The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(14)

There was nothing tentative in this beautiful woman, nothing timid or small. She was wild and passionate, and when she came to her toes, one gloved hand snaking up and around the back of his neck, reaching, pulling him down, pressing closer, offering herself to him, he recognized that it was not she who was ruined.

It was he.

He lifted his lips at the thought, turning her face to the light, looking down at her closed eyes, at her parted lips, the flush on her cheeks that spread lower, over the pale rise of her breasts. She was a portrait of pleasure.

Her dark lashes lifted, and what he saw there, mixed with desire and surprise, was his future. His wife.





Chapter 5



Seraphina Surfaces Armed with American!




August 22, 1836

The Singing Sparrow

Covent Garden



“So, to be clear, you told him you were having an affair.”

Sera set the box of tapered candles down and looked to the American leaning on the bar of The Singing Sparrow, Covent Garden’s newest tavern. She’d discovered Caleb Calhoun in a similar tavern in Boston, Massachusetts, half a day after her ship from London had made port.

She’d been in search of real, warm food—something better than the cured meat and pickled veg that had played the role of sustenance during the month-long transatlantic journey—and she’d been pointed in the direction of The Bell in Hand tavern, three doors down from the rooms she’d let while she considered her next move.

The American had come off his chair when she’d entered, looming large alongside a handful of other, less imposing and more dangerous characters, making himself her protector that day. And the next. And the next.

And soon, he wasn’t simply an American, but her employer. Then, her business partner. And then, the dearest friend she’d ever had. Soon, the only person in the world who knew everything about her, and the only one who demanded nothing of her.

That he was also the only one who kept her honest was one of his lesser points at this particular moment. Nevertheless, she soldiered on. “I did not tell him that.”

Sera did not like the way Caleb leveled her with a frank green gaze, as though it were a perfectly simple question and she’d provided an unacceptable answer. “I didn’t!” she insisted. “Not really.”

“Not really,” Caleb repeated. “Sera, I don’t like the idea of being murdered by some aristocrat without warning.”

“Do you think many people enjoy the idea of their own murder?”

He cut her a look—one she imagined brothers reserved for their most insufferable sisters. “There are days when I am not opposed to the idea of yours. Particularly if your lovelorn duke is coming after me.”

“I assure you. He is not lovelorn.” He’d looked the very opposite three days earlier. He’d looked positively unmoved that she’d turned up.

Caleb grunted.

Sera ignored the tacit disagreement. “It’s not as though I named a man and provided physical description. I simply suggested that if he wished to divorce me on the grounds of adultery, I would not be opposed to such a solution.”

“That’s the kind of semantic argument an Englishwoman would use.”

She cut him a look. “I am an Englishwoman.”

“No one ever said you couldn’t try a bit harder to throw off the yoke, darlin’.”

“Please. Everyone knows that half the divorces granted by Parliament are done so after husbands and wives collude. I am more than happy to play the adulteress if it will help get me this place.”

Which it would. The moment the marriage was dissolved, The Singing Sparrow was hers, and she could begin anew. Without the past and the ghosts of it that haunted her.

“All they have to do is see you slinging a drink or two, and they’ll all believe you’re properly fallen,” Caleb replied.

“A girl can dream.” She toasted him and drank. “I’m not a very good duchess, am I?”

“I don’t know much about duchesses, but what I can tell you is that you’re nothing like you were when you wandered in off the street like a lost lamb, so there’s hope for you yet,” he allowed, crossing his arms over his wide chest. “But returning to the topic at hand, you implied we were having an affair.”

“I did not. I simply stated a fact. If he inferred such a thing . . .”

Caleb laughed. “Then he simply did what you’d intended. And when he discovers who landed on the docks beside you . . . I’m at the receiving end of the duke’s wrath. And then we shall have to fight. And then—” He waved a hand dramatically. “We shall have no choice but to be at war again.”

“You do realize that you are not an ambassador of any kind, do you not?” Sera lifted the box of candles and weaved between the tables scattered throughout the empty tavern, straightening the chairs. “I can’t be responsible for what the man thinks, Caleb,” she said, the words loud enough to travel through the empty room. “But I can say that I don’t imagine he’ll care enough about my actions in the last three years to be much trouble.”

Caleb gave a little disbelieving snort. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

Sera ignored the coarse language. “If he is angry, it will have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with how I’ve ruined his precious legacy. Again. I wouldn’t worry about your face. Which isn’t really that handsome,” she teased. “No one likes a broken nose.”