Page 2 of Dance with the Dragon Duke

The next night, Tomorrow was at it again. A coward she may have been, but she was not yet ready to abandon her plan. She took her dinner in the parlor and watched as the duke ate his meal—an Unseelie beet stew—at the corner table he favored.

She cracked her knuckles and pumped her arms, trying to fuel her courage.

“Ready for round two?” Susan teased, setting Tomorrow’s dinner plate in front of her: pickled herring on thick Lunar bread. “Look there.” The madam pointed at the duke’s table.

Margot, Susan’s business partner, sat across from him. The voluptuous, dark-haired courtesan seemed slight beside the duke.

“What’s Margot doing?” Tomorrow asked.

“When we need a break from entertaining the guests, we sit with Darko,” Susan explained. “He chases off the customers and doesn’t ask for anything in return. Hasn’t made a single demand of us since he got here three months ago.”

“He has protective instincts,” Tomorrow said thoughtfully. Dragons were notorious for being as defensive and possessive as they were protective. She could use several doses of each. “I think I can do this . . .”

Worried she’d lose her nerve if she didn’t act quickly, she slipped from her stool. Her boots connected with the hardwood floors and her ankle rolled. Stumbling forward, she righted herself.

She was not off to an excellent start.

“Don’t stop now,” Susan said gently. “Go on, then. I’ll keep an eye on your dinner.”

Tomorrow wished the madam would accompany her instead. She nearly told her so, but Susan was pulled into a flirtatious conversation with a patron. Trying to squeeze between customers, Tomorrow bumped into tables and side-stepped guests. As Seelie-small as she was, she was easy to miss, even easier to knock aside by accident.

Finally, she made it across the room to the duke, feeling a bit like she’d traversed a treacherous battlefield. At the table, Margot smiled welcomingly. Tomorrow did her best to return the gesture and grimaced.

“Find somewhere else to be,” the duke grumped at her in the hard guttural accent of the people from the mountains.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Tomorrow stammered, dropping clumsily into the chair opposite him. She missed part of the seat and hadto adjust. “Ahem, I’m not here to harass Margot. I stopped by to harass you, actually—er, not harass. I don’t mean to bother anyone.”

The duke glowered at her with eyes as dark and glossy as volcanic glass.

Meekly, she cleared her throat. “I, um . . . Maybe I should start over?”

Margot slid a comforting arm around her shoulders, ending her rambling tirade. “Quit your scowling, Dark,” she said affectionately. “You’re making my friend nervous. This is Tomorrow. She’s sweet, and she just needs a quick word with you. You can go back to glaring at your drink as soon as she’s spoken her piece.”

“I can’t promise it’ll be quick,” Tomorrow confessed with a breathy laugh, wringing her hands in her lap. “When I’m anxious, I tend to go on and on and on, and you’re, well, you’re quite befuddling and—” She swallowed her next thought, deciding it wouldn’t be polite to say aloud the adjectives that came next, which was remarkable for her. She usually struggled to keep her words inside her mouth when she felt on the spot. Talking to the gentry made the condition worse.

He lifted one black brow at her. “Befuddling?” Something in his expression softened, though there was absolutely nothing about him that should have been characterized as soft.

Tomorrow gestured broadly at the whole of him, from the curve of his scaled horns to the bulky proportions tightening his blue-trimmed jacket. “Well, you’re quite intimidating. Surely you’ve noticed.”

A patron stopped at the table in an attempt to get Margot’s attention. Dark sent him off with a dismissive flick of his wrist, like he was shooing away bees. The customer scampered away, his bushy fae tail between his legs.

“The duke is as striking as he is terrifying,” Tomorrow confessed to herself. The words needed a safe place to get out now that she was seeing him up close again, but the chatter in the parlor quieted just then and her thoughts carried further than she wanted them to. Heads swiveled in her direction, including the duke’s. Her face flushed. “Beg your pardon. That bit wasn’t for your ears.”

Margot cackled. “Don’t fret,” she said between bouts of mirth. “Heknowshe’s beautiful. It’s completely unfair when they already know it. What’s a girl to do in the presence of so much befuddlery, eh?”

Tomorrow grinned at her, and the nervous sensation tightening her chest eased somewhat.

“What the girl should do,” Darko said with a voice like a grumpy grizzly bear, “is tell me exactly what it is she wants as concisely as possible before I give up on the lot of you and take to my room early.”

“That— I can try that.” Tomorrow licked her dry lips. She wanted his respect almost as much as she wanted his help and worried both were slipping away from her fast. “Obviously, I come in a much smaller, less refined package than you, but I want you to know I’m an immortal too. I’ve been alive for three whole centuries. I’m not some fragile green fledgling.”

“I can see what you are,” he said dismissively.

She took a moment to organize her thoughts before pressing on. It helped when she studied the backs of her hands, which were covered in freckles, instead of the chiseled lines of his statuesque face. “I’ve recently come into an inheritance, a generous one that I need, but it’s kept in trust by a diligent executor.”

Margot squeezed her shoulder encouragingly. “She’s a duchess, Dark, and she needs your help.”

“A bastard duchess,” Tomorrow added, glancing at his evening jacket of seasons past. The silvery blue trim was fading. “Before I can collect, I need a partner—someone with a title of his own who could really use the coin—because there are stipulations.” She scratched at her forehead, coming to the complicated bit that made her face heat further. Hoping to cool herself, she tugged on the collar of her blouse.

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