The Duke's Gamble

But now it was outrage that sent her marching up the stairs to her private rooms to change, her heels clicking fiercely on the treads of the steps. For an intelligent man, the duke was behaving like a first-rate dunce. This was the other night after the wedding all over again. Did Guilford really believe her memory was this short? She’d asked him to join her today for educational purposes, not to amuse him, and she knew she’d made her intentions perfectly clear.

Quickly she shed the soiled gown, washed, and brushed her hair, then stood before the other gowns that hung in the cupboard. She didn’t possess the vast wardrobe that Guilford seemed to believe. Beyond the dramatic gowns for evening that she and her sisters wore for their roles at Penny House, there wasn’t much that would meet the stylish standards of a duke. The only one that might do was a soft blue wool day gown with a ruffled hem, complete with a matching redingote with more ruffles across the bust, and a velvet bonnet in a deeper blue—an ensemble designed by her fashionable sister Cassia, and the one Amariah wore when she and her sisters went driving in the park together. She touched her fingers to one of the ruffles and smiled, imagining how pleased Guilford would be to see she’d obeyed his request.

Then she resolutely turned to the gown beside it. A serviceable dove gray with dull pewter buttons, high necked and as plain as a foggy day: a dress somber enough for a poor neighborhood. Amariah’s smile widened with fresh determination as she reached for the gown and drew it over her head.

Guilford wouldn’t be partial to this color, or the sturdy plainness of her gown, either. She didn’t care, or rather she did for the opposite reasons. At least she knew how to dress unobtrusively and suitably when the situation called for it.

And as for her so-called reputation as a virago: ah, for a virago the gray gown would be entirely appropriate!

Chapter Four

“H ere I am, your grace,” Amariah said, tugging on her glove as she stood in the doorway to the hall. “You’ve been most kind to wait for me, and now, you see, I’m ready whenever you please.”

Guilford turned, the easy, welcoming smile already on his face for her, and stopped short.

What in blazes was she wearing now? A nun’s habit? A winding cloth? Sackcloth and ashes?

“You are ready?” he echoed. As rumpled and unappealing as her dress had been earlier, he would have taken it over this without a second’s hesitation. The gray shapeless gown and jacket were bad enough, burying all semblance of her delightfully curving body in coarse gray wool, but she’d scraped her hair back from her forehead so tightly that she’d lost every last coppery curl, and then tied a dreadful flat chip hat over a white linen cap. She looked like the sorriest serving girl fresh from the country, or worse, perhaps from some sooty mill town.

What had happened to the delicious Amariah Penny? And how could he possibly take her into Carlisle’s dressed like this?

“Have you changed your mind, your grace?” she asked sweetly. “You know I won’t think an iota less of you if you’ve decided you’d rather retreat than accompany me.”

One more look at that awful gray gown, and he very nearly did. Yet there was something in her eye—an extra sparkle of triumph—that stopped him. He couldn’t forget that Amariah Penny was no ordinary female, and she wouldn’t rely on ordinary female wiles, either. If she thought she’d shed him simply because she’d made herself as ugly as possible, why, then he was ready to prove her wrong.

“Nothing could make me abandon you, Miss Penny,” he said with as gallant a bow as he could muster—which, coming from him, was impressively gallant indeed. “Abandonment is not a word I acknowledge when it comes to a lady.”

“Of course not, your grace,” she said as he joined her in the hall. A footman was holding the front door open for them, and she sailed on through. “I must thank you again for offering your chaise today, your grace. It will make everything so much easier and more pleasant.”

“The pleasure is mine, Miss Penny,” he said, then stopped short with surprise for the second time that morning.

There stood his chaise where he’d left it, standing before the carriage block, the blue paint shining in the sun. But now Amariah’s man Pratt was there at the curb, too, directing three Penny House servants who were loading wicker hampers, covered with checked cloths, into the chaise.

His chaise.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, adjusting the flat brim of her hideous hat, and he caught that extra sparkle of a dare in her eye again. “I trust you are in a charitable humor today, your grace.”

“Charitable?” he said indignantly. “You’ve turned my chaise into a dray wagon! What in blazes is in those baskets, anyway?”

“Food,” she said as if it were perfectly obvious. “The places we are to visit are always in need of food for hungry folk, your grace, and I try to provide what I can. Come, there’s still plenty of room for us inside.”

