Page 77 of The Duke
It wasn’t her lack of desire to be alone with Cole that inspired the rude and desperate actions she’d taken. It was the presence of desire, that traitorous, pervasive, and primitive emotion, that had prompted her to invite Lord and Lady Ravencroft to accompany them the short distance from her home to that of Farah and Dorian Blackwell’s residence.
She’d sensed Cole’s displeasure immediately when she’d descended the stairs arm in arm with Mena. She’d sensed hisdesireas well. Lady Ravencroft’s shimmering blue gown set off the brilliance of Imogen’s crimson silks. Never in her life had Imogen felt more beautiful.
When he lifted his chin to watch her, his ever-tense jaw had slackened and his wolfish gaze roamed her body, leaving no place untouched. Imogen could feel herself turning as red as the Anstruther rubies dripping over her clavicles, and resting in a tear-drop point between her breasts. His gaze lingered there, his lips pressing together as though to stem the rush of involuntary hunger.
She’d not seen that look on his face in three long years. The heavy-lidded veneration of a lover. The abject, unabashed appreciation of a man who’d tested a sip of honeyed wine, and was ready to devour every last drop.
To slow the gallop of her runaway heart, Imogen tried to transpose the bare-chested barbarian in her basement onto the suave and haughty duke that stood before her, resplendent in white-tie finery.
When that was a miserable failure, she’d informed him that she’d invited his acquaintances, Lord and Lady Ravencroft, to accompany them as she was certain his ducal carriage could accommodate them all.
He’d not been fast enough to hide his scowl from her before he’d informed the Mackenzie laird and his wife that he was, of course, delighted. Judging by the uncomfortable tension in the carriage, he was about as delighted to see them as a vampire was to see the sunrise.
He’d planned on being alone with her.
She planned to never again allow that, as each time they spent alone together seemed to result in a kiss.
And those kisses were becoming more and more dangerous.
Imogen managed to avoid his dark regard, doing her best to keep up a stilted conversation with Mena regarding marriage prospects for the season for Isobel and Mena’s stepdaughter, Rhianna.
Ravencroft and Trenwyth sat uncomfortably close, the combined width of their shoulders forced to touch, even though pressing against the walls of the spacious coach. Though Imogen avoided looking directly at the duke, she sometimes caught the marquess Ravencroft sliding curious and amused glances at Trenwyth from beneath heavy ebony brows. He wasn’t a man given to much mirth, Imogen gathered, but the ghost of a smirk quirked the corner of his full lips. As though he’d guessed the entire situation.
When the coach arrived at the Northwalk mansion in Mayfair, Ravencroft leaped out and brushed the footman aside, offering his own wife assistance from the carriage.
This obliged Trenwyth to do the same. In a lithe movement, he ducked from the coach and turned, offering her both of his hands for support.
Imogen stared at them. Since he wore pristine white gloves, it was nearly impossible to tell the difference, but for the unnatural stillness of his left. Or perhaps it only seemed thus as his right fingers twitched with impatience.
Reaching for him, Imogen found herself seized and abruptly swept to the ground, her waist supported by one strong, warm hand, and a cold steel one. Just as swiftly as she’d been pulled into his arms, she was released, before anyone really had a chance to notice the breach of conduct.
Feeling dazed and a little breathless, Imogen blinked up at Trenwyth, who gestured down the grand path to the entry in an “after you” motion. She made a sour face at him and said nothing as she made her way on unsteady legs toward the mansion. This was how it would be between them, she lamented. Their every interaction fraught with intensity and underscored with unfulfilled need.
Imogen envied him. It was unfair that he remembered so little of what transpired between them on the night he’d paid her for pleasure, and had given it in return.
She remembered everything, and sometimes that memory tormented her to the brink of a sweet and aching madness. He’d awakened within her a fiendish, feverish sort of need that night, which she’d done her best to ignore ever since. Never to indulge. Nor to reminisce.
But every time he touched her, carried her, confounded and kissed her, the fever had been rekindled in ever-increasing increments. Sometimes, when she was alone at night, she’d toss and writhe in heated agony, kicking off her damp covers in a fit of frustration. Yearning for another, warmer, more substantial weight upon her. Remembering how their sweat had mingled and their muscles strained. Wondering if making love to Cole now would resemble anything like what it had been so long ago.
Wondering if she wanted it to.
They’d arrived at the Backwell manse a bit early, as Imogen had requested, so that she and Farah Blackwell could consult upon last-minute preparations for the event. Usually, the men left them alone to do so, but as Mena, Farah, Millie, and Imogen wandered the house, inspecting the preparations and so on, they noted a very badly concealed entourage.
“I do believe our procession has acquired a vanguard,” Mena remarked from behind her glass of champagne, her green eyes dancing with merriment.
Using a poorly ruffled valance as an excuse to glance over at their hovering husbands, Farah giggled as she picked and fluffed at the bit of cloth. “I do believe you’re right, dear. You don’t think they actually imagine they’re being subtle, do you?”
As the men noted they were being observed, they suddenly became absorbed in an expensive John Constable painting to which Dorian directed their respective attentions.
“Your husband certainly has excellent taste in art,” Imogen ventured, placing her empty champagne flute on a servant’s tray and happily accepting another.
“My husband wouldn’t know Renaissance from Rococo,” Farah scoffed.
“Nor mine,” Millie blithely agreed, her midnight eyes narrowing.
“Iacquired that painting and he’s never before noticed it.” Farah narrowed her eyes. “Now I know they’re up to something. The question is, what?”
“I fear their odd behavior is my fault.” Imogen sighed miserably.
