One Dance with a Duke (4 page)

“Four hundred pounds.”

“What?”

He closed his eyes. “Four hundred pounds, if you leave me this instant. You’ll have the bank draft in the morning.”

Stunned, she blinked down at the paving stones. Four hundred pounds. Four hundred pounds, and all she need do was turn around and leave? Jack’s debt, paid. Her summer at Briarbank, restored.

“Turn those hapless d’Orsay fortunes around, Lady Amelia. Learn when to walk away.”

Good Lord. He was serious. She spared herself a brief moment of self-deprecating irony, that while he wouldn’t think of paying four hundred pounds for her favors, he was eager to hand over the sum if she would simply go away. Vile man.

Oh, but his face had turned a very peculiar shade. In the ballroom, his cheeks had blazed red with anger, but now his complexion was the color of ash. She could hear the air dragging in and out of his lungs. And was it a trick of the moonlight, or was his hand trembling, just a little, where it rested atop the balustrade?

If he
were
unwell, to simply desert him … it would be to abandon every good principle her dear parents had taught her. She would be selling her conscience and good breeding for four hundred pounds.

And there were some things on which one could not put a price.

She took a step toward him. “Truly, you look very ill. Why don’t you allow me to get you some—”

“No. I’m perfectly well.” He pushed off the marble pillar and paced the terrace perimeter, taking deep draughts of night air. “My sole affliction is a plaguing female in blue silk.”

“There’s no need to be rude. I’m trying to be helpful.”

“I don’t need your help.” He swiped impatiently at his damp temple with his cuff. “I’m not ill.”

“Then why are you so pale?” Amelia shook her head. “Why is it a man would rather swallow nails than accept a lady’s assistance? And for pity’s sake, can’t a duke afford handkerchiefs?”

She unlaced the reticule cinched around her wrist. Now emptied of coin, it was so light she’d nearly forgotten the thing altogether. She loosened the string and withdrew the sole item remaining within: a meticulously embroidered linen square.

She took a moment to admire the stitching she’d finished
just a few days ago. Her initials, in dark purple script. Twining around and through the open spaces of the letters, she’d embroidered vines and, in a lighter green, a few curled ferns. A stroke of pure whimsy had spurred her to add a tiny black-and-gold honeybee, buzzing around the apex of the A.

It was, perhaps, her best work yet. And now this treasured, labored-over bit of linen would go to wipe His Grace’s noble brow? Just how much would she be forced to surrender on this terrace? Her brother, her home, her last small accomplishment. What was left? She half expected Napoleon to pop out from the hedges and demand her allegiance.

“Morland.” The curt baritone sounded from the shadows.

Amelia jumped.

The voice spoke again: low, rough. To her relief, most definitely English. “Morland, is that you?”

The duke straightened. “Who goes there?”

A rustling of greenery indicated the stranger’s approach. Impetuously, Amelia went to the duke’s side and pressed her handkerchief into his hand. He looked from her to the square of linen, and then back to her again.

She shrugged. Perhaps it was silly, but … it was simply that he was one of England’s great men, and she did come from one of England’s historically great families, and she just couldn’t allow him to face an unknown challenge looking as if he’d succumbed to malaria. Not when she clutched a perfectly clean handkerchief in her hand.

“Thank you,” he said, hastily wiping his brow and jamming the linen square into his coat pocket as not one, but
two
men emerged from behind the hedge and vaulted the low rail at the edge of the terrace. The duke edged between her and the strange men. It was a
chivalrous, reassuring gesture. She did not regret the handkerchief now.

The strangers stood outside the half-circle of available light, so that Amelia could not make out their features. She saw only two silhouettes: one fashionable, one fearsome.

“Morland. It’s Bellamy.” This came from the fashionable one. “And I know you’ve met Ashworth,” he said, indicating the giant at his side.

The duke stiffened. “Certainly. We’re old school chums, aren’t we, Rhys?”

No answer from the hulking shadow.

“We’ve been waiting for you to make your escape,” Bellamy said, “but we can’t delay any longer. You must come with us at once.”

“Come with you? Why?”

“We’ll tell you in the carriage.”

“Tell me now, and I shall decide if I join you in any carriage.”

“Club business,” Bellamy said.

