What a Duke Dares

Chapter Four

Oldhaven House, London, February 1828

Harry Thorne took one last puff on his cheroot and tossed it with a contemptuous flick into the bushes lining the terrace. He hadn’t enjoyed it, although smoking was the craze for the young bucks he ran with.

Just lately he didn’t enjoy much. The malaise had set in last month after his older brother Peter’s death. The exciting life that a fellow of twenty-three with no responsibilities led in the capital had lost all savor.

Guilt added to his depressed spirits. Hell, if he’d known the truth about Peter’s troubles, he’d have rushed to his brother’s side. But Peter had kept his difficulties to himself. Still, it was a damned bitter pill to swallow that his brother had breathed his last, alone in a foreign country, and Harry hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye.

Harry wandered away from the ballroom into the dark garden. The violins scratching out the latest waltz faded until the music was a whisper.

Somewhere out here Lady Vera Standish waited, finally ready, if he read the signals, to surrender her plump prettiness. She’d challenged him to find her. After months of dogged pursuit, he damn well hoped she wasn’t trying too hard to hide.

Except even the prospect of exploring Lady Vera’s much admired, and much caressed charms didn’t dispel his megrims. He reached the garden wall, well away from the house. When he heard a rustle, he turned, struggling to muster a flicker of excitement.

Then a sound he didn’t expect. A sniff and a muffled sob.

Not Lady Vera.

He retreated to grant some privacy to whoever huddled in the bushes.

Another sniff. Another choked sob.

He took a couple of steps down the white gravel path. If someone cried out here alone, it was none of his damned business. If he delayed, Vera Standish would turn to some other swain. She wasn’t noted for her patience.

His shoe scraped across a rock. Silence descended. Whoever was hiding now knew that she wasn’t alone.

Harry recognized that he was incapable of leaving someone to suffer. As a rake and roué, he was a rank failure. With a sigh, he turned toward the holly-smothered alcove. As he battled through the prickly greenery, he couldn’t help thinking of the prince struggling through thorns toward Sleeping Beauty.

“Please don’t come any closer,” a soft, broken voice whispered from mere feet away.

“Too late,” he muttered, bursting through the hedge into an enclosed hollow. His eyes had adjusted and he easily made out the girl in a light-colored gown cowering against the wooden seat.

“Go away.” Although he couldn’t see her face, she sounded very young. Her lace handkerchief twisted in her hands.

“Are you all right?” He ventured closer and she pressed back.

“Perfectly.”

There. He’d asked. She was fine. He could now find Lady Vera. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying.” Her quaking voice proclaimed her a liar.

“You sound like you are.”

“It’s a bad cold,” she said stiffly.

“You shouldn’t be sitting outside, then.”

“And you shouldn’t be talking to strange women without an introduction.”

The show of spirit intrigued him. He could make out very little apart from her slenderness and the constant tugging at the handkerchief.

“Are you?”

“Am I what?” she asked with a hint of snap.

He hid a smile. “Strange.”

She stood. The full moon chose that moment to emerge from behind a cloud, granting his first glimpse of his damsel in distress.

He felt like someone had punched him in the gut.

How in hell had he missed her before this? Had he been so fixated on the pinchbeck of Vera Standish when somewhere in that ballroom waited pure gold?

“I’m not strange.” She surveyed him with wide eyes in a delicate face under a pile of thick golden hair. “I’m beginning to think you might be.”

His damsel was breathtakingly lovely. “Why the devil are you sitting out here all alone?” he asked roughly. “You don’t know who might come upon you.”

Tentative mischief lit her expression. He’d been right to suspect liveliness beneath her distress. “Well, you did.”

He should say something rakish. But when he looked at her, his heart stopped. She was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Who on earth was she? Damn it, he’d been out in society since leaving university and he had a reputation as a dog with the ladies. But this girl stole his ability to do more than mumble and act the looby. He managed a smile, quite a feat when his heart performed somersaults in his chest. “I’m generally accounted quite benign.”

She stared at him as if she’d never seen a man. “I should go.”

He chanced a step nearer and felt a surge of triumph when she didn’t retreat, although even in the uncertain light, he saw her wariness. Not quite as innocent as all that, apparently. “You don’t want to go back into the ballroom with red eyes.”

“Nobody would notice.”

His laugh was short. “This is your first season, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then take advice from someone older and wiser—the old tabbies notice everything. And they pass it on. If you don’t want the world to know that you’ve been crying, you’ll enter that room utterly composed.”

Her lush lips turned down. “I don’t like London.”

“You will.”

Daringly he reached for one of her gloved hands. She started, but even through two layers of fabric, he felt her warmth. The urge to strip away both gloves and test the softness of her skin beat like a war drum in his head. But one false move and she’d scarper for the ballroom, red eyes or not.

“I’m not so green that I don’t know a stranger shouldn’t hold a lady’s hand,” she said drily.

“Yes, remiss of you not to tell me your name.”

To his surprise, she laughed. He was glad to see her regain her cheerfulness. “It’s better that you don’t know who I am.”

“Won’t you tell me why you’re crying?”

She raised shining eyes to his and he suffered another blow from an invisible assailant. “You’ve just told me I can’t trust anyone.”

Hoist by his own petard. “You can trust me.”

An unimpressed look crossed her face. “I’m sure every untrustworthy person in the world says that.”

Good Lord, she was sweet. “Where does that leave us?”

“With plans to return to the ballroom?”

“Are you deserting me?”

