Page 19 of The Duke and the Darkness

Or in this case…a deception. After all, as Armand Marchand had taught her, a good soldier always dressed appropriately for battle. Tonight would be her second skirmish with the Duke of Dartmoor in the war she was waging against him, and she needed to be prepared.

Three nights ago, she’d begun her assault on his fortune. Tonight, she planned to go after his future.

Dartmoor was here somewhere amid the crush of bodies, which was why she moved so slowly up the stairs, each step deliberate and smooth. She wanted him to see her. Her presence tonight would make him reveal himself. He wouldn’t be able to resist approaching her, demanding answers about the other night at Barton’s, and then she would have him exactly where she wanted him.

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly…

She hadn’t seen him yet, but she knew he was here. She’d heard he’d planned on escorting Lady Catherine Carlow and her parents.Of courseshe’d heard. Servants’ gossip was better than newspapers for reporting the lateston dit. Dartmoor really needed to hire servants who were more cautious in sharing information about their employer’s whereabouts. But servants employed in the household of a duke did so love to brag about what their estimable employer was up to when he was out and about. In this case, they’d shared with Proctor how Dartmoor was still attempting to formalize his engagement to Lady Catherine by continued reminders to her father that he was a duke, one powerful enough to hire the box located next to the prince regent.

She reached the top of the stairs where more whispers and curious stares greeted her. Her heart pounded so fiercely that her chest ached, yet not a stray emotion registered on her face to show how uneasy she was venturing into society like this and putting herself at risk for being recognized. Attending Barton’s had been different. Dark and smoke-filled, the club was used to patrons who wanted to keep their identities and activities secret. But here, everyone wanted to see and be seen, to be put on display for compliments or cuts. The crowd was ten times as big, the chandeliers twice as bright, and there was nowhere to hide from snooping eyes.

For the past ten years, she’d stayed away from London for fear of being recognized and having her life threatened. But she knew now her fear was unfounded. Dartmoor didn’t recognize her, for heaven’s sake, and she’d practically been in the man’s arms at the card table. If he didn’t recognize her, why would anyone else? She was a woman who was dead, after all, transformed like a butterfly from the caterpillar of a sixteen-year-old cocooned girl whom few had bothered to notice in the first place.

The crowd might have been curious about her, this stranger who so audaciously moved through them tonight in the devil’s own colors, but none dared approach her. She was safe, hiding in plain sight. Yet knowing that didn’t lessen her unease.

Drawing a deep breath, she walked on, just as deliberately as before. She turned toward the wide saloon that led to the private boxes and toward the one she’d rented entirely for herself for the evening.

Halfway down the saloon, she stopped.

Dartmoor.

He stood among the crowd at the end of the saloon, engaged in conversation with an older couple. Beneath the chandeliers, he looked rakishly handsome, with his blond hair just sandy-dark enough to give him a rogue’s appearance even while dressed in Bond Street’s finest. As if in intentional opposition to her attempt to stand out, he’d dressed in dark colors that blended into the crowd around him. Black jacket and trousers, black waistcoat—the sapphire pin in his white neck cloth was the only splash of color in all six feet of him.

Yet if he’d meant to hide, he’d failed. Because beside him on his arm stood a young lady in dandelion yellow muslin, as bright as he was dark.

Sothatwas the woman he wanted to marry. Lady Catherine Carlow. She looked so…ordinary. Not at all the kind of woman Peyton would have picked for Truro. But he wasn’t the Marquess of Truro anymore, was he? He was the Duke of Dartmoor now and all that name implied. Which meant no more scandalous widows, no more adventurous wives or opera singers. He had to project a veneer of respectability, after all, even if he was wicked to the core.

Lady Catherine would certainly help with that. By all accounts, her father, the Earl of Northrop, was one of the most respectable peers in England, while she had a sterling reputation to match. Overall, the Carlow family was conservative, scandal-free, as exciting as a rainy afternoon…utterly harmless. A middling peerage with a middling fortune that would benefit exponentially by marrying into a dukedom, and a dukedom that would benefit from an unblemished family name that stretched back to the Restoration.

Lady Catherine was the perfect choice for Dartmoor. But did she have any idea of the monster he truly was?

Not at all, judging from the pleasant way she smiled at him as he stood talking to the earl. Her mother stood at her other side, her back toward Peyton. Around them gathered a half-dozen or so assorted friends. Quite the crowd, all of them enjoying the evening.

But not for long. Not if Peyton had her way.

Before the night was over, the Earl of Northrop would reconsider his plans to marry his innocent daughter to Devlin Raines, and the poor girl would have escaped by the skin of her teeth. All it would take was a private box and a few mussed pieces of clothing to convince the earl and countess that Dartmoor had engaged in scandalous intimacies tonight, right behind the back of his intended, sitting only a few yards away. Their engagement would be off before it had begun.

Dartmoor glanced up, and their eyes locked across the length of the salon. For one beat, his face registered surprise. Then it vanished, his expression once more a carefully controlled mask.

“Come into my parlor,” she whispered.

Then she turned toward the private box she’d reserved, knowing his eyes were following her.

“Thank you,” she told the uniformed attendant as he opened the door. She gave him a coin. “Please go somewhere else for the evening. And leave the door open.”

He nodded smartly. “Yes, ma’am.”

She sat in the second row of chairs in the dark box, far enough back to watch the stage yet remain in the shadows, and patiently waited.

Most of the first act passed before a prickle of awareness tingled at her nape. She didn’t hear him—shefelthim slip inside the box and close the door, felt his slow approach through the shadows. Her heartbeat increased as it always did before a fight. Every inch of her tensed, every one of her senses came alert. Yet she kept her gaze straight ahead on the stage, not turning to reveal that she knew he was there.

The air around her stirred as he came up behind her. He rested his hand on the back of the chair beside her, then lowered himself to lean over her shoulder, bringing his mouth close to her ear. “Are you enjoying the opera?”

“Not yet.” She didn’t dare turn her attention away from the stage, although it was firmly on the man behind her. “Although I’m certain to find it absolutely scintillating before the curtain falls. And you?”

“I hate opera.”

“But you love opera singers,” she purred, remembering how he had stolen away with the Italian soprano at his mother’s musicale. At the time, she’d thought that to be the most terrible part of her night—that the man she’d held an affection for, who barely realized she existed, had slipped upstairs with another woman. She’d been so very wrong.