One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)(7)

This was the very attitude responsible for her brother’s debt. Jack would not quit the card table, even when he had no hope of recouping his losses. He stayed in, risked hundreds he did not have, because he wanted to win one last hand. It was precisely the temperament one might expect from a family such as the d’Orsays—a lineage rich with centuries of pride and valor, perpetually strapped for gold.

Lady Amelia wanted to best him at something. She wanted to see him brought low. And through no particular skill or perception of her own, she was perilously close to succeeding.

Spencer came to an abrupt halt. Implausibly, the room kept spinning around him. Damn it, this couldn’t be happening. Not here, not now.

But the signs were unmistakable. His pulse pounded in his ears. A wave of heat swamped his body. The air was suddenly thick as treacle and tasted just as vile.

Devil, damn, blast. He needed to leave this place, immediately.

“Why have we stopped?” she said. “The waltz isn’t over.” Her voice sounded as though it came from a great distance, filtered through cotton wool.

“It’s over for me.” Spencer swung his gaze around the room. An open set of doors to his left beckoned promisingly. He attempted to release her, but she clutched at his shoulders and held him fast. “For God’s sake,” he said, “let me—”

“Let you what?” Her eyes darting to the side, she whispered, “Let you go? Let you abandon me here on the dance floor, to my complete and total humiliation? Of all the unchivalrous, ungentlemanly, unforgivable …” When she ran out of descriptors, she threw him an accusatory glare that implied a thousand more. “I won’t stand for it.”

“Very well, then. Don’t.”

He slid his hands to her waist, grasped tight with both hands, and bodily lifted Lady Amelia d’Orsay—two, four … six inches off the floor. Until they looked one another eye-to-eye, and her slippers dangled in midair.

He spared a brief moment to savor the way indignant shock widened those pale blue eyes.

And then he carried her out into the night.

Chapter Two

Before Amelia could even catch her breath, the duke had swept her straight through the doors. They emerged onto the exact same circlet of terrace where she’d argued with Jack, not a half hour ago. The Bunscombe gardens were getting good use this evening.

Dropping her to the ground with dispatch, Morland warded off her complaint with an open palm. “You asked for it.” Then he sagged against a marble pillar, tugging at his cravat. “Bloody hell, it’s hot in there.”

Amelia quietly reeled on her feet, simultaneously infuriated and exhilarated by the way he’d so easily lifted her and carried her from the room. She wasn’t precisely a wisp of a girl. But as sturdily framed as she was, he was definitely more so. As he’d lifted her, she’d felt his dense shoulder muscles rippling beneath her palms.

Oh, yes. He was powerfully built indeed.

Well, and what now? She’d known she was treading untested ground with her bold teasing. But then, she’d been in the mood to take risks. She’d already lost Briarbank, lost Jack, probably lost any remaining marital prospects after her wild charge across the ballroom to claim His Grace’s hand. She had no reputation or fortune left to protect; why not have a little fun? He was an attractive, enigmatic, powerful man. It had been intoxicating, pushing the boundaries of propriety as she’d never dared before, not knowing what manner of response she might provoke.

Whatever response she’d expected, it hadn’t been this. Bodily abducted from the ballroom? Ha. Let those debutantes giggle at her now.

“And to think,” she said wonderingly, “I defended you against all those rumors of barbarism.”

“Did you?” He made a gruff noise in his throat. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Don’t test me again. In the end, I always come out ahead—at cards, at negotiation, at everything.”

She laughed. “Oh, do you?”

“Yes.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Because I possess the singular bit of sense no one in your family seems to share.”

“And what’s that, pray tell?”

“I know when to walk away.”

She stared at him. Light spilled out from the ballroom, illuminating his sculpted, aristocratic profile. With his curling forelock and the marble behind him, he could have been part of a Greco-Roman frieze. Immortally handsome.

And deathly pale.

“Are you feeling well?” she asked.

“Four hundred pounds.”

“What?”

He closed his eyes. “Four hundred pounds, if you leave me this instant. You’ll have the bank draft in the morning.”

Stunned, she blinked down at the paving stones. Four hundred pounds. Four hundred pounds, and all she need do was turn around and leave? Jack’s debt, paid. Her summer at Briarbank, restored.

“Turn those hapless d’Orsay fortunes around, Lady Amelia. Learn when to walk away.”

Good Lord. He was serious. She spared herself a brief moment of self-deprecating irony, that while he wouldn’t think of paying four hundred pounds for her favors, he was eager to hand over the sum if she would simply go away. Vile man.

Oh, but his face had turned a very peculiar shade. In the ballroom, his cheeks had blazed red with anger, but now his complexion was the color of ash. She could hear the air dragging in and out of his lungs. And was it a trick of the moonlight, or was his hand trembling, just a little, where it rested atop the balustrade?