Beauty and the Duke (13 page)

As if on cue, a knock sounded on the door. His hands tightened on the fabric and closed it over her nightdress. “For my eyes only,
leannanan
.”

He turned and walked to the door, leaving her to stare after him as he opened the door. She now realized why he remained dressed. The harried innkeeper and one of her daughters stood outside. The elder wheeled in a trundle cart topped with silver chafing dishes while the younger lit the candles and poured wine.

Erik helped Christine into her chair, his hands brushing her shoulders, then he moved to sit across from her. Christine watched as the innkeeper proudly displayed each dish, pleased pink each time Erik nodded his head in approval. Roast grouse and stovies on the side. “Yer grace,” she said, presenting the final dish.

She deftly removed the lid and revealed a plate piled high with neatly arranged oysters on the half shell and shaved ice. Enough to feed a Scottish rebellion. Christine smothered a laugh as she raised her eyes over her serviette.

“That will be all, Bessie,” Erik said bluntly.

The poor woman’s expression fell as if the moon had dropped out of the sky. Clearly, she had not meant him any displeasure. “Yes, yer grace.”

Christine watched the woman leave and shut the door. “We’ve hurt her feelings, Erik.”

“You do not think thirty oysters somewhat excessive?”

The mere thought of consuming any slimy creature made her grimace. “Thirty-four,” she corrected, inclining her head toward the plate. “Obviously, one for each of your advanced years.”

She reached for the green leaves in a dish next to his plate and dropped them in his cup—“I believe a sprig of jasmine in your tea is supposed to accomplish the same thing. So I have heard.”

“Thank God for that.”

She suddenly laughed. As did he.

When they had both settled down again, his eyes found hers. Her smile faded. The desire blossoming inside her had been dormant for years and now that she had unlocked the cage again, she found she might not be able to rein the beast back inside. But her instincts, ever diligent in protecting her, rose to her defense.

“Do you still play chess?” she asked.

“No. There has been a dearth of worthy adversaries in my life of late.”

His finger circled the rim of his wineglass and she followed the movement, wondering if, now that she was his wife, he regretted the contract between them. Except for the moment he’d set her robe on her shoulders, he seemed distant. Unlike he had been in London. She was uncertain if she had done something wrong. “I have been thinking about the fossils,” she said by way of attempting conversation as she lifted the grouse from the trundle cart and spooned some into her plate, attempting to do her duty by Bessie and at least eat. “Aunt Sophie is one of the finest anthropologists in the world. I want to invite her into this investigation—”

“I prefer to keep that part of our understanding between us, Christine.”

Christine set down the dish. “She won’t judge you.”

“I think when it comes to you, her opinions may be biased.”

His words, as much as the tone in his voice, struck her. Though she’d never had a murder accusation tossed at her, she’d confronted enough prejudice to understand the isolation. “I cannot imagine what you must endure, Erik. People can be cruel.”

His mouth quirked as if he found her concern an odd
thing to contemplate and he drank from his wineglass. “I have long ceased caring what people think of me, Christine.”

“Why?”

“It is neither important nor relevant to my life. The people who are essential to Sedgwick’s survival are well paid enough not to have an opinion. As long as I can give them what they need, they will pretend they believe me innocent.”

“Everyone wants something—is that it? Give and take. No complications?”

A small smile lurking on his handsome lips, he considered her. “You are not satisfied with the terms of your contract then?”

She narrowed her eyes. “No one should ever doubt your generosity, Erik.”

He laughed. “I believe you are one of the few who does not. I am not known in many circles for being either generous or nice.”

Obviously, ruthlessness was not a trait he shunned. Nor was he bothered possessing it.

When she’d met him years ago, he was already infamous, having gained repute over his legendary war with his stepfather for control of the Sedgwick duchy. Erik had not only fought the powerful establishment at a young age and won, but he had also gained custody of his infant sister some years afterward. Truly, he was passionate in his fight to protect that which he loved, passion he worked hard to conceal in himself.

“And yet…you are both nice
and
generous,” she accused him.

Leaning toward her, he braced his elbow on the table. “The business between us requires…shall I say, a certain degree of gentle persuasion on my part, a tactic I don’t usually employ in my other business dealings.”

Clearly, she had given him the false impression that he had a right to the platitude that purchasing her allowed him a certain degree of ducal ennui in her presence. But she would not allow him to convince her he had handled her ruthlessly. In addition, she was beginning to suspect that the only person sitting at this table displaying timidity about their contract sat directly across from her.

