Beguiling the Beauty (7 page)

In the confines of the lift, her attention had all but licked him from head to toe.

He was not unpopular either at home or abroad. Still, the baroness’s interest had been extraordinarily intense, all the more so for the fact that she never once directly gazed at him.

Now, however, she did. From sixteen stories below, she looked up over her shoulder and unerringly located him, a glance that he felt through the cream netting that concealed her face. Then she crossed the street and disappeared under the trees of Central Park.

V
enetia was vaguely aware of the trees, the ponds and bridges, the young men and women zipping by on their safety bicycles. The sea lions at the menagerie barked; the children clamored to see the polar bears; a violin wailed the mournful notes of “
Méditation”
from
Thaïs
—yet all she heard was the duke’s inescapable voice.

The lady would like your best rooms.

The lady wishes to go to the fifteenth floor.

Your map, madam.

He had no right to appear helpful and gentlemanly, he who’d judged her as if he knew everything there was to know about her. When he knew nothing—nothing at all.

Yet she was the one who felt ashamed that her husband had despised her so much. She could have continued in her blissful ignorance had the duke had the decency to keep a private conversation private. But he hadn’t, and his revelation would haunt her always.

She wanted—needed—to do something to knock him off his arrogant, comfortable perch. Actions carried consequences. He would not decimate her good name and not pay a price for it.

But what could she do? She could not sue him on grounds of defamation, as he’d never named her. She knew no dirty secrets of his that she could spill in return. And even if she warned every woman under the age of sixty-five of his savageness of spirit, his title and wealth would still ensure he’d have the wife of his choice.

It was dark by the time she returned to the hotel, her feet sore, her head throbbing. The lift was empty save for the lift attendant, but as it ascended, the duke might as well have been there, taunting her with his invulnerability.

She smelled the lilies as soon as she opened the doors to her suite. A large peach bloom vase that hadn’t been there before occupied the center table of the sitting room. From the vase, aggressively tall stalks of white calla lilies and orange gladiolus shot toward the ceiling, their petals glaring in the electric light.

Her family would never send her calla lilies, a cascade of which she’d carried when she walked down the aisle to marry Tony. She plucked the card from the fronds that buttressed the flowers.

The Duke of Lexington regrets his departure from New York and hopes for the pleasure of your company another day, madam.

The gall of the man. The extravagant bouquet was nothing but an announcement that should they meet again, he’d like for her to be waiting in bed, already naked. So he despised Venetia Easterbrook’s soul, but liked her backside well enough when he didn’t know to whom it belonged.

She tore the card in two. In four. In eight. And kept tearing, choking on her impotence.

Helena’s words leaped to mind.
Avenge yourself, Venetia. Make him fall in love with you, then give him the cut.

Why not?

What would it be to him? Merely a dalliance gone wrong. He’d hurt for a few short weeks—a few months, if she was lucky. But she, she would go through the rest of her life oppressed by the weight of his disclosure.

She telephoned the concierge and asked for a first-class stateroom on the
Rhodesia
, as close to the Victoria suites as possible. And then she sat down to write Helena and Millie a note concerning her sudden exit.

It was only as she sealed the note that she thought of the specifics of her seduction. How would she manage to breach his defenses when he had such entrenched preconceptions about her? When he’d take one look at her face, otherwise her greatest asset in a quest of such nature, and turn away?

No matter. She’d have to be creative, that was all. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And with every fiber of her being, she willed that the Duke of Lexington would regret the day he chose to stick a knife into her kidney.

L
exington stood at the rail and surveyed the hive of activity beneath him.

Carriages and heavy drays drove on and off the dock, their procession surprisingly speedy and orderly. Trunks and crates, hefted by stevedores with meaty shoulders and bulging upper arms, slid down open chutes into the cargo hold. Tugboats tooted at one another, readying themselves to nudge the great ocean liner’s nose around—for her to head toward the open sea.

Up the gangplank came the ship’s passengers: giggling young women who had never before crossed the pond; indifferent men of business on their third trip of the year; children pointing excitedly at the ship’s smokestacks; immigrant workers—largely Irish—returning to the old country for a brief visit.

The man in a hat too fancy for his clothes was likely to
be a swindler, planning to “aggregate funds” from his fellow passengers for an “extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” The lady’s companion, plainly dressed and seemingly demure, examined first-class gentlemen passengers with mercenary interest: She did not intend to remain a lady’s companion forever—or even for much longer. The adolescent boy who stared contemptuously at the back of his puffy, sweaty father appeared ready to disown the unimpressive sire and invent an entirely new patrimony for himself.

But what hypothesis should he form concerning Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg, for that was her coming up the gangplank, was it not? He recognized her hat, almost like that of a beekeeper’s, but sleeker and more shimmery. The day before, the veil had been creamy in color. Today it was blue, to complement her blue traveling gown.

Logically, a woman shouldn’t need to don a traveling gown for the two and a half miles between Hotel Netherlands and the Forty-second Street piers on the Hudson River, where the
Rhodesia
was docked. But he’d long ago given up trying to apply logic to fashion, the offspring of irrationality and inconstancy.

