Page 16 of A Gamble on the Duke (The Gambling Dukes #4)

NINE

Catherine

Don’t think about it.

Don’t think about his face between your thighs.

Don’t think about your whimpers, your moans.

Don’t think about his tongue?—

“So delighted to properly make your acquaintance, Miss Shenton,” said the Earl of Tuxford pleasantly as a footman handed me my second glass of wine. “In such intimate arrangements as this, it is far easier to get to know one.”

I gagged slightly on my drink.

“Oh dear, a little strong?”

“Yes—yes, very strong,” I managed, handing the glass back to the footman who had hurried forward as I blinked through stinging tears. “Thank you for your kind compliment, my lord.”

And it was a compliment. It had been a compliment when the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies after dinner, and the Earl of Tuxford had made straight for me.

His wife did not appear to care. She was enjoying a conversation with the Viscount Kirekwall and Georgiana, a woman who had told me to call her by her first name the moment she and her husband had arrived at our—at Kineallen’s townhouse for dinner.

“You must call all us Gambling Dukes founding members by our first names,” Georgiana said with a grin. “Or at the very least our titles. You are part of the club now.”

Part of the club.

Her words had warmed me in a way I had not expected. To be part of any club, any group or connections…I had lost that when my father had died.

The Earl of Tuxford was still talking happily. “I suppose you are a member too of this Gambling Dukes club?”

My gaze flickered, inexorably, to the one person in the room who I knew would be listening, even though he was standing by the fireplace supposedly listening to Lilah.

Alfred, the Duke of Kineallen.

Well, I could hardly call him ‘Your Grace’ now, could I? Not after he had pleasured me so utterly last night.

I wished we’d had time to discuss it, but he had not appeared at breakfast, and he had luncheoned out…and I had only come down for dinner five minutes before the first guests had arrived.

Which meant that I had not been able to ask him what it meant.

Foolish, idiotic woman that I was.

What it meant?

It meant nothing. He was a duke. He probably seduced women left, right, and center.

He was a widower with no children and no limits that Society would ever place upon him—of course he had bedded more women than I’d had hot dinners .

Last night had undoubtedly meant a great deal more to me than it had to him.

My gaze raked over the man. Alfred—the Duke of Kineallen was wearing a well fitted jacket and breeches which clearly showed his impressive stature, one that I had seen in far too great a detail last night.

Last night…

“I am not one to ruin a lady, but if you wish for…well. A little pleasure. I can ensure that no one will ever know—you will not have lost your innocence. Not technically.”

“Miss Shenton? Miss Shenton are you quite well?”

I blinked, raising a hand to my burning cheeks as I turned back to the Earl of Tuxford and saw a great deal of concern in his expression.

“You look most overheated,” he said jovially, though there was still concern in his tones. “I wonder whether Kineallen?—”

“Have you tired yourself, Miss Shenton?”

I flinched, not at the closeness of Alfred but at the suddenness. I had not even noticed the man move, but he was now kneeling by my side, pressing a hand to my forehead.

An action that was only likely to warm me further.

“She does look a little pink,” said the Earl of Tuxford anxiously. “All we were doing was discussing?—”

“I assure you, I am quite well,” I said firmly—hopefully firmly enough to convince both gentlemen.

I did not appear to be successful.

“A chair,” Alfred said quietly.

He did not need to raise his voice to be heard, or obeyed. A footman stepped forward with a chair and placed it beside my end of the armchair. Alfred sat upon it, leaned back, and reached out for my hand .

“You must take better care of yourself,” he said quietly, under the hubbub of conversations throughout the drawing room. “Or else I shall have to send you to bed.”

Heat burned between my thighs.

Dear God, did the man have any idea?—

I caught the smirk on his face.

Blast him to hell, he did have an idea!

“That might not be the worst idea, Miss Shenton,” the Earl of Tuxford said gravely, his concern for me relay touching. “Ladies like yourself are delicate.”

“Oh, I don’t think Miss Shenton is that delicate,” said Alfred lightly, squeezing my hand in a most provoking manner. “I’ve often found?—”

“Tell me, my lord,” I interrupted with what I hoped were not pink cheeks in the slightest. “How long do you intend to stay in town for the Season?”

The conversation meandered onto a topic that was quite mundane, and after five minutes of it I decided to risk looking at the man whose pulse was rapid. At least, I thought it was his pulse that was quickening, felt through my palm as he held my hand.

Or was that my own pulse?

