Page 19 of Duke with a Lie (Wicked Dukes Society #4)

Aubrey swung his fist wildly, gratified by the crunch of cartilage as he landed his punch on the bastard’s nose. Blood began spurting instantly, raining down the man’s face and soaking into his white shirt. He cupped a hand over his battered nose, trying to stem the flow.

“Apologize,” Aubrey demanded coldly, staring into the other man’s soul and letting him know just how desolate his own was.

He hoped the arsehole saw the madness burning deep inside him.

“I’m sorry,” the man was quick to offer, his bravado gone.

“Not to me,” Aubrey growled. “To her.”

He stalked toward Rhiannon, offering her his hand to help her to her feet. Predictably, she ignored his hand and rose on her own, brushing off her silk skirts and pinning him with a furious glare. “How could you?”

He would deal with her wrath later.

Aubrey glanced back at the sniveling, bleeding beau. “Apologize to the lady.”

“Forgive me,” the man said hastily, blood leaking through his fingers and dripping in fat droplets onto the gravel at his feet. “It won’t happen again.”

He began backing away from them, as if he feared Aubrey would follow, traveling in the opposite direction from which Aubrey had just come.

Deeper into the maze, as it happened, but he was hardly inclined to offer the man counsel.

Indeed, it would serve him right to get lost within the intricate Wingfield Hall labyrinth.

Not only had the man dared to be too familiar with Rhiannon, he had also pushed her.

He was fortunate Aubrey hadn’t ripped off his ballocks and made him eat them for supper. There had been the matter of the insult he’d paid him as well, but Aubrey wouldn’t dwell on that now, for Rhiannon was coming for him, blue eyes blazing.

“How dare you attack him?” she demanded as her former beau disappeared into the foliage, retreating like the coward he was. “All he was doing was chatting with me on the garden bench.”

Aubrey held her gaze, unaffected by her ire. “He pushed you. I’d break his nose a second time if I could as penance for daring to do you violence.”

“I don’t think he meant to shove me,” she protested, throwing back her shoulders in defiance.

“Don’t make excuses for him,” Aubrey snarled, feeling particularly vicious. “No man of honor would dare to hurl a woman to the ground as he did.”

“How rich.” She marched toward him, not stopping until they were breast to chest. “Because no man of honor would viciously attack someone for the supposed crime of merely sitting on a bench with me.”

“He intended to do far more. I can assure you of that. You’re damned fortunate I found you in time.”

Her vivid blue eyes sparkled in the sun as she glared up at him. “Perhaps I wished for him to do more.”

Aubrey wanted to touch her, but he didn’t trust himself.

She was tempting, maddening, bloody glorious.

His. He felt it to his marrow in that moment, the rightness of it, as if there existed some unspoken innate connection between them.

Truth be told, he’d always felt it, but he hadn’t been in her orbit long enough to allow himself to truly experience the magnetic pull.

He flexed his fingers at his sides instead, ignoring the ache in his knuckles from punching her companion. “What is his name?”

“I…don’t know,” she admitted.

“Ah, so you don’t know who he is, whether he’s married or a bachelor, whether he’s kind or cruel, but you wanted him to do what, Rhiannon? Kiss you? Lift your skirts and take your maidenhead on a stone bench?”

“Why should you care what I want?” she asked, raising her voice until it echoed off the maze walls. “Shouldn’t you be off with your paramour somewhere?”

“Did you accompany him to the gardens because you were jealous of Perdita?” he demanded, incredulous at the notion.

He had thought her too intelligent to do something so rash. He’d known she had been hurt by seeing him with the viscountess this morning, of course, but he hadn’t imagined she would go about the house party, inviting ruin.

“ Perdita , is it?” Her eyes flashed with renewed fire. “How wonderfully close the two of you are.”

He was hardly close with the viscountess, but Rhiannon didn’t need to know that. Perhaps if she believed his interest was firmly elsewhere, he would find it easier to keep her at arm’s length.

“It’s none of your concern, is it, minx?” he countered.

“Just as what I do, and with whom, is none of yours!” she tossed back, her voice growing louder by the moment.

That was when Aubrey heard the faint sound of footsteps approaching on the gravel from behind him.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, frowning as he concentrated.

“The only thing I heard was an arrogant, haughty, overbearing rake who mistakenly thinks he can dictate my actions.”

“Hush,” he ordered her. “I think someone is coming.”

Her lips parted, but miraculously, she ceased her loud berating. “I have no wish to cause a scene with you. You’ve done enough damage for one day.”

Nor did Aubrey desire to cause any undue attention for either of them, and if they were having a row, they would most assuredly attract attention and curiosity. Perhaps even Whit would take note, despite his recent mysterious absences at the house party.

“This path will direct you back to the main house,” he told her, motioning to a place where the trail meandered off in a direction opposite of the one her companion had chosen. “Go now.”

“I don’t take orders from you, Richford,” the minx snapped, defiant to the last. “But I will go because I’m still furious with you.”

With that, she turned and flounced down the path. Seeking to give her enough time to escape, Aubrey pivoted and stalked in the direction of the footfalls. If it was Rhiannon’s blasted suitor, returning for more of the justice he’d already received, Aubrey would be more than happy to deliver it.

But as he rounded the bend, the man he nearly crashed into wasn’t the masked suitor who had been holding Rhiannon in his arms. It was the Duke of Whitby.

Whit looked surprised to see him in the garden maze.

That made two of them.

Aubrey had been able to avoid direct conversation with his friend up until now. Guilt stabbed him like a knife. He hoped his guilty conscience wasn’t written on his face like ink scrawled across paper.

His friend’s brow furrowed. “Richford?”

