Ruined By the Duke’s Quizzing Glass (Spicy Shorts #3)

Chapter 1

In retrospect, it may have been unwise to steal a duke’s quizzing glass at the Cliveley ball.

Lucy Ninepence was not typically so reckless.

In Manchester, matrons considered her a girl of good sense.

But when the coterie of debutantes who had previously shunned her for “reeking of mill money” excitedly gathered round, offering Lucy a way into their circle via a diverting game, she accepted immediately.

And only then found out what the game entailed.

It hadn’t been difficult to locate the duke in question.

The other girls had pointed out the new Duke of Cockesbrayne.

Five minutes of observation revealed he was an officious fellow who had refused all suggestions to dance and then had the temerity also to decline ratafia, a trip to the card room, and a perfectly amiable discussion of the weather. Did the man like anything?

Lucy had expected little of the duke; throughout the evening, as she perched on a stool alongside the other wallflowers, she heard constant complaints about His Grace.

Wilting in the shadows seemed a waste of her pretty new silk dress and training in manners, but whenever she worried at the lace on her gloves, her chaperone, Mrs. Easterling, slapped Lucy’s hand.

Her father’s hopes and money were coming to naught.

Lucy was about to return to the north, twenty-two years of age, unmarried, and humiliated by the sophisticates in the capital.

Thus, when a gaggle of girls from fine families scooped Lucy from her seat and offered her a way to become part of their faction, she was prepared to sacrifice a small toe to stay within their accepting embrace.

“You simply need to relieve the duke of his quizzing glass,” said Lady Maria Courtenay, bored and beautiful in a dress of emerald green despite expectations that debutantes wear white; she’d been on the marriage market long enough to earn some color.

“It’s such a little thing. Just dangling there.

He likely won’t even miss it.” The other girls dissolved into laughter at the double meaning.

Their fellow debutantes tittered behind their fans, and Lucy joined in, relieved at last to be invited to partake of a joke instead of being the subject of one.

“I’m certain that I can do it,” said Lucy earnestly, watching her prey, unaware that the girls were watching her in much the same fashion.

Lucy wasn’t so silly as to think that one quizzing glass would solve the problem of her social status or make these young ladies her friends. But what was the risk of borrowing a quizzing glass for just a few moments?

The Duke of Cockesbrayne was tall, she noted, with dark hair and an aristocratic profile that might have been handsome if he didn’t look so perpetually irritated.

Lucy felt an unwelcome flutter when his gaze swept the room.

He was cold and assessing behind that ridiculous quizzing glass.

No, she was here for a purpose, not to swoon over disagreeable dukes.

Lucy slipped to the side, close enough to smell his delectable shaving soap.

Her fingers brushed his as she eased the quizzing glass from his loose grip.

It was warm from his hand. For a moment, neither moved.

Then someone asked after his mother’s health, and the duke’s attention shifted.

Lucy stepped away, the glass secure, her heart hammering belatedly in her chest.

When she arrived in the ladies’ retiring room to present her easily obtained prize to the other debutantes, it seemed only fitting that they reveal a second requirement. A far more scandalous demand.

***

The Duke of Cockesbrayne wondered if his hosts were just now preparing a medal for his forbearance in attending this most dreadful ball. He’d left his ailing mother to show his face at this disastrous event. Why, some fool had tried to discuss the weather with him!

As mere Lord Peter Sidwin, he’d supported himself and his mother on a modest, but adequate income.

As the Duke of Cockesbrayne — and, yes, he knew exactly how ridiculous the title sounded — he faced an insurmountable challenge of debt tied to lands he’d never expected to inherit and an endless pile of correspondence that required missives sent with rhetorical flourishes else they might offend the wrong person. Peter hated flourishes.

When Mrs. George Shakelance appeared bearing news of a shipment of fine Renaissance tapestries woven with gold and silver thread, Peter finally began to enjoy the evening.

His eyebrow twitched as he thought of the cache of old fabric that had the potential to offer hours of diversion as he and other parfilage hobbyists painstakingly removed the precious metal threads strand by strand.

He could almost feel the tweezers in his fingers now.

Thus pleasurably distracted, Peter didn’t realize that his prized quizzing glass had gone missing from his very hand. He couldn’t think of where he’d misplaced the thing. It must be on a tray of ratafia, he reasoned. Awful stuff. He’d just have to go into the kitchens and recover it.

While following a waiter towards what was presumably the Cliveley kitchen, he felt a small hand on his arm.

“Oh my,” cried a voice altogether too rehearsed. “Do forgive me, Your Grace. It’s just that I seem to have sprained my ankle.”

Peter turned to look at the gel, wishing all the while that he had his quizzing glass so he might survey her with the appropriate amount of hauteur.

