The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series (13 page)

“You cannot refuse,” Miss Peppertree said. “It would be rude.”

“But it’s so sudden,” Charlotte said.

Miss Peppertree’s mouth thinned. “So was your engagement.”

“Well, I am not attending the theater dressed like a—”

“—a schoolmistress?” Miss Peppertree said.

“Wear the dress you wore to the ball, Miss Boscastle,” one of the girls suggested.

“But I can’t be seen in it twice in the same week.”

“The duke isn’t going to notice,” the girl said with a confidence that Charlotte wished she could share.

She put down her cup, her lips pursed. The duke would notice. He would definitely remember the dress.

Lucy Martout spoke up. “I have a gown that is too long for my height and rather risqué in the bodice.”

Charlotte bit her lip. “Isn’t that the gown that I forbade you to wear outside your room?”

“Yes,” Lucy said, rising from the table. “We’ll make you look a queen, Miss Boscastle.”

“A duchess will do well enough,” Miss Peppertree announced from her table.

“She is quite right, girls,” Charlotte said. “I should not aspire to look tawdry.”

Miss Peppertree’s next pronouncement startled Charlotte but delighted everyone else in the room. “On the other hand, a lady does not need to appear underdressed and unconcerned about the latest fashion. A future duchess should look stylish.”

Charlotte sent her a grateful look. How could she leave this gentle harbor of refinement? “Miss—”

“You need to wear a better corset,” Verity said, separated from the others by her background of coarse abuse. “Gentlemen like nothing more than a big pair of kettledrums.”

Charlotte turned to her in despair. “Verity Cresswell, you should have your mouth rinsed out with vinegar for that.”

Miss Peppertree sniffed and drew a handkerchief from her pocket. “Why? It is the woeful truth and has been since time began. There is no need for an engaged woman to hide either her bosoms or her light under a bushel.”

Her light? In the three hours it took for Gideon’s carriage to arrive, the entire academy conspired to ignite an inner flame of confidence inside Charlotte. They brushed and fussed and pinned her blond hair into loose curls upon her shoulders. They draped her curves in shimmery
pink silk. She felt elegant as Rankin, the footman, proudly escorted her from the house.

Gideon was waiting outside his carriage, his back toward her, his arm resting on the door. How arresting he looked in his black top hat and long-tailed woolen evening coat. But how different they were from each other. And—they were virtually strangers who would soon be forced into intimacy.

He turned, his face set in an impatient frown until she moved under the lamplight. His dark eyes swept over every detail of her appearance. She couldn’t decide whether he was amused, displeased, or something else. But his brooding stare riveted her to the spot. She wondered, in fact, if they would stand there forever, suspended in hesitation, until Miss Peppertree and the girls made an unsubtle appearance at the window to watch them.

“Charlotte,” he said, holding out his hand, both of them ignoring their audience in the window above.

Be fire to fire.

“Charlotte!” Jane’s cheerful voice called from inside the carriage, and the spellbinding moment snapped like a thread. “You are stunning tonight! Isn’t she, Gideon?”

“Yes,” he said, his grasp on her hand tightening. And as he drew her to the carriage he added, “I have an opera cloak inside here.” He reached back across the seat. “Maybe you should borrow it for the night.”

“Is that your way of telling me you don’t approve of my dress?”

“Not at all. It’s my way of telling you that I don’t wish to share with London what I have acquired at such a steep personal cost.”

She held still as he draped the cloak around her bare shoulders. “I do have my own shawl with me,” she murmured
in amusement. “Your cloak does not match my dress, Your Grace.”

“We do not match, either,” he said, reclaiming her hand. “But we will still make a marriage. And in case I have not made myself clear, I agree with Jane: You look beautiful this evening.”

T
he courtship had begun. As expected, the duke’s arrival at the theater with his fiancée and the popular marquess and his wife stopped conversation and turned heads. Charlotte was every bit as in awe of Gideon as was his audience.

She had no idea what the play was about. She didn’t care. She could not concentrate on the stage with Gideon, so handsomely groomed, sitting beside her. He kept his hand upon hers, and she wasn’t sure whether he meant it as an amorous gesture or whether he was putting on a show for Grayson’s benefit.

