The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series (8 page)

“No.” She sighed. “You do not.”

“It will be far easier on us both if you admit why you are really here.”

She glanced at the door, as if she had the slightest hope of escaping without giving him an answer.

“You
are
in my house. When I find a woman in my bedchamber, I assume she’s offering herself for pleasure.”

“The truth is that…”

“Please. Say it.”

“…that I’m on a treasure hunt. The graduation ball went so well tonight, I thought I deserved a little fun, and so Harriet and I joined another group of friends, and here I am.”

“A treasure hunt.” His brow rose. “For something in my house? Why
my
house? It
had
to be my house?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“And the reason is?”

“Because…because the item I’m requested to collect is a duke’s kiss. And since Harriet’s husband is in Brighton, you were the nearest duke I know.”

Gideon slowly removed his gloves and hat. He didn’t know how he managed to keep a straight face. He wondered again whether he was the victim of a prank. Hadn’t Devon been involved in the treasure hunt, too? But would Devon allow his cousin to be caught in a rakehell’s room?

“I could give you more than a kiss,” he said, throwing his gloves and hat on the bed.

She shook her head. “That isn’t necessary.”

He walked around her. “And you could give me the truth.”

Charlotte felt the tension between them slowly rising, invisible, heated, as insidious as smoke. He studied her, his expression dark and indecipherable.

“Don’t you know what happens to young women who dare to enter a duke’s lair?” he asked with a shadowed smile that warned her he was well aware of the answer.

“If you knew anything about the females in my family, you wouldn’t be concerned. Duke and dragon tamers, every single one of us.”

His smile deepened. “If you knew what was running through my mind right now, you would realize that your family history doesn’t protect you at all. At least, not while we are alone.”

Her lips parted. “Are you threatening to seduce me?”

“I might be. If everyone else is on a treasure hunt tonight, why not me?”

She tried to take a breath. The air had caught fire. “You could have played if you liked, I’m sure. It was my understanding that you had other plans.”

“I would have canceled them if I’d realized you’d be waiting for me in my bedroom. You should have given me a hint at the ball.”

“Your bedroom,” she whispered. “It was a very bad choice.” Which made her wonder what had happened to his mistress. He didn’t appear to be in any hurry to remove Charlotte from the house. And he didn’t act like a man who was expecting a harlot to drop in at any moment.

“I think I would like to go on a treasure hunt, too,” he said in a pensive voice. “One that involves only two people,” he added.

“That doesn’t sound like much of a party.”

His dark eyes danced. “It is if both people intend to play.”

Charlotte held her breath as he placed his large hand on her shoulder, moving her toward the bed. Where was Harriet? What if one of the servants had apprehended her?

“This is really accommodating of you, Charlotte.” He bent his head to her neck. “How did you guess that I needed a woman in my bed tonight?”

Harriet had searched in all the obvious places—she decided that the diary wasn’t in the house. Why would a man like Wynfield bother hiding it in the first place?

She walked down the stairs in thoughtful silence. The
duke seemed capable of being an arrogant bastard, as all gentlemen in lofty positions could be. But he was a man’s man. He’d attended the ball to please the Boscastles, and then he had gone to Mrs. Watson’s to please himself.

Harriet closed her eyes as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She could hear Charlotte in the bedroom, her search apparently as fruitless as Harriet’s had been. She pictured the duke sitting across from her in his carriage. She’d concealed the diary inside her cloak. And then she had completely forgotten it.

That was the last time she had seen the diary.

In the carriage. Which meant that she would have to wait until he came home. Perhaps she could appeal to his higher instincts, although a man who had just come from a house of Venus wasn’t liable to be in a moral mood. She could hide in the carriage house and check when he went inside. But she couldn’t hide with Charlotte, who caved at the first sign of danger.

Not that this was a dangerous venture compared to Harriet’s past larks. In fact, she would search the duke’s study and then tell Charlotte that the best solution was to simply explain to Gideon what had happened. And hope that he hadn’t disposed of the diary without realizing what it was.

