Nicole Jordan - The Seduction

Something in Clune’s tone made Damien suddenly wary, but he reluctantly acceded to the plan. Rising, he accompanied the earl up the stairs and along the hall.

Clune rapped gently on the door and unlocked it. Then, with a grin at Damien like a cream-fed cat, he swung open the door.

A woman stood at the window, her back to them, yet her silhouette was heart familiar. When she turned slowly to face him, Damien went rigid.

Vanessa returned his gaze levelly, her lustrous midnight eyes cool and unwavering.

His gaze shot to Clune, who maintained an owl-eyed look of innocence. “What the devil is the meaning of this? What is she doing here?”

“She will make a perfect queen, don’t you think?” Clune queried in a silken tone.

Damien clenched his fists at the thought of Vanessa being the prime attraction of an orgiastic ritual. “You intend her to rule the ceremony?” His eyes narrowed with disbelief. “And you agreed?” he demanded of Vanessa.

Clune replied for her. “She hasn’t yet consented to be our queen, though I tried to persuade her.” He cast Damien a probing glance. “Truthfully, Sin, I brought her here merely to see your reaction.”

“My reaction?” Staring at him, Damien recalled the locked door and Clune’s speculative glances earlier. Vanessa wasn’t here willingly then. A quiet, poisonous rage surged through him.

“You bastard…” Lunging unexpectedly, he grabbed Clune’s cravat and pushed him from the room, forcing him against the hall’s far wall with a resounding thud. “Is this reactive enough for you?”

The earl gave a triumphant laugh, despite his friend’s ferocity. “Quite. I never expected you to permit anyone to touch her.”

“By the blazes,” Damien gritted out through clenched teeth.

Chine bared his own teeth in a taunting grin. “I thought you claimed indifference, Sin. If you aren’t besotted, then why does the prospect of her becoming our queen upset you so?”

Tight-lipped with fury, Damien increased the vise of his hand. “She is under my protection, damn you!”

Clune had difficulty speaking with the grip on his throat. “You… are still… deluding yourself, my friend.”

Damien’s fist tightened further in the silk. When Clune made a choking sound, Vanessa protested behind him, “Damien, stop… you’re hurting him!”

Just then almost a dozen Hellfire League members appeared at the far end of the hall, apparently alerted by the commotion.

“What the devil is going on?” Thornhill exclaimed.

“Damien, stop… please…” Vanessa implored anxiously, but he refused to loosen his grip.

When Clune’s strained face turned crimson from lack of air, several gentlemen voiced protests of concern and alarm. Finally one of them physically intervened.

Nicholas Sabine stepped forward to put a restraining hand on Damien’s arm. “You don’t wish to kill him, do you?”

“Don’t I?” Damien retorted savagely.

Releasing his hold, though, he made a visible effort at controlling his violent urges and stepped back, his blazing gaze fixed on Clune. “You will give me satisfaction. The choice of weapons is yours.”

He heard Vanessa gasp at his challenge. “Damien, you cannot-”

“I advise you to name your seconds,” he told Clune tersely, the hushed vehemence of his tone deadly serious. “I trust Thornhill and Matthews will act as mine.”

Ignoring the astonished gazes of his colleagues then, Damien took Vanessa by the arm and ushered her along the hall, away from the spectacle.

The curricle ride home was fraught with tension. Vanessa felt herself shiver in fear, while beside her Damien seethed with fury.

“You can’t possibly mean to challenge Clune to a duel,” she said finally as he guided the pair of chestnuts onto the road to Rosewood. “Surely you will call it off.”

A wintry smile touched his lips. “I have no intention of calling it off.”

“Damien, it was a prank, nothing more. Harmless enough-”

“Harmless?” His jaw clenched. “Clune compromised you before a gathering of the premiere rakes in England. That is hardly harmless, to my mind.”

“My identity might have remained secret if not for your outburst. Whatever possessed you to such violence? Had you behaved rationally, your friends would never have been aware of my presence.”

“Clune would not have been satisfied with a rational response from me. He deliberately orchestrated my outburst. But he overstepped the line, holding you prisoner.”