Alfred met my gaze with a steady look that spoke of things I could not say.

At least, not in public.

Perhaps not ever. I had never dreamt such pleasures could be shared with another. It had been far greater than the bliss I had been able to find in my own body with my own hands, something I rarely did because it left one somehow feeling even less satisfied than when I started.

Alfred smiled briefly and then turned his attention back to his guest.

Yes. Right. That was the whole point of me being here. To charm the Earl of Tuxford.

Right.

The trouble was, it did not appear that I was particularly necessary. Alfred, the Duke of Kineallen, appeared to be doing a mightily fine job on his own.

“—enticed and intrigued by this Gambling Dukes club, of course,” the Earl of Tuxford was saying with a wink at me. “Old Kineallen here thought he would be able to convince me.”

“Convince you? Oh no, my lord, not convince you,” Alfred said lightly.

The Earl of Tuxford frowned. “Oh? I thought it was your intention to convince me to join the Gambling Dukes as a member.”

“I would be gratified indeed if you did decide to join,” said Alfred with an incline of his head. “But convince you? I never have to convince anyone to join the Gambling Dukes. My intention is to let prospective members catch a glimpse of its delights. The decision rests with them.”

I saw the curiosity of the Earl of Tuxford rise as he shifted in his seat.

“The delights?”

“How do you think the duchy of Kineallen was saved?” Alfred said with a shrug, gesturing about the room. “It is not something spoken much of, naturally, but not every noble seat entered the new century with a great deal of capital.”

“I had heard…well, not rumors,” said the Earl of Tuxford quietly. “Murmurs.”

I watched, fascinated, as the two men continued to converse. There was a charm in Alfred that I had never seen before—not that of a seduction, no, but of something else .

He was not attempting to charm a lady into bed—and I knew how well that could be achieved.

No, this was a charm of quite a different flavor. That of enticement. Of dangling a delight before a gentleman and telling him that he had to reach for it.

“The murmurs were true, but are no longer,” said Alfred with a brief smile. “The duchy of Kineallen will be paying off the final mortgage on the estate next month.”

The Earl of Tuxford’s eyes bulged. “But—but I heard tell that the mortgage was for thirty thousand pounds!”

I could not help but gasp. Such a sum was…was unfathomable.

Alfred’s lips lilted. “You were misinformed, my lord.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I would have been?—”

“It was nearer forty thousand pounds,” said Alfred with a gentle laugh. “And yet my membership of the Gambling Dukes has so reversed my fortunes that I have seen fit to pay it off.”

I could see, seated between them as I was, just how impressed the Earl of Tuxford was by this pronouncement.

Not only the sums, though they were impressive on their own.

No, it was the genteel and refined way that Alfred spoke about such a thing which had clearly gained the Earl of Tuxford’s interest. Alfred was not a brash youth who had entered Society by way of trade.

He was a gentleman. A duke, and grandson of a duke.

To enter into a club which had him at the top was to be doing something noble…

“Of course, you have always taken care of the Tuxford estate,” Alfred said conversationally, inclining his head again in a movement of respect. “Tell me, how are your daughters? Six, I think, with two of them out in the marriage mart. How are they finding it?”

It was cleverly done.

So cleverly, that I did not think the Earl of Tuxford even noticed. “Yes, Amelia and Elizabeth are…well. Plenty of interest of course, they are both very pretty girls…very pretty. Very charming. As yet…no offers.”

I could almost see the man’s thoughts, they were so transparent.

My gaze flickered to Alfred, and I had to force myself not to applaud.

It truly was masterful. He had flattered the Earl of Tuxford with his statement that he had of course taken better care of his estate than Alfred’s grandfather, but then immediately reminded him—subtly, of course—that it was not his estate that needed funds but his daughters.

Heavens. Six daughters.

Even a rich estate would struggle to find sufficient dowries for each of them. Why, I believed that the Earl of Tuxford had an income of five thousand a year…but his daughters? Dowries of only a thousand pounds.

It was more than some, to be sure, but I had overheard Georgiana and Lilah talking, and they had each taken twenty thousand pounds into their marriages.

A thousand pounds? Even with the enticement of an earl for a father-in-law, it was not much.

Not much at all.

“I would be delighted to make the Lady Amelia’s acquaintance. Introduce her to some of my friends,” Alfred was saying lightly.

And that was when jealousy, hot and angry and full of rage, poured into my chest.

Meet the Lady Amelia? Meet an earl’s daughter?