Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

“ M ay I have the honor of a dance this evening, Duchess Madeline?” said the Duke of Huntingdon with a formal bow that only seemed to increase the hostility he could see beneath the surface of his wife’s carefully composed face.

“A dance?”

She blinked, evidently not expecting this approach. Despite Charles’s consistent efforts, Madeline had managed to avoid being alone with him during the day’s picnic, treasure-hunt, and then an impromptu ladies’ outing for watercolor painting that naturally excluded him.

The success of this avoidance was maddening, but the presence of guests throughout the house had so far kept both of their tempers in check.

Now, Charles thought he might finally have found a way to ensure at least five minutes of Madeline’s attention, hopefully enough time to make it clear that there was no foundation to her jealousy.

Lady Juliette wasn’t helping his cause; she still seemed to lurk at every corner or wait for him in every doorway. Regardless of his need to keep Lord Oakley in good temper and well-disposed towards handling his business in Holland, Charles could see that he would soon have to ask her father to intervene…

“My dance card is full, Your Grace,” Madeline finally answered with a polite inflection of her own head after consulting the said card. “As hostess, I cannot disappoint any of our guests.”

“Full?” he questioned in surprise, this possibility not having occurred to him before.

“You have a space there, Duchess Madeline,” suggested Gabrielle diplomatically at Madeline’s elbow with her bag, shawl, and notebook, tonight playing the role of secretary as much as maid. “ Regardez, là, the first waltz.”

“No,” Madeline corrected her maid, quickly shaking her head and holding her hand out to Gabrielle for a pencil. “I have just promised that dance to Viscount Morgan, since relations with the Barton family are so important to you, Duke Charles.”

Charles felt his temper rising at this dig and knew that in other circumstances he might be tempted to rip up that damned dance card and lead Madeline straight onto the dance floor where the musicians were now tuning their instruments. In the sight of so many, she would not resist. Today, however, they each had roles to play and his was not “The Duke of Wrath…”

“You’re going to waltz with that milksop?” he said tersely instead, the muscles in his jaw straining with frustration. “You realize you’ll have to lead, don’t you, Madeline? I think you might find the experience more disappointing than you presently realize.”

“I could rearrange your dance card if you wish, Duchess?” Gabrielle offered. “It need cause no embarrassment to you or the Duke.”

“You shall not, Gabrielle,” Madeline ordered while looking directly at Charles.

He returned her gaze. Perhaps the locking of their eyes was a battle of wills for his duchess, but for Charles, it was something else entirely.

In her ballgown of bronze silk overlaid with golden tulle, her bosom high and full, and the diamond and sapphire choker at her pale neck, Madeline looked like an empress if not a goddess tonight. The lines of her face were strong and sculpted while being womanly, and the expression in her rich brown eyes was intelligent and determined with a hint of the sensuality only Charles had experienced.

Charles reflected again on his statuesque wife’s adult and highly sexual attraction in contrast to the forgettable girlish prettiness of Lady Juliette Barton. He wondered anew at the madness of the delusion that he could possibly prefer the latter when he was married to Madeline. She was his wife, damn it all! In every way that mattered. What did she think she was playing at?

As they spoke tonight, it took considerable effort to keep his eyes from those breasts. So full and soft and so sensitive to his lips or hands as he thrust into her. His mind replayed the cascade of soft and then sharp gasps and cries as Madeline approached her peak. He imagined her bent over a sofa in a side room nearby, head turning to look longingly back at him.

“As you will. I shall see you later, Duchess Madeline,” Charles said with a curt bow, spotting the monocled Lord Bentham approaching to claim his first dance.

He would not allow his imagination to run away with him when it seemed so unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon. First, they must talk and end this foolishness that was driving him mad.

Watching Lord Bentham lead his duchess into the opening quadrille, the Duke briefly itched to do exactly what Madeline had taunted him with on the stairs yesterday morning. As her husband, he could order his wife to his bedroom to claim his conjugal rights. Of course, he would do nothing of the sort once they were in his suite, but at least, they would be alone together.

But then, the idea of having Madeline believe him capable of such a reprehensible act, even for a few minutes, appalled him. No, he must find another honest and honorable way to correct her wrong-headed assumptions.

“You’re not dancing, Your Grace?” asked Lord Oakley, joining him with a glass of champagne in hand. “My own old bones don’t hold up as well as they used to on the dance floor, unfortunately.”

“Maybe later,” Charles answered politely, mentally switching back from his fevered thoughts of Madeline to the advancing series of useful conversations he’d managed to have with Lord Oakley over the last few days. “But I’m glad to find you unoccupied. I’ve been thinking about what you said about investment in the low countries and how their banks don’t take smaller investors seriously.”

