Page 15 of A Deviant Spinster for the Duke (The Gentlemen’s Club #3)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“ T here is no music,” Valeria murmured, her chest rising and falling with quick, uncertain breaths. “And… I have promised the next set to someone else.”
Duncan no longer cared about the lessons, his hand tightening around hers, gazing deeply into her eyes. He had known she was a rare woman, but he had not known the magic she possessed until she had cast him those shy, torturous looks. Rather, he had been able to ignore it until that moment.
“Tonight, there are no other gentlemen,” he growled. “There is only you and there is only me, and if I must rip your dance card to shreds, I would do it gladly.”
Maintain the charade, his thoughts roared, his mind foggy as it shrouded the boundaries between what was a lesson and what was not.
Her throat bobbed. “That does not remedy our lack of an orchestra.”
“There is music, Valeria,” he urged, leading her to an open space at the far end of the drawing room. “Listen, and you will hear it.”
She stared at him, her cheeks flushing with color. “I… hear it, Your Grace.”
“Duncan,” he replied. “Call me by my name.”
She hesitated. “Do I know you well enough to do so?”
“Valeria, I have known you for lifetimes. I have known you for years, though we have only just met,” he replied, his voice husky. “I have been searching for something, Valeria, and now I know what it is.”
Her eyes widened and her lips parted in surprise, offering no resistance as he pulled her closer. There were dances everyone knew, dances that were seen time and again in ballrooms across the country, but there were other dances that were unknown to most, reserved for private moments with no spectators.
Duncan slipped his arm around Valeria’s waist and clasped her hand. Her breath hitched, her hand falling to his shoulder as if she had seen this dance before.
“A waltz is a forbidden thing,” she whispered, breathless.
“It has been performed in countless halls, among countless couples, for centuries,” he countered, as he began to move with her, swaying from side to side in slow steps. “It is only forbidden now, and for foolish reasons. Heaven forbid that a lady and a gentleman should be allowed so close, so they might speak and not be overheard.”
She swayed with him, glancing down briefly to mark the steps. And as he began to circle with her, gliding around the far end of the drawing room, she picked up the dance with the ease of someone who knew it innately.
“What would you say to me that you do not want anyone to overhear?” she asked, her grip tight on his shoulder.
Duncan gazed at her with a smile. “That I want you to be mine.”
“Pardon?” Shock rippled across her face, reminding him of the purpose of all this.
Yet, he was fighting himself. He was fighting with the impulse that had made him race through the gardens at that first ball to catch up with her, to find out who this dark angel with the fiery hair might be. Knowing her more had not tempered his desire to know her better, to be nearer to her.
“Think, Valeria,” he urged, for his own sake. “How would you respond in a ballroom?”
Her breath hitched, her fingernails practically digging into his shoulder as they whirled around and around. “I would not… be dancing like this in a ballroom.”
“Then, pretend it is a different dance,” he urged, needing distance while pulling her closer, holding her tighter.
“I would say… that is very presumptuous and indecorous,” she managed to croak. “There is a… correct etiquette to follow. If you are quite serious, then… you should call upon me at a proper hour, you should speak with my father, you should… show that you are sincere.”
He smiled as he suddenly swept her out into a spin, taking a much-needed breath to steady himself, before ushering her back into his embrace. “So, I should have tea with you tomorrow?”
“That would be a start,” she replied, frowning. “Duncan, I am… confused.”
As am I…
“In what way?” he said instead.
She slowed him down, until they stood there in the drawing room, face to face and far too close, the silent music and the stirring waltz coming to a halt.
“Are we still… in the midst of a lesson?” she asked thickly, her beautiful green eyes gleaming with unease.
“Of course,” he replied a note too quickly.
“But this would never happen in reality,” she pointed out. “What is the purpose of this instruction if not to… bewilder me?”
He could not answer her immediately. She was quite right; this served no purpose beyond the privacy of his townhouse. If any gentleman out there were to try and dance with her alone, flirting with her as he was, he would have taken his pistols and demanded a duel in the name of her honor.
