The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke (6 page)

Chapter Six

Emma ascended the flight of stairs in what had become a reassuring nightly ritual. Heath had generously reopened the uppermost floor of his town house as a private dormitory for her boarding pupils. For a brief time, her younger brother Devon had also allowed her the use of his home for her school, but Heath could provide more spacious lodgings, and as he and his wife Julia traveled often, this was a more convenient arrangement. Naturally, Emma hoped one day to settle into a proper place for the academy. Now that her siblings had found their own loves, well, it was time. She hoped that by the end of the summer she would decide on a country locale.

For once the thought of her pupils and their fresh, hopeful, sometimes impertinent, faces failed to rally her fighting spirit. She had betrayed them with her lapse tonight. She had become that most hideous of all society entities, a hypocrite, and perhaps she would become something even worse.

She dared not put a name to it. However, what was done was done. The most perplexing thing was how easily she had lost herself in sensual pleasure. She had not realized herself capable of such physical enjoyment.

She paused on the threshold of the tidy atticchamber to gather her wits. There were thirteen girls now. Enough, she thought distractedly, for a witch’s coven. Truly they did brew up enough mischief to befuddle their headmistress.

Four other young ladies who lived outside London had made applications to the academy in the last fortnight alone. One of her current students claimed royal ancestry. Another was betrothed to a cousin of a French marquis. Mademoiselle’s parents, naturally, wished to give their daughter’s deportment a certain flair before she took residence in Burgundy. To be entrusted with the improvement of young gentlewomen who would influence the world was a duty sacred to Emma’s heart.

That an acquaintance from her own school days, Lady Clipstone, had become her archenemy by setting up her own struggling academy only a month ago made Emma all the more determined to succeed.

And now, after today—tonight—

What of her indiscretion? The unspeakable event that she was supposed to pretend had not happened.

I’m dying of desire for you.

Desire. For her. An unbidden smile crossed her face.

She knew what others said of her. The Dainty Dictator. Mrs. Killjoy. No one would believe she was the woman who only a half-hour ago had all but succumbed to a mercenary’s seduction. Not at all herself, and yet, well, she
had
been herself. Her veins bubbling with all the wretched passion of her Boscastle ancestry.

To think she hadn’t been different at all. She might end up even worse, in fact, than her brothers. At least they sinned openly and made no excuses for it.

Emma had committed her transgression in secret. Or so she hoped. At any rate, she would be less forgiving of herself than anyone in her family should her conduct be brought to light. She had been a hard judge of her brothers’ misdeeds. Perhaps they really were all cut from the same cloth.

A soft snore erupted from the bed of one of her sleeping pupils. Sighing, she walked slowly across the room.

She should have guessed the restless girl was her newest student, Harriet Gardner, a charity case from the gutters of St. Giles. Emma had asked herself at least a hundred times since the fateful day she’d taken the flame-haired Harriet under her wing, why she had been possessed of the notion to help a street urchin who swore she would never be reformed.

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.