Vice

Juliana looked up with a quick flush. 'Do you think so?'

'Mmmm. But then you, my dear, are a most unusual young woman.' He rose to his feet and took her hand, raising it to his lips. 'Unusual, and most perceptive. I didn't mean to burden you with my troubles.'

Juliana's flush deepened with pleasure. 'You didn't burden me with anything, sir. I'm honored with your confidence.'

He smiled again and bent to kiss her cheek. 'You have, at least, enabled me to see clearly again. If it's so obvious to you what Lydia and I feel, then it may become obvious to Tarquin also. I don't want that to happen.'

'So what will you do?'

'Write to my bishop and ask to return before my mission is completed.'

It was a sad-indeed, rather pathetic-solution, Juliana thought, but she merely nodded as if in agreement, and he left her.

She leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes for a moment. Her hand drifted over her belly. Had she conceived? It was five weeks since her last monthly terms. She felt no different, none of the signs so painstakingly pointed out by Mistress Dennison. And yet she had this strange, deep knowledge inside her body that something different was going on. She couldn't put words to it, but it was a definite conviction known in her blood if not in her brain.

She would wait until she was sure, of course, before telling the duke. In their present state of estrangement he'd probably be delighted that there was no further need for their lovemaking. She ought to be pleased herself, but Juliana was too honest to pretend that the thought brought her anything but a hollow pain. She hated the present coldness, but some stubborn streak kept her from making the first move. It was up to the duke to heal the breach if he wanted to.

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' 'E's lodgin' at the Gardener's Arms, in Cheapside, Yer Grace.' Ted took a thirsty gulp of ale. Tracking George Ridge across London had been hot and thirsty work.

The duke was perched on the edge of the desk in his book room, a glass of claret in hand, his canary silk coat and britches a startling contrast to his companion's rough leathern britches and homespun jerkin. Yet it would be clear to anyone walking into the room that there was a definite equality in the relationship between the Duke of Redmayne and the stalwart Ted Rougle›.

'Has he recovered from your little intervention?'

Ted grinned. 'Aye, 'e's large as life an' twice as ugly.' He drained his tankard and smacked his lips.

Tarquin nodded, gesturing to the pitcher that stood on the silver tray at the far end of the desk. Ted helped himself with a grunt of thanks.

'An' there's summat else ye should know, Yer Grace.' Ted's tone was faintly musing, yet carried a note of some import. Seeing he had the duke's full attention, he continued. ' 'Cordin' to the missis at the Gardener's, 'e's bin 'avin' a visitor. Regular like.'

'Oh?' Tarquin's eyebrows crawled into his scalp.

'Right sickly-lookin' gent, the missis said. Gave 'er the creeps 'e did. All green an' white, with eyes like the dead.'

'She has a colorful turn of phrase,' Tarquin observed, sipping his claret. 'Are we to assume that Lucien and George have set up an unholy alliance?'

He took out his snuffbox and stood for a minute tapping a manicured fingernail against the enamel. He was remembering that George had been in the Shakespeare's Head the night Lucien had put Juliana on the block. Juliana said he'd made a bid on her. It was possible that these two, both bearing grudges against Juliana, and in Lucien's case overwhelmingly against his cousin, should have formed the devil's partnership.

Ted didn't answer what he knew had been a rhetorical question, merely regarded his employer stolidly over his tankard.

'Let's deal with George first,' Tarquin said. 'We'll pay a little visit to the Gardener's Arms later tonight… when the oaf should have returned from his amusements in the Garden. Bring a horsewhip. We must be sure to emphasize my point.'

'Right y'are, Yer Grace.' Ted deposited his empty tankard on the tray, bowed with a jerk of his head, and left.

The duke frowned into space, twirling the delicate stem of his glass between finger and thumb. He'd been intending to put a stop to George's antics as soon as Ted had tracked him down after the attempted abduction, but if Ridge had joined forces with Lucien, then the situation was much more menacing. Lucien was unpredictable and could be quite subtle in his malevolence. Ridge, as he'd already demonstrated, would rely on brute force. They made a formidable combination.

He stood up suddenly, impelled by a force he'd been fighting for the last couple of days. He wanted Juliana. This estrangement tore at his vitals. It was becoming almost impossible to keep up the cool, distant facade. Every day he looked at her across the dinner table, at the fierce vibrancy of her hair, the luster of her eyes, the rich curves of her body. And he held himself away from her. It was torture, a wrenching on the rack. And Juliana, damn her, was giving as good as she got. Her stare was as cool as his, her voice as flat, her conversation never transcending the banality of small talk between strangers. He wanted to throttle her as much as he wanted to assuage his aching longing on her willing, eagerly responsive body.

Never had he felt like this before. As if every carefully woven strand of his personality was tangled, his life a jumbled jigsaw. And all because a seventeen-year-old chit didn't know what was good for her. What else did she want of him, for God's sake?

With a muttered oath he flung himself out of the book room and took the stairs two at a time. He entered Juliana's parlor without knocking, shut the door behind him, then stood leaning against it, regarding her in brooding silence.

Juliana had been writing a note to Lilly. At midnight they were all due to meet at Mother Cocksedge's establishment. Juliana had planned the evening very carefully. She was going to the opera in a party assembled by one of Lady Melton's acquaintances. It would be easy enough to slip away before supper. She could plead a headache, insist on returning alone in a hackney, and instead have herself driven to Covent Garden. In the unlikely event that the duke returned from his own entertainment before her, he would assume the party was sitting late over supper.

