Royal Regard

Chapter Three

Adolphe Fouret stepped into an alcove behind a folding wooden screen to surreptitiously toss back a mouthful of cheap rum from his flask. Ridiculous custom at this miserable establishment, serving tea and lemonade to grown men who needed to be good and drunk to stomach the endless matchmaking mamas and their marriageable misses. Not to mention, no matter the lies the hostesses told about exclusivity, they would allow anyone in knee breeches to walk through the door. Even a merchant, if he had enough money in the bank.

The rough liquor burned the back of his throat, but didn't erase the humiliation of a common tradesman telling him off, as though the Duc de Malbourne was a whoremonger asking to pay a sou for his wife. That a man no better than a sailor had even been allowed to speak to a duke was intolerable; his words and tone should have seen him drawn and quartered: "I will not countenance your advances toward my wife, Sirrah! Be gone, ere I am forced to demonstrate my contempt more plainly!"

Earl and Countess of Huntleigh, indeed. As if Adolphe needed any further proof King George was as mad as his father.

She was ugly as a street dog, with a mouth like a hellcat, and couldn't even dress herself properly. Swarthy skin like a gypsy, even darker than his own, and he doubted she could dance a step, as adamantly as she was avoiding the floor. Once she was his duchesse, he would keep her locked in an armoire until she learned not to disgrace him in public.

Holsworthy should be grateful someone else wanted to dance with her, so he would only have to touch her in the dark—if he still had the stamina to screw her. With no children to show for it, he probably never had, not that Adolphe could blame him. It would take an Act of Parliament to get hard in her bed.

But for her merchant husband's enormous fortune, Lady Holsworthy was as worthless as a provincial banknote.

Good God, this polka music was almost as grating as the teasing girls who had no idea what they weren't offering. He would give anything to be back in Dover, enjoying the crashing silence of his seaside cliffs and the charms of Marie-Thèrese, with whom his fascination was coming to an end. She would have to be disposed of soon and another woman acquired, but for now, she was preferable to the unending misery of English aristocratic entertainments.

If King Louis had kept his word, Adolphe would be in the Vosges now, in his ancestors' château, not at this grubby little dance hall peddling his title to repay debt amassed so Louis' court-in-exile could live beyond its means. But he had been waiting five years to hear the French king had reinstated his property, and Adolphe's creditors had finally lost patience with his claims to a noble fortune.

Louis had no right to renege on his promise. It wasn't as though the woman had been a virgin or someone's wife or mistress, and French women never meant non. How was Adolphe to know the king's nephew nursed a fondness for her, when she looked nothing like his other women? Childhood friend—more likely the first girl to suck Antoine's cock, and he fancied himself in love even now that she was a dried-up, ugly, old hag.

So, the rightful king was back at the Tuileries, but because of the high-handed Duc d'Angoulême and a prattling woman who didn't know enough to lie back and enjoy herself, the rightful Duc de Malbourne would lose his lands—again—if he didn't marry a sizable fortune very soon. If only he had choked the life out of the miserable bitch when he was finished, his duchy would have been restored with all the others.

"Monsieur le Duc?" An alabaster forehead, two virtuous blue eyes, a riot of white-blond curls, and a set of perfectly plump red lips poked around the screen slowly, so as not to catch him at anything untoward. As though a man of his rank and position would act improperly in public.

He clenched his jaw, preparing to step back into the room with whichever girl this was who thought to be compromised, and so force him to offer for her. His nostrils flared as he carefully twisted the cap back onto his flask and stowed it in his pocket. His smile seethed.

"Oui, ma chère?" As he turned, he cleared the echoes of harsh drink from his throat and regained his silky voice. "You are looking for me?"

It was the fetching young lady in the silver muslin gown. He wasn't sure of her name, as fetching young ladies were un denier a dozen at Almack's, and her dowry was a pittance.

"Ma mère m'a envoyé vous trouver pour la prochaine danse." Her execrable French scraped up his spine like a rusty nail on a washboard.

"Of course, my sweet, I had forgotten we were to dance this set. Your maman is quite right to remind me. I have been looking forward to it all evening."

She sidled closer, swaying her hips like a Parisian streetwalker, pressing pert breasts against his arm, selling the promise of her maidenhead for the fortune she assumed he had. She looked up at him expectantly, her lips almost pursed for a kiss. Mon dieu, she was beautiful—ripe for despoiling—but if he touched her, he would be on the wrong end of her father's pistol by dawn. And all he would get for it was a dry kiss tonight and a dry cunt in his bed the rest of his life. There was no point in that unless there were hundreds of thousands of guineas attached.

He engaged his considerable charm and instinct for self-preservation, saying, "I remember you have said the gavotte is an especial favorite of yours, as it is mine."

He reached out his hand to grasp her elbow, sweep her back into the crowd, and remain unmarried another day. If he could avoid the cunning traps of these prudish English women, he would remain free to ensnare the riches he really wanted.