The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke Page 7

  She was very afraid it had to do with some maternal instincts that, try as she might, would not be denied. And the fact that Harriet, at seventeen, had been preened by her family to enter a life of larceny and prostitution. Emma’s heart ached for her. What chance did a girl like that have in London? Her plight both touched and challenged Emma, for she had learned that there were some trouble-bound souls who would not be helped.

  As expected, it was Harriet who emitted the offensive snores, her thin white fingers curled around the cudgel she slept with every night. Emma bent over the bed to remove the weapon from the girl’s fist, then stopped.

  Who knew what horrors Harriet confronted in her dreams? Or had faced in life? If the girl needed a stick to enable her to sleep, Emma supposed, as she straightened, it could be allowed for a few more days at most—

  “Effing fancy-man,” Harriet shouted, sitting bolt upright in bed with her cudgel raised. “Gimme back my guinea, or I’ll bash you into pig guts!”

  Emma blanched, then swooped down to wrestle the cudgel from the girl’s fists, whispering, “Harriet, Harriet, wake up! It’s only a dream, my dear.”

  Then, even more gently, she added, “You’re safe in this house, do you hear? There are no”—her tongue stumbled over the word—“effing fancymen, only friends.”

  “Lady Lyons?” Harriet blinked several times before she broke into an abashed grin upon recognizing Emma. “That oughta teach you not to sneak up on a sleepin’ body. I almost thumped you a croaker, Mrs. Princum Prancum.”

  Emma regarded her unflinchingly, thinking that two persons thus “thumped” in one day could not be allowed. “I have warned you about the language, Harriet.” She paused. “And that elocution. You drop the inital h and defy the rules of phonics more often than not. In fact, your diction could stop a parade of Horse Guards in their tracks.”

  Harriet beamed. “Well, thanks, ma’am.” She tucked her bony knees under her well-washed night rail and settled in for a lengthy chat. “You’re prowling about late, ain’t ya? Been gettin’ friendly with his grace? Lovely looker, that fellow. Gives a girl the warm shivers.”

  Emma felt her scalp tighten. Either Harriet had almost supernatural instincts, or Emma looked as guilty as she felt. “Do lower your voice, Harriet, and refrain from such lowering remarks. His grace—goodness, he’s not inherited yet. He is Lord Wolverton to us.”

  “Wolf,” Harriet corrected her with a knowing smile. “And don’t we all know what that means?”

  Emma lifted a brow in astonishment. “If we know, then we certainly will not admit it, nor share our embarrassing perception with the other, more innocent girls,” she said in a disconcerted voice.

  Harriet’s mouth quirked at the corners. “Someone has to educate ’em, don’t they?”

  Emma was feeling a little light-headed, a belated reaction, she was sure, from her own unplanned amorous lesson. “Not in those matters, my girl. When a woman marries, well, her husband is best left to instruct her in such affairs.”

  Harriet snorted. “There’s the blind leadin’ the blind, in my ignorant opinion. If you want to give us a proper education, you should take us to Mrs. Watson’s house on Bruton Street for a few nights. I heard tell she gives lessons in love.”

  “My blood chills at the mere suggestion.”

  “It wouldn’t be chill for long in that place.”

  “Reassure me, Harriet, that you were never employed in such an establishment,” Emma whispered, sickened at the thought.

  “I was once,” Harriet whispered back, “but only as an undermaid until they caught me at a peephole. Cor, the things I saw. Some of them acts just ain’t natural, do you know what I mean? The places men put their—”

  Emma closed her eyes. “You are never, ever to admit to anyone again that you worked in a seraglio. Do you understand? That sort of thing is behind you. We are going to pretend it never happened.” At least that was the advice Emma’s father had always dispensed when faced with one of his children’s offenses. Emma was not sure one could always forget, however.

  Harriet studied her with unnerving intensity. “Ain’t you ever done one bad thing in yer life, Lady Lyons?”

  “Of course. Everyone has.”

  “Nah. I ain’t talkin’ about pinching an extra biscuit off the breakfast tray. I mean something truly wicked. Sinful. As a grown woman. Something that keeps you awake at night.”

