The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series (2 page)

When her Boscastle cousins had first invited her to London five years ago, she had been so enthralled by their amorous exploits that she had undertaken the task of recording the family history in her diary. Soon the pages needed no enhancement. It was a challenge to follow the family’s constant scandals. It seemed that everyone in the brood had led a secret life as a spy or someone’s lover. She had to face a painful fact—as much as she admired her relatives, it was obvious that she led a dreary life in comparison.

It took her a month to overcome her inhibitions and let her pen wander where it would. Soon her diaries simmered with illicit truths and vicarious pleasures. In the pages of her intimate musings the duke not only adored her, but he had been pursuing her for months. In actual life he was domineering, indecent, and inexcusably taken with disgraceful women. In his fictional encounters with Charlotte he was domineering, indecent, and inexplicably taken with her. And no one else.

In Charlotte’s version of the incident in the emporium, the duke had noticed her across the counter and had immediately dismissed the other women. He had walked straight up to Charlotte and, without a word, grasped her hand.

“My carriage is outside,” he had said, his sinful smile mesmerizing her. “May I take you away?”

His face receded. Another voice, breathy and excited, was whispering in her ear. “That’s the Duke of Wynfield you’re staring at, Miss Boscastle. Do be careful. Everyone is saying that he’s in the market for a mistress.”

Charlotte gripped her fan and turned to regard her favorite student in dismay. “Lydia Butterfield, reassure me that he has not found one in you.”

Lydia gave her a wistful grin. “Dear Miss Boscastle, I shall miss you with all my heart.”

“You shall miss my guidance; that is clear.”

“I won’t need it any longer,” Lydia said with regret. “But I will miss your history lessons.”

“All the battles and beheadings?” Charlotte asked, stepping to the side to stop Lydia from staring at the duke. Or him from noticing her. “But don’t be so melodramatic or I shall start to cry. Your family still lives in London. You may visit the academy whenever you wish.”

“My family—well, my
betrothed’s
parents live in Dorset, and he is eager to start a family—”

“Your betrothed?” Charlotte said faintly.

Lydia bit her lip, nodding toward the short gentleman standing a few feet behind her. “Sir Adam Richardson, the architect.”

“Lydia, I am so—”

Envious? Yes, to her shame, she envied Lydia a little. But she was also filled with happiness for a girl whose sweetness Charlotte had feared would render her vulnerable or undesirable on the marriage mart. “I am proud,” she said firmly. “He appears to be a fine gentleman.”

Lydia laughed, her gaze drifting to the duke, who was
not
known to be a gentleman at all. “I was told that he is a wildly jealous lover.”

“Your fiancé?”

“The duke,” Lydia said, laughing again. “He has a reputation for being a possessive suitor.”

“
Lydia
.” Charlotte attempted to look shocked, although the same rumors had not escaped her attention.
Such gossip should have stamped the duke as an unacceptable person instead of engendering wicked daydreams about him in Charlotte’s imagination. Why did it feel so pleasant to picture him tearing off his long-tailed evening coat to defend her from…Oh, since it was
her
flight of fancy, the other man might as well be Phillip Moreland, the cad who had broken her heart years ago.

She could picture it so clearly. The ballroom would be cleared for a duel; the duke studied sword fighting at Fenton’s School of Arms. Charlotte had watched him perform at a benefit ball in this very mansion. She’d had nothing to do with him on that past night, and it was doubtful that she would capture his interest in the future.

“I don’t think that either of us need worry about the duke’s amorous proclivities,” she assured Lydia, thus uttering the fateful words that would come back to mock her before morning came.…

G
ideon doubted that he had made a good impression on Miss Charlotte Boscastle the day she had seen him in the emporium. For one thing he’d drunk too much the night before and his head had felt like Hephaestus’s workshop. For another he was dressed for practice at the fencing school, and there were two whores attached to him like handcuffs, which they may or may not have used on each other the night before. He couldn’t remember.

He knew he looked disreputable the day he stepped into Sir Godfrey Maitland’s emporium. Godfrey, a former student at Fenton’s fencing salon, had stared at him in reproach across the counter. “We have many
ladies
in the shop, Your Grace,” he had said in a meaningful voice.

