Page 3 of His Duchess of Scandal
Last night of freedom.
Hermia swept her gaze across the room. Nobody stared at her. Not like the ton, with its ever-watching eyes, always judging her, always guessing or ordering her next move.
Lady Hermia must marry before she becomes a spinster. Lady Hermia must apply herself to conversation lest she become, dare we suggest, a lonely hag in the countryside, forced to age alone.
Hag. She had barely turned four-and-twenty. What did the scandal sheet know of a hag?
What did freedom look like?
She watched as three dancers entwined with one another, a show of depravity that she should have blushed at. Yet in here, with the dim light and the heavy red velvet drapes hanging around the room, the masks and the anonymity, the flickering candles and the paintings watching over the guests, it felt utterly right.
Erotic positions were displayed on canvas, and she wondered what would happen later tonight, when she had returned home and the party grew more heated.
Would such positions be replicated in the flesh?
Enchanted, she watched the dancers for a moment, letting her mind wander. She had kept her purity, and for what? To be sent to the countryside either way. Sometimes she wished she had lived a little more daringly, had she known that not being pure would not have affected her life in any way. She could have?—
Stop this. Do not be selfish.
Hermia immediately shut down that train of thought with a gulp of wine. She was good at that, at ignoring the voices in her head. So, she stood up gracefully and moved closer to inspect the painting that had caught the handsome man’s gaze.
Beneath the gleaming silver frame, a plaque read:Ares and Aphrodite, a traitors’ embrace. Painted by Christian Dawson.
She hummed, biting back a huff of a laugh, but it slipped out of her anyway.
It wasn’t until a voice answered her laugh that she realized she was no longer standing alone.
“What are you laughing at?”
She dared to look sideways, hoping she would not be recognized or recognize the person, only to find herself face-to-face with the stranger who had directed her attention to the painting in the first place.
His eyes remained on the painting, but hers roved over the thick, dark beard that covered his jaw, lightly tracing his sharp cheekbones. Dark blue orbs stared at the art, but they flickered, as if he was looking out of the corner of his eye. The corner of his mouth twitched, as if he was suppressing a smile, aware of her scrutiny.
“The caption,” she noted. “It says it is a traitors’ embrace.”
“You do not agree?” His mouth curled into a smirk, yet he still did not look at her.
Hermia was nameless, faceless in this crowd. With that power came boldness. With boldness came a sense that she could speak and do as she pleased. She could be speaking with a commoner in fine clothes, or a duke delighting in sensual parties, or aviscount hoping to gather dirt on other notable members of the ton.
He could be anyone, but she found that she did not care or want to know.
After a long pause, he finally fixed his gaze on her. The intensity of it shot right through her breastbone, down into her sternum, wheresomethingstirred.
She half feared that same something was roused by the paintings as well—eroticism, sensuality, an attraction.
“I do not, no,” she replied. “Aphrodite and Ares were lovers in a true, honest sense of the word. It was only through force that Aphrodite had to marry the old Hephaestus. She was shackled to him. Some myths say he forged the chains himself. Should she be blamed for seeking pleasure in the arms of a man who truly loved her and her body?”
“And what if Hephaestus loved her, too? What if he was lonely and craved her companionship?”
Hermia frowned. “That was not her burden to carry if so.”
The handsome stranger paused and looked back at the painting, as if considering her words.
Hermia took a swig of her wine as her eyes trailed over his broad shoulders, clad in a black tailcoat with discreet, dark velvetpatterns woven into it. His waistcoat was dark, as was his shirt, but both held some manner of layered patterns.
Hermia found herself seeking out more of his body to find them. When she noticed that he had not made another observation, her gaze rose back to his face.
She went still as she found his eyes already on her, his mouth quirking into another smirk.
