The Virgin Huntress (15 page)

“Then I am honored, indeed, Your Grace.” Caroline abruptly released Ludovic’s arm to puddle her petticoats in a deep obeisance to the duke.

“My dearest Lady Caroline.” The duke took her hand as she rose, smoothing his lips over her fingers. “The reports of your pulchritude were sadly understated.” Ludovic noted a display of uneven and discolored teeth when he spoke.

“The duke is an old and dear friend of your father’s and recently widowed,” Lady Capheaton explained to her daughter. “Now out of mourning, he has come to join our party with a particular desire to meet you.”

“You honor me too much, Your Grace,” Carline replied breathily, fluttering her lashes over modestly downcast eyes.

What the hell is the vixen playing at? Does she think to make me jealous?
Ludovic discarded the notion as meritless as he’d already expressed his intent to wed her. He stepped forward to put an end to the game and was met with the duke’s supercilious stare. Until that moment, Ludovic had watched the interaction between the duke and the Capheatons with a sense of detached amusement, but the haughty stare sent his hackles rising as if they were a pair of gamecocks being set-to for a match.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Beauclerc lifted a penciled brow.

“DeVere,” he answered.

“The viscount?” asked the duke.

“His heir,” Ludovic volunteered more defensively than he would have liked. He made a second effort to mark his claim. “The Lady Caroline and I have just returned from a most
delightful
little promenade.”

The penciled lines became ludicrous squiggles. “Have you, indeed?”

Casting Ludovic a reproachful look, Caroline blurted, “Lord DeVere refers to the Ruins of Palmyra. From a distance, one would surely believe it real. It is so lifelike it stirs the blood. Have you seen it, Your Grace?”

“I don’t believe I have,” the duke answered. “But since it is a while yet before the illuminations, perhaps you could show it to me?” He offered her his velvet-clad arm.

Caroline’s gaze flicked from Ludovic to the duke and back again. Her lips formed the slightest moue as if she weighed upon the scales of her mind the relative merits of a mere viscount-to-be against the certainty of a ducal cornet. DeVere realized she had found
his
side of the scale wanting when with no more than an apologetic shrug, Caroline placed her dainty, white-be-gloved fingers upon the sleeve of the Duke of Beauclerc. Without even a final glance back at her erstwhile lover, Caroline and her duke departed.

Ludovic was incredulous. Although his first inclination was to wipe the duke’s smug expression from his bloated face, preferably with his fist, he realized the true rage he should have felt never surfaced. Certainly his pride was injured, but he would have expected to feel far more upon being so properly jilted.
Right curious, that.

Chuckling at his dispassionate conclusion, Ludovic took up Beauclerc’s abandoned drink with an inward smile as another consoling thought came to mind. The burning question of Caroline’s capacity for fidelity no longer plagued him, but he would soon ensure that it plagued the good duke instead!

***

“Damme,” said Ned a few hours later in Ludovic’s crested carriage. “I’m stunned. Ludovic Lord DeVere, legendary lover, cast aside like some old shoe?”

“Lady Caroline and that old fop? I never would have believed it,” Annalee agreed. “It’s truly beyond comprehension. You were, by all appearances, the perfect couple.”

“Your naiveté astonishes me,” Ludovic said.

“I must say I regret to see your cynicism prove itself yet again,” Ned replied.

“Cynicism?” Ludovic laughed. “I am nothing if not a realist, dear Ned. In all fairness, do you honestly think that in Caroline’s stead, you would not also have grabbed for the golden goose? Damned if I wouldn’t have!” He gave them a flash of his even, white teeth. “But don’t fear I shall spend any tears over it, ol’ chum, especially when she consoled me in advance with such a magnificent parting gift.”

“What do you mean?” Annalee asked.

DeVere’s lips twitched. “Dear, sweet, innocent Annalee, I leave it to your devoted husband to illuminate you.”

Ned scowled. Annalee blushed. “So it’s truly over between you?” she asked.

“Truly,
it
never was,” DeVere said. “I never even made the formal proposal and would not have pursued her in the first place were it not for my damned pater. Though he didn’t take to the shackles himself until he’d turned the half-century mark. If there’s aught that I can’t abide, it’s hypocrisy. The bloody devil rebuking sin is what that is!”

“Surely one can’t blame a man for wanting to ensure the continuation of his line,” Annalee remarked.

“It’s a damnable obsession,” DeVere said. “He’s bloody well fixated on his death, though he’s already managed to linger at its door far longer than is considered civil.”

“You really ought not to speak of your own father in such a way,” Annalee reproached.

“You might feel differently if ever you met the poxy, old bas—”

“He’s justifiably distraught, my dear,” Ned interjected with a gentle hand over his wife’s. “A gentleman needs to blow off steam in such circumstances as these. Why don’t I take you home?”

She arched a brow. “So you and DeVere can go back out and get thoroughly foxed?”

“Well, yes,” Ned confessed. “That’s generally how it’s done.”

Annalee gave them both a warning look. “Just promise me no fisticuffs, Ned.”

“Fisticuffs?” He appeared to be affronted. “Why the devil do you think I would engage in fisticuffs?”

“I’ve ears on my head. I know how you and DeVere were used to entertaining yourselves.”

“But that was long before I met you, my sweet.” Ned raised her hand to his lips.

She gave a disbelieving huff. “You shan’t bamboozle me, Neddie. I know leopards do not change their spots.” She looked to DeVere with a scowl. “I don’t relish the mortification of collecting my husband from the round house come morning. Do you understand me, my lord?”

DeVere smirked. “Absolutely, my lady.” He added to Ned in an undertone, “Since I don’t see the ring in your nose, I can only imagine she’s put one through your ba—”

“Ah! We’ve arrived!” Ned pronounced as the carriage lurched to a halt. “I’ll escort Annalee inside and return directly.”

Ludovic watched them depart arm in arm, musing how three short years of so-called connubial bliss had nearly emasculated his best friend. He pulled a flask of brandy from his breast pocket, upending it in a salute to the beneficent guardian angel who had allowed his own near escape from the same woeful fate.

Victoria’s Titillating Tidbits

Because so very many romance novels feature rakish heroes, I very much wanted to create a male protagonist for
The Virgin Huntress
who would be the antithesis of this popular archetype. I also loved the idea of two virgins discovering lovemaking together.

My hero, Captain Hewett DeVere, would have been a contemporary of Banastre Tarleton, the colonel of Tarleton’s Legion, an elite British cavalry force that played a prominent part in the American Revolution. The Seventeenth Light Dragoons, formed to honor General James Wolfe, were part of this force but were decimated at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina, January 17, 1781, which was a major turning point in the war.

For a brief history of the Seventeenth Light Dragoons and other topics of my eighteenth century research, please visit my author blog at: http://victoriavane.wordpress.com.

B
IOGRAPHY

A lover of history and deeply romantic stories, Victoria combines these elements to craft erotic and romantic historical novels and novellas for a mature reading audience. Her writing influences are Georgette Heyer for fabulously witty dialogue and over-the-top characters, Robin Schone, Sylvia Day, and Charlotte Featherstone for beautifully crafted prose with deep sensuality, and Lila DiPasqua for creative vision in melding history with eroticism. Ms. Vane also writes romantic historical fiction as Emery Lee.

Author Links:

http://authorvictoriavane.com

http://authoremerylee.com

http://georgianjunkie.wordpress.com

Her Works:

The Devil DeVere Series:

A Wild Night’s Bride—available from Breathless Press

The Virgin Huntress—available from Breathless Press

The Devil You Know—Coming July 27, 2012

The Devil’s Match—Coming August 24, 2012

Other works:

A Breach of Promise