My Seductive Innocent

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London, England

The Year of Our Lord 1820

Nathaniel Ellison, Marquess of Deering, the fifth Duke of Scarsdale tried to block out the annoying noise flowing from his crowded ballroom into the sanctuary of his billiard room. He gripped his billiard stick and took aim, but it was no use. The second the stick connected with the ball, he knew he was too far to the left.

A deep chuckle erupted from the candlelit corner where his friend Philip De Vere, Earl of Harthorne, reclined in a leather chair sipping on his brandy and waiting to play the winner of the game. “I’ve never seen you miss a shot, Scarsdale.”

Nathan smirked in Harthorne’s direction. He didn’t mind the jibing. It was a long-standing, good-natured tradition. “You’ve never seen me give a ball, either. Did you think you knew everything about me?”

“Hardly,” Harthorne replied, amusement lacing his tone. “For example, I would have sworn you would never invite the ton into your home, but then you astonished me by agreeing to my sister’s request to host a ball here. How did Amelia talk you into this?”

“Sweetly,” Nathan replied. He didn’t care to admit that her story about the plight of London’s orphans had affected him in such an unusual way. It had made him feel compelled to help, and he rarely felt compelled to do anything.

Nathan’s cousin, Ellison, brushed past him to stand in front of the billiard table. He drained his third brandy of the night before speaking. “If you two are done chitchatting,” he slurred, “I’d like to take my turn, so I can wrap up besting you.”

Nathan swept his hand toward their game as he stepped back. “By all means, give it your best shot.” Ellison was always churlish when he drank too much.

As Ellison leaned awkwardly over the table to line up his stick, Nathan’s unwavering and long-established guilt drew his gaze to his cousin’s bad leg, which often made balancing difficult for Ellison. When Nathan looked up, narrowed brown eyes met his, and Ellison curled his lip back from his teeth.

Damnation. Nathan fought to suppress his annoyance. The crowd in his home had already obliterated his patience, not that there had been much of it in the first place. He was in no mood for one of Ellison’s drunken tirades, but he’d put up with it. The price was nothing compared to what Ellison endured every day with his maimed leg, thanks to Nathan. Nothing had been the same since he’d wrecked the carriage they’d “borrowed” from Nathan’s father so long ago and crushed Ellison’s leg in the accident.

“Shelve your tedious, never-ending guilt, Scarsdale,” Ellison growled before turning and taking his shot. The clank of balls hitting and missing their targets filled the room.

From the corner, Harthorne clapped his hands. “Bravo, Ellison. This little game has shown me I’m not the worst billiards player I know,” he teased.

Nathan watched as Ellison gripped the billiard stick so tight that his knuckles turned white. Hell and damn. He could feel the heat of Ellison’s mounting ire.

As Harthorne rose and strolled toward them, Nathan tried to give his friend a warning look, but the moment Harthorne spoke again, Nathan realized the warning had gone undetected. “Until tonight I thought I was the only one who missed such easy shots,” Harthorne said as he clasped Ellison on the shoulder and grinned. “I admit I’m glad to have company in not being an expert billiards player like Scarsdale and my sister’s husband, Aversley.”

“That’s enough, Harthorne,” Nathan interjected. Ellison looked as if he was on the verge of exploding with his now red-mottled coloring.

Harthorne’s eyes widened in belated realization, and he hastily nodded his agreement, but Ellison slammed the billiard stick on the table and scowled at Nathan. “I don’t need a defender, Scarsdale. God knows where you developed that loathsome trait. Your father certainly never defended you.”

Nathan stiffened at the mention of his deceased father and at the idea that Ellison might think Nathan gave a damn that his father had never taken up for him against his mother’s harsh treatment. He may have cared at one point, but he had ceased to give a damn long before his parents perished in the carriage accident twelve years ago.

“You’re inebriated,” Nathan clipped.

Ellison swayed, even as he shook his head in denial. “I can beat you at billiards most every time, even with this bad leg, and you damn well know it.” His sharp words rang in the room.

It was on the tip of Nathan’s tongue to flay his cousin for his crass behavior, but then Ellison grabbed his leg with a wince, and guilt slammed Nathan straight in the chest once again. You did that to him, his inner voice reminded him. Slowly and with the casual air of one who seemed to be contemplating the assertion, Nathan twirled the billiard stick with his fingers as he stared at his cousin and, in truth, debated exactly what to say to soothe Ellison without him knowing it.

