Pride & Passion

“He didn’t deserve you,” Lucy said, truly meaning it. “One day, you will meet with the perfect gentleman.”

“I have given up on that. Besides, I believe that once given, the heart does not easily love again. Especially when it’s been betrayed.”

For some reason, Lizzy’s words struck fear inside her. Gray eyes flashed before her, and she startled, not understanding where the image had sprung from. Only knowing she had no wish to see them, or to be drawn in by the ghosts that looked out at her. She thought of her young friend and her father’s cruel treatment of him. She had been betrayed then, and she was quite certain that although she had been very young, her friend had quite captured her idealistic heart. It had not been easy to allow someone in, after that. She had mourned his loss for quite a while, and still did.

“Oh, love, what a burden it can be. How can something so heady and perfect cause such deep-rooted despair?” Isabella asked.

How indeed? She had only ever known that love led to despair. The two were synonymous to her. “I suppose,” she answered, “it is because there is such a fine line between passion and despair.”

Elizabeth looked up, and in that brief second, Lucy could have sworn her friend glimpsed inside her soul. “You have felt despair while in love?”

Glancing quickly at Isabella, Lucy struggled for an answer. Isabella knew her secret—most of it at any rate. She would know if she lied to Lizzy.

As if sensing her inner turmoil, Elizabeth inched forward and reached out her hand, which Lucy took in hers. “Tell me, Lucy, have you ever given up everything you are, everything you believed in, for one moment of passion?”

Truth or dare … at last, the dreaded moment had arrived.

SAVED BY HIS GRACE!

Never in her life had Lucy been more delighted to see the large-bodied presence of Sussex lurking in the doorway. With typical cool indifference and ducal autocracy he strolled into the salon, his high glossed boots ringing against the marble floor. His gaze swept over her as he prowled closer to them, and Lucy fought the urge to give in to a tremble. The last time she had seen him he had been handing her the lace handkerchief, and warning her away from her lover. She had refused to listen, and now … now she suspected they were enemies.

There was no denying that his grace would make a formidable one. What he lacked in passion, he more than made up for with a determined tenacity, something Lucy knew he would use to discover Thomas. She could almost find herself admiring that trait in him, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was now her—and Thomas’s—enemy.

With an elegant arch of his dark brow he stood before them. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Of course you are, brother. Off with you!” Elizabeth drawled as she shooed him away with a wave of her hand. “You have the most inopportune timing.”

“Don’t be silly, your grace, do come in,” Lucy said a little breathlessly as she avoided Isabella’s astonished gaze. “The tea is still hot, and there are plenty of sandwiches left.”

She saw the way Elizabeth frowned and the speculation in Isabella’s eyes. Even though the duke really was the last person she wanted to see, at the present he was the lesser of two evils, the greater evil being the question Elizabeth had asked her.

Truth or dare … well, she dared not give the truth, and if suffering through tea with Sussex was to be the reprieve from having to answer, then so be it.

Taking the vacant cushion between Elizabeth and Rosie, the duke slouched deeply onto the soft settee and reached for a plate. With a glance, he peered up at them from a veil of thick lashes. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Swallowing hard, Lucy bit her lower lip and thought back to that evening when she had visited the Fraser Witch and the feelings she had experienced. They were the same ones she felt now—in the duke’s presence. And it was damned inconvenient, she thought churlishly, especially since she sought to dislike everything about his grace.

She couldn’t understand it, this new reaction in her body whenever Sussex’s cool gray eyes locked with hers. Every nerve ending seemed overly sensitized and raw; her spine tingled with warning and a sense of foreboding she had never once experienced in the presence of another man. Sussex had a way of looking at her that made her think he was peeling back her carefully placed layers and peeking into the core of her. It was disconcerting, his way, and no less now, when his gaze briefly flickered along her face. For Lucy knew that despite that deft sweep of his eyes, the duke missed nothing.

For all his propriety, his grace never let on that they had drawn their respective lines in the sand. Lucy found herself wondering if the duke ever thought of that afternoon, and what he had discovered of her past. No doubt it riled his sense of propriety and surely he now found her lacking and utterly unsuitable in the role of his duchess.