“I wonder if you might help me to the ladies’ retiring room?”

He squinted at her. She was Miss Clough, if he wasn’t mistaken. A pert, pretty little thing with a disdain for the fiber arts. He had to assist her — Peter was a gentleman, after all — but he had no plans to get caught in this one’s web.

Peter offered his arm but maintained a decorous distance while looking about for a mother or chaperone who could aid the girl. It wouldn’t do to get saddled with a silly debutante for a wife.

***

Just a bit earlier, in the ladies’ retiring room down the hall, Lucy had lifted the quizzing glass in triumph before her new friends. And then collapsed onto a divan shortly after in shock. In between, she’d discovered the extent to which she had misjudged the situation.

“You want me to…”

“We have all done it. The point of stealing an object from an eligible gentleman is to anoint it with our feminine essence, rendering us irresistible to him,” said Lady Maria as if Lucy was a dolt for not considering this.

There were two problems. Well, likely more, but two stood out glaringly. The first was that she didn’t consider the Duke of Cockesbrayne an eligible gentleman. He might smell delicious, but he was a boor!

The second problem was her dratted curiosity. In order to maintain her reputation and have even the slightest chance of making a respectable marriage, she needed to appear innocent as a newborn lamb.

And in some ways, Lucy Ninepence was innocent.

She’d never so much as touched the ungloved hand of a gentleman not related to her by marriage.

Oh, but she had studied. Every unlocked library in Manchester had attracted her attention, especially the collections in tantalizing nooks.

She’d done yeoman’s work as an espionage agent tasked by her own hungry mind with finding caches of pornography and devouring their contents before she was missed from a party.

Obviously, these London sophisticates couldn’t know that.

“Feminine…essence?” she asked, her eyes wide.

Lady Maria sneered. “You know, from your mantrap,” she hissed. “If you’d been raised with a proper nanny, you’d know all about such magic. She’d have told you stories of the occult. Feminine power that brings a man to his knees.”

Lucy looked at the quizzing glass. She’d read about lewd acts in those forbidden books. But she’d always imagined sharing intimacies with someone who cared for her. Not performing for cruel girls who’d never accept her anyway.

Honestly, Lucy wasn’t even sure she wanted a husband from this glittering, cold world.

But she wanted to belong somewhere. To someone.

For too long she’d been the only child of an industrialist who constantly lived in fear of his employees.

The gates between her and the outside hadn’t merely been figurative.

“I can assure you I’m as pure as any of the debutantes,” said Lucy, her eyes downcast and mind calculating how to get out of this mess.

Lady Maria snorted. Really, she was a nasty bit of business, and Lucy wasn’t so new to this earth that she could gather from this interaction any offer of genuine friendship. It was a false overture and seemed to have all the makings of a trick.

“I am! And I don’t think this is a very nice game,” said Lucy. “I forfeit.”

Lady Maria didn’t respond. She merely left the room at high sail, no doubt off to tell her confederates that their plan had been thwarted.

Lucy looked about the empty room and realized that this was as good a time as any to avail herself of the chamber pot.

Only when Lucy had concluded her ablutions and rounded the corner of the privacy screen did she realize something was wrong. There were hisses and a crowd of ladies at the door to the retiring room. Most glared at her in horror, and a few merely looked sad.

The Duke of Cockesbrayne was at the center of the crush.

He stood on the threshold as if repelled by propriety, but final as the Gates of Thermopylae.

She would need to pass him to exit the room, but attempting to do so might cause her death, if his expression was any indication.

The room suddenly felt airless, too hot, the walls closing in.

“My quizzing glass…” he said, his hand extended as if to pull it from Lucy’s hand through the air between them.

Lady Maria, just to the duke’s right, wiped beautiful false tears into a fine handkerchief. “That’s not all, Your Grace. I saw her — with my own pure eyes — doing the most unnatural things with it. Under her skirts.”

Towards the back of the crush, Lucy heard the voice of her paid chaperone.

Mrs. Easterling, well aware that her lucrative business was being leveled faster than London in 1666, swooned.

But not before crying out, “Oh dear! The ton wasn’t supposed to discover the duke’s attachment to Lucy in this manner! ”

The assemblage gasped and then buzzed, each person seeking confirmation of this most shocking bit of news. It almost seemed as if the Duke of Cockesbrayne and new money Lucy Ninepence…had an agreement?

It was under those circumstances and the eyes of a scandalized, watchful group of ladies that Lucy met the duke’s eyes for the first time.

They were hard and angry. Beneath that, there was something else: humiliation, as if he found himself suddenly exposed.

And in a way, he was exposed; there was no quizzing glass before his eye because it was in her hand.

And thus was Lucy Ninepence spectacularly ruined.