  Emma shook her head. “A lady wouldn’t ask, and like it or not, by hook or by crook, you will become a lady. Now go to sleep. Your voice is disturbing the others.”

  Harriet sank down only to spring right back up on her elbow. “I won’t betray you if you’re nice to me.”

  Emma pivoted at the foot of the bed, the fine hairs on her nape prickling. “Betray me?” She knew she’d be better off ignoring the taunt. “What are you saying?”

  “Your rival, ma’am. That flat-chested Lady Clipstone. She’s sent letters to all the girls’ parents offering ’em free tuition for three months.”

  Emma narrowed her eyes. “That vindictive woman.”

  “Yeah. And you wanna hear the worst of it?”

  “No. I do not.” Although, naturally, Emma did.

  “She’s trying to steal me away. Moi. There. That’s French lessons for you. Ain’t you proud?”

  Emma felt as if she were standing at the edge of some noxious cesspool. “Why, pray tell, would Lady Clipstone want to steal you away, Harriet?”

  Harriet tapped her forefinger to her temple. “To pick these old brains in ’ere.”

  “To pick them of what?” Emma asked hesitantly. “You have only begun your life as a young lady.”

  “Yeah. But I do got an attic full of secrets, you know. I see and ’ear everything.”

  “You see and hear everything,” Emma said in a resigned voice. “You have been here less than a fortnight. I would imagine there has not been much of interest to see and hear.”

  “You’d be flippin’ wrong then,” Harriet retorted with a sly grin. “I’m like a little mouse, I am, all over the place.”

  Emma stared at her in chagrin. “Well, whatever it is you imagine you have seen or heard, I trust you will keep it to yourself. You must concentrate on your lessons, Harriet.”

  “Would I bite the ’and that feeds me?” Harriet scoffed. “Not bloody likely, is it?”

  Emma released her breath. “I hope not.”

  “I’ll stick by you thick ’n’ thin, Lady Lyons.”

  “How fortunate for me,” Emma murmured, turning to the other beds. How in the name of heaven would she turn this troublesome girl into a lady?

  “You keep that chin up tomorrow, Lady Lyons. Don’t let ’er knock you down.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Emma asked through her teeth.

  “That mean Lady Clipstone—once she gets a sniff of scandal, and that Wolf is a scandal if ever I saw one, well—” She swiped her hand across her throat. “The end.”

  Emma narrowed her eyes. “Do you think I am that easily beaten?”

  Harriet slid under the coverlet. “Not with me on your side. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Do we have a deal?”

  “I’d as soon make a deal with the devil, Harriet. But—if I must shake your hand to earn your trust, then I shall do so.”

  Harriet waited another fifteen minutes before she swung her bare toes to the floor and began to awaken the rest of the girls. “All right,” she announced whilst the other twelve yawned at her in resentment. “Who’s game for tonight’s entertainment?”

  Miss Lydia Potter crossed her arms across her prominent bosom. “My idea of entertainment is not running down a damp alley to peer into another brothel window.”

  Harriet looked down her nose in scorn. “Who wants to see Lady Lyons’s duke and defender in the flesh?”

  One by one the other girls ceased their chattering to gaze upon Harriet in uncertain awe. “What do you mean?” one of the prefects demanded.

  “I mean exactly what I said,�
� she countered. “Is anyone game? Or are you too afraid to have a good look at the sort of man you’re all aspiring to marry?”

  A discordant female voice invaded his pleasant drift of dreams. For an instant he thought it was Emma again. He fought through his drugged befuddlement to respond to her—giggling at the foot of the bed? Surely that was not her making that ungodly noise.

  He groaned in an effort to answer her. Finally he opened his eyes to stare up at a gamine-faced girl whose evil grin awakened him to full consciousness like a bucket of salt water splashed upon his face. Her hand was in the process of peeling away the bedcovers.

  “Demon’s spawn!” he shouted in annoyance. “Where is my sword? I’ll cut off your damned little head!”

  The girl danced back beyond his grasp. In disgust he noticed the group of young females gathered behind her at the door, watching him in wide-eyed shock.

