Author: Tessa Dare

But there was something almost … human in his face, as he mentioned her. A slight pleating at the corner of his eyes. A hint of uncertainty in the furrow of his brow.

Amelia tore her gaze away. She’d spent entirely too much time looking at the duke this evening, and she couldn’t bear to see him humanized any further. Far safer to hold to her demonized version: arrogant, cold, horse-mad. Easy to detest.

Bellamy covered the floor in three quick strides to confront Lily at a distance of inches. His voice was husky and intense. “You know I have no sister. No brother. No estate in Devonshire or anywhere else.”

“I know.” Lily took his hand in hers. “But we have thought of you as family, Leo and I.”

Closing his eyes, Bellamy swallowed hard. “Then you must not deny me the right to look after you.”

“I would never try.”

Standing at Lily’s side, Amelia began to feel as though she were intruding on a very private conversation. Yet it did not seem possible to move away without drawing further attention to herself. She settled for averting her eyes and remaining absolutely still. Beneath her hand, Lily’s shoulder began to tremble.

“I promise you this,” Bellamy said in a low voice, resonant with emotion. “I will find the men who killed Leo. I will hunt them down. No matter how far they run, no matter where they hide. And I will see them hanged.”

Lily began to weep.

“Dear Lily.” Bellamy clutched her fingers and brought them to his lips. “Tell me what to do. Give me some way to make it better.”

“Just take me to him,” she said. “And let me say goodbye.”

Chapter Four

As morning dawned, Spencer had still not found the solace of his library carpet, but he had downed a fair amount of brandy, and the whirling din in his head had cleared. He had passed much of the night in silence, which helped. Though he and Ashworth had retreated to Bellamy’s garden while Lily wept over her brother’s battered corpse, by tacit agreement there’d been no conversation. He’d spent the carriage rides to and fro in quiet contemplation, as had they all.

He peered out the coach window into the gray-amber dawn. The London streets swarmed with fruit and fish vendors, live-out servants and laborers on their way to their posts. The early-morning bustle slowed the coach’s progress considerably.

But then, he was in no great rush. The two other men and Leo’s grieving sister had already been deposited at Harcliffe Manor. He and Lady Amelia were the sole passengers remaining, and the coachman was welcome to take his time. For once, Spencer was not eager to be alone.

“This has been a most extraordinary night,” he said softly, almost to himself.

“Indeed,” she replied.

Fatigue, coupled with the incredible nature of the night’s events, had left him in a strange state. He had taken Lily’s exhortations to heart. Harcliffe’s death was indeed an effective memento mori, as the medieval saying went. “Remember that you will die.” Were something to happen to him, Spencer would not want Claudia caught in Lily’s predicament. Fortunately, there were concrete actions he could take to avoid such an outcome, and he intended to see to them directly.

This very morning, as a matter of fact.

“It was a very grave shock,” he said. “But Lily seems to have taken it well.”

“Perhaps it seems so, to you. But I know better. Leo’s death is only now becoming real to her. When the shock wears off, she will be stricken with grief. I will call again this afternoon. Perhaps offer to stay with her for a few days.” She shot him a look, her blue eyes catching a sharp gleam from the window glass. “Only until other arrangements can be made.”

He tried to understand the anger in her tone, and failed. It was becoming a maddening habit, this trying to understand her.

“Your Grace, if I may speak freely—”

“I haven’t yet managed to prevent you.”

“Your ‘offer’ to Lily last night was unconscionable. I have never encountered a person so vain, arrogant, presumptuous, self-absorbed, and utterly heartless.”

Her charges surprised Spencer, but they did not wound him overmuch. When spoken in such a distraught, irrational tone, words were easy to dodge—like so many china shepherdesses hurled in a fit of pique.

She continued, “From all evidence, you care more for horses than for people.”

“You have concluded wrongly.”

“Oh, have I concluded wrongly?” she said, mocking his deep tone. “How so?”

“It is true that I find the average horse more pleasant to be around than the average person. Most true horsemen would agree. But it does not follow that I value all horses above all people. And I am not pursuing ownership of Osiris simply because he is a horse, but because he is the horse I am determined to have, at any cost.”

“Precisely,” she muttered. “At any cost, including that of friendship, dignity, honor.”

Spencer shook his head. It would be futile to explain his reasons for wanting that horse. She couldn’t comprehend them, even if he tried.

The carriage rattled on, and their elbows rattled against each other. They sat sharing the front-facing seat. Spencer supposed he might have crossed to the opposite seat, once the others had alighted. That would have been the proper thing to do. But he hadn’t felt like moving. Lady Amelia was leaning against him, just slightly—no doubt fatigued and chilled. And once again, he found himself enjoying the soft weight of her body against his.

As that pleasure gathered and spread, so did his unbiddable curiosity. He could not rid his mind of it, this desire to keep speaking with her, to listen to whatever she might say. To discover, to know, to understand.

He said, “You disdain the importance I place on horses.”

“I do. With all due respect to the horses.”

“What is it then, that’s most important to you?”

“My family,” she replied instantly. “And my home.”