There was relief in that thought. Now if only her father would accept the fact that his grace would no longer be calling upon them.

“For heaven’s sake, Sussex. Take your sweets and go along with you,” Elizabeth muttered, which made Sussex grin. And that grin … what it did to his normally somber face. Lucy found herself blinking in surprise, and … no, not wonder. She would never admire his grace in that fashion. Yes, he was tall, dark and very handsome. But there wasn’t anything about the duke that tempted her. He was rigid and controlled, stuffy and proper. Aloof and cool, which only made her realize how very much like her father he was. And that sort of man was the furthest kind she desired. She craved warmth, and emotional intimacy. Never would she marry the sort of a man her father was. Her mother may have chosen her cold, polite matrimonial bed, but Lucy would not endure the same in her marriage.

From across the tea table, the duke studied her, and Lucy suffered beneath that heavy, watchful stare. How he looked at her … there was something vaguely familiar about that stare, but of course she was being fanciful. His were not the eyes she had seen in her vision when she visited the Scottish Witch. She was sure of it.

“Are you quite finished pillaging our tea tray, Adrian?” Lizzy demanded. “We have a pressing matter of business yet to discuss.”

“Dear me, Lizzy, your mood has turned sour since I left. What has transpired to make you so irritable?”

“How can you be so obtuse, brother? Your arrival has put a damper on our conversation.”

His dark brows rose in question, causing a scar that bisected the left one to be more noticeable. “What then were you discussing when I arrived that I might not listen to now?”

“Nothing that need concern you,” Elizabeth muttered.

“Ah, gossip, then,” he said then focused his attention on Lucy. “Do you enjoy it?”

“Enjoy what, your grace?”

He didn’t blink, but kept his cool, steady gaze upon her. His mouth was set in a grim, disapproving line. “Gossip, Lady Lucy. Do you enjoy indulging in such pastimes as spreading tales about others?”

The censure with which he had asked his question did not dissuade her from answering. “You would be hard-pressed to find a tea table devoid of gossip.”

“But it is not others I am inquiring about. I am asking about you. Do you, Lady Lucy, enjoy gossip?”

She met his gaze head-on, refusing to be intimidated by his blatant reproof. Obviously he held himself above the lesser mortals who found tittle-tattle a tempting sin. Such a virtue he was! Lucy could not admit that she was of a like mind. She had found gossip much too helpful to disregard it altogether.

“Well?” he asked again.

“I, like so many people, find it vastly amusing, your grace.”

Cocking his head, he studied her through narrowed eyes as though she were a new species of beetle stuck to a felt board by a stickpin. “I don’t think you do. You merely partake of it because it is an expected requirement at such gatherings, as well of your station. Your heart, I think, is never fully in it.”

She flushed, but forced herself to stay steady and still. “I wonder why you asked then, in the first place?”

“I am merely trying to make out your personality, Lady Lucy. There are so many sides to it, one wonders who you truly are. Or indeed, if you know who you are.”

“Your grace, you are too bold.”

“Insufferable, isn’t he?” Elizabeth said as she glared to where Sussex sat next to her on the settee. “Very bad manners, Sussex.”

“Apologies. It is just that I cannot imagine that you take joy in laughing at another’s expense. To be amused by someone else’s misfortune or folly? You are too softhearted for that.”

She sniffed, despising him for making her feel things she did not care to admit to, for seeing that beneath her aloof facade to the soft core she had tried to harden through the years. She didn’t want him to know she was soft and kind and so easily hurt. She would rather he think her a lofty, snobbish woman who had fallen low for the sins of the flesh. Far better to be considered a cold woman than a weak one. One could not be timid and easily damaged when one moved about the ton. It was as deadly as a three-legged gazelle amidst a pride of lions. With such an obvious weakness, they would run her to ground and devour her whole. Far better to possess the hide and horn of the rhino.

The facade of the uncaring society lady was her favorite and most often employed shield, and to have his grace take it from her, really was rather harrowing. Having him peek deep inside her was downright frightening. She had not shared herself with another since she was twelve—not even Thomas had been given a look into her soul.

