Page 10 of The Duke of Deceit

The two men nearly ran at each other back and forth across the basement, long ago leaving behind the rug that served as the piste. After all, no real fight ever stayed within artificial boundaries.

“When has the truth ever stopped a good rumor?” Devlin challenged between pants for breath.

The truth.That was the very last thing Lucien needed to come out. “Next thing you know,” he grumbled, “she’ll want to introduce me to Miss Dunwoody.”

“Doesn’t have to.” Devlin feinted to his right. “Rumors say you’re already courting her.”

Lucien froze, stunned.

Devlin stepped casually forward and easily tapped his chest with the dulled point of the training rapier. “Touché.”

With a curse, Lucien tossed his blade away. It clattered against the stone floor.

He should have known he would end up just as frustrated after the match as before. Fencing had never helped burn off any of the anger or angst he’d been plagued with over the years. Only bare-knuckled fighting did, and he wouldn’t dare ask Devlin to spar with him like that. Given his current mood, Lucien would pulp his best friend into oblivion.

Instead, he sank into a nearby club chair, screwed his eyes shut, and flopped his head over the chair back.

“What did I do to deserve a rumor like that?” he contemplated in a mutter. “I’m a blackguard, not Lucifer. Who have I ever hurt who would want revenge like this?”

Devlin paused as he poured two glasses of brandy at a side table. “There was that flamenco dancer you encountered in Seville.” He set down the bottle and capped it. “I don’t think her castanets ever worked again.”

“That was a simple misunderstanding,” he argued. “I thought she was in league with the French.”

“She was.”

Lucien lifted his head and leveled a curious gaze on Devlin. “How do you know that?”

Devlin crooked a grin. “Castanets weren’t the only things she played between her fingers.”

Lucien twisted his lips in irritation. “My life is being turned upside-down, and you’re bragging about beating me under the skirts of a Spanish dancer ten years ago?”

“Yes.” Devlin’s grin grew wider as he lifted one of the glasses to his lips. “Yes, I am.”

Lucien bit back a frustrated curse, not having the patience for Devlin’s antics today. “InEngland, then,” Lucien emphasized for clarification. “Who in England would want to do something like this to me?”

“You think it’s intentional then?” Devlin frowned as he handed over the second glass to Lucien.

“Has to be.” He gratefully swallowed a healthy dose of the brandy. “There are too many rumors of my newly acquired charitable spirit happening all at once to be anything else. Similar rumors all growing at this speed can’t be coincidental.”

Either that, or someone truly had discovered what he’d been doing. Hehadgiven funds to charities and foundations. Lots of them, in fact, but always anonymously. After all, if the devil didn’t want his too-black soul when he died, then best to hedge his bets on the side of good.

“Then who’s doing it,” Devlin asked, “and why?”

Lucien shrugged, tossed back the rest of the brandy in a single gasping swallow, and held out the glass for a refill.

Devlin obliged. “Anyone you’ve trounced at cards lately? Or won a large bet against? Perhaps at one of those hells you’ve been haunting.”

“No.” He frowned into his glass as he swirled the brandy. He was always careful at those places, going more to stir up talkabout himself than to actually win anything. He always made certain to leave the tables with the same amount of blunt he’d arrived with.

“A woman you’ve bedded who felt spurned, perhaps?”

He gave a short laugh and raked his fingers through his hair. Being a decent man cloaked in wickedness was beginning to wear. “I haven’t done any ofthatlately, either.”

“No one?” Devlin’s voice was thick with disbelief. “Not even some unmarried miss who—”

“I donotdally with unmarried misses.”

“—who misunderstood your glances across the room for something more serious?” Devlin finished pointedly as he reached for the discarded rapier on the floor. “Or who is willing to overlook your terrible reputation if it means becoming a duchess?”