The Duke (6 page)

Hands in pockets, Hawk looked judiciously out to sea. “No.”

“No, I don’t suppose you have, cold fish like you,” he said, too drunk to heed his own insolence. “I’ll bet you were born under Saturn.”

Hawk lifted a brow. “Pray, are you in love, Breckinridge?”

“Hawkscliffe,” he said, “I have found a diamond.”

“Ahh, that brunette you had sitting on your lap last night after the theater?”

Dolph shook his head, gestured idly with his bottle. “That was just to pass the time. No, I have found the most beautiful, adorable, desirable, cleverest, sweetest girl. I know . .. such love,” he said, pressing the bottle to his heart, “as you cannot imagine.”

Hawk stared at him, taken aback. He had never till this moment heard the man speak of anything with much passion except the hunt, horses, and hounds. “Do tell.”

“You should see her,” Dolph went on. “No—no—on the other hand, no one is allowed to meet her until I have married her. I am keeping her hidden away from you all. God knows, you’ll swoop down with your dukedom and your great name and try to steal her,” he said, laughing drunkenly. “And if not you, then one of your intolerable brothers.”

“Such a prize, is she?”

“More than you will ever know,” he declared arrogantly, and took a drink.

“Has your angel got a name?”

“Belinda.”

“When’s the wedding?”

Dolph sighed again. “Won’t have me. Yet.”

“You’re joking,” he said mildly.

“She will, in due time,” he assured him. “I’m thinking she will miss me so much while I’m away that she’ll have reconsidered my offer by the time I get back to town.”

“Well, I wish you great success with her,” he said lightly, and turned away with a calculating gleam in his eyes.

Bull’s-eye, he thought.

Having given his quarry plenty of time to ponder the misery of existence without him, Dolph Breckinridge returned to town with the buoyant eagerness of a hunter at the climax of the chase. The vixen was cornered. There was nowhere she had left to flee.

What a fine trophy she would make! he thought as he whipped his horses down the
Strand
. Belinda had led him a merry chase, but the enforced separation he had imposed on her had surely driven the defiance out of her. He intended to find her meek and willing to come to him at last. If not, then he would just have to devise some new way to block her foolish attempts to live without him.

Streaking down the street in his phaeton, he was heedless of the wrecks he almost caused and the pedestrians he nearly crushed under his whirring wheels. Impatient to find her, he scanned the faces of the vendors as his phaeton careened through the next intersection. He barked a curse at a delivery wagon going too slow in the road and curved past it, nearly colliding head on with a mail coach.

He shouted at the post driver and would have liked to stop and brawl, only he had more important things to do. Sulking angrily, he brought the whip down on his horses’ backs and plunged on.

Where the devil was the chit? He couldn’t wait to spar with her, for Belinda had been one of the few real challenges he had ever known.

Life had been easy for Dolph Breckinridge. Things always seemed to fall out in his favor, like his inheritance of his uncle’s earldom. His parents had never been any match for his strong will, even as a child.
Eton
and
Oxford
had been effortless because he had coerced the underclass bookworms into fagging for him. Thanks to the excellent physique and looks God had given him, women also fell in line—all but his dainty, indomitable Miss Hamilton.

Never had any woman so made him burn for conquest. What a feather she would be in his cap! With such a refined, obedient, beautiful wife, he would be the envy of his friends—among whom he now numbered the extremely powerful duke of Hawkscliffe, he thought in self-congratulation.

“Hang it all, girl, where are you?” he muttered to himself. His horses’ ears swivelled nervously at the sound of his voice.

Failing to spy her in any of the usual locations, he took a break from his hunt and tore off in the direction of his club, knowing that a good repast and a drink would cure his bedevilment. Then he would resume his search and no doubt find the quarry in the open.

It was not long before he was drawing off his thick leather driving gloves and swaggering into Watier’s. As one of the livelier clubs, the sight of a boisterous confab abuzz in the main saloon was not unusual.

About a dozen men were arguing good-naturedly on the subject of some new wager. Dolph strode into his club mates’ midst, exchanging greetings with some while the discussion went on. He barely listened, more interested in ordering a good beef pie.

“Prime
article. No one will get near her for anything less than carte blanche, you realize.”

“That rules me out—at least until my venerated parent expires.”

Snickers, idle laughter.

“Who do you think she’ll choose?”

“Ten pounds says it’ll be Argyll.”

“No, Argyll belongs to Harriette.”

“What about
Worcester
?”

“She doesn’t fancy him.”

“She fancies me!”

“Oh, please.”

“She said I was witty!”

“She doesn’t fancy anyone. That’s what makes her so appealing. Ah, but to be the one to melt her ice ... now, that would be something.”

“Well, she’s never given you a second look, nor any of us.”

“What does she want? A demigod? Perfection? A saint?”

“I’ve got twenty guineas that says she’s waiting for Czar Alexander to arrive. The women are half in love with him already. The
Times
says he’ll be here any day—”

“No, no, she’s a good English girl. She’ll have nothing to do with a foreigner!” scoffed another. “I say it’ll be
Wellington
, mark my words. Give me ten pounds on
Wellington
! And I daresay he deserves her more than any of us.”

“With all due respect,
Wellington
could be her father,” someone muttered.

“I think I shall hang myself if she won’t have me,” another said with easy cheer.

“All right, all right,” Dolph declared, turning around, hands on hips. “I’ll bite. Who are you talking about?”

They stopped abruptly, glanced at each other, and smiled slyly.

“Pardon?” Luttrell asked innocently.

