Page 10 of A Gamble on the Duke (The Gambling Dukes #4)

SIX

Catherine

Well, this was it. My life was over.

“Relax,” the Duke of Kineallen muttered at my side.

“Relax?” I said, my voice jumping about twenty octaves. Someone passing us on the pavement turned back to stare at us.

At me.

And why wouldn’t they? I was attired in one of the most ridiculous outfits I had ever seen. It was a marvel I could breathe in this thing, let alone speak. The close knit of the corset stays pulled at every curve, accentuating ones I hadn’t even realized that I had.

Perhaps that was the reason why people kept staring.

It had to be that. It might also explain why the Duke of Kineallen didn’t appear to be able to stop staring at me.

Sharing a home with him was something far beyond anything I had been able to imagine, but when I had waited outside his bedchamber just an hour ago, wondering if he approved of the ridiculous gown which had been sent up for me …

Well. His eyes had bulged, and that wasn’t the only thing.

It would hardly be ladylike to point it out, so I hadn’t. But I wasn’t blind. I had seen the twitch of his manhood within those smooth breeches. It wasn’t as though they left much to the imagination.

And now here we were, just a few yards away from my doom.

“You really need to relax,” the Duke of Kineallen murmured.

And it was a proper murmur, his breath warm on my neck. I shivered. I couldn’t help it. The memory of that kiss rose again, unbidden.

As it had last night. When I was alone. Alone in my bedchamber, the Duke of Kineallen only feet away and I hadn’t…hadn’t done anything about it.

I’d wanted to. I had wanted to creep along the dark corridor and slip into his room and his bed and show him just how attractive he was—how he made me feel.

But I wasn’t foolish.

Not completely.

Touching myself while thinking of him, however…perhaps not the wisest move I had ever made. Because now here I was, the Duke of Kineallen’s hand on the small of my back, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Every nerve in my body was on fire for him, and all I was to him was some woman who could impress. Who had to impress.

In about five minutes.

“Tell me again,” I found myself saying. “Tell me again what you need from me.”

I glanced up at the Duke of Kineallen through my lashes and flushed at how my words had sounded.

Well, I hadn’t meant that. Not that.

Clearly the Duke of Kineallen had no concept of what I could mean, because he said quietly but without much thought, “You just need to impress.”

I snorted as a footman opened the door of a ridiculously expensive restaurant that I had never even heard of until two hours ago. “Impress? Oh, right, easy.”

“Would you just relax?” the Duke of Kineallen said softly, our pace slowing on the outlandishly soft carpet, the hum of genteel chatter and elegant music filling the vestibule. “You look absolutely beautiful. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” I breathed, almost tripping over in the preposterously long hem the modiste had made for me.

Nothing to worry about. I was beautiful.

The words echoed around my mind making it almost impossible to think. Impossible to walk. Without the Duke of Kineallen’s strong and yet gentle hand on the small of my back, I'm not sure how I would have been able to step forward into the restaurant.

It was dazzling. I had spent enough time with Alfred, the Duke of Kineallen now to spot wealth, and it was absolutely everywhere.

In the understated marble, in the gentle chatter that never rose beyond a quiet word, in the unassuming jewelry that adorned every woman and some of the men in there.

Jewelry that looked so simple, it had to be expensive.

Gold cutlery on gold plates, a couple who looked like they could be royalty, my head swaying and it was a miracle I was still walking.

“Would you just relax? You look absolutely beautiful. You have nothing to worry about. ”

And the Duke of Kineallen thought I was beautiful.

It was embarrassing how much that meant to me. As the Duke of Kineallen halted by a table and pulled out a chair, I couldn’t help but look at him with a beaming smile as I sat down.

He thought I was beautiful.

“Ah, there is no need to introduce this young lady,” said a voice I did not recognize. “This must be your lady love, Kineallen.”

I blinked.

I had become so intoxicated with what the Duke of Kineallen had said, I had entirely forgotten that we were here for a reason. That the table he had led me to was not empty.

Three men sat at it, each with their own partners. Two women who looked like they ate women like me for breakfast, and a man with a better coiffure than I had ever seen.

They were all smiling at me.

