Page 15 of Nothing Compares to the Duke
“Tell me, Lou.” Her cousin did have a flair for the dramatic but Bella was too out of sorts to have the patience for it tonight.
Louisa leaned in. Bella took a step closer. But rather than telling her what she’d discovered, her cousin looked around the drawing room, reached for Bella’s hand, and pulled her into the hallway.
“Loui—”
“You need to hear for yourself. If we’re quick, they’ll still be at it.”
“At what?”
Rather than answer, Louisa broke into a dash and pulled Bella along with her. At the billiard room threshold, she stooped and turned back to Bella, a finger pressed to her lips.
The men weren’t difficult to hear. Their booming laughter echoed into the hallway. Mr. Edgar Nix, the wealthy mill owner her mother claimed was the most handsome of all the gentlemen guests, and Lord Teasdale, a widowed viscount with eight thousand a year and a crumbling castle in the north of England.
“One poor fellow claimed she wouldn’t even shake his hand after she refused him. The lady is a cold one.”
“It’s true,” Nix agreed. “Gent I know still tells the tale of the time he tried to kiss her. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t push him away. Just turned to offer him her cheek. He said her skin was cold as winter.”
A scream welled up and Bella felt anything but cold. The words stoked a familiar anger inside her to white-hot fury.
Both men chuckled, echoing each other.
“Perhaps we should increase the bet. Two hundred pounds? We must have some reward. After all, we’llhave our work cut out for us and a rather chilly prize if we win.”
“Two hundred pounds it is.” Glasses clinked. More belly-low chortles followed. “Hardly worthwhile for a lady to be such a beauty if she hasn’t an ounce of passion in her.”
Bella’s whole body vibrated. Heat rushed across her cheeks and her heart beat in her ears loud enough to drown out the men’s chuckles.
She moved past Louisa, pushed the billiard room door open, and marched toward the two men.
They turned as one, eyes wide, backs stiffened in what she hoped was shame. Maybe they weren’t so craven that they were capable of embarrassment.
“Lord Teasdale.” He was the one who’d called her passionless. She was proud of herself for getting his name out in something less than a shout.
Bella strode toward him. He couldn’t look her in the eyes, but he was mumbling. She didn’t stop. Anger drove her, a vibrating outrage that was more instinct than thought.
“Miss Prescott, I don’t know what you heard—”
Bella lifted her arm to strike. Teasdale reeled back.
“Arry, don’t do it.” The voice came from behind her. Deep and warm and achingly familiar.
Bella froze. Her arm still raised. Goose bumps spread across her skin.
It wasn’t possible.
Teasdale lifted his gaze to the man who’d entered the room. The look in his eyes, a mix of consternationand begrudging deference, told her that the voice she’d heard wasn’t some conjuring of her mind.
Bella lowered her arm, breathed deeply, and glanced over her shoulder at the man she should have slapped five years ago.
Chapter Four
Arabella Prescott was not at all as he remembered.
The girl he’d disappointed at that long-ago garden party had been all softness and sweet innocence. Her hair had hung down in loose ringlets, arranged over the shoulder of a frilly candy-sweet pink gown. The same rosy shade had colored her cheeks and tinted her full lips.
The woman who stood before him now was all bold colors. She wore a rich blue velvet gown buttoned to her chin, revealing nothing of her freckled skin. A wash of crimson colored her cheeks and her wavy auburn hair was trapped under pins, though a few strands gave off a fiery glint in the candlelight.
Rhys swallowed hard. Until this moment, he’d had no notion of how much he’d missed the sight of her.
