The Duke of Morewether’s Secret (9 page)

“What?” Why was Dalton talking about horses? He was having a hell of a time following his friend’s conversation. First it was his pregnant wife and then horses. “Not horses. The mares are all fine.”

Dalton set his glass on the table with a sudden, heavy thud. “Don’t tell me that crazy arsonist is back in town?”

“Jesus, no.” Oh, the horror. It didn’t matter how good a lay she was, there weren’t enough trees in the garden to put up with that lunatic again.

“What then?” Dalton signaled the waiter and requested sandwiches.

“She doesn’t even like me. She always looks at me with disdain.”

“Who?”

“But, she’s fascinating and beautiful, and I think about her all the time. Anna told me she loves horses. Isn’t that perfect? She let me kiss her.”

Dalton’s mouth hung open in shock. “You kissed Anna?”

“No! Anna’s like my sister.”

“Well, you had me wondering. Who is
she
then?”

Christian hesitated. If he spoke her name, even to someone he trusted as much as Dalton, then his dilemma would be validated. There would be no more pretending what he was experiencing wasn’t real.

“Come on, who is she?”

The sandwiches arrived along with a steaming pot of coffee. Christian wrinkled his nose at the dark liquid and washed down a mouthful of roast beef and crusty bread with another deep swallow of liquor.

“Come on,” Dalton urged, “Who is she?”

Christian swallowed hard. “Thea.” He watched Dalton hard, monitoring his reaction. Would his friend laugh at him? This was probably a big mistake. It seemed like confessions often were.

A slow grin appeared. “Aha.” Dalton made a toasting motion with his half-filled glass. “We like her, too.”

“Who likes her?”

“We all like her. Everyone who meets her likes her. You really can’t help it, you know.”

Oh, Christian knew all right. “But why did you think I liked her?”

Dalton shrugged. “I don’t know. You get a little high-strung when you’re around her.”

“I do not.” High-strung? What did that mean? Horses and little dogs are high strung. He was not high strung, and he resented the comparison.

Dalton rolled his eyes. “Right.”

Christian recalled his abrupt departure from the garden. And the way he had left the dinner party in a huff. And how he couldn’t ever seem to make an intelligent comment around her. “Maybe a little.”

Dalton nodded again. “I can see why you’re all wound up, though. She’s not your average girl. Certainly not like any woman you’ve set your eye on before.”

She is extraordinary
. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” Another long drink and the glass was empty once more. “She’s never going to speak to me again.”

“You said that already. What did you do?”

Christian didn’t have the energy to try to pretend like everything that had gone wrong wasn’t entirely his own fault. “I made her dance with me — which was mortifying, by-the-way, and then I kissed her in the garden.”

Dalton’s eyes grew wide. “Oh. Did she slap you?”

If he was going to recount his miserable failure out loud, he would need more whiskey. When none was forthcoming, he reached over and took Dalton’s glass and poured the contents into his own then promptly drained it, setting the dead soldier on the floor next to the chair. “No. She kissed me back.”

A toe-curling, groin-tightening, blow-the-top-off-my-head kiss.

“Did you shove your hand down her dress or something, and that’s when she slapped you?”

“No, she never slapped me. What’s with you and the slapping?”

Dalton laughed and shrugged. He leaned back in the chair, all evidence proving his friend was relaxed and enjoyed making him uncomfortable. “It seems fitting with all your stolen kisses and liaisons in coat closets, that a slap or two only seems fair to the rest of us.”

“Well it didn’t start tonight.”

“All kidding aside, man, what happened? It’s something big or you wouldn’t be drunk, alone, in a club full of unruly jackanapes.”

“I don’t really know,” Christian admitted. He really didn’t. One minute he was hot and melting, pressing her against the length of him, tasting the intoxicating Mediterranean beauty. The next, his heart was racing, and he couldn’t get enough air. When he pushed her away, his hands were shaking. Now, with the luxury of hours to look back and review, he was embarrassed, but, at the time, he had been terrified.

“Did you say something? Were you caught?” There was no teasing in Dalton’s voice now.

He sat forward in his chair, his forearms on his thighs, his hands hanging loose between his knees. “I pushed her away, rather roughly, really.” Christian said the words quietly, his voice low and directed towards the floor. “Then I made her go.” He shook his head, incredulous.

