It Had to Be the Duke by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 3

In the end, Althea had been right.

Lydia had gone.

Granted, she’d tried to sneak out the front door as soon as she’d arrived.

“Caught!”

She froze.

Alas, her escape was cut short.

Dorothy and Althea came rushing over. “Wherever are you going?”

“I forgot something… in the carriage,” she lied, even as they were taking her arms and steering her back in the direction of the most scandalous sight she’d ever beheld and certainly the most wicked affair she’d ever attended.

“Oh, splendid,” Dorothy said in her always-happy tones. “And here I feared you were trying to leave.”

“She wouldn’t dream of it.” Althea slid a sly glance Lydia’s way. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

“Of course. I can’t imagine anyplace I’d rather be than…” They again stopped at the front of the room. “Here.”

Just like that, the seemingly impossible happened for a second time. They, three almost-always talkative, not easily shocked women, found themselves silent as they took in the tableau unfolding in the ballroom. Couples in varies states of undress waltzed to the evocative whine of the orchestra’s string instruments. Periodically, partners would trade off with a nearby couple. Women danced other women about, kissing while they completed the steps of the dance, before swapping to join a masked, male partner.

It was a lurid display of sin and carnality that managed to heat Lydia’s cheeks with a blush like she were a debutante, and heat stirred within her, too. Desire.

Though, in fairness, Lydia had never before witnessed… this.

“Do you believe people we know behaved this way when we were their age?” Dorothy whispered loudly.

A tall, heavily muscled servant in a domino mask, his chest bare and his breeches tight-fitting, stopped before them. He extended the silver tray filled with champagne flutes towards them.

Lydia and her friends flanking her all jumped.

“Drinks?” he purred.

“Of course we want drinks,” Althea snapped. “Drinks, he asks,” she muttered to herself. “As if we wouldn’t because we’re what? Too old for the fun?” With her spare hand, she proceeded to fetch flutes and pass them over to Lydia and Dorothy before taking one for herself. “Now, go.”

The young man blinked wildly and then fled with his half-empty tray.

Lydia stared commiseratively after him. Lucky fellow.

She knew how he felt.

Lydia and her friends made their way down the left side of the spiral staircase. “I’m so glad you came,” Althea stated in crisp, no-nonsense tones that were contrary to the actual words she spoke.

A wry smile pulled at her lips. “Did I really have a choice?” she drawled, adjusting the peacock mask concealing her face. The feathers itched. Viciously so.

“Aren’t the feathers lovely?” Dorothy beamed.

A purple feather fell across Lydia’s brow and tickled her nose. “Achoo!”

“Next time, I promise to not put her in charge of costumes,” Althea whispered.

“Thank you.” Though there wouldn’t be a next time. This? This was really enough. She stole a glance about, bypassing the trysting couples and searching for a clock. How long need she stay before her friends were satisfied that she’d given the festivities the proper attempt they expected?

Black and crimson gauze had been draped over the walls, furniture, and dais. The whole room fairly dripped with it.

She stole a sideways glance at Althea. Leaning over the cane, she watched the scene before them with unabashed interest.

“Why do you insist on using that cane?” she asked. It had always been a question she’d wondered after.

“I like it,” Althea insisted, her gaze locked on someone across the room. “Men have monocles. Men have clever canes. Why shouldn’t we? It makes me menacing.”

“I assure you it is hardly the cane that is responsible for that feat,” Lydia muttered.

Dorothy giggled.

“Laugh if you must. There are plenty of young blokes present going about this evening with canes.”

As one, they looked to a gentleman brandishing one, and then—

Lydia’s eyes flared wide.

“My goodness, he is… spanking her with that cane. He must be stopped.” Muttering to herself, Dorothy took a step forward.

Both Lydia and Althea caught her by an arm, staying her in her tracks.

“I assure you the girl quite likes it,” Althea snorted. “Peculiar love play, that.”

Yes, it was peculiar indeed. Her cheeks heated, and Lydia discovered that in her forty-ninth year, she was still capable of blushing… and often.

“All right. Let us get on with it.” Althea started forward.

She’d made it several paces before it registered—

“Wait!” Lydia rushed after her friend, darting around a pair of lovers in the throes of an embrace. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to explore Davenport’s son’s affair. One would expect such proclivities of a fellow like that boy.”

Lydia leaped at that. “Precisely. There are any number of different”—more respectable, less scandalous—“affairs to take part in than… than… this,” she whispered, brandishing a hand over the room.

“I suspect that is the case, but we shan’t know unless we try it out. Ain’t that right, my girl?”

Lydia looked to Dorothy for support and frowned. Where—? And then she found her. Dorothy had at some point found herself a dance partner who now danced her back and forth in a neat little row along the side of the dance floor. Catching her eye, Dorothy waved a hand and then, laughing, looked up at the gentleman who held her.

