Chapter 15
Ellie swam to consciousness in the growing dusk; her head was on a pillow, and soft, fluffy blankets were tucked over her knees. The gentle gloom of a lamp glimmered over the grandfather clock in the corner—she read half-past seven.
She startled. The last she remembered, the sun had been in the sky. How was it nighttime already?
Her eyes landed on the table across the room, and heat prickled over her insides. The things they had done on that table. She brushed her fingertips against the tender evidence of Dorian’s kiss.
She had no doubt that if she were to gaze into a mirror, the red mark would still be blazing at the side of her throat. She also did not doubt that he had put it there on purpose.
The soft screech of a door had her bolting up. Dorian walked in, a tray in hand. His gaze fell on her as he set the tray on the table. “You fell asleep.”
Blushing, Ellie gazed at the teapot and the mince pies. “From simply…” She didn’t have a word to describe what they had done.
“Your sexual climax,” he said, smirking. “Do not fret about it, Evelina. Such a response in women is natural.”
She blushed. The only way he knew that was because he had experience with women, a history she would prefer not to know. Busying herself with making a cup, she asked, “Is it the same for men?”
“Much of the same,” he shrugged a lone shoulder. “Only, for men, it is stronger after full copulation.”
Evelina was sure her face mirrored a fire pit. “I… see.”
“But the manner in which you collapsed in my arms tells me something more,” Dorian sat back in his chair and cocked his jaw on a fist. “You are more exhausted than you think you are.”
She hesitated while lifting the cup to her lips. Brows dipping, she asked, “What do you mean? I just had a rather long nap.”
“Not physically,” he corrected her. “Mentally. You’ve been carrying a lot of worries with you.”
Ellie set the untouched cup down. “Well, yes. How could I not? I’ve left my cousin behind with parents who only want upward mobility. What is to say they won’t sell her off too? What if Carrington demands her hand in marriage since he can no longer attain me?”
“He won’t do that,” Dorian assured. “Miss Harriet doesn’t have anything valuable for him.”
“I didn’t have anything valuable for him,” Ellie replied.
Just as she expected a response from him, Dorian went stone-faced. Why? It even seemed as if he were biting his inner cheek or swallowing back some words. What was he not telling her?
“Not true, Ellie,” he eventually whispered. “You did have value to him, not by what you could bring into the marriage, but by what you could give to him in the marriage. And I do not mean children, I mean status.
“Even with his title, Carrington has never had the respect from the ton that he so dearly craves,” Dorian continued. “You could give him that.”
“By that rationale, are you not doing the same with our marriage?” Ellie shot back.
“But I won’t be subjecting you to an eternally unhappy life, Evelina,” he said staidly. “After our arrangement is dissolved, you’re free to live how you please.”
Ellie was not sure she wanted that. Some inconvenient emotions reared their heads every time she looked at Dorian. She was sure she had not fallen in love with him, but a fierce attraction simmered in her belly for him. How could it not?
The man was a handsome devil with a voice that took her knees out from under her. She respected him, admired him even for dragging himself up when he had every reason to stay put. His irreverence for propriety humored her, as did his dry wit.
“Somehow, I don’t think I’ll—”
A knock on the door stopped her, and from the irritated look that flashed across Dorian’s visage, he’d wanted to hear what she’d say. The butler stepped in with a lone letter on a silver platter.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” he bowed his head, then turned to Ellie. “But this has arrived for you, Your Grace.”
“For me—?” She took the letter and flipped it to glimpse the address. Her face immediately fell. “It is Carrington.”
Opening it, she read aloud, “Dear Duchess of Wolfthorne. I do hope you will pardon me when I say that I was beyond shocked when I saw you emerge from the vestibule in the church and marry Beaumont. I would ask how he met you, or where he met you, but that is behind us now.
“I want to formally invite you to my ball at my estate in Canterbury. Call it my way of extending the olive branch. Please tell your husband that there is no pretense or trick here.