She took a deep breath, trying to control her own anger. “What he did was ungentlemanly, even despicable, I’ll agree, but it is over now. And a duel would only publicize my humiliation and compromise me further. Please, can you not simply forget the incident?”

Damien slanted her a fierce glance. “It’s too serious to forget. I would be fostering the notion that he can dishonor a lady under my protection with impunity. I won’t sanction his scurrilous behavior.”

“You won’t sanction?” Her own glance was scathing. “What gives you the right to sit in judgment of others? To play God with people’s lives? First Aubrey, and now Clune-”

“Enough! I don’t intend to discuss it further.”

Vanessa pressed her lips together to stifle an angry retort. She would have been furious, if not for her feelings of dread.

She endured Damien’s simmering silence for the entire journey home. But the moment he drew up before the manor, Vanessa stepped down from the curricle.

Without speaking another word, she marched up to her bedchamber and changed into a traveling dress. With the help of two maids, Vanessa packed her trunks and ordered them taken to Damien’s carriage. It was late afternoon, but she intended to try to catch the stage at the coaching inn in Alcester. If she could make London tonight, she would reach her own home in Kent by tomorrow.

She gave one last glance around the bedchamber where she had known such pleasure and heartache, then shut the door quietly behind her. She went downstairs again without stopping by Olivia’s room. She couldn’t bring herself to say farewell just now, not when she was so emotional. But she would write the moment she arrived home.

She found Damien in his study, sitting at his desk, inspecting a set of dueling pistols that, according to the name engraved on the case, were the exquisite work of Manton. Vanessa paled.

For a moment she studied his perfect profile, her heart aching with fear and love. “You really mean to go through with this?” she asked finally.

“Yes,” Damien replied without looking up.

“You could die, don’t you realize that?”

“I don’t expect to die. I’m considered a crack shot.”

“And that makes it all right? You could kill Clune. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Taking another man’s life?”

He raised his head to stare fixedly at her. “Honor won’t permit me to back down.”

“This is not about honor! This is two spoiled, reckless schoolboys fighting over a prize.” Vanessa swallowed the fierce ache in her throat. “I won’t stay to watch. I can’t bear the thought of your killing another man-or worse, being hurt or killed yourself. I am leaving.”

His gaze took in her traveling cloak. “Where will you go?”

“Home, to my family. I mean to take the stage.”

“What about our bargain?”

She stared into eyes as gray as a storm. “My term as your mistress is nearly up. If my leaving means that I forfeit our wager, then so be it.”

His expression remained impassive.

Vanessa bit her lip to contain her frustration. “You wanted to know why I refused your proposal,” she said finally. “This is why.” She gestured angrily at the dueling pistols. “I could never be certain if you would return home to me alive or dead. I still have nightmares about Roger’s death. About his life and the scandals he caused. I won’t go through that again.”

She might have been talking to a stone statue for all the emotion Damien showed.

The fury that filled her vibrated in her voice. “Do you know what is so incomprehensible? Why you insist on wasting your life, living this meaningless existence. Your Hellfire League is bent on self-gratification and carnal indulgence, but has your profligacy ever brought you any real joy?”

Damien simply looked at her and smiled a slow, cynical smile. “And if I were to swear off debauchery? Would I then meet your standards of eligibility? Would I become worthy of being your husband?”

There was a terrible sense of raw tension vibrating in the air around him.

“You want a bloody saint,” Damien said grimly when she made no reply.

She stared into his eyes, but she could read nothing of his feelings for her; he had locked his heart away.

“No, I don’t want a saint. I want a man who loves me. Only me. I want a husband who will hold his marriage vows sacred, who won’t betray me with other women. Someone I can trust not to plunge himself into the next scandal-or be killed in a senseless duel!”

For the first time he showed a response. His jaw clenched. “I am nothing like your late husband.”

“No? There is little difference between you that I can see.”

Their locked gazes warred. Vanessa could hear the sharp sound of her own breathing in the intense quiet of the room.

Her throat constricted when she realized she was getting nowhere. “Damien…” Her voice softened to a plea. “You could do so much with your talents, your wealth. I’ve seen your devotion to your sister, and at times even your indulgent friendship toward me. You have a vast potential to live a life of significance and meaning, and you insist on throwing it away in empty pursuits.”