What time was it? She had a meeting with Arden and the Duke of Winchelsea from the Home Office this morning, the first in her official capacity as Arden’s partner. She could not afford to be late. And if there was one thing Hazel loathed more than deceptions, it was tardiness.
Her head thumped with increased vigor, her wretchedness mounting. How much wine had she consumed with dinner and its endless courses? And afterward, following the Duke of Arden’s lead, not just sampling his port, but attempting to keep paces with him? Had he not asked her to toast to their bargain? And what else had he asked of her?
A surge of new memories returned to her then, hazy and indistinct. What a cake she had made of herself. Shame and regret stung her as if she had twin live coals in her belly.
She recalled laughing uncontrollably. Hiccupping into her hand. She remembered leaning upon Arden for support, the seemingly infinite journey up a set of stairs and down a never ending hall to her chamber. The smell of him, she recalled that as well, citrus and musk, with a hint of soap. Delightful, really. Not at all like hair grease and unwashed armpits like most of the men she had been in proximity with over the years.
The reminder of those disagreeable scents made her stomach lurch painfully now, as if she were smelling them in truth. Clutching her abdomen, she rolled over with another groan.Dear Lord, she needed a chamber pot.HadArden given her one, offering it to her much like an olive branch the night before? Or was that memory born in her fanciful imagination, a product of her dreams?
Hazel swallowed against the sickness threatening to unburden itself from her throat. There was no mistaking her reaction, she feared. Her physical ailments, coupled with the fragments of lucid memory she possessed from the night before, all pointed to one inevitable truth.
The night before, she had been drunker than the husband of a temperance woman who had just been laid into the ground.Yes, she had. The time for denying her egregious lack of control and gross misconduct was at an end. She must face the truth of what she had done.
And what she had done was drink herself silly. She had been unprofessional, even if goaded into it by Arden. Which she had, undeniably. She had allowed him to provoke her, and she saw it so plainly by the ugly morning light: her weakness, him taking advantage of the vulnerability in her defenses, as any opponent worth his salt would. As she would have done in his stead, had their situations been reversed. But that was rather a moot point.
Because the damage had already been done, the battle lines distinctly drawn. Hazel rolled from the bed, falling clumsily to the floor, and landed upon her hands and knees. The Axminster was thick, although not plush enough to blunt the sting of pain. But there was no time for pain. A more fervent need rolled up from her gut, demanding an answer.
She required the chamber pot her faded recollections had Arden proffering to her the evening before.How humiliating.He had been in this very room with her, the room where she would sleep, the room containing a bed.
Her hands seized the pot not a moment too soon, her mind grimly taking note after she had finished retching, that even the Duke of Arden’s chamber pot was fancy.
“Where is MissMontgomery?”
Lucien knew a momentary spear of guilt, sharp and stinging, in his chest before he squelched it. He had no cause to feel guilt, he reminded himself, when the infernal woman had deceived him and cozened her way into staying at his home.
Careful to keep his face an expressionless mask of impassivity, he met the gaze of the Duke of Winchelsea, his primary contact at the Home Office, and the man responsible for saddling Lucien with The Abomination, which was how he vowed to think of her from this moment forward. It was far safer to think of her in those terms, after all, than to think of her as Miss Montgomery.
If he called her The Abomination, he would not be forced to recall the way her silk gown had clung lovingly to her generous bosom and sweetly curved waist. Nor would he recall her warmth, that suppressed feminine flesh heating his hand through her bodice, when he had escorted her to her chamber last night. She had not been wearing a corset, and he could not fathom how a dress could hug her body so well, without the boning and lacing which seemed to be the standard armament of all females.
Damn it, there he went again, thinking about The Abomination’s lush form.
“Arden?” Winchelsea repeated, his irritated tone cutting through Lucien’s tortured musings. “Have you received word from her this morning? When last we spoke, she assured me she would be here this morning at ten o’clock.”
Though Winchelsea was a diplomat, his demeanor was often haughty and detached. Lucien resented the extension of the Home Office’s power into the Special League under the aegis of the duke, and he suspected Winchelsea resented him in equal measure.
He extracted his pocket watch and glanced at the time. “I am afraid I have not, and it would appear she is one quarter hour late.”
Because he had gotten her thoroughly soused the night before, refilling her port glass until she had no longer resembled the determined detective who had appeared in his study. Until she had been glassy-eyed, giggling, and hiccupping. Until she had required an escort to her chamber, and he had given her one, and she had clung to him like a lover, her breasts crushing into his arm.
Her nipples had been hard. He wished he had never discovered the revelation. He also wished he was not thinking of those tempting peaks now, as he was seated across from the Duke of Winchelsea.
“This is most distressing,” Winchelsea offered, his tone grim.
Lucien silently agreed. Thinking of The Abomination’s breasts was not just distressing, it was the height of lunacy. But he and the duke were ruminating upon different matters entirely.
The door opened before he could gather his wits enough for a response, revealing none other than The Abomination herself, dressed in a somber gray gown, which failed to perform the same feats as her dress the previous evening at dinner had. Thank Christ for that. She wore the same jaunty hat upon her head she had worn for his first meeting with her, and she strode into the room with the same sense of purpose.
But there was no mistaking her pallor. Guilt attempted to break free inside him once more as he recalled helping her find the chamber pot the night before. A servant could have done just as well, but The Abomination had been clinging to him with the persistence of an ivy vine, and hehadbeen responsible for her sorry state. He wondered now if she had spent the morning casting up her accounts.
And then he brutally reminded himself of the discovery he had inadvertently made during innocent conversation with the Duke of Winchelsea. The Abomination had been assigned a room at a hotel. She had not been ordered to stay at Lark House, which meant her story about thefts at the hotel had been pure fabrication. Which also meant she had deceived him with malicious intent. If anything, she deserved the punishment she had received this morning. After all, he had not poured the bloody port down her gullet.
Belatedly, Lucien stood in deference, along with Winchelsea, as she sailed across the office. Just as she had the day before, she marched forward, hand outstretched. The duke accepted her handshake with nary a hint of hesitation.
“Forgive me for my lack of punctuality this morning, Your Graces,” she said. “I fear I did not allow sufficient time to arrange for my transportation. With no omnibus nearby, I had to hire a Hansom cab instead.”
Had the woman truly imagined she would find an omnibus outside his door? And was it Lucien’s imagination, or was her honeyed drawl dipped in an extra coating of sugar for the Duke of Winchelsea’s benefit? And why had she yet to glance in his direction? Her bright gaze was settled upon Winchelsea with the fervent dedication of a lover.
That thought gave him pause. Frowning, he cast a glance over Winchelsea. He was a man in his early thirties with a reputation for being rigid, harsh, and unforgiving, one wife in the grave, and if Lucien recalled correctly, a daughter. The man was unyielding and cold. Hardly the sort a woman who bore the personality of a gale of wind would be drawn to.Surelyshe was not interested in the duke?