The degree of a woman’s devotion to fashion frequently corresponded to her degree of silliness. He’d learned to pay no attention to any woman with a stuffed macaw in her hat and to expect shoddy food at the home of a hostess best known for her collection of ball gowns.

The baroness was certainly highly fashionable. And restless: The unusual parasol in her hand, white with a pattern of concentric blue octagons, twirled constantly. But she did not come across as silly.

She looked up. He could not quite tell whether she was
looking directly at him. But whatever she saw, she halted midstep. Her parasol stopped spinning; the tassels around the fringe swayed back and forth with the sudden loss of momentum.

But only for a second. She resumed her progress on the gangplank, her parasol again a hypnotic pinwheel.

He watched her until she disappeared into the first-class entrance.

Was she the distraction he badly needed?

A
hush always descended in the final moments before departure, quiet enough to hear the commands issued from the bridge and passed along the length of the ship. The harbor slipped away. On the main deck below her, the crowd waved madly at the loved ones they were leaving behind. The throngs on the dock waved back, just as earnest and demonstrative.

Venetia’s throat tightened. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such unbridled, unabashed emotions.

Or when she last dared to.

“Good morning, baroness.”

She jerked. Lexington stood a few feet away, an ungloved hand on the railing, dressed casually in a gray lounge suit and a felt hat that had probably seen service on his expeditions. He regarded the waterfront of New York, its piers, cranes, and warehouses sliding past, and displayed no interest in her whatsoever.

It was as if an iceberg had come to call.

“Do I know you, sir?” He’d spoken in German; she replied in the same language, surprised to hear herself sound quite calm, almost unaffected.

He turned toward her. “Not yet, baroness. But I would like to make your acquaintance.”

They’d been in greater proximity in the hotel lift. Yet whereas the day before his nearness only angered her, today she felt as if she were balanced on a high wire over Niagara Falls.

Was she ready to play the game?

“Why do you wish to know me, Your Grace?” No point pretending she didn’t know his rank—the hotel staff had not been reticent about it in her hearing.

“You are different.”

From the greedy whore you held up as an affront to decency?

She fought down her agitation. “Are you looking for a lover?”

Know the rules before you play the game, Mr. Easterbrook had always told her.

“Would that be agreeable to you?” His tone was utterly unexceptional, as if he’d expressed nothing more untoward than a desire for a dance.

After the flowers, she shouldn’t be surprised. All the same, her skin prickled hotly. Thank God for her veil—or she would not have been able to hide her revulsion. “And if I say no?”

“I will not impose on you again.”

She’d dealt with men wanting her favors her entire life. She could recognize feigned nonchalance from a furlong away. But there was no affectation to his dispassionate stance. Were she to turn down his overture, he would simply turn his attention elsewhere and not give her another thought.

“What—if I am not sure?”

“Then I’d like to persuade you.”

Despite the brisk breeze on the river, the veil threatened to asphyxiate her. Or perhaps it wasn’t the veil at all, but his words. His presence. “How would you do that?”

His lips lifted at the corners—he was amused. “Do you wish for a demonstration?”

She’d known only his sharp mind, his arctic demeanor, and his limitless capacity for slander. But now, with the almost playfulness of his tone, the lean strength of his build, and the sight of his fingers absently stroking the railing, she became conscious of his sensuality, her awareness dark and potent.

It was too much. She couldn’t. Not in a million years. Not if he were the last man alive. Not even if he were the last man alive
and
the guardian of the last store of foodstuff left on Earth.

“No,” she said, her voice seething. “I do not wish for a demonstration. And I would be grateful should I never see you again.”

If her sudden rejection took him aback, he did not show it. He bowed slightly. “In that case, madam, I wish you a pleasant voyage.”

B
ridget, Millie’s maid, came back from the hotel clerk’s station with the news that Mrs. Easterbrook had not yet checked in.

“Do you think she might have gone to a different hotel?” Millie asked Helena.

Helena felt uneasy. “But Lady Tremaine’s driver said he’d brought her here yesterday.”

“I’ll speak to the clerk myself,” said Millie.

She approached the counter, Helena in tow, and made her request. The clerk checked the register again.

“I apologize, ma’am, but we do not have a guest by that name.”

“What about a lady by the name of Fitzhugh or Townsend?”

Helena could not see Venetia ever using Tony’s name again. On her calling cards she was simply Mrs. Arthur Easterbrook.

The clerk looked up apologetically. “Not those, either.”

“Did anyone here see a singularly beautiful lady arriving by herself?” Helena asked.

“I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

“Very well, then,” said Millie. “Do you have the suite reserved for Lady Fitzhugh? I am a day early. I hope that will not present a problem.”

“No, ma’am, not a problem at all. And we have a message for you and Miss Fitzhugh.”

The handwriting on the envelope was Venetia’s familiar scrawl—thank goodness. They opened the message as soon as they were inside their suite.

Helena bit her lower lip. If it hadn’t been for her, Venetia would not have gone to his lecture.

Before she’d taken up with Andrew, she’d considered
all the possible outcomes of her action—or so she’d thought. But she had not remotely prepared for such unintended consequences.

Worry gnawed at her. Even for one who’d contemplated and accepted the likelihood of the worst, it was still unnerving just how quickly and unpredictably things could go so wrong.