To Pleasure a Duke (6 page)

“Do you think she’ll come to the village ball?” he mused. “A guinea says she will.”

“You owe me a guinea.”

“Then we’ll be even. If I could find a wife like Lady Annabelle I’d be made for life.”

“Once she sees where the ball is held, in the rooms above The Acorn, she may not be quite so unaffected,” Eugenie said dryly. “It is hardly what she is used to, Terry. I’d be very surprised if her brother lets her go. That poor girl . . . Miss Gamboni. Obviously Lady Annabelle gave her the slip.”

“All the gossip about him is right, isn’t it? He’s an arrogant stuffed shirt. Did you hear how he spoke to me when I dared to touch his old sword?”

Eugenie wasn’t listening. Her thoughts were drifting. Would Sinclair be at the village ball? And if he was, would he dance with her? The rooms above The Acorn were crowded and stuffy and couples were known to slip away for a cuddle and a kiss. Would Sinclair ever do anything so daring, something so far beneath his usual rigid code of behavior? If she could persuade him to do something so unlike himself then her chances of marrying him would surely rise a notch or two?

She wondered what it would be like to kiss Sinclair.

Her lips tingled, as she recalled the manner in which he’d looked at her when they were standing on the terrace, the way he’d moved closer, almost as if he was about to take her in his arms. The way he’d spoken her name.

Terry might think him stuffy and arrogant, but Eugenie saw something else in Sinclair’s dark eyes. His Grace, the Duke of Somerton was lonely and quite possibly shy, hemmed about with his duties and responsibilities and his grand house. She smiled, remembering his boyhood wish to be a tinker with a golden earring. She was beginning to understand him. Whereas Eugenie wanted respectability her duke needed to do something completely undukelike and a little wild.

And Eugenie was the girl to help him do it.

Chapter 5

J
ack was full of talk about the duke’s stables and all that he’d seen there. Sir Peter didn’t appear to be taking any more interest than normal, but Eugenie noticed he hung about after supper rather than retiring to his newspaper. She could almost see the cogs in his brain turning, formulating some plan whereby he would sell his services to the duke for a small fee. “I taught Jack everything he knows about horseflesh,” he would boast, and then offer to share his expertise. Eugenie cringed at the thought, and hoped her father would think better of it. Unfortunately, knowing him as she did, she was more inclined to fear the worse.

As she’d grown up, her family had become more of an embarrassment to her. When she was young she was like Jack, naïve, believing there was nothing wrong in what her father did. But the years had changed that, and as Eugenie grew into a woman who found such behavior unacceptable, she felt the gap between herself and her family widen. She was like a changeling and sometimes she thought it would be a wonderful thing to walk away from these people who were so unlike her. Why, she asked herself, couldn’t she have been born into a different family altogether—a respectable family with morals and ethics? A family she could be proud of instead of wanting to hide them behind closed doors?

But of course she couldn’t walk away. Jack needed her, and the twins were not completely beyond redemption. She had a duty to them, to help them as best she could, although some days the burden was great indeed and she could not help but wonder if there would ever be a time for
her
. When would she be able to live her own life?

Eugenie tried not to give a sigh as she made her way upstairs to her small bedchamber. At least it was hers alone, she being the only girl in the family, and she treasured the small private space. With the door closed she could shut out the trials and tribulations awaiting her and lose herself in her books and her dreams.

She went to her wardrobe and stood staring at her few dresses. There wasn’t much to choose from, but there was the ball on Saturday and she wanted to look her best. Her Sunday gown was too drab and serious, and she had grown out of many of the girlish dresses she’d worn before she went to Miss Debenham’s. The truth was she needed something new, but that was unlikely to happen when the boys desperately required new shoes.

As she examined each garment, Eugenie imagined what Sinclair would think, and her dissatisfaction grew. How could she attract such a handsome, eligible man when he must be used to the most beautiful women in the most gorgeous outfits? Eventually she shut the door with a bang and flung herself back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling, and indulging in her favorite pastime of make-believe.

The make-believe world was always so much more satisfactory than real life. She could make the story end as she wished, and lately it always ended the same way. With herself happily married to the Duke of Somerton.

But today she couldn’t seem to place the story threads to her satisfaction, and restlessly she turned over, her cheek on her hand, and gazed at the window. Downstairs she could hear the twins arguing and her mother’s desperate and useless threats, and then her father’s roar of displeasure, which worked better. It was no use. In a moment there would be a tap on her door, the long-suffering servant requesting she come and help.

Eugenie rose and left her daydreams behind.