She, too, leaned forward. “We can both agree your gentle persuasion may not have been as swaying had you not dangled that tooth in my face and threatened to give the find to Mr. Darlington. But consider this.” She peered at him over the rims of her spectacles. “I didn’t have to marry you to come to Scotland. I would have come with or without your consent.”

“Is that right?”

“It is I who has wed
you
for selfish purposes, not the other way around. As you have said, ours is a partnership based on mutual interests.”

“Don’t misinterpret my generosity for kindness. It would be a mistake.”

“And don’t mistake
mine
for cowardice, Erik.”

Their mutual awareness sent a rush of heat through her veins, and, from the lazy-lidded look in his eyes, he, too, felt it. And seemed pleased.

“I can see I have erred in my attempts to play the gentleman,” he said.

Before she knew what he was about, his hand snaked out and captured her wrist. Her heart skipped in her throat. He drew her around the table, pulling her across his lap, nearly upsetting the table and poor Bessie’s dinner all over the floor. “What are you doing? Erik…”

He threaded his fingers in her hair. His other hand traced the curvature of her cheek and throat and laid
claim to her breast. Her robe, a meager cover at best, fell open. “I intend to make love to you,
leannanan.
”

And, in one gentle motion of his mouth, he extinguished her voice with a kiss. An unhurried easiness and contentment that warmed even as it calmed. That excited even as it cautioned. A flutter of anticipation heated her veins. She became acutely aware of his body, aware of the thickness of him against her bottom, the heat of his arms. She tasted wine on his lips and in her mouth.

He opened his palm and her breast filled his hand. Her body, already hungry for more than the tactile caress of his palm against her flesh, shifted in his arms. The freedom to simply enjoy his touch infused her with heat. And longing.

And her own hunger.

The linen shirt clinging to Erik’s muscled frame yielded to her desire to touch him. He raised his head and looked down at her in his arms, his wild dark hair muted by firelight, and then he smiled wickedly, as if to tell her there was not an inch of her he would not touch in the next few hours.

He splayed his palm against her navel, then lower. She watched his gaze follow the slow path of his roaming hand, parting her robe for further exploration as he found the damp triangle between her legs. His blood quickened in his veins. Surged. He knew about arousing a woman’s body, where to look, how to touch, just when to stop and allow her to feel. He knew all these things, when she knew so much less about him.

But whatever it was they’d once shared, whatever passion had been theirs, no matter the bargain they had struck, no matter the years separating them, they both knew fire still burned hot between them.

He kissed her deeply, first her lips, then the hollow
beneath her ear. Then he removed her glasses and set them on the table.

“Tha sin a’ còrdadh rium,”
he murmured ever so enticingly against her lips. The Gaelic endearment foreign to her ears, and yet, she understood the words as if she’d spent her entire life wandering Scottish fields of heather.

“I like this, too,” she answered.

He slowly pulled back, his warm breath caressing her lips, as sensual as the heat reflected in her eyes. She smiled. “
Tha sin a’ córdadh rium
,” she whispered.

“Aye,” he rasped. “Our arrangement will more than suffice, my lady wife.”

He stood with her in his arms. He kicked off his shoes. Then they were on the bed. His hands sank into the mattress on either side of her shoulders. Her hair splayed across the white satin of the comforter. Her eyes lifted to his.

Her legs parted beneath the pressure of his hips. Only his trousers prevented full contact, flesh against flesh. His mouth closed on her breast, sensually laving her. With a deep groan he caught her lips, and lust coiled low in her abdomen. He gathered her filmy nightgown into his fist and drew it over her head, tossing it to the floor.

She had never been naked before any man except him. That he might not find her pleasing was indicative of the way he made her feel around him.

“Look at me, Christine.”

She heard his voice through the thunderous rush in her ears. Her lashes fluttered open. The dark centers of his eyes made them nearly black in the shadows pressing against him.

All she could think about was seeing him naked too.

He sat back on his calves, stripped off his shirt, and flung it to the floor. Dark hair arrowed up his abdomen and sprinkled his chest. His stomach was firm, his chest and shoulders toned with an athlete’s grace. His hair hung in his eyes as he yanked the buttons on his trousers. She sat up and watched the play of his muscles that moved with his arms. His penis jutted from between his thighs, rigid and hard. With one hand, he extinguished the lamp on the nightstand, leaving only the light from the hearth fire flickering on the walls.

