Page 20 of Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone (Dukes in Disguise #2)

Chapter Twenty

Bess's feet were sore and tired, her legs trembling from the exhaustion of dancing every dance. She never wanted to stop.

But she could hide nothing from Nathaniel. He pulled her to the edge of the dance floor and gave her an appraisal that she felt like his hands skimming her naked body.

“Let us sit this one out,” he said, more of a command than a suggestion. Without further ado, he located a chaise longue positioned along the wall and drew her over to it.

Never mind that the chaise longue was occupied by a jolly, plump-cheeked wench dressed, improbably, as an infant in yards of lace ruffles and a white satin mask, and the volubly singing man in a horned Viking helm dandling her upon his knee.

Nathaniel evicted them from the chaise with no more than a glare. Bess waved an apology at their retreating backs, but her feet hurt too much to quibble about manners. She sank gratefully onto the chaise and fanned at the back of her overheated neck where her hair had straggled loose from its pins to cling damply to her skin.

Glancing up, Bess found Nathaniel standing over her, scanning the ballroom as though searching out potential threats. The stance of his long legs and the set of his wide shoulders were casually possessive, protective in a way that made Bess’s insides melt with heat.

He’d found her a secluded corner, she realized with some relief. An ornately carved wooden screen stood at the end of the chaise, painted with a peeling scene of a hunt on horseback, complete with baying hounds and scampering fox.

A large potted palm stood at the other side of the chaise, too spindly to provide any real screening but bulky enough that the wildly cavorting dancers flowed past it without stopping.

She found she could actually breathe here, for a moment, and she savored the slightly cooler air away from the crush of the ballroom floor.

Evidently deeming the situation acceptable, Nathaniel said, “I will find you something to drink. Stay here.”

And then he was gone, cutting a swath through the crowd like an axe cleaving through a tree trunk, leaving Bess blinking bemusedly after him.

She sat quietly for a long moment, enjoying the hint of a breeze from a nearby open casement window, even if it did smell of the river. Another minute passed. She shifted on the chaise and rolled her shoulders, wishing she could put her aching feet up but feeling strongly that would be considered impolite.

Though why she should concern herself with propriety at this gathering, she didn’t know, Bess reflected.

A heavily rouged, giggling woman costumed as a peacock in a feathered, beaked mask and a teal satin gown caught Bess’s eye. The lady peacock bent flirtatiously over to invite an enthusiastic Mephistopheles in head-to-toe scarlet and horns to swat her bottom.

Mercy. Bess fanned at her neck some more. Still, even in such dissolute company, it felt too awkward to lounge at her ease here on this chaise.

But perched as she was, she had nothing to lean against. Bess lifted her left arm to the scrolled back of the chaise, leaning a bit, but immediately regretted it. Who designed this ridiculous piece of furniture , she wondered crossly.

She thought about getting up and moving to a normal chair, but paused at the thought of Nathaniel’s reaction when he returned to the chaise and couldn’t find her.

Bess did not wish to be the cause of a deranged duke tearing this dilapidated manor house down to its foundation in his search for her.

She had just crossed her ankles and straightened her posture, resigning herself to the torture of the chaise, when a man detached himself from the crowd of party guests and approached her.

She watched him come, alert but not alarmed. Nathaniel would return any moment, and until then, she felt herself perfectly equal to handling a drunken gentleman in an overly elaborate, and probably very aspirational, Zeus costume.

“I saw you from afar, beauteous rose,” the lanky Zeus proclaimed, with the overloud tones of the inebriated.

“Good evening,” Bess returned placidly.

Zeus’s eyes glittered behind his hammered gold mask. He seemed young, to Bess. Untried, but with the preening overconfidence of wealth and privilege. He made a very pretty leg, only wobbling a bit, and held out his hand. “It would give me great pleasure if you would do me the honor of dancing with me.”

“That is very gracious of you, but I’m afraid I must excuse myself. I’m very tired, you see, and my companion has gone off in search of refreshments. He will be back shortly.”

