Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,31

lady needed time.

Yet she’d sent Ashmont a clandestine note. She’d given him a point, and it nagged at him. Did she give other men points? How many men? How many points?

He realized Morris was waiting for something.

“Well, then, there’s your chance,” Ashmont said. “All you have to do is buy a trinket of some kind and gaze adoringly into your adored one’s eyes.”

“Are you mad? I’ll never get near Miss Hyacinth with Medusa standing guard.”

“Why can’t you get . . . Medusa, did you say?”

The Duke of Ashmont wasn’t aware of his voice dropping a dangerous octave. He certainly wasn’t aware of the demon within, crouched at the entrance of a deep inner cave, waiting to spring. He was only aware of a familiar surge of excitement, the joyous prelude to violence.

He wasn’t aware, but Morris, like anybody else who’d spent any time with him, caught the signal. His face reddened. “Yes—meaning no offense, but—”

“Do you mean Miss Pomfret?” Ashmont’s tone was mild, but Morris edged his chair back a bit.

“Exactly what I meant,” Morris said.

The demon crawled back to wherever it had come from.

“How do you know?”

Morris looked at him. “How do you think?”

“Your mother.”

“It was a last-minute thing,” Morris said. “My mother says they did it on purpose to spite her—”

“But Miss Pomfret will be there.”

Morris nodded. “And how am I—you know—with her there?”

It took Ashmont a minute to comprehend, his mind being very busy now. “You’re afraid of what Miss Pomfret will say to you? Scared she’ll embarrass you in front of everybody? Make you cry?”

Morris nodded. “In front of Miss Hyacinth. Everybody else can go to the devil. But, you know . . .”

Ashmont couldn’t possibly know. The kinds of women he’d always spent his time with didn’t humiliate him. They didn’t speak harshly to him. He wasn’t one of the Earl of Bartham’s irrelevant younger sons but a wealthy and attractive duke. He knew this was why these women treated him the way they did, spectacular arsehole that he was. He didn’t care. He’d always seen it as a fair exchange for what he wanted from them.

Two exceptions, and these were respectable young ladies. Good girls. The bane of a man’s existence.

“Courage,” he said.

“Miss Pomfret nearly knocked you off a gallery!”

“She was annoyed with me.” Ashmont couldn’t believe he’d been so lost to reason as to lay hands on her. Louts grabbed women. He was an arsehole, yes. He wasn’t a lout.

“Annoyed? She could have killed you!”

“She won’t kill you at a fancy fair,” Ashmont said. “No weapons on offer. She could throw a pincushion at you.”

Morris’s shoulders slumped. He drank the wine Ashmont had poured for him. “Never mind. Lost cause. There’ll be hundreds of fellows, all with the same thing in mind. Don’t have a prayer.”

Hundreds of fellows.

What had Uncle Fred said?

I believe we might safely assume that nobody else will snatch her from you in the interval.

Maybe not. Then again, not all men were as fainthearted as Morris.

“Giving up too easily,” Ashmont said. “All you need is a diversion.”

Morris, lost in misery, only looked blankly at him.

“Something to call Miss Pomfret’s attention elsewhere,” Ashmont said. “That’ll be me. I’ll take the abuse and you can make sheep’s eyes at Miss Violet.”

“Miss Hyacinth.”

“Yes. We’ll do it, then. Tomorrow.” Ashmont already felt better. Something to do at last. And nobody had to know what lured him to a fancy fair. A prank. That would be enough. Easiest thing in the world to create one. And she’d simply happen to be where it happened.

“Erm . . . yes.”

Ashmont looked at his friend, who did not appear as enthusiastic as he ought. “Now what?”

“How will you get in?”

“Through the door.”

Morris said, patiently, as to one of slow comprehension, “Royals expected to attend. Foreign dignitaries.”

“And?”

“You and any of them in the same room? Remember what the King said about you after that prank with the rabbits at the fête for the Grand Duchess of Volldenham?”

“Don’t remember. Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“He said, ‘I’ll hang that goddamned Ashmont by the yardarm if he comes within a mile of any member of the Royal Family.’”

“Sailor Billy’s way of talking, that’s all.” King William IV had been a sailor, and he swore like one.

“Ashmont.”

“It’s a fancy fair, not a boring damn dinner at Windsor Castle. I’ll get in. I’ll stay as long as I like. Ten guineas says so.”

Thursday 20 June

The fancy fair fulfilled Cassandra’s predictions. Instead of Smithfield’s animal smells, expensive scents permeated the Hanover Square Rooms’ stagnant air, not

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