Devotion (49 page)

Tomorrow she would leave, pack her paltry little valise with her two dresses and tattered shoes, and return to
Huddersfield
. She simply couldn't stay here any longer. Even an existence of living under her father's vindictive brutality would be better than facing one more day of loving the Duke of Salterdon.

A sudden sharp and angry exclamation made her turn and rush to the door. Her heart stopped.

Lord Dunsworthy and his daughter stood just inside the room. Laura, her aghast gaze fixed on Salterdon, appeared on the verge of fainting. Her small hands gripped desperately at her father's arm.

"By God, what is the meaning of this?" Dunsworthy demanded with a ferociousness that seemed to shake the walls.
"Imposters!
Did you think to dupe my daughter into marrying some—some—good God, look at you, man!" he raged at Salterdon.

"I told you, Father," Laura wept on his coat. "He's a beast, a monster—"

"Nay, Laura!" Maria ran into the room. "No beast! No monster!
Simply a man who has long since grown weary of his responsibilities to everyone but himself.
Believe me when I say that His Grace is good and kind and finds
himself
in this awful turmoil only because he doesn't wish to hurt either you or his grandmother. I should count myself lucky if I could trade places with you."

For a moment, Laura stared at her blankly, her eyes swimming with tears. Then her lips fell slightly open with realization.

More softly, Maria said, "I'm certain you
understand,
m'lady
."

"I demand to see the duchess immediately,"
blustered
Dunsworthy.

"The hell you say," Basingstoke replied.

"The hell
I
say,"
came
the duchess's voice behind them, and they all turned.

Leaning her weight heavily upon her cane, she moved into the room, directing her words to Clay, but her gaze fixed on Trey. "I knew you were spitting out a lot of poppycock and balderdash.
Dreaming my backside.
You're old enough to realize that I've known every move either of you have made since the instant you took your first breaths. While you might have fooled the rest of the world occasionally, you never once fooled me. This time,
however . . .
I don't rightly know where my mind was. I suppose I was too bloody wrapped up in my own misery and grief to realize just how far His Grace would go to defy me without completely obliterating his chance to inherit my money. What a damnable choice he's been forced to make."

"Choice?"
Dunsworthy barked. "What the blazes are you talking about?"

Stopping at the piano, she laid one hand upon it almost caressingly before focusing on Salterdon again.
"The choice between devotion and obligation, Dunsworthy.
Between freedom and that damnable albatross of responsibility we are born with around our aristocratic throats."

"Choices, you say?" Clenching his fists, his jaw working, Dunsworthy declared, "The only choice to be made here, my good woman, is his cutting that deplorable hair, dressing like the distinguished man he is supposed to be, and carrying out his commitment to my daughter."

The duchess raised one eyebrow. "And if he doesn't?"

"Then I will make certain that every guest residing in this house knows what a hoax you attempted to perpetrate on myself and my daughter. That you would have had
this
imposter
(he shoved his finger at Basingstoke's face) trick
my daughter into marrying a man obviously of irrational behavior and inferior intelligence."

"If he is so irrational and inferior," said the duchess, "then why would you care for her to marry him at all?"

"He is the Duke of Salterdon, madam. I would have my only daughter duchess someday. She
will
be duchess . . . whether the lot of you like it or not."

With that, he grabbed his daughter by her arm and dragged her from the room as she wept, "But, Papa, I don't want to marry—"

"Quiet!"

"But—"

"Quiet!"

The music from the orchestra below resonated through the house. The guests had gathered in the ballroom for the last hours, imbibing the duchess's best champagne, sparkling in their Parisian creations, supposing on the reasons why His Grace had not yet joined his obviously discomposed
fiancée
or her heavily perspiring father.

In truth, he hadn't shown himself at all—to anyone.

Except Maria.

Her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, she gazed over his head at their reflection in the mirror. She tried to smile.
Impossible.
She attempted to speak. Not yet. Not until the act was done.

Taking a handful of his hair, she slid the keen edge of a razor through the thick, silken strands, watching as they drifted like feathers through her fingers and over his shoulder. Again, and the dark hair melted to the floor to lie like a coil of shadow over her toe. When the last long strands fell into her hand, she closed her fingers around them fiercely and clutched them to her breast.

"Delilah," he whispered. "You would rob me of my manhood and deliver me to the enemy."

"For your own good,
Your
Grace."

He turned in his chair and gently took her hand. His eyes were dark as slate. "You'll come with me downstairs."