Either way, she welcomed Gideon’s touch and wished she knew a polite way to reciprocate.

At intermission Grayson and Jane excused themselves to visit with friends in another box. Charlotte waited for Gideon to lift his hand away. Instead, he turned and pulled her into his arms. His hands slid between
her shoulder blades to crush her to his hard chest. His mouth came down on hers.

It was a deep kiss of desire. It was an unsubtle taunt to all her senses. He broke off only when she was breathless. A nagging voice warned her that he might be playing a role. She certainly was not. He had ignited a smoldering ache of sensuality inside her that made her aware of her vulnerability whenever she was near him.

“Did you dress to please me tonight?” he whispered, his eyes dark with allure.

“Who else?”

He bent his head to brush a lingering kiss on her lips. His mouth stung her like sweet fire. She closed her eyes, lost, simmering with pleasure. “Soon you’ll be undressing to please me.”

“Not in a theater box…” Her eyes flew open.

Gideon had lifted his head and released her, casually resettling in his seat a moment before Jane and Grayson returned to their seats.
He’s too practiced at this,
she decided, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. His air of attractive elegance gave no hint that he had kissed her into witless havoc moments ago. He appeared slightly detached from his surroundings, if anything.

Of course, it was impossible to completely deceive a lady of Jane’s cunning. Jane took her seat, stared at the stage in contemplation, and said, “Did we miss much while we were gone?”

Charlotte should have taken a page from Gideon’s book of vast experience and given only a vague response. Rather than following his sage example, she had to betray her guilt by volunteering an excess of information.

“No. No. The curtains are still closed. We haven’t
heard a peep from the players. I think the management might have asked some young men in the audience to stop tossing about an orange, and, well, I don’t think you missed anything.”

Jane turned to her with an angelic smile. “I wasn’t talking about the stage, dearest.”

“Oh.”

After that Charlotte could not even pretend to concentrate on the performance. The actors might have been trained monkeys, for all she noticed. She wanted the evening to go on forever. But at last the curtain fell on the final act. Gideon rose, enveloping her briefly in the disconcerting warmth of his shadow.

There was a small crowd waiting outside their box, friends calling out greetings to Gideon and Grayson; others were sweeping Jane off toward the stairs. Charlotte felt a hand descend heavily upon her shoulder. She heard a masculine voice repeating her name.

She turned into the press of bodies, the scent of tallow, sawdust, and perfume overpowering. Engaged or not, she would have to advise Gideon that his affectionate gestures should be saved for when they were alone.

Actually, he was pulling at her with such dogged determination that she was tempted to give him a solid thump of her fan. Except that as she looked up she saw Gideon was standing in a corner of the lobby, engaged in conversation with Grayson and three other gentlemen. Alarmed, she realized that it wasn’t Gideon’s gray-gloved hand that had so rudely claimed her. She glanced around slowly into a grinning face she had done her best to forget.

“Charlotte, I almost didn’t recognize you,” Phillip Moreland said, his eyes bright with excitement. “We’ve
been in London only a few hours and I was dying to see you. I know I should have waited until the play was over. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Caleb and I traveled together.”

She backed up against another theatergoer, resisting Phillip’s painful grasp. Caleb, her eldest brother. Where was he? Where had Gideon gone? She glanced around the lobby in search of him, of anyone, to rescue her.

“Charlotte?” Phillip laughed. “Why don’t you say something? I hoped to surprise you, not give you a shock. What is this nonsense that spinster at your school was spouting about your marrying a duke?”

“It’s true.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is. Let go of my hand.”

“Not likely. I lost you once. It’s not going to happen again.”

“Well, I’m warning you again. Let me go.”

He didn’t. He gripped her harder.

She lifted her free hand in the air. He glanced up. And her fan came down.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, reaching up to either protect himself from another blow or to feel whether a lump was coming out on his forehead. “I’ll have a bruise there in the morning. How will I explain it?”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you attacked me.”