Charlotte would be mortified, but she would live through it. She had a good head on her shoulders. She was stronger than she realized. It was a pity, in a way, that the duke wasn’t drawn to a lady like her. In Harriet’s mind they made a lovely couple.

Nick Rydell had worked the streets of Mayfair ever since he could remember, but his proudest moments of
thievery had been training Harriet Gardner and her half brothers to commit larceny. He and the boys still collaborated from time to time and reminisced about their crimes and how it wasn’t the same without Harriet. That girl had been born to housebreak. She could see like a cat in the dark. She could walk like a whisper through a house full of people, pinching all the silver, and no one would notice until the morning.

Millie was jealous of her, because Nick had made no secret of the fact that she would never be the born criminal that Harriet had been. “You can’t blame ’er for givin’ it all up, Nick. The rats, the police, the stench of the gutters, to marry a duke. You’d ’ave married ’im yourself if you’d been asked.”

Tonight he fancied Harriet’s company; he missed her talent for housebreaking, her rude mouth, and her blazing red hair. He had always been able to impress the other girls in St. Giles. But not Harry.

He’d taken a risk and called out a favor from a cabdriver who owed him. Then he’d waited across the street from the duke’s residence for him to come home.

He waited so long that he deplored the waste of a night’s work. Still, while he’d been waiting he’d taken the opportunity to burglarize the town house straight opposite the duke’s.

To his delight he’d recognized Harriet’s small carriage lurching to a halt at the corner of the fancy square where the duke lived.

Nick scaled the garden wall, taking out a spyglass from his jacket to watch Harriet and her fair-haired companion tiptoe through the duke’s back gate.

Did Harriet have a late-night assignation with the duke? Wasn’t the one she’d married enough to please
her? And who was that fetching lady who’d accompanied her in Harriet’s carriage?

They were up to something, and Nick sensed an interesting motive behind their mischief. Before he could investigate, the duke’s carriage appeared at the corner and rolled into the gated carriage house.

Nick crossed the street and slipped through the gate. He opened the carriage door and grabbed the diary before the coachman had come back to lock up for the night.

Nick could have left it at that.

Instead, he returned to the garden wall and trained his spyglass on the upper rooms of the duke’s residence. He thought he could make out one of the women flitting behind the curtains.

Anticipation surged in his blood.

God love them.

They must be looking for the diary, too.

And here it was, resting right up against Nick’s black heart.

Had he beaten Harriet to the kill? There had to be more to this quarrel between two ladies. He’d be a fool to let the diary out of his tender keeping before he had estimated its worth. To hell with Lady Clipstone; if Harriet wanted it, the diary was invaluable.

What price could a man put on revenge?

T
he duke did not need to lure Charlotte to his bed. She would collapse across it if he kept on nuzzling her neck. His sensuality swept away reason and replaced it with irrational desire. For a year she had craved his touch. “Why don’t you tell me the truth?” he whispered, his arm locking around her waist. “I might be able to help you.”

“Your actions say otherwise.”

“In truth.” He lifted his head, his hard stare offering her no escape. “You are not here on a treasure hunt, are you?”

She drew a breath. “No. I’m not. I came here because you have my diary, and I would like it back, please.
Please.
”

His expression did not soften. She hoped he would understand. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the shambles she’d made of his wardrobe drawers, or that she’d found
what she thought were French letters tucked between a pack of playing cards and a pair of dove gray gloves.

But more than anything she hoped that he had her diary in his possession but hadn’t read it.

His deep voice caressed her. “Come downstairs to my study, Charlotte. I find it impossible to think clearly with you so close to my bed. And, yes, I have your diary.”

She was afraid to ask whether he’d read it. She felt giddy with relief that at least it wasn’t lost. He led her to his darkened study. If Harriet had searched the room, she hadn’t left any visible sign of her presence.

But there also weren’t any signs of Harriet in the house. Where had she gone?

“Sit down on the sofa, Charlotte,” the duke said. “I assume you don’t mind if I use your first name.” He paused, waiting for her to be seated. “Considering that we appear to know each other so well, it only seems appropriate.”

