The Duke (9 page)

“What’s your game, Miss Hamilton?” he asked pleasantly.

“Vingt-et-un.”

“I understand the prize is your kiss.”

“Only if you win—which you won’t.”

A smile tugged at one corner of his beguiling mouth. He slid a thick gold ring off his pinky finger and placed it in front of her. “Will this do?”

Sitting up straight in her chair, she picked up the ring and examined it skeptically. The ring had an onyx medallion with a gold
H
emblazoned on it.

She slid him a calculating glance, wondering who he was and what the
H
stood for, but she didn’t care to indulge his vanity by asking. No friend of Dolph’s was a friend of hers.

“A pretty trinket. Alas, I already own a dozen like it.” She gave his ring back to him. “I don’t wish to play you.”

“Dear me, do I have the look of a cardsharp?” he asked in a cool, cultured baritone.

“I dislike the company you keep.”

“Perhaps you are leaping to conclusions—or maybe this is just an excuse?” he suggested with another sly smile. “Perhaps the
indomitable
Miss Hamilton merely wishes to back down?”

She sent him a ladylike scowl as the men around them laughed.

“Very well,” she conceded in a severe tone. “Best of three hands. Face cards are ten points. Aces high and low. You’ll regret this.”

“No, I won’t.” He placed the ring once more between them, then coolly sat back, slung his arm over the chair’s back, and propped his left ankle over his right knee. He nodded toward the deck on the table. “Deal the cards, Miss Hamilton.”

“Giving orders, are we?”

“I am only answering you in kind, my dear.”

Holding his taunting gaze, she realized he was referring to her earlier command to bring the coin to Dolph. She gave him a sardonic look. “I am your servant, my lord.”

“Interesting notion,” he murmured.

Under his penetrating stare she grew uncharacteristically flustered. Her hands trembled slightly, making her clumsy as she shuffled the deck, but at length, she dealt them each two cards, one face down, one face up. She set the pile down and picked up her hidden card, the king of diamonds. With her face-up six, she decided to take a third card, but she looked at her opponent first in inquiry.

He flicked his fingers, elegantly declining. She turned over a three for herself, hiding a smile of satisfaction as her total came to nineteen.

“Show me what you’ve got,” she invited him with the mildest trace of flirtation. She couldn’t seem to help it. There was just something about the man.

He sent her a knowing little smile and turned over a queen and a ten. “Twenty.”

She scowled, sweeping her nineteen aside.

She dealt again, more determined than ever to beat the arrogant scoundrel, an impulse that had nothing to do with the small fortune she could get from pawning his fine ring if she won it. He was too smug and domineering by half.

This time Bel dealt herself a pair of knaves. Twenty. Marvelous, she thought, sure she’d get him this time. “Would you care for another card?”

“Hit me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she murmured, peeling an eight off the top for him.

“Hell,” he said, tossing his cards down. “Went bust.”

“I’m so sorry,” she consoled him, her eyes sparkling.

As he brushed his spent cards aside with a lordly scowl of irritation, she picked up his large ring and slipped it on her finger, pretending to admire it on herself. He lifted his eyebrow at her. With the big ring flopping on her finger, she dealt the final hand. His face-up card was the two of clubs.

Obviously he would want another card, she mused, strategizing as she examined her own hand, a four face down and a nine face up, for a total of thirteen. She would have to be careful not to overshoot twenty-one.

She glanced across the table at her enigmatic opponent. He beckoned. She dealt him a five.

“Another,” he murmured.

“The four of spades.”

“I’ll stay.”

She looked closely at him, trying to read his blank expression, then turned over a third card for herself, a five. This brought her to eighteen. If she took another card, the chances were she’d go bust. Best to play it safe.

“Show, my dear,” she said archly to him.

“You first,” he countered with a dark smile.

That smile worried her.

“Eighteen.” She turned her last card over.

He leaned closer and inspected them, then nodded. “A respectable hand.”

“Well?” she prodded, unable to decide if she was irked or entertained by the man. “Are you going to show your cards or not?”

“Show! Show!” the spectators clamored.

He glanced at them then looked down and slid his cards forward one by one, the two, the five, the four, totaling eleven.

Oh no, thought Bel, her eyes widening.

He turned over a ten and smiled wolfishly. “Blackjack.”

“A kiss! A kiss!” the men shouted in uproarious cheer, calling for more drinks.

Bel sat back, folded her arms over her chest, and pouted for a second, then pulled off his ring and rolled it back to him with a scowl. He gave her an innocent smile.

Around them the men exclaimed and guffawed and hooted and drank.

Serenely ignoring them, her tall, arrogant opponent leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, smug as any conqueror. He tapped his splayed fingertips against each other, regarding her in amused expectation. “I await my prize with bated breath, Miss Hamilton.”

“Oh, very well,” she muttered, blushing. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Tsk, tsk, sore loser,” he chided softly.

She stood, braced her hands on the green baize table, and leaned across it to him, aware of the cheering growing to a thunderous volume. Her heart was beating rapidly, but for his part, he appeared thoroughly unrattled.

Bravely she leaned closer, pausing in hesitation as she hovered in front of him, her lips mere inches from his. “You could cooperate,” she suggested.

“But why should I, when it’s so much more fun to see you flustered?”

She narrowed her eyes. Ignoring their raucous audience by a surge of will, she closed the distance between them, kissing him resolutely on the mouth. A moment later, she drew back, glowing pink, and unable to hide the sparkle of triumph in her eyes.

He studied her skeptically, skimmed his fingers over the table, then drummed them boredly. “I thought you said you were going to kiss me.”

“I—I just did!”

“No.”