“I am right, aren’t I?” he asked, his voice dropping to a husky purr. He spoke as though they were alone, as if his sister and Isabella were not present. He was far too familiar, and she didn’t like it. How he seemed able to command the room, the conversation, and even more frightening, her emotions.

Gathering her courage, and stiffening her spine, Lucy prepared to meet his challenge. “I suppose you think you’re always correct in your assumptions and estimations, your grace. But in this matter, I must strike a blow to your vanity, for you are indeed wrong.”

His smile temporarily disarmed her. “No, I don’t believe I am. You talk of gossip because it is expected. Not because you enjoy it, and the pain it causes others.”

She was right. The duke did see far too much—she could not run from the truth now. “Well, it is vastly more entertaining, and I suppose ego sparing to talk of another than our own follies, wouldn’t you agree, your grace? It at least allows one a moment of reprieve from the prying eyes of others,” she snapped, while shooting him a meaningful glare.

“You use gossip as a shield, then?”

Lucy was conscious of the way Isabella’s head seemed to volley back and forth between their increasingly heated banter. If she were thinking clearly, Lucy would back down, but there was something about Sussex that riled her. She would never bow to him, never let him needle her. Therefore, she would continue this strange, far too familiar conversation. “Who does not use gossip as a weapon, or defense, your grace?”

“And what secrets have you to hide that you would not wish others to pry into?”

“Adrian, you beast!” Elizabeth scolded. “I vow you are merely toying with my guests, much like a cat with a mouse. Pay him no heed, Lucy. He enjoys these little debates, you see, and has quite forgotten that he is in polite company, and not the men of his club.”

Sussex blatantly ignored Elizabeth, and kept his gaze trained on her. “Or do you use it to keep others at bay, Lady Lucy? From straying too close to what you do not wish them to discover, which would be you, and who you truly are?”

How had he guessed? she wondered. Everyone who looked at her believed her to be a spoiled, shallow society miss who cared for nothing but fashion and parties. Certainly no one had ever thought she might have a heart and conscience. Yet with one sweep of his storm-gray eyes, Sussex had seen to the core of her, and what she kept hidden.

“Sussex, stop this at once,” Elizabeth demanded. “You cannot come in here and start such a bold discussion without first at least inquiring as to our company’s health and spirits.”

“Absolutely. It was unpardonable of me. Forgive me. Now then, how are you ladies today?” he inquired politely as he placed four of the pink custard squares on his plate, but not before his gaze flickered to hers and he grinned. Such a cheeky grin, she thought as the hair on her arms stood straight on end.

CHAPTER SIX

“OH, WE ARE very well, your grace,” Isabella replied as she stole a perplexed glance at Lucy. “Now, if only the weather would cooperate and allow the sun to shine, if only for a few hours, we would be much better off.”

Sussex glanced over his shoulder and out the tall window that was behind the settee. “Mmm, yes, it is gloomy. Makes one long for the comforts of bed.”

Isabella flushed delicately, and Lucy struggled to swallow the mouthful of hot tea she had just taken. The word bed was one she would have preferred not to hear coming from Sussex’s mouth. It was far too familiar, and she could not put aside her fears that when he said it, he was recalling the moment between them when he had returned the bit of lace to her, and discovered her most carefully guarded secret.

How she wanted to quit this house, to leave Sussex and his strange conversation behind. She was on tenterhooks, she realized. Disconcerted by every glance, and word. She could not endure this, not while trying to stay polite and removed.

Studying Lizzy, Lucy looked for any signs from their host that the tea was over, and they should take their leave. Unfortunately Lizzy had only managed to appear more comfortable on the settee, as if she were settling in for a much longer conversation. Even Isabella, who had looked extremely uncomfortable during their discussion of gossip now looked at ease, and was even in the process of pouring herself more tea.

Traitor, Lucy wanted to shout at her friend. Did no one understand how horrid it was to sit across from his grace and suffer through his stare? Of course they did not. Because neither Lizzy nor Isabella knew what had transpired between them. Only Sussex knew, and Lucy could not help but imagine what thoughts were running rampant in the proper duke’s mind. “Oh, yes, I adore afternoon naps,” Elizabeth said on a sigh, “especially in the rain. Just lying there, listening to the raindrops rattle against the windowpane is so soothing. Don’t you think, Lady Lucy?”

