Chapter 8
Chapter eight
In Which Wanton Solves a Crime, Exposes Several Glutes, and Is Threatened With a Spanking (Professionally)
They returned to the frigidarium in triumph—Wanton radiant with victory, the Duke deeply rumpled, and the sculpture carried between them like a sacred relic.
The suspects had been assembled.
Cassian Drake sprawled across a chaise with nonchalance.
Milton Avery scribbled couplets on a damp napkin.
Monsieur M lounged, masked, unreadable, and sipping something dark.
And the valet, Mr. Trumbuttle, was standing beside a footbath with all the poise of a man who’d just been caught admiring someone else’s towels.
Wanton stepped forward. The room quieted.
She cleared her throat. “Ladies, gentlemen, and others in bathrobes. I have solved the mystery of the missing glutes.”
“You have one minute, Miss Wallflower,” the Duke said and crossed his arms.
His arms, dear heavens, his arms, bulged against the sleeves of his robe like twin warnings from Mount Olympus. His forearms, all taut muscle and aristocratic veining, folded with such grim precision that Wanton momentarily forgot what she was saying. Or thinking. Or doing on this planet.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again, blinking rapidly to clear the fog of ducal proximity from her mind.
She was here for justice, certainly not for a scandalous full-body flush brought on by a man’s wrist flex.
“I only need thirty seconds.”
A murmur rippled across the frigidarium. Monsieur M adjusted his towel. Drake crossed his arms. Milton Avery leaned back with a pleased grin, as if he were about to be praised in verse.
“Mr. Avery,” Wanton began, pointing at him with the authority of a woman who’d once tangoed with death in a silk chemise, “is unquestionably guilty of public obscenity and poetic crimes against punctuation—”
Milton gasped. “I'll have you know my rhymes are blameless.”
“—but he is not guilty of sculpture theft. His hands are too busy writing odes to various backsides to have time for actual larceny.”
Milton looked smug.
She turned to Drake. “Cassian Drake, while guilty of espionage, illegal mapping, and possibly blowing up bridges—”
Drake arched a brow. “Allegedly.”
“—has no interest in glutes. He’s far more concerned with secrets and sabotage.”
Another ripple of scandalized shock.
Wanton turned slowly to Monsieur M.
“And Monsieur M—well. He may be guilty of lounging, stretching, and mysterious hip movements, but I assure you, he is innocent of this crime.”
The Duke frowned. “Wallflower, what are you about? We found the sculpture in Monsieur M’s room.”
“Yes,” Wanton said serenely. “But he didn’t put it there.”
The valet gawked like a vicar stumbling into a boudoir.
“He’s guilty!” he blurted. “He’s jealous of His Grace’s form. That’s why—”
Before he could finish, Wanton stepped forward with righteous purpose and, in one fluid motion, yanked Monsieur M’s towel clean off.
Gasps erupted across the frigidarium like cannon fire.
Monsieur M stood bare as the day he was born— unashamed, glowing, and lightly misted.
Wanton extended one arm like a museum docent unveiling a masterwork. “Is this the backside of an envious man?”
She paused dramatically.
The collective gaze dropped.
Even the Duke looked.
Wanton nodded toward the exhibit in question—firm, round, sculpted like cherubs had spent an afternoon buffing it with olive oil.
She turned, slowly, like a heroine in the final act of a gothic play where the true villain was vanity and velvet. Her arm rose with grave flair.
“It was you, Trumbuttle.”
Gasps rippled across the frigidarium. Towels were clutched. A sherbet dish fell with a delicate plink.
Milton swayed. Monsieur M whispered something in French that might have been Mon Dieu or My glutes are innocent.
The valet turned an alarming shade of rhubarb.
“Absurd!” he barked. “I am loyal to His Grace!”
The Duke frowned. “Why would my valet steal the sculpture?”
Wanton stepped forward, eyes gleaming with the thrill of justice and deeply personal vengeance. “Elementary, my dear Duke.”
