Page 28 of The Duke Decides

And now Gabriel Declan, Duke of Barkham, had stormed in like a flood, threatening to sweep all before him.

Whatever the blackmailer didn’t take first.

Louisa submitted to the rest of the toilette so she might do the gown justice. Pearls clamped at her ears, when she had not worn earrings in a decade. A choker of pearls at her throat. Mason teased her hair into a high knot, holding it with a comb and a great deal of pomade, then caught up the tower with a bandeau sporting knots of silk flowers and a crown of feathers.

She rolled three-quarter gloves onto her arm and slid her feet into silk slippers. Her heart sank lower and lower, sloshed in the uneasy swirl of her belly as each weapon in her armory snapped into place.

She had agreed to this night with Gabe because he had seemed to think it a marvelous idea, the way to taunt her blackmailer into revealing himself by promising an ever-larger reward. She had agreed for reasons of her own.

But the result was going to be the same. She couldn’t ask anyone at the Hospital to pay the price for her crimes. There would be scandal if she suddenly disappeared, but that small betrayal was to be preferred to a larger one.

She had run away once before from her life, fleeing into the night with nothing but the clothes on her back and her dearest possessions sewn into her petticoats. She would simply do so again.

Only this time, it would not be freedom she found. This time, she was going to lose everything she loved.

And that would hurt so much worse.

“You look marvelous.” The Duke’s eyes went straight to Louisa as the butler showed him into the small, elegant parlor in Rutland House. She rose, conscious of his higher status, trying to remind herself that tonight she was a lady, not the Matron of the Benevolence Hospital.

Tonight she was a woman, enjoying an evening in the company of the most intoxicating man she had ever met. He reached for her hand, and she gave it, catching her breath at the warm grip of his fingers. A dizzying delight skimmed the top of her head as his lips brushed her knuckles. The tiny pressure was so correct, so restrained, and yet the touch of his lips put her straight back on that balcony, when she had welcomed the heat of his mouth on her breasts, when she had felt all of him against, and inside of her.

Her breasts tingled, tightening within her firmly laced stays, and Louisa hoped her reaction was not visible through the delicate silk of her bodice. She could not go about in a continuous state of arousal the entire evening. It simply would not do.

He released her hand, his eyes dark but a smile twisting up one side of his mouth, as if he knew her secret. He did not step away, and a low heat hummed through her body. He knew how he affected her, the dratted man. And he meant to torment her with it.

“You look so well together, Duke,” the Duchess said. “Mind you do not permit our Louisa to take a chill. She is very dear to us.”

“And growing increasingly dear to me. I shall take care, Duchess.”

Such a gallant statement, and he tossed it off so easily. She must remember he was a roué. She must remember that he made a habit of propositioning women he met at parties, and because of his powerful charm and many personal attractions, they fell easily into his arms.

“You might tell your mother and sisters to call on me, you know,” the Duchess said pleasantly. “I shall have advice for your mother on marrying the girls well.”

Yes, because marrying girls well was the chief, in fact only concern of a mother’s life, and girls who had suddenly become sisters of a duke would be ready targets for alliance. Louisa and her sisters had been no more than pawns for their own parents, pieces they might arrange on their personal chessboard to increase their own wealth and importance.

When Auguste Grenay had come to their door, the d’Estreaux had seen nothing but his title and his expensive chateau. They had not questioned how he had enriched himself with the belongings of other fallen nobles, or what he had done to gain the favor of the Emperor. They only saw the security of being close to power after the long years of revolution and war. They had certainly not inquired whether the rumors were true. They had signed the marriage settlements readily and handed over Louisa and her trousseau, and that had been the end of the girl known as Eloisa d’Estreaux.

The Duke of Barkham might equally be hiding a devil behind that dark beauty and seductive smile. It would behoove her to have a care how she made herself vulnerable to him.

The Duchess held out her hand for a kiss. The Duke did not bend as near, nor linger as long as he had over Louisa’s hand.

“She is high enough, you know,” the Duchess said, watching Louisa as she wrapped up in her shawl. “She’s a firm hand for running things and can conduct herself in any company. She would make you an excellent duchess.”

“I have no doubt of that,” the Duke said.

That small quirk of a smile played around his mouth as he conducted Louisa to the front door and into his coupe. A carriage was a luxury she hadn’t experienced in a while, and the business of handing her in and getting her settled allowed him to touch her again. Then his body was pressed all along her side as he settled himself. There was no doubt this was a ducal equipage, with a driver in smart livery at the reins and a footman in matching livery clinging to the step behind.

“You must forgive Her Grace,” Louisa said as they rolled out onto the Knightsbridge Road, passing the barracks of the Life Guards, part of the King’s Household Calvary. Louisa steered clear of the regiments, disliking the way they had fired on mourners who had interrupted the funeral procession for Queen Caroline, several years before. “She does not believe the evening is a ruse devised by Your Grace.”

“Stop Gracing me,” he said. “My name is Gabriel. My friends and family call me Gabe. What few friends I have.”

A duke with many acquaintances but few true friends. Louisa knew something of feeling that one hid one’s true face from the world, and the people one trusted were a small, select group.

“Gabriel,” she murmured. “The archangel who dispatches messages from God.”

They passed the barracks of the Foot Guard, also part of the King’s Household Division within the Army. Then St. George’s Hospital, which was a medical facility in truth, and currently undergoing expansion. The stately old Lanesborough House had been demolished and the hulk of a new, grander hospital was rising in its place, its frontage columned like a Greek temple, its massive wings able to hold over three hundred beds, or so she’d been told.

Her stomach pinched beneath the tight stays, and she couldn’t take a proper breath. Knightsbridge, once a bucolic village outside London, was slowly being engulfed by the spreading metropolis. No wonder developers were eager for all the acres occupied by the sprawling Benevolence Hospital and its grounds.