Page 28 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Devyn watched the way her lips wrapped around the flask, the way her throat bobbed, and had to flex his fingers and count his breaths to master his control over his lust.

“I thought you were good at this sort of thing, my lady,” Devyn asked, taking the proffered flask from Moria.

“I’m good at providing entertainment, but bores like those two prigs? They require a stiff drink to tolerate.”

“I’m glad we agree,” he said, replacing the flask in his pocket and ushering her to a seat at the front of the box.

When she was in front of him, his eyes fell down her exposed back and the curve of her hips.

She looked over her shoulder and smirked when she caught him staring.

Devyn coughed and looked away, studying the theater instead of the shape of this woman in a perfectly fitted dress.

The packed theater was enormous, all red and gilt and renaissance paintings on the ceiling like the ones in the ballroom back at Wintersea Manor.

Devyn had spent so many hours in that ballroom on dancing lessons, his mother determined her overly large, athletic son not embarrass the family honor by being a terrible dancer until she’d smoothed down all his rough and jerky movements.

His mother would have loved Lady Moria, actually.

She’d have set her up with Perry, but still.

When Lady Moria sat down in her seat, he felt rather than saw the eyes that trained in their direction.

Devyn sat next to her, angling his back in view of the exit, but her chair was so…

. far away. She was wearing a dress in shades of blue that looked like moving water at night and he loved her in blue.

She was unreachable in more ways than one. He supposed that theater boxes were designed that way. Propriety and reputations and all that.

As the curtains opened, the music started, her attention was rapt on the stage.

She played the piano, loved talking about music, clearly wanted to come tonight not for the theatrics off stage…

but the ones onstage. He could see the excitement in her bouncing knee.

Her head was held high and her shoulders painfully straight, but she had a tell.

The play began and everyone trained their attention on the stage, until the female character was introduced as a stunning blonde…. named Marina.

She was simpering and flirting with a young lord, the male hero of the play. And the eyes and binoculars trained in her direction. In their direction.

Devyn’s heart fell down a flight of stairs. Peregrine heard it or sensed his brother’s plight—he always had—and touched his arm for the briefest of moments. Their father didn’t do simple affection like that—but Peregrine did.

“Well, this is rather…unexpected,” Moria said, leaning over to his chair.

Devyn’s knuckles pressed tighter against each other.

The sounds of the dialogue, the gasps and laughter of the audience, he barely even heard what was being said on that stage. He was trained on her. He wasn’t the only one. Peregrine pointed out the Duke of Andover staring in their direction. The Bloody woman had to also be courted by a Duke.

You could give her a title too, weakling. That dark voice that sounded like his father’s, invading his head whenever he least needed it to, irked.

The woman next to him smiled tentatively in his direction, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Devyn only cared about her.

So, he did what any possessive and domineering man like himself would do.

He dropped his flimsy program at her feet.

Little matching satin slippers just barely there peeked out from her too-many-skirts.

He muttered something under his breath. Made a grand show of picking it up from the floor.

And he hooked one strong arm around the foot of her chair and dragged it closer to his own.

Her chair made a little scraping sound on the carpet that caught others’ attention.

The air whooshing out of her lungs was enough to make him smile like an idiot. Then he took her hand in his and kissed her gloved knuckles. Onlookers and Dukes gasping in shock be damned to hell.

* * *

The play that night was about a society princess who breaks many hearts, including that of the main character who says he will never love again. Then, she introduces him to a shy and confident girl who is not after his money, she is a princess in disguise. It was like a backwards Adelaide.

Drysdale and Fitz had called on her the day before and explained that Drysdale and his brother were behind it, and that Fitz was publicizing it in the newspaper he’d inherited. She didn’t hate the story, it was the kind of thing she was sure would be a massive success.

“Does she have to be called Marina?” she’d asked Drysdale, poking him in the shoulder.

He’d blinked a couple times. “Well, no, actually. It’s just already printed on the programs.”

“And you didn’t run that bit by her first like we discussed?” Fitz had said, crossing his arms. Drysdale had looked at her apologetically. The dolt.

Moria could only do what she had always done. Lean into it.

And so here she sat, on opening night, between the man she was pretty sure she was starting to fall in love with, and her chaperone. So many eager eyes looked in her direction throughout the play to see if she was angry or hurt, whether she knew about it or was as surprised as everyone else.

Somewhere in another box, she saw the Duke of Andover looking as handsome and polished as always and was that…Kate Herring? Good god, perish the thought. Both were looking at her, and when they saw her looking back, trained their eyes and binoculars back on the stage.

So, naturally, Moria’s face had to take on an amused expression, her demeanor had to reflect that she wasn’t hating it, or they’d all rejoice in her turmoil.

She couldn’t appear to be loving the attention either, even if she was, because they’d call her all manner of things that may or may not be true.

And then…Devyn. He’d done the chair move and she’d almost collapsed on the spot.

A Duke wouldn’t have done that. Some inner, primal voice riled her.

He grinned at her, the devil. He took her hand and kissed it.

There was a dryness to her throat and a clamminess to her hands that felt out of the natural order of things.

When she’d dreamed about courting this man in public, she hadn’t dreamed of this.

When he’d escorted her tonight, she had hoped maybe he won't find the level of attention directed at me humiliating, but she hadn’t foreseen this.

His hand, holding hers, resting against the armrest of her chair.

All the binoculars looking would catch that.

He didn’t seem to care.

And his brother was saying something to him on his other side, leaning toward him. He was large enough that he could do so without letting go of her hand. Could he do everything without ever letting go of her hand? If she asked him to, he'd find a way.

He only let go when it was time to clap, and he didn’t try to hold her hand again.

Likely, Peregrine had said something like we don’t hold hands of women we aren’t married to at the theater.

The thought made her smile, and Miss Kelley met her eyes. “Try not to look quite like you’re having the night of your life, my dear.”

Moria giggled into her ear, maybe it was the contents of Devyn’s flask. “And if I am?”

Miss Kelley tamped down her own smile. “Because of the play, or the Captain?”

Moria pretended to keep her eyes on the stage. “Definitely the latter. Did you see the chair?”

“Impossible to miss. That was kind of the point, I suppose.”

She’d been playing a dangerous game tonight, stepping out with the captain the same night as the play’s launch; but even when she caught the Duke staring again, she could barely tear her thoughts from the man who had so publicly declared his intent.