Determined to ignore Sussex, she focused her attention on answering Elizabeth. “I am afraid I am not a fan of rain, but I am rather fond of the feel of cool grass beneath my feet on a warm spring day. I like to hear the chirping of birds, and see the swelling of flower buds. I like the wind not to be cool and bracing, but warm and scented with the aromas of the sun and earth.”

Sussex met her gaze, allowed it to linger, then slowly he slid it away, down to his plate where he picked up a custard slice, and popped it into his mouth.

“Oh, I enjoy that too,” Elizabeth said wistfully. “When I was younger I could lie in the grass for hours and stare at the sky and imagine the clouds were all kinds of fanciful shapes, and animals.”

Lucy knew her expression was not one of rapture at Elizabeth’s description, and the duke noticed and said, “Do you not approve of the pastime, Lady Lucy?”

She was forced to raise her gaze from the teacup and saucer that was balanced on her lap and look at him. That stare … it made her tremble once again, and she despised how easily he could disconcert her. No one had ever had that ability, she’d made certain of it, but when the duke came into her life, he had torn down those safe walls she had erected.

Now here she was, feeling vulnerable and cornered, held hostage by eyes that bored deeply into hers as he patiently awaited her answers. And he would wait. She had learned that about Sussex, he was the most patient man on Earth—maddenly so—and she knew he would sit there all afternoon, his plate of pink sweets balanced in his palm while he watched her with his eyes that saw too much. Nothing dissuaded him when he wanted something; she had learned that much about him.

“Stonebrook wouldn’t have allowed it,” he replied for her, his gaze unwavering. “Your father is a difficult man to please, not given to gaiety or lenience.”

Yer papa will tan my hide if he finds ye getting yer ‘ands dirty wit the likes o’ me. I’m yer lesser, or so Mr. Beecher says. No lady of Gov’ner Square will look at a little street urchin the likes o’ me.

Lucy recalled that day in the kitchen, as she and Gabriel sat at the table and talked. She had made it her business to be in the kitchen on Tuesdays when the butcher made his deliveries. It had been curiosity at first—the quiet, sullen boy who had accompanied Mr. Beecher had captured her interest. But after a few visits, and some shared stories, it became something more than curiosity, but infatuation. They had become friends, borne out of common circumstances, their differences ignored as they shared whatever treat Cook had left at the table for them.

“I don’t care about such trivial things such as stations in life,” she had boldly stated. “Are we not all created equal?”

“No, Miss Lucy, we ain’t. Ye were made better ‘n me. And that’s why I’m to leave ye be and not look at ye. I’m beneath ye.”

She had glared in the direction of the butcher, then. “Never mind him,” she’d ordered. “We’re friends, are we not?”

“I ain’t never ‘ad a friend.”

“I ain’t never, either.”

They had dissolved into a fit of laughter, which had died as suddenly as it sprung up when a dark shadow emerged in the kitchen …

“He would have had you kept inside the schoolroom,” his grace continued on, pulling her from her memories, making her confront a reality she had no wish to contemplate. “A young lady meant to remain pale and unmarred, her mind filled with useful information, her days occupied with learning tasks that would set up her future. He would have frowned upon frivolous pursuits such as daydreaming and cloud watching.”

She swallowed, and he followed the action of her throat, his long, dark lashes shielding the expression in his eyes and the thoughts behind them. How Lucy wanted to rail at him for it.

“Is my brother right?” Elizabeth asked sympathetically. “He paints a rather bleak picture of your childhood.”

“Yer just as lonely as me,” her friend had once told her. “I guess it don’t make no difference if you live on a pallet of straw before a fire, or in a great big palace like this one. I’m a prisoner of St. Giles parish, and yer a prisoner of this world. We are what we are, so different because ye have money, I have nothin’ … but that’s just the outside. Inside I think we’re more alike than any two people could be.”

That was when their connection had been made, when she realized there was someone else like her, who felt the same way, who was trapped in a world they did not want, and did not choose.