“Where’ve you been?” asked another.

“
Brighton
, with the Regent,” said Dolph haughtily. “What news?”

“There is a new Cyprian who has brought us all to our knees,” said Colonel Hanger. “We are placing bets on whom she will accept as her protector.”

Dolph gave a short laugh, unimpressed. These fools thought they knew what beauty was.

“You doubt us?” one of the exquisites asked indignantly.

“What does she look like?” Dolph skeptically replied.

A collective sigh rose from their midst.

“Hair like spun sunlight—”

“Oh, spare us your poesy, for God’s sake, Alvanley,” drawled Brummell. “She’s a blue-eyed blonde. In a word, stunning.”

“Humph,” Dolph snorted. “Those are easy enough to come by.”

A trifle uneasy suddenly for reasons he could not name, he turned his back on them as the waiter came out and set his beef pie down before him.

“Has anybody heard where Miss Hamilton will be appearing tonight?” one of them asked behind him.

Dolph promptly choked on his bite of beef.

“I should think she’ll be at Harriette’s soiree.”

Dolph washed down his cough with a swallow of ale, shot up out of his chair and whirled around, wiping off his mouth with his forearm. “What did you say her name is?”

“Who?”

“The Cyprian,” he rumbled, lowering his head like a bull ready to charge.

Colonel Hanger smiled at him and lifted his glass in a toast. “Miss Belinda Hamilton.”

He recoiled in horror.

“To Miss Hamilton!” they toasted cheerfully, but Dolph was already out the door.

He roared for his phaeton and in another moment was hurtling down St. James’s toward Marylebone. He knew where Harriette Wilson lived, having attended many of the harlot’s Saturday night parties at her house in

It was impossible. It was a mistake or a joke or a coincidence. She would not—
she would not!
She was a prude, a virgin, a lady. Damn it, she was
his
claimed property.

Almost too angry to concentrate on driving, he left a wake of chaos in the streets behind him as he thundered down on the reigning Cyprian’s elegant, modest townhouse.

If it was true—if his Belinda really was in there, by God, he would break down the door and drag her out of that house by her hair. Drag her all the way to
Gretna Green
.

In front of Harriette Wilson’s house, he leaped out of his barely halted phaeton and strode to the front door and began banging on it with his fist.

“Open up! Open up, Harriette, you slut! Damn it, Bel, I know you’re in there! You will see me!”

The door abruptly opened under his beating fist. Dolph found himself eye to eye with one of the whores’ bullies— a tall, bulky footman who looked like an ex-prizefighter. Treachery in livery. Harriette kept a couple of them around the premises as bodyguards, he recalled.

“May I ‘elp you?” the menacing footman growled.

“I’m here to see—” He strove to calm himself. A bead of sweat ran down his cheek. “Is there a girl here by the name of Belinda Hamilton?”

“Miss Hamilton is entertaining guests right now,” the brawny footman grunted. “You can leave your card.”

So it was true.

Dolph stared at him in horrified disbelief until the footman snorted at him and closed the door in his face. He heard the lock slide home. He beat on the door, hollering, but no one answered. He staggered backward away from the house, across the pavement, into the middle of the street, where he threw his head back and howled in volcanic rage:
“Belinda!”

Though the whole world was spinning sickeningly, he saw motion in the upper window. The curtain fluttered.

Panting with fury, the whites of his eyes wild and baleful, he fixed his stare there. The afternoon sun glared off the panes as the French windows swung inward and opened. Then
she
appeared—only somehow it wasn’t her—his bedraggled little Bel in her threadbare woolen cloak.

It couldn’t be her.

Dolph stared in awe at the beautiful courtesan stranger.

The woman in the window was a pale, elegant goddess. Her gleaming flaxen tresses were swept up in a sleek, sophisticated arrangement. She wore jeweled earrings and a rich gown cut too low for afternoon. The breeze billowed through her sheer long sleeves, sculpting her graceful arms as she placed her pampered hands on the windowsill and tossed a mocking twist of smile down to him like a thorny rose.

“Yes?”

“
Belinda
!” he bellowed in disbelief. “W-w-what have you done?”

She lifted her eyebrows coolly. “Sorry, I haven’t the full honor of your acquaintance.
Au revoir.”

Though the words were polite, Dolph knew she had just delivered him the most direct and thorough cut a young lady could give. She started to shut the window.

“Belinda, wait!”

She laughed blithely at him then looked over her shoulder into the room behind her. “Come and see this poor Caliban in the roadway,” she called to her companions.

Two shadowy shapes of men came to the window, flanking her on either side.

Good God! Dolph thought, recognizing them. Argyll! Hertford! Those lechers were trying to seduce her! he thought. But they were powerful lechers, a duke and a marquis respectively, men of intellect and distinction. Dolph snapped his jaw shut to bite back a stream of curses, realizing he must watch what he said.

The Regent himself might be up there, for all he knew, or the royal dukes, or
Wellington
, for he could hear other people talking and laughing up in the drawing room.

“Belinda Hamilton,” he said through gritted teeth, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing in this place, but you had better come down here at once.”

She slipped her arms around both men’s shoulders and smiled brazenly at him. “I know exactly what I’m doing, Dolph. I’m entertaining some very charming friends, as our servant already told you.”

“I must talk to you!” he nearly wailed.

She laughed gaily, releasing the lords, who frowned at him in protective disapproval. She braced her elbows on the windowsill, then rested her flawless face in her hands with a smile of mock pity. “Poor Dolph, you look so distraught.”