The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series Read online

“I want to bring the academy to ruin!” she cried in a quavering voice. “I’m a desperate woman. That diary is the key to it all.”

  “I see that.”

  “They steal pupils from my door every month. I don’t know how much longer I can make a living. Do you understand how unfair it is that they prosper while I know their sins and must hold my tongue?”

  “Let me take care of this,” Nick said.

  Three hours later he penned a message and had one of his boys take it to her.

  The price has gone up due to the dangerous nature of the job. I am making a reappraisal of the matter and will contact you at our leisure.

  Fond regards,

  N. Rydell

  Chapter 7

  Old habits died hard. The Duchess of Glenmorgan appeared to be in her element as she plotted out how she and Charlotte would break into the duke’s house to retrieve the diary. To her credit Harriet had accepted full responsibility for the part she had played in the evening’s debacle.

  “If I weren’t desperate,” Charlotte said as she stared at Harriet across the swaying carriage, “I would never have agreed to this. Jane will be furious.”

  “We’ll be home before Jane even knows we’re missing.”

  “How do you know?”

  Harriet sighed. “I’ve broken into more houses than you have attended teas. Charlotte?”

  “What?”

  “Trust me,” she said, the two words now sending a chill of foreboding down Charlotte’s back, when earlier they had reassured her.

  “What choice do I have?”

  “None.”

  “What if he didn’t take the diary into the house? What if it isn’t there or in the carriage?”

  “I need to concentrate,” Harriet said. “Would you please stop worrying?”

  “How can I help it? It’s bad enough that you instructed your coachman to drive to Mrs. Watson’s house to make sure the duke was still inside. Imagine being caught, two ladies of our position, sneaking around a brothel.”

  “I did work there once,” Harriet murmured, closing her eyes.

  “I’ll be mortified if anyone recognized us.”

  “Perhaps you should have stayed behind the curtains instead of peeking out at the place.”

  “The house certainly does a brisk business,” Charlotte said. “I lost count of the gentlemen who arrived in the short time we circled ’round.”

  “One of those gentlemen is you-know-who.”

  “Don’t remind me.” She had already tortured herself with the thought. It wasn’t difficult to picture him surrounded by women eager to satisfy his every disgraceful whim.

  “We’re in Belgravia,” Harriet said, opening her eyes.

  “How can you tell?”

  “The sound of the wheels on the cobbles.” Harriet frowned at her. “If you can’t stay calm, then stay in the carriage.”

  “No,” Charlotte said resolutely. “That isn’t fair.”

  Twenty minutes later Charlotte wished she could change her mind. In all her secret yearnings she hadn’t once imagined that she would be skulking behind the shrubbery to break into Gideon’s house. A lady was never to pay a call on a gentleman unless she wished to be considered fast.

  Harriet pulled her skirt free from a thorn-laden branch. “He would have to plant rosebushes right under the window.”

  “It seems a reasonable place to plant them,” Charlotte replied, biting her thumb.

  “Not when you climb through them in a gauze ball gown.”

  “I’m sure the duke’s gardener didn’t grow them there to ruin your wardrobe.”

  “No chattering. Someone could be listening.”

  Charlotte stared past the dark rows of trees in the garden. “From where?”

  “From the servants’ quarters. Or the house next door. There’s a window looking down at us. And don’t answer if someone asks who goes there. Just hoist yourself over the sill and close the window. Pass me the chisel, please.”

  Charlotte reached into Harriet’s beaded reticule. “I don’t believe this.”

  “What?”

  “‘Pass me the chisel, please.’ We were sitting at the breakfast table only this morning and you asked me to pass the sugar tongs. This is housebreaking, Harriet.”

  “Well, it isn’t a night at the opera. Did you find it yet?”

  “No. Hold my fan for a moment.”

  “Why on earth did you bring a fan?”

  “I feel naked without it. Here.” She handed Harriet the tool. “How long do you think the duke will be gone?”

  “This is his first official night with his mistress. I don’t think he’ll come home before dawn. I saw her at a rout once. She’s very beautiful. Small and dark.” Harriet worked the chisel under the windowsill. “There. You go in first.”