“You can beat me when I’m distracted,” he drawled, allowing a bit of the conceitedness everyone expected from him to tinge his tone. Truthfully, Ellison had never won against him of his own accord, but Nathan would take the secret to his grave. Stepping around Ellison and briefly meeting Harthorne’s knowing gaze, Nathan took his shot and purposely missed.

Ellison laughed as he swept back the platinum hair that had been hanging in front his eyes and repositioned himself to shoot. The balls clanked together, and Ellison came up grinning as he motioned to the table. The ball he’d been aiming for disappeared into the appropriate hole. “If only my mother would consider her crippled son besting the Golden Duke time and again in billiards an accomplishment, I feel certain she would regard me with the fondness with which she holds you.”

“I’m not the Golden Duke, and you are not a cripple. And you know as well as I do that Aunt Harriet’s esteem is not for me but for my title and the esteem it brings her with all her simpering friends.”

“So true,” Ellison agreed with a lopsided grin, becoming suddenly affable, as was his typical pattern when he drank. Ellison leaned down beside Nathan as he stared blindly at the balls. His cousin’s pudgy face appeared inches from his. “You are a daunting duke, if not golden, and one with a fierce scowl on his face at the moment. There are several easy shots here, yet you are staring as if you don’t see one.”

Nathan shrugged. “I suppose I don’t have the keen eye you do.”

“And I suppose you do.”

“Do you?” Nathan drawled.

“Indeed. Do you know what else I suppose?”

“I can’t say that I do, but I suspect by your serious expression that you are going to enlighten me.”

Ellison was the one scowling now. “I propose you are throwing the game and allowing me to win.”

“You said propose not suppose. The words carry different meanings.” Nathan parried the truth with drivel, a trick he’d learned long ago from his father when dealing with one of his mother’s moods.

“Don’t try to distract me, Scarsdale. Are you letting me win the games we play?”

“You give me too much credit,” Nathan said. “I’m not nearly that generous or kind.”

“I don’t think so, either, but if you miss scoring this next point, I’m going to know you have been mollycoddling me. And the only creatures I’ve ever seen you mollycoddle are lame dogs. Therefore, I will know you think of me much in the same light as you do that old three-legged hound you rescued some time back. What was his name?”

“His name is Duke,” Nathan replied as he decided what shot to take. It would be simple enough to beat Ellison, though he hated to do it. Obviously, his attempt to help his cousin had backfired.

Nathan moved his stick, tilted his head perfectly to line his shot, and ceased breathing. As the stick slid forward, a shrill, earsplitting sound cut through the background noise of the ballroom music, and Nathan lurched, recognizing Miss Benson’s obnoxious laughter at once. His stick jerked, the cue hitting the ball too far to the left, and his point was lost. Slowly, he turned his head as he stood and tried to think of a reasonable explanation for missing such an easy shot, but when he met Ellison’s accusing stare he snapped his jaw shut at the futility of the endeavor.

Ellison’s gaze fell toward his shoes as his fingers traced a line over the billiard table. “It’s good to know what you really think of me,” he said, so low Nathan almost missed the pitiful words.

Irritation flared in Nathan’s chest, but he tamped it down. “Bollocks. You had to see me lose control of my stick just now when Miss Benson snickered so loudly.”

“I did not,” Ellison insisted in a mutinous tone.

“I saw you,” Harthorne assured in his usual helpful way.

“Woo-hoo, Your Grace, are you in there?” Miss Benson called from the other side of the door.

Bloody, bloody hell. He was in no mood to deal with the chit. “A moment, gentlemen, if you please,” he said before setting down his cue and striding toward the door. No doubt Miss Benson was loitering in the hope of trapping him alone and somehow maneuvering him into marriage. How the lady could conjure so much false hope from one dance of pity more than a year ago baffled Nathan.

Jesus. Did that make him a sappy defender of the downtrodden as Ellison had accused?

That would mean he allowed emotion to rule him, and he certainly did not. No, that had been a momentary slip when he’d rescued her from the wallflower line. It had never happened before, and he would not allow it to happen again.

His own father was a sterling example of the tragedy that could strike a man who let emotions rule him. His father had fancied himself in love with Nathan’s mother, and the poor devil had paid for the weakness the rest of his beleaguered life, married to a woman who, for years, was an unpredictable tempest until she settled into permanent frostiness. Nathan had paid, too, until he’d realized her affection was unattainable. But his father had continued to want her love, despite everything, and she would never give it to him. Not really.She’d give snatches of it, and then she’d become angry and snatch it right back. And her actions eventually drove Nathan’s father away from both of them.

