Page 2 of A Bride for the Devilish Duke (Marriage by Midnight #2)

CHAPTER TWO

MAY 1813

The Redmane Grand Ball

“ I t is magnificent, is it not?” Rosie exclaimed in a whisper for Emma’s ears alone.

“ Quite ,” Emma replied faintly.

“Ah, the spoils of aristocracy!” came the amused boom of Charles as he appeared behind them, striding into the Great Hall with greater confidence.

He swept past them with the air of a man escorting three princesses into court, all charm and practiced poise. Josie, on the other hand, was still attempting to look serene and graceful, despite the nervous way she kept smoothing the skirts of her brand-new gown—pale blue silk that matched Rosie’s to the stitch. The poor girl looked less like a swan gliding into society and more like a lamb on the verge of bolting.

Charles offered Rosie his arm with a showman’s flourish. Emma took Josie’s, squeezing it gently.

“You look perfectly radiant, Josie. I daresay, you shall be the belle of the ball. And if Sir Thomas has any eyes at all, he’ll see it too . ”

Josie startled, her brows lifting, and then her cheeks lit with color—rising from throat to temple. Her lips curved in a guilty smile.

“I did not think you knew,” she said quietly.

“My darling Josie, I have noticed how you studiously avoid mentioning his name while finding reasons to talk about his family. And how any conversation that touches on the Donovan’s seems to leave you feeling… oh my … the heat .”

Emma fanned herself. Josie giggled.

“Sister, you are terrible! Does Papa know, do you think? He would disapprove of a husband without a title.”

“Papa is blissfully unawares. Charles and Rosie see everything of the ton but nothing of the family. Your secret is safe with me. Don’t worry, I shall help you find a way to win Papa over.”

Josie bounced on her toes gleefully. “I have corresponded with him, and he has also been invited! I have promised him the first dance tonight…”

“And the second, third, fourth, and fifth?” Emma teased.

“I shall take as many as I dare! But enough about me,” she said, elbowing Emma gently. “What of you? Is there a handsome beau that you have your eye on?”

Emma’s gaze swept across the splendidly dressed ladies and gentlemen that thronged the Great Hall. She sobered, taking in their glittering decorations and ostentatious displays of wealth. Could there be any from that crowd that she could someday consider a husband?

She doubted it.

The thought of a husband— of love —was one she had long buried beneath the weight of memory. The scar she bore, hidden from the world and most especially from herself, was a cruel reminder of the price of a gentleman’s unchecked desire. It made warmth difficult. Made trust a fragile, vanishing thing.

“Truthfully?” she said at last. “No. I do not care for all this gold and glitter. It is... froth without substance.”

“You sound as though you seek to marry a farmer!” Josie snorted before catching herself and flushing.

Emma giggled at her sister’s blunder. “Mayhaps that would suit me best. A practical man who is wed to his land.”

Her sheepish sister grinned. “If Papa objects to a knight of the realm, then he would have apoplexy at the thought of a son-in-law wedded to his fields.”

“ Precisely . Therefore, I shall be content to remain unattached and help Papa run the estates and wrangle you three miscreants.”

Ahead, she could see their father conversing with a man his age in a militia officer's uniform. Two young men stood beside the older, bearing similar looks and both in red and white tailcoats. Duncan looked around; his eyes alighted on Rosie and Charles, then Emma and Josie.

He beckoned all four. Emma swallowed.

“Josie dear, I believe Papa wishes to parade us before his friends and their eligible sons. I have no desire to make small talk just now, do you?”

Josie’s eyes darted to the uniformed trio, then back to Emma. Her grimace spoke volumes.

“I should rather converse with Sir Thomas about the merits of rose gardens than feign being besotted by some young officer merely because he sports a commission and a title.”

“Then let us seek out your gallant knight and lose ourselves in this crowd as we do,” Emma whispered conspiratorially. She tugged Josie’s hand, drawing her into the tide of satin and lace, giggling as they went.

“Emma! Papa will be in a taking!” Josie exclaimed.

“Let him,” Emma said gaily.