  He lurched into a stand, weaving several feet across the floor with the bedclothes wrapped around his legs. The girls backed away with gasps of fear. Emma, he soon perceived, was not among this group of silly, gasping females, and suddenly, as a black dizziness overcame him, he wondered whether he was still dreaming.

  “Be gone, you plaguesome imps!” he growled, sweeping his hand across the air in a menacing gesture.

  “So that’s what a duke looks like,” one of them boldly whispered. “I never guessed they grew them so big.”

  So big? Were his improper body parts showing? He had strangely lost sensation from the waist down, but it appeared he was still wearing his drawers beneath his robe. His feet felt like slabs of stone.

  As if through a haze, he heard their muffled shrieks of terror, watched them scatter into the dark like timid mice. The gall. Intruding on a sleeping man only to shriek in fright as if he had instigated this humiliation, and him as helpless as a…what had she called him again? A butterfly.

  He made an ungainly effort to chase after them, at the very least to tell them off. But the dose of sedative Heath Boscastle had insisted he swallow would have put a weaker man to sleep for a minimum of three days. In Adrian’s cast-iron system it would remain potent only until morning. It slowed him now.

  He bellowed once more on principle to demonstrate his wrath, then stomped back to the bed. His head throbbed mightily. His limbs felt clumsy and uncoordinated.

  In the morning, perhaps, he would recover sufficient strength to pursue the impertinent mice and inform them he was not a man to trifle with. But not until after he had found Emma Boscastle alone and apologized for the offense he had given her.

  Not that he was truly sorry for what had happened, to be perfectly honest. Their pleasant inter-lude had been the only bright spot in his gloomy return to England. She was quite possibly the only human being, certainly the only woman, who had displayed a genuine concern for his welfare with no thought of what she would receive in return. He’d always had a strange weakness for a woman of sharp wit.

  Every other person in this accursed country had fawned at his feet upon learning he was a duke’s heir. As if that misfortune of birth elevated him to some lofty status.

  Misfortune of birth. For the formative years of his life that was exactly what Adrian had been led to believe his existence was. A misfortune. The result of sin.

  And he had not particularly cared one way or another whether he proved this belief to be true or not. Until a few hours ago when Emma Boscastle had stolen a few comfits from a wedding cake to please him.

  Emma had gone to bed in the weak hope that when she woke up she would discover the previous day hadn’t really happened. But the first thing she thought of when she opened her eyes in the morning was him. Her injured Lord of Scandal. Lord Wolf lying abed. Still wounded or in wait? She had no precedent upon which to speculate.

  She was quite confident, however, that once she faced her day’s work, her students, those wild buds of flowering womanhood, she would be able to put Adrian Ruxley from her mind and resume her regular affairs. The demands of instruction never failed to distract her.

  It was raining lightly. The coal in the grate had gone out, leaving the scent of old ashes and damp in the room.

  She huddled under her quilt and listened to the splash of carriage wheels and hooves through puddles in the street below. Through the rhythmic pattering on the town house roof she heard the faint cry of the pie-sellers offering their freshly baked wares. Her empty stomach grumbled.

  She was suddenly ravenous, hungry for something more substantial than her usual light breakfast of tea, toast, and a slim wedge of white cheese. A flaky-crust steak and onion pie, perhaps. A meal in which to sink her teeth.

  She pushed her way slowly through the bedclothes. Her body felt unaccountably lush and agile. Even the cold air seemed to caress her skin.

  How dare he.

  Had he passed a peaceful night?

  She washed briskly with her precious orange blossom soap from Spain, usually reserved for special occasions such as court appearances or Christmas mornings. Well, today was a special day. The day she rededicated herself to the ordinary life she had chosen. And to the young ladies whose parents had entrusted her with instilling in their daughters the highest values.

  She inquired after Lord Wolverton during breakfast and was informed by Heath that Adrian was apparently still alive but asleep. What that meant Emma was afraid to ask.

  It seemed best for now to let sleeping wolves lie. If Adrian had passed a restful night, it was more than she could say for herself.

  “If you are concerned about him,” Heath added from behind his morning newspaper, “I’d be happy to accompany you to his room.”