Something ugly tightened the corners of Zeus’s thin lips. “One dance. While you wait for your…companion. Surely you will not deny me.”

“I must,” Bess said firmly. She did not like the way he sneered the word companion , as though he meant something else entirely, something much more unsavory. “Though I thank you for the thought.”

He stepped closer, his toga brushing Bess’s dancing slippers. He hadn’t been shaved well, and the sparse, sandy-colored stubble gave him an unkempt appearance. “What I think , is that you ought to be on your knees thanking me for condescending to notice you, you ill-bred bitch.”

The menace in his voice propelled Bess to her feet. She worked in a busy coaching inn; she had done her time behind the bar, dealing with guests who might’ve had a few too many. She’d been propositioned by travelers on their way through Little Kissington to Bath, who thought the company of the bar wench ought to come free with their pint of ale. And she’d never had too much trouble turning those propositions aside with a wink and friendly smile.

But there was something about the intensity of this man’s regard, and how quickly he’d moved to loom over her, cutting off her easiest escape, that unsettled Bess.

“You should leave,” she told him, in the plainest language she could muster. “You are not behaving as a gentleman, and my companion will not like it when he returns.”

“A gentleman,” he sneered, cheeks mottling under the gold mask. “As though a whore like you has any claim on gentlemanly behavior.”

He leaned in close, the smell of whiskey on his breath strong enough to make Bess’s eyes water, and said the first thing tonight that truly frightened her.

“I know all about you. Elizabeth Pickford.”

The breath went out of her in a sudden wheeze. “How do you know my name?” she blurted, an instant before realizing she should’ve pretended she’d never heard of Elizabeth Pickford.

But it was too late, and probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway because Zeus smiled with smug triumph and said, “Oh, I’ve had my eye on you for some time.”

A chill took Bess. Prickling sweat broke out at her hairline and the small of her back.

She recognized the feeling at once. Those times when she’d been out with Lucy and that night at the Marylebone Pleasure Gardens, when she’d been so certain someone was following her. And that night at The Nemesis, when Rufus had warned away a sandy-haired patron by proclaiming Bess had been claimed by The Berserker…

“I’ve been watching you,” he hissed. “Ever since that day you humiliated me in front of…”

He cut himself off, face darkening. “That’s by the by. The important thing is, I know your secret, and if you want to keep it, you’ll do everything I want, exactly as I say. If I want you to get on all fours and…and bark like a dog, that’s what you’ll do.”

Something about the phrase bark like a dog tugged at Bess’s mind. She gasped. “You’re that boy from the riverbank!”

Affronted pride stiffened the young man’s frame. He grabbed her wrist in a bruising hold. “You should have a care how you speak to me, bitch. Now that I’m your lord and master.”

The boy she’d called a pup, prancing about in front of his idol, the Duke of Thornecliff, all but wagging his tail and panting for attention.

Bess remembered him now. Lord Phillip Something. The idea that he’d become fixated upon her, enough to follow her and watch her from the shadows, made her stomach twist.

She jerked her arm trying to get free, but he held tight, the delicate bones of her wrist grinding together painfully.

“You are nothing to me,” she told him through gritted teeth.

“I’m the man who has you in the palm of his hand, and I won’t hesitate to crush you. Do you know what my life has been like since that day? Thorne won’t see me, I’m not invited anywhere, or if I do turn up at a club or hell, do you know what I hear? People barking and growling, mocking me. They call me Lord Pup! And it’s all your fault. I will have my revenge, if you don’t do what I want, I’ll tell everyone?—”

Bess shook but somehow kept her voice steady. “I don’t know what you think you’ve discovered, but?—”

“Why, that you’re spreading your legs for the oh-so-noble Duke of Ashbourn, of course.”

Bess froze. Everything in her head went silent and swaying, like an uneven stack of hay bales about to come tumbling down.

He knew. What if he told Nathaniel? “Let go of me.”

“No,” he sneered, so certain that he had the upper hand. “We’re going to walk out of here right now, and you’re going to become my mistress. Show me some of what Ashbourn’s been getting.”

