Page 96

Anthony brushed aside the baronets and headed for the hallway. Someone had stood a bottle of whiskey on a side table and he caught it by the neck without missing a step.

The courtesans still followed.

In the hallway, he gestured to a wide-eyed footman.

“Put the guest rooms in the north wing at their disposal.”

The footman nodded, a blush creeping up into his hairline. Anthony looked past him. What he saw had the quality of an apparition. A dozen barefoot women were arrayed on the stairs, dressed in robes that glimmered in pale metallic shades. They held musical instruments in their hands. They made a beautiful, otherworldly picture.

Another tableau vivant.

If he knew a damned thing about art, he’d no doubt recognize it. He scanned the fresh young faces, unpainted and serene. The lovely musicians seemed attuned to unheard melodies, and something inside him stirred too. It was ensorcelling, their silent, motionless performance.

At the top of the steps, a woman turned her head. Nothing serene about her face. It wasn’t precisely her face as he’d been picturing it. Bereft, the hurt softening her chin, lashes thick with unshed tears.

Lucy stared at him. Her chin was tilted up, dry eyes narrowed into gleaming slits. Contempt was written in every line of her face. He’d always been able to read that particular expression.

He strode forward, fury lifting his heels. He heard the clock strike as he reached the stairs.

It was his birthday.

He passed between the women, climbing the steps, bottle in hand. When he reached Lucy, he paused. Their eyes met, hers a smoky gold.

Without a word, he tugged her up the final step and down the hall.

Chapter Sixteen

As soon as he shut the door to his bedchamber, he crowded her against it, planting his hand on one side of her head, the bottle on the other. She tried to turn her face from him, and as she shifted, her cheek came into contact with the glass. Her lips curled.

Ludicrous, his need for her affirmation.

“I’m a good man,” he said. Laughed at himself as he said it. “Dammit, I’m not who you think I am, who my father, or Yardley, or . . .”

She cut him off.

“Who are you, then?” Tension vibrated through her limbs. The same tension had vibrated through him, for weeks now. Now he almost shook with the force of his longing, with the effort it took to restrain himself from biting her plumped lower lip. A provocation. Her lips, her body, her being. All of her provoked him.

You’re a duke, she’d said in the glasshouse. Well, here he stood, the fully empowered Duke of Weston. An accident of birth. Not even. The result, rather, of George’s accidental death. Who was he, really? Once upon a time, he’d wanted nothing more than a soldier’s kit, felt most alive on a fast horse opening into a gallop under a midnight sky. And now? What did he want?

He let his hand fall to her shoulder, taking up a lock of hair, winding it around his fingers before releasing it. She caught her breath. Then she reached up, curled her arm around his. He let her force his arm down, work the bottle out of his hand. She looked at it, studied it, brow furrowed, as though she could break it down into constituent parts. Glass, liquor. Sand, barley.

“I’m not drunk,” he said, detecting petulance in his tone, hating it. Legally no longer a child. Why did he sound like a sulky boy? “I haven’t had a sip.”

“I’ve heard that before,” she said flatly. And she had, of course. She’d heard it from him. Heard it from her father. Heard it, no doubt, her whole life.

He’d always hated being hectored, judged, patronized. Strange—with her, he wanted to explain, to prove himself. To be better.

She didn’t look at him. She kept staring at the bottle. Perhaps she could see her face reflected there darkly.

“This is what I’d use to peer into your soul.” Now she did look up. Her eyes glittered terribly. “A bottle of whiskey, not a crystal ball. But I’m not a fortune-teller. You want to find out who you are? Here. Best of luck to you.”

She thrust the bottle back at him, hard, a blow to the diaphragm that knocked loose his breath.

“Lucy,” he began, fingers wrapping the neck of the bottle. He lifted it, but he could see only the finger-smeared surface of the glass. When he lowered it, he met those glittering, baleful, beautiful eyes. He wanted to see his soul there, trapped in their amber.

“I saw you in the garden,” she said, and laughed. The laughter hit a false note. He realized she was trembling. She had watched him coming down the path from the back garden flanked by courtesans.

“If you must have a . . . a . . . Feast of Venus in the glasshouse, move my easel out of the way and mind the brushes. That is my only request, and it’s only a request. You have every right, of course, to do what you want with whom you want and to drink yourself into an early grave. Your Grace.”