Page 38 of A Stroke of Luck
“Well, it seems the King of Spades does not quail to call a spade a spade,” observed Zara dryly.
“I assumed that you would wish me to dig in and get to the heart of the matter.” After pausing to wind the leather lead into a neat coil, he added, “We cannot choose our relatives, as we may our friends.”
She wondered whether she was mistaken in thinking his voice had taken on a strangely wistful undertone. Surely a gentleman of his lofty position could not be … lonely. Her imagination must truly be running wild. He was a duke, not some footloose wanderer like herself, treading a perilous line between respectability and ruin. Of course he was surrounded by a proper family and elegant friends.
Friends.Zara swallowed hard, thinking that the rather ordinary blue stripes of her everyday muslin paled in comparison to a certain rich shade of emerald green. She doubted the duke would ever dream of looking at a shabby hellion as a friend.
“My great aunt and her grandson may be unpleasant and obnoxious,” continued Prestwick, “but I don’t suspect them of anything more nefarious than trying to employ a bit ofwheedling, bullying to ensure that Uncle Aubrey’s title passes to Harold. Along with dropping a few well-placed innuendos concerning your antecedents, of course.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked glumly.
“Actually it is.” Prestwick flashed a small smile. “What I mean to say is, you may simply ignore their ill-mannered sniping. However, I hope that you will trust me and not ignore my request to show Symonds your papers.”
“I suppose there’s no harm in that,” she allowed.
The real danger lay in that she did not trust herself to ignore the growing attraction she was feeling for the dratted man.
Hell’s teeth.The young lady was more difficult to read than the most obtuse passages of Plato, mused the duke as he wiped a smudge from the mirror-like surface of his Hessians. Her expression was so nuanced that the quixotic changes of emotion were too fleeting to decipher. She had apologized, but there had been a good deal more in her gaze than mere contrition. The devil of it was, he had not a clue as to what it might be.
“Here now, sir, you ought to be letting me do that.” Stump’s feelings were not at all hard to determine. He was irritated, and just a little bit offended. “I can still wield a rag.”
Prestwick yielded the boots without argument, then stripped off the rest of his garments and sank into the tub of steaming suds.
The valet looked up at the sound of the long, drawn out sigh. “Them lads running you ragged around the paddock, eh?”
It was not Nonny and Perry who had his thoughts spinning in maddening circles, mused the duke as he watched the vapor swirl in a ghostly dance up toward the ceiling. But as it washard to explain, even to himself, he answered with naught but a wordless grunt.
Stump took no more than an instant to interpret the rumbled whoosh of air. “Ah, I think I get your drift,” he commented. “I suppose you’re thinking of Lady Catherine. Word has it she stopped by this afternoon.”
With a start, Prestwick realized he had forgotten all about Lady Catherine’s visit.
“Arrrgh,” he replied, taking care to drown out the need for further comment by splashing a goodly amount of water over his face. Then, taking in a deep breath, he let himself sink below the soapy surface, somehow feeling that once again he had fallen overboard. But this time around, he had a sneaking suspicion he was in way over his head.
Indeed, the storm currents stirred up by Miss Greeley made a North Atlantic gale appear a mere tempest in a teapot.
A hand suddenly reached into the tub and yanked him up. “The devil take it! Are you all right, sir?”
Coughing and sputtering, Prestwick found his valet staring down at him with a look of grizzled concern. “Yes. Of course,” he muttered. “What makes you think otherwise?”
Stump made a face. “Mayhap the fact that since you dove off the deck ofNereid, you been acting as if you left your senses behind.” He reached for a towel and gave it a vigorous shake. “You ain’t been yourself of late.”
His valet’s words hit him like a splash of cold water. There was no denying the truth of them.
The damnable question was why.
Wrapped in his silk dressing gown, a glass of brandy in his hand, the duke was still pondering the question as he paced before the library hearth and set the amber spirits to swirling in a slow vortex. He had thumbed through the pages of a book on Quattrocento paintings, but the colored engravingshad appeared dull as dishwater. He had plied the keys of the pianoforte but the notes of the sonata had sounded sour as curdled cream.
What the devil was ailing him?
Music and art had always provided a safe haven in times of troubled moods. But tonight he had found no solace in Botticelli or Beethoven. All he could picture was a certain young lady with fiery gold hair and an equally volatile temper. And the only sound echoing in his ears was the thrumming of his heated blood as he wondered whether her lips would feel like liquid flames when covered with his own.
Gulping down the rest of the brandy in one swallow, he felt it burn the insides of his mouth, then flow in a licking spiral to pool in his core. This was pure madness! he thought with an inward groan as sweat began to bead on his brow. Seeking to keep a grip on his sanity, he spun around and took hold of the marble mantel, letting the empty glass shatter upon the brass fender.
Dizzy and disoriented, he lay his forehead against the cool stone.
Somewhere in the back of his head a small voice whispered that it was not pure madness but pure lust that was causing his fingers to tremble and his knees to buckle. Lust? Oh, to be sure, he had kept the occasional mistress, but the arrangement had been quite civilized. Indeed, if truth be told, his intellectual interests had inspired more passion than his physical needs.
Prestwick drew in a ragged breath. Well, there was nothing civilized or cerebral about the wave of raw desire that was now shuddering through every fiber of his being. Closing his eyes, he found himself imagining what Miss Greeley would look like with her gold-sparked hair fanned out upon the jewel tones of the oriental carpet, her skirts rucked up to expose her long legs to the glow of the firelight. No doubt she would be more breathtakingly beautiful than Botticelli’s Venus.