Urging his mind to come up with an excuse, he gazed down at her, searching her face. She remained in his arms, almost flush against him, her hand still clutching his shoulder as if she truly was unmoored and he was the only thing holding her steady against a fierce current. Her hand held his firmly, her eyes locked with his.
As if compelling him to say something she, perhaps, wanted to hear. The look of a prompt waiting anxiously for a thespian to speak lines he had clearly forgotten.
Why is she not pulling away if she knows this is unseemly?
He pushed a lock of auburn hair out of her face, skimming her skin as he tucked it behind her ear. Rather than drawing his hand away, he cradled her cheek for a moment, eyes flitting to her slightly parted lips. If he kissed her now, he sensed she would not strike him or push him away. Indeed, her own gaze moved to his mouth for a moment, thickening the air around and between them, until it crackled.
His head dipped slowly, the promise of her lips just a breath away.
“Duncan?” she prompted, a moment away from a kiss, her voice barely a whisper. “Why are you doing this, if not to teach me? What are we doing?”
It was akin to catching the edge of the copper bathtub with a bare arm, white hot and jolting. Duncan snapped out of whatever potent trance he had been caught in, blaming the port, blaming the bygone heat of the day, blaming the secrecy, blaming a thousand things to clear his head of responsibility. That he might have caused this in the mere act of wanting.
She is right. What am I doing? This is not what I intended. He hurried to quell his thoughts, lest they become disingenuous.
“You will encounter gentlemen who ask too much, too quickly,” he said evenly, almost coldly. “Be wary of that. That is the lesson. When there is an air of desperation, one must ask oneself why.”
He stepped back and bowed his head to her, folding his arms behind his back so he would not be tempted to pull her into another dance.
She stared at him, the corners of her eyes pinching as if in some minor pain. “And if a gentleman should ask to speak with me alone, away from the safety of public observation?”
“You should never go,” he replied, forcing a smile.
“So, I should have slapped you and walked off?”
Duncan swallowed. “My dear Valeria, you should not have come here at all.”
Her expression hardened, her shoulders pulling back, her posture straightening. “I thank you for this… fascinating lesson, Your Grace.” She smiled coolly. “I shall not soon forget it.”
Turning on her heel, she marched out of the drawing room, grabbing her cloak on the way. Leaving him standing there, just as confused as she had been.
Not ‘Duncan’ anymore, but back to being ‘Your Grace.’
Valeria stumbled through the silent streets of Mayfair, keeping to the shadows with her hood firmly over her face.
I am such a fool. What an idiot I am, to think that I would gain any benefit from meeting with a notorious rake.
She wished she had thought to copy her dear friend Amelia, who had donned the garments of a man when she had first approached her husband, Lionel. The skirts that poked out beneath the edge of the cloak were not exactly discreet in hiding Valeria’s identity from anyone who might be watching. Clearly, she was a woman, out in the city at an inappropriate hour, doing something she should not be doing.
She pressed a hand to her heart as she hurried along, her entire face ablaze with embarrassment and, worse, the unwelcome sting of rejection.
It was all a game. He has toyed with me, and will no doubt delight in telling his friends about my stupidity.
She could not bear the humiliation, nor could she risk anyone hearing that she had been alone with such a man as that.
He was going to kiss me. Her stomach knotted at the memory. I thought I was learning about flirtation, but all this time, I have been a part of his. I have been reeled in like the clumsy fish that I am.
She muttered rude things under her breath as she stormed on, cursing his name as loudly as she dared, but as she passed by the townhouse that used to belong to her family, she halted. Gazing up at the window that was once hers, the candlelight no longer flickered, but a flame ignited in her heart and mind.
Duncan Lock could play all of the games he liked. She would take what she had learned from him, and she would find a husband before the end of the summer. Indeed, she would take the embarrassment that boiled in her stomach and use it to her benefit, letting it fuel her determination to save her home and father without the duke’s help.
Making it to the altar before Duncan could would simply be a secondary triumph that was no less satisfying.
I will thwart you, Duncan, she vowed. You have trifled with the wrong woman.
Indeed, he would soon find that his ‘dark angel’ had become a vengeful one.