Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas

sir.”
     
    His gaze landed on the Central Park map on the console table. “And return the map to the Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg.”
     
    The porter bowed again and left.
     
    Christian walked out onto the balcony of his suite and looked down. The height was perilous, the air abrupt and chill. The pedestrians were the size of drawing dolls, jointed mannequins milling about the pavement.
     
    A woman emerged from the hotel: Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg, as evidenced by her daft hat. The rest of her, however, was altogether shapely—a figure meant for reproduction. Product of evolution that he was, even though he had no intention of procreating with her, he was still coaxed out of his preoccupation to contemplate the obvious pleasures of her form.
     
    In the confines of the lift, her attention had all but licked him from head to toe.
     
    He was not unpopular either at home or abroad. Still, the baroness’s interest had been extraordinarily intense, all the more so for the fact that she never once directly gazed at him.
     
    Now, however, she did. From sixteen stories below, she looked up over her shoulder and unerringly located him, a glance that he felt through the cream netting that concealed her face. Then she crossed the street and disappeared under the trees of Central Park.
     
    V enetia was vaguely aware of the trees, the ponds and bridges, the young men and women zipping by on their safety bicycles. The sea lions at the menagerie barked; the children clamored to see the polar bears; a violin wailed the mournful notes of “
Méditation”
from
Thaïs
—yet all she heard was the duke’s inescapable voice.
    The lady would like your best rooms.
     
    The lady wishes to go to the fifteenth floor.
     
    Your map, madam.
     
    He had no right to appear helpful and gentlemanly, he who’d judged her as if he knew everything there was to know about her. When he knew nothing—nothing at all.
     
    Yet she was the one who felt ashamed that her husband had despised her so much. She could have continued in her blissful ignorance had the duke had the decency to keep a private conversation private. But he hadn’t, and his revelation would haunt her always.
     
    She wanted—needed—to do something to knock him off his arrogant, comfortable perch. Actions carried consequences. He would not decimate her good name and not pay a price for it.
     
    But what could she do? She could not sue him on grounds of defamation, as he’d never named her. She knew no dirty secrets of his that she could spill in return. And even if she warned every woman under the age of sixty-five of his savageness of spirit, his title and wealth would still ensure he’d have the wife of his choice.
     
    It was dark by the time she returned to the hotel, her feet sore, her head throbbing. The lift was empty save for the lift attendant, but as it ascended, the duke might as well have been there, taunting her with his invulnerability.
     
    She smelled the lilies as soon as she opened the doors to her suite. A large peach bloom vase that hadn’t been there before occupied the center table of the sitting room. From the vase, aggressively tall stalks of white calla lilies and orange gladiolus shot toward the ceiling, their petals glaring in the electric light.
     
    Her family would never send her calla lilies, a cascade of which she’d carried when she walked down the aisle to marry Tony. She plucked the card from the fronds that buttressed the flowers.
     
    The Duke of Lexington regrets his departure from New York and hopes for the pleasure of your company another day, madam.
     
    The gall of the man. The extravagant bouquet was nothing but an announcement that should they meet again, he’d like for her to be waiting in bed, already naked. So he despised Venetia Easterbrook’s soul, but liked her backside well enough when he didn’t know to whom it belonged.
     
    She tore the card in two. In four. In eight. And kept tearing, choking on her