The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

Chapter Seven

Harriet drank her lemonade, perfectly content with her position between Lady Powlis and the assembly of wallflowers and chaperones observing the guests who gathered at the edge of the ballroom floor. A ruddy-cheeked young gentleman, who had been waiting for a quiet moment to approach, had just asked Edlyn to dance.

The girl looked stunned at the offer, glancing at Lady Powlis for advice. “What should I do?” she whispered behind her fan.

“Dance with him,” her aunt replied, nodding encouragingly at the gentleman.

“But I don’t want to. I’m in mourning.”

Lady Powlis released a long-suffering sigh. The official mourning period had long since passed. “Then refuse him nicely.”

“Fine,” Edlyn muttered with a mutinous look. “I shall dance with him.”

Harriet took another long sip of lemonade.

Lady Powlis frowned, tapping her closed fan on her knee. “Stop slurping, Miss Gardner.”

“Pardon me, madam.”

“No, pardon me,” the older woman said.

“For what?”

“For snapping at you.”

“That’s all right, Lady Powlis. I understand.”

Lady Powlis stopped tapping her fan and searched Harriet’s face. “Do you, indeed?”

“I might,” Harriet said evasively, and hoped she wouldn’t be asked to explain what she understood. Or thought she did. She sensed that the old lady deeply loved both the duke and Miss Edlyn, and it made Harriet a little sad to see all of them so miserable. Of course, it would be unseemly to admit any of this. So, as to seem agreeable, she settled for a banal smile and said, “Would your ladyship like another glass of lemonade?”

“I’ve had three already,” her ladyship replied ill-humoredly.

“If we’re counting, you’ve had four,” Harriet said before she could stop herself.

That might have been the end of her right then and there. Lady Powlis could have insisted the academy dismiss Harriet for impertinence, had the duke not sauntered up to her chair. Her ladyship brightened, and Harriet breathed a sigh of relief.

Saved. By the rake. At least, if what the gossips like Miss Peppertree said was true. He had not revealed himself as such in the short time Harriet had known him. The entire collection of wilted-looking wallflowers cheered up as he honored them with an elegant bow. As he straightened, his eyes lingered on Harriet.

Elegant beast, she thought in grudging pleasure. All the ladies around her were sighing, smiling, or murmuring vapid remarks, which he gallantly acknowledged with a few evasive nods. There was an uninhibited honesty about females who for various reasons had abandoned all hope of snaring a catch. Having discarded their illusions, they could appreciate a stunning man for what he was.

The duke, however, seemed a little at a loss over the fuss afforded him. Suddenly the thought occurred to Harriet-no, it wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be shy. He knew the value of his masculine appeal. And he certainly had not been shy with her the day they met.

Still, his haunting beauty, his tragic past, the identity of the woman he would marry, would be discussed by this audience for many weeks to come. Harriet realized that her own status had suddenly risen simply because she could claim his acquaintance. And even though she doubted he would ever have reason to confide in her, she felt an obligation to protect his secrets, whatever they were, from the world.

The Boscastles had favored her. Heaven knew she might even learn to care for the snippy old tartar sitting beside her.

And then, right before Harriet could go floating away on a cloud of sentiment, Lady Powlis said to the duke, “You look elegant in black, dear. Be a good boy and dance with Miss Gardner here.”

Harriet willed herself not to react. If she had obeyed impulse, she might have emptied her lemonade glass on her ladyship’s head for making such a preposterous suggestion.

The duke’s silence only intensified her annoyance. Another woman might have been mortified. Having shed her pretensions early in life, Harriet wondered why she felt the slightest humiliation. Lady Powlis, she decided, was not a woman to be pitied. She was a double-faced harridan who bedeviled others to alleviate her boredom. The duke, one assumed, had developed tactics to elude his aunt’s traps. Still, he was taking his sweet time to employ one if he had.

“Did you hear me?” Lady Powlis asked in a voice that rang across the room like a cathedral bell.

Harriet couldn’t bear it. She said, “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you by yourself, Lady Powlis.”

The duke gave his aunt a strained smile. “And why,” he asked evenly, “should I torture this innocent young lady by dragging her into that foray? What crime has she committed that I should punish her with my abominable clumsiness?”

Harriet’s lips curved in acknowledgment of such a gracious rejection. One could learn more from an uncaring adversary than from a devoted friend. Another young woman might have taken his refusal as a sign of modest character. The duke didn’t want to dance with her. And why should he? He could have his pick of anyone in the room.

“Do as I say, Griffin,” his aunt said again.

He leaned down to address her in a stern but respectful voice. “I came here tonight to please you and the rest of the family. Have you ever known me to participate in a public affair of my own volition?”