Oakley nodded blandly, his thoughts veiled from Charles.

“Certainly. Let me tell you, I promised myself that I would never act as middleman again for any deal in Holland worth less than ￡10,000. Such projects don’t have the weight to sustain themselves longer term, and it damages my reputation to be associated with them.”

“So, you definitely are still in the market for handling such affairs? I was unsure from our earlier conversations.”

“I haven’t ruled it out, Your Grace,” laughed Oakley with a shrug. “For the right opportunity, and the right investor, I might be persuaded…”

They chatted noncommittally in this vein for a quarter of an hour which lifted Charles’s spirits considerably. With an experienced hand like Lord Oakley mediating his investments, he might well be prepared to put up the sum indicated by his guest. It was better to have a larger chunk of capital safely invested than to lose a smaller chunk of capital through not knowing the lay of the land.

Still, even while his mind was working through the intricacies of investment, risk, and return, Charles was conscious of Madeline out of the corner of his eye. Lithe and possessed of graceful strength, she cut a striking figure on the dance floor, attracting appreciative glances and compliments. He felt proud of his duchess despite any quarrel, but at the same time, he felt increasingly desperate to physically possess her once more.

As the musicians retuned, the Duke spotted Lady Juliette Barton making a beeline for him in her white muslin dress. At the same moment, her brother stepped hesitantly out from the crowd at one wall and began to move towards Madeline. The musicians played a few introductory waltz bars to remind guests of the next dance and something inside Charles snapped.

“Tell your son there’s been a change of plan — he’s to dance the waltz with his sister,” the Duke said to Lord Oakley abruptly and stalked away to cut across the younger man’s path.

“Has Harry messed up again? It never surprises me,” chortled Archibald Barton behind him and then temporarily ceased to exist for Charles as he entered Madeline’s orbit on the dance floor.

“I believe this is my dance,” he said firmly to his wife and saw shock in her eyes but also something else, like the echo of those sweet moments when she abandoned herself to pleasure at his hands on the bed.

“But Lord Morgan…” Madeline said, even while her hands came up to his waist and shoulder, ready for the dance.

“Lord Morgan is dancing with his sister as he damned well should,” Charles interrupted her, not wanting to talk any more of the young Bartons than he had to.

“Is this not rather discourteous to our guests?” she asked as the orchestra now played the formal introduction. “Whatever you have done to change matters, I had promised this waltz.”

“If I wish to dance with my wife, I will dance with my wife,” said Charles emphatically. “Unless, of course, she genuinely does not wish to dance with me. Look me in the eye now, and tell me you don’t want to dance, Madeline, and I’ll leave you to that foolish boy or any other you may choose.”

Her eyes met his as he whirled her around, his brain conscious of every pressure and contact of skin. For an unguarded moment, swept up in the harmony of their physical movements, Madeline’s eyes were full of yearning that matched his own.

“Charles,” she said and closed her eyes briefly, unable to deny what she wanted but equally unwilling to confirm it.

“You want me, Madeline, as I want you,” he stated urgently, conscious that he had only a matter of minutes to get through to her. “You feel what I feel when I hold you in my arms, don’t you?”

His hand tightened at her shapely waist as they spun again, their bodies shifting automatically together as though they had partnered for years of dancing rather than taken to the floor for the first time. Madeline matched him as well on the dance floor as she did in the bedroom.

“Of course, I do, damn you!” she whispered. “You know that. You’ve had me enough times. Does it give you a thrill to have such power to stir up my feelings and then play with Lady Juliette’s heart, too?”

What?! There were tears in his wife’s eyes as she spoke these absurd words, but she blinked them away.

“I want you ,” he said gruffly close to her ear, temporarily lost for other words. “It is as simple as that, Madeline.”

“Then order me to your bed, Duke Charles, if that’s all this is about.”

She almost rested her head on his chest as she spoke, hiding her words from the other dancers around them but in doing so, stimulating him painfully with her hot breath at his neck.

“All? Wanting you is everything, Madeline!” he returned. “Everything! Don’t you understand?”

She shook her head mutely, and they moved to the music in silence as the measure began to wind down.

“I understand nothing,” she said as they bowed to one another as civility and convention required.

“Madeline,” Charles insisted, taking one of her hands in his.

He would have held her there for longer if he could but something else caught Madeline’s eye.

“Lord Radley, we have the next dance I believe?”

She turned from Charles with an expression of forced brightness, despite the slight redness of her eyes, offering her other hand to an elderly neighbor who had ridden over that evening for the ball. The old man looked delighted at Madeline’s welcome as any sane man would in Charles’s view.

The Duke offered old Radley a polite greeting and then stalked away, deeming his strategy of dancing with Madeline a partial success, but there was still unfinished business.