Page 15 of A Duke to Undo her (The Husband Hunt #1)

Chapter Ten

“Lady Belinda plays the pianoforte well, doesn’t she?” commented Vera as they strolled from the music room back to the drawing room that evening. “I believe she is quite as good as Constance was on the instrument at the same age.”

“Oh, yes,” Josephine agreed with her sister, although she had actually spent most of the recital giggling with Benedict Emerton at the back of the room, speculating on which of the now complete party of twenty guests might be induced to play blind-man’s buff or musical chairs on another evening.

“She plays very well indeed, I should think.”

Josephine could not, in fact, recall a single piece that had been played and felt guilty for it now. It was impolite not to have listened at least a little.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it too, Josephine. It was longer than I anticipated and I know you get restless.”

The younger sister shook her head and squeezed Lady Elmridge’s arm in its long cream evening glove.

“I had Mr. Emerton’s company and can never be bored when we’re together,” Josephine assured Vera.

Excluding that heart-racing first encounter with the Duke of Ashbourne, Josephine had actually thoroughly enjoyed her first day at Ashbourne Castle.

Cassius Emerton had absented himself entirely until dinner, leaving his mother to host older and more sedentary guests in the house while Benedict led Josephine and more active members of the party on a first exploration of the grounds.

There had been sunshine, laughter and an informal buffet luncheon under the shade of some beech trees beside the top lawn.

Josephine even had the chance to paddle on the shores of the lake alongside Mr. Emerton, enjoying the cold water and squelchy sand beneath her feet while Lady Belinda and another young lady hung back under their parasols with an expression of distaste.

For dinner, Vera had approved her choice of a favorite blue silk evening gown and simple hairstyle, requiring very little primping and pinning.

That particular dress was two years old now and tighter at the bosom than Josephine thought it had been when first made up.

It was hardly surprising, she supposed. She had been barely eighteen years then and now she was a full-grown woman of twenty.

Josephine noticed the brief and slightly pained glance that the Duke of Ashbourne first gave when his eyes fell briefly on her neckline as she appeared for dinner. It did make her feel real injustice to be judged for something so small, and so unfair.

Vera had a perfect sense of propriety and would never have let Josephine dress indecently.

In addition, Lady Belinda’s dress was lower cut and the duke paid no heed whatsoever to that, or the dress of any other young lady present.

It seemed she must accept that Cassius Emerton was simply rude and didn’t like her.

Well, Josephine didn’t like him either, and presumably to their mutual satisfaction, they had been seated as far away from one another as possible at the dinner table.

Josephine sat with Mr. Emerton, hoping that this arrangement would be repeated often during the week.

His conversation was always cheerful and polite and she never once caught him eying her bosom.

“Who is for whist?” asked Benedict Emerton cheerfully once the party had reassembled and refueled itself with coffee, the clocks around the house just striking ten. “I have had card tables set out in the room next door and fancy a few rounds before bed.”

While some of the older guests excused themselves either to their beds, or to the comfortable seats around the dowager duchess in the drawing room, many of the younger guests trooped eagerly after Mr. Emerton into the adjoining room.

They were soon arranged in two games at two tables, with Josephine in a pair with Mr. Emerton.

While the Duke of Ashbourne did not play, and Josephine was determined to ignore him, she was still conscious of his presence from the first moment he entered the room, following both games with his too-interested dark blue eyes.

“We win again!” Josephine crowed happily at the conclusion of a second game. “It is lucky we play only for coppers tonight, Vera, or you and Lady Barnabas would be quite broke.”

“Don’t use slang, dear,” Lady Elmridge reproved her sister mildly, although Lady Barnabas beside her only smiled in amusement.

“We are an unbeatable team,” Benedict Emerton declared, to Josephine’s further satisfaction.

“Unbeatable?” questioned the Duke of Ashbourne, unwinding his long frame from where he had been silently leaning against the wall. “That sounds like a challenge, Brother.”

Benedict Emerton laughed good-naturedly as the duke came to the table and took an empty seat opposite Josephine.

“I was naturally excluding you, Cassius, when I made that comment. You are far too adept at the card table for me, as I’ve learned all too well over the years.”

“Too late, little brother. I am at the table now and will have my game. What shall we play?”

“I yield to you now, before the cards are even dealt, Cassius. Let those unfamiliar with your skill take their chances against you.”

The blond man continued to shake his head and laugh. Benedict’s immediate capitulation puzzled Josephine, who could never hear a challenge without trying to meet it.

“Brag,” proposed Josephine without further hesitation, throwing the word and her gaze very deliberately towards the Duke of Ashbourne before she turned her head and addressed the other card players. “Would anyone else like to join our game of brag?”