They slipped through the sea of silk and perfume, heads ducked, until they nearly collided with a man dressed in a perfectly cut coat of forest green. He was tall and lithe, with hair that gleamed pale gold in the candlelight and eyes the precise shade of spring grass after a storm. He swept an elaborate courtly bow, to which Josie clapped her hands in delight.

“Lady Josephine, what an unexpected delight to see you here,” Sir Thomas Donovan greeted.

He took Josie’s hand and kissed it tenderly before turning to Emma.

Emma gently disengaged from her sister, offering her gloved hand to be kissed, and then stepped aside. “A pleasure to see you again, Sir Thomas. I must dash, though; I am rather thirsty and in search of punch. May I entrust my sister to your care?”

Josie blushed, smiling demurely as Sir Thomas gaped for a moment. Then, he recovered himself with a broad and hearty grin.

“Why, of course, Lady Emmeline. I shall protect her with my life.”

Emma gave a bow of the head and promptly slipped back into the crowd. Seeing her sister in the company of a man she adored was rather gratifying. Another matter she added to her ever-growing list of familial chores was persuading her father to allow his daughter to marry a man without rank.

She made her way to the edge of the gathered crowd of guests, feeling relieved when she could step between two marble columns and be somewhat hidden from view.

A portrait hung on the wall behind her depicting a tall, dark-haired man with a stern, handsome face. It was too brutal and cruel to be genuinely attractive, but the features held an exotic appeal. She recognized Redmane Manor in the backdrop and wondered if she were looking at a portrait of either the current or one of the former Dukes. The style of the clothing, suggestive of fashions twenty years old, made her think that if it was not the current Duke, it could not be that of any other but his immediate predecessor.

The eyes of the man were icy blue and seemed to root Emma, gazing out of the painting as though it were in some way alive. She forced herself to look away, shuddering at the intensity of that painted gaze. The artist had certainly been talented enough to capture such charisma. Emma hoped it was not the current Duke, the Duke to whom she had linked herself by whispered rumors.

She did not wish to come face to face with those icy blue eyes.

A living man caught her eye then, though not for the reasons that her sister had hoped. It was the figure of Charles, who was striding swiftly around the fringes of the crowd, headed for a door in a corner of the Great Hall.

Emma frowned as she watched him go, casting frightened glances over his shoulder as he went. She moved in his direction, wondering what had her brother thusly apprehensive. She was even more afraid that she might know. Indeed, his debts should have been discharged this time. The brooch had been worth more than any of her siblings thought simply due to its three-hundred-year antiquity.

She reached the door through which Charles had disappeared and followed him. Ahead, she caught him vanishing around the corner of a corridor paneled in dark wood.

“Charles? Come back! Whatever is the matter?” she whispered urgently.

But either he did not hear or chose to ignore her.

She picked up her skirts and scurried after him. By the time she reached the corner, he was out of sight, but a door in the corridor ahead was swinging shut. She hurried to it and opened it into a dark room lit only by a shaft of light from a door opposite. The figure of a man was briefly outlined before that door was closed too.

Emma started gingerly across the dark room but stumbled over a stool, crashing to the floor clumsily. She clutched at a bruised shin and returned to her feet, backing into a chair and stumbling again. Her heel snagged at the edge of a poorly placed rug, and she fell down heavily on the floor with a thump.

Charles, she groused viciously, teeth clenched. When I get my hands on you…

She had been so caught up in trying to follow Charles that she had not heard the footsteps approaching the door through which her brother had disappeared. When the sound of the door opening reached her, she assumed he had heard her and returned.

“Charles! What are you about? Please come and help me up. I am on the floor because of you!” Emma grumbled, looking towards the figure of a man who stood silhouetted in the doorway.

She then realized that it was not Charles at all.

The man who stood, rendered faceless by the light behind him, was taller and broader than Emma’s wayward brother. His coat was black, but not mourning-black—black like ink still wet, fitted like armor. His waistcoat was patterned, faintly, like scales. Yet his cravat, beyond all reason—the color of flame.

For a moment, he stood unmoving and silent. Then, he flashed into the room, momentarily lost to the darkness.

True terror curled in Emma’s chest.

“Pardon, sir…!”

The scent of amber and musk reached her first.

Then came the sound of flint and steel.

The hiss of a flame, and a lamp flared to life.

