Page 28 of My Deceitful Duchess
“Shall we begin, then?”
Her head jerked toward him, eyes wide with surprise at his casual tone—as if he had suggested something terribly improper.
He swiped his hand over his mouth, stifling a chuckle. “The list,” he prompted. “We really should—”
“Oh.Oh.” The tip of her tongue swiped her lower lip as she fumbled for the ledger. “Yes, of course. The list.” Flustered, she collected the ledger in her hands, her fingers curled around the spine. “How shall we go about this?”
Sebastian selected an inkwell, a quill, and a fresh sheet of paper from their drawer, and laid the list out on the desk. “Start with those denied subscriptions,” he said. “Specifically, for reasons of financial insolvency.”
She thumbed through a few pages. “I should warn you,” she said. “This list goes back several years. Some of them might have reversed their fortunes. And—and it won’t include everyone, naturally.”
“That’s good enough. It doesn’t have to be complete. It only needs to be a place to start.” Judging by the thickness of the ledger, his list would narrow considerably.
She began to read off names, her voice clear and precise. One at a time, watching as he scoured the list for them, dutifully copying down those found upon it onto the fresh sheet of paper—this, his list of potential suspects. It grew slowly; two names, then four, seven, nine—apparently there were quite a few peers whose fortunes were less secure than the face they presented to society.
And then her voice trembled just slightly over one name. “N-Nerissa Amberley.”
Why did that name sound so familiar? Like a spider treading across a dusty, disused thread of a web,somethingtickled at the very back of his brain at the advent of it. He let his finger drift down the list, searching for the name and coming up empty. “She’s not here,” he said, only to see what she would say to it.
“No.” Her voice was low, with only a slight quaver to betray her. “But her brother, the Duke of Venbrough, is.”
She did not care for the man, then—which seemed strange to him, for it was unlikely that their paths had ever crossed. He; a duke, and she; a seamstress and ladies’ club manager. Perhaps the duke had once patronized her shop on behalf of a mistress and left a bill unpaid. What did he know of Venbrough? The title, too, felt familiar somehow; like it had brushed against something buried at the back of his mind, dislodged it from its proper place.
A matter to reflect upon later. The discomfort that she was trying so hard to mask—it had no place between them here and now. So he pretended he had not noticed it, scrawledVenbroughupon his list of suspects, and said, “The next?”
And she settled once again into a bland recitation of names, until at last, many long minutes later, she had run out of pages and he had compiled a list of fifteen names that matched both her knowledge of theTon’sfinancial states and his list of Lady Pendleton’s guests.
“Oh,” she said, frowning down at it. “That’s still so many.”
“Lady Pendleton’s party comprised some two hundred guests,” he said. “We’ve narrowed it significantly.” There were still twenty or so that he would have to investigate, names that hadn’t appeared in her ledger. But fifteen suspects was a decent start. “I can use this to investigate the other thefts, see if the living victims have also hosted any of these people. My thanks for your assistance. I don’t think I could have managed it without you.” Or at the very least, not nearly so quickly. He might’ve spent weeks trying to unearth the information he would have needed, and not without prodding his father and brother for sensitive information on potential banking clients.
“It was no trouble.” Her voice had taken on a lovely, breathless quality as he replaced the cap on the inkwell and set it back into its proper place. “I suppose—I suppose that’s all you need from me.”
“No.” He stilled her hand as she laid it upon the surface of the desk. “It’s not.”
“It’s late. I shouldn’t.” It was little more than a murmur, forced past lips that did not wish to cooperate with her. The last dying gasp of whatever concessions toward propriety she felt somehow obliged to make. Wanting one thing; knowing she ought not.
“It’s hardly gone past eight.” Her fingers had curled into his unconsciously. He wondered if she realized it.
“Forme. It’s late forme, I meant. I should be abed already.” And yet her hand did not relinquish its hold on his.
“NowthatI will agree to.” He squeezed her fingers with his own, felt the shiver that coasted through her. “Come to bed, Jenny.”
Chapter Thirteen
Somehow she had set her hand in his, and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Every instinct which had driven her over the last decade, every habitual action toward self-preservation, every trilling alarm which had steered her clear of danger–they all receded into silence at once. There was only the harried beating of her heart in her chest; the faint rasp of her breath across dry lips.
He caught her hands in his when she would have reached for her buttons. “No; I want to undress you. It’ll be like—denuding a cake of its icing.” The words were a rumble of sound deep in his chest, the vibration of them singing along her nerves.
“Acake?” Incredibly, she laughed.
“Layers,” he said, and with those assessing dark eyes, she could see him considering her attire. Likely plotting out how best to separate her from it. “Far too many of them. Why do women wear so many of them? It can’t be comfortable.”
“It’s not.” His hands had found the buttons that ran up her back, and he began to slip them through their loops. The warmth of his fingertips kissed her skin even through the fabric. “We wear them because men pretend to be scandalized by the glimpse of so much as an ankle, despite the fact that they seem to spend a not-insignificant portion of their time crawling up ladies’ skirts themselves.”
“The dichotomy of man,” he said, and the fabric over her back gaped open. “Saying one thing while doing another. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it. It’s madness.” The bodice of her dress drooped, and he pressed the sleeves down until they bunched around her elbows, catching her arms within the trap of the fabric. There was a tug at the laces of her stays.
“Oh, wait—my dress—”