Dalton said nothing although his expression registered disbelief.

“I thought I was having an attack or something. I couldn’t breathe, and I was sweating and shaking.” He scrubbed his face with his palms.

“I do not profess to know women, Christian. Generally, I’d say you know them much better than I, but there is one universal truth.” When Christian raised his head and met Dalton’s gaze, his friend continued. “If you say ‘I’m sorry’ and convince her you mean it, you can often be excused for any number of male sins.”

Christian leveled a look at him. “
I’m sorry
? Are you serious? This is your answer?”

“What do you have to lose? If she’s never speaking to you again what more could go wrong?”

Christian shuddered to think of the possibilities. But, maybe his friend was right.

“It’ll work. I apologize all the time.” Dalton waved his hand expansively. “Sometimes I don’t even have any idea what I’m apologizing for, but I do it. Married life is much easier if you realize everything is your fault.”

“But I’m not married,” Christian pointed out. He thought this was fairly obvious, but maybe not.

“How long have you been sitting here sucking down scotch lamenting the fact she’s through with you?” Dalton looked pleased with himself like he’d scored the winning hand in
vingt-et-un
.

“Long enough.”

“Exactly. You need to apologize. Tomorrow you present yourself at her townhouse. Take her flowers. Things will work out.” Dalton nodded sagely. “I guarantee it.”

“Guarantee it?” Christian asked, hopeful.

“Guarantee it,” Dalton agreed.

Then why wait until tomorrow?

Chapter Eight

“Anna.” Christian called into the crack of the door. “Anna.” He rapped lightly. After several seconds when that didn’t rouse a response, he pressed his lips against the wood of the door and the door jamb. “Anna,” he whispered, a little more forcefully this time. How could she not hear him? Pretty soon someone else would and then there’d be trouble. He tried singing her name. “Aaannaaa.” It was easy with the vowels on each end to extend her name into a singsong that could go on for quite a while. He was preparing a falsetto when the door swung open, and he teetered into her room.

“What? Is the house on fire? Is that mad mistress of yours back?” Anna stood in the open doorway clutching the neck of her white nightgown. She sounded genuinely alarmed which Christian thought might have been his fault.

“Anna, Anna, Anna,” he crooned. He thought it might soothe her. It didn’t.

“Oh my word. Are you drunk?” Annoyance replaced fear in her voice. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” Christian noted, but he thought in fact he might indeed be inebriated since he kept sliding along the door jamb.

“No, you’re drunk, and you don’t smell good.”

Christian shrugged and flashed the Yes-But-I’m-Handsome look. He closed one eye so he could get a better idea how Anna took it. Maybe the other eye instead. Ummm, no.

“What time is it?”

The clock in the upstairs parlor chimed the half hour. “I don’t know. Something thirty,” he suggested, trying to be helpful.

“It’s two-thirty, Christian.” Her little hands now rested on her hips, and she looked at him with all kinds of fiery wrath.

“If you already knew what time it is then why did you ask?” Women were so confusing.

She didn’t say anything just stared at him with her lips sealed in a tight line.

“You know you’re my favorite sister.” He tried Friendly Brother Smile # 1.

Now her eyebrow quirked. “Nothing makes me happier at this very minute than to remind you I am not, in fact, your sister.”

Christian straightened against the doorjamb and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You might as well be. I’ve always considered you as such.” All those years of teasing and bickering alongside his actual sister, and Christian had long since stopped making any distinction.

“Why are you waking me at this ungodly hour drunk as a, I don’t even know what, but really drunk?”

“I need your help. Really, really, reeeaaaaally badly.”

Anna pushed at his chest. “Dear God, man, step back. Your breath could kill a person.”

He clapped his hand over his mouth. “Onions and whiskey,” he offered through the muffling hand.

“Are you sure it’s not musk ox or something?” Anna turned back into her room leaving him standing at the door. She slid her arms into her wrapper, glaring at him the whole while.

“Will you help me?”

“I can’t believe I’m even going to entertain this idea, especially after the way Thea left the ball tonight.” Her arms crossed over her small chest. All five feet of her loomed, formidable, several feet away.