“Promise me, then,” she had pleaded with him, “that you’ll always think this way of me. That when we’re grown you’ll come back and rescue me from this life.”

“All right, then, after I own me own butchery and get meself set up. I’ll come back for ye, and ye can be me wife.”

In her innocence she had believed it possible. That was, until her father had shown her just how impossible it truly was. How futile it was for her to believe a world where young girls’ dreams might one day become reality—where the world and everything was treated equally.

Bristling, Lucy set her cup and saucer aside, struggling to shield the emotion she knew would be brimming in her eyes. She loathed talking of her past, and especially her parents. She especially despised speaking of it knowing it was the privileged Duke of Sussex who had brought it up.

“Well?” Elizabeth gently prodded. “Is Sussex correct in his estimation?”

“My parents held particular views when it came to child rearing,” she said carefully. “Neither of them was possessed of a frivolous personality.”

“In other words,” Sussex drawled as he finished another custard square, “they were all work and duty, and no play.”

Lucy felt herself sneering, the memories of her lonely, isolated childhood tasting like acid in her mouth. “Succinctly put, your grace. Indeed, my parents found not much in life amusing. My mother lived to advance my father’s goals, and to uphold his hallowed title. My father existed, and still does, in the sanctity of his very male domain. As an only child, and a female at that, my parents’ goal for me was simple—to marry well, and to manage my husband’s home with dignity, decorum and efficiency, while providing him with the requisite heir. An heir that would not only inherit his father’s title, but my father’s as well. I was always very conscious of my role, and the inferiority—and disappointment—of my sex.”

“And that did not sit well with you,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper. “I can see the truth in your eyes. You can hide nothing beyond those emerald depths, Lady Lucy.”

Nervously she glanced over and noticed how Isabella was trying her best to study the painted flowers on the delicate china cup. The air was quite thick with a new intimacy that was completely inappropriate. Such intimate discussions were not to be borne at tea, and Lucy tried her best to deflect the conversation to a more tactful and less revealing place.

Casting a gaze about the room, she sought an appropriately benign topic, and remembered that she had wanted to invite Elizabeth to an evening out.

“Before your untimely arrival, your grace, I was about to ask Elizabeth if she was interested in accompanying me to the Sumners’ musicale this evening.”

There was a flicker of amusement in his eyes, before he sat back against the settee, his plate in his lap, his long fingers wrapped around the rim of the teacup. He thought her a coward, she knew, but she didn’t care. He touched too close to the truth, and she would run from it. No one came to know her so intimately. Isabella was possibly the only person in the world who had ever come close, but even still, her cousin did not know all.

Even Thomas, through their shared encounter of passion had never known her so well. She shared her body with him, but nothing else.

“Oh, I would love to,” Elizabeth said. “I haven’t been to a musicale in years. Adrian despises them.”

“You mistake me, Lizzy,” he said silkily as he rested his cup on the arm of the settee. He met Lucy’s gaze, and she noticed the coolness was back in his eyes. “I am inclined to enjoy them, if the company is agreeable. I would be delighted to escort you ladies.”

Like a fish out of water, Lucy floundered for a way to deny the duke. She did not want him with her this evening, did not want to sit in a carriage, or make conversation with him. She didn’t want him looking at her, and seeing her, seeing the things she tried so hard to hide.

Thankfully she hit on something that Sussex would not be able to refute. “But what of your lodge meeting tonight?” she inquired. Thank heavens her father had thought to remind her of his Freemasonry meeting. As part of the Grand Lodge, Sussex would be obliged to attend, thereby forcing him to forgo his attendance to the musicale.

Lucy gave a small smile of triumph, which faded as the duke perused her slowly.

“I think your friend would like it if I were not to attend,” he drawled, making Lucy’s face flame.

“Oh, Adrian, do not tease. Lady Lucy means nothing of the sort … she only seeks to remind you of the obvious. Tonight is lodge night.”

“Ah, yes, but one only has these special opportunities arise so infrequently. The lodge can wait, I believe. Yes,” he murmured thoughtfully as he watched her. “I think I shall send word around to Mrs. Sumner that the three of us shall be attending. If you’ll excuse me, ladies.”