"No." She backed away and reached for the fine black tailcoat with the rolled velvet collar he had tossed so carelessly onto the bed. "Besides, I've simply
nothing to wear for such a grand occasion. A black nurse's dress would hardly suffice." She self-consciously ran her hands over her skirt. "I'm certain you'll manage well enough without me."

With only a momentary unsteadiness, Salterdon left his chair. He adjusted the double-breasted waistcoat and tugged at the linen stock round his throat. "Odd that I never realized just how bloody suffocating these damn things could be. No wonder my brother curses every time he's forced to wrap himself up in one."

Maria held up his coat and averted her eyes.

He slid his arms gracefully into it. Slowly, he turned to face her. "So tell me, Miss Ashton. Do I look properly
duked
?"

"Aye," she replied without looking. "You're quite . . . smashing, Your Grace. But then . . . you always were."

"Pretty liar.
I appalled you not so long ago."

"'Twas your temperament that appalled me, sir.
Not the man.
Never the man."

He reached for her again. She slipped away, toward the door to her room. Though she tried—oh, how she tried—not to look back, she did anyway, just long enough to see him standing there, poised in his arrogant glory—a man personifying aristocracy and aloofness. Only it wasn't remoteness in his eyes which reflected the splash of bright light from the chandelier overhead.

From her hiding spot behind the drapes, Maria watched the Duke of Salterdon, with his grandmother on one side, his brother on the other, slowly, cautiously, descend the curve of stairs. Below them, the din of conversation had ceased the moment the guests looked up to discover that, at long last, their host had decided to join them. He would saunter back into their lifestyle with the ease and grace of an accomplished dancer. Tomorrow, he would be a different man. He would belong to them—and to her—the Lady Laura Dunsworthy, who did not love him—who loved another.

The crowd of his peers washed over him like a tide, swept him beyond her vision into the adjoining salon.

The music began again and Maria returned to her room, took up a book and opened it, knowing, even as she did her best to focus on the blurry words, to comprehend them would be impossible. Again and again she was forced to endure the sounds of frivolity from below: laughing, the strains of violin music that made her want to weep.

But she would not weep! She would not feel sorry for herself. She had known love for the first, mayhap the only time in her life, and that was enough.

Then she saw the dress.

It hung from a hook on the wardrobe: a flowing scarlet creation reminiscent of ancient Greece. A note was pinned to the bodice.

"I'll dance with you in the moonlight."

She couldn't! Dare she? Imagine her, who had never worn aught but gray and black. What could he be thinking
,
to tease her in such a way?

What harm could come of it?

Her hands trembling, she pulled off her clothes, allowing them to fall where they may, kicking them
aside as she reached for the sumptuous gown that was finer than anything she might have dreamt up in her own vivid imagination.

In a breath, she slid it on, felt it fall soft and light around her body, flowing like crimson water down her legs to the floor. Then she spun toward the mirror.

Fitting beneath her breasts, accentuating her bosom, the gauze dress exposed her shoulders and much of her breasts. The back plunged low, to the small of her spine, and from there spilled in tiny gathered folds to an abundant train. All was edged in the most delicate lace dyed the same color as the dress. The train sparkled with some iridescence that looked like stars flung upon a sunset heaven.

With a quiver of thrill, Maria spun around, closed her eyes and allowed the distant music to uplift her. For hours, it seemed, until the candle burned low, she glided in and out of the shadows, little noticing when the fire grew dim and the room cold. Round and round she twirled, dipping and swaying to the sounds of the crooning violins, then . . .

She stopped.

The music.
His
music.
Vague, at first.
Soft.
A piano litany that drew her to the door and out into the corridor, her feet hesitant, then swift as she flew down the sprawling corridor to the music room.

Maria's Song.

Alone in the vast, shadowed room, moonlight spilling through the open French doors, Salterdon looked up from the pianoforte, and his hands became still. His eyes narrowed. His face became impassioned.

"Don't stop," she pled. "I would hear it all to the end once more."

"I would end it with you in my arms," he replied, and stood, extended one hand, and smiled,

Too eagerly perhaps, she moved to him, touched one fingertip to his before melting against him, sighing as his strong arm closed around her waist and swept her up, crushing her momentarily as he kissed her mouth.

Effortlessly, they glided into the rhythm—one, two— one. two—one, two, three, four—spinning, dipping, the music coming low and from deep in his chest, purring through his lips against her ear, turning her knees to water and her heart into fire.

"Maria.'''
He opened his mouth and breathed upon her shoulder. "I—"