She grabbed Trumbuttle by the shoulder and spun him around like a suspicious canapé at a scandalous supper.
Then—with the determination of a woman of science presenting her thesis before the Royal Academy (if they weren’t a patriarchy of powdered fossils who thought female brains would melt under scrutiny)—she lifted the tails of his robe without mercy or warning.
Flat.
Tragically, profoundly, irredeemably flat.
Like two underinflated crumpets abandoned at the back of a pantry.
A hush swept the room like a moral reckoning in a ballroom.
Milton Avery clutched his quill. “A crime against curvature,” he whispered. “Geometry weeps.”
“Trumbuttle was the one envious,” Wanton declared, voice rising. “He saw the attention. The double entendres. The triple takes His Grace receives—while he is, tragically… flat.”
“I am not flat!” Trumbuttle cried, outraged. “I am… gluteally underexpressed!”
With a decidedly unheroic shriek, he yanked a revolver from his coat.
Screams rang out.
Towels flew.
Cassian Drake somersaulted behind a marble column and disappeared entirely.
The Duke stepped forward. “Wanton, get behind me!”
She did not.
“Damn it, woman—get down this instant or I will spank you so hard you won't be able to sit for a week!”
Her stomach did a pirouette. Her spine tingled in a most unhelpful fashion.
And between her thighs? A scandalized flutter.
Great glutes of national security! There was a gun pointed at her chest!
A literal, loaded weapon! And yet her body had the audacity to file this entire moment under erotic tension.
Field Hypothesis #42: The human nervous system is deeply unreliable. May exhibit inappropriate arousal in life-threatening situations. Possibly related to voice timbre and threats of light spanking. Further study required.
“Your Grace,” she called back, “let’s keep the promises of corporal affection for after we solve the crime, shall we?”
Trumbuttle jabbed the pistol with theatrical venom. “Stop flirting and die!”
“Wanton!” The Duke roared and lunged for her.
They collided in a blur of limbs and towels and toppled backward.
Splash.
As they tumbled into the plunge pool, water surged, steam hissed, towels flew.
They surfaced with a gasp. Wanton sputtered, soaked, her hair clinging to her cheeks. The Duke grabbed her, hauling her upright as water streamed down his furious, glistening forearms.
The valet aimed again and pulled the trigger.
Click. Nothing.
Everyone froze.
While the valet was cursing the lame weapon, two footmen dragged him away, still screaming about betrayal, flatness, and spa injustice.
Silence settled like mist. Wanton blinked at the soaked duke as water lapped around them, heated and mineral-slick.
The Duke pulled her closer, fingers splayed low on her back. His chest was hard, heaving. His jaw clenched like it might snap.
“You mad, reckless, daft woman!”
She gasped—genuinely offended this time. “Daft?”
She placed a hand on her chest like she’d just been accused of misfiling footnotes.
“I’ll have you know my cognitive processing is running at full scholarly velocity. I’ve outwitted medieval tribunals, decoded suspicious poetry, and located stolen glutes under extreme ducal pressure. Kindly insult my temperament all you like—but my intellect remains spotless!”
He was soaked, furious, and devastating. “I told you to get down!”
“I knew the gun wouldn’t fire,” she said primly, as if it were all rather obvious. “The steam content in this environment exceeds optimal thresholds for powder combustion. Moisture compromises ignition.”
He glowered, water dripping down his temple.
Curious, her brain supplied unhelpfully: While gunpowder loses its combustibility in steam, dukes appear to become exponentially more flammable.
She filed it mentally under “Phenomena Requiring Further Study” and tried very hard not to stare at the droplet inching toward his collarbone.
“Trumbuttle didn’t kill you. But I might.”
Her fingers brushed along his collarbone. “Still—case closed.”
His grip tightened at her waist.
“No. This case remains open." He brushed his nose along her neck. "And so do you, until I say otherwise.”