Marsh leaned close and spoke to her breasts. "It appears your luck has taken a sad turn, Lady Denmore. May I offer the comfort of my arm for a stroll about the room?"
Idiotic cur. Even Chestershire slanted the man an incredulous look. If there had remained any doubt among society that Somerhart was her lover, it had disappeared over dinner. They'd been seated at nearly opposite ends of the table, but the distance hadn't stopped Somerhart from staking his claim. He'd aimed several smoldering looks in her direction, not to mention the occasional wicked smile. Some of the guests had stared at her in openmouthed wonder. Winterhart was not known for displays of affection.
But Lord Marsh was apparently not averse to making open advances to a duke's mistress. Perhaps he just considered it another gamble. And he was right about one thing; Emma's luck hadn't held. She'd lost exactly one hundred and eighteen quid in the past hour. Marsh might as well have been poking at a badger with a sharp stick.
"Well?" he drawled, face angling closer to her cleavage. "Are you available for a bit of. . . exercise?"
"Lord Marsh . . ." She spoke through clenched teeth, though she smiled for the audience. "Kindly remove your face from my bodice."
He drew back and shot her an arrogant look. "You were not so cold this morning."
The conversation at the table stopped at his overloud words. Emma's jaw creaked. "I was on a winning streak this morning, Marsh. I could afford to be indulgent with lesser players. Excuse me, gentlemen."
"Fool," she heard Chestershire whisper as she walked away. "You could at least be quiet about it." Marsh was still protesting when Emma quit the room.
The tension in her shoulders had built up to a steady, sharp ache over the day. Not only did she have to deal with her unrelenting thoughts about Somerhart and temptation, but her fellow guests had begun to treat her differently. At luncheon, the few other ladies attending had ceased to speak whenever she drew near. They'd smiled benignly, so it wasn't that she'd fallen completely out of favor, just that their conversations were either about her or Somerhart or both.
Since dinnertime, the men had begun acting strangely too, sneaking sideways looks when she passed. Emma was growing worried that someone had espied them in the card room this morning. But no, she told herself, there wasn't enough tittering.
Her annoyance edging to anger, Emma swore off the tables for an hour and headed for the conservatory. It opened onto the music room, where delicate piano playing signaled the presence of ladies. Real ladies. Emma stole through the sweet green leaves of orange trees and orchids. The curtained glass doors of the music room were closed, so she eased the latch up and let the door fall open an inch. Music chimed into the air, followed quickly by the chatter of female voices.
There weren't many women in attendance at Moulter's retreat: most were wives of some of the older gentlemen, though there were also two well-to-do widows and a dowager countess. The countess was quite fond of piquet. And gossip, it seemed. Her voice rang out above the others.
"I can't begin to imagine what it is about her."
A gruff male voice interrupted. "Just what I've been wondering all evening."
"Well," the dowager countess pushed on, "there must be something, though she seems exceedingly average. He's been the Duke of Winterhart for over a decade, now suddenly he's thawing as quickly as snow in spring rain."
Another woman cleared her throat. "Not entirely. I commented on the uncommon blue of his eyes and he brushed a piece of lint from his coat and walked away without a word!"
The countess descended into gales of laughter. Emma was sure she could actually hear the other woman seething. "It was quite rude," she bit out.
"Oh, my poor Lady Worster! I am sorry!" Despite her apologies, the countess continued to laugh for several more seconds. "I once heard the duke comment that if there were one lady in the country who hadn't mentioned the color of his eyes, he’d pluck them out and hand them to her."
"Such rudeness should not be tolerated!"
"Ah, but it will be. Did you hear he's acquired another railroad? Is that three now?"
The man cleared his throat. "Well, there must be something about her. The duke seems almost, dare I say, human?"
The dowager snorted. "Ha! He used to be quite human back when I was Countess Shrewsbury. Or perhaps not human, but more of a satyr!"
An ancient female voice cracked with laughter. "Yes, goat hooves and all. That letter. . . my word."
"The letter! Did you see it?"
"Oh, I did."
Emma leaned closer, lip caught between her teeth. The letter. She'd heard whispers about it, unsatisfying snippets of information. It was the staff of legend, this missive Somerhart had penned to his lover.
She was sure the story must be exaggerated, despite that the occasional speaker claimed to have seen the actual note. The man was Winterhart, after all. Notoriously icy and controlled. And even though she'd recently seen him in his old incarnation, Emma found it hard to believe that words like lush and thrust and worshipped thighs had ever fallen from his pen. Surely he'd never woven lust into poetry. Even after the morning's debacle she could not believe that the man had ever proposed marriage to a woman ten years his senior who'd played mistress to half a dozen of his peers.
Despite Emma's best efforts, the rumors of his past proved hard to confirm. The voices on the other side of the conservatory door grew hushed as they always did. No one wanted to risk the duke's displeasure. He'd made his ruthlessness quite clear over the past decade.
He kept no one close. No one. But even a nodding acquaintance with Somerhart was better than the alternative: frozen disregard, perhaps even outright hostility. Not to mention the occasional infliction of cruelty. Somerhart had purchased more than a few gentlemen's debts when he'd heard particularly nasty comments made about his scandalous sister. The debts had been called in, and whatever terms the gentlemen managed to negotiate had changed their faces in some permanent, inscrutable way. One simply did not cross the duke . . . unless one had nothing and no one to lose.
Emma leaned her head against the white-painted doorjamb. Eavesdropping had proven useless, but she did not want to leave, didn't want to resume the night's performance. The confidence and dry amusement, the tolerance for arched eyebrows and moistened lips. And now this other ruse—this pretense of being Somerhart's lover. Or worse . . .