Kiss Me Darkly Read online

  KISS ME DARKLY

  Kiss a Belle

  Book 2

  by

  Cecilia Gray

  Subscribe to her newsletter for updates on new releases, sneak peeks, and giveaways.

  Meet Dinah Belle—the Blasé Belle—who never gets emotional because there is no problem—including love—that she cannot solve with her superior intellect. The irrational emotion of love has destroyed her family, but it must have a cure, and she has the perfect test case by which to discover it.

  Meet Graham Abernathy—the popular duke’s son—a gentleman who goes out of his way to please others and be well liked. Not that it’s done him any good, since the woman he loves has thrown him over for someone else. Heartbroken, he attracts the interest of one Dinah Belle, who has her sights set on him—for research, of all things.

  Dinah has no intention of failing. He has no intention of being cured.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead, or places, events, or locales, is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2016 by Cecilia Gray

  Cover Design and Copyright by Okay Creations

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written consent from the author/publisher.

  Published by Gray Life, LLC

  READ. LEARN. LIVE. REPEAT.

  * * *

  Contents

  A Disclaimer of Some Urgency

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Cecilia’s Booklist

  About Cecilia

  Praise for Cecilia Gray’s Novels

  “Absorbing… refreshing… commendable.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A compelling mix of action, drama and love.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Four Stars!” —San Francisco Book Review

  “Gray’s characters are so full of life, hope and dreams, it’s a pleasure to read about them.” —Schenni’s Book Nook

  “This series is definitely worth reading.” —A Whisper of Thoughts Reviews

  “Cecilia has a talent for instilling warmth and weight into her characters.” —Romancing the Book

  “Will have you captivated from beginning to end.” —Can’t Put It Down Reviews

  The Couldn’t-Have-Done-It-Without-You Page

  Lisa, Oakland, and lots and lots of room service.

  A Disclaimer of Some Urgency

  This story features a kiss between two unmarried individuals who are not engaged—one being Miss Dinah Belle.

  Given Miss Dinah’s unromantic nature, one can assume this kiss was not motivated by passion but by the sheer need—nay, compulsion—for scientific discovery. Not that a quest for knowledge should excuse Miss Dinah’s actions. Academic or not, she knows what’s what.

  Chapter One

  Sera Belle’s wedding day

  February 14, 1817

  Woodbury, England

  Dinah Belle discovered Graham Abernathy, third son of the Duke of Rivington, lying flat on his back in the front entrance of the gardener’s cottage on the day of her youngest sister’s wedding. The house was a modest single-level dwelling that abutted the fishing pond of the 200-acre ducal estate. She had been sent by one of her elder sisters, Bridget, on a fool’s errand—Was there any other kind?—and in her haste had swung open the front door—crack!—into his head.

  She’d glanced down at her feet when she heard his ensuing groan and cringed at the sight. Never in her seventeen years had she come upon a man, or woman for that matter, in such a state.

  “Lord Graham, I did not see you.” She paused, compelled to defend her perfect eyesight. “Likely because you are in such an inconvenient and improbable location for a man of your stature.”

  By stature she did not only allude to his status as third in line to one of the oldest titles in England but to his height of over six feet. While several of his friends managed to tower over him, his head was two lengths higher than hers. To fit in the entry of the gardener’s cottage, his neck must’ve had to contort into a near right angle and his legs fold into a shape resembling a pretzel.

  A draft carried into the cottage. The flagged floor must have already been cold. A shiver trembled through Graham.

  Dinah squeezed inside, closed the door behind her, and studied the mess of man at her feet.

  Graham was dressed for the wedding—a smart charcoal-gray coat, matching breeches, and a white linen shirt that may have been pressed when he put it on but was currently rumpled. Her mind whirled with reasons as to why he could be lying near-comatose on the floor, and nearly all of them led to the conclusion that he, while also on a fool’s errand—possibly even the same one on which she had been sent since he, too, was at the cottage—had slipped and fallen, and likely hit his head, too.

  Though she was also dressed for the wedding—a pink Empire-waist gown with pearlescent petals sewn into the hem and sleeves—and in no hurry to rumple her attire, she leaned over Graham’s groaning form, intent on helping the man back to the main house where he could seek medical attention. Or be propped upright in a church pew long enough to get through the ceremony and then receive medical attention—the more likely scenario given her priorities for the day.

  No sooner did she and Graham come face-to-face than noxious fumes of alcohol stung her eyes, assaulted her nose, and sent her rearing up to her full height. Dinah shook her head in distaste. She had caught her father drunk on two occasions. Both times he had been in his study gripping her mother’s favorite pelisse and bathed in a cloud of her gardenia perfume, which he insisted on purchasing every year although Dinah no longer had a mother to wear it. Dinah had, both times, exited promptly, shut the door, and left her father to his own devices. They had never spoken of the incidents. Leaving Graham, however, with the wedding of their siblings imminent, was not an option.

  He clutched his head, opened one bloodshot eye, and muttered something.