Nathan clutched the door, angry he’d let the memory surface. He could see Miss Benson’s long, pointy nose and spectacled eyes as she peered at him from the opening in the ajar door. With a sigh, he swung it open, but before she could even attempt to enter his private domain, he gently took her elbow and maneuvered her into the corridor. “Miss Benson?”

“Your Grace, imagine finding you here!”

“Yes, it’s quite the leap of the imagination,” he drawled.

She blushed ever so lightly and tugged on one of her tight brown curls. “Your house is enormous,” she gushed. “I became lost trying to find the terrace.”

“Ah, quite understandable,” he lied, his cheek twitching. “It’s located directly off the ballroom and outside.”

She batted her eyes and smiled as if she did not understand how ridiculous she appeared. “Do you mind showing me the way?”

“Ah, I wish I could, but I’ve important business that cannot wait. Follow this corridor back the way you came and one of my many servants will guide you the rest of the way.”

“But―”

“Off you go,” he ordered and gave her an encouraging nudge. When she didn’t move, he gave her the look Amelia had told him was rather daunting. “Your mother would be quite displeased to know you’ve become lost. She’s a stickler for staying on the correct path, I hear.”

Miss Benson gasped. “You won’t tell her?”

“Not if you go immediately.”

Miss Benson nodded, shot him a look of extreme longing that made him wish for the hundredth time that he’d never danced with her, and then she turned on her heel and fled.

As he watched to make sure she did indeed depart Amelia came around the corner with her husband—and Nathan’s closest, and once wisest, friend—at her side, where the poor fool had stayed since becoming shackled by marriage and dull-witted by love. As they strolled toward Nathan, staring into each other’s eyes and oblivious of their surroundings, he first thought about how amazing it was that they did not trip. His second thought was that he felt sorry for Aversley. One day, likely sooner than later, Amelia would crush that heart his friend had so foolishly given her. Nathan had a flash of guilt for helping Amelia win Aversley, but how could he have known the man would turn to putty in her hands? Before Amelia, Aversley had been just as averse to the notion of love as Nathan was.

When it appeared the couple might walk right into him, he cleared his throat, and they glanced toward him in unison. Amelia did not offer her usual lovely smile as greeting. Instead, she scowled at him. “Scarsdale, as the host of the ball, you really should be out amongst your guests and not secluded in the billiard room.”

Nathan crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I’m not secluded. My cousin and your brother are with me. I made it perfectly clear to you that I would host the ball but not linger amongst the guests.”

“Botheration,” Amelia grumbled. “All the trouble I went to help you and you refuse to cooperate!”

“Help me?” He raised an eyebrow at her, a suspicion forming, fueled by the smirk on Aversley’s face. Nathan furrowed his brow. “I was under the impression, given what you told me, that I was helping you raise money to fund a shelter for homeless children.”

Amelia nibbled on her lip as a blush stole over her cheeks. “You were. I mean, you are. But I confess I had hoped to help you meet a nice lady tonight.”

“I know plenty of nice ladies,” he taunted.

Amelia pursed her lips. “Not those kinds of ladies, who you really cannot call ‘ladies’ at all. I’m speaking of the kind who want to give you more than their bodies for pay.”

“Who says I pay?” Amelia was the only lady he would ever banter with this way. She was his closest friend’s wife, yes, but she was different. She was a lady all the way through, but she could joke, laugh, and exchange barbs with razor-sharp wit. And she did it better than most gentlemen could.

“Do be serious,” she scolded. “You know perfectly well I’m referring to you meeting a lady with whom you could fall in love.”

Before Nathan could respond, Aversley spoke. “I told Amelia it would take more than a ball in your home to bring you out of your cave.”

Nathan frowned. “My what?”

“Your refuge, Scarsdale,” Amelia said, then scooted around him, dragging her husband with her.

“Where are you going?” Nathan demanded.

“To hold my brother accountable,” she retorted, barging into the billiard room.

When he entered the room after her, he motioned between his cousin and Amelia, whom she had not met yet as Ellison had been in Bath for the last year getting treatments on his leg. “May I present my cousin, Mr. Hughbert Ellison. Ellison, this is the Duchess of Aversley, and you already know her lesser half.”