Another faint smile. He had a delicious sense that she tested her power. “Yes.”

He fleetingly wondered whether perhaps he’d dipped too deeply into the punch. But when her smile widened and his heart lurched like a drunken sailor, he recognized that this intoxication reached far beyond lowly alcohol’s power. “Cruel beauty.”

“How can I be cruel when you’ve been so very kind?”

He groaned. “That makes me sound like an aged uncle.”

This time when she tried to withdraw, he let her. “Nevertheless, it’s true.”

“Will you save me a dance?”

Her poise revived with every second. “My card is full.”

“What about tomorrow night?”

“We mightn’t be at the same party.”

It was his turn to smile. “Oh, that we will, my mysterious miss.”

The moonlight was bright enough to reveal the flash of unhappiness that crossed her face. “There’s no point flirting with me.”

“There’s every point.”

She shook her head and he wished he believed that she teased him. “I’m spoken for.”

Spoken for? “You’re not married?”

Thick sheets of lead coated the heart that had been lighter than air. Something had happened to him tonight in this garden, something momentous.

“Not yet.”

Not yet? What the hell did that mean?

Before he could question her, she turned and hared off through an opening in the hedge that he’d missed. And bugger it, he still didn’t know her name.

Something in him insisted that she’d seen him as clearly as he’d seen her. That she’d felt the immediate connection. Stronger than attraction. Affinity, and an odd recognition, as though their encounter was preordained.

He sighed and sank onto the seat. Could a man’s world change in an instant?

When Harry rejoined the party, he immediately located the girl. He’d wondered whether to blame the moonlight for his enchantment. Now that he saw her clearly, she still took his breath away. Candlelight revealed details that he’d missed. The precise shade of her gold hair. The creamy skin. The pink flush on her cheeks.

A pink flush that heightened when she cast one nervous glance to where he stood near the doors.

Satisfaction that she’d sought him out flooded him. His eyes followed her as she twirled around the room, graceful as a flying bird in her white dress. She was dancing with the Marquess of Leath. Could his rival be James Fairbrother? The man was filthy rich and from a powerful family.

Across the crowded room, Lady Vera scowled at him as if she’d like to skin him alive. He shrugged and sent her a regretful smile. How could he explain that after a chance meeting, he was no longer the same man?

“Who is that pretty girl with Leath?” he asked with studied nonchalance when his friend Beswick sidled up.

Beswick took a few moments to locate her. The man must be blind. She outshone every woman here the way the sun outshone the moon. “The blonde?”

The goddess. “Yes.”

“That’s Sophie Fairbrother.” Beswick regarded him in disbelief. “That’s setting your sights too high for a penniless younger son with no prospects, chum. She’s Leath’s sister. Word is that she’s promised to Desborough, although nothing official’s been announced.”

Another punch in the guts. Was that why his beauty had been crying? Her family forced her into an unwanted match? “Earl Desborough?”

Beswick laughed derisively. “Is there another? He and Leath are political pals and this will unite the two great fortunes. The chit comes with a fat dowry. Surprised you haven’t heard talk of her.”

“Does she love Desborough?” Harry asked, then cursed himself for the betraying question.

Another scoffing laugh from Beswick. “Who cares when she brings all that gold? Good God, I’d make a play for her myself if Leath didn’t know that my pockets are to let. Wish he’d forget about fortune hunters and concentrate on his spat with Sedgemoor.”

Without shifting his attention from Sophie Fairbrother, Harry asked, “What spat?”

“Have you been living under a rock?”

Harry cast his friend a look of cordial dislike. “No, just attending Peter’s funeral and helping Elias settle into his role as the new Lord Wilmott.”

Dismay filled Beswick’s good-natured face. “Beg pardon, old man. I forgot. Blame it on my frustration at seeing such a fat pigeon fly to someone who already has a full dovecote.”

Reluctantly Harry smiled. Beswick’s financial woes were long-standing. “Buck up, Beswick. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

“Especially if you can’t afford candles,” his friend replied glumly. “You must have heard about Richard Harmsworth and Sedgemoor exposing Neville Fairbrother, Leath’s uncle, as a thief? Fairbrother shot himself before charges were laid, but the investigation has filled the papers. Jonas Merrick gathered most of the evidence—as you’d expect with his contacts. That man knows before a mouse farts in the wainscoting, I vow.”

Perhaps Harry had been living under a rock. “The uncle’s doings have tainted all the Fairbrothers?”

“Pretty much. The word is that Leath hopes this spectacular marriage will restore the family prestige.”

“So she’s a sacrificial lamb.” Poor Sophie. The dance finished and her brother returned her to a group of grandees including, he noticed, Desborough.

“Sacrificial virgin, more like.” Beswick’s voice lowered. “Desborough’s a lucky dog. Brass doesn’t usually come in such an appealing package.”

“Watch your mouth, Beswick,” Harry snarled.

Even without looking, Harry knew his friend regarded him like he was going mad. The way he felt, perhaps his friend was right. “Steady on, man. She’s a pretty girl who’s completely out of reach. We’ve admired plenty of those in our time.”

The Thornes were inclined to sudden, but lasting passions. Sophie Fairbrother had no idea what she’d sparked tonight. As if she sensed his thoughts, Sophie looked up sharply and immediately found him. Even across the room, he saw the hectic color in her alabaster cheeks. Dear Lord, she was a peach.

Harry held her eyes. He meant to make her his. Let the rest of the world go hang.