The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order by Miranda Davis Page A

older domestic chanting “Miss H., Miss H.” over and over. She knelt before him, watching him, and reached out. He woke with a violent twitch.
    Damn her eyes!

Chapter 7
In which our heroine suffers envy, then an apoplexy, on Piccadilly Street.
    I n late January, Miss Haversham, Murphy and Mrs. Mason returned to London to make deliveries in Mayfair and St. James. Again, the threesome stayed in her brother’s unoccupied townhouse for this brief transactional visit.
    Prudence loved strolling the streets of Mayfair, admiring – to be honest, rudely gawking at – the fine ladies in their beautiful, irresistibly impractical clothing. Delicate laces effervesced at swanlike ivory throats. Dyed ostrich plumes erupted from fanciful spoke bonnets. Sable and ermine muffs cosseted delicate, pale hands sheathed in thin, pastel kid gloves. The women floated along Bond Street like bits of brightly dyed eiderdown.
    When Prudence was a small child, she delighted in delving into her mother’s carefully packed chests filled with finery from an earlier age of elegance. She stroked the silk stockings and slid them up over her knobby knees to the top of her thin thighs where they hung loose but felt decadent even to a little girl. As she whirled before a cracked mirror in the attic, she fantasized about her come-out: the balls, the routs, the music, the dancing and the delicious rustle of silk.
    That was long, long ago.
    Prudence glanced down self-consciously at her best walking gown. Her Pomona green, long-sleeved frock buttoned to the neck and had no froths or ruffles, just a few sober horizontal pleats above the hem. Nothing but simple velvet trim decorated the warm, brown wool kerseymere Spencer she wore over it. Her bonnet was serviceable but made her look as dour as a Methodist, or so she thought. She needed no fripperies in her practical life but that did not prevent her from coveting them on occasion.
    It was a typically grubby, overcast January morning in London as Prudence walked briskly along Piccadilly with basket in hand on her way to a tiny apothecary shop on Albemarle Street. The air was tinged a sludgy, smudgy yellow green. London’s infamous fog hung denser than usual this morning, thickened as it was by half a million chimneys belching coal fire smoke into the cold, dank air. It reduced visibility to barely across the wide, crowded thoroughfare. Carts and carriages loomed into view only to be swallowed up a short distance away. Pedestrians, too, materialized from and disappeared into banks of the gritty urban mist.
    In her own personal fog, Prudence riffled through her mental filing cabinet to recall the owner of Albemarle Apothecary. As she walked, she barely noticed a man further down the pavement whose bare head was nearly as tall as the beaver hats on other pedestrians. A heartbeat later, she recognized the Duke of Ainsworth looming out of the pea soup not ten yards ahead of her and all her mental notes spewed from her mind. She jerked to a halt, abruptly short of breath.
    They both headed in the same direction so she followed him, careful to stay behind him. Prudence took in the breadth of his shoulders, accentuated by the capes of his greatcoat, and recalled the other, more disturbing memory of his naked back. He had been inert, leaning against the chaise, his brawny shoulders slumped but still exceptionally wide. The contours of his muscular arms and his golden skin haunted her still. His tousled brown hair now appeared lighter by a shade to a warm caramel.
    The man moved elegantly. Impeccable tailoring could not disguise the power of the warrior within his clothes. He wore his coat carelessly open and flying away from his legs. Oh, the legs on the man! Years in the saddle resulted in long, distinct thigh muscles that pulsed with each firm step he took. Even the most exaggerated illustrations captured sufficiently the duke’s profile and powerful physique. From her perspective behind him, Prudence also saw the