Chapter 3
The air was fresh and cold, but Rose was glad. Only a bath of ice could entirely extinguish the hot pain of humiliation and rejection, never mind the sense of failure underlying both.
Pulling her shawl over her head and shoulders, Rose tripped away down the faintly torch-lit main path. Turning off to the left, she took refuge in a circle of severely pruned winter rose bushes around a sundial, with tall evergreen bushes beyond.
“I want to go home,” she whispered to the skies, quietly but earnestly, as if pleading with the pale crescent moon above. “I just want to go home!”
It was all too much. Rose’s father was likely dying, she was disappointing her family in failing to find a husband, and disappointing herself in failing to find love. She had made herself ridiculous tonight, although Lord Gillingham need not have been so cruel.
I abhor speaking with simpletons who squander their trivial lives in meaningless claptrap…
How could she have thought him so kind and good?
Rose supposed that she was not a very good judge of character.
But how did anyone learn to understand such complexities as people or love?
She had always simply trusted her heart and fate.
Trying to become more like pragmatic Madeline felt like being told to climb a high mountain.
To top it all off, the Duke of Ravenhill's teasing voice was still resonating in her head, more memorable than any other, for some reason.
…do you not know how to waltz? If so, I would be honored to be your teacher…
Had he been mocking her too, in some subtler way? Rose despaired of understanding and could not wait for the morning when she could escape back to Westvale Park – and ideally never lay eyes on Dorian Voss again.
The sound of music was still audible but faint at this distance, and Rose knew that when it stopped fully, it would mean a break in the dancing. She must then return to the refreshment room. Otherwise, her brothers would doubtless worry and come looking for her.
The music paused, and Rose closed her eyes, willing it to start again for the next dance. She was not yet ready to endure Edwin’s further lectures, nor to smile on some eligible young man, even if anyone were to ask her to dance.
In the shadows, Rose pulled the shawl more tightly around herself and wished hard for the earth to swallow her up. Then, an older longing rose up f rom the depths of her heart, and she wished only to find true love…
Before Rose could even form the words of this wish properly in her head, some movement nearby made her freeze. Was it an animal or a human being? Should she run away back to the house? She certainly did not wish to be discovered in her present state, nor to intrude on anyone else.
But where was the sound coming from, and in which direction should she run? The noises became recognizable as soft, deliberate footsteps, the slight crunch of boots on gravel, and a sense of panic fluttered in Rose’s chest.
She would have run then if a strong pair of arms had not come from somewhere behind her and slipped around her waist. Too terrified to even scream, she found herself drawn back against a man’s broad, firm chest.
“Found you, love. I thought you meant the other rose garden, further down.”
In contrast to his actions, the man’s tone and words were tender and softly spoken, his lips touching Rose’s ear through the fine material of the shawl, and his hot breath caressing her skin.
The voice resonated in her chest, and a faint scent of cedar and sandalwood filled her nostrils, somehow sweeping away Rose’s initial fear on the wave of an entirely different but equally overwhelming sensation.
“God, I want you,” the man added, one of his hands actually sliding up and glancing over Rose’s bosom before partly pulling down the shawl from her head.
Already astonished and confused by these proceedings, Rose could barely breathe when a warm mouth found and began to nuzzle at her neck.
She knew she should be afraid; she should scream and run from this, whatever it was.
But something held her there, something more than a large and gentle, if entirely indecently placed, hand.
“You are different every time, more beautiful than ever tonight,” growled that rich, deep voice that seemed to touch her inside.
The mouth at her neck turned from a teasing nuzzle to a firmer pulling and then a gentle bite. The shocking pleasure of teeth at her skin ran down Rose’s spine like lightning, finally breaking the spell she seemed to have fallen under.
Rose spun around so fast that she would have fallen if her companion had not grabbed her arm and held her steady. Her free hand still came up of its own accord and flew at him, the resulting sharp slap across his handsome face resounding loudly through the nighttime garden.
Duke of Ravenhill stepped back from her now, looking utterly stunned, his hand at his stricken cheek.
“You!” he murmured with incredulity.
Trembling, Rose regarded the duke warily as they stood together in the cold moonlight.
His identity was not entirely a shock to her, she admitted to herself.
Some part of her had recognized him from the moment she breathed in the scent of his skin.
That part of her had even wanted exactly what he did, and this new understanding of Dorian Voss’s influence on women was terrifying.
“Good lord!” he now added and then gave a low, small laugh, as if the situation were more amusing than anything else. “I did not expect that tonight.”
“I did not intend to strike you,” Rose told him, both nervous and defensive as she wondered how to bring this strange encounter to an end. “You gave me such a fright that I could not help it, Your Grace.”
“Is that an apology?” the duke asked, his tone infuriatingly teasing once more. “It sounds a little like one.”
“Well, you should not have touched me!” Rose flung back at him, raising her chin and regarding him with defiant eyes. “You should apologize too!”
“It was an honest mistake,” he responded with a shrug. “But, certainly, you have my apologies, Lady Rose. I mistook you for someone else entirely, a friend of mine. Do excuse my error.”