Bess pulled harder at her wrist. “Let go .”

A peevish frown clouded his wild gaze. He looked like a child who’d been told he couldn’t have a boiled sweet. “There’s no need to be so obstinate. Just be friendly to me, like you’ve been to Ashbourn. I’ll make it worth your while. You’ll see, there’s not much difference between whoring for him and whoring for me. Unless you think his father’s madness is hereditary and he might one day lose his mind enough to actually marry his whore.”

The words landed hard, in the center of Bess’s chest. She didn’t care what this petulant puppy called her, but it hurt to have an unspoken dream spoken aloud and mocked mercilessly.

Anger flowed through her limbs, lending them strength and bringing clarity to her mind. Remembering her sparring lessons with Nathaniel, Bess stopped trying to twist her arm free. Instead, she slid one foot behind her for balance and turned her body to give her other arm room to wind up.

Then she hauled back and punched her assailant with all the force she could muster.

He let her go to grab hold of his nose, which fountained blood that instantly stained his toga red. “My nose! You broke my nose! You bitch!”

Riding a wave of fury, Bess stepped in and said into his ear, “The difference between whoring for Ashbourn and whoring for you is that you must resort to blackmail and violence to secure a woman. But Ashbourn? I would do anything he asks of me and ask for nothing in return. I will never be your mistress. But I will be whatever Ashbourn wants, for as long as he will have me. Because he’s a thousand times the man you will ever be.”

He looked at her, eyes streaming and nose still bleeding, and Bess felt a little hint of what it must be like for Nathaniel when he stood victorious over an opponent in the ring.

She’d beaten this man who’d tried to bully and intimidate her, and it felt good.

Only he wasn’t beaten—he was furious.

He reared up, reaching his blood-covered hands toward Bess as though he would wring her neck. She darted out of reach, heart hammering, but then stilled in shock.

From somewhere behind them, on the other side of the painted screen, Bess heard a roar. An instant later, the heavy wooden boards collapsed with a deafening clatter, kicked aside by Nathaniel in a full Berserker rage, bearing down on them.

Lord Phillip blanched, throwing up his hands in terrified surrender, but it was far too late for that.

In an instant, Nathaniel had seized the blood-soaked front of his toga and lifted the smaller man clear off the ground.

“If you ever touch her again,” he snarled, landing a bone-shattering blow of his fist on the young man’s dazed face. “I’ll put you in the ground.”

As if to demonstrate, he shook Lord Phillip like a rag doll and threw him to the floor, where he curled into a ball and cowered.

With cold calculation, Nathaniel crouched beside him and used the tip of one finger to flick the dented, misshapen mask off the huddled man’s face.

Of course, a crowd had gathered by this time, inevitably drawn by the sounds of a fight. Bess heard whispers go through the group as people recognized the Duke of Thornecliff’s erstwhile friend, Lord Phillip Dewbury, sprawled on the ballroom floor.

Someone in the back of the crowd yipped like an excited spaniel, sending a ripple of laughter through the party.

His face was white under the smeared blood and a livid bruise had already begun to form on his cheek. With one last glare of angry mortification at Bess, Lord Phillip scrambled to his feet and staggered out of the ballroom.

“Tail tucked between his legs,” some wit observed with relish. “Farewell, Lord Pup.”

Bess couldn’t catch her breath.

What did Nathaniel see? Did he know she knew his name?

As the musicians picked up their tune once more, Nathaniel backed her into the darkest corner of the ballroom. He caged her in with his big body. His eyes were hot and wild as they traveled the length of her figure looking for damage.

Bess searched his masked face, consumed with a single thought.

What did Nathaniel hear ?

* * *

Someone had laid hands on Bess. In violence.

The inside of Nathaniel’s skull was on fire. He didn’t trust himself to touch her, though all he wanted was to strip off her pink gown and catalog every inch of her skin, find every scrape and mark to torment himself with.

And under it all, beating like the pulse of his blood: She knows .

Bess knew who he was.

