Page 36 of Duke with a Lie (Wicked Dukes Society #4)

A ubrey had regretted bringing Perdita with him almost the second his carriage had departed Wingfield Hall. She had offered to suck his cock on the short voyage to his country seat, Villiers House, and when he had politely declined, she had pouted for the duration of the ride.

The only pouting woman he could abide was Rhiannon.

And the only woman he wanted in his carriage was her too.

But he couldn’t have her.

Which was why he was presently sitting in his study at Villiers House getting roaringly drunk. And which was also why he didn’t want Perdita hovering over him like a bloody mosquito, intent upon sucking his blood. Or his cock. Or anything.

He glared at his bottle of gin, his head feeling light and listless and dizzied.

As well it might. He had commenced drinking yesterday when he had arrived at Villiers House, and he hadn’t stopped since.

Getting soused didn’t drown out the guilt or the misery that had been his ever-constant companion since he had abandoned Rhiannon in the cottage at dawn the day before.

But it was all he could do to keep himself from going to her.

She loved him. He didn’t deserve her. Didn’t believe in love. He knew what love led to, and it was naught but death, madness, and destruction. She deserved so much better than that. So much better than him. Aubrey brought the bottle to his lips and downed half of it at once.

The door to his study opened, and the wrong woman swept across the threshold.

Perdita was gorgeous, and her bubbies were hanging out of her bodice in a most indecent fashion, but his cock didn’t give a damn and neither did the rest of him. Because she wasn’t Rhiannon.

He glared at the viscountess and realized she had two heads and four breasts. “Who let you in here?”

“I let myself in,” she said breezily. “I’m growing weary of wandering around alone. You told me you wished for company. Why else did you bring me with you? I could have stayed at the house party for another day.”

Damn it, was she pouting again? Aubrey squinted at her. “You’re deuced tedious.”

“ I’m tedious?” Her voice vibrated with outrage. “You brought me here and have yet to even so much as touch me.”

True. When he had made his decision to leave the house party early, he had known he would need to do so with haste.

He’d also known that he would need to do something drastic.

Something that would keep Rhiannon from following him with her stubborn determination to see the bloody good in him and to love him.

Christ knew he couldn’t resist her.

“As you can see, I’m rather occupied at the moment,” he pointed out rudely, lifting his bottle of gin to Perdita.

Gin wasn’t his ordinary drink of choice. He saved it for days when he wanted to get so thoroughly soused that he could drown out everything in his mind. He had been on a steady diet of it since his arrival the day before, and he had no intention of stopping any time soon.

“You prefer spirits to me?” Perdita asked, rounding his desk and invading his space.

Her breath smelled of onions. What the devil had she eaten for luncheon? Had it been luncheon yet? Blast, he couldn’t recall when he’d last eaten.

Her hands were on his chest, caressing. All four of them.

Why the devil was she here again? Ah, yes.

He had been waiting for his carriage to be readied when Perdita had sailed past him in the great hall.

On a whim, he had invited her to accompany him, thinking her the perfect pawn for his plan.

If Rhiannon knew he had left with another woman, she would be less likely to come after him.

He hated the very idea of hurting her, but he knew without a doubt he was doing what was best for her.

She deserved happiness.

A husband who could give her everything she wanted.

One of Perdita’s hands settled on his cock, massaging with firm insistence.

He shoved her hand away. Why had he thought it a good idea to invite a bloody octopus to Villiers House anyway?

“I want to get drunk,” he informed her, taking a swig of his bottle for emphasis.

The gin burned down his throat, hardly a soothing elixir.

What he ought to have done was drag King from his bed and demand some of his potions.

Those would have had him thoroughly and diabolically passed out by now.

Perhaps he would have even been so disguised that he might have given shagging Penelope a try.

No, that wasn’t her name, Penelope. Was it?

He blinked owlishly, trying to make his blurred vision distinct enough that he could see the woman’s face. Mayhap then he could recall her actual name.

