A Devil Named DeVere (The Devil DeVere)(2)

“And the same heaven awaits you,” she murmured before taking him slowly and completely into her delicious and decadent mouth.

***

“There you are, my dears!” exclaimed Lady Capheaton when the two couples returned to their supper box. “I’d begun to fear you’d become lost.” Lady Capheaton gave her daughter’s escort a scathing look.

“Pray forgive us, Mama. It is entirely my fault, “Lady Caroline said. “I didn’t mean to worry you, but I was so completely engrossed by the mural of the Ruins of Palmyra. Lord DeVere has been there, you know, to nearly all the ancient ruins. When I discovered him a veritable fount, I took obscene advantage of him.” She looked to him with artless innocence, and DeVere thought he would swallow his own tongue. Fount, indeed! She nearly sucked me dry.

In one night, his proposed bride-to-be had revealed a depth of cunning and guile he never would have thought she possessed. In truth, their entire assignation had been purely her design, a revelation as equally disturbing and sublime as was the expert skill with which Caro had brought him to completion.

But while he’d initially been excited by her lively sense of adventure and even more delighted to know he wouldn’t experience a cold marriage bed, her actions now provoked myriad questions. Foremost was just how she had come by such intimate, carnal knowledge. Although Ludovic had never possessed a jealous nature, he had also never entertained the notion of sharing his future wife with another man. That one, or more, may have already preceded him was both irksome and highly disconcerting.

“We have an especial guest who has been patiently awaiting your return, Caroline.” Lady Capheaton’s voice interrupted his ruminations.

“Oh? And who might that be, Mama?” Caroline asked with barely veiled disinterest.

“Why, it’s his Grace of Beauclerc who honors us with his presence,” Lady Capheaton answered in her cloyingly sycophantic style.

A mincing, middle-aged dandy broke from conversation with Caroline’s father with a sweep of his leg and a flourishing bow. His coat cut from midnight velvet, his red-heeled shoes adorned with diamond buckles, and his elaborately-embroidered silk waistcoat could only have come from Paris. Caroline’s eyes widened in surprise while the duke’s glimmered with interest.

“Then I am honored, indeed, Your Grace.” Caroline abruptly released Ludovic’s arm to puddle her petticoats in a deep obeisance to the duke.

“My dearest Lady Caroline.” The duke took her hand as she rose, smoothing his lips over her fingers. “The reports of your pulchritude were sadly understated.” Ludovic noted a display of uneven and discolored teeth when he spoke.

“The duke is an old and dear friend of your father’s and newly widowed,” Lady Capheaton explained to her daughter. “Recently out of mourning, he has come to join our party with a particular desire to meet you.”

“You honor me too much, Your Grace,” Carline replied breathily, fluttering her lashes over modestly downcast eyes.

What the hell is the vixen playing at? Does she think to make me jealous? Ludovic discarded the notion as meritless, as he’d already expressed his intent to wed her. He stepped forward to put an end to the game and was met with the duke’s supercilious stare. Until that moment, Ludovic had watched the interaction between the duke and the Capheatons with a sense of detached amusement, but the haughty stare sent his hackles rising as if they were a pair of gamecocks being set-to for a match.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Beauclerc lifted a penciled brow.

“DeVere,” he answered.

“The Viscount?” asked the duke.

“His heir,” Ludovic volunteered more defensively than he would have liked. He made a second effort to mark his claim. “The Lady Caroline and I have just returned from a most delightful little promenade.”

The penciled lines became ludicrous squiggles. “Have you, indeed?”

Casting Ludovic a reproachful look, Caroline blurted, “Lord DeVere refers to the Ruins of Palmyra. From a distance, one would surely believe it real. It is so life-like, it stirs the blood. Have you seen it, Your Grace?”

“I don’t believe I have,” the duke answered. “But since it is a while yet before the illuminations, perhaps you could show it to me?” He offered her his velvet-clad arm.

Caroline’s gaze flicked from Ludovic to the duke and back again. Her lips formed the slightest moue as if she weighed upon the scales of her mind the relative merits of a mere viscount-to-be against the certainty of a ducal cornet. DeVere realized she had found his side of the scale wanting when, with no more than an apologetic shrug, Caroline placed her dainty, white-begloved fingers upon the sleeve of the Duke of Beauclerc. Without even a final glance back at her erstwhile lover, Caroline and her duke departed.

Ludovic was incredulous. Although his first inclination was to wipe the duke’s smug expression from his bloated face, preferably with his fist, he realized the true rage he should have felt never surfaced. Certainly his pride was injured, but he would have expected to feel far more upon being so properly jilted. Right curious, that.

Chuckling at his dispassionate conclusion, Ludovic took up Beauclerc’s abandoned drink with an inward smile as another consoling thought came to mind. The burning question of Caroline’s capacity for fidelity no longer plagued him, but he would soon ensure that it plagued the good duke instead.