While the rest of the ladies declined, several gentlemen came to the table and sat down, either bored with watching or intrigued by Benedict Emerton’s warning on the duke’s proficiency.

“You will deal for us, Lady Josephine?” asked the slightly drunken Earl of Carbury, whom Mr. Emerton had pointed out to her as a fool but always game for a laugh. “There is nothing like a pretty face at the card table to bring a man luck.”

“I shall deal and I shall play,” Josephine clarified, shuffling the cards competently in her small, deft hands and then raising her eyes to steadily meet those of Cassius Emerton again.

“I am not afraid of your reputation at the card table, Your Grace. I welcome it, for if I beat you, my own reputation will be established at a stroke.”

Several of the gentleman guffawed at this fearless taking up of the duke’s challenge, although others looked shocked and Josephine caught a definite warning glance from Vera, now sitting with Lady Barnabas on a nearby sofa.

Josephine dealt the initial cards as adeptly as she had shuffled them, drawing admiring murmurs from the table.

Facility with cards had been one of her party tricks as a child and her skill in common games had grown precociously, being allowed to sit up and play with her sisters and their friends from a very early age.

Chance was just as important in brag as judgment or daring.

Still, Josephine had never yet played against anyone she felt she couldn’t beat, if luck was on her side.

She hoped that this would be the case tonight.

How fine it would be to trounce the Duke of Ashbourne in his own home! She chuckled to herself as play began.

The game was fast-paced and quick moving, just as Josephine liked it. Lord Carbury was the first to fall, not quite understanding the rules and having to be persuaded from the table with much laughter by his friends as his brags fell flat each time, much to his puzzlement.

Josephine wondered if he actually knew what game he was playing, and why he was not more embarrassed by his incompetence and bumbling.

It was unfair that she must try so hard to be proper and correct all the time but someone like Lord Carbury could stumble through life saying and doing the most foolish things without reproof.

One by one, the other gentlemen at table admitted defeat and bowed out until there were only two players left: Lady Josephine Thomson and the Duke of Ashbourne.

Josephine could almost taste victory now and threw her host a challenging grin, expecting a stern or scowling look in return.

To her consternation, the duke smiled back quite naturally, appearing to be having a very good time.

“I warn you, I play to win, Your Grace,” she needled him.

“As do I,” Cassius Emerton laughed back. “I enjoy a game all the more when it is against a worthy opponent.”

Huffing slightly at this failure to create any obvious upset in the man’s temper, Josephine focused again on her hand. While it was very close at the end, the winning card was hers and she jumped to her feet in triumph as she laid it down and then spun around, clapping her hands.

“I win!” she shouted joyfully to the room, a display that brought Vera rushing over to her side.

“Hush, my dear, it is almost midnight,” her older sister soothed her, putting an arm about her shoulders. “I think it is time we went to bed now.”

Josephine became conscious that several in the room were looking askance at her behavior and she drooped slightly, feeling for Vera’s unease but also irked by the sense that she could never do anything right, unless she managed to become someone else.

.. Someone like the refined and dignified Lady Belinda perhaps, who was looking away from the card table with downcast eyes as though embarrassed on Josephine’s behalf.

She heard her own name in the familiar rising whisper of gossiping voices sounding around the room, and felt her hackles rising and her stomach sinking.

Looking back across the table at the Duke of Ashbourne, Josephine expected his face would be the most censorious of all, and she was prepared to defy him all over again.

Instead, he was smiling broadly, his deep blue eyes only keen and good-humored. If they had met for the first time tonight, Josephine realized that she would have liked him…

“This game is indeed yours, Lady Josephine. I hope you will do me the honor of a rematch. I warn you that I do not give up after a single defeat. It only encourages me.”

While his hair was in its usual unruly condition, his stock askew and his face as flushed as if he had run a race, Josephine admitted that the duke was an inescapably handsome man when he wasn’t frowning and jibing at her.

His graceful capitulation and invitation to fresh competition pleased and excited her against her will and she felt a strange pulling sensation in the pit of her stomach.

Their passionate kisses at the Gordenford garden party flooded back to her again.

She had tried very hard since arriving to put them from her mind, particularly the way in which she had responded to Cassius Emerton in kind.

She had been relieved in some ways that he had not mentioned that incident directly or indirectly, but the tension of not knowing what it meant was difficult too.

How could any of this be? Didn’t she hate him? Didn’t he disdain her? The entire scene was too confusing for her to countenance.

“I must retire with my sister,” Josephine blurted out and then dropped a brief curtsy before almost running from the room, sensing the Duke of Ashbourne’s gaze burning into her back as she departed.