The Heart of a Duke (31 page)

Nearby lords and ladies peered at them as they
continued walking, obviously curious at that which had brought the
marquess to such a very obvious reaction.

“
If you’d said that any other way,
I would believe you were a young lady searching out
compliments.”

“
Oh, no, not at all, my lord,” she
rushed to assure him. He couldn’t be further from the
truth.

He winked. “I know that, my lady. Would you
join me for a stroll in Hyde Park tomorrow with your mother’s
permission, of course?”

Oh goodness, she had thought she had so neatly
sidestepped his request. If her mother needed to, she’d truss
Aldora up with an apple between her teeth and serve her up on a
silver platter for the marquess. “Uh-yes, that would be lovely,”
she lied.

The marquess bowed. “I’m looking forward to
it.”

Aldora watched him go, all the while dreaming
of another.

Chapter Five

Thick, dark clouds blanketed the London sky,
all but ready to unleash a torrent of rain upon the
city.

A walk through Hyde Park at this time was the
height of foolishness, yet the marquess had insisted, and Mother
had concurred, so Aldora walked alongside him with bated breath,
waiting for the deluge that would ruin her ridiculously thin wrap
and ornamental hood.

A faint breeze rustled her cloak and set a
lone lock of hair tumbling over her brow. She brushed it
back.

Aldora met the marquess’s long strides, easily
falling into step. Her maid’s gasping breath indicated the brisk
pace was hardly fashionable and not at all appropriate. Regardless,
the sooner this outing was over, the sooner Aldora could return
home and try to forget that she was hopelessly besotted with the
wrong brother.

The angry rumble of thunder sounded in the
distance.

Aldora frowned. She needed to make a match
with the gentleman but she wasn’t willing to die by a bolt of
lightning just to save her family.

“
I know ladies possess a
significantly weaker constitution. Would you care to rest a
moment?”

It was the first thing he’d said since they’d
entered the largely empty park. She cringed as Valera’s claims
about St. James’s views on women surfaced. It shouldn’t bother her
that he saw her as a fragile wisp of a thing. After all, it was the
view held by most in Society. And yet it did rankle—a good deal.
Aldora couldn’t imagine Michael being possessed of a like
opinion.

She closed her eyes.
Michael
.

“
My lady?” he murmured. Her gaze
flew to his. He gestured to their surroundings. “I was asking if
you’d like to stop a moment?”

Aldora looked around, taking in their area.
The knowledge of where they were hit her like a kick to the chest.
Her flesh tingled in remembrance of the touch of Michael’s hands as
he circled her neck with the childhood pendant she now
wore.

It hardly worked toward her ultimate goal for
the marquess, but Aldora could not bite back the next words. “I
don’t believe a riding trail is the best place for us to rest, my
lord.”

St. James’s full lips turned upwards with
amusement.

“
Ahh!”

Aldora and St. James looked up in unison, in
time to see her maid not even twenty paces away topple over. The
older woman landed hard on her knees. A loud wind muted the
agonized cry.

Propriety forgotten, Aldora raced to her maid,
dropping to a knee.

St. James knelt alongside her.

“
Silly thing, Lady Aldora. I
stepped in a rabbit hole. A rabbit hole. What is a rabbit hole
doing in Hyde Park?” The woman dashed back a stray tear.

“
Are you injured, Isabella?”
Aldora asked.

With effortless grace, St. James stood and
helped Isabella to her feet. The maid took a tentative step and
cried out. The wrinkles on her narrow face contorted with
pain.

St. James turned to Aldora. “I’m going to
carry her to the phaeton and instruct my driver to return her at
once.”

Aldora bit the inside of her cheek to keep
from suggesting that she be allowed to return home with her
maid.

He hesitated. “I do not want to leave you
alone, unchaperoned.”

But he could move faster without having to
match his stride to Aldora’s. She understood that and cared more
for Isabella’s well being that propriety.

Her mother, however, well that was a tale of a
different color. She nodded. “I’ll be fine, my lord. Truly,” she
said when he hesitated.

The marquess inclined his head and then all
but sprinted through the park, the older woman in his arms. Aldora
stared after him, marveling at the absolute ease in which he
handled Isabella’s reed thin frame. She watched until they’d
disappeared from her line of vision.

St. James had behaved as the perfect
gentleman. He’d been kind, considerate, and even managed to laugh
at her tendency to blurt out exactly what she was
thinking.

He was nothing like his brother, Michael.
Michael who teased her and challenged her…and who’d also lied to
her. Last evening, after she had returned from Lord and Lady
Havendale’s ball, she had pounded her pillow, precious sleep
eluding her. The shock of discovering that Michael was not her
marquess had crippled her sensibilities. If somebody had wrenched
her heart from her chest and stuck a thousand pinpricks within the
foolish organ, it couldn’t hurt more.

It was foolish. To feel these things,
anything, for a veritable stranger. But she cared for him, cared a
good deal. After she had allowed herself a cleansing cry, other
thoughts had trickled in and replaced the agony.

Michael had lied to her. He had deliberately
misled her into believing he was in fact the marquess. She fed that
sense of betrayal, because it dulled the ache within her breast.
Oh, the fun he must have had at her expense.

