Duchess Decadence (2 page)

“We will be just outside the door,” Lavinia said with a reassuring touch to Thea’s arm.

“Good luck, Duchess,” Harrison added.

With a quick nod, Thea closed the door. Her petticoats whispered as she turned.

Wynchester sprawled over the desk chair, legs stretched and eyes closed. He looked like an angel fallen from the heavens—broken, bewildered. Her gaze softened. Somewhere between Wynchester’s expectation of god-like perfection and her realms of embittered disgrace, a less hostile plain
must
exist. She sighed. Even if no such place existed, loyalty to the Wynchester title and the many tenants who depended on the duke were enough for her to remain constant.

Beneath her sleeve, Thea touched the weighted dice inside the small pockets her new-and-clever maid, Polly had concealed behind the beading. Cunning, indeed. But to succeed, she’d need something more than cunning. She’d need Grace. How else were two such hearts as theirs—proud and battered and wary—to come together once again?

“Are you ready for our game?” she asked.

Scythe-like eyelashes flew apart and stormy eyes fixed on her face.

“This is no game, Thea Marie.”

“Everything is a game, Duke.” And the stakes were much higher than he could imagine.

“You can call our life a game,” his tone held a sneer, “only because society’s shaming means nothing to you.”

Thea bristled, reliving the sum of a hundred hollow looks of spite and shallow triumph that had been cast her way since she’d left Wynchester.

“Even if that were true,” she said, “
I
am not the one who sauntered into Sophia’s home like a leather-headed, gin-bitten drunk.”

“Not gin.” He snorted. “An exorbitant indulgence that Harrison imports—Armagnac.” He lifted his right brow. “One way or another, it seems my predisposition for
decadence
will be my ruin.”

“A single night’s excess will hardly be your ruin.” She frowned. “Even if it was,
I
would not be the cause.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Slowly, he rose from the chair, eyes hurling accusation with the same force he’d use to thrust one of the centuries-old Wynchester swords. “Every choice I made has been a sacrifice to the Worthington name and Wynchester title, the name and title you carry and have blackened without cause or feeling.”

Without cause? Without feeling?
She inhaled sharply.
My pregnancy ended in violence and pain because your loyalties lay elsewhere.

The words clanged against her teeth, straining to be spat in a final act of defiance that would, no doubt, result in a permanent rupture. She waited for the dark haze of anger, fear, and grief to dissipate, as she learned it would do with time and steadied breath. Old wounds may fester, but, right now, the slanderer Eustace was scheming his way back into their lives, and she believed he would be more than happy to see her husband in the grave.

She donned her most haughty expression, the one she used when returning a cut-direct.

“Well,” she said, “
I
never asked you to sacrifice for me.”

He held his breath as if he, too, struggled to restrain horrible words. Internally, she crumpled.
Damnation
. Even three sheets in the wind, he held sway over her spirit. She had courage and cunning but she hadn’t the strength. Truly, she hadn’t. And what deity in heaven or on earth would grant her angry heart Grace? The air was hot. Her skirts were heavy. Unattractive perspiration dampened her neck. She looked toward her mottled reflection in the night-dark window.

Run
, her reflection ordered.

“No,” he said softly.

Wynchester’s quiet resignation slithered under her skin. Her fingers stretched and stiffened inside tight gloves.

“Pardon?” she asked.

“No,” he repeated, “you never asked me to sacrifice for you.”

Something in his tone forced her to turn. His gaze dealt a stunning blow.

“And if I had?”

He straightened. “Let us lay the past aside. I am here, aren’t I? I responded
at once
to your challenge. Have you no guess as to why?”

She held his words in mental hands as if they formed the last piece of a puzzle. She turned them this way and that, but no matter which direction she tried, his words did not fit the scene she’d painstakingly created during their years of separation. She knew he wished for her return—but believed he acted for propriety’s sake, not his own.

…Yet the yearning in his gaze was not just for the restoration of appearances.

A slanted smile lifted one side of his mouth as he touched the pewter cup on Sophia’s desk. “What say you, Decadence? Shall we rattle fate?”

“We have a wager,” she said, almost by rote.

“Yes,” he drew out the single syllable and dangled the word into the silence.

She moistened her lips. “If I win, we discuss a Parliamentary divorce.”

Such simple words for a public scandal that would, in truth, be Wynchester’s ruin.

He veiled his gaze with lowered lids. “And if
I
win, you return home for the summer, with further consideration to be given at summer’s end.”

Home
, for her, had been with The Furies. She’d never once set foot in the fortress he’d built following the riots. She swallowed.

“If you win, I will return for the summer.”

“Well, then, we are agreed.” He dropped the dice into the cup and swirled. “Shall we?”

He tossed the contents on the table.
Five and four
.

“A respectable throw,” she said.

He picked up the dice, dropped them into the cup, and scowled. “If I win,” he said slowly, “you will not
just
return. You will make
every
effort.”

Request-framed-as-fact. Now
there
was the Wynchester she recognized.

“I will,” she echoed, “make every effort.”
God help her
.

He threw again.
Two and six
.

She exhaled with relief, her worst uncertainty allayed. Against those throws, her two sets of weighted dice—one three and two, one four and two—could only lose. She plucked the cup from his hands and then dropped her arm, rattling the bone against pewter to block her exchange of dice.

She applied gentle pressure to his chest until he sat back down. She circled behind his chair, trailing fingers along his shoulders. As she removed the non-weighted dice, she leaned down and placed her cheek against his. Then, she inhaled.