She was explaining in her letter to Lilly that she would arrive at Cocksedge's just after midnight when Tarquin burst in. She felt herself flush. Instinctively she thrust the sheet of vellum to the back of the secretaire.

'My… my lord. This is a surprise,'' she managed to say, trying for the cold tone she'd perfected recently.

'I miss you, dammit!' he stated, pushing himself away from the door. 'Goddamn you, Juliana. I can't go on like this. I don't know what you've done to me.' He pulled her up from her chair. He held her face between both hands and kissed her with a deep urgency. His hands moved upward, pulling the pins from her hair, his fingers roughly running through it as he loosened it; all the while his tongue hungrily probed her mouth.

Juliana was so taken aback that for a minute she didn't respond; then a wild, almost primitive, triumph flashed through her veins. She had this power over him. A woman's power. A power she was positive he had never acknowledged before. Now she clung to him, at last after days of deprivation able to give expression to the unquenchable well of passion that bubbled at her core. Her tongue fenced with his, her body reached against him, rubbing, pressing, moving with sinuous temptation, and she felt him hard and urgent against her belly.

Tarquin bore her backward to the sofa, and she fell in a tangle of skirts to sink onto the shiny taffeta. He didn't release her mouth, merely pushed up her skirts to her waist, released his own aching stem, and drove deep into her body. Her legs curled around his back, and her body moved with all the urgency of a passion that had many causes but only one outlet. Anger, hurt, mistrust, desire, all consumed in the flames.

He drew her legs onto his shoulders, his palms running up the firm calves, over the smooth flesh of her thighs above her garters, cupping her buttocks. His eyes were closed as he held her in his hands, and his flesh was plunging deep into the dark, velvet depths of her body. As the little ripples of her approaching climax tantalized his flesh, he opened his eyes and looked down at her. Her own eyes were wide-open, glowing with joy, not a sign of misgiving or withholding beneath the jade surface. She was giving herself to him as if there had never been a word of doubt between them, and he knew, in that moment, that the giving was a true expression of her soul.

And in the same instant he understood what she wanted from him. A gift that came without reservations. The gift of himself. He had beneath him, her body encompassing his as he possessed hers, the possibility of a love for all time. A partner of his heart and soul.

Juliana reached up and touched his face, a look of wonder now in her eyes. He looked transformed. Her breath caught in her throat as she read the message in the intensity of his gaze. This was no longer a man who couldn't believe in the reality of love.

Chapter 23

George Ridge threw the dice. They rolled across the square of table cleared of debris and came to a halt in a puddle of ale. A six and a one. He spat disgustedly on the sawdust at his feet and tipped the bottle of port against his mouth, taking a deep draft. His guineas were scooped up with a gleeful grin by his fellow player, who spat twice in his hand, tossed the dice from palm to palm, murmured a blasphemous prayer, and rolled them. A groan went up from the crowd around the table as they saw the numbers. The one-eyed sea captain had had the luck of the devil all evening.

George pushed back his chair. He'd continued playing long past his limit and had the sinking feeling that his losses were probably greater than he realized. His brain was too addled by ale and port to function well enough for accurate calculation, but in the cold, aching light of day he'd be forced to face reality.

As he struggled unsteadily to his feet, a hand descended on his shoulder and a voice spoke quietly into his ear. It was a voice as cold as a winter sea, and it sent shivers down his spine as if he were about to plunge into such waters.

'Going somewhere, Ridge?'

George turned under the hand on his shoulder and found himself looking up into a pair of expressionless gray eyes in a lean and elegant countenance. The thin mouth was curved in the faintest smile, but it was a smile as cold and pitiless as the voice. He recognized the man immediately. His eyes darted around the room, looking for support, but no one was paying attention. Their bleary gazes were focused on the play.

'I think we'll find it more convenient to have our little discussion in the stable yard,' said the Duke of Redmayne. He removed his hand from George's shoulder. Suddenly George found himself in the grip of a pair of fists that fastened on his elbows from behind as tenaciously as the tentacles of an octopus.

'This a-way, boyo,' an encouraging voice said in his ear. George's feet skimmed the ground as he was propelled through the crowded taproom and out into the yard behind the inn.

The night was hot. Two ostlers, sitting on upturned water butts smoking pipes and chatting in desultory fashion, glanced up, at first with scant interest, at the three men who'd entered the yard. Their eyes widened as they took in the curious group. A gentleman in black, gold-embroidered silk looking as if he'd just walked out of the Palace of St. James's; a second gentleman, bulky and red- faced, in a suit of crimson taffeta and a yellow-striped waistcoat; a third man in the rough leather britches and jerkin of a laborer. The second gentleman was beginning to protest, trying to free himself from the grip of the laborer. The elegant gentleman leaned casually against a low stone wall. He carried a long horsewhip that snaked around his silver-buckled shoes of red leather.

'Take your hands off me!' George blustered thickly, finally managing to get a look at the man holding him. He had but a confused recollection of the disruption in the hackney before he'd lost consciousness, but there was something horribly familiar about his captor. He struggled with renewed violence.

'I just want a word or two,' the duke said carelessly, snapping the whip along the ground.

George's eyes darted wildly downward. There was something menacingly purposeful about the thin leather lash flickering and dancing across the cobbles. Ted adjusted his grip almost casually, but his victim immediately recognized that he was held even more firmly than before.

'Listen to 'Is Grace, I should,' Ted advised. 'Listen well, boyo.'

Tarquin subjected George Ridge to a dispassionate scrutiny before saying, 'Perhaps you would care to explain why you issued such a pressing invitation to Lady Edgecombe. I understand from