  She leaned over to catch his words. “Pardon?”

  His throat rasped. “I’m fine.” Another acidic plume of breath puffed from his lips.

  She coughed and waved a gloved hand in front of her nose.

  “I am,” he insisted on a weakened breath. It was typical Graham. He never complained, never spoke a hurtful word, and never drew attention to himself.

  “I see.” While she could see he was clearly intoxicated, she could not see why, nor did she know what to do now. It was late afternoon. Her youngest sister, Sera, was due to wed Graham’s eldest brother, Thomas—Tom, the Jolly Giant, as Dinah and her sisters called him—heir to the Duke of Rivington, in an hour’s time.

  Graham had helped very little in the course of organizing the event and had no cause to feel stressed enough to drive him to drink, much less drink to excess. Most troubling of all was the degree to which such behavior seemed against Graham’s general character. While Dinah would hesitate to call herself a friend of the family’s, an understanding had existed between their fathers for years involving Sera’s engagement—granted, to another of the Abernathy sons but now was hardly the time to stir up old gossip.

  As a result, Dinah had enjoyed several opportunities to study the character of each Abernathy. Graham was the middle child, a merry sort of gentleman. He always had a smile too easy shared, a laugh too carelessl
y offered. Not that he was a rake or of irreparable reputation. He was popular, and friendly, and seemed imbued with a natural desire to make everyone like him. However, since the odds of all people favoring the same type of cheese, much less the same person, was improbable as it was, he and his quest for popularity were, in Dinah’s opinion, strange.

  So his drunkenness during an event of such great importance to both their families was even stranger.

  He made no move to rectify his inconvenient position on the floor, and she steeled her voice. “Get up.”

  He turned on his side as if he were curled atop a mattress and not cold, hard stone. His tangle of dark hair, which clearly hadn’t seen the better side of a brush since morning, flopped in front of his face so only the tilt of his nose and the patrician jut of his chin peeked from beneath the silky locks.

  She set her hands on her hips and glanced through the cottage to see if she could find anything to aid her. While the back bedroom boasted a door, the rest of the house—the kitchen and a parlor with small fireplace—was visible in an open floor plan from the foyer. She opened cabinets and checked in closets, but since calling it a gardener’s cottage was a misnomer—the gardener lived in town and rode in for work with his crew every morning—and there was no one currently in residence that she knew of and she could find nothing of use.

  Through the kitchen window, Dinah could see the pond and gentle rolling hills of Woodbury’s meadows, as well as the imposing brick-and-granite exterior of the hall itself. She could make out a few figures dotting the green landscape. Likely the footmen, readying the carriages in a line along the main drive. They would carry the guests from the estate to the parish church.

  Carriages that she and Graham needed to occupy shortly.

  She nudged his shoulder with a lambskin-covered toe. “Get. Up.”

  Graham flopped like a fish to his back, his hair falling away from his face. He studied her through slit eyes that, despite their ire, were a deep, friendly brown, much like the gentle eyes of the first pony she had ever ridden. That was Graham’s talent, she supposed—his air of amicability.

  Another glance around the cottage yielded no weapons with which to threaten him, but she could see empty drinking glasses on the table and books strewn about the sofa. Surely Graham hadn’t been living in the cottage. She’d seen him at dinner last night, more somber than his usual self, but she had attributed the mood to his affecting the more serious nature of his father for the occasion.

  Regardless, she needed no weapons. She had her superior intellect with which to battle him—or at least with which to rig a device to carry him outside.

  She stomped around Graham and kicked his outstretched leg. “I’ve no time for nonsense.”

  She was sure her sisters were positively panicking back in the main house given all that was left to do for the ceremony at this late hour. The ballroom was being set up for a formal reception, and there had already been some disasters involving a kitchen fire, an upturned flower wagon, and God knew what else. The stress of discovering one member of both the bride’s and groom’s families missing was likely to send her eldest sister, Alice, who was organizing most of the event, into hysterics. (Or not, Dinah acknowledged. Alice was eerily composed in a crisis.)

  “Stop, you annoying woman,” he growled.

  She didn’t think she’d ever heard him utter an insult before. “I do not appreciate your characterization of my sex in the pejorative,” she snapped. She nudged him with her foot again, harder this time.

  He grabbed her ankle with his bare hand, and she froze, holding her breath.

  The heat of his skin seared through her thin stocking. Whatever she knew of human anatomy, there must be an unknown nerve that existed at the exact point of contact between the pad of his thumb and the indent of her ankle. A nerve that sent a spark up her leg and finessed its way up the curve of her back to the slope of her neck. A pleasant sensation, or more than that, she admitted. It was a heady, addictive, sharp blade of delight.

  She’d barely had time to consider this medical breakthrough when Graham scrambled up, stammered an apology, and turned to run out the door. Only instead of running out the door, he ran into the door. With a smack of his head, he fell back, unconscious.