“Well, that’s a blessing,” he said glumly as he followed her down the steps. How could he begin to seduce her when they’d be packed cheek to jowl with her wretched baskets like a farmer and his wife on market day? If he saw any of his friends with her like this, he’d never hear the end of it.

“Indeed it is a blessing for those we benefit, your grace,” she said, clearly refusing to hear the sarcasm in his voice. “We all do what we can, don’t we?”

He didn’t answer. He’d wager a handful of guineas that if it had been after dark and she’d been standing with him inside the club, wearing one of those handsome blue gowns, then she would not only have understood his other meaning, she would have laughed aloud.

“Here you are, your grace, seat yourself,” she continued as she climbed into the crowded chaise, “and I’ll tuck myself into this little place. I’ll grant you it’s snug, but we shall manage.”

“Snug, hell,” he muttered crossly as he squeezed his long legs into the small space she’d allotted to him. “Snug is what we’d be if you were beside me, not with this infernal basket wedged between us.”

She smiled, tipping her head to one side. Sunlight filtered through the woven brim of her hat, dappling her face with tiny pinpricks of light. “The basket won’t be here for so very long, your grace, and I promise you it will do such a world of good that you’ll feel infinitely better about yourself, much better than from the simple sensation of my skirts brushing against your leg.”

He smiled in return, thinking of what might have been if she weren’t being so damned perverse.

“It wouldn’t have been the brush of your skirts, Miss Penny,” he said, “but the pleasant warmth of your thigh pressed against mine. Nothing simple about that, I can assure you.”

“How wonderful it must be for you to have such confidence in your opinions, your grace!” she exclaimed wryly. “To be able to give your assurance as easy as that—why, I almost envy you!”

“Except that envy is one of the seven deadly sins, and you, as a parson’s daughter, would never, ever dream of sinning.”

“One must have goals, your grace,” she said serenely. “Likely yours has been to experience every one of those seven sins for yourself.”

“Not at all,” he declared. “I’m not even sure I could name the seven, let alone describe them on a comfortable, given-name basis.”

Her smile widened as she held up her hands, ticking off each sin on a finger. “Envy, pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony and sloth. Those are the seven deadly ones.”

He frowned. He wished he hadn’t asked; he didn’t like realizing that, at one time or another, he had in fact been guilty of most of the seven. Come to think of it, he was practicing at least two of them at this very moment, sitting with her in his luxurious chaise with the crest on the door.

“There are more than seven sins?” he asked warily.

“Oh, yes,” she said, too cheerfully for comfort. “There are the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance, as well as the sins of the angels. I don’t have fingers enough for them all.”

“At least there’s no sin in that,” he said with a heartiness that he didn’t quite feel. He was on shaky ground here, and they both knew it. “I suppose I should know better than to banter about sins with the vicar’s daughter.”

“At least bickering isn’t a mortal sin, your grace,” she said. “Not even on the Sabbath.”

“I suppose not.” He turned toward her, or at least as far as he could in the crowded seat. “Look here, why don’t we speak of something more agreeable than all this hellfire and damnation?”

Amused, she leaned back against the seat, an almost languid pose that was much at odds with her prim dress.

“Sins alone don’t earn damnation, your grace,” she said. “It’s only if you don’t show repentance that you’ll run into trouble when you die. But if you’d rather not speak of the state of your soul, I’ve no objection to finding a new subject.”

“Very well,” he said, more relieved than he’d want to admit. “What shall it be? The weather? The crowds in the street around us? Where we shall dine this evening? What member is cheating the club at hazard?”

Surprise flickered across her face, only for an instant—she was very good at hiding her emotions—but enough for him to know what he’d overheard between two servants last night was true.

“Wherever did you learn such a thing, your grace?” she asked with forced lightness. “A cheat at the Penny House table?”

He smiled, the advantage back in his court. “You’re not denying it.”

“Because it’s too preposterous to deny,” she declared. “Our membership consists of only the first gentlemen in the land. How could I suspect one of them of cheating?”

“Because gentlemen hate to lose, perhaps more than other men,” he said. “Because gentlemen can be desperate, too. Because if you are as pathetically trusting as you wish me to believe, then I must report you to the membership committee at once, before you let some villain steal away everything from under your nose.”

Bright pink flooded her cheeks—an angry, indignant pink, not a blush at all. “That will not happen, your grace. You have my word.”

He smiled indulgently. “You can’t simply wish away a scandal, my dear.”