“You’re known well enough for participating in a few private ones,” Lady Powlis replied tartly.

Harriet finished off her lemonade. She enjoyed a lively quarrel as well as the next girl. In fact, she was debating which of the pair would come out the winner when the duke looked at her unexpectedly and said, “Dance with me, or we shall never hear the end of it.”

Almost immediately, a footman appeared and whisked her empty glass away. The duke reached down for her hand. She stood, vaguely aware that Lady Powlis had risen beside her. For a moment she wondered whether the three of them were going to dance together. She faltered. What the dickens was that dance called, anyway? Harriet couldn’t be expected to recall every minute detail of what she had been taught.

“I don’t waltz,” she said faintly.

Lady Powlis subjected her to an irate stare. “It is a Scotch reel, my dear.” She nudged Harriet in the ankle with her cane. “And it will be over before I talk sense into the pair of you.”

The duke took Harriet’s arm, almost protectively. “It is you, Aunt Primrose, who appears to have taken leave of your senses.”

“Don’t you understand?” she asked in a low, worried voice. “Edlyn has disappeared from the dance floor, and her partner has just walked off by himself.”

“Well, why the devil didn’t you say so?” the duke asked.

“And let everyone in London know?” she whispered.

Harriet glanced around. Now she understood. There wasn’t a lady in sight whose ears had not pricked up like Puck’s to eavesdrop on the conversation. “But I just saw her dancing right by the door to the supper room,” she said, straining to pick out Edlyn’s gray silk dress.

Griffin’s height gave him the advantage of looking down upon the assembly, whereas Harriet and Lady Powlis could barely see above the shoulders of the other guests. “She isn’t by the door now,” he said grimly.

“She might have run off again,” Lady Powlis said, gripping Harriet’s free hand. And then Harriet started to feel sorry for her all over again.

The duke gently pulled her toward him. Harriet’s nape tingled in pleasant warning. Submit? Disobey? Did she have a choice? Would she have denied herself this experience even if she could? His eyes smoldered with concern, if not with a justifiable anger. She wouldn’t want to be in Edlyn’s slippers when he found her.

Where had she gone, anyway? If something had upset her, she should have at least told the old lady. Her misbehavior as a student at the academy made Harriet appear negligent in a duty not entirely hers. Still, she felt a twinge of compassion for the girl. Edlyn had buried her father and gained the arrogant duke as her guardian. No wonder she acted unwisely. She’d lost her way in life.

Therefore, Harriet decided, she would sacrifice what small dignity was hers and dance with the duke. After all, she had acted unwisely often enough in the past, and the Boscastle family had guided her onto a better path.

At least, this was what she believed until the moment Griffin swept her into his arms and she lost her way all over again.

The moment he took her by the hand, Griffin knew he ought to have run for his life instead. The mistrustful look on her face suggested she felt the same way. If he followed the instincts that she had awakened in him, one of them-and he wasn’t sure whom-could very well end up ruined.

He placed his hand around Harriet’s waist to guide her between the vigorous figures swirling in every direction. She resisted, and rightly so. She wouldn’t have let herself be caught within a mile of him had she guessed how his body was reacting to being close to her again.

He inclined his head to hers. “I apologize for making you dance with me.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” she asked as they assumed their positions among the other dancers, neither of them in step. Another couple darted through the space between them. The duke frowned at this apparent breach of etiquette. Was he expected to emulate the intricate footwork of the other male dancers? He could barely hear himself breathe above the din. Worse, he practically required a horn to speak to his partner.

“No wonder my niece disappeared from the dance floor,” he said in a loud, disgruntled voice.

Harriet shook her head to indicate that she couldn’t hear him. He reached for her hand again and missed. He did, however, manage a few halfhearted hops to bring them closer together. Some overenthusiastic oaf bumped into Griffin’s back. He turned to address this insult, thwarted by the sound of Harriet’s uninhibited laughter. Suddenly he was laughing, too, moving toward her with a determination that impeded the progress of the dance.

Her hazel eyes shone with delightful mischief. “I don’t see her anywhere. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Your niece. I don’t see her.”

“Neither do I.”

He knew he should insist she return to his aunt. He could damned well find Edlyn by himself. But he hadn’t felt this… alive, entertained, attracted… well, perhaps he had never felt like this before. He found it oddly comforting that she seemed to recognize him for what he truly was. Why that made her so appealing, he couldn’t explain.

“I owe you another apology, by the way,” he said.

“What did you say?” “I said-”

He wove her in and out of the formation with haphazard grace. The other dancers, at first offended by his presumptuous behavior, gradually appeared to realize that they had the scandalous Duke of Glenmorgan in their midst and attempted to follow his impromptu steps.