The Duke of Ravenhill laughed again, low and sonorous and infuriating.
What had occurred seemed to be only a joke for him.
Rose supposed that he had mistaken her for Lady Lepford, also fair-haired and dressed in pink tonight.
They must have arranged some sort of assignation, and the white shawl about Rose’s head and shoulders had been enough to fool him briefly in the darkness.
“Your error? As far as I know, gentlemen do not normally go about biting even their friends and acquaintances in gardens at night,” Rose attempted to reprimand him, but this seemed only to divert the duke further.
“As far as you know, Lady Rose?” he questioned with a chuckle.
“I do not believe that your knowledge on the subject is likely to be extensive. One day, when you are well married, perhaps you will laugh about tonight. Until then, I suggest that you do not wander alone in dark gardens, incognito or not.”
The duke’s black laughing eyes flickered briefly over Rose, and she again observed that there was something positively wolfish in his countenance – dark and wild and hungry.
His gaze lingered on her throat where his mouth had nuzzled, and his teeth had lightly bitten.
Unexpectedly, Rose felt something of a strange and corresponding hunger in herself, as though transmitted by his earlier embrace.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she demanded accusingly, rather than interrogating her own feelings further.
“I am thinking that you had better fasten that wrap about yourself when you go inside, Lady Rose. It is too dark here to tell whether I left any mark.”
“Oh my!” Rose exclaimed, not even having thought of this, and almost dropping her shawl as she tried unsuccessfully to feel her neck. “What will I do?”
“Plead a bad cold for a few days and wear a scarf constantly,” Dorian Voss advised. “It is what most ladies and gentlemen do under these circumstances.”
Rose looked back at him with wide eyes. Under these circumstances?
Was it really so common for people to go around biting one another?
! On the one hand, it seemed absurd. On the other hand, she remembered that lightning sensation that had shot through her body with the first touch of the duke’s teeth and began to understand why they might.
Shivering both with cold and the confusion of that intense remembered sensation, Rose wished she had never run out here into the garden and never gotten herself into this mess. How could the duke be so unbothered?
“Come into the light,” he sighed then. “Let me check for any damage and then you may also tell me whether my face looks freshly slapped or not. No one is likely to ask questions about that, thankfully, as long as all the ladies are happy, but I should still like to know.”
Cautiously, Rose followed the tall, dark man towards the torches on the main path and stopped beside him.
“Now, show me your neck,” he instructed her and stepped nearer.
Her breathing a little fast, Rose tilted her head back and exposed her throat, her body tingling as he examined her. This act felt dangerous but also made sense. It occurred to her that if the duke leaned in only a few inches more, he could place his lips again on the spot he had bitten…
This did not happen, however.
“I’m sorry,” the Duke of Ravenhill said with another sigh and a smile as he raised his head again. “That is a real apology, Lady Rose. There is a slight mark on your throat. It will be gone within a day but you must take care tonight, lest anyone see.”
Rose nodded, disturbed by this news, but still tingling, seemingly in response to the duke’s proximity.
“Let me see your face,” she said, backing him into the light and looking up into his handsome countenance as she tried to ignore her own body’s signals.
“Am I marked?” the duke asked after a few seconds of silence, but Rose only bit her lip and frowned.
“I am not sure. You do look rather hot and red but it is all over your face, not only where I hit you.”
At this, the black-haired man laughed yet again, as if she had said something very funny indeed.
“Yes, I dare say I am somewhat flushed, and I dare say you are the cause, Lady Rose,” he chuckled.
“But we need not concern ourselves with anything that is not an obvious injury. Now, for both our sakes, please cover your exceptionally comely décolletage and return to your people inside. I will follow after a short interval.”
While Rose was still puzzling over this strange compliment, Dorian Voss reached out and adjusted the sleeve of the dress that had slipped from her shoulder.
Rose found herself looking into his eyes and feeling an unbidden thrill from this further impropriety, although still unable to make sense of her own reactions to his slightest touch.
The Duke of Ravenhill seemed about to rearrange the shawl about Rose’s shoulders and throat, too, but it was at that moment that the voices rang out and her heart almost stopped.
“Rose? Is that you?”
“Rose! What are you doing down there?! Your Grace!”
“Step away from my sister, damn you!”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s the Duke of Westvale’s daughter!”
“Good God, Ravenhill has gone too far this time…”
Looking up towards the house, Rose saw Edwin and Magnus, who had come looking for her, along with several other guests, presumably taking the night air and then attracted to the scene by the sudden clamor.
Every one of them had seen her standing there with Dorian Voss in the moonlight as he adjusted her dress in a most intimate fashion.
“Damn,” said the Duke of Ravenhill quietly, but still proceeded to wrap the shawl around Rose nonetheless, even while Edwin and Magnus were dashing down the path towards them. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, I suppose.”
When Rose looked into the duke’s face again, the amusement in his eyes was still there, but now darker and somewhat rueful. She knew what their audience meant, and he must know it too. This scene would doubtless be all over the ton within weeks, if not days…
Shy wallflower Lady Rose Williams had been caught in a scandal with the devilish Duke of Ravenhill!