he should enter into a duel with the Earl of Whitney with her at the centre of it.
That he was even thinking of doing so told Hawk just how ludicrous this situation had become.
He was the Duke of Stourbridge. The formidably correct Duke of Stourbridge. A man with a deliberately spotless reputation. A man he had heard his peers hold up to their children as an example of one of the finest members of the aristocracy, for them to emulate.
And yet here he was, on the terrace of his own family seat, contemplating challenging another man to a duel over a young woman who had already told him how much she deplored such behaviour.
‘I do not believe Jane would approve,’ he said flatly.
The Earl arched mocking brows. ‘And that concerns you?’
‘That surprises you?’ Hawk grated.
Whitney gave a derisive smile. ‘You know, Hawk, I still remember you when you were the disreputable Marquis of Mulberry. Before you became every inch the superior Duke of Stourbridge.’
Hawk stiffened. ‘Meaning?’
The older man shrugged. ‘Meaning you might do well to remember it too sometimes.’
Hawk shook his head. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
But he did know.
Life had been much simpler ten years ago. Hawk had been a different person then. As Marquis of Mulberry he had only been heir to the Dukedom, and as such able to be as riotously devil-may-care as he knew Sebastian now was.
But that had been in a different life. And he a different man. He was the Duke of Stourbridge now, with all the responsibility that title implied. He could no longer do what he wanted without thought to the consequences.
‘In my opinion, your Jane Smith is unique, Stourbridge.’ The Earl nodded towards the direction Jane had taken when she had left them so abruptly.
‘A young woman to be priced above—I believe Jane is wearing pearls this evening, Stourbridge? Your mother’s pearls, are they not…?’ he taunted softly.
Hawk stiffened. ‘What if they are?’
‘Idle curiosity on my part. That is all.’ The Earl shrugged uninterestedly. ‘But be assured, Hawk, that if you do not care to claim Jane for your own, then some other lucky man soon will.’
Hawk’s jaw clenched. ‘Not you!’
The Earl gave a humourless smile. ‘No, not me,’ he conceded wryly. ‘Although I am sure that not even the estimable Jane would dismiss the idea of becoming the Countess of Whitney.’
Hawk eyed the other man scornfully. ‘And we all know how devoted you were to your last Countess!’
‘Have a care, Stourbridge,’ Whitney grated harshly, all humour gone as his eyes glittered dangerously in the darkness. ‘Just because I did not love my wife, it does not mean that I am incapable of understanding the emotion—’
‘Understanding it, perhaps,’ Hawk conceded derisively. ‘But feeling it? Somehow I do not think so.’
‘I have loved, Stourbridge,’ the other man bit out coldly. ‘Too much to ever feel the emotion for another woman! I—’
‘Ah, there you are, Hawk,’ Arabella greeted him brightly as she came out onto the terrace. ‘And the Earl of Whitney, too,’ she recognised happily. ‘The absence of two such eligible gentlemen has left some of the ladies in desperate need of dancing partners for the next set,’ she added, with a playful tap of her fan on the Earl’s arm.
The last thing Hawk felt like doing at the moment was playing the polite host to Arabella guests—male or female. In fact, he had never felt less polite in his life!
‘As long as you will promise to be my partner, I will indeed return to the ballroom, Lady Arabella,’ the Earl drawled in reply to her rebuke.
‘Hawk…?’
‘Oh, I believe your brother has…some urgent business about the estate he has to take care of before he is free to rejoin us,’ the Earl dismissed lightly as he drew Arabella’s hand into the crook of his arm. ‘Is that not so, Stourbridge?’ he added, with a challenging glance in Hawk’s direction.
Hawk met the other man’s gaze in a silent battle of wills, knowing Jane to be the ‘urgent business’Whitney referred to.
‘Hawk…?’ Arabella said uncertainly as the silence stretched between the two men. ‘Surely whatever it is it can wait until morning…?’
‘Doubtful, hmm, Stourbridge?’ the Earl drawled mockingly.
Hawk gave the other man one last narrow-eyed glance before turning to his sister. ‘I will rejoin you as soon as I am free to do so, Arabella.’ He could not, after all, simply return to the ballroom when he knew Jane was alone somewhere out in the garden.
‘Oh, very well,’ his sister accepted, with an impatient flick of her fan.
‘Our dance, I believe, Lady Arabella?’ the Earl prompted smilingly, as the sound of the quartet of musicians hired for the evening could be heard once more.
Hawk waited until his sister and the Earl had returned to the ballroom before turning his narrowed gaze in the direction of the garden. But he could detect no sign of movement either on the lawns or along the hedges to indicate Jane’s presence.
Where could Jane have disappeared to so completely? The stables once again? Or somewhere else?
Chapter Eleven
Jane sensed rather than heard the Duke’s presence behind her in the darkness of the summerhouse to which she had fled so angrily such a short time ago.
Angrily? She had been more than angry; she had been incensed.
‘Have you come to once again laugh at my fears?’ she demanded, without turning.
‘Fears, Jane…?’ he echoed softly.
Jane had not lit the lamps when she entered the summerhouse, preferring to hide her blushing cheeks in the darkness as she acknowledged how close she had come to revealing her feelings for the Duke—both to Hawk himself and to cynical the Earl of Whitney.
She turned now, her chin stubbornly high as she stared across the distance that separated her from the Duke as he stood silhouetted in the doorway.
Arabella had shown Jane the summerhouse yesterday afternoon, and the two women had lingered to enjoy a glass of lemonade on the veranda surrounding it in the heat of the afternoon.
But the single room that had seemed so bright and airy during the day was full of shadows this evening, and the Duke appeared very tall and imposing in the darkness, the haughty arrogance of his face all sharply etched angles.
Jane made a brief movement of her shoulders. ‘I would not like to see you imprisoned, or more likely hanged, for killing another man.’
His teeth glinted white in the gloom as he drawled. ‘That is always supposing, Jane, that it was not I who was killed.’
That had been her real fear, of course. The fear Jane had almost revealed, and along with it her newly discovered love for this man. The same fear she dared not reveal now, for that very same reason.
‘Was that ever a possibility?’
He shrugged. ‘Whitney has something of a reputation as a swordsman.’
Jane repressed the shiver than ran through her. ‘Then you were doubly foolish to have challenged him in that way.’ She snapped her impatience with his recklessness.
‘Was I, Jane?’ He moved farther into the summerhouse to close the door softly behind him.
Jane resisted the impulse to take a step backwards, determined that she would not reveal