He eased into the light, and Amelia peered at him. Ah, now she understood why his name was familiar. His face was familiar to her, too. And there was no mistaking the shock of artfully disheveled hair. He was that infamous hell-raiser, the ringleader of that fast group of young bucks Jack would give his eyeteeth to join. The group he’d lost four hundred pounds trying to keep pace with. Was Bellamy involved in that token nonsense, too?

“Club business?” Morland said. “Do you mean the Stud Club?”

Amelia barely checked an unladylike snort of laughter. Stud Club, indeed. Men and their ridiculous societies.

“Yes, we’re calling an urgent meeting,” Bellamy said. “And since you’re now seven-tenths of the membership, you’re required to attend.”

“Is it Osiris?” the duke asked, his voice suddenly grave. “If something’s happened to that horse, I—”

The tower called Ashworth broke his silence. “It’s not the horse. Harcliffe’s dead.”

The bottom dropped out of Amelia’s stomach.

“For Christ’s sake, Ashworth,” said Bellamy. “There’s a lady present.”

“Harcliffe?” she echoed. “Dead? As in Leopold Chatwick, the Marquess of Harcliffe?” As in, the boy who’d been raised a half-day’s ride from Beauvale Castle and gone to school with her older brothers? The golden-haired, fine-featured, good-humored, and universally admired young man who’d been so kind as to dance with her at her come-out ball? Not just once, as the obligation of friendship warranted, but two full sets? “Surely you don’t mean Leo?”

Bellamy stepped forward, tapping his gold-knobbed walking stick on the paving stones as he went. “I’m sorry.”

Amelia’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, poor Lily.”

“You know his sister?”

She nodded. “A little.”

The duke seemed to recall his social duty, as the only person present acquainted with all parties. “Lady Amelia d’Orsay, this is Mr. Julian Bellamy.” His voice darkened a shade as he introduced the larger man. “And that’s Rhys St. Maur, Lord Ashworth.”

“Under any other circumstance, I’m sure I would be delighted.” Amelia inclined her head. “May I ask, how is Lily coping with her grief?”

“She has not yet been informed of Leo’s death,” Bellamy said. “That’s why we’ve come for you, Morland. As the remaining members of the Stud Club, we have an obligation to her.”

“We do?”

“Yes, we do.”

“What sort of obligation? Imposed by whom?”

“It’s in the code. The Stud Club Code of Good Breeding. As your interest obviously lies purely in the horse and not in the club’s spirit of fraternity, I don’t suppose you’ve taken the care to acquaint yourself with it.”

“I’ve never even heard of such a thing,” said Morland. He looked to Ashworth. “Have you?”

The larger man remained cloaked in shadow, but Amelia could tell that he shook his head in the negative.

“There
is
a code,” Bellamy said impatiently. “And you are both subject to it. Else you must forfeit your interest in the Club entirely. Now come along, both of you. We must inform Lily of her brother’s death.”

“Wait,” Amelia said. “I’ll go with you.”

“No,” the three men said in unison. They looked around at one another, as if surprised to find themselves in agreement.

“Yes,” she argued back. “Yes, I will. Lily’s parents are no longer living. Leo was her only family, correct?”

“Correct,” Bellamy said. “Unfortunately.”

“Well, you gentlemen may have your clubs and tokens and codes of honor, but we ladies have our sisterhood. And I will not allow the three of you to go trampling Lily’s feelings like so many elephants. Tonight, she will learn that her only brother has died and she is alone in the world. She will need understanding, comfort, a shoulder to cry upon. And I refuse to let her suffer through it alone, while you three dolts stand around, arguing the finer points of your asinine club and its asinine code.”

There was a prolonged silence, during which Amelia began to regret a few of her words. Such as “dolt,” applied to two peers of the realm. And the uninspired repetition of “asinine.” But she would not apologize for the sentiment, and she would not be left behind. She
knew what it was to lose a brother. She knew what it was to walk down that particular alley of Hell all alone. What she would not have given for Mama’s presence on the day they came about Hugh.

At last, the duke spoke. “We will take my carriage. It’s readied, and I have the finest team.”

“My bays are warm,” said Bellamy.

Morland firmed his jaw. “I have the finest team. Anywhere.”

