other areas as well? Your father, I know, would’ve wished it.”

  Dyemore moved his big arthritic hand from Val’s sleeve to his shoulder.

  Val stilled, glancing at the duke’s hand, and noticed that his sleeve had fallen back, revealing a tiny tattoo on the inside of the old man’s wrist. It was in the shape of a dolphin. “Indeed? I had thought the… club defunct by now?”

  “Oh, no, oh, no!” Dyemore chuckled. “As vital as it ever was—perhaps more so even than in your father’s time. We have a great many members. We just lack a new heir for when I decide to retire from my leadership.”

  Val glanced up into Dyemore’s eyes—a bright, bloodshot green. He remembered, long, long ago, seeing those same eyes glittering from behind a wolf’s-head mask. Yet what the duke referred to was after all just another means to power, was it not? And what power it would be—to hold dozens of England’s aristocrats in thrall…

  Val’s blood rose at just the thought, but he kept his smile serene. “Under certain circumstances, I might be amenable, Your Grace.”

  The smile this time was frankly satisfied, like that of a man who had just orgasmed down the mouth of a particularly pretty woman… or boy. “Then we should have a chat. Perhaps you’ll visit me for tea?”

  “Perhaps I will, sir.” Val bowed again with a flourish and continued on his way, wondering if he should nip upstairs for a quick bath first.

  The sight of Lady Ann Herrick, strolling arm in arm with another lady, one he’d not been introduced to yet, diverted him, however. Lady Herrick was a wealthy widow with whom he’d had a liaison last spring. By the moue she shot him she wouldn’t mind a re-acquaintance, but he’d already swum those waters. Now, her friend was another matter. A petite, buxom redhead—probably hennaed—she had the look of a woman who knew her way around a cock. He arched his e
yebrow at her and Lady Herrick’s smile abruptly dimmed, although her friend’s face brightened in almost exactly inverse proportion.

  He wondered what Mrs. Crumb’s face would look like should she find him abed on the morrow with the faux redhead. The lovely disapproval, carefully hidden. The exasperation, less well concealed. The sharp comments, meant to cut and reprimand. Oh, he would have a wonderful bickering argument with her and her cheeks would bloom that hot red as her temper rose.

  He’d lay his palms against her cheeks to feel the heat. To absorb her emotion.

  “Val.”

  The voice was Eve’s so naturally he turned, a half smile still playing about his mouth.

  His sister’s face was grave, though, as she paced toward him, that man on her arm. “Val, how did you do this? How did you reestablish yourself in London society?”

  But he had other, more important matters on his mind as he stared at her, horrified. “What are you wearing?”

  She glanced down at the… well, he supposed one must call it a gown. It did, after all, drape her form, covering her adequately if not suitably.

  She looked a little hurt. “Don’t you like my new dress?”

  “It’s…” He swallowed and turned his head, for his eyes really could not take the sight. “Yellow.”

  The man beside her made a restless movement. “So help me, Montgomery—”

  “We have the same coloring, you and I,” Val pleaded with his sister. Surely she wasn’t entirely lost to reason? Good God, was this what love did to a person? “We have golden hair, fair skin, blue eyes.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said, sounding puzzled.

  “Blues,” he said simply, because perhaps her brain was so befogged she couldn’t take in more complex words. “We look good in shades of blue.”

  He spread wide his arms, showing her the pale silvery-blue suit that he wore tonight as a demonstration.

  “You see?”

  Makepeace wrinkled his nose as if an odd thought had entered his brain. “But you’re always prancing about in pink.”

  “Yes, yes,” Val said impatiently, waving him off. “I look good in everything, really. But to be safe, blue, not yellow, darling Eve.”

  “She looks wonderful,” Makepeace said intensely, which only went to prove that he had lost his mind over this love thing, because Val might adore his sister, but no one could call her beautiful. “The dress is perfect on her.”

  “Thank you, Asa,” Eve said. “But I have something much more important to discuss with Val.” He opened his mouth to disagree—very few things trumped one’s toilet, after all—but she continued without pause. “How did you get into the King’s good graces?”

  He closed his mouth slowly and smiled. “Why, Eve, whyever wouldn’t I be in His Majesty’s favor?”

  “Because,” she said sadly, “you’re a liar and a blackmailer and, for all I know, far worse.”

  He blinked, a little… startled. Yes, startled. He’d been called much filthier things before, but never by his sister.

  Never by Eve.

  “Darling,” he said gruffly.

  “You can’t keep doing this,” she said. “You can’t keep hurting people. People I like. People who are my friends.”

  “I hardly think you’re bosom bows with His Majesty,” he said, smiling, but his words seemed to fall flat.

  “No, Val,” she said, her face stern. “No.”

  She used to be so frightened when they were young. Like a pale little ghost, slipping into the shadows, hiding from their vicious elders, trying not to be noticed.

  He’d saved her once. Swept her away like a prince in a fairy tale, but that was long ago and far away and perhaps no longer mattered. How were such things counted among normal people?