She settled in his lap, pouting once more. “But I want to be properly fucked. That’s why you brought me here, is it not? I’ve heard so many delicious stories about you, and I simply must know if they’re all true.”

Her eyes were brown and gold, her lashes long. Her breasts were ivory mountains, quivering over the edge of her brazen décolletage.

“Persephone,” he said.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I shall be your Persephone. And you can be my Hades, spiriting me away as you’ve done.”

So that wasn’t her name, then. He knew it. Her name was on the edge of his brain, sharper than a needle, poking and prodding.

Phillipa?

No, that wasn’t it.

Proserpina? No, that was the Roman equivalent of Persephone.

Priscilla?

“I’ll take this,” she was saying, plucking his gin from his fingers and settling it on the desk. “You won’t be needing that for now.”

“Yes, I will be,” he argued, reaching for it again.

“No, you won’t, naughty Hades,” she said, taking his hand and setting it upon her breasts, which were suddenly bare.

No, they had already been bare. Chrissakes, was that her areola peeping from her bodice? What time of day was it?

Aubrey turned toward the windows, where the heavy curtains had been drawn, and found sun streaming through a crack. Surely it was too early to be dressed thus.

“You’re indecent,” he groused, thinking that perhaps she was cutting off all the blood to his cock, for he was limp and useless beneath her.

Her breast was cool to the touch and as uninspiring as a pillow. He withdrew his hand.

“I want to be more indecent,” the woman in his lap was cooing into his ear, and damn him, but he still couldn’t recall what her name was.

Pamela?

“That’s indecorous. It’s got to be…what…” He squinted at the mantel clock and couldn’t make out a single goddamn number. “Morning?”

“It’s afternoon.” She licked his ear, and again the scent of onions washed over him, making his stomach clench. “Why don’t you take me upstairs and tie me to your bed? You can birch my naughty bum if you’d like. Punish me until I’m raw.”

No, he didn’t want this. Didn’t want her.

“Perdita,” he managed at last.

Yes, that was her name. She was lifting her skirts, placing his other hand on her knee.

He closed his eyes as the room began to swirl.

He was going to be ill. This wasn’t right.

It was all wrong. He never should have left the cottage yesterday.

Never should have left Rhiannon’s side. He could still hear her voice telling him those words he didn’t want to hear. The words he couldn’t bear.

I love you.

He opened his eyes again, and as if he had conjured her, there she was. Rhiannon standing in the doorway of his study, her blue eyes filled with tears and betrayal. Was she real or a chimera? Was he dreaming or awake?

“Aubrey,” she was saying. “What is happening?”

The room was swimming around him. Or he was swimming. Drowning. Drowning in her gaze, in the hurt he saw there, the confusion.

She couldn’t be here. He couldn’t be with her. He had taken her innocence, and if she let him, he would destroy her.

The woman in his lap was laughing, the sound husky and mocking. She shoved his hand higher so that it skimmed past her garter and he felt soft, smooth, womanly flesh, but it was all wrong, that skin. All wrong, that woman.

Rhiannon was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What have you done?”

He forced himself to speak. “You will thank me later, minx.”

“Aubrey,” she said again, pleading.

“Can you not see Richford wants a woman and not a mere girl?” snapped the blonde in his lap as she pressed a kiss to his neck. “Go before your reputation is completely ruined.”

Rhiannon was shaking her head, backing away. He was losing her. It was what was right. What he wanted. He was no bloody good for her. He was the son of a madman. He was a danger to her, to himself, to everyone.

The door slammed closed, and Pamela was laughing again, only that wasn’t her name, and she had wrapped her arms around his neck, forcing his face to hers.

“Kiss me,” she said.

He couldn’t do it.

The blackness inside him, the awful, ugly, jagged shards he kept buried rose up.

He saw blood. So much blood. On his hands, on his shirt, on the floor.

Streaking his trousers. He saw the lifeless form draped in fine silk.

The eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

He heard the report of the pistol firing.

Aubrey pushed the woman from his lap, setting her on his desk. The gin spilled. Glass broke. The walls swirled around him.

He rushed from the study, unsteady on his feet.

But it was too late.

Too late.

Rhiannon was gone.

His butler’s frowning face appeared before him. “Is Your Grace ill?”

“Yes, Wickett. I bloody well am.” He fell sideways into a wall and cast up his accounts into a potted plant. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “See my lady guest sent on her way, if you please.”

Still feeling sick, he dragged his miserable hide to his bedroom and bolted the door before he passed out in his bed just as he deserved to be, alone.

Utterly, damningly alone.

The journey back to London from Villiers House in a hired carriage was the most miserable one of Rhiannon’s life.

She had spent it alternately sobbing and in a state of abject shock.

Each time she closed her eyes, it was to the picture of Viscountess Heathcote seated in Aubrey’s lap as if it were where she belonged, her arms around him, his hand on her breast as it spilled from her bodice.

Her heart was shattered.

Her hopes were shattered.

She was shattered.

Irreparable. That was what she was.

When Aubrey had left the cottage yesterday morning before she had awoken, she had been convinced that he had merely returned to the house party. She had told herself that likely, a pressing matter had arisen he needed to attend to as one of the hosts.

The ride back to Wingfield Hall on her lone bicycle had been demoralizing.

She had been desperately sore in all manner of intimate places, and the seat of the cycle had been wretchedly uncomfortable.

Her bloomer suit had no longer seemed quite as dashing as it had when she had set off on her adventure, and neither had the rest of her.

There had been no sign of Aubrey. No missive left for her from him. She’d had to go to the servants and make discreet inquiries to learn he had left earlier that morning, returning to his country seat. The revelation had been like being dealt a physical blow.

It had taken her a night of fitful sleep and misery to realize she needed to go to him at Villiers House.

She had allotted herself a full week for the house party, and even that was drawing to an end at Wingfield Hall.

The time had come to return to London. But she had told herself she needed to see Aubrey first.

A terrible mistake, as it happened.

A mistake, just like giving herself to him had been. Just like loving him was.

And now, she was almost back where she had started her journey, at her brother’s London town house.

She had no doubt that Rhys was awaiting her there, along with Mater.

She would be required to explain where she had been, and although she had a plan in place and intended to claim she had spent the last week visiting Great-Aunt Bitsy, orchestrating it convincingly seemed far less plausible by the afternoon’s grim light.

Her brother wasn’t stupid. He would have questions. Questions to which she didn’t have suitable answers.

But who could she blame for the straits in which she found herself? Not Aubrey. He had warned her, had he not? He was every bit the villain he had claimed to be, and she was every bit the fool.

If only she could forget the burning memory of his kisses. His hands on her. His searing eyes that had seemed to see a part of her she hadn’t known existed…

No , she chastised herself inwardly. She must be strong. She must not allow her girlish infatuation with a handsome, conscienceless rake to weaken her resolve. He had made his feelings about her more than abundantly clear, dashing her heart to pieces in the process.

She had set off with such hope in her heart, so hopelessly na?ve. How horridly wrong her plans had gone.

He had left without warning, without a word. Had disappeared. And then she had found him, much to her everlasting regret. Rhiannon squeezed her eyes tightly shut against a painful rush of heartache and betrayal.

His words still echoed in her mind.

You will thank me later, minx.

Minx , he had called her, daring to use the pet name for her that she had once found so endearing. Now, it felt like a dagger plunging into her flesh, glancing off sinew and bone, making her bleed.

Her hired carriage came to a halt before her brother’s town house. Rhiannon didn’t know what awaited her within, nor how she would brazen her way through her explanation. If she even could.

But there was one matter of which Rhiannon was deadly certain.

She would never, as long as she lived, forgive the Duke of Richford for what he had done to her.