“A house in Bryanston Square?” Spencer could not mask his surprise. From the direction she’d given, he knew it must be one of those newer, boxy town houses. Not the sort of history-rich, time-faded abode in which he would picture Lady Amelia d’Orsay.

“No, not that house. That is Laurent’s house, built to his wife’s tastes. I refer to our ancestral home in Gloucestershire. Beauvale Castle is in ruins, but we have a cottage where we summer. It’s called Briarbank, for its position directly overlooking the River Wye.”

“A pleasing prospect.”

“It is. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a house more happily situated. Mama and I, we used to walk out every morning to gather lavender and fresh—” She sniffed. “All my fondest memories are of Briarbank.”

“Will you be leaving Town soon, to summer there?”

She tensed. “Not this year. This year, my brothers intend to let the cottage out. You see, Your Grace, my brother Jack has a debt to pay.”

“I see,” he said, after a pause. “So this is the true root of your anger, my refusal to forgive your brother’s debt. Not my offer to Lily.”

“Well, the root of my anger has since forked into several branches of irritation, and your treatment of Lily is one of them. But yes.” Jutting out her chin, she turned her face to the window.

Spencer couldn’t bring himself to fault her persistence. Throughout his life, if there was a common trait amongst the few people he’d unreservedly admired, it was loyalty. But in this case, the sentiment was severely misapplied. That brother of hers was on a swift course to ruin her entire family. “I fail to see how—”

“Your Grace.” She cut him off with an impatient gesture. “By my counting, we’ve spent close to seven hours in one another’s company. And you’ve spoken more words to me in the last few minutes than in previous six-and-some hours combined. Are you always this chatty in the mornings?”

Chatty? Spencer had been called many unflattering things in his life, but no one had ever accused him of being chatty. Remarkable.

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not. Are you always this inhospitable?”

She gave a breathy sigh. “No. But as you say, it has been an extraordinary night. Even before you arrived at the Bunscombes’ ball.”

Her remark put him back on that darkened terrace and had him mentally searching his pockets for her handkerchief. He shouldn’t like to lose it. She’d obviously invested great care in its design and creation. But unlike the young ladies who netted purses and lacquered tea trays as a means of displaying their dubious “accomplishments,” Lady Amelia had embroidered that square of linen for no one’s appreciation but her own.

This intrigued him.

As did the fact that, for all her harsh words declared him an enemy, her body seemed to have formed a fast friendship with his. She was still leaning against him.

“You are not intimidated by me,” he observed.

“No,” she said musingly. “Honestly, I am not. Oh, I would have been at this time yesterday. But as Lily said, this night has taught me that no one is immortal. It’s a dire realization in many respects, but oddly enough I find it somewhat freeing. Brash impertinence holds a sudden charm. I shall have to look out, or I may be in danger of becoming a real termagant.” She laughed softly to herself. “Yesterday at this time, I would have seen you as the unapproachable, imposing Duke of Morland. And you would not have seen me at all.”

No doubt it would have been the politic thing to object. To say, Oh, certainly I would have noticed you. I would pick you out from a crowd of ladies. But that would have been a lie. In all likelihood, she was right. If they’d crossed paths in the street this time yestermorn, he would not have spared her a second glance. And that would have been an unfortunate thing, for she was a woman who greatly improved on second glance. At this moment, he was discovering that the warm, even light of dawn did her features better service than the harsh shadows cast by candlelight and coal. She looked almost lovely, in the morning.

She touched a finger to the window glass. “Today, I know we are merely humans. Two flawed, imperfect, mortal beings, whose bones will one day crumble to dust. Just a woman and a man.”

At her words, space inside the carriage seemed to collapse around him. Not in a suffocating, oppressive manner, but in a way that evoked the pleasanter aspects of human closeness: physical pleasure and emotional intimacy. It had been some time—an imprudently long time, on reflection—since he’d enjoyed the former. He’d spent most of his adult life avoiding the latter. Surely the extraordinary nature of the night’s events was to blame, but Spencer found himself suddenly, intensely hungry for both.

No sooner had he thought it, than she nestled closer still. Was she seeking comfort? Or offering it?

Just a woman and a man.

Slowly, deliberately, he lifted one gloved hand from his lap and placed it on her leg, a few inches above her knee.

Her thigh went rigid beneath his palm. He did not move, did not acknowledge her startled response. He simply sat there, cupping the plump curve of her thigh and enjoying the way it filled his hand.

Though for practical reasons he favored pretty little nothings in a ballroom, when it came to bed sport, Spencer’s tastes ran to substance, in multiple senses of the term. He liked a woman with something to her, both physically and intellectually. Lady Amelia met both qualifications.

True, she was no great beauty, but she had an undeniable appeal. Her mouth, in particular, he found alluring. Her lips were full and voluptuous, like the rest of her, and a lovely shade of coral pink. Then there was that lone, obstinate freckle still clinging to the inner curve of her left breast. The tiny mark only called attention to the otherwise creamy perfection of the bosom it adorned.

And after the night they’d just passed wandering through Death’s shadow, it was only natural for a man to crave … well, to crave.