Duke of Desire (Maiden Lane #12)(4)

He grunted and tried to sit up against the swaying of the carriage, eyeing her, this woman he’d only truly met once before.

He’d first seen her in a ballroom where he’d gone to meet members of the Lords of Chaos. In that den of corruption, swarming with his enemies, she’d stood out, pure and innocent. He’d warned her to leave that dangerous place. Then, when she’d walked alone back to her carriage, he’d shadowed her to make sure she made it safely there.

And that would’ve been that—had he not discovered that she was all but engaged to the Duke of Kyle—a man tasked, on orders of the King, with the risky job of bringing down the Lords of Chaos. Raphael knew that as long as Kyle pursued the Lords, Lady Jordan would be in danger. Because of this, Raphael had spent no little time worried about her. Had even gone so far as to trail her into the country to Kyle’s estate.

There he’d seen her marry Kyle—or so he’d thought.

At that point Raphael had been forced to consider the matter at an end. Lady Jordan’s protection was no longer his concern, but her husband’s. Raphael might be loath to admit it, but Kyle was more than equal to the task of protecting his wife. If Raphael had felt some small twinge of longing … well, he’d made sure to bury it deep inside, where it would die a natural death from lack of light.

Yet now …

It was as if his previously stopped heart jolted and started beating again. “Are you truly not the Duchess of Kyle?”

“No.” She reached for him, and he was astonished at how gentle her hands were. She had no cause to be gentle with him—not after what she’d been through tonight. Yet she placed both small palms about his left arm—the unharmed side—and helped him stand. He lurched across the moving carriage and half fell into the opposite seat.

“I, too, saw you married to Kyle,” Raphael said evenly.

She glared. “How? Alf and Hugh were married inside their country manor. The King was there, and I assure you there were guards everywhere.”

“I saw Kyle kiss you in the garden at the celebration afterwards,” he said. “There might have been guards, but I assure you they neglected to search the woods overlooking the garden.”

“It rather serves you right that you confused the matter since you were spying,” she said tartly. “I don’t remember Hugh kissing me, but if he did it was in a brotherly manner. We’re friends. It doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever you imagined you saw, I’m not married to Hugh.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering why she’d bothered moving him, when he felt the bulk of a fur rug bunched over his nude body. He hadn’t even realized that he was shivering.

Ah, of course. The rug that had been stored in the bench he’d been sitting on. “Yet it was well known in London that you were to marry the Duke of Kyle.”

“We let the gossips think I was the bride at the wedding because his real wife is without family or name.” She shook her head. “’Twill be a scandal when the news comes out. Is that why you saved me? Because you thought I was the duchess?”

“No.” Raphael opened his eyes and watched as she unwrapped the fichu from about her neck, exposing a deep décolletage. Her breasts were sweetly vulnerable. He glanced aside. Such things were not for one as tainted as he. “I would have rescued you in any case—duchess or not.”

“But why?” She flipped the fur away from his shoulder and pressed the flimsy fichu hard against the wound.

He inhaled, not bothering to answer her nonsensical question. Did she think him a demon?

But then she had just seen him attending what was at base a demonic rite.

“You have to stop the carriage,” she was saying. “I can’t halt the bleeding. You need a doctor. I should—”

“We’re near my home,” he said, cutting her off. “We’ll be there soon enough. Just keep pressing. You’re doing fine, Lady Jordan. You tend a wound nearly as well as you dance.”

Her blue-gray gaze flicked up to his, wide with surprise. “I wasn’t sure if you recognized me from the ball.”

This was intimate, her face so close to his. He naked and she with the upper slopes of her breasts uncovered. He felt hazy with desperate temptation. He could smell her, above the scent of his own blood—a faint flower scent.

Not cedarwood, thank God.

“You’re hard to forget,” he murmured.

She frowned as if uncertain whether he complimented or insulted her. “Is that why you rescued me? Because you knew me from that one dance?”

“No.” Not at all. He hadn’t known whom the Dionysus meant to sacrifice tonight. Hadn’t known there was to be a sacrifice—though of course that was a possibility. Would he have rescued any woman?

Perhaps.

But the moment he’d seen her, he’d known he had to act. “You seem oddly competent at handling a gunshot wound.”

“My late husband James was an officer in His Majesty’s army,” she said. “I followed him on campaign on the Continent. There were times when tending a wound became very helpful.”

He swallowed, watching her from beneath half-lowered lids, trying to think. He couldn’t afford to show weakness in these parts—it was why he’d brought his own servants from Corsica. The Lords of Chaos were powerful in this area. If the Dionysus discovered that he was wounded, he—and she—would be in peril. The Dionysus already wanted her dead and expected Raphael to kill her.