"To point out the realities of her situation, rather."
The duke nodded. "Well, I'm glad she's not stupid enough to ignore those realities."
"Oh, I don't believe Miss Juliana is in the least stupid." Mistress Dennison declared. "She has a tongue like a razor."
The duke smiled and laid his cup on the table. "If you'll excuse me, madam, I'll go and make my salutations." He rose and strolled across to the window.
Juliana felt his approach. Her spine prickled. A thick strand of hair worked its way loose from the knot and slid inexorably down her neck. Automatically her hands went to her head.
"Allow me." His voice at her shoulder was deep and dark, and although she'd been expecting him, she jumped visibly. "Did I startle you?" he inquired gently. "Curious… I could have sworn you knew I was here." His hands put hers aside and moved through her hair.
It took Juliana a moment to realize that he was removing the pins. "No!" she exclaimed, reaching for his hands. "I will not wear it loose."
"Your hair seems to have a different idea," he commented, capturing both her wrists in one hand. "It really seems to have a mind of its own, my dear Juliana." His free hand continued its work, and the fiery mass fell to her shoulders. "There, now, I find that infinitely more desirable."
"I am not in the least interested in what you find desirable, Your Grace." She tugged at her imprisoned wrists and they were immediately released.
"Oh, I hope to change that," he responded, smiling as his hands on her shoulders turned her to face him. "You look ready to thrust a dagger into my heart!"
"I would like to twist it like a corkscrew in your gut," she declared in a savage undertone. "I would carve my initials on your belly and watch you hanged, drawn, and quartered! And I would laugh at your agonies." She brushed her hands together with the air of a task well completed as she delivered the coup de grace, her eyes sparking with triumph as if she really had disposed of him in such an utterly satisfying fashion.
Tarquin laughed. "What a fierce child you are, mignonne."
"No child!" she hissed, twitching herself out of his grasp. "If you think I'm no more than an inexperienced simpleton to be twisted to your design like a straw, I tell you, sir, you quite mistake the matter!"
"I fear we're drawing attention to ourselves," he said. "Come, let us go somewhere private, and you may rail at me to your heart's content."
Juliana, aware that a curious hush had fallen over the room, glanced around. Eyes were swift I\ averted and the buzz of conversation was immediately renewed.
"Come," he repeated, offering his arm.
"I will go nowhere with you."
"Come," he repeated, and a hint of flint lay beneath the smiling good humor in the deep-set gray eyes. As she still hesitated, he took her hand and tucked it into his arm, advising softly, "You have nothing to lose by behaving with good grace, my dear, and everything to gain."
Juliana could see no way out. All around her she saw men whose faces reflected the lascivious greed of those hungry for flesh. She could scream and create a scene, but she'd meet no sympathy or support from either the buyers or the sellers in this whorehouse masquerading as a softly lit, gracious salon. No one here would have any sympathy for a recalcitrant harlot.
Could she break free and run? But even supposing she could get past Garston and the burly footmen in the hall, where would she go? Dressed as she was. she could hardly lose herself in the narrow, twisting alleys around Covent Garden.
Her only chance was to appeal to the Duke of Redmayne's finer nature-Supposing he had one. Putting his back up wouldn't help.
In silence she allowed him to escort her from the salon. Covertly curious glances followed them. Richard Dennison was crossing the hall to the salon as they stepped through the double doors.
"Your Grace." He bowed low. His gaze flicked over Juliana, and he nodded as he noted her loosened hair. He smiled at her. "You will show His Grace all the hospitality of this house, Juliana."
"Were I a member of this household, sir, I should feel obliged to do so," Juliana retorted.
Richard's mouth tightened with annoyance. Tarquin chuckled, thinking he'd rarely met a creature with so much spirit. "I give you good evening, Dennison." He bore Juliana up the stairs and into the small parlor where she'd first met him.
Once inside, he released her arm, closed the door, and pulled the bell rope. "As I recall, you drink only champagne."
Juliana shook her head. That was a pretense that had little point now. "Not really."
"Ahh." He nodded. "You were attempting to put me in my place, I daresay."
"Is that possible?"
That made him laugh again. "No, my dear, I doubt it. What shall the footman bring for you?"
"Nothing, thank you."
"As you please." He asked the footman for claret, then stood behind an armchair, one long white hand resting on the back, his eyes on Juliana. She stood by the fireplace, staring down into the empty grate.
There was a quality to her that Tarquin found moving. A vulnerability that went hand in hand with the fierce determination to hold her own against all the odds. She was not in the least beautiful, he thought. She had an unruly, ungainly quirk that denied conventional beauty. But then he remembered her naked body, and his flesh stirred at the memory. No, not beautiful, but a man would have to be but half a man not to find her desirable. By the same token, she would be safe from Lucien. Her body was too voluptuous to appeal to him.
Suddenly she flung herself into a chair and kicked off her shoes with such vigor that one of them landed on a console table. The candlestick shook violently under the impact, and hot wax splashed onto the polished surface.
"A plague on the damnable things!" Juliana bent to massage her feet with a groan. "How could anyone wear such instruments of torture?"
"Most women manage without difficulty," he observed, much amused at this abrupt change of demeanor. Her hair obscured her expression as she bent over her feet, but he could imagine the disgusted curl of her lip, the flash of irritation in her eyes. Strange, he thought, that after only two meetings he could picture her reactions so accurately.
She looked up, shaking her hair away from her face, and he saw he'd been exactly right. "I don't give a damn what other women manage! I find them insupportable." She extended one foot, flexing it to stretch the cramped arch.
"Practice makes perfect," Tarquin said, taking the discarded shoe off the console table. He picked up the other one that had come to rest in the coal scuttle. He blew coal dust from the pale silk, murmuring, "What cavalier treatment for a fifty-guinea pair of shoes."
So he had paid for them. Juliana leaned back in her chair and said carelessly, "I'm sure they won't go to waste, Your Grace. There must be harlots aplenty eager to accept such gifts."
"That might be so," he agreed judiciously. "If women with feet this size were easy to find."
The return of the footman with the claret gave Juliana the opportunity to bite her tongue on an undignified retort. When the man had left, she was prepared to launch her appeal to the duke's finer feelings.
"My lord duke," she began, getting to her feet, standing very straight and still. "I must beg you to cease this persecution. I cannot do what you ask. It's preposterous… it's barbaric that you should demand such a thing of someone you know has no protection and no friends. There must be women who would be willing… eager, even… to enter such a contract. But I'm not of their number. Please, I beg you, let me leave this place unmolested."
Almost every woman Tarquin could think of in Juliana's situation would leap at what he was offering-wealth, position, security. The girl was either a simpleton or very unusual. He kept his thoughts to himself, however, remarking, "Somehow, I have the impression that pleading is foreign to your nature, mignonne." He took a sip of his claret. "That little speech lacked a certain ring of conviction."