“Gentlemen, ladies, may I introduce Miss Catherine Shenton,” the Duke of Kineallen said with well-practiced ease, sitting beside me and taking my hand as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

And it felt it. For a moment I could almost forget that this was make believe. I could believe the lie, drink in the glorious idea that this was actually my life. My world. My man.

Kineallen squeezed my hand and I cleared my throat.

But it wasn’t.

“This is his lordship, the Earl of Tuxford, and his wife Lady Tuxford, this is Viscount Kirekwall and his wife…”

It was all a haze—but then, the Duke of Kineallen had schooled me on this gathering and I was not about to let him, or myself, down at the final hurdle.

“How pleasant to meet you all,” I said, hating how tinny my voice sounded. God, had it always sounded like that?

“And I you, my dear,” said the Earl of Tuxford genially. “And I must say how delighted I am to see that young Kineallen is taking the future of his duchy seriously. Marry, Kineallen!”

I caught the pained look on the Duke of Kineallen’s face and almost wished I hadn’t. It was more than pain. It was gone almost before I could see it.

“Indeed,” the Duke of Kineallen said, his tone clipped.

The Earl of Tuxford did not appear to have noticed the chill in his host’s reply. “I know almost nothing of you, my dear, and I want to hear everything.”

Oh dear. “I…I have heard a great deal about you.”

“Really?” The Earl of Tuxford leaned forward with a smirk. “Like what?”

Just for a moment, the Duke of Kineallen’s hand tightened around my own. I didn’t need to look at his face to know what he was thinking. He was worried that I would collapse, panic under the pressure. And perhaps in another lifetime, I would have.

With his hand over my own, I suddenly felt as though…well. As though I could do anything.

They were just clay, I told myself. Yes, I was nervous. Yes, I was entirely out of my depth. Yes, it had been a ridiculous idea to think that I could do this, and I should never have accepted the Duke of Kineallen’s outrageous idea.

But I had. And I was here now.

And I was a potter, and they were clay. All I had to do was gently work them into the shape that I wanted, right?

“Well, I couldn’t possibly reveal all the terrible things,” I said with a laugh, leaning back so the candlelight shone on the pearls I had argued the Duke of Kineallen down from the diamond set. “But if you flatter me sufficiently, I am sure I can tell you some of the few pleasant things.”

There was a moment of complete silence.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Duke of Kineallen. He had gone completely rigid and the look on his face was one of terror.

Kineallen

“Well, I couldn’t possibly reveal all the terrible things.”

I froze. I couldn’t have heard that right. Surely, I could not have heard that right.

Miss Shenton wouldn’t be so daft…would she?

“But if you flatter me sufficiently,” she continued, looking absolutely radiant in the pearls I had been certain wouldn’t suit her, “I am sure I can tell you some of the few pleasant things.”

The silence that followed was only going to be broken by my apologies, I knew it. I could feel it, right in the curl of the panic that was curdling in my chest.

I looked up at the Earl of Tuxford, and did not understand for a heart stopping moment why the man was…smiling.

Smiling?

“Oh, Miss Shenton, you charmer!” he chuckled, the ambiance at the table warming considerably. “I don’t know where Kineallen has been hiding you, you’re an absolute delight!”

“That’s what I keep telling him,” Miss Shenton said breezily, nudging me on the shoulder as I tried to force my heart to start beating again.

“But apparently business comes…well, not first, but certainly very hi gh on the list. You should hear about his ideas for the Gambling Dukes for next year, they really are something. Aren’t they, Kineallen? ”

Kineallen. That was me.

I tried to take a deep breath but it just ended up being a choke. Miss Shenton handed me a glass of wine and I tried not to splutter into it and make a bigger fool of myself than I had already.

Hell. She had them in the palm of her hand. The conversation continued animatedly, Miss Shenton smiling here and putting in a word here, delicately encouraging the chatter but somehow keeping it moving, vibrant, alive.

Which was just how I felt.

Vibrant. Alive.

There was something about her that I had never found in another woman. Beauty yes, brains yes, charm yes—but never all together.

Never framed in one person who could make me feel so utterly useless in her presence.

It was…intoxicating.

Perhaps it was the wine. I hardly needed to speak, finding myself sipping the delicately fragranced wine that this restaurant was known for, and took Miss Shenton’s hand as it rested on the table next to me.

Then I froze.

