Duchess of Seduction (Hearts in Hiding 3)

Chapter 1

“The Duke of Lovett has taken a mistress?”

The breathy shock of pretty newlywed, Mrs. Rupert Browne, sliced through the buzz of conversation, lancing its unsuspecting target three feet away and causing a deaf colonel to ask the duchess if she required a glass of water.

“Of all the men in this town, he was the last— Why, Catherine are you not astonished?”

Still choking on her champagne, Cressida, Lady Lovett, strained to hear the response of her cousin, Catherine, who had obviously disseminated the shocking on dit regarding her husband while she smilingly assured deaf Colonel Horvitt she was quite all right, as if her happiness were not suddenly hanging by a gossamer thread.

The colorful throng in the ballroom seemed to sway like jeering miasmas as Cressida clutched her shepherdess’s crook, glad to have the foolish prop of her fancy dress costume provide such unexpected support.

She only hoped she was making the right responses to the colonel’s monologue. Meanwhile, all her concentration was focused on the nearby conversation as she waited desperately for a rejection of the outrageous claim.

“Indeed! And yes, surely not?” gasped the generally well-intentioned but oblivious Mrs. Browne to Cousin Catherine’s whispered reply. The two were in a huddle of black and gold silk and ermine, clearly enjoying the opportunity to dress as 17th century palace courtiers at tonight’s lavish entertainment. “The duke made a love match. Mama told me he scandalized society by marrying a nobody. Why, that was but a handful of years ago.”

Cressida tried to keep her champagne coupe steady. The indignity of being described as a ‘nobody’ was nothing compared with the pain of hearing her husband’s amours—real or otherwise—discussed in the middle of a ballroom.

“Why, I remember the word around town was that he insisted that the state of his heart was of greater consequence than his pocket book. But that was then. I daresay after all those children—“

The children! How could anyone speak of her darlings like that? Cressida forced her trembling mouth into her best attempt at a smile as the colonel leaned forward and wagged his finger at her, his stentorian tone precluding further eavesdropping. “Your husband ruffled more than a few feathers with his speech in the House of Lords last night, Lady Lovett.”

Cressida was in no mood for his bantering tone. Or for giggling as she’d once been in the habit of doing with her fearfully forceful but often entertaining cousin. Clearly, Cousin Catherine was disclosing details about the state of Cressida’s marriage, of which Cressida, apparently, was the last to know. She straightened and pushed her shoulders back, suddenly self-conscious of appearing the sagging, lacking creature the several hundred guests crowded into Lady Belton’s newly renovated ballroom must imagine her, if they were already privy to what she was hearing for the first time. Before her last sip of champagne, she’d considered herself happily married. It was all she could do to remain standing and dry-eyed.

Adjusting the lace of her masquerade costume, she managed, faintly, “Ah, Colonel, you know Lord Lovett and his good causes.” She tried to make it sound like an endearment, but the axis of her world had become centered on ascertaining what other titbits about her marriage Catherine was divulging to Mrs. Browne.

The music swelled to a crashing crescendo, the end of which was punctuated by Mrs. Browne’s shocked squeak, “Surely that is not the woman? Madame Zirelli? Was she not once Lord Grainger’s mistress? No! His wife? He divorced her? And now she and Lord Lovett—?”

If Cressida hadn’t been holding a champagne coupe, she’d have pressed her hands against her ears. If she hadn’t been a lady, she’d have dashed the champagne coupe to the floor.

But she was a mother. It’s why she hadn’t wanted to come to Lady Belton’s masquerade. Little Thomas was teething, but her darling husband Justin had been especially persuasive tonight, reminding her that it had been a long time since they’d been out in public, and that, yes, he knew Thomas was cutting a tooth, but there was nothing Cressida could do that Nurse Flora couldn’t, just for a few hours that evening.

Seeing his handsome face smiling down at her had been more than she could resist. Especially since she could acquiesce and please him—without the dangers of being faced with his charm within the bedchamber.

Searching the ballroom for her Justin, she spied him talking to her friend, Annabelle Luscombe and a dark-haired Castilian looking young woman, near the supper table. His look was enquiring, as if he were hanging on Annabelle’s every word. Cressida knew he would take equal interest if Annabelle were talking about her latest bonnet or about the Sedleywich Home for Orphans, of which Justin was patron and Annabelle on the committee.

A frisson of longing speared her. Justin had often gazed at her with such a look of interest when she’d first met him. So handsome, so determined. So sincere.

The thought that he’d made a special plea for her presence tonight purely in the interest of stilling wagging tongues was almost too terrible to consider.

A mistress? Her kind, beloved, faithful Justin?

As if he were conscious of her from across the room, Justin turned, his dark brown eyes kindling at the sight of her, the warmth of his smile spreading comfort like a woolen mantle. It radiated across the heated, perfumed distance that separated them and sent the blood tingling through her extremities. Cocooned in such safety—a public ballroom—she could admit to the extent to which he aroused her. Dear Lord, he looked like a handsome prince taken right out of the pages of a storybook, his brown, wavy hair brushed fashionably forward, topped with the laurel wreath required by his costume, his sideburns contouring his elegantly chiseled, high cheekbones.

Even after all these years of marriage her body responded as if she were a girl in the first throes of love.

Dressed like a stately Roman senator, Justin was the stuff of every swooning maiden’s dreams, yet it was she, insignificant Miss Cressida Honeywell, daughter of a poor country parson, who had won his heart all those years ago.

She’d thought she still had it—had vowed she’d always keep it.

Rallying, she took a step forward, responding to the invitation implicit in her husband’s eye, but the colonel began counseling Cressida on the dangers of Justin making speeches about orphans and sanitation when he could better rouse his audience in the Lords if he concerned himself with more important matters.

Cressida bit back her response. Like the docile, well bred woman she’d trained herself to become, she instead smiled politely at the colonel while her heart beat like a drum in response to the smouldering look she’d just exchanged with her husband. A look that was enough to all but dismiss her fears.

Exhaling with relief, she rewarded the colonel with such radiance that he, obviously regarding this as encouragement, closed the distance between them as he pursued his argument.

Cressida took a discreet step backwards though she preten

ded to be invested in the exchange with the elderly gentleman before her; meanwhile she slanted another secretive smile at Justin. He raised one eyebrow and his lips quirked as if he might blow at kiss in her direction before he gallantly attended to the hunchbacked Dowager Duchess of Trentham, whose eightieth birthday celebration this was.

Justin had the gift of making every woman feel the center of his especial interest. Clearly something must have been misconstrued...

And yet.

Awareness prickled through her—that she had for some time sensed all was not quite right.

“Very true, as always, colonel.” She was adept at trotting out the required niceties. Her face and her body could speak the language required of her while her mind took its own journey .

And the journey it was now forced to take was not a comfortable one.