“It is simply a formality that I am bound to extend. I have no doubt you will look your best, Your Grace. Do me a favor and rub off the rough edges of your new husband. Yours respectfully, Carrington.”
She dropped the letter. “Does he never use his full name?”
“That’s because his name is Pip,” Dorian commented. “It sounds weak. Sterling does not like weak.”
Nudging the letter, she asked, “Are we to attend?”
“As I recall, the choice of the sixth ball is yours,” Dorian said.
She angled her head. “But I know you want to attend, because there is something he has that can lead you to your uncle.”
“There is,” Dorian admitted.
“So, that shall be the first invitation we accept,” she nodded resolutely. “And if we must, we shall go again. And again.”
“Carrington is a very suspicious, crafty, distrustful bastard,” Dorian added. “If we are to get something from him, we’ll have to be just as crafty and distrustful, if not more.”
“We?” she asked.
He rubbed his jaw, then his eyes sharpened. “You. This will be on you, Ellie. If I suddenly go missing in his house, he will know something is wrong. For you, not so much.
“You will have to be my sleuth. Pull from every novel you have read and use those prodigious smarts of yours to find any records of Edgar Beaumont, or as he preferred to be known as, The Viper.”
“The Viper,” Ellie shuddered. “That certainly speaks volumes.”
“It does,” Dorian nodded. “And none of it is good.”
Reaching for her cooling tea, she murmured, “Tell me about his house. What do I need to know?”
Carrington’s home was a spatial chateau plucked straight from the French countryside. Built in the early eighteenth century and laced with a baroque cornice, the structure had three stories with two pointed towers serving as bookends of the perfectly symmetrical facade.
Made of cheerful gingerbread-looking stone, it stood nestled among mighty oak trees and low verdant hills. Ellie even spotted sheep in the pastures leading to the domicile before night fell.
“Is Carrington the pastoral sort?” she asked.
“No,” Dorian said. “Those sheep are for his table. He eats lamb with more blood than char.”
Ellie wrinkled her nose. “Is that healthy?”
His snort was derisive, “I thank god that he is not eating it raw.”
Carrington’s ball was an intimate gathering of forty of London’s wealthiest, most powerful people in the country. As it was, they arrived late, and the strains of an orchestra and hum of guests indicated the party was already in full swing.
“Announcing, His Grace, Duke of Wolfthorne and his wife, Duchess Wolfthorne,” the butler announced.
Instantly, fans snapped out, and a wave of murmurs crested through the room.
“Is that good or bad?” she whispered to Dorian beneath her own.
“I wouldn’t know,” he murmured, while fixing that perfect smile across his lips for the attendees. “I have no insight into the ton’s collective consciousness. Shall we get some liquid fortification before we start the charade?”
“Champagne?”
“For you,” he rested a hand on the small of her back. “Brandy for me.”
At the refreshment tables, he filled her champagne flute and poured a brandy. Surveying the room, Ellie asked, “Do you think it is troubling that Carrington did not greet us?”
“No,” Dorian replied, swirling his drink. “But Carrington knows we are here, I can guarantee you that.”
A blonde woman in an elegant dress, the shade of wine, sauntered to Dorian. The lady was probably in her mid-thirties, tall and statuesque, her gown clinging to her curves and nipped-in waist. She looked at Ellie, then back to Dorian; the cut was not subtle.
“Your Grace,” she said sultrily as she curtsied. “I do not recall receiving an invitation to your wedding?”
‘That would be because I did not send one, Lady Palmer,” Dorian said curtly. “Your charms have no place in a wedding, and do not think I have not seen your dismissal to my wife.”
The lady’s cheeks pinked. “I apologize, Your Grace.”
“Lady Palmer,” Evelina curtsied.
The strains of a waltz sounded in the air, and Dorian turned to Ellie, hand extended. “May I have this dance?”
“Of course,” she smiled prettily, then took the last sip of her drink. To the lady, she added, “Please, excuse us.”
As Dorian swept her off to the floor, Ellie could not help but quip, “And now for your debut waltz.”
