Not Quite A Duke (Dukes' Club Book 6) by Eva Devon Page B

“Society, if you must know, and the little recourse given to women.”
    Charles made no reply to deny.
    “What do you think of fallen women, Lord Charles?”
    He looked at her for a very long, hard moment. “I think fallen women didn’t fall at all.”
    Oh dear. Here it was. He was going to extoll the glories of the scandalous female.
    “I think she either leaped blindly and there was nothing to catch her or she was given a good hard shove.” Charles’ face hardened. “Most probably by a man.”
    She gaped. “I beg your pardon?”
    “Who is hard of hearing now?”
    She cleared her throat. “Given your reputation, I thought. . .”
    He arched a dark brow, his face a mask of shadows in the faint cab light.
    “I thought wrongly.”
    “For a woman of such good brains, you do make a habit of assuming the worst about people and deciding their characters for them.”
    She pressed her lips together. He’d already mentioned this propensity in her. It was difficult not to assume all rakes were painted with the same brush. But she’d seen the cruel streak that ran through the certain kind of man that discarded women as quickly as they could be corrupted.
    “It is hard not to think badly of a man who delights in ruining women,” she said simply.
    “I have never ruined anyone,” he said with a surprising degree of passion.
    “Not even men like my uncle?”
    Once again, he stared at her, made no reply then looked to the window.
    His silence pained her. A vehement denial would have been easy to cast aside. The lady doth protest too much and all that. She’d have known him to be a cad. But his cool dismissal of her accusation was somehow. . . Well, shaming as if she’d tainted him with her words.
    After several moments of silence, the only noises being the street outside and the bumping of the coach, he whispered, “I know the darkness of men’s souls. Most need no assistance from me in blackening their hearts further. . . And in my experience, when a man casts himself into darkness nothing and no one can pull him out if that is where he is determined to be.”
    The ache in his voice stabbed her straight to the heart. It was so vital, so intense, it took her breath away.
    She realized that she had struck far too close to home and, once again, she recalled what he had said, alluding to someone close having committed self-slaughter.
    Had that person dwelled in darkness before they’d taken their own life? Had Lord Charles tried to extract them?
    Before she could make voice to any other questions, the cab rolled to a stop.
    She glanced outside and spotted a palatial townhome. “Are we here?” she asked incredulously.
    “No.”
    “Then why—“
    “I’m not taking a lady where we’re going without the assistance of a friend.
    “That’s not truly necessary is—“
    His look, which begged to know if she had any sense at all, silenced her.
    Suddenly, she began to feel a certain sort of excitement which was the type that combined fear and anticipation. At least she didn’t have to worry about Lord Charles making any advances. Not with another person present and certainly not if they were going to such a hell.
    Or at least, she hoped she didn’t. Assumptions had not been her friend as of late.
    She glanced out the window and spotted a very large man, a man who looked like he was built like a brick wall coming towards them.
    “There’s not room,” she whispered.
    “What the devil are you saying?”
    “How will we all fit in here?” she asked. The approaching man was massive. Lord Charles was massive. She wasn’t a delicate flower.
    “Dear girl, all three of us will fit a treat.”
    Her own eyebrows shot up. A treat? “There will be no nonsense—“
    Charles snorted. “None. Firstly, because I’m not sharing you with anyone else. Secondly, he’s a married man.”
    “Oh.” Though marriage, as she was sure Lord Charles was aware, was no guarantee of fidelity, it did make her feel a trifle better.
    The