Murder at Almack's: A Regency Romantic Suspense Short Story by Sharon Louise Page A

once in Portugal, Derrick ducked behind the nearest gilt column, his pulse speeding faster.
    She’d be what? Seventeen, eighteen now? About his sister Anne’s age—and a pang hit him in his hardened heart—and in her first season. The demure, pale-yellow dress he’d gotten a glimpse of proclaimed it to be so. The womanly figure beneath the gown confirmed, with stunning effect, she was no longer a child. She’d grown into a beauty, like her mother.
    But she was pale, from fright, he was sure—though others looking at her would never see it—and what the bloody hell did an earl’s only daughter in a primrose dress with her golden hair in ringlets and blue eyes as vivid and clear as a china doll’s have to be afraid of at Almack’s?
    Thank God the fright was not on his account. Of all the things he’d had to bear these past two years, he didn’t think he could bear her looking at him with fear. But afraid, she was. He’d known Eliza since she was a child, and he not much older, and that serene gaze that had been drilled into her as surely as gentlemanly manners had been drilled into him didn’t fool him an instant.
    She was afraid.
    No, terrified.
    If she saw him, recognized him, she would give him away.
    He would have to speak to her.
    Marshalling the dissembling that had saved his life countless times, he strode around the army of toadeaters congregating around the bloody Duke of Belville and made his way toward Eliza.
    ***
    From behind her hand-painted, silk-and-ivory fan she’d acquired from her lover only last month, Lady Prysden, widow—young widow, young, grieving widow, keep that in mind she told herself, you are a young, grieving widow—watched His Grace the Duke of Belville converse with Mrs. Drummond-Burrell, the duke’s hard face as haughty as the woman’s. His figure was powerful and manly, his countenance generally remarked on as handsome, his fortune Top of the Trees, his rank the highest save the royal dukes and princes and regent.
    Her child— his child—would have that rank and fortune, too. And beauty. Hers. His.
    Never mind that Framphampton chit, who was staring at her future betrothed with the blank expression of a fool. Belville was Lady Prysden’s. In all ways but one.
    She would remedy that tonight, before he declared himself to that milksop child.
    She breathed deeply against her low-cut, constricting, emerald-green gown, her ample breasts already growing with her pregnancy, and made her way through the crowd.
    ***
    Eliza would never be first in the duke’s life, his actions silently told her. Better she became accustomed to that now.
    Not that she had any intention of encouraging his attendance on her. The less time spent together, the more she could look at her future with anything resembling equanimity.
    The crowd grew around the duke, a nonpareil, he was generally acknowledged. A hated one. Even a sheltered, young miss like Eliza knew this. A nonpareil who used his prowess with guns, swords, horses, fists, to tyrannize others. Who used his rank and fortune to control—and at times, ruin—the ton he loved to rule.
    Behind the crowd, a man moved with a swift, decisive stride that spoke confidence and belonging, belonging here, belonging in his own skin, without need to toadeat the duke, and that belonging drew her attention. Any man without need of the duke was a man worth admiring.
    He must be a stranger to London. No man was so foolish as to ignore the Duke of Belville, not if he wished to be in fashion. Not if he wished to be in the highest of circles.
    Perhaps he didn’t know.
    Perhaps he didn’t care.
    He made his way through the growing throng, dressed in dark evening clothes—dark but for an elaborately embroidered, silver-threaded waistcoat—his clothes cut in the French fashion the duke favored and fitted to his well-formed body, and a stirring of recognition tweaked her heart, not a stranger, but who, then?
    She watched him move at an angle from her, craning to