“What do you mean? I just did!” She turned from pink to red as the men around them howled with laughter at his matter-of-fact reproach.

He slid the ring across the table to her again. “Look at this ring. It’s worth ten of your new cravat pins. This is what I put into the pot. You can’t give me a kiss like that and call it fair. Rules are rules, Miss Hamilton. I want a real kiss, unless you want to become known as an unsporting young lady.”

Her jaw dropped with indignation. “That’s the only kind of kiss you’re getting from me.”

He scoffed and glanced away, scratching his cheek. “And you call yourself a courtesan.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

He shrugged, lounging in his chair. “I’ve had better kisses from dairy maids.”

“Ooh!” cried the men, watching their duel in mounting suspense.

Bel folded her arms over her chest and glared quellingly at him. She would have thrown his ring in his arrogant face if his eyes weren’t sparkling so playfully. She could see he did not intend to let her off the hook.

“Really, don’t you owe these devoted gentlemen a true demonstration of your professional expertise, Miss Hamilton?” he drawled, toying with the ring, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger.

She glanced around uncertainly at her admirers, then glared at him. How dare the blackguard call her skills into question—threaten her livelihood? Little did he know he’d struck a nerve. Her chief worry, after all, was that her suitors, who had been offering such vast sums to take her under their protection, might find out that in fact she was terrified to go into a man’s bed. If she didn’t prove herself here and now, they might begin to suspect.

Most of them were cheering at his suggestion, though the more zealous ones looked genuinely offended on her behalf. The coxcomb would be lucky if he didn’t get himself into a duel, whoever he was. No, she remembered a second later, men didn’t duel over demireps, only over ladies. Her kind had no honor to defend.

Considering her next move, Bel tossed her head in haughty nonchalance and rested her hands on her waist. “The fact is, I don’t give
serious
kisses to men whose names I don’t even know.”

“Easily remedied,” he said as he flashed her a smile. “I’m Hawkscliffe.”

“Hawkscliffe?” she echoed, staring at him in ill-concealed shock.

She knew of the duke of Hawkscliffe—Robert Knight— fierce young Tory leader on the rise, renowned in government circles for his courage, high character, and unyielding sense of justice. He was not merely a bachelor— he was the catch of the decade, with a hundred thousand pounds a year. So far, no young lady had quite measured up to Hawkscliffe’s exacting standards.

She knew the major points of his family history and the rest of his title, as well—earl of Morley, Viscount Beningbrooke. She knew that Hawkscliffe Hall was a huge Norman keep standing proudly on a rugged hilltop in the
Cumbrian Mountains
. She knew all this because the intricacies of the aristocracy had been a large part of her girls’ curriculum at Mrs. Hall’s Academy for Young Ladies— where, disastrously, Bel had taught his hellion little sister, Lady Jacinda Knight.

Oh, dear, she thought, glancing uneasily at the rowdy, misbehaving peers all around the table, then looked again at Hawkscliffe. This man, whatever he was, was no friend of Dolph Breckinridge. Somehow this certainty, along with her connection to his little sister, made her feel a bit safer with him, as did his sterling reputation and the brilliant articles she had read by him in the
Quarterly Review
championing humanitarian views that she heartily applauded.

A girl could do worse.

Careful to hide her sudden interest, she folded her arms over her chest and regarded him in lofty amusement. “Pray tell, what is the Paragon Duke doing here, gambling and trying to coax unwon kisses out of a demirep?”

The men standing around them laughed at his expense, but not maliciously.

“Oh, just entertaining myself,” he replied with a calculating smile. “You know full well that I won a
proper
kiss from you fair and square, Miss Hamilton.”

“Well,” she said archly, “no doubt you need it.”

Laughter rippled around them at her tart rejoinder, but for the most part, the surrounding lords and dandies hushed themselves, a captive audience, waiting to see if she would kiss Hawkscliffe.

Now that she knew who he was, Bel decided she could not honorably back down. She would never allow herself to be intimidated by a self-righteous, renowned prude. He probably didn’t know anything more about
serious
kissing than she did.

As she braced her hands on the table and leaned toward him a second time, her heart beat faster with anticipation and curiosity and undeniable attraction; the moment had come to see if anything Harriette had taught her had stuck.

Gently she cupped his clean-shaved cheek in her hand, catching a glimpse of his smoldering eyes before she closed hers, then she caressed his lips with her own, slowly gifting him with a kiss that left the rest of the noisy, clamoring party and the city and the world behind.

His mouth was warm and silky; his smooth skin heated beneath her touch. She stroked his black hair and kissed him more deeply, leaning further over the table. She felt him pull her toward him. His warm hand curled around her nape in firm, gentle possession as she parted her lips and let him taste of her. He responded hotly yet still with restraint, entrancing her with his drugging kiss until she was nigh trembling with pleasure.

At length he brought the kiss to a slow, soft end and released her.

Bel returned to sanity amid raucous cheers, feeling dazed. Her lips were bee-stung, her cheeks glowed pink, and she was breathing rather heavily. Hawkscliffe’s slicked hair was tousled and his starchy cravat was mussed and at the moment, he looked anything
but
a paragon.

The glance he sent her, potent with desire, made her feel for the first time thrillingly like a real courtesan rather than just a silly, stiff girl pretending. She lowered her head, bit her lip shyly, and glanced at him again.

With a sultry little smile the duke slid his expensive ring toward her. “Take it,” he murmured. “I insist.”

By this gesture, she realized he meant to say that now she had earned it. With a knowing smile, she slid it right back to him.

“Keep it, Your Grace. The pleasure was all mine.”

The men around them burst out laughing but Hawkscliffe merely smiled intimately and watched her walk away with a promise in his eyes that said he would indeed be back.