Page 14 of Anything But a Duke
Though Aidan Iverson possessed no title, he’d built an enormous fortune in shipping and commerce, earning a reputation as a champion of progress. The Duke of Devices, they called him, due to his passion for investing in grand industrial projects.
A shaky sigh escaped as she reviewed her notes on the Duke’s Den. The odds were most decidedly not in her favor. In the eight months since its inception, only twelve inventors had received funding. A mere dozen successes out of hundreds who’d come before them. And, of course, none of them had been lady inventors.
The door to the lower level of the club opened and a hush fell over the room. Leather creaked and chair legs shifted as everyone turned anxious gazes toward the man who’d entered.
Diana recognized him as one who’d accompanied Iverson earlier. The Marquess of Huntley possessed a handsome face of perfect symmetry topped by a head of chaotic golden waves. He’d acquired a reputation worse than her brother’s. Nearly everything she knew of the man came from scandal rags, much of it unrepeatable in polite company.
The notorious marquess scanned faces until his gaze settled on Diana. His mouth twitched before sloping into a wickedly appealing grin.
“You must be Miss Ashby.”
Diana nodded and took a breath so deep her stays pinched at her chest.
The marquess turned his gaze toward Dom and glanced down at a paper clutched in his hands. “Mr. Ashby and Miss Ashby. Won’t you both come and join us?” He gestured to the open door he’d just stepped through.
Dom hovered a hand at her back and whispered, “You can do this, Di.”
She nodded and started forward.
She’d planned for this. She wanted this. She alone truly understood the stakes. It wasn’t just funding she sought, but recognition, an opportunity to alter the future course her mother had set out for her.
She absolutely could not fail.
Chapter Five
Aidan watched, fascinated, as Miss Diana Ashby attempted to manage both her brother and the complex flow of her presentation.
“Just hold it steady,” she whispered to him.
He held up a painted diagram of the cleaning apparatus she’d designed, but the edge kept slipping, along with the young man’s concentration.
“Got it,” he whispered back, but his hands shook and perspiration clung to his brow. He attempted to smile and only managed to look miserable.
Even from across the room, Aidan noted how Mr. Ashby’s skin had taken on a sickly shade. Aidan knew of him as a gambler, one who’d briefly been a member of Lyon’s. Lack of funds had driven him from the higher stakes games, as Aidan recalled. He also remembered Ashby as one who spent as much time imbibing as testing his luck at the tables.
“We’re almost finished,” Miss Ashby promised.
Oddly, though they’d met with half a dozen inventors over the course of the morning, Aidan wasn’t eager for her presentation to end.
The first lady to ever present to the Den was acquitting herself well, despite rushing through a few details and tripping over words he suspected normally caused her no grief. Her passion for her invention was what mattered most and it shone through. Unfortunately, Aidan couldn’t fathom the viability of a machine that required so much assembly and potential maintenance. Not to mention that its success would rely on the very unpredictable buying power of London’s household consumers.
He suspected Miss Ashby’s device might be popular for a time but then fall out of faddish favor.
She tripped over a word and started her sentence again. Her brother dropped the diagram he’d been holding and scrambled to retrieve it. Miss Ashby’s cheeks reddened.
Aidan felt a ridiculously chivalrous impulse to come to her aid, yet the lady’s confident air suggested she’d refuse any kind of assistance. After the incident in the lobby, he doubted she’d trust him to help at all.
He understood her nervousness and unease.
The men of the Den could be an intimidating trio. They each possessed wealth few had achieved. But Aidan recalled a time when he was the one seeking opportunities and investors, desperate for someone to believe in his instincts.
Miss Ashby took a deep breath as she drew to a close. Then she pressed a hand to the side of her neck, where Aidan suspected her pulse was racing madly. The room was warm, and her cheeks had become increasingly flushed during the past quarter of an hour.
He tried desperately to listen as if she was someone he’d never met before. When the application to appear before the Den had come from a Miss Diana Ashby, he had no idea it was the same woman who haunted his dreams. The woman who’d saved him from being left in a bloody heap in a Belgravia alleyway.
In the past months, he’d willed himself not to think of her. But she held a unique distinction of being the single person to whom he owed a debt.
And meeting her again today did nothing to diminish how much she fascinated him.