Damn, I hadn’t intended to do—well, I had, obviously. It was instinct, a need to be close to her, a need to touch her.

A need to show her how much I cared.

This had never happened since—since Olivia. And the thought of her was precipitated by the expectation of pain, and though there was sadness, the agony that always accompanied the thought in my mind did not come.

For the first time ever, I could think of my late wife…and not wish to weep.

Miss Shenton glanced at me, a smile dancing on her lips, and squeezed my hand. They rested on the table, intertwined, as my life was swiftly becoming.

When had it been so difficult to imagine a life without her? A day without her even, that was almost impossible to consider.

And here she was, charming my potential members.

Something lurched in my stomach. Hell. This pretense, I didn’t want it anymore.

I wanted something real.

“—must do this again,” Miss Shenton was saying winningly as I silently nodded at a waiter.

The bill would be put onto the Gambling Dukes account. It was the least I could do if Miss Shenton’s charm was able to get several thousand out of these people to gamble in our club.

Which it looked like they would.

“Next time, I want to be taken on a tour around that club house of yours by Miss Shenton,” the Earl of Tuxford was saying as we rose. “I’ve never heard anyone talk about art in such a way. You have a real gift, my dear.”

Miss Shenton flushed with delight and a rush of anger poured through me. Only I should be making her smile like that. Only I should be telling her how clever she was, how beautiful, how charming, how?—

How I wanted her.

I swallowed as I placed her pelisse around her shoulders.

God, I was falling. Falling too deep into the deception.

But the real damage was done as the Earl of Tuxford indicated that we should go ahead of them and Catherine— Miss Shenton slipped her hand into mine as we moved through the restaurant toward the vestibule. I felt ten feet tall, having her by my side. What man wouldn’t?

I felt something else entirely when she suddenly leaned over and tilted my face toward her.

“Miss Shenton?—”

No further words were necessary. No further words were possible. It was a rather challenging thing, speaking anything when a woman as delicious as Catherine was pressed up against you.

I lost my head. Who could blame me? I’d wanted to kiss her again ever since the last instant my lips left hers, and now here I was, her arms around my neck, her lips on mine, parted, inviting me in.

The groan that escaped my mouth was for her, and her alone. She must have heard it, felt it perhaps, because Catherine’s nails scraped down the nape of my neck and my tongue plunged into her mouth, desperate to taste her again, to possess her.

The kiss was over far too quickly.

Cheeks pink, hair mussed, breathless, Miss Shenton looked at me with a wry smile.

I swallowed, mouth dry. Now, that had not been part of the arrangement.

But then neither had the soar of feelings that were now pouring through me, making it almost impossible for me to think. To feel. To understand what I was or who I was.

“Good,” Miss Shenton breathed.

I could hardly think. “Oh…good?”

She nodded. “Good, they’ve gone.”

They? Who they hell were they? I couldn’t think of anything other than the sensation of her lips on mine, the way she had pulled herself into me, the scrape of her nails, the need I had sensed in her, the way her warmth had flowed through that gown I wanted to rip off her body with my teeth and plunge myself into her. Into the deepest part of me.

Miss Shenton nodded again as the door to the street closed softly. “They’ve gone. The Earl of Tuxford, Lord Kirekwall, all the others. We can…can stop pretending.”

Stop pretending.

My shoulders slumped as the truth of what had just happened broke over me, like a stormy tide on a shingled beach.

Stop pretending—the Earl of Tuxford. Of course. Catherine—Miss Shenton had only kissed me because the potential members had been looking, because she knew we needed to give them a show, prove that we were genuinely courting.

That this wasn’t all fake.

It wasn’t fake to me, not anymore. But of course, that hadn’t been part of the deal. Miss Shenton didn’t want this, this life, this man—me. She wanted a quick flush of cash so she could go back to that pottery shop of hers.

“Kineallen?” Catherine said quietly.

I swallowed hard: swallowed down the need for her, the physical release I so desperately wanted, the aching hurt that I had been played, the emotions that swelled up that I should never have permitted to exist.

“Stop pretending—right, yes, of course,” I said quietly. “Let’s go back home. I mean, back to the townhouse.”

Home. It wasn't home now, not now I’d received a big fat reminder that this was nothing but a paycheck for her.

And it was all my fault.