Page 94 of The Duke Undone

“I always liked the fellow.” Burgess said it thoughtfully. “He was the only bigger boy who didn’t knock me down for the fun of it on the playing fields. Oh, he had an evil temper. He’d charge into a thicket of fists if he thought he’d heard a word against his mother. But he wasn’t a bully. Bit of a fat-wit. Effie got all the brains in that family.”

Lucy smiled tightly. The Augustus Burgess wasn’t perfectly perceptive.

He returned her smile, still lost in his thoughts.

“She’s a clever girl,” he murmured. “She’ll be all right.”

She recognized the tone of a man trying to convince himself.

“And what’s your connection with all of this?” he asked her.

A fair question. How to answer?

“I am His Grace’s . . . painting teacher.”

Burgess spun in a circle. He stared at her, hand on his forehead. She looked back at him sourly.

“A cricket bat, a rifle, a saber, yes. But a piece of chalk or charcoal? A brush?” He shook his head. “Not Weston.”

And in fact, he was a bit of a snob after all.

“Why not Weston? People are surprising,” said Lucy, lips thinning.

Snob or no, Burgess missed nothing. He stepped back, gaze sharp as a burin. The look he gave her made her squirm.

“People are very surprising indeed,” he said, and this time his smile was real.

• • •

The butler had been dismissed for the night, or perhaps he’d been swept away by the throngs surging through the front door. Or gone to sleep in his coffin. There was no sign of him.

“Best keep your shoes on for now,” called Burgess as he led the way down the entrance hall. The marble floor glittered with broken glass. Soon Lucy saw why. Laughing young men were swallowing their champagne at a gulp and smashing the flutes against the wall. The party underway was so rollicking that Burgess’s cortege of otherworldly maidens scarcely drew a glance. Lucy turned abruptly from the group, darting into the dining room. It swam with lights and shadows. Tall red candles flickered in the candelabra. Courtesans with brilliantly dyed hair swayed their hips to music produced in fits and starts by a drunken quartet.

Lucy stared at the banquet table. Was that a woman beneath those mounded fruits? A blond dandy leered at her as he leaned forward, plucking a cluster of grapes from the woman’s belly. She pivoted, putting her back to him, and wove her way to the glass doors that stood open to the garden.

She wasn’t the only one who’d had the idea. The garden teemed. Shrieks rent the air as rowdies carried a kicking courtesan toward the fountain. She spotted Kate setting lanterns on the grass, Maude beside her, arms crossed, staring back toward the blazing house. It was strange to see Maude in her dress. Her pale beauty did take on a certain historical grandeur, set off by the dark velvet.

The tableau vivant was unlikely to receive the attention it deserved. Real-life lovers twined beneath budded trees.

Did Anthony count the party a success? Certainly, it was designed to shock conservative elements. His father’s blood would have curdled.

She shouldn’t have come. Her feet found the path that wound away from the house. She’d never entered the back garden from this direction, but she’d seen the door in the brick wall. There was a way in, and she’d find it.

She’d wait out the party in the glasshouse.

The path led her through a colonnade of cypresses that ended at another fountain. She circled it and cut away at an angle. The noises of the party had faded and her heart beat more steadily.

That’s when she saw him. She froze, then pressed back into a hedge. Tall, erect, beautiful, he was coming down the path, coming from the southeast corner of the garden. Her blood turned to ice in her veins. He’d been in the glasshouse.

He hadn’t been alone.

Two courtesans clung to him, one on each arm.

Her breath stuttered out of her.

Fool. She berated herself. Did she think the glasshouse hers? Theirs?

One of the courtesans stumbled and Anthony caught her, lifting her bodily, then setting her back on her feet. She flung a bare arm around his neck. He laughed his deep, musical laugh, the one that caused the dimples to crease his cheeks. Lucy ran. She ran down the path, back toward Weston Hall. There wasn’t any escape. The peace and protection the glasshouse had provided her, the hope—all illusion. She threw herself into the center of the swirling, noisy debauch.