Harriet nudged him down the line. “I think you’d better sit this one out, your grace, before you cause an accident. What did you want to apologize for?”

“I was rude to you the day I arrived at the academy.”

The lively notes of the violin quartet rose dramatically as if to underscore his admission. The dance ended before Harriet could reply. He noticed the other guests drawing back to watch them. He was tempted to sit down in the middle of the floor to see how they would react to a ducal temper tantrum. Fortunately, Harriet turned toward the opened doors of the crowded candlelit supper room before he could act upon this impulse. His glance moved past the guests standing at the buffet table. A row of ladies and older gentlemen sat against the far wall, chatting and nibbling away. A raven-haired girl in a gray silk dress occupied a corner chair. She appeared to be listening attentively to a gentlewoman who stood with her back to the ballroom. Her dance partner was nowhere to be seen.

He felt a flash of guilty relief.

“There sits my sullen niece in the supper room, with nary a rake in sight.”

“Well, there’s certainly one in my line of view,” Harriet said frankly. “And now that the reel is over and we are standing alone on the dance floor, would you mind if I went to check on Miss Edlyn for myself?”

“Yes. In fact, I would.”

“I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I understand.”

That made two of them. He searched his mind for a plausible explanation. “You’ll never plow through the crowd at the buffet table without my help.”

She glanced around him. “That’s what you-”

He claimed her hand before she could finish and pushed a path rather imperiously through the throng of astonished guests, leaving her with little choice but to follow. He’d have the devil’s time finding another reason to enjoy her company. After all, a man could rely on his aunt to provide excuses only to a certain point.

“There are side passages in this supper room,” she said breathlessly.

“How do you know?” he asked without turning around.

There were some secrets that a woman took to the grave. If discretion were the better part of valor, Harriet decided that she would not satisfy him with an answer. In fact, for a man she had begun to think of as shy, he was causing a scandal with his ungracious entrance into the supper room, shouldering aside bewildered guests and hauling about an academy’s instructress in the bargain. She glanced up into the astonished stare of the usually unflappable senior footman to the marquess, Weed. His shrewd gaze cut sharply to the duke. Without blinking an eye, he snapped his fingers, and three other footmen appeared as if they existed for no other purpose than to await the duke’s every desire.

Not that the duke needed anyone’s help to command an antechamber. He had the attention of the entire assembly. Even the small glasses of syllabub trembled as he strode past the table.

Upon recognizing his ducal personage, the guests who had gathered in the room parted to allow his progress. A few called his name in the hope of being acknowledged. Several of them stared enviously at Harriet for having captured his attention. She would have stared back, except she was more intent on keeping her eye on Miss Edlyn in the corner. The girl seemed to be watching a matronly woman in a green muslin gown escape into one of the private corridors, which Weed and the other footmen would be guarding had they not been chasing the duke around the room.

The duke sighed. “All is well. Neither of us shall be scolded by my aunt. By the way, she goes into a panic at least once a week. It’s nothing you should take personally.”

Harriet frowned as Miss Edlyn rose suddenly from her chair, ducking away from the guests who clamored to coax a look from her. The girl had apparently never bothered to put her Boscastle charms to the test. Her young uncle had probably been exercising his since the day he was born.

“You may let go of my hand now, your grace,” she said, when it became clear he would not do so by himself.

He turned, a thin smile playing on his lips. “But I have a reputation to uphold.”

She shook her head at him in reproach. “Mine will not be helped if I’m reported to be remiss in my duties or to be so smitten by-”

Oh. Hung by her tongue again.

“By?” he inquired, widening his heavily lashed eyes as if he didn’t have a clue.

“I shall be tarnished,” she explained in an undertone. “You will shine like a black diamond.”

He paused briefly as Edlyn walked past him without a word. “It isn’t fair, is it?”

Harriet sighed. “Not at all. But there’s nothing to be done for it.” She lowered her voice. “Please, your grace. People are staring. We must separate before they draw certain undesirable conclusions.”

He glanced around in resentment. “What are they waiting for, anyway?”

She bit her lip, her gaze following Edlyn’s progress back into the ballroom. “An introduction to you.”

“All of them?”

She smiled. “So it appears.”

“Where does that side passage lead to?” he asked her suddenly.

She laughed, pulling her hand from his possessive grasp. “If you want to get in trouble, I shall not be the one held responsible.”

“I saved you from the inferno, remember?”

“I remember,” Harriet said, as if that were an experience she would ever forget. She backed away before he could stop her. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I believe I have to save myself.”