And that was when Gideon first noticed Charlotte, who glanced at his two companions and lifted her nose in the air as if she’d caught the scent of a noxious threat that might contaminate the young ladies huddled around her.

He inclined his head at her, to no effect. And then he
had kissed one of the harlots on her neck, hoping to elicit some reaction from the golden-haired lady in the straw bonnet. He had, too.

She had gasped and moved back to stand like a shield in front of her charges. Gideon had responded with a slow, roguish smile that brought a blush to her porcelain complexion.

“Fancy that,” he murmured to the woman at his right. “I didn’t know there were any ladies left in London who could still blush.”

“Do not behave like a rake, Your Grace,” Sir Godfrey whispered from behind the counter. “This is Miss Charlotte
Boscastle
. You know how indebted the maestro is to her family.”

“Who isn’t?” the duke mused.

“She is also the lead seamstress at the Scarfield Academy for Young Ladies.”

“God forbid,” Gideon said, straightening in alarm. “A lady with an operative brain in her head. Who’s going to protect me?”

The tart clinging to one of his arms giggled. “As if anyone could threaten a man of your largesse.”

He glanced down at her in amusement. “I suspect the word you just used doesn’t mean what you think it does. At any rate let’s not discuss my ‘largesse’ in public.”

He had laughed off that afternoon; he had forgotten it until tonight. He had been busy practicing at Fenton’s academy, and while it was true that the blushing schoolmistress had momentarily caught his eye, Gideon was in the market for a different sort of mistress. Not one who obeyed rules in bed, but one who broke them and made up a few along the way. He wouldn’t object if she had a brain, though.

Therefore it surprised him that he had recognized Charlotte the moment he’d entered the ballroom. There were young women everywhere. He couldn’t even recall the names of the ladybirds who had accompanied him to the emporium, and he had been far more intimate with that pair than with the frost maiden.

Charlotte Boscastle. He looked directly at her once. She returned the courtesy with a scowl that could have curdled milk. He should have known better than to attend a party given for a group of finishing-school girls. He’d be better off wandering into the conservatory and talking to the Greek statues. At least that way he was fulfilling his function as a guest at the party—all eligible young men of high lineage having been invited—and he wasn’t likely to cause any trouble.

But no sooner had he made the decision to sneak off than trouble in another form appeared. Lord Devon Boscastle detached himself from his throng of friends and stepped into Gideon’s path. “You can’t leave yet, Wynfield. We haven’t talked once. I hope you aren’t avoiding me. I didn’t mean to stab you at practice the other day.”

“Are you trying to lure me into a dark corner?”

Devon’s blue eyes brimmed with devilish intent. “Sorry, but I’m a married man. As you should be at your age.”

Gideon hesitated. “I
was
married.”

“I— Oh, God. Yes, I did know that. Sorry.” Devon said awkwardly, “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine, Devon. It’s been almost five years. I didn’t even know you then.”

Devon lowered his voice. He was the playful brother in the Boscastle family, the prankster and amusing friend, who had become a devoted husband and father of a little
girl. But as a reformed sinner he still liked to stir up mischief whenever he could, and Gideon, along with Devon’s other friends, had come to expect the unexpected from him.

“What do you have planned for the night, Gideon?” he asked, his voice benign.

“An escape. From this party.”

“Why?”

“Why? Look around you. We are outnumbered by innocents, up to our shoulders in educated virgins, who, from a bachelor’s point of view, are the most dangerous entity in London.”

“I was looking at it the other way around,” Devon said. “A libertine could easily lead one of the innocents down the primrose path of dalliance. All he’d have to do is follow the footsteps Grayson wore through the carpets before he walked down the aisle.”

“I’m not in the mood for a maiden. Anyway, you’re married, a fact that renders any advice you offer null and void.”

“Do me a favor, Wynfield.”

Gideon’s first instinct was to refuse outright. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. You want me to stay away from Miss Boscastle. She must have told you that I paraded a pair of strumpets in front of her. It wasn’t as if I did it to provoke her.”

Devon arched a dark brow. “Where on earth did this happen?”

“It was at the emporium.”