“How did she leave?” He almost stopped her before she could tell him. He really didn’t want to know how badly he’d hurt her, but he deserved to know, as a small punishment.

Anna tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “In a state. I’ve known Thea a long, long time, and I know when she’s upset.”

A state. “Was she crying?”

“No, she wasn’t crying. Frankly, I don’t think she would give you the satisfaction.”

Somehow that made him feel marginally better. “Will you help me?”

“It’s two-thirty in the morning,” she whined. “Why can’t you get one of your friends to help you?”

“Because it has to be you.”

Anna heaved a heavy sigh. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

“I’m going to go apologize to her.”

“At two-thirty in the morning? Are you daft?” She stared at him for a second. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” he insisted.
I am so drunk
. “It has to be now. Right now. I need you to come with me right now. How soon can you get dressed?”

“Do you really think this is a good idea — your going over there when you’re this soused?”

“I’m not that lushed.” He probably could have really sold that better if he hadn’t listed to the left when the room tilted. “Please, Anna, I need to do this. It’ll be fun.”

“So you’re going to drag me out of my warm bed and into a carriage and drive several blocks, whereupon you’re going to rouse another sleeping woman from her warm bed. A woman, mind you, who probably won’t want to speak to you, so you can ease your mind?” Anna stared at him, fixated, as if he couldn’t be serious. Then she shook her head as if she didn’t believe what she was going to say next. “All right, this I have to see.”

Christian clapped his hands together. “Great. Throw a frock on. Let’s go.”

“Don’t rush me. Ten minutes won’t guarantee the success of this foolish endeavor. Do something about your breath while I’m gone.” She turned and left him tilting in the doorway.

A few moments later, she was shaking him awake where he’d taken a seat on the hallway floor outside her room. “Come on,” she urged, wiping the remains of tooth powder from his cheek. “There more I think about it, the better this idea is. For me, of course. You’re going to make a complete ass of yourself, and I can’t wait to see it.”

“You knock on the door,” Christian instructed Anna as he pushed her up the steps of Thea’s townhouse.

“Why can’t you do it?” Anna balked on the third step, leaning back against his palms.

“Might not open the door if she thinks it’s me.” That sounded prudent to Christian. How pickled could he be if he was able to think this clearly?

“What are you going to do, hide in the bushes? “Anna laughed at her own joke, but at least she lifted the knocker and rapped on the door. No one answered.

“You must be doing it wrong.” Christian waggled his finger at the brass knocker hanging on the door.

“How could I do it wrong? It’s a door knocker. It’s not like there’s fifteen ways to knock on the door,” Anna pointed out. “Maybe the problem is it’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“Knock louder,” he instructed. When she rapped again, only slightly heavier this time, Christian huffed out a frustrated breath. “Never mind, I’ll do it.”

He balled a fist and pounded on the door. “Thea,” he called up towards the second floor of the townhouse.

“New plan, then?” Anna made no effort to hide her laughing smile.

Christian ignored her and pounded again, three hard raps on the door. When the door opened revealing a bleary eyed footman, Christian shoved Anna in front of him.

“Good evening,” Anna said to the servant sounding every bit as if their appearance on his employer’s stoop was entirely normal.

“It is three o’clock in the morning,” the footman said.

“Indeed, good man. I am certain your mistress is abed at this hour, but if you would be so kind to send word to her she has visitors.” She pushed past him into the foyer. “We’ll wait here for her reply.”

The footman didn’t move. Instead he looked at Anna and then Christian, then back to Anna.

“It’s quite all right,” Anna said soothingly. “I know this is an unusual request, and the hour is late, but I assure you my friend here,” she reached up and patted Christian’s shoulder, “will not be dissuaded from his course of action. If Miss Ashbrook refuses us, I’ll see to it we leave quietly.”

“Wait here.” The footman eyed Christian with an untrusting gaze, then turned on his heel to head up the stairs. Christian’s gaze followed the footman up several steps before he noticed Thea on the landing.

He was finally willing to admit he might be more inebriated than he’d originally thought. Thea’s long white wrapper cinched around her waist, flowed down her long legs and pooled at her feet. The goddess personified.