Even June in Scotland was no proof against the chill of a thunderstorm. Erik dragged the eiderdown over them both, encapsulating them in the humid darkness beneath the covers, and braced his weight on his elbows. She couldn’t see him in the darkness beneath the covers, but she could feel his body and taste the scent of him on her lips. He parted her with his fingers and eased into her. “I do not need oysters for this.” One large hand enclosed her bottom and, with each move, he drove deeper inside her. “Or jasmine tea.”

He sank hilt-deep inside her. She cried out, a soft keening sound, her hands clutching his muscled back. His mouth dipped to hers, taking the sound, openmouthed and hungry as she. Then she was kissing him, wanting this always, the feel of him inside her, years of celibacy that had not been completely assuaged when Erik had taken her against the door made her think only of this. Her arms wrapped around his neck. She rocked with him. Savored him. In time, they found their blend of rhythm and melody.

The intensity of her orgasm was never more finite than the instant before it burst. She arched into the hard length of him, taking him deeper, shuddering around him, heedless of her panting, vulnerable to more than her passions as she let Erik rock her to sweet oblivion.

His back arched and his eyes half closed, he rose on his palms and spilled himself inside her. And when the throbbing ebbed, Erik remained braced on his hands, his face half hidden in the humid shadow beneath the canopy of the bed, but she could feel his eyes on her. Still buried within the wet heat of her body, he lowered himself to his elbows. When he did, a gleam of firelight touched his face.

Neither of them spoke.

Rolling off her, he sprawled on the pillow beside her, dragging her against him. A second passed, then two, where they both settled into the sanctuary of their own thoughts, a less volatile place to be. His hand moved into her hair and his lips touched her temple, the thickness of desire still between them.

“I didn’t know you spoke Gaelic,” he said.

“You’re Scots,” she said sleepily, wondering why such a simple feat as learning a language should surprise him. She only spoke a little. “It would be a dishonor to you if I did not prepare myself for my place here.”

Christine pondered his silence but was not sure what she had said. Perhaps it was not that she was a quick study that perplexed him—surely he must know such things as learning languages were not difficult—but that she had cared enough about who he was to do so at all.

A
unt Sophie’s presence stopped Christine the next morning when she arrived downstairs dressed to depart the inn. “Mrs. Samuels has gone on ahead with the luggage,” Aunt Sophie informed her, eyeing her carefully as she wriggled her hands into her gloves. “Mr. Attenborough said we will arrive at Sedgwick Castle late this afternoon.”

“You needn’t have remained behind because of any concern for me.”

Her aunt sniffed. “I hope he has fed you, because the carriage is waiting, my dear.”

“I have eaten, Aunt Sophie.”

She stepped outside into the sunlight. Her husband stood near the coach speaking to Mr. Attenborough, looking every inch the devil duke people suspected him of being. With the exception of a spot of white beneath his jacket, he was dressed entirely in black, from his jacket that emphasized his shoulders to the waistcoat, trousers, and shiny boots that hugged his calves.

In the bright morning sunlight of the new day, only the tenderness between her legs had given hint of the many exceptional and unexpected pleasures she had shared with him last night and this morning.

As he turned slightly, his jacket opened to reveal a braided chain looped through his buttonhole to his pocket, and a shirt open at his throat. He paused mid-sentence when he saw her and her heart skipped childishly. His eyes raking her and the blue velvet traveling garment she wore, he dismissed his solicitor and approached. “Madam.” He offered his arm.

Bessie and her daughters waited just outside the door. Christine paused to thank them for their kindness, her words leaving the timorous trio standing a little taller as she stepped past them. They had not moved from their place when a few moments later the coach lurched forward.

Erik braced his body against the sway of the coach, his arm across the back of the squabs and his hand casually resting against her shoulder.

Christine glanced at him but found him engaged in dialogue with Mr. Attenborough and Aunt Sophie sitting across from them. She was vividly aware of the warm, clean scent of him, her place beside him as comfortable as she could be, traveling by coach over bumpy roads, until his long fingers came to lay beside her jaw and turned her face to look up at him.

“You are comfortable?” he asked.

His voice caressed her much as it had last night while his hands and mouth had worked sinful magic on her body, the mere memory making her flush like a silly virgin bride in front of Aunt Sophie and Mr. Attenborough.

“I am merely admiring the view,” she said, smiling at Aunt Sophie, who peered at her as if she might reach over and test Christine’s face for fever.

“Just past that oak tree is where the first duke of Sedgwick was beheaded as a traitor to King Henry II
for fighting on the side of the Scots during one of the many rebellions,” Mr. Attenborough said.

“Good heavens!” Aunt Sophie gasped, pressing her nose to the glass. “Which oak tree?”

Mr. Attenborough