After the first few steps, she let the one thread of worry fray from her mind—he was doing fine. Dorian spun her again; the strength and assuredness of his movement caused her to laugh breathlessly.
They whirled in unison, their speed building with the music, her heart pounding even faster as she gazed into his bright eyes. The way he was looking at her turned her insides into sun-warmed honey, her nipples puckering beneath her bodice.
“Stop staring at me that way,” she whispered.
His lips curved mysteriously. “What way?”
“As…. As if you want to strip me bare, or have me painted and immortalized,” she whispered again. “Which is it?”
“Both,” he chuckled throatily as he swung them. “And based on the men looking at you, staring at you, clearly entertaining lustful thoughts, I am not above planting a facer on them.”
“Violence is never the answer,” she chided gently.
“In my experience,” he spun them again, “it is the solution.”
A gruff and scowling Dorian was attractive; now that he was flirting with her, he was irresistible. Wrapped up in the lush music, the smoky intensity of his eyes, the world faded away.
“I do regret every penny I paid for that dress, however,” his eyes dipped to the off-the-shoulder bodice that flaunted her smooth shoulders, the fullness of her bosom, and the slenderness of her waist. “I wish it were a gunny sack. Though, even that I doubt would turn these voyeurs away.”
She’d never been more at home in her own skin than now, moving as one with him. He swirled them into a dizzying set of perfect spins, as the violins grew to a crescendo. Dorian was so steady and in command: he would never let her fall.
She was frictionless, gliding across the floor with him in the most exhilarating dance of her life. She never wanted it to end.
By the end, Dorian drew her right into his chest, cupped her cheek, and kissed her.
It was not as passionate as their many others, but even as chaste as the peck was, it still had the guests take notice.
“We’ll be in the papers by tomorrow,” she murmured.
“Good,” he grinned as he swept her off the floor. “That’s just what I need.”
“Why?”
“Because no one will be surprised if we disappear for a while,” Dorian said as they took two more glasses of liquor to a balcony. “Young married couples are notorious for slipping away. That is the one time the le bon ton turns a blind eye.”
While nursing the drink, Ellie watched as lords and ladies twirled with elegant vigor across the dance floor. Chatter and laughter floated in the air, and the champagne flowed freely.
“Your Grace,” a footman bowed, “Lord Carrington would like to speak with you and your wife in his gold drawing room.”
Dorian looked up at the staircase. “I was wondering how long it would take him.” Craning his head to Ellie, he nodded, “Shall we?”
After leaving the ballroom and traveling up the flight of grand stairs, with two corridors down, Ellie had to stifle a shudder at the drawing room’s decoration. The gold-on-gold damask wallpaper, which she supposed was to vaunt wealth and affluence, was an eyesore.
Carrington turned from a bar of liquor; his dark suit clashed with the burnished gold of his waistcoat. His dark eyes landed on Ellie first and stayed there.
“I never got to ask you…” This time his eyes did flicker to Dorian. “How did you meet?”
“Does it matter?” Dorian asked calmly.
“I suppose it does not, not anymore since you are married.” Carrington moved to a dry bar and poured out a glass of brandy and one of sweet wine. He rested them on the coffee table and gestured for the pair to sit. “Indulge me anyhow.”
“We crossed paths before,” Ellie began. “Sir Alexander DuPont’s hunting party. You do remember that one?”
“I… believe so,” Carrington mused aloud.
“I’d snuck outside, and he was there, but I had not seen him first. When I did see him, I asked if he thought the stars told stories. He said—”
“If they did, they are not the ones I am familiar with,” Dorian finished easily.
“That does seem like something he would say,” Carrington murmured, while sitting back and swirling his wine.
“When I left, it did not take long to ask around for his townhouse and from there—” She shrugged. “— C’est la vie.”
Carrington’s eyes shifted to Dorian, then back to Ellie. “Beaumont here has many townhouses,” he put in. “Which one did you find him in?”
“The one on Fleet Street,” Dorian said with an exasperated sigh. “After my footman at Grosvenor told her where to go. Why the Spanish Inquisition, Carrington?”