Page 48 of To Dare a Duke

Chapter 13

Prue!

Whatever happened to you? Tell me everything! I’m dying of curiosity. The duke swore me to secrecy and was so fierce about it. Not that I would have breathed a word anyway, but I certainly wouldn’t have dared refuse anything he asked of me. Is he in love with you? He seemed like a man who wanted very much to be your hero. Did he achieve it?

―Excerpt of a letter from Miss Matilda Hunt to Miss Prunella Chuffington-Smythe.

***

23th April. Still at Lord and Lady Faversham’s garden party. Hambleton House. Beside the Thames. Richmond, London.

Prue shivered. Her arms were prickling with gooseflesh by the time the duke’s carriage paused beside her. The door swung open and Robert leapt down, helping her the short distance to the carriage and hurrying her inside. Once she’d sat down, he rapped smartly on the roof and the carriage pulled away.

She watched, a little alarmed, as he stripped off his coat and moved to sit beside her.

“You’re cold,” he said, by way of explanation, slinging the coat around her shoulders.

The warmth of his body still burned in the silk lining, and as it slid against her chilled skin, Prue shivered again, though pleasurably this time. It seemed intimate, that sharing of body heat, even though he wasn’t touching her. She kept her gaze cast down, fighting the flush of colour that the thought of his hard, masculine form was inviting, but that didn’t help as the scent of him rose from the fabric of the coat. Crisp and clean and something faintly citrus. Lemon soap, she guessed, and felt an illicit thrill at having such a personal detail revealed to her.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, and looked up, wishing she hadn’t as she was confronted with those green eyes, for once not the cold reflection of deep water he usually wore, but as soft and inviting as a mossy bank. Tiny flecks of gold glinted amid the green, almost yellow as the sun shafted through the window and illuminated her perusal. Like primroses in the grass, she thought, smiling as she realised the absurd thought would revolt him.

“What?” he demanded, a curious look in the dark forest jade of his gaze.

“Nothing,” she said at once, turning to stare out of the window. At once she was too aware of him, of his large presence so close to her on the plush velvet seat, and of the fact they were alone together in his carriage. She would be ruined if they were discovered.

“You’ll have to marry me now,” he said, his voice gentle and amused. “You’re ruined.”

Prue stiffened, alarmed by the way he’d all but read her thoughts. “I’m only ruined if I’m discovered,” she corrected. “Are you going to allow anyone to find out about this?”

“No, of course not,” he said, folding his arms and sitting back, resting his head against the squab. “But it doesn’t change the fact you are alone with a man in a carriage, looking very much as though you’ve been thoroughly ravished,” he added with a smirk. “Any whisper of my name will have everyone believing you’ve been debauched, most likely against your will,” he added, his tone souring a little.

She stared at him, hearing the bitterness behind the words, and marking the sardonic twist of his mouth.

“But you would never do that, would you.”

It wasn’t a question for, rightly or wrongly, despite her awareness of his proximity and of the strength contained in those broad shoulders and powerful limbs, she felt no fear of him. Her father had been a smaller man than this powerful duke, yet the damage he had wrought had been enough for Prue to swear off men for good. This man, though… despite his terrible reputation, he’d done nothing to hurt her.

He stared at her, his gaze unwavering.

“No,” he said, that one word firm and full of certainty. “Only a weak man would use his fists, or his strength, against someone who has no means of defending themselves. Only the worst kind of villain would take what has not been offered freely. I am many things, Prue, and I’ve done plenty I am not proud of, that I am rightly vilified for, but I was never cruel to a woman, not to my wife. I never laid a hand on her, and I did not kill her. I would have made her happy—or tried to, at least, if she’d allowed me to—but she didn’t want that from me.”

“Why not?” she asked, wondering if he would answer such an indelicate question.

He shrugged and looked away from her. “She was as trapped as I was, for all that it was her who caught me. Her father had manipulated her since she was a child. Her only purpose in life was to catch herself a title. Once she’d done that, she refused to play his games any more. She wanted to taste freedom and pleasure and be wild after years of being the perfect daughter.”

“You sound sympathetic,” she said, surprised.

“Now, perhaps,” he said, with a derisive snort. “I’ve spent plenty of my life loathing her, loathing what she did to me, despising her for how she wrecked everything.” He shrugged. “Age and time give perspective, I suppose. She was unhappy, lonely too, in her own way. We were unsuited, and I was blinded by her beauty. I didn’t take the time to get to know her. What happened was as much my fault as hers. If I’d have been thinking, I would have gained her trust. I would have discovered her heart, instead of allowing my baser instincts to rule me, and accepting her invitation to meet in secret.”

“You don’t know me, either,” she pointed out. “And you met me in secret. Have you not learned your lesson?”

He chuckled at that. “No, perhaps not,” he admitted. “But I’d like to know you. My uncle would rhapsodise about you for hours. I believe he knows you well—he certainly thinks so—and there is no one whose opinion I trust more than his.” His voice lowered, shivering over her, far too intimate in the confined space of his carriage. “I have seen enough to believe it would not be a mistake. Far from it. I… I think we could be happy.”

Prue felt something shift in her chest: an ache for something she’d long ago told herself was not for her. Don’t believe it, she warned herself. A snide voice whispered that he wanted something from her, that he was just lulling her into a false sense of security.

“But you just want a brood mare,” she said, deliberately coarse and accusing. “You need only to secure the line. When you proposed marriage, you implied that once I’d provided your heir, I would be free of you, that I could live an independent life as long as I caused you no scandal.”