  For she’d thawed. He could see that now. She was no longer that frozen, scared little girl afraid to be noticed. Afraid to live. He supposed he should thank Makepeace for that. For taking his Eve, his sister, and blowing warm life into her. But all he could think was that in doing so, Makepeace had shattered Val’s last link to her.

  Leaving him alone in the frozen cold.

  He actually shivered, there in the overheated ballroom.

  “I love you,” she said quietly. “I always will. But this must stop. You must stop.”

  And she took Makepeace’s arm and walked away from him.

  He turned, a bit blindly. The room was bright and chattering and he was the king of London. He was. He was.

  And yet he felt as if he might be bleeding to death here in his crowded ballroom, all the warmth trickling from his body.

  Where was his bloody housekeeper anyway? It was her job to keep him warm. Probably gliding unnoticed in the back hallways, wearing black always, like the inquisitor she was. She would tell him that he’d deserved it. That his sister was right. And then her dark burning eyes would drop to his mouth and widen a bit and he’d think about throwing up her skirts, tearing through staid wool and linen, and finding out if her cunt was as hot and molten as those eyes.

  He started for the door, thinking of crimson velvet and burning eyes—and a woman’s face swam into view.

  Ah. A quarry. A victim of his plots and of his villainy.

  He diverted his course, intercepting the woman. She was on the arm of an older man, her father.

  Val swept her an abrupt bow. “Miss Royle. Sir.”

  Hippolyta Royle was the only daughter of Sir George Royle, who had gone to the East Indies to make his fortune and had done quite a good job indeed. The result was that Miss Royle had a dowry with few rivals in England.

  “Your Grace.” The lady’s face, oval and proud and naturally olive-complexioned, paled at the sight of him.

  Actually, he was rather used to that sort of reaction to his sudden appearance.

  Blackmailer, and all.

  He took her hand and brought it to his lips, peering over her knuckles. Her fingers were trembling. “Might I have the pleasure of this next dance, Miss Royle?”

  Oh, she wanted to deny him, he could tell. Her full berry-red lips were pressed together, her dark brows gathered. The lady did not look entirely happy.

  A state of affairs that didn’t escape her father. “My dear?”

  She patted the elderly man’s hand. “It’s nothing, Papa. It’s just so hot in here.”

  “Then perhaps if we venture close to the windows—”

  “Oh, but I insist on a turn on the floor,” Val purred, his pulse racing, his nostrils flared. If she darted for cover he’d spring and sink his teeth into her. She was prey—his prey, and he’d not let her go. She was a prize and he’d parade her before all. “If you please.”

  The old man frowned as if to object, but she drew a deep breath and nodded. “Certainly, Your Grace.”

  “Splendid.” He held out his hand.

  She placed hers in his and he glanced around to see who was looking, who was taking note. He frowned for just a second, irritated, for the one he truly wanted to take note wasn’t even in the damned room. Such a shame housekeepers didn’t frequent balls.

  He led her to the dance floor where he performed the steps much more gracefully than she, but that was all right. He could hire dance masters to teach her better later.

  As he brought her back to her waiting parent he lowered his head to hers and said, “I’ll call on you next week, shall I?”

  The hand on his arm jerked, but she kept her composure. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

  “I intend to court you,” he informed her kindly, and then added to make it perfectly clear, “and make you my wife.”

  She swallowed. “Oh, no.”

  He smiled. “Oh, yes.”

  She stopped dead and turned to face him, her fine dark eyes large and her delicate nostrils flared. “I don’t like you. Doesn’t that matter to you at all?”

  “No.” He smiled kindly at her, his chest still and frozen. “No one likes me.”

  BRIDGET STRODE THROUGH the bustling Hermes House kitchens, surv
eying her army of footmen and maidservants. What looked like total chaos at first glance turned to concentrated work on closer inspection. Two footmen hurried past her, bearing silver trays of filled wineglasses on their shoulders, no doubt bound for the gentlemen’s gaming room. A row of kitchen maids assembled plate after plate of salmon pâté in a golden jelly. On another table three footmen were making punch in an enormous silver bowl under the watchful eye of a hired butler.

  Bridget nodded to herself. After two weeks of near sleeplessness she’d brought off the almost impossible: a successful ball with no advance warning and no mistress of the house to hostess the event. A pity there was no history of housekeepers, for had there been, this night might have been made into legend to be told and retold through the ages, she mused rather whimsically.

  She really did need some sleep—and she thought longingly of her little room where no doubt Pip was already curled up on her bed.

  But she couldn’t rest yet.

  Right now she had to make sure the ball finished as grandly as it had begun.

  She motioned to Peg, one of the Hermes House maidservants. “Set a tray of wine for the musicians with some bread, cheese, and meat.” Bridget pointed to two of the hired footmen. “You’ll bring the trays to the musicians with my compliments for the excellent music.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the elder of the two men said, nodding.

  “And Peg?”

  “Ma’am?” Peg looked up alertly.

  “Be sure to water the wine well. They still have hours yet to play.”

  Bridget turned without waiting for Peg’s reply, heading for Mrs. Bram, when one of the hired footmen came running into the kitchens near breathless. “Gentlemen come t’ blows in th’ hall. Shattered a vase and there’s blood all about. I think someone heaved up.”