Had known all along, perhaps, and wanted him anyway.

Nathaniel couldn’t fathom it and didn’t have the capacity to try at this moment, with anger and terrible fear for her still riding him hard.

“I never should have left your side,” he said hoarsely.

“I’m unharmed,” she promised, her beautiful brown eyes flicking back and forth between Nathaniel’s. She was worried about what he’d overheard. Her declaration.

I will be whatever Ashbourn wants, for as long as he will have me.

He could not think about it now, or he would lose control.

Nathaniel wanted to kiss her. He wanted to smash something. He needed to master himself.

“No one touches you without your permission,” he growled.

Bess set her shoulders against the carved wood paneling of the wall and gazed up at him from beneath her lashes. “The only man I want touching me is you.”

Nathaniel stared at her, starved for the taste of her, frantic to get her someplace private where he could assure himself once and for all that she was safe.

He escorted her through the throngs of revelers and out the darkened entry hall of Wycombe House to find them a cab. He sat beside her and held her poor, bruised hand all the way to the Haymarket, nearly vibrating with his desperation to get her under him where he could hold her and keep her safe…keep her his .

At The Nemesis, Nathaniel took her through the dank side alley he always used and let them in through the back door. He led her up to the room he thought of as theirs and he undressed her in the dark, not even bothering to light a fire or a single candle.

By now, he knew every line and curve of her body by touch. Had he the skill, he could have sculpted her from memory alone.

In years to come, Nathaniel promised himself feverishly, when memory was all he had, he would be able to close his eyes and recreate the fine-grained texture of her skin. The muscular roundness of her bottom, the lithe bend of her waist, the firm, round perfection of her breasts.

He would lie in the cold solitary splendor of the ducal bedchamber at Ashbourn House and imagine the trusting weight of Bess in his arms, lovely and soft and lifting her face to his with ardent, tender passion.

Nathaniel examined every inch of her, skimming her curves with greedy palms and searching eyes, and Bess soothed him with her body, surrendering to his driving need to claim her.

When he finally let her sleep, panting softly and still trembling with the aftershocks of slaking his furious, feral need, Nathaniel held her lax body to him and stared up into the darkness.

I will be whatever Ashbourn wants, for as long as he’ll have me.

Nathaniel's brain returned to Bess’s words inescapably.

Did she mean it?

For he felt the same. Whatever she wanted, for as long as she wanted—it was hers. He was hers. And she could not have been clearer that what she wanted…was him.

All of him. The Berserker. The Duke of Ashbourn.

Nathaniel himself.

The thought was overwhelming, almost more than he could bear. But as he turned the words over and over in his mind, he knew with sinking despair that he had to heed all of Bess’s words, not just the ones he wanted to hear.

For as long as he will have me.

They both knew this would not last forever. From the start, Bess had spoken about her eventual return to Little Kissington and her life there.

And Nathaniel would stay in London. He would go to work. And go to fights. And never bring another woman to the room at the top of the stairs.

Someday, he would wed. Because what was the point of rehabilitating his family name if there was no one to pass it on to?

The thought filled him with nothing but dull dread. But it was his duty and he would do it, because there was no one else to.

But for right now, for tonight and for a little while longer, he and Bess had each other.

Nathaniel stayed awake as long as he could, intent on memorizing everything about the way she felt so that he would be able to have it again later, in his dreams.

But all too soon, exhaustion and sheer warm, animal contentment pulled him down into slumber.

It was still dark out—the darkest part of the night before the dawn—when they were awakened by loud, frantic banging on the door.

In a towering temper, Nathaniel yanked on his pants and strode to the door to kill, or at least maim, whoever dared to disturb Bess’s sleep.

It was Rufus. Face pale and grim, he held out a note and said, “You’re going to want to see this, guv.”

Nathaniel’s eyes scanned the note once, then again, his mind wiped clean of everything except its contents.

He turned back to Bess, meeting her wide eyes in the dark of the room. What he was about to say would change everything. But there was nothing he could do other than say it.

“Lucy is missing.”