Page 31 of A Night of Desire with a Duke
"They have excellent miniatures behind potted bays."
Lady Pemberton sighed the sigh of a woman who'd raised four daughters and could spot romantic distress at fifty paces. "My dear girl, you are avoiding a man that studiously only makes it more obvious that he affects you. Though I suppose I should be grateful because if you were setting your cap at him, my poor Marcus would be quite devastated."
Catherine's stomach performed an uncomfortable twist at the mention of Lord Pemberton. Dear, kind, devoted Lord Pemberton, who'd been courting her with the persistence of a man who'd decided she was to be his viscountess and saw no reason why the universe shouldn't accommodate this plan.
"Lord Pemberton and I are friends," Catherine said carefully, the words she'd repeated so often they'd begun to lose meaning.
"Friends who waltz together at every ball, ride together twice weekly, and whom he looks at with deep admiration? Those sorts of friends?"
Before Catherine could formulate a response that wouldn't be either a lie or devastatingly honest, the musicale's hostess, Mrs. Drummond-Burrell, clinked her fan against her champagne glass with the authority of a woman who expectedimmediate silence and, being one of Almack's patronesses, generally got it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if you would take your seats, Signora Catalani is about to grace us with her voice."
Catherine moved toward the gilt chairs arranged in neat rows, hoping to find a seat near the back where she could suffer through what would undoubtedly be two hours of Italian arias in relative peace. She'd developed a strategy for these events: sit far enough back to be inconspicuous, close enough to the door to escape during the interval, and absolutely nowhere near...
"Lady Catherine! How fortuitous!"
Lord Pemberton materialized at her elbow with the timing of a man who'd been watching for her. His pleasant face, and it was pleasant, all cheerful blue eyes and genuine smiles, lit up as if she'd made his entire evening simply by existing.
"Lord Pemberton," she greeted, allowing him to take her arm because to do otherwise would be to cause the kind of scene that would have the gossips feasting for weeks. "How lovely to see you."
"I've saved us seats," he said proudly, steering her toward the front of the room. The very front. The catastrophically, unavoidably, hideously front.
"How... thoughtful," Catherine managed, her heart sinking as she recognized the deliberate arrangement. Mrs. Drummond-Burrell had that look of satisfied meddling that society hostesses got when they'd successfully engineered a romantic moment.
"I know how you love music," Pemberton continued, blissfully unaware of Catherine's growing horror. "And I thought, what better than to experience Signora Catalani from the best seats?"
What Catherine actually loved was being able to slip away unnoticed, but she could hardly say that.
They reached their seats, front row, center, practically on the makeshift stage, and Catherine resigned herself to her fate. At least, she consoled herself, she was unlikely to encounter the Duke here. He typically claimed a seat near the back, the better to make his escape when...
"Your Grace," Pemberton said warmly, and Catherine's blood turned to ice. "What a pleasure. I believe you know Lady Catherine Mayfer?"
The world, Catherine decided, had a peculiarly vicious sense of humor.
James stood before them, immaculate in black evening dress that made his shoulders look broader and his presence more commanding than any duke had a right to be. His face was that perfect mask of polite indifference he'd perfected these past months, the one that made her simultaneously want to slap him and kiss him senseless.
"Lady Catherine," he said, bowing with precise correctness. His voice was exactly as she remembered it from that night—deep, cultured, with just a hint of something rough beneath the polish. "A pleasure, as always."
"Your Grace," she replied, proud that her voice remained steady even as her traitorous body remembered exactly what that voice had sounded like saying her name in the dark. Saying other things. Commanding things. Wicked things that proper ladies weren't supposed to know about, much less crave.
"I believe," Mrs. Drummond-Burrell announced, "that the Duke's seat is just there. How convenient!"
She pointed to the empty chair directly beside Catherine. Because of course it was.
James's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly—Catherine only noticed because she'd spent three months cataloging every minute expression that crossed his carefully controlled features during their brief public encounters. "How... convenient indeed."
He sat with the fluid grace that marked everything he did, managing to make even the simple act of taking a seat look like something out of a Byron poem. Catherine fixed her gaze firmly on the empty stage, determined not to notice how his presence seemed to heat the air around her, how the subtle scent of his cologne, sandalwood and something uniquely him, made her remember things she had no business remembering in public.
"I didn't know you enjoyed Italian opera, Your Grace," Pemberton said cheerfully, apparently immune to the tension that Catherine could feel crackling between James and her like lightning before a storm.
"I don't," James replied flatly. "I find it overblown and unnecessarily dramatic."
"Then why attend?" Pemberton asked with genuine curiosity.
"Duty," James said, the word falling like a stone. "The eternal chain that binds us all."
Catherine felt rather than saw him glance at her on that last word. She kept her eyes fixed ahead, though she could feel heat climbing her cheeks.