“You read my diary…How humiliating!
How could you?
”

“It wasn’t easy, believe me. It is to your credit, however, that it claimed all my attention.”

“I don’t think I deserve credit for what I’ve done.”

“Or written?” He sat beside her.

She lowered her fan to her lap.

“Well?” he said, giving her an expectant look.

Charlotte raised her gaze to his. “Well, what?”

“I believe that the treasure hunt called for a duke’s kiss.”

“Oh, that.” She twirled her fan in a bleak wave. “I made it up. I’m not really on a hunt.”

“I know.” He raised his hand. His fingers glided down her face, warm, knowing, in no hurry. “But I am, and I will claim my kiss.”

She swallowed a gasp. His other hand curled around her nape. She felt her hair spill loose as he pulled her pins that held its heavy weight in a knot. The words that had come so easily when she wrote of him now abandoned her. Or she abandoned herself.

She knew only that when he lowered his head and kissed her, her desire for him was no playful dream. It was desperation. It was undeniable need. She closed her eyes, the better to surrender to him. His mouth coaxed a response. Her lips parted, and his kiss led her into darkness, lured her toward…what? She didn’t know. But he did. Her head fell back against his hand. His tongue delved into her mouth and he kissed her until shivering pleasure seeped into her bones. Her pulse soared. Her blood roared. She drifted, weightless, into her first encounter with decadence.

“Is this what you wanted?” he asked, his voice harsh, his mouth a maddening breath from hers.

“I— Yes…”

“But I want more.”

He pressed her back, her shoulder sinking between the cushions. For a moment he didn’t move. His hooded eyes claimed victory, branded her with heat too intense to bear. She felt it race through her veins and to her fingertips.

He bent over her, his body hard, aroused, every inch a hot-blooded male. He brought his hand up slowly to sculpt the shape of her breasts. A sweet pain pierced her. She arched her back.

“I could carry you back upstairs to my bedroom—”

“
No.
I can’t. You can’t.”

A merciless smile spread across his shadowed face. His hand stroked upward to the front of her gown.

“We can’t do this,” she whispered, lifting her hand to his chest.

“Why not?” he asked softly. “We did it in your diary, which implies consent, if not an engraved invitation. Of course, I was not consulted. But I can’t imagine I would have denied you if you’d asked.”

“I didn’t break into your house to strike up a liaison,” she said indignantly, staring up into his sardonic face.

“But you did break in, and you’re in my arms. Do you know that property is nine points of the law?”

“Property?” she said, pushing herself upright.

“Would you like a brandy?”

“Yes,” she said, even though brandy usually went right to her head.

“I think I could use one myself.”

Harriet stood at the door to the study, unable to believe her eyes. She recognized the duke right away. But who was the long-haired lady he was leaning over and kissing with such wanton disregard that neither of them knew they had an audience?

Oh, God. Charlotte.
It couldn’t be. Yet it had to be.

She backed away.

What should she do?

She couldn’t let Charlotte be ruined.

But then again, she couldn’t let her lose the man she desired. And Wynfield obviously desired her, although how a harmless fancy had become a ruinous interlude the moment Harriet turned her back was a mystery to be pondered later.

Here she’d been afraid that Charlotte had accidentally locked herself in a closet, when she’d actually been
locked in the duke’s embrace, acting out one of the alleged entries in the diary that had started this affair.

She looked so defenseless sitting on that sofa clutching her fan that Gideon’s protective instincts overpowered his basic nature. He felt like a bastard for calling her bluff. “How long have you been keeping your diary?”

“Diaries. Ever since I learned to write.”

He took a swallow of brandy. “Were you always so inventive?”

“I embellished the truth in a few places. I wanted to write my life as a fairy tale. I never intended for anyone else to read it. It’s not all fabricated.”

“Fabricated? Embellished? My angel of mischief, not even the names were changed to protect the guilty. But
I
have to admit I’m curious—how long have we been engaged in this affair?”