His features shimmered into view. Cut from the same stone as ancient warriors. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, lips neither too full nor thin, and eyes the hue of pale silver-blue. His hair was fair, almost flaxen, the sort of gold that rarely caught sunlight without glowing.

“I do not know of your Charles,” came a rumble, a slow timbre like the first pour of brandy into a crystal glass, “but I feel compelled to apologize on his behalf.”

Emma blinked, cheeks tinged pink despite herself. There was something in his presence that made the room seem smaller, the shadows deeper .

He extended a gloved hand. Emma’s gaze flicked to it for a heartbeat—the finest kid leather—before her fingers reluctantly curled into the expensive material. With barely a twitch of his arm, she was hauled to her feet.

Emma brushed at her skirts in want of something to do. “Erm… thank you, kind sir. I think it rather careless of the owner to leave the rooms so dark. I might have sprained an ankle,” she chuckled nervously.

“A reasonable complaint, Miss…?”

“ Lady. Lady Emmeline Montrose ,” Emma corrected, raising her chin with polite dignity.

“ Emmeline ?” He let the intimate sound stew in the silence. “A rather… unusual name.”

“I am generally referred to by the shorter variant, Emma ,” she hastened to say.

He inclined his head with courtly grace. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance then, Lady Emma . And who is this Charles, I wonder?”

Emma sighed in exasperation. “My deviant brother. I wished to speak with him, but he did not seem in the mood for conversation.”

The stranger pursed his lips in thought and had Emma’s eyes lingering there. “I seem to recall a young man heading towards the gardens in a hurry. Hair the color of yours. Perhaps a few years older than yourself?”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “Yes, that would be Charles. The gardens, you say? Thank you, kind sir. I will see if I can catch him up.”

“Allow me to escort you then, madam,” he offered smoothly. “This house is something of a labyrinth. New wings bolted onto old bones without any sensible design. I find myself getting lost rather easily.”

Emma faltered, caught between caution and something far more dangerous. “Thank you… kindly,” she said at last.

She felt a curious thrill at the offer to remain in the stranger’s company.

The man was older than her, perhaps in his early thirties. His visage had Emma’s heart thundering in her chest and set butterflies fluttering in her stomach. She chastised herself for being so taken by a man’s looks like some fawning debutante, but could not help it.

The moment she laid her hand upon his steely arm, a jolt of awareness sparked through her fingers. His coat did little to conceal the hardened muscle beneath, and she found herself, to her horror, nearly breathless.

As they stepped into the softer glow of the corridor sconces, Emma chanced another glance at him—this time catching the lines of his profile in sharper relief than the lamplight had allowed.

His eyes were sapphire blue, as bright as a panther. He was taller than her but did not appear spindly in the way that many tall men did. He might have been the descendant of giants—his body had such Herculean proportions.

Emma’s gaze dipped—traitorously—to the broad stretch of his chest beneath the fine cut of his gold-threaded brocade coat. There was nothing delicate about his form. He bore the build of an ancient warrior, the kind immortalized in marble, shoulders that strained subtly against the seams, arms that seemed born to carry—not letters or gloves—but battleaxes. Or, she thought with a shameful shiver, women .

He could lift her, she was certain, and never break stride.

It was only after they had walked fifty yards or so that she became aware that she was silent, lost in reveries of naked torsos and strong arms.

“Your pardon, sir,” she said abruptly, voice higher than intended, “but I do not believe I caught your name.”

He halted. Emma froze. It took a second longer than she would have cared to admit before she realized it was as they had reached their destination. A set of wide double doors were thrust open with effortless ease. Beyond was a broad paved area decorated with iron tables and chairs. A vast expanse of lawn lay beyond that, lit by flickering torches.

He turned to her, smiled enigmatically, and bowed.

“ Damien Fitzgerald , thirteenth Duke of Redmane, at your service, Lady Emma. I do hope you locate your brother and return to the Great Hall before the dances commence.”

Emma’s face paled. Suddenly, everything became crystal clear. Where she had seen that face before. The painting!

And then the rest of his words sank in, drawing her back to the moment with the subtle shock of cold water.

“Why is that?” was all she could whisper.

“Because I believe I am owed your first evening dance.”