S
inclair found his sister in a surprisingly good mood following the Belmonts’ visit. He had his suspicions this was something to do with Terry Belmont, and the coming ball he’d let himself be persuaded into attending, but as Annabelle would be leaving for London soon he didn’t concern himself too much. And he had had words with Miss Gamboni and instructed her sternly on the need to be vigilant when it came to his sister.

If there were tears when it came time for Annabelle to go, he would deal with them as he always dealt with her tantrums. By reminding her she had a position to maintain and a birthright to uphold.

He found himself thinking of Eugenie Belmont instead.
Don’t you ever feel as if you’d like to do something dangerous?
He hadn’t, not until that moment, or if sometimes he felt restless then he’d simply refused to allow such rebellious thoughts to form in his mind. He’d been born and bred to the title and everything had been sacrificed to it—that was just the way it was. He couldn’t say he’d really felt dissatisfaction with his lot, not for years. Why should he? People were jealous of him, not the other way around.

But now he felt a stirring inside him, an urge—one he tried hard to quash—to do something reckless and wild. To show Eugenie he wasn’t the stuffed shirt she imagined him.

He shifted restlessly, glancing down at the note on his desk. He’d written to his mother about the village dance and just received a reply, and now he forced himself to read it.

“Do be careful,
Sinclair,”
she’d written in her neat scrawl.
“Annabelle is at an impressionable age and if you don’t keep a close eye on her one of those yokels will make off with her fickle heart. A heart, which I should not have to remind you, belongs to Lucius!”

Sinclair had no intention of allowing Annabelle to forget where her future lay, but he couldn’t help but wonder what his mother would think if he told her how much his own thoughts had recently become preoccupied with Miss Eugenie Belmont. She’d raise her narrow eyebrows and fix him with one of her cool aristocratic looks.

“Really, Sinclair,”
she would say,
“can’t you do better than that?”

He’d explain to her what it was about Eugenie that made her so fascinating, although because he didn’t really understand the reason himself he’d probably make a hash of it.

“You have a duty not to make your family a laughingstock, Sinclair.”

He thought about the painting in the gallery, the fierce Boudicca, bare-breasted, with her sword raised against the Roman invaders. Her red curls tumbling about her shoulders and her eyes glittering with purpose.

“You are lusting after Boudicca?”
his mother would sneer.
“Dear me, Sinclair. Wasn’t she a savage?”

But he wasn’t lusting after the woman in the painting; he was far more interested in Eugenie. She seemed to occupy a special place in his thoughts. And when Annabelle began speaking about the village ball and what she would wear and how excited she was to be going, he might tease her and roll his eyes and play the bored older brother, but in truth he was just as eager.

T
he cobbled square, on one side of which sat The Acorn, was alive with people and noise and flaring torches. The rain that had at one point threatened to spoil the evening was gone, leaving the ground washed clean and the air fresh and sharp. The Belmonts were on time, mainly because Terry had harried them like a sheepdog a mob of sheep in his impatience to get here, although he was sensible enough not to tell his parents the real reason for his impatience. Eugenie felt frazzled, wondering if she was properly turned out. There hadn’t been enough time to check her appearance as often as she’d wished to, and now it was too late.

Her tentative, “Do I look well?” was met with a chortle from her father and a teasing, “Are you hoping to catch a husband tonight, Genie? Make sure you ask him whether he is rich before you fall in love with him, because if he is poor then I will refuse to give my permission for the banns.”

“This was where I first met and fell in love with your father,” Mrs. Belmont said, sighing. “He was by far the most handsome man in the room.”

“And did
you
ask him if he was rich, Mama?” Eugenie asked innocently.

Her mother pretended not to hear. The difficulties of her marriage to Sir Peter Belmont were well known, but Mrs. Belmont’s manner of dealing with them was to always believe the best of her husband and to turn a blind eye to the worst.

Eugenie had always expected to meet her future husband at a ball like the one tonight at The Acorn. That was before she’d got herself into this scrape with her friends at Miss Debenham’s and the Husband Hunters Club.

They went indoors and up the stairs to the rooms set aside for the ball. Eugenie swallowed her nervousness and smiled at her acquaintances, exchanging a word here and there, and gradually she began to relax and stop herself from worrying about what may or may not happen, and how she was going to play the part required of her if Sinclair did turn up.

Village balls were always great fun, even if sometimes matters got out of hand. Despite what Terry had told Lady Annabelle, there was certainly no stuffiness or grandstanding, apart from the landlord of The Acorn, who liked to remind everyone that it was down to his generosity that they were here at all. Whenever she had a moment, Eugenie glanced about her, but she could not see the duke or his sister. She told herself firmly that she wouldn’t be disappointed if they didn’t turn up, despite Terry’s insistence that they would.