The heartless deception should have squashed
any feelings she had for the darkly handsome, scandal-ridden
gentleman. She should wholeheartedly devote her efforts to winning
over the powerful, more-gentlemanly Marquess of St.
James.

So why didn’t she feel any of the fluttery
waves of awareness deep inside her belly as she did whenever
Michael was near?

Thunder sounded in the distance. The wind
kicked up a frenzy, and the tree branches shook. The breeze sent
several leaves fluttering. She reached up and tried to catch one,
but it sailed through her fingers and landed on the ground. Aldora
put the heel of her slipper to keep it in place, then bent down to
retrieve it.

“
Never tell me you’ve lost
something again, my lady?”

Aldora froze. The green leaf slipped out of
her hands and floated off on the next gust of wind.

She swallowed.
Why is he here
? She remained rooted
to her spot upon the ground.

Michael dismounted from his horse. The
enormous black beast pawed the ground nervously but remained in its
place. “What are you doing here?” He looked around as if expecting
someone to materialize from the breeze. “Alone.”

Aldora’s lips parted, but no words came
out.

He took a step toward her.

She held her ground. “Why
are
you
here?”
she tossed back at him, embracing the volatile anger that stirred
deep within her chest. It gave her the fortitude to confront
him.

Michael paused. “I was riding.”

Well, he had her there. He had far more reason
to be out on this dreary gray day than she. Still…

“
You should have continued
riding.”

His body convulsed like he’d been physically
struck.

I will not feel bad. I will not
feel bad.

“
And I’m not alone,” she added for
spiteful measure. “I’m out walking with the Marquess of St. James.
You know, your brother.” In unison with her bold declaration, the
wind died an instant death, and the air stood still.

A savage-like growl split the sudden,
unearthly quiet. The unrestrained darkness in Michael’s eyes
indicated that the sound didn’t belong to nature but rather had
come from deep within his chest.

She should relish his tangible pain, but it
didn’t bring her even a smidgeon of glee. It only made her feel
that much worse, which she hadn’t thought possible. “You lied to
me. You made light of me, knowing all along I thought you to be
your brother.” She spit the words at him.

“
I didn’t.”

Stated in that flat, emotionless tone, Aldora
gritted her teeth, besieged by an unladylike desire to strike him.
“You didn’t what? Lie to—”

“
Make light of you.” Michael held
his palms up, almost as if in supplication. “That was never my
intention.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly an apology, and his
words were certainly not enough to erase the vast hurt he’d caused
her. Aldora tipped her chin back. “Oh, well then what was your
intention?”

Michael should have continued riding. He
should have turned Midnight around and ridden hard to the opposite
end of the park. Lady Aldora was like the nymph Calypso who’d held
tight to Odysseus for seven years. Only Michael suspected that Lady
Aldora’s hold would be something a deal more permanent.

He studied the pinched lines at the corner of
her lush lips, the glitter of emotion that filled her expressive
brown eyes.

Michael removed his hat and beat it against
the side of his thigh. It would be easier for both of them—all of
them, if he considered his brother—if he offered a hasty apology
and left her believing that he’d merely been, ‘making light of
her’. There was nothing he could offer her. He had money. Plenty of
it. But respectability and a place in London Society? No. Not after
he’d killed Lord Everworth. The things he now dreamed of were
beyond his reach.

For the first time, he found himself craving a
title.

Since there was nothing he could say that
would excuse his actions, he settled for the truth. “You are
correct. I was wrong. I should have corrected your error from the
very beginning instead of letting you believe I was in fact the
marquess.”

“
So why didn’t you?” There was a
steely edge to her question, a strength that he appreciated. Most
any other lady would have descended into a fit of
hysterics.

Michael closed the distance separating them.
He reached out and brushed back a dark curl that had escaped her
neat coiffure. She didn’t pull away from him. “Because I knew the
moment you realized who I was, you would have left.”

Aldora frowned.

“
Come, can you truly say that you
would have continued conversing with me, the younger, untitled
brother with a scandalous past?” Silence met his question. “That is
what I suspected.”

“
You’re wrong,” she said, her
words the faintest whisper.

Laughter bubbled up from his chest, harsh and
angry. “Am I?”

She cocked her head a small angle. “We’ll
never know, because you weren’t honest with me.”

He slashed the air with his hand. “Honesty?
You speak to me of honesty? What is honest about your intentions
for my brother? When we met, were you not scheming to meet the
illustrious, titled Marquess of St. James?”

Her head jerked back and splotches of obvious
embarrassment flooded her cheeks. “You don’t know anything about
it.”

Michael laughed, the sound devoid of humor.
“Are you going to tell me you are so different from every other
young lady scheming to make the best match?”

Aldora’s eyes wandered to a point beyond his
shoulder, all the confirmation he needed.

Why did he feel this weighty sense of regret?
Because with her wit and ability to go toe to toe with him, he’d
mistakenly allowed himself to believe Lady Aldora was different
from all other ladies. Her silence served as a subtle reminder as
to what drove nobility; familial connections and age-old
titles.

A raindrop fell upon his brow. Then another.
And another.