A deferential silence followed. It hadn’t even been a command, but with those few words the duke had asserted absolute control of the situation. If he had been feeling ill, he now appeared fully recovered.

Fitter than ever, to Amelia’s eyes.

“As you wish,” Bellamy said. “Can we cut across the gardens? Until we’ve spoken with Lily, I’m loath to draw public notice.”

Again, all three men looked to Amelia.

She paused. Obviously, it would not escape the guests’ attention that she and the Duke of Morland had disappeared into the night. But all would be explained, once Leo’s death became public knowledge tomorrow. And it wasn’t as though they were alone.

She nodded. “Very well.”

Bellamy and Ashworth cleared the railing easily. Their boots landed in the flowerbed with a soft squish before they rounded the hedge and disappeared the same way they’d come. Morland went next, stepping over the rail one long leg at a time.

He directed Amelia to sit on the balustrade, then to swing her legs across. She did so, in rather ungainly fashion. A fold of her gown became tangled in the closure of her slipper, and that made for some seconds’ delay. At last freed, she prepared to slide down from the rail. It was only a few feet to the ground.

The duke stopped her.

“Allow me,” he said, placing his hands about her waist. “It’s muddy here.”

At her nod of assent, Amelia found herself in those powerful arms for the second time that evening. Lifted effortlessly from the balustrade, swung over the flowerbed, and deposited on the raked gravel path. Gently, this time. Surely she was reading far too much into it, but she couldn’t help but imagine he was making amends. Offering an unspoken apology for his brutish behavior in the ballroom.

“Oh,” she said, swaying a bit as he released her. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he replied, laying a hand to the coat pocket where he’d placed her handkerchief. “For earlier.”

“We needn’t speak of it. Are you well?”

“Yes.”

Together they followed the path the other men had taken, walking alongside one another. He did not offer his arm. He did, however, point out a toad in the path an instant before she would have stepped on it.

As they rounded the front corner of the house and approached the paved driveway where the carriages and drivers sat waiting, he spoke once again. “What does it stand for, the C?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your initial.” He patted his pocket again.

“Oh.” Understanding dawned. “Claire. It stands for Claire. Amelia Claire.”

He nodded and walked on.

Amelia purposely fell behind.

Ninny, ninny
. They passed a piece of bronze statuary, and Amelia longed to bash her head against it. What an absolute muffin she was. He’d asked her a question once. She had to answer it
three times?
“Claire,” she
mimicked quietly, adopting the voice of a parrot. “It stands for Claire. Amelia Claire.”

She recognized, and rued, the giddy flutter in her belly: infatuation. It could not have happened at a worse time. Nothing good could come of it. And of all the gentlemen in London, this one? She hadn’t been exaggerating in the ballroom, when she’d told him he danced divinely and was undeniably handsome. Nor when she’d confessed an unchaste longing to touch his dark, curling hair. And he really did lift the hairs on her neck. True, all of it true.

He’s horrid
, she silently told herself.
Loutish, arrogant, insufferable! He refused to release Jack from debt. He insulted you. He bodily hauled you from a ballroom and then offered you money to just please go away! And for heaven’s sake, you are on your way to tell Lily Chatwick her twin brother is dead. You are a depraved, deranged woman, Amelia Claire-Claire-Claire d’Orsay!

It was just … something about those few unrehearsed moments, when a strange rustling in the hedge made them forget debts and insults and act on instinct alone. And she’d rushed to his side with her treasured handkerchief, and he’d put his body between her and the unknown. She could not escape the feeling that they’d formed an unspoken alliance and were now acting as a team.

He touched a hand to his coat pocket again. He kept doing that. And every time he did, her knees went weak.

Oh, Lord.

They reached the carriage. It was an impressive conveyance. Jet-black, glossy, emblazoned with the Morland ducal crest, and drawn by a team of four perfectly matched black horses.

The duke helped her in, closing one of his hands about her fingers and placing the other against the small of her back. Bellamy and Ashworth had already situated
themselves on the rear-facing seat, leaving Amelia and Morland to share the front-facing one.

Nothing about this situation should thrill her. It was terrible, the way his authoritative command to the driver shot sparks to her toes. It was unpardonable, how she sat toward the middle of the seat and allowed her body to fall against his as the carriage lurched into motion.