Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,15
hair and caught in the embroidered white lacy thing that filled in the low neckline of her dress. The cloudy sky had darkened, but even in the parlor’s gloom he could make out bits of twigs and grass in her hair, deepened to mahogany in the gloom.
If he tried to pick out the debris, something bad, possibly fatal, would happen to him. Of this he had no doubt.
“You don’t know,” she said. “You simply don’t know.”
He knew a few things now. The man he’d broken was more than a former champion jockey. Keeffe was her bodyguard and mentor and probably closer to her than any family member, except perhaps the sister who had Morris in palpitations.
Among other concerns, Ashmont knew that if he didn’t act, her brothers would be fighting for the privilege of shooting him at thirty paces. He didn’t want to fight her brothers, who’d never done him any harm. He didn’t want to cause her family trouble. He was an arsehole. He knew this. All the same, even he had lines he didn’t cross. Precious few, but there they were.
This morning he’d come sickeningly close to killing Ripley, two women, and one of England’s greatest jockeys. Even now, it was even odds Keeffe would make it.
All of it done with the same pistol.
Nobody dead yet, but the consequences were sweeping down and piling up like an avalanche in the Alps.
“Tell me you’ve a better idea,” he said. “I’m all ears.”
Silence.
It went on for a while.
“I can hear you thinking,” he said. “Nothing comes to mind, does it? So here’s my idea—”
“Your ideas lead to people screaming and things exploding.” She turned to him. “I was there, you know, the night you and your friends smuggled the goat into Almack’s.”
“You were there? Really?” At close quarters, he noticed the little black cravat she wore under the lacy collar. It must have come undone, and she’d made a bad job of refastening it, because it was crooked. The collar was wrinkled and the lacy something-like-a-shirt it was attached to was smudged with dirt. One of the belt buckle prongs had torn a large hole in the silk belt or ribbon or sash or whatever it was. His hands itched—to right matters or make them worse, he wasn’t sure. It was distracting; that much he knew.
“It was my first Season and my first Almack’s ball,” she said. “I’d heard stories. After that personal experience of your gift for chaos, I stopped dismissing them as exaggerations. When it comes to you and your accomplices, the papers don’t need to exaggerate. They can’t. It’s impossible to claim anything more outrageous than what you actually do.”
“Which is why this will work. I’m outrageous. You’re outrageous.”
She stared at him. “I? Like you? You’re not yet nine and twenty. You’ve had every advantage: power, rank, money, looks, not to mention your gender. What have you done with them? What have you accomplished, besides dissipation and destruction? All I did was cross your path unwittingly, and now everybody I care about is in trouble, and the man who helped me keep my sanity is likely to die.”
She brushed past him, yanked the door open, and stalked out, slamming it behind her.
He stood for a moment, debating: persevere or give her temper time to quiet?
He’d waited too long five days ago and let a promising future get away.
He went after her.
Feeling hemmed in on all sides, Cassandra strode along the gallery. The air was oppressive, the clouds auguring a storm. Dust rose from the courtyard below, where another coach was on its way out. Still, she was outside. She was not in a small room with the Duke of Ashmont. She could breathe properly. Think properly.
Almack’s. She had to bring that up—as though he’d remember her. He hadn’t remembered her then, when she stood in front of him, resplendent in a grown-up, blue striped satin dress, and longing to dance.
And he . . .
She couldn’t remember what he wore. She’d been bedazzled. She and Alice, eighteen years old, with three years’ Continental schooling and travels behind them, were vastly more sophisticated than any other debutantes. All the same, Cassandra reeled when she came face-to-face with him again.
She saw him, some sort of glittering deity, approach to pay his respects to Aunt Julia. Cassandra was standing next to her. She could hear her aunt’s voice, so clearly: “Ashmont, you will remember my niece, Cassandra Pomfret, I’m sure.”
And he, obviously not knowing Cassandra from Adam, bestowed upon her a