Page 10 of The Dueling Duchess

She recognized him because she had seen him in the audience several times over the past few weeks, both at her performances and Marianne’s boxing matches.

The Duke of Flawless was known as something of a social reformer, so his presence at the Fayre had made Barnabas nervous. He’d worried Staunton was looking for moral violations that would give the authorities reason to close down the circus.

Cecile thought Barnabas’s worries were all bosh. It was her opinion that the duke came to stare at Marianne.

And here he was actually with Marianne and looking far, far different.

His distinctive pale blond hair was now a flat brown and he was wearing spectacles, although they did nothing to disguise his striking pale green eyes.

He’d been in expensive evening blacks before, and now he was garbed in the humble attire of a working man.

Not that he really looked like a working man when one examined him closely.

Aside from his reform work, Cecile didn’t know much about the Duke of Staunton because his behavior was so flawless that he made poor fodder for the society sections.

Indeed, it was ironic that Staunton—a man who was never mentioned in gossip columns—was bosom beaus with a man who was rarely not in one.

The very same man that Cecile had just been reading about in fact.

Cecile turned slowly to the second man, who was looking right back at her and smiling.

She knew she was gaping like an unlettered hayseed, but her brain refused to believe her eyes.

No.

It can’t be.

It is impossible.

Cecile knew she looked like a fool with her mouth hanging open, but she seemed to have lost any power to shut it. Besides, it was the only way she could draw enough air into her lungs, because it was as if his very presence sucked all the oxygen from the room.

Good God! It is he!

Yes, it was. The god standing before her was none other than the Darling of the Ton.

He was gorgeous.

And perfect.

Cecile would have known him even if he’d worn a wig and ballgown. The only reason his paltry disguise had fooled her for so much as five seconds was because of the sheer improbability of the Darling himself walking into the Fayre’s cluttered dressing room.

She’d seen dozens and dozens of illustrations of the Darling but had never seen him in the flesh.

And oh, what flesh.

To say he was six feet of masculine perfection was to criminally understate the case.

He was perhaps an inch taller than the duke but slightly leaner than his friend, and everything about him shrieked patrician elegance.

His thick hair was a dark, glossy mop of loose curls. His eyes were the warm golden brown one saw in stained-glass windows in churches.

But there was nothing religious in the look shining out of his exquisite orbs.

Indeed, the Darling was taking Cecile’s measure every bit as intimately as she took his, those bedroom eyes lingering on the bodice of her gown with a speculative look that made her heart clatter wildly in her chest.

She’d actually dreamed about him looking at her that way—the sort of dreams one couldn’t admit having even to one’s best friend. The sorts of dreams that made one’s thighs clench just recalling them.

Cecile knew from the stories in the newspapers that he was thirty-two—a few years younger than she—and the faint lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes only made him more gorgeous, as did the grooves in his lean cheeks, which appeared to have been formed by smiling.