“See? Looks like Dorothy is enjoying herself. I suggest you do the same.”

“Dorothy is always smiling,” she pointed out.

“Exactly. Unlike you, who is always scowling and frowning and sad-eyed these days. You’d do well to steal a page from her book. Now off you go.”

With that, off Althea went, brandishing her cane to part a path for herself.

Lydia frowned. She was not always scowling and frowning and sad-eyed.

She instantly made her lips into a line.

There, that wasn’t a frown. She was happy enough. Certainly happy enough that she didn’t need to be—Lydia found Dorothy once more—waltzing with a young rake the way her friend now did. Nor did she need to be—she located Althea—fed grapes by a man even younger than Dorothy’s company for the evening.

A tall, darkly clad gentleman some twenty or so years younger than Lydia stepped into her line of vision. Wearing a lascivious grin, he waggled his eyebrows in her direction and then proceeded her way.

Oh, God. Certainly her absolute last idea of an enjoyable time would be keeping company with a roguish gentleman younger than her own son.

The fellow moved at a determined clip, weaving himself between trysting couples.

Grimacing, Lydia spun and promptly headed off in the opposite direction. Far, far away. She continued walking, exiting the ballroom, and continuing down corridors strewn with moaning men and women embracing in the halls. She stole a sideways peek at two gentlemen in the midst of pleasuring a young woman.

Each man devoted himself to one of the lady’s breasts.

Her cheeks flaming, Lydia jerked her gaze forward and hastened her step.

This was really what her friends had in mind for a diversion for her? This?

She peeked in parlor after parlor.

How many libertines and wicked ladies were there in Polite Society?

Until she found an empty corridor. Quiet.

Pressing a door handle, she peeked inside the room, blinking several times to adjust her eyes to the darkness.

Empty.

Blessedly empty.

With a blissful sigh, she slid inside and pushed the door shut behind her. Muttering to herself, Lydia yanked the ridiculous peacock mask free. Dropping it onto a nearby table, she ventured deeper into the room.

The library.

An enormous one at that. Rows upon rows of leather volumes lined the floor-to-ceiling shelving. It was an unexpected collection, given Davenport’s licentious son’s reputation. Relishing the hum of silence, Lydia wandered over to the shelves, inspecting them.

She lingered her fingers upon a rich green leather copy and then withdrew the title.

“Thérèse the Philosopher,” she murmured.

Well, imagine that. Perhaps she, and all of Polite Society, had unfairly judged the young man. Lydia fanned the pages. With his interests extending to female philosophers, mayhap there was more to—

She stopped on a page.

I could see that with every backward movement of the priest, the red lips of Miss Eradice’s love ne—

Lydia gasped and slapped the book closed. “Enlightened works indeed,” she said, her cheeks burning as she gave her head a hard, little shake.

Yes, it appeared everything within this household, even the solitary room in which she’d managed to find herself, was of the wicked.

Lydia froze as footfalls reached her. “Oh, hell,” she whispered. Heart racing, she bolted across the room to lock the door.

Too late.

The person she’d heard stopped on the other side of the panel.

“All lovers meet in libraries.” The gentleman’s low, deep rumbling came muffled but clear.

Clear enough to mark the end of her solitude.

Cursing quietly, Lydia dove sideways, climbing over the leather button sofa. Her legs tangled in her ridiculously frothy blue and green and purple skirts as she came down in a noisy, inelegant heap.

Resisting the urge to groan, she lay there as her space was infiltrated, and the door shut.

She’d gone more than two decades without so much as a stumble and had now in the span of a day found herself laid low twice.

Lydia covered her face with her hands. Perhaps whatever rogue had stumbled upon her would be so good as to leave her alone.

Alas…

Those sure, steady footsteps came to a stop on the other side of that button sofa.

“I really am quite fine, you know,” she said briskly, cutting him off at the pass. “I’ve no desire for company.”

“Well, then, that would make two of us, Lydia.” That deep, mellifluous baritone—familiar—brought another gasp from her. “Which perhaps makes us perfect company for one another this night.”

Lydia let her arms fall to her sides and stared at the upside-down figure peering over her, a ghost of a grin on his lips.

Her heart thumped a little bit harder and faster.

It had been years since she’d seen him. He was slightly broader, but as powerful in his shoulders and barrel chest as he’d always been. Time had dusted the edges of some of those midnight-black strands with a hint of gray, indicating the passage of time, and yet, those grays and silvers only lent an air of sophistication to him. Nay, even with the many years that had passed since their last meeting, she’d recognize him anywhere. Her heart would.

Geoffrey. The Duke of Bentley.