Page 180 of Dukes for Dessert

An urge to knock the insolent gentleman upon his arse filled Damian, all the while knowing that was the very reaction the man likely sought. With a deliberate slowness, Damian hesitated, appreciating the curve of her waist. Then his gaze connected with Theodosia’s. The anxiety that bled through the blue irises of her eyes ended any effort to bait her brother. He relinquished her. “My lady,” he said and dropped a bow.

The waltz drew to a close. There was none of the polite applause. Instead, Society stared on, blatant in their rudeness.

“Your Grace,” she said softly.

Without a backward glance for her brother, Damian marched through the crowd that parted for him like that fabled sea. He tightened his jaw. Nothing more than returning the lady’s hair combs had brought him here this night. Nothing, at all.

He paused at the top of the staircase and looked back at Theodosia once more. She stared boldly at him. Damian turned and left, knowing he lied to himself.

11

After a night of braving her family’s fury, which had entailed a blend of Aidan’s furious shouts and Richard’s glares and her father’s chiding words and her mama’s disappointed shakes of the head, sleep had proven elusive. Apparently, her family found attempting theft of Damian’s sword one matter, dancing with the enemy an altogether different one.

As she strode through the quiet, empty grounds of Hyde Park, a lone kestrel in flight called an eerie morning song overhead. Theodosia stopped and peered up at the russet bird with his black spotted breast. The bird long a symbol of power and vitality not unlike the gentleman she now planned to meet.

Merely to obtain the cherished items she’d left behind.

She turned back to her maid who trailed along at a slower pace. The young woman yawned into her fingers. “Susan, I just plan to walk along the walking trail,” to the copse of trees just outside Kensington Gardens. “No harm is likely to befall me on a mere walk.” The lone bird circling overhead called out a protest and a chill stole through her. She thrust aside the nonsensical fears and adopted a nonchalant smile.

“Are you certain, my lady? Your parents would never forgive me if I were to abandon you.”

She scoffed. “You are hardly abandoning me. You are allowing me,” and Damian, “a moment of solitude.”

The maid eyed the bench alongside the Serpentine and then exhaustion must have won out over her responsibilities as lady’s maid, for she walked over to the bench at the foot of the river. Before Susan thought through the years of scrapes she’d witnessed her mistress falling into, Theodosia spun around and then hurried off, back toward the copse of trees.

Another eerie cry shattered the quiet and she glared up at the noisy bird. “I’ll not allow you to frighten me,” she mumbled. For the lies and stories told about Damian and his family through the years, she knew in the gentleness of their meetings that he’d not harm her. She slipped past the meticulously tended boxwoods, expertly pruned, and stopped at the entrance, hands upon her hips, as she scanned the area. “If he wanted to harm me, he’d have tossed me into Newgate.”

“Have there been other crimes you’ve been committing that merit you being tossed into Newgate?” a deep, mellifluous baritone drawled from within the gardens and she gasped.

“Y-you startled me.” Her heart thudded wildly as Damian strode forward, attired in his familiar black garments. With his midnight black hair and ice blue eyes, he had the look of darkness and, having come to know him these days, she knew it was an affected effort on the gentleman’s part. And there was something heady in knowing that this man so feared by all, she knew in this special, intimate way.

He continued to study her in that silent, inscrutable manner of his.

She cleared her throat. “I assure you, however, that I do not make it a habit of committing acts of crime.”

Damian lifted a single black eyebrow. “Beyond the theft of the Theodosia?”

Her heart started. The Theodosia. Until this very moment, he’d referred to that revered item in cool, distant terms; a weapon, a sword, but never the Theodosia.

“Beyond that,” she said softly. “You called it the Theodosia.” The words floated as a whisper on the air between them.

With his naked fingers, he stroked her cheek. Oh, God. She’d never really given thought to the necessity of gloves. It was a matter of propriety and properness, but now with his skin against her own, the delicious wickedness that set off a fluttering within her belly that made her forget years of feuding and hunger for years of knowing him and no other. “Isn’t that what it is? Proud, noble, and strong. It is not merely,” he passed a penetrating stare over her face, “a sword. It is so much more.” Her breath caught and she knew by the heated intensity in the blues of his eyes, that he’d ceased to speak of a sword.

Her lashes fluttered and she leaned into his caress. Then he lowered his brow to hers. The rapidness of their breaths blended in an intimate meeting. “I came to return that which belongs to you, and then after that, there will be no more reasons that require us to meet.” There was a hoarse quality to his tone that belied the evenness of his words.

Her heart tugged. “No, there will not be.” She paused, recalling that which had brought them together before now. “The sword.”

“The Theodosia,” he amended, those two words a husky whisper against her lips.

“Y-yes. There is the Theodosia.” As long as that remained in his possession, there would be a need for a meeting. What a hollow, shallow lie.

He brushed his lips against hers in an all too brief meeting and that simple touch burned, until she ached from the inside with a desire for more and pulled away.

Damian fished around the front of his jacket and withdrew the cherished, thistle hair combs. The deep purple amethyst shimmered even in the dim light of dusk.

“Here,” he murmured and placed first one thistle in her hair, and then the other.

And with that, their meeting here was at an end. He took a step back. “Don’t,” her words emerged as a desperate entreaty. He stopped and stared at her. She didn’t want him to leave. Now. Or ever. And it was madness and all things foolhardy, but God help her, she’d gone and fallen in love with him.