Page 44 of The Duke's Dream
She placed her hands over her knees, nauseated. Her ears could only hear Langley’s frustration.
When the music started again, her body wouldn’t obey her. She was not ready for this. Why had the duke demanded her promotion? Terrible, arrogant, gorgeous tyrant! William—a beautiful and willful name. He had not given her leave to call him by his Christian name, but she would start now, if only in her head, just to spite him.
William, William, William.
She gazed at Vestris slumped in the chair, and her vision blurred. Instead of the blond, easy-going dancer, she saw brown hair, windswept, and lighter on the tips. A midnight beard grew on the dancer’s fair skin, and when he gazed at her, his eyes were changeable, stormy.
The duke grinned at her, showing his teeth in his sardonic smile, and asked her if she would give up. And then he lifted his hand, inviting her to dance for him—if she dared.
Oh, she dared. To haunt him, she dared. When the notes swelled, Helene felt it—a shift within, a tether loosening. She turned, keeping her eyes on him, not admiring his stern profile, but taunting him. She flitted around him, touching his broad shoulders, teasing him. The music blended with her playfulness, and the air lifted her skirts as she pirouetted. She tapped her toes in fastbourrées, drifting away from him, daring him to catch her. When he tried, she darted away, only to return when he pretended to give up. She admired his lips, and her mouth parted, and when she escaped him, she wished he could follow her into her own world.
When the music ended, the silence startled her.
Then she heard clapping. It was Langley. Langley was clapping!
Panting, Helene blinked repeatedly.
Vestris shook her hand.
Langley patted her back. “Much better, child, much better. You convinced me.”
Helene covered her mouth. She had danced for William,le duc, even in his absence.
Langley laughed. “Enough for today. Tomorrow, we will start thepas des deux.”
She offered a quick nod and left the stage, retreating from the warmth of his praise as if it scalded. What had come over her? Why had thinking of him made it all feel so natural? William? No, not William. Better call himMonsieur le Duc, Duke of Albemarle, the Silent Sovereign. The heavier the titles, the easier it would be to keep him at bay.
Why, she didn’t love him. She didn’t even like him.
Shivering, Helene wrapped her arms around herself and hurried toward her dressing room—until a splash of a familiar livery caught her eye.
A servant stood mid-corridor, clearly out of place amid the rush of dancers and dressers. And on his coat? The unmistakable insignia of the bane of her existence. The Goliath to her David. The Claudius to her Hamlet. The Cassius to her Caesar—The Duke of Albemarle.
What now? Was it not enough for the Duke to invade her thoughts in the most vexing ways?
The performers and stagehands did not pay the duke’s servant any attention, too caught up in their own post-rehearsal routine to acknowledge the stranger.
Heart racing, Helene approached the boy. “Do you need help? This place can be quite the labyrinth.”
Relief flickered in the servant’s eyes. “I’m here on behalf of the Duke of Albemarle. I’m looking for someone by the initials H.B. He is expected to attend His Grace tonight. For dinner.”
Helene hid a gasp behind her palm. Wasn’t he the most conceited male in all of Europe?
She wouldn’t join him for dinner—not even if she were starving and he held the last croissant in all of Christendom. And yet… unbidden, an image flashed behind her eyes—the duke awaiting her, sans neckcloth, framed in candlelight and arrogance. Heat shot through her spine, quickly chased by a shiver.
She cleared her throat and extended her hand. “May I see the note?”
The seal was real. His handwriting polished and demanding.
“Ah. H.B. Of course,” Helene murmured, furrowing her brow with mock understanding.
A plan bloomed—full-grown and wicked—and she returned the invitation to the boy with a serene nod.
“Please wait here while I fetch H.B.”
***
As William strode through the theater’s corridors, performers flattened themselves against the faded wallpaper to make way for him. The memory of the evening’s fiasco seared through his thoughts like a branding iron. When he had entered the secret apartment and saw that—that pimple-riddled youth, bewildered and awkward, sitting amidst the dinner he had overseen for her…
