CHAPTER 1
“Are you leaving so soon, Your Grace?” Lady Lucinda Mountingdon asked, lounging on the velvet chaise-longue in a most scandalous state of deshabille, her long blonde tresses tumbling over her naked breasts and skirts still around her stocking tops.
The tall, dark man she spoke to barely glanced at her and did not pause as he fixed his clothes.
“Yes,” Nathaniel Winslow, the Duke of Greyhaven, returned. “You ought to dress too, Lady Mountingdon. The door is locked, but it is best that no one notices our absence from the performance.”
The woman who had ridden him with passionate abandon only a few minutes ago made a sound of disappointment and pulled a face.
“Oh, do not be such a spoilsport. I can still hear the music playing, and there is no need to rush away. Anyway, even if the interval starts, my greedy pig of a husband will go straight to the buffet and start stuffing his face rather than looking for me.”
“I thought I remembered you telling me that we had to be quick,” Nathaniel reminded her. “You told me it was now or never when you dragged me in here.”
“Oh, that was only part of the game. It was fun, wasn’t it? Let’s have another round while we are in here already. We might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, don’t you think?”
Nathaniel blinked at this logic, taking a further metaphorical step back from the situation. This brief encounter with the buxom and voracious Lady Mountingdon had indeed been fun, but that did not mean he was willing to risk the trouble of a scandal or row with a jealous husband to repeat it.
“I expected more discretion from a married woman,” he remarked as he buttoned his jacket.
“I have already told you that my husband does not care where I go or what I do,” Lady Mountingdon insisted, rising from the chaise and attempting to embrace him again.
“I have no wish to test that theory,” Nathaniel said shortly, detaching himself and combing his hair back into place in front of a looking glass that hung on the wall.
“Then when can I see you again?” Lady Mountingdon asked, resigned now to her lover leaving, and looking instead to the future, entirely unaware that her question might have the opposite effect to that intended.
“Need we think of that now?” Nathaniel answered. “We both enjoyed today’s little tryst, but I told you when we first met that I do not like to entangle myself in relationships. I thought you felt the same.”
Briefly, Lady Mountingdon looked hurt and then angry, before schooling her features, adjusting her neckline, and covering herself.
“You are telling me you felt nothing between us this afternoon, Your Grace?”
Nathaniel shrugged, very much averse to conversations of any kind about feelings. Most often, he felt nothing when others seemed to have a thousand feelings at any given moment. It was worse when they expected him to match them.
“I enjoyed you; you enjoyed me. What else is there to say?” he replied.
As he approached the door, Lady Mountingdon fell back onto the chaise longue.
“I feel quite faint,” she moaned. “You have been so very cruel, Your Grace.”
Nathaniel was not fazed by her little show and only just stopped himself from laughing. Even by amateur standards, this was bad acting. It was tempting to reply in kind, with the same level of absurd melodrama:
Yes, I was too cruel to make you climax twice. But alas…
But that would only extend this conversation further, and he was determined to leave. He quickly opened to the door and then turned back to her with a formal bow, as if they had just danced together.
“Goodbye, Lady Mountingdon. Do enjoy the rest of the performance.”
“Oh, to hell with you then, Greyhaven!” she snapped, then turned to the looking glass to fix her hair. “I do not give a fig for you anyway.”
Indifferent, Nathaniel stepped out of the room into the corridor and closed the door behind him, glancing around in case there were any observers. Seeing none, he strolled back to the large reception room where the orchestra was still playing.
“How long until the first part ends?” he asked a footman by the doors, after listening for a moment and consulting the program. “This is the final piece, is it not?”
“Yes, Your Grace. I do not think it will be more than five minutes now,” the man replied. “Shall I open the door for you?”
“No, I will not go back inside.”
Nathaniel decided it was better to linger in the anterooms rather than draw attention to himself by rejoining the last five minutes of the recital.