“Attacked?” He narrowed his eyes. “London has changed you, Charlotte, and not for the better. I will be glad to take you back where you belong.”

She leaned away from him. Where she belonged? She knew where she belonged. It was here, with Gideon, and not with this embarrassing pretender from her past. Perhaps when she’d first arrived in London she had been
homesick for her family and their country home. But she hadn’t missed Phillip. And she most certainly had no intention of allowing him to take her away from the duke.

Sir Daniel Mallory often walked alone at night, usually with no destination in mind. Tonight he was on his way to London’s most exclusive brothel. For business. A clash with the proprietress was certain. They had engaged in a secret liaison last year during one of his investigations. These days they met infrequently and clashed like thunderclouds when they did.

He expelled a sigh, reviewing his conversation with Miss Charlotte Boscastle. She had caught him off guard with her confession.

Working for the Boscastles paid well; it gave him time to spend with the niece and nephew he had taken into his home after his sister had been murdered.

Finding a lady’s diary wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of his profession, even though he understood why it caused the family distress. Even though it meant he would have to question a witness who harbored an intense hatred for him in her heart.

Gideon straightened. He could not have seen what he thought he saw—a man accosting Charlotte in the corner of the theater lobby. Who did this joker think he was? Who dared to lay his hands on a lady in public? Well, Gideon did, but that was entirely different. He had yet to meet a woman who shunned his attention when he set his mind on seduction.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, cutting off an acquaintance midsentence. “There is trouble afoot, and I intend to stop it.”

He plowed unceremoniously through the crowd, ignoring the whispers he left in his wake, until he reached the man Charlotte had just crowned on the pate with her fan.

A
udrey Watson sat alone in the upstairs parlor where she occasionally entertained select guests.

She maintained an elegant but well-guarded seraglio. Secret traps from the roof to the cellar caught the curious intruder who hoped for a glimpse of the house’s celebrated decadence. But privacy was guaranteed to a paying guest.

Many university students thought the risk of capture was worth the chance to meet the infamous Mrs. Watson. On occasion she had even invited a brave invader or two to enjoy her company.

Naturally she had her favorite guests. The Boscastles had the right of entrée on any given evening, and her attachment to the family had nothing to do with sexual favors and everything to do with friendship.

Therefore it was unfortunate that the family had hired Sir Daniel Mallory as their private agent and bodyguard.

It was well after midnight, the time during which the house came to life. She had already been informed that Sir Daniel had arrived to speak with her. She waited for a servant to bring her uninvited caller into her presence. Her nemesis, as she tauntingly referred to him. Sir Daniel challenged every aspect of her unconventional life whenever he had the chance. Ever since they had engaged in their short affair, he seemed to have assumed the unsolicited role as her personal policeman.

Her heart seemed to beat in time with his footfalls on the carpet. She could feel the disdain in his eyes as he waited for her to acknowledge him. With a provocative smile she looked up past him to her bodyguard. “You may go. I don’t think our hero of the metropolis means me any harm. Do you, Sir Daniel?”

He smiled without humor. “No more than you mean yourself.” He gestured to the chair across from her. “May I?”

“Please.” And at length, because she was a person who indulged herself in any random pleasure, she looked him in the face. Fascinating countenance, his. Not at all handsome, with that obstinate chin and those craggy cheeks that might have been creased from the tears he shed for the sinful world he could not save.

Then she felt the judgment in his eyes that he had once masked, and her hackles went up in self-defense. “What do you want of me?”

“A decent life, but we both know that will never happen.”

“As long as there exist men like you to shift the blame. Why don’t you remove your cloak? Or are you afraid you will be tempted again?”

His lips tightened. He turned his hat over in his hands. “I didn’t come here to fight.”

“Or to find pleasure?”

“The family we both respect has asked my help in finding a personal diary that disappeared in the night. It was last in the Duke of Wynfield’s possession.”

Audrey stared at him. “The only rule that I faithfully observe is that all secrets remain safe in this house.” And for that reason she maintained a faithful clientele that consisted of politicians, dignitaries, impoverished poets, and affluent lords alike.