The Virgin Huntress (The Devil DeVere #2)(34)

“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 recently widowed,” Lady Capheaton explained to her daughter. “Now 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 lifelike 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-be-gloved 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!

***

“Damme,” said Ned a few hours later in Ludovic’s crested carriage. “I’m stunned. Ludovic Lord DeVere, legendary lover, cast aside like some old shoe?”

“Lady Caroline and that old fop? I never would have believed it,” Annalee agreed. “It’s truly beyond comprehension. You were, by all appearances, the perfect couple.”

“Your naiveté astonishes me,” Ludovic said.

“I must say I regret to see your cynicism prove itself yet again,” Ned replied.

“Cynicism?” Ludovic laughed. “I am nothing if not a realist, dear Ned. In all fairness, do you honestly think that in Caroline’s stead, you would not also have grabbed for the golden goose? Damned if I wouldn’t have!” He gave them a flash of his even, white teeth. “But don’t fear I shall spend any tears over it, ol’ chum, especially when she consoled me in advance with such a magnificent parting gift.”

“What do you mean?” Annalee asked.

DeVere’s lips twitched. “Dear, sweet, innocent Annalee, I leave it to your devoted husband to illuminate you.”

Ned scowled. Annalee blushed. “So it’s truly over between you?” she asked.

“Truly, it never was,” DeVere said. “I never even made the formal proposal and would not have pursued her in the first place were it not for my damned pater. Though he didn’t take to the shackles himself until he’d turned the half-century mark. If there’s aught that I can’t abide, it’s hypocrisy. The bloody devil rebuking sin is what that is!”