One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)(116)

She was on the verge of slipping out entirely and hiring a hack to Morland House, where she could perhaps find some restful quiet and wait for Spencer in peace. Then the musicians struck up the first few bars of a waltz, and a raucous male voice called out, “Not yet! Not yet!”

Bemused, she watched as every head in the room swiveled toward the ancient clock, where the short hand wavered just on the brink of twelve. A collective hush amplified the tick, tick, tick … as then the long hand swept past the ten. Amelia suddenly understood why the guests wouldn’t give up on the duke and simply go home.

They were waiting for the hour of twelve, of course. Breathless with anticipation to see if the Duke of Midnight would remain true to his name.

And that realization began the longest ten minutes of Amelia’s life.

She passed the first five minutes asking after and then slowly imbibing a glass of tepid lemonade.

By straightening every seam of her gloves, she managed to while away another two.

Then there came a dark, endless minute in which guilt and regret swamped her, and doubt followed close behind. Perhaps he wouldn’t come because he was still angry and didn’t want to see her. Perhaps he had no use for her now, since she was already with child.

Another minute ticked past, and she scolded herself. If he didn’t appear tonight, it meant nothing. Except that he was off somewhere else, and she would see him the next day. Or the next.

And then the entire assembly passed the final minute simply waiting, watching, listening to the clock’s inexorable ticks. When the slender minute hand finally clicked into unison with the squat hour hand, the room went dead silent. And then the clock’s cuckoo bird popped out from its window and cheerfully mocked them all.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Twelve. Dratted. Times. The wretched little wooden creature had probably never enjoyed such a rapt audience.

It was midnight. And no duke had arrived.

Well, that was that.

Now the party was truly over. The musicians struck up a waltz, as they’d no doubt been bribed to do, but no one cared. The guests murmured amongst themselves on mundane, uninteresting topics, in the way people do when they’re thinking of leaving a party.

A week’s worth of fatigue settled on Amelia’s shoulders. For heaven’s sake, she needed to rest. She pressed forward through the packed drawing room, heading for the little pocket door behind the pianoforte. It led to a service corridor, and she could use it to make her escape upstairs.

“Amelia, wait.”

The deep voice rang out over the crowd. Over the musicians. Over even the violent pounding of her heart.

“Wait right there. Please.”

Well, that couldn’t be Spencer. She’d just heard the word “please.” She wheeled around anyway and felt positively biblical when the crowd thronging the hall parted like the Red Sea. And there, standing at the other end of that freshly carved valley of humanity, was her husband. The tardy Duke of Midnight.

“It’s ten past,” she couldn’t help but say. “You’re late.”

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly, starting toward her. “I came as soon as I could.”

She shook her head, astonished. Not only “please,” but “sorry” now? In public, no less? Was this man truly her husband?

But of course he was. There was no other man on earth so handsome.

“Stay there,” he said again. “I’m coming to you.”

He took an awkward, hobbled step in her direction, and then another. A grimace pulled at his mouth. His injuries were clearly still paining him. As gratifying as it was to watch him at long last moving across a dance floor toward her, and not some preening debutante, she realized this was going to take far too long.

“For heaven’s sake, stay put,” she said. Her heel caught on the carpet fringe as she hurried toward him, and she would have fallen to the floor without the well-timed assistance of a smartly dressed gentleman in green velvet. It made her conscious, as she met her husband halfway and he pulled her into a tight embrace, that they were being observed by one and all. And “all,” in this case, referred to hundreds.

Of course she didn’t mind the attention herself. But she knew how Spencer hated crowds. She pulled him as far to the side as possible, putting his back toward the horde of onlookers.

“There now,” she said, keeping her arms laced around his neck. “Just pretend we’re dancing.”

He winced. “The ride from Braxton Hall nearly killed me. With these ribs, pretense is all I can manage.”

“Why are you in town at all? I heard you were playing cards.”

“Well, I meant to. That’s the reason I came to London. I’d no idea you’d be here. My intention was to win back Jack’s debt from the gaming lord himself. I’d arranged the game, prepared my stakes and sharpened my strategy—do you know that man’s one of the best piquet players in England?”

“I suspect you’re better.”

His mouth tipped with an arrogant grin. “I suspect I’d have proved you right, in the end. It might have taken me hours, though, and we were just sitting down to the table when your boy found me, and I read your note. And after that …” He blew out a breath. “After that, I just said to hell with it. I wrote him a bank draft instead.”

She gasped. “You didn’t!”