His was not the country-spring scent favored by men of the court, but a scent of richness and spice, a scent as expansive as the timbre of his voice was deep. It lingered, as did the vague presence of a thousand shared-and-forgotten moments. He’d been hers for a very long time. Longer, even, than they’d been wed. And yet, he’d never been hers at all. He’d been ice and crag, as distant and isolated and beyond her power to reach as the mass of glacier and rock known as Old Greenland.

“When my father pledged me to you,” she whispered as she tucked the honest dice he’d used inside her sleeve, “I was little beyond the cradle.”

A
slight
exaggeration, but not entirely untrue.

Their unusual childhood betrothal had been more of an honor-bind than a legal contract. Thea’s father had been indebted to the duke and the only possible payment was his deceased wife’s property, held in an unbreakable trust for Thea. A settlement had been proposed. Thea Marie had been presented. Thea’s bloodlines met the dying duchess’s expectation; her property met the duke’s need. The anticipated marriage brought a satisfactory resolution to all.

All but the two whose lives would be joined
.

“You were well-beyond milk-and-toast. You,”—the duke made an indeterminate sound—“with your large, knowing eyes fixed on my every move, as if I’d been summoned solely for your entertainment.”

Thea’s memory was less visual—a queasy flutter that had spun in her heart when the serious, red-cheeked boy had grasped her hand in his and bowed.

“No matter what my age,” she said, “from the moment our fathers came to terms, I was raised by my family to belong to yours. I was drilled in duty, history, and practice until my greater loyalty belonged to the Worthington name and the Wynchester title.”

“Loyalty?” he out-and-out snorted yet again. “Was it
loyal
of you to abandon our marriage bed?”

She smoothed the wrinkles out of her gloves before sliding between his knees and perching on the desk. An encore of the queasy flutter-dance of long ago sped up in tempo until it reached a Bedlam-frenzy. Tonight, she may have lost a fortune, but she had guided Wynchester’s mental shuffle to her only ace. She braced herself with one hand, leaned forward, and caressed his tangled hair.

“What
are
you about?”

She smiled, faint. “I am proving my point: you have no cuckold horns.” She let her hand fall from his hair into her lap. “I abandoned our marriage
home
, Wynchester. The bed remains undisgraced…at least by me.”

His pupils expanded, turning dark orbs to India ink. Her gamble had paid returns.
Good.
Her chest-flutter settled—a sensation much like a caged bird abandoning hope of escape.

“Thea Marie,” his Adam’s apple bobbed, “do you mean to say you have not…?”

“Are you so perfect,” she narrowed her eyes, “you cannot even speak sin?”

He blanched and she cursed her penchant for sarcasm.

“I have been no saint,” she intentionally softened her voice, “but the answer is no, I have ‘known’ no other man.”

He took hold of the hand in her lap. The rough edges of his signet ring pressed into her thigh. “Why not?”

She read urgency in his gaze. “Your father’s affair—and subsequent marriage—caused irreparable damage to your family. And,” she spoke honestly, “I would not hoist on you a bastard duke.”

A wild light entered his eyes. “Is that why you proposed this wager? Do you wish for divorce because you have found another?”

“Many tried.” She silenced the excited bird trilling in the hollow between her neck bones. “None succeeded.”

He rose to his feet. “Thea Marie…”

Bending down, he touched his forehead to hers. Wisps of their hair mingled, brown-to-black, like parted veins of a feather. Could they too, be smoothed together with just the right touch? Thea closed her eyes as her heart cried,
please
.

“Where those throws test throws,” she forced out, before she lost nerve, “or do you hold?”

…

Touched-starved and hungry for his long-absent wife, Wynchester tightened his grip on Thea Marie’s hand. If he hadn’t done so, he might have ripped away his cravat, torn open his shirt, and caught her cheek against his heart, just to feel the sensation of her breath snaking across his bared chest. Instead, he pressed his duchess’s forehead to his own and savored smooth heat passing from skin-to-skin—a sensation, if he discounted their passionate kiss a few weeks past, he had not experienced in several lonely years.

Saint-bloody-Swithin
. He’d sworn never to be as his father had been—a man driven by base urges, but he wanted Thea Marie the way a child yearned for spun sugar. He wanted her more than he needed to get-the-bloody-hell out before he sold the pale-skinned Fury his soul.

Again.

Since their first night together, his body had yearned to tumble her like a trollop. He’d used all his control to submerge his desires and treat her with the deference due a lady. He’d been careful to guard his response to her, careful to protect them both. Nonetheless, she had rejected him.

Justly so, apparently. For after mere minutes in her presence, he’d become a panting panther.

Sentiment
. He cursed inwardly.

Sentiment beaconed like a siren. But sentiment was an ugly, grasping beast who lent men like his father temporary comfort while demanding heavy payment from the next generation—
disgrace
.

A single chance to regain his honor shined between
alive-and-smitten
and
alone-and-shamed
and Thea Marie’s esteem had never been part of the devil’s bargain. He’d come here tonight with the will and the means to take her home, no matter what the outcome of her blasted wager. If she won, he’d be honor-bound to discuss divorce, but he intended to have those discussions in his home. Preferably in his bed.

Despite what she believed, however, he was no monster. If she so desired, he would allow her to continue her separate life,
after
he had a legitimate heir. An heir was his duty and hers. How could he allow the Wynchester title to revert to the crown after all he’d sacrificed?

But to have his heir, he needed her compliance. And for that, he needed to be balanced more carefully than a salt-seller’s scale. The last draught of Armagnac had been a mistake.