In fact I would be relieved.

But it wasn’t true, not really. She wanted to see Sinclair again. She wanted to test her feminine skills on him. She wanted—she hardly dared to admit it even to herself—to kiss him.

“Annabelle promised,” Terry said smugly, when she voiced her doubts to him, as if he knew her better than anyone.

“Lady Annabelle to you,” Eugenie reminded him sharply.

He pulled a face at her. “She hates being Lady Annabelle. She says she’d rather have been born in a hedgerow.”

“For heaven’s sake don’t encourage her,” Eugenie hissed. “She sounds very young and impressionable. You’re not planning anything silly tonight, are you, Terry?”

“Depends what you mean by silly,” he retorted. “I’m going to show her some fun, that’s all.”

“Well, I hope that’s all. The duke will lock you up in his dungeon if you do anything to compromise his sister.”

Terry snorted and walked off to join a group of his friends, all of whom were slouching as if they had no bones.

Eugenie told herself that the duke was perfectly capable of watching over his sister and she was worrying over nothing, so she smiled and tapped her foot as the musicians struck up again and tried very hard to enjoy herself.

It wasn’t until there was a stir at the door that she became aware that something out of the ordinary was happening. Eugenie looked up with the rest of the crowd. The tall, handsome figure of Somerton and his beautiful sister had drawn all eyes. The third member of their party was the fair-haired girl, Miss Gamboni, the chaperone for Annabelle, but it was the brother and sister who commanded the attention of the room.

“The Most Noble Duke of Somerton and Lady Annabelle St. John!” declared the doorman—the village constable—in his loudest and most official voice.

Sinclair bowed as he was introduced to the gathering and Annabelle curtseyed prettily. A crush of The Acorn’s elite surged toward them, but already the duke’s gaze was surveying the room over their heads, darting from face to face in the crowded room. Eugenie felt that familiar drummer boy begin his tattoo on her heart. She suspected that Sinclair was looking for her. Who else would he be searching for among this motley lot? With a smile she couldn’t quite contain, she made her way toward him.

As soon as he caught sight of her, something sparked in his dark eyes, despite his face remaining cool and aloof. Annabelle, suddenly noticing her, clasped her arm to draw her into their intimate circle.

“Miss Belmont, how nice to see you again!” she declared, and then half turned aside to avoid her brother’s watchful eyes and whispered, “Where is Terry?”

“I am certain he will find you,” Eugenie whispered back. She wondered if she should offer a warning, but decided against it. This was her night, too, and she wanted to enjoy herself.

“So this is the famous village ball,” Sinclair said, with that sneering curl to his lip she found so extremely irritating. When they were married, Eugenie told herself, she would insist he stop doing that.

When they were married. . .

A giggle escaped her at the sheer madness of the idea.

Sinclair gave her a baleful look. “Is it customary for one to dance or does one watch, Miss Belmont?”

“Well
I
prefer to dance,” she said cheerfully. “There will be supper, too, later on. But do not expect a late night, Your Grace. The ball finishes promptly at midnight so that the farmers can rise to till their crops and milk their cows.”

He gave her a sharp look but didn’t seem to know how to answer her, or perhaps he was thinking up a suitable put-down.

“Will we stroll about?” Eugenie suggested, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. “Then I can introduce you to some of the people present. Although I expect some of them are already known to you, Your Grace.” She added, when he gave her a blank look, “Your tenants.”

He looked down at her gloved fingers, resting so intimately upon his sleeve, and his mouth twitched. “Miss Belmont,” he drawled, bending his head so that only she could hear. “I think you know very well I haven’t come here to play polite with my tenants or eat what passes for supper at The Acorn. I’m here because of you.”

Eugenie felt herself drawn into his dark gaze, like a small bird into a thunderstorm. She might have stepped away, to compose herself, but he’d placed his warm hand over hers to hold her exactly where she was. This was happening too quickly and she didn’t know what to do, how to behave.

“Because of me, Your Grace?” she said, breathless, smiling to make a joke of it. “What could I possibly have to do with your attendance at our village ball?”

His eyes narrowed. Suddenly he looked very formidable and rather flustered. “I am no good at word games, Miss Belmont. Never have been.”

“I’m not playing a game, Your Grace.”

He frowned at her, looked away, but she saw the hint of doubt, of shyness in his eyes. Could the grand duke of Somerton be as uncertain of his next move as she? His vulnerability touched her as his arrogance never could.