  She shook her head dismissively. “Perhaps later. I have a demanding day. I might visit him when he’s had a chance to rest.”

  He raised his brow. At least she imagined he did, his face still hidden behind the morning news. She could only assume there was not yet any mention of the wedding brawl in the papers.

  “Should I give him your regards in the meantime?” he asked as she rose from the table.

  She took a breath. “Of course.”

  “And I’ll explain,” he went on in a casual tone, “how busy you are. Too busy to sit at his bedside.”

  She stared at the door. She reminded herself how dearly she loved her four brothers. She really did, even when they provoked her. “You might want to phrase that a little less bluntly.”

  “Don’t worry about Wolf’s feelings, Emma. He’s not the sort to weep over a slight.”

  “I’m sure he’s not.”

  “I’ll take care of him for you,” he murmured.

  She gripped the doorknob. “That is a comfort to me.”

  He chuckled. “I knew it would be.”

  Chapter Seven

  Adrian awakened later that morning with barely an ache to remind him of the embarrassing events that had brought him to his ignominious position. He thought immediately of Emma and wondered when he would see her again or if she intended to ignore him. He yawned fitfully and had just thrust the bed curtains apart when he heard a woman speaking outside his door. It did not sound like Emma’s soft, pleasant voice. Perhaps it belonged to one of the mice who had found it amusing to study him last night while he slept.

  Rising, he strode to the rose-satin chaise and at tempted to arrange his too-big body across the em broidered cushion in an intimidating, male pose. The effort made his temples pound faintly in pro test; it was a dull pain he could ignore and it soon receded.

  There was a light rap at the door. Then a woman’s voice inquired, “Are you awake, Lord Wolverton?”

  He lifted his brow. Not a mouse’s voice that. “Yes.”

  “May Charlotte and I visit? It is Heath’s wife, Julia, and my cousin-in-law. I won’t stay long.”

  Ah, Julia, the wife of his host, Lord Heath. She was definitely not the sort of lady to accost a strange man in his sleep. Her husband appeared to be another matter. Adrian grinned as he remembered the scandal this red-haired viscount’s d
aughter had caused Heath right before their marriage last year. London had been at turns shocked and delighted when she had sketched his disreputable parts as a cartoon of Apollo and then lost her drawing, only to discover it printed in the broadsheets of the city.

  “Please come in, Julia.”

  “Good. You are awake,” she said in relief. “And famished, I expect. Would you like your valet sent up to shave you before or after breakfast? He’s been here all morning with your personal belongings. I’ve kept a plate of bacon and eggs warm for you. I never thought to see you laid low, Adrian.”

  He leaned his head back against the demeaning piece of furniture. What he would have liked was to see Emma standing behind Julia, rather than her comely blond companion who had not lowered her blue eyes quickly enough for him to perceive the laughter in them.

  He sighed. Just because he had promised that he would not remind Emma of the Evening-That-Had-Never-Happened didn’t mean he couldn’t hope for another chance. He was suddenly irritated at how easily he had alienated her affections with his untimely bid for intimacy.

  “Lord Wolverton?” Julia asked, apparently concerned by his lapse of attention. “Shall I send for the doctor? Have you taken a queer turn?”

  “Perhaps I should summon Lady Lyons,” Charlotte said from the door.

  “Wait,” Julia said, her eyes full of mischief. “She’s teaching table manners this morning. You know how she dislikes to be interrupted in the middle of such crucial instruction.”

  Table manners. Adrian suppressed a grin. He could just hear her refined voice now as she drilled her debutantes on the importance of not impaling their peas with a knife.

  “Lord Wolverton,” Julia said again, a little more sharply this time. “Let me look at your eyes.”

  He blinked. She was a tall, commanding woman and apparently not one to be ignored. Heath Boscastle had allegedly been in love with her for years but had almost lost her when he went to war. Now that he reflected upon it, Adrian seemed to recall that Julia’s love affair with Heath had been sparked after she’d shot him in the shoulder. He assumed it had been an accident. He couldn’t be entirely sure. The Boscastles tended to marry strong-hearted mates, which would contribute to perpetuating their passionate line.