“Bloody hell, Whit,” he managed, trying with all his might not to think about all the liberties he’d taken with his friend’s sister. “You gave me a fright.”

He was going to hell. If there had been even the slightest hint of a question as to where he’d be spending eternity, Aubrey knew it without a doubt as he stood in the sunlit gardens, lying to his friend.

“What are you doing skulking about in the gardens?” Whit demanded, his tone tinged with suspicion.

Aubrey gave his friend an unamused look. “I do not skulk.”

But he did know it was imperative to distract his friend and give Rhiannon sufficient time to safely retreat from the gardens without discovery.

Whit regarded him solemnly, a raised brow suggesting he disagreed. “As you wish.”

“I don’t.”

Whit shrugged. “I thought I heard you arguing with someone. A female someone.”

Damn it. He could only hope Whit hadn’t recognized his sister’s voice.

Aubrey stiffened. “You must be hearing things. I say, you weren’t indulging in another of King’s potions, were you?”

Christ knew he’d been as ragged as a centuries-old tapestry after his last bout with Kingham’s elixirs.

“Riverdale said something about you and a blonde,” Whit countered without answering his question. “Are you dallying with one of the club members?”

Blast it, what was Riverdale doing, wagging his tongue?

And since when did Whit give a damn if Aubrey was bedding one of the club members?

He wouldn’t have been the first to have done so, and neither would he be the last, he was sure.

Granted, it had been Rhiannon he’d been dallying with, and if Whit had the slightest inkling of his sins, he’d be drowning him in the garden fountain by now.

“I don’t dally either,” Aubrey snapped, doing his best to summon outrage and cloak his guilty conscience as he scowled. “Is Riverdale your spy now?”

“Do I have need of one?” Whit asked archly.

“Of course not,” he said quickly.

Their conversation couldn’t have possibly been going worse.

“Something is afoot,” Whit insisted. “Tell me what it is.”

“Nothing is afoot,” he fibbed, telling himself that he wouldn’t think about how Rhiannon had pulled her nightgown hem up over her gorgeous legs that morning and failing utterly.

“You never did have a face for cards. I can tell when you’re guilty, old chap.”

With great care, he banished the memory from his mind and forced himself to begin counting backward from one hundred in Latin.

“Nothing is afoot,” he lied again. “I am merely here in my capacity as one of the leaders of the club, given that two of our members were not able to attend because of women and weddings and other such bloody rot.”

He could still scarcely believe that Brandon and Camden had married. Aubrey had disavowed love long ago. He had witnessed what it had done to his father, and he had no wish to have the same hell visited upon himself or anyone he cared about.

“Christ, don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with someone,” Whit said suddenly, a strange expression on his face as he searched Aubrey’s gaze.

“In love?” Aubrey sputtered. Again, Rhiannon drifted into his mind, but this time, he was thinking about how he had lifted her skirts, how wet she had been, how much she had enjoyed watching another couple through the viewing windows. His face went hot.

“Of course not,” he added, choking out the denial. “Don’t be daft.”

Whit’s expression turned wry. “You don’t dally, you’ve been chasing about a blonde, and you’re acting damned odd. But I’m to believe that nothing is amiss?”

Good God. Aubrey could only hope that his friend didn’t think too closely about his own words.

The only bloody fortunate thing about these ridiculous circumstances was that Whit believed his sister was safely ensconced back in London with their mother where she belonged.

But if he began to suspect otherwise, the ruse would be over.

Along with his friendship, should Whit discover the depths of depravity to which Aubrey had sunk.

“Yes,” he ground out, “that is what you are to believe, Whit. Because that is what I bloody well told you.”

But Whit was no fool, and he knew better; his expression said so. “I know that is what you told me, but I also happen to know it’s a lie. What I don’t know is why you’re so intent upon deceiving me.”

There it was again, the guilt, stabbing between his ribs, making his chest go tight. Whit and the rest of the Wicked Dukes Society were like brothers to him. They were the closest thing to a family he’d known since…

No, he wouldn’t think of the hellacious past now.

He couldn’t bear for his mind to return to that dark place, just as he could never see those evils repeated.

Unbidden, the images he had witnessed returned to him.

The still, lifeless figure. The blood. So much of it, soaking fine silk, pooling on the carpets, seeping away and wasted.

Spilled by the hand that should have protected.

Aubrey scowled, summoning the rage he felt for his past to replace the guilt. “You’re not my goddamned mother, Whit. Leave well enough alone.”

“That rather stings,” Whit said, looking hurt. “Fair enough. If you don’t want to tell me?—”

“I don’t,” Aubrey interrupted, steeling himself against the urge to confide in his friend.

Because despite his sense of honor and his loyalty to Whit and his threats to Rhiannon, he couldn’t bring himself to tell Whit she was here. He didn’t want to consider why.

“—then I shall simply have to bide my time and discover what is going on myself,” Whit finished with a triumphant air.

Damn it. Aubrey sensed the determination in his friend, and he knew why. Whit couldn’t abide by secrets or lies, and it all but killed Aubrey to be the one deceiving him.

“Don’t pry where you aren’t wanted,” Aubrey felt compelled to warn him. “You may not like what you find.”

Whit frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I don’t want you interfering in my affairs,” he said coolly. “If there was something I wished to tell you, I would have done so by now.”

He had to have given Rhiannon sufficient time to meander out of the gardens and back into the safer crush of guests within the manor house by now. And Aubrey couldn’t bear another damned second of deception. He had to flee.

Without waiting for Whit to say anything else, he stepped around his friend, stalking down the path.

The things he was willing to do for Lady Rhiannon Northwick never ceased to astound him. Now, he thought grimly, all he needed to do was keep the cunning minx out of further trouble.

A Sisyphean task if he had ever heard of one.