Devon pondered this for a moment. “She never mentioned a word of it to me. You couldn’t have made much of an impression on her.”

“I think I did, but it wasn’t a good one,” Gideon said. “If you’re going to forbid me to flirt with your cousin, you needn’t worry. I’m not even remotely tempted.”

“That’s a little insulting,” Devon retorted.

Gideon laughed. “Would you rather I told you that I’m lusting after her?”

“No. I’d probably feel compelled to stay at your side. Grayson asked me to keep an eye on anyone who seemed suspicious.”

“In that case he should have given you a mirror.”

“The woman you have
not
been lusting after isn’t married, but she does have three older brothers who are plotting to end her unhappy spinsterhood any day now.”

“Are they here tonight?” Gideon inquired.

“The two older ones are traveling to London from Sussex. Jane expects them in a week. I think the plan is to find a husband for Charlotte as quickly as possible. I’ll be honest with you; she won’t make it easy on them. I doubt she’ll ever incite anyone’s lust.”

Both men glanced at Charlotte, then looked away.

“And this worries you?” Gideon said, wondering what Devon’s point was, or whether he even had one.

Devon nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, don’t look at me. I was married once and I have a daughter, too.”

“Eventually you’ll have to remarry if you want an heir.” Devon cleared his throat. “Do me a favor, Wynfield?”

Gideon didn’t respond. Here it came. Again Gideon’s instincts warned him to proceed with caution, while his reason argued that Devon was mischievous but not malicious. “I’m meeting my soon-to-be mistress at Mrs. Watson’s tonight.”

“Then this will be your last night of freedom.”

“Excuse me?”

“A mistress can be more demanding than a wife, especially if she’s good at her job. The precious hours of your freedom are slipping like sand through your fingers as we speak.”

“That’s a good point. It makes me wonder why I’m wasting those golden moments talking to you.”

“Will you do it?”

“Will I do what?” Gideon demanded.

“Ask my cousin Charlotte to dance.”

A dance? Was that all? “Why would a lady with a pristine reputation want to dance with me?” he asked slowly.

“I don’t know that she would,” Devon replied. “But, you see, everyone else in the family would like to see her dance.”

The family?

Gideon could have sworn an invisible hand tightened his neck cloth and that a candle in one of the corner girandoles writhed and died. “There are several eligible gentlemen here tonight. Why me?”

“Because you’re a duke, for one thing, and my friend for another. If you could give the other guests the impression that she intrigues a man like you, a few decent gentlemen might begin to see her in a different light.”

“I am
not
offering to court her. And I think you just insulted me.”

Devon shook his head. “I’m not asking you to court her.”

“I don’t trust you, Devon. I think you’re the devil looking for an instrument, and I can find my own evil without your interference.”

“All I really want you to do is to pay a little attention to our lonely wallflower.”

“I think the wallflower just made a face at me.”

“No,” Devon said. “That was at me. She knows we’re standing here talking about her.”

Gideon balked. “Then she might have meant it for both of us. Perhaps you should find another strategy—and by that I am suggesting another gentleman. Someone else to melt her—”

“To what?” Devon asked, one brow lifting.

“She reminds me of a frost maiden. I prefer my ladies warm and willing.”

“Well, she does have a cold heart when it comes to letting gentlemen visitors into the academy. But I can’t blame her for that. I think she’s shy. Come and meet her for yourself.”

Gideon didn’t move.

“I know it doesn’t make much sense—”

“That is an understatement.”

“—but no other gentleman is brave enough to approach her.”

“I shouldn’t wonder, if you go about haranguing them for admiring her from halfway across a room.”

Devon smiled. “Then you admit that you were admiring her?”

Gideon stared at him in stone-faced silence.

“Please ask her to dance.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m her cousin, and if I ask her to dance, everyone will know it’s because no one else has asked her.”

“Maybe she doesn’t
want
to dance.”

“Of course she does.”

Gideon hesitated. “Why do I have the feeling that I’m about to walk into a trap? And why don’t you ask any of the bachelors present to do the honors? Of all the other male guests I’ve undoubtedly earned the worst reputation. Present company and his kin excluded, that is.”