  * * *

  Graham awoke gasping her name, Lily, as though it were air and he would suffocate without it. The pain returned. Not just the pain of having lost Lily, the love of his life, to another man but the throbbing in his forehead where he’d struck the door, the pounding in his brain from the booze, and the ache in his leg where Dinah had kicked him. Twice. Possibly three times. Perhaps more. Who knew what she’d done while he was unconscious?

  He hadn’t awakened on the sofa, either, oh no. Dinah was no tender angel of mercy. He was still lying on the hard stone, its chill seeping into his bones.

  “How long have I been out?” he asked.

  “Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.” Those fathomless gray eyes peered down at him without an ounce of sympathy.

  Of all the Bayswater Belles, why, oh why, did it have to be Dinah who had found him after a bout of secret drinking—the last ounce of which he needed to make it through a ceremony intended to cement the union of two people when he himself could now never imagine a union of any kind for himself—rendering him unable to operate a stupid doorknob?

  Alice, the Bossy Belle, would have been preferable. There would have been a lecture to endure, but at least she would have seen him to the sofa in a trice and brought ice to soothe his head.

  Bridget, the Bookish Belle—who was also quite the romantic—would have cooed over him and fanned his face while begging for his tale of sorrow and woe.

  Charlotte, cruelly dubbed the Bovine Belle, a nickname he loathed to even think much less utter, would have seen to his comfort.

  The youngest, Sera, the Belle Belle, his soon-to-be sister-in-law, possessed beauty that rivaled the effects of laudanum, so at least gazing upon her would have eased his suffering.

  But Dinah? She not only glared at him, she not only judged him, she not only allowed him to suffer, but she wouldn’t care one whit about his lost love. She would have no sympathy for the circumstances that had driven him so far afield of his own character.

  For someone so unaccountably heartless, she looked like a kindhearted pixie. Dinah was the most petite of the Belles. Her blond hair was arranged in the new tousled style, with sprigs tucked beneath her ears. She wore the mask of a gentle fairy—unfortunately, one who would never grant a wish or engage in anything she believed to be nonsense.

  “Who is Lily?” she asked.

  He winced as something lurched within him when Dinah said her name, as if its very existence were tied to his heart and tugged it alive. Or ripped it apart. If he was going to be melodramatic, he may as well commit to it.

  Dinah stared down at him with those guileless gray eyes. All five Belle sisters were said to have the same color eyes, the only feature they shared with one another and with their father, industrialist Dominic Belle. But in the years since the Belle sisters had attached themselves to the Rivington legacy and, thus, had the privilege of being in his family’s sphere, he’d noticed subtle differences. Dinah’s eyes were wide set and big as saucers, leading to the completely misleading appearance of waifish innocence.

  “Never mind,” Dinah said tartly. “I see.”

  The inexperienced man might believe Dinah gazed upon him with concern, but he knew the expression for what it was: judgment.

  He, Graham Abernathy, third son of the Duke of Rivington, one of the oldest titles in the kingdom, war hero, and all-around popular chap, was being judged by this slip of a girl. It was enough to send him scrambling to his feet, where he swayed. He set his hand on the wall and braced himself so as to not to empty the contents of his stomach in a most ungentlemanly manner.

  “What do you think you see, Miss Dinah?”

  “A man mooning over a woman he cannot have.”

  “It hardly makes you
Bow Street material.” He felt energized by the insult as it left his lips. Graham couldn’t remember the last time he’d let loose such feelings. It was invigorating, unfortunately too much so. He gave up all pretense of standing on his own and leaned against the wall entirely.

  “I do wonder at the timing of it.” She tapped her finger against her plump, pursed lips. “Why should your brother’s wedding to my sister cause you so much distress over this mysterious Lily?”

  He winced again.

  “Ah, you do not like the sound of her name? Lady X, shall we say? I presume she is a lady.”

  “She is a paragon of womanhood—kind, saintly, and beautiful beyond compare.” His head pounded with each declaration.

  “Even when measured against Sera?” She studied him curiously.

  He was aware of the mulish pout of his lip. “Your sister is quite exceptional, as you well know, but to me, Lady X has her own unique charms.”

  “As much as I would like to continue solving this mystery of Lady X, I must confess I was drawn here by other purposes that I now must abandon to see you to the house. I shudder to think of the consequences if your state is discovered by your father.”

  He straightened, and his lips compressed in a grim line. The thought of his father was always a sobering one. There was no man more humorless than August Abernathy, the Duke of Rivington. His father’s temperament had been enough to send his youngest brother running from an engagement to Sera Belle, forcing the widowed Tom to step in. Not that anyone who laid eyes on Sera felt Tom’s plight to be a hardship. There would be a wedding, and damn it, Graham was going to be there to witness it.

  He took a few steps, but his stomach trembled and he keeled over. Dinah was at his side and used her shoulder to help him stand upright. The relief he felt leaning against her could not be overstated. “Thank you.”

  “You can thank me by breathing in the other direction,” she muttered.