One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)

—A.

There. If he wished to see her, he would know where to find her. Laurent dispatched a runner with the note, and Amelia passed two fretful hours unpacking in her old, modest bedchamber whilst Winifred renovated the downstairs. Finally, just as light was fading, she glimpsed the runner through her open window as he made for the house’s back entrance. She rushed down the service stairs to find the boy.

“Well?” she asked him breathlessly, once she’d collared the youth. He held a folded paper in his hand. “Is that my reply?”

He shook his head no. “The duke weren’t at home, ma’am. Footman told me he’d gone out for a game of cards.”

A game of cards? He’d come back to London just for a game of cards?

“Go back there,” she told the boy. “Find out where he’s gone, and find His Grace to give him that note. Don’t bother coming back until you do.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She released the lad, and he darted off the way he’d come.

Circling one palm over her belly—a habit she’d already developed, even though her abdomen didn’t protrude yet—she took deep breaths and tried to remain calm.

Hours later, she was panicking.

Laurent’s house was crushed, wall to wall, with guests. They’d begun arriving shortly after sundown and continued to stream in even now. The entirety of Bryanston Square was congested with coaches and teams. Most of the recent arrivals didn’t even seem to understand they were lacking an invitation. Amelia wasn’t certain they knew whose house they were at; they were just following the crowd. Winifred’s food had run out hours ago, much to her despair, but her reinforcements of wine and spirits were holding strong for the moment. No one showed the slightest inclination to leave.

In the hall, the hired quartet gamely played over and through the din of rumor and laughter. A few couples carved out enough space to dance a cramped quadrille.

Amelia couldn’t imagine why they all hadn’t given up and gone home hours ago. The duke’s absence was obvious, and tonight she lacked the spirit to compensate with flirtation and witty remarks. Even with every window thrown open to the night air and the barest minimum of candles burning, the air in the rooms was exceedingly close, and Amelia had done her best to seek out the few pockets of relative seclusion. Whenever someone asked after Spencer, she murmured a few words of excuse. Recently arrived in town, delayed by business … et cetera.

She was on the verge of slipping out entirely and hiring a hack to Morland House, where she could perhaps find some restful quiet and wait for Spencer in peace. Then the musicians struck up the first few bars of a waltz, and a raucous male voice called out, “Not yet! Not yet!”

Bemused, she watched as every head in the room swiveled toward the ancient clock, where the short hand wavered just on the brink of twelve. A collective hush amplified the tick, tick, tick … as then the long hand swept past the ten. Amelia suddenly understood why the guests wouldn’t give up on the duke and simply go home.

They were waiting for the hour of twelve, of course. Breathless with anticipation to see if the Duke of Midnight would remain true to his name.

And that realization began the longest ten minutes of Amelia’s life.

She passed the first five minutes asking after and then slowly imbibing a glass of tepid lemonade.

By straightening every seam of her gloves, she managed to while away another two.

Then there came a dark, endless minute in which guilt and regret swamped her, and doubt followed close behind. Perhaps he wouldn’t come because he was still angry and didn’t want to see her. Perhaps he had no use for her now, since she was already with child.

Another minute ticked past, and she scolded herself. If he didn’t appear tonight, it meant nothing. Except that he was off somewhere else, and she would see him the next day. Or the next.

And then the entire assembly passed the final minute simply waiting, watching, listening to the clock’s inexorable ticks. When the slender minute hand finally clicked into unison with the squat hour hand, the room went dead silent. And then the clock’s cuckoo bird popped out from its window and cheerfully mocked them all.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Twelve. Dratted. Times. The wretched little wooden creature had probably never enjoyed such a rapt audience.

It was midnight. And no duke had arrived.

Well, that was that.

Now the party was truly over. The musicians struck up a waltz, as they’d no doubt been bribed to do, but no one cared. The guests murmured amongst themselves on mundane, uninteresting topics, in the way people do when they’re thinking of leaving a party.

A week’s worth of fatigue settled on Amelia’s shoulders. For heaven’s sake, she needed to rest. She pressed forward through the packed drawing room, heading for the little pocket door behind the pianoforte. It led to a service corridor, and she could use it to make her escape upstairs.