Page 72 of Dare to Love a Duke
Checking her timepiece, Lucia saw the time to be three o’clock in the morning. It was Friday night—or, more specifically, early Saturday—and activity at the club showed few signs of slowing down. New guests continually arrived. The establishment’s entire staff never had a moment of rest as they went about their duties in a frenzy.
She’d lost count of the number of times she had run up and down the stairs and the loops she’d made through the club. Dimly, she felt her feet throb, but the ache belonged to someone else. Weariness didn’t touch her. Instead, energy zigzagged through her body, always pushing her forward.
By all rights, Lucia should have been dragging herself through her workday. She and Tom had barely slept the night before, and instead of napping as she always did in preparation for the evening ahead, she’d been exploring his body with the zeal of a woman who’d long been denied the pleasures of her lover rather than someone who had fucked herself raw only hours before.
As she stepped into the drawing room, she handed a server several bottles of wine she’d just brought up from belowstairs. She caught sight of Tom flipping a chair back onto its feet, and her stomach tumbled as ifshehad been the piece of furniture.
“There’s that smile again,” Elspeth said, coming to stand beside her.
“What smile?”
“The one that I’ve never seen you wear for longer than five seconds. Until...” Elspeth looked at Tom, who now conversed with Arthur in a corner of the room. “I keep turning around and finding you beaming at him like he personally invented cake. And I should know, because I look at Kitty the same way.”
Lucia busied herself collecting glasses. “He and I, we’re enjoying ourselves. It needn’t mean anything.” But her skin was flushed and her heart beat at an unseemly speed.
“I never said a word about anything meaning something. That was your inference.”
Caught.
Lucia’s hand hovered for a moment over an empty wineglass before she shook her head and picked up the vessel.
“What will you do,” Elspeth asked softly, “when it’s time for him to go back to his world?”
Lightly, Lucia said, “We haven’t discussed it.”
But at the thought of his departure, something huge and empty opened up within Lucia, so suddenly and powerfully she pressed her lips together to keep from gasping.
Lovers she’d had, and yet none of them made her trulyfeelas he did. His insight, his heart, his joy in the pleasure of being—they were rare qualities to find in anyone.
“Perhaps you ought to.” Elspeth stroked a finger down her cheek. “Through all the years we’ve known each other, I’ve never seen you this happy.”
A hard knot formed in Lucia’s throat. “Cara.”
“I’d hate for you to lose that because of fear.” With that, Elspeth plucked the glasses from Lucia’s fingers and strode away.
The trouble with friends, Lucia thought as she plunged back into her work, is that they saw beyond all masks, both literal and figurative, all the way down to the needy, love-starved soul beneath.
Lucia stood in the foyer as the very last guest walked out the door on unsteady legs. The guest in question, a black man with the clothing of a prosperous man of business, had drunk only one glass of wine the whole of the night. His wobbly gait was the result of being the object of two women’s attentions for hours, clearly evident in his lopsided grin.
“Next Wednesday?” he asked as he stood on the threshold.
She inclined her head. “We shall await your presence.”
“Rely on it.” Despite his weakened physical condition, he whistled as he strolled off into the dawn.
A smile curved Lucia’s mouth as she shut the door behind him.Thiswas why she truly enjoyed her work. When that guest had arrived earlier in the evening, he’d been tense as a cocked pistol, deep lines of strain framing his mouth. Clearly, the Orchid Club had worked its magic on him.
Her smile faded when she turned around and found Tom standing beside his valise.
“Oh,” she managed to say. It felt as though she’d been running at full speed down a hill, joyous and free in her movement, and then slammed into a stone wall.
“Much as I hate not contributing to cleaning up,” he said regretfully, “I’m due home before breakfast.”
“Yes. Of course.” Her feet were bolted to the floor, and she could only stare at him across the expanse of the entryway.
“I...” He balled his hands into fists. “I need to go. Don’t want to, but I must. I promised my family that I would be gone for three days only. And Parliament won’t wait for me.”
“I understand.” The urge to fling herself at him, to wrap her arms around him and beg him not to leave, was an insistent demand she forced herself to ignore.
