Instead, he gave her escort a look of enquiry and she let her breath out.
‘Vingt-et-un, if you don’t mind, Barker,’ Granby said, as agreed earlier in the evening.
The maître d’ settled them at a table and snapped his fingers for a waiter to take their orders while Minette casually glanced around, trying to spot her man. The back of her neck prickled. Awareness. Someone watching.
The suave-looking gentleman seated at the next table leaned back in his seat. His heated gaze took in her face and the low cut of her gown. ‘Welcome, lovely lady,’ he said, eyeing her escort in the way of a male prepared to compete.
She merely inclined her head and leaned closer to Granby. The gentleman shrugged and turned back to his game.
After an hour of play in which Granby lost a great deal of money to her and there was still no sign of the Duke, she decided her quest was hopeless. So disappointing. And irritating. She’d been certain she would find him here tonight after trying for days to catch him at his lodgings. Now she’d have to think of a different way to meet him. She was running out of ideas.
‘Why am I not surprised?’ The familiar deep male voice struck a chord low in her stomach. He’d always had that effect on her, though she’d tried to ignore it. As she did now. Slowly, she put her cards face down and glanced up to meet a pair of dark, insolent eyes set in a lean, saturnine face.
A face of pure male beauty, his eyes of the darkest blue ringed by grey. He’d changed since she’d last seen him. His expression had grown colder, harder, more remote. More darkly fascinating. And while his form remained elegantly slender, he’d broadened across the shoulders to match his six-foot frame, which he now used with great effect to loom over her with all the menace of a greater physical force.
Not that she was surprised by the anger smouldering in his dark eyes. She’d invaded his very masculine sanctum.
‘Good evening, Your Grace,’ she said coolly, the daringly low cut of her gown seeming far more outrageous than when she’d left home. Nom d’un nom, she would not give him the satisfaction of feeling embarrassed. She lifted her chin. ‘Quelle surprise.’
His intense dark gaze shifted to her companion. The cold, hard scrutiny of an offended aristocrat.
‘Your servant, Your Grace,’ Granby said, rising to bow, colour flooding his face.
A dark eyebrow lifted in question. ‘Hardly the place to bring a lady, Lieutenant.’
Granby tugged at his neckcloth. Perspiration popped out on his brow. ‘A wager,’ he choked out. ‘Lady wanted to see the inside of a hell. Debt of honour and all that.’
‘Naturally you are not one to argue with a lady.’ The Duke’s narrowed gaze flicked down to the cards and the guineas on her side of the table. ‘Your companion has the devil’s own luck, I see.’
He was being careful not to use her name. She couldn’t help but be grateful for the courtesy. She offered him a sweet smile. ‘Don’t you mean skill, Your Grace?’
‘A newly won skill, then.’
As she had hoped beyond hope, he hadn’t forgotten her or their card games aboard ship some two years before. While she had played off her feminine wiles to get his attention, he’d treated her as little more than an annoying child. Brat, he had called her on the last occasion he had visited Meak, or any other of her brother-in-law’s residences.
‘Unfair, sir,’ she said, keeping her expression flirtatious. ‘I learned from the best.’
His lips quirked at the corners, his eyes glinted, the brief smile making him appear less austere. And more devastatingly handsome. An unwelcome pang pierced her heart. As if she had missed his smiles, which back then had been wickedly teasing. Oh, of a certainty she had missed him. The way one missed a stone in one’s shoe.
The maitre d’, standing at a little behind him, gave an impatient cough.
The flash of amusement on Freddy’s face vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He turned his chilly gaze on her escort. ‘Lieutenant, may I offer you a parlour where you can continue your game in private?’
The commanding tone of his voice was something she certainly didn’t miss. His attempts to act like her older brother. To take charge, as if he had some authority over her actions. She damped down the instant raising of her hackles. After all, this was the reaction she had set out to achieve. His wanting to protect her from her own folly. Not that she would let him know the full extent of her error.
Granby’s expression collapsed into something like relief. He gulped. ‘Very civil, Your Grace. Perhaps...’ He gave Minette a pleading look. ‘Perhaps we should leave?’
Several nearby patrons, including the man who had inspected her when she’d first arrived, had paused in their game to watch the unfolding drama.
‘Oh, no,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘We should accept His Grace’s kind offer.’
Granby’s face crumpled. ‘Really?’
‘Naturellement.’
Freddy bowed, his expression mocking. ‘Be so good as to follow me.’
He led them through a door in the back wall of the subscription room. As she passed him in the doorway, Freddy leaned close and murmured in her ear, ‘I wonder what Gabe is going to think of this piece of mischief?’
She cast him a glance from beneath her lashes. ‘I didn’t take you for a tattletale, Your Grace.’
Granby gasped.
His Grace glowered.
Minette gave him her brightest, most innocent smile and breezed past him. Her gamble had paid off. She had his full attention.
Now came the most difficult part of her plan.
* * *
Following in the wake of the shamefaced Granby and the clearly recalcitrant Miss Rideau, Freddy curbed his ire. The attraction he’d always felt towards the stunningly beautiful French girl, with her velvety brown eyes flecked with gold and her deliciously creamy skin, of which he and everyone else in the club had seen far too much this evening, had nothing to do with his anger.
He was a normal, red-blooded male, and she was a lovely young woman.
No, it was Minette’s lack of respect for the feelings of his friends, Gabe, the Marquess of Mooreshead, and his wife, Nicky, that had him clenching his jaw to the point of cracking his back teeth. How could she be such a little idiot as to come to a place like this? ‘Heaven’, as his customers like to call his establishment when in the throes of their disillusion. For he had no doubt this was all her doing.
Fortunately for her, Barker, his maître d’, knew a member of the Quality when he saw one. The moment Freddy had come in by way of his private entrance, his man had brought him the news that the wrong sort of woman had strayed onto the premises. She wasn’t the first lady to wander through his portals. Usually they were older, married, matrons looking for a bit of excitement after doing their marital duty. As long as they were discreet, no one paid them any mind. However, never did freshly minted debutantes like Minette Rideau
