Duncan threw down his quill, not caring if ink splattered on the ledger he’d been painstakingly balancing. Irritation surged within him, mingling with desire. Why the hell should his man announcing a visitor grant him a rigid—almost painful—cockstand?
Because you think the visitor isher.
Lady Frederica Isling, to be precise. She had told him she would return on the morrow.
The black-haired beauty with the emerald eyes and strange manner of conducting herself. The girl who had dared to dress as a man to infiltrate his establishment. To his knowledge, she was the only one who had ever had the gall to attempt such subterfuge in order to gain entrance to The Duke’s Bastard.
Part of him admired her for it.
Part of him wanted to bed her into the next century.
Another part of him found her an irritation and a complication he did not need. Her appearance in his club had already provided him all the ammunition he required. Indeed, her usefulness to him was at an end. All he need do was pay a visit to her father, the Duke of Westlake, and vengeance would be his.
Damn.
“Who is it?” he asked Hazlitt at length.
Hazlitt, who hailed from the rookeries but like Duncan had clawed and fought his way from seedy filth and poverty to prosperity, raised a lone brow. “He gives his name as Lord Blanden, sir.”
Her.
Hazlitt’s discreet disapproval left him without doubt the man did not believe Lady Frederica was her brother the Marquess of Blanden for a moment. Duncan did not hire fools, and Hazlitt was no exception—indeed, he was one of the cleverest men he knew. He ought to refuse her entrance. The night was early, and he had a great deal of work to accomplish before emerging on the floor. His ledgers were out of balance, and it seemed to him someone had been stealing from him.
She was nothing but trouble. If he had half the mind the Lord had bestowed upon a rooster, he would send her on her way. Forget she existed. Expunge all thoughts of wide emerald eyes framed with thick lashes, midnight hair, and full, pink lips from his mind. Visit the lovely and debauched Elise, Lady Burton, instead. The countess knew what he preferred, just how far to push the limits of his appetite for the depraved.
“You may send him in, Hazlitt.” The words emerged from him in a rush. From some secret, dark recess of his mind not even he knew existed. It went against common sense, against his plans, against every damned thing to perpetuate her falsehoods. Each appearance she made at his club heightened the risk, for if anyone else suspected her or unmasked her, his carefully wrought plans for revenge against his sire would be dashed.
Hazlitt bowed and disappeared, snapping the door closed.
For a moment, Duncan was alone with his clamoring thoughts. Why the hell had he allowed her entrance? What was the purpose of delaying, of allowing her to continue with her ruse? He swallowed, raked a hand through his hair, and otherwise attempted to compose himself. Lust, he realized.
Base. Crude. Wrong.
It had felled many a great man before him. But there it was, shameful and true, a fact he could not deny. He wanted her. Last night, he had lain awake in his bed, thinking of her, hand on his cock, and he had found his release to the thought of him on his knees before her, tasting the sweet flesh between her thighs as she watched the wickedness unfolding within the scarlet chamber. How sweet her pearl would have been against his tongue. He would have sucked until—
The door opened once more, and there she stood, Hazlitt hovering over her shoulder with his piercing stare. Duncan flicked his gaze back to her, taking her in—the awkward, ill-fitting coat and waistcoat navy and gray respectively, at odds with her buff breeches. Her cravat was crooked. Her boots scuffed and clearly a discarded pair of her father or brother’s. Her hair was once again stuffed beneath a hat.
He stood and willed his painfully erect prick to soften. Thank Christ for the cut of his coat, which hid his tremendous and inappropriate reaction to all thoughts relating to Lady Frederica.
He bowed. “Lord Blanden.”
She bowed as well. “Mr. Kirkwood.”
Her gruff attempt to disguise her voice had returned.
“Thank you, Hazlitt,” he called to his hovering man, for he had no wish to perpetuate an audience. He wanted her alone so he could decide what the devil he was to do to her.Er, with her, rather.“That will be all.”
One more dubious lift of his dark brow, and Hazlitt was gone, disappearing into the lively fabric of the club that was coming to life beyond Duncan’s office. The door closed with a barely audiblesnick. He and Lady Frederica were alone.
The silence seemed suddenly ominous.
“Would you care for a whisky, Blanden?” he asked, because it was what he asked all his friends, acquaintances, and patrons of the male variety.
It occurred to him, quite belatedly, there was no means by which Lady Frederica could have ever sampled whisky or anything stronger than ratafia or orgeat. He could only hope she did not accept.
“Of course,” she said in her feigned gentleman’s baritone.
Damnation.
