He forced himself to look at his brother, who stood ready, like a knight of old, to defend his lady love. “Harry,” he said calmly. “Stand down.”
Harry sneered at him. “I’m attempting to save the lady from folly.”
“It is decided.” His tone was flat but firm.
“I’m sorry, Lord Harry.” Lady Boadicea’s voice was strong and clear, the throaty rasp sending a fresh arrow of lust directly to Spencer’s groin against his will. “You are a treasured friend whom I should not like to lose.”
Treasured friend.That rather had a dampening effect on his ardor. His eyes narrowed. The soft expression on her face for Harry nettled him. A sharp, unfamiliar stab of emotion wrenched through his gut. Envy. Bloody hell, what ailed him?
“You’re making a scene,” he growled at his brother, taking out his vexation on him “For the final time, stand down and let the lady do what she must or risk making this night even worse for her.”
Harry gritted his jaw, clearly wishing to argue, but in the end, his common sense won the inner war and he bowed. “My offer stands, Lady Bo. Good evening.” With a parting glare at Spencer, he took his leave.
He took note of at least half a dozen guests eying the exchange with curious gazes, and he knew that his brother’s ire would have been readily spotted. He could only hope that wagging tongues would put it down to two brothers fighting to win the hand of the same lady rather than what it truly was.
A horrible muck.
Not so far removed from the rest of his thirty-three years.
An ominous sense of foreboding rising in him, he turned to the woman he would marry. How odd that two days ago, she had been nothing more than a lovely menace in danger of luring his brother into an ill-advised alliance. Odder still that the thought of making her his duchess didn’t disturb him as much as it ought.
It must be the shock mingling with the suddenness of his downfall. Perhaps the champagne could be added to the blame as well. Regardless, he had but one task this evening, and it wasn’t to argue with his brother. Staying the course and making everyone believe he’d lost his head for Lady Boadicea Harrington was.
Where was a servant with more goddamn champagne when he needed it? A surreptitious glance proved nowhere near, and the orchestra was readying a set.
“Dance with me,” he demanded of her before she could say anything that would further ruin his mood.
“Duke,” she protested, as though he’d asked her to leap a horse over a wall of flames. “I do not care to dance at the moment. Can you not see I am distressed?”
“Bainbridge,” he corrected as he slid her arm through his and led her into the throng. They needed to maintain appearances for the evening to unfold with aplomb. “Or Spencer, as you prefer. And I do not give a damn if you don’t wish to dance, Lady Boadicea. You will dance and smile at me and call me anything but Duke.”
She remained quiet as they took up their positions, her full lips firming into a line of displeasure. Her eyes sparked up at him. “I prefer Duke. Or Your Insufferable Arrogance. The last rather has an agreeable sound to it, does it not? Quite pleasing to the ear.”
One of his hands anchored her waist as her hand settled on his lower back, their palms pressed together. Every part of him was keenly aware of the places where their bodies made contact. He looked down at her, trying to make sense of the way she undid him, and caught a heady whiff of jasmine.
Damn her.
“If you wish anyone to believe our charade, you must call me either Bainbridge or Spencer.” He refused to take her bait.
The defiant minx raised a brow. “Are you always this way?”
It wasn’t lost on him that she’d thrown his earlier words back at him. He clenched his jaw. For some reason, he wanted to hear his Christian name in her throaty voice, needed for her to acknowledge that their circumstances had changed, and not just for the sake of fooling the revelers around them.
He waited as the music began, but she maintained her silence.
Very well. He could play her game. “This way?” he asked in an echo of her.
His future duchess was only too happy to elaborate. “Demanding and pompous.”
“Only when in the presence of maddening ladies who trespass in my library with a filthy book and then kiss me in a misguided effort to regain said book.” He was careful to keep his voice low, lest anyone else hear, but she had pushed him too far.
Her cheeks flushed. “I daresay it was a horridly flawed plan. You are correct, Duke.”
Yes, it had been. But his reaction had been even worse. “If I could take back the incident yesterday, I gladly would. But I cannot. Now smile, my lady, for half the ballroom watches us.”
She stiffened beneath his touch, but the smile she gave him dazzled even as he knew it was false. “We must give the ballroom their show, then, must we not?”
His lips stretched with a smile that was equally feigned, for the sight of so many inquisitive stares accompanied by the inevitable whispers affected him. In truth, it affected him far more than it should have, but he realized in that moment that this was the first time since Millicent’s death that he’d ever ventured into a dance at a ball. And everyone had noticed while he had not until that precise moment as the orchestra struck up their tune.
