“What’s your name?” he asked.

“You can call me Nox.” She smiled, face relaxed in a posture meant to disarm the opponent.

“Aren’t you going to ask mine?” He cocked a brow again.

“We’ll see,” she said, finally lifting the wine. She paused before drinking.

Her response hit its mark. They toasted the air before drinking. She smiled fully at the lordling, though the coy grin was as much for herself. His pretense had dropped, already enraptured. Once he’d begun talking, he hadn’t stopped.

Yet, there were still moves to be made. Her eyes wandered away from the duke, landing on the lutist. She didn’t need to signal the musician for the woman to understand her cue. The lutist picked an up-tempo drinking song. Priory was a coastal city, and there were several sea shanties known to excite the crowd. Many of the more intoxicated patrons jumped on the chance to sing along, which brought the perfect level of too loud rowdiness to the salon. The clients took over the tune with jovial energy.

Meanwhile, the duke’s compliments burbled like water breaking over stones. After scarcely sipping half of her glass, Nox had heard enough. She tilted her head, as if struggling to listen to him speak over the happy chorus.

“It’s a bit difficult to hear down here, don’t you think?”

He agreed wholeheartedly. She felt as though the duke was practically glued to her as she led him away from the bar, far from the haze of vanilla and sandalwood, and beckoned him to follow her up the stairs, distancing themselves from the tufts and silks and prying eyes of patrons. Nox knew if she’d looked for Millicent’s face, the Madame would be concealing a thin smirk.

There was something childlike about the way the duke smiled at Nox, his eyes wide and expectant as they entered a private room with a four-poster bed. The click of the lock behind them was heavy with implication. The lordling’s eyes matched his hair, both golden brown and glittering. Nox lowered her lashes, offering an evocative, conciliatory smile. She knew enough of male eagerness to understand she’d have to temper his haste. She also knew enough of her own thirst to know she’d have to proceed carefully if she wanted to keep him alive. While greedy impatience colored his face, her returning gaze was positively bloodthirsty.

She gestured for him to find his way to the bed while she stepped behind an ornately carved wooden screen, the gaps in its pictures barely obscuring his view of her near-nakedness. Even through the lattice, she could feel the man eyeing her hungrily as she stripped off her black silk dress and let it dangle over the carved separation. The duke crawled onto the bed, breathing out with eager appreciation as she stepped out in a thigh-short, practically sheer dressing gown with nothing underneath.

Check.