  Once they had climbed into the kitchen, they waited a few more minutes before Harriet repeated the instructions she’d given Charlotte in the carriage. “We’ll start upstairs first. If he came home to change, he would have done so in his bedroom. You go there. I’ll search the upstairs drawing room.”

  “What if we’re caught?”

  “Make up something. Say you were sleepwalking.”

  “All the way from Park Lane?”

  “Say that we…we’re on the treasure hunt and that we broke up into groups after he left.”

  “A treasure hunt.”

  “Yes. He knows it was planned earlier. The beau monde is always off on one escapade or another. Haven’t you ever done anything adventurous?”

  “Only in my imagination.”

  “Well, here’s your chance to be a little daring.”

  Charlotte didn’t move.

  “You’re as white as chalk,” Harriet whispered. “If you can’t be useful, then do us both a favor and sit in a chair until I’m finished.”

  “Useful? I feel like I’m made of iron. I can’t breathe properly, and my legs are too heavy to lift. I think I’m losing the sensation in all my limbs. I don’t think I have the temperament to make a good criminal.”

  “There’s no crime in taking back what belongs to you.”

  “I hope the duke sees it that way.”

  “I hope he doesn’t see us at all.”

  Chapter 8

  Gideon had been on edge the entire evening. First there had been the challenging encounter with Miss Boscastle at the ball. Now he couldn’t help wondering what would have happened between them if he’d read her diary first. He might not have teased her unmercifully if he had known she secretly desired him.

  Devon would have killed him if he’d suggested anything impolite to her. Of course, Devon had not read his cousin’s diary. The damned thing had ruined Gideon’s chance for a gratifying night. Furthermore, he had to go about the complicated business of finding another mistress.

  He felt his nerves prickle as he entered the house. The servants had been advised to retire early in case he brought Gabrielle home. The only light came from the coals glowing in the grate in his study. He walked past the open door and stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  Just when he thought he was imagining things, he heard the creak of his wardrobe door.

  There was a rustle of…it might have been the rustle of bedcovers being turned down. Did he have a surprise waiting? Could Gabrielle have rushed here before him to make amends? Just in case he was wrong, he returned to the entry hall and drew his walking stick from the stand. By the time he reached his bedroom door, he realized that he would not have to subdue this intruder with a sword stick. It was Gabrielle, making herself quite at home.

  A swat across the rump should get her attention.

  He rested his shoulder against the doorjamb and waited for her to notice him. Her arse rose in the air at an intriguing angle, one that afforded him a view of several inches of petticoat and cotton-stockinged calves. He frowned. Plain white stockings. Unadorned white gown.

  How had she had time to change her clothes and sneak into the house before he did?

&n
bsp; In fact, she had not only changed her clothes. She had altered her entire appearance—height, hair color, her face—

  Her face.

  Good heavens. It was the schoolmistress, searching through his drawers, for what he could only guess: his pocket watch, cash, old love letters?

  He retracted the sword blade into the walking stick. “Excuse me. Would it help if I lit a lamp behind you? I wouldn’t want you to strain your”—he looked up from the lower portion of her body—“eyes.”

  She went still, like a small animal suddenly aware it has been marked by a predator. Carefully she lifted her hands from the drawer and straightened, her eyes wide and anxious.

  His gaze traveled over her. “Miss Boscastle. What an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Your Grace?” she said, as if they were sitting down to tea.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “What on earth are you doing in my bedchamber?”

  The look of shock on her face must have mirrored his. “I’m…I’m”—she glanced around, studying the bed, his washstand, the chair by the window—“sleepwalking.”

  “Sleepwalking?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Sleepwalking?” he said again, pushing off the doorjamb. “You mean for me to believe that you walked from the academy to my house, and climbed the stairs to my bedroom asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “You aren’t sleeping now, are you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He swore softly. “Do I look like the type of man who believes in mesmerism or messages from the otherworld that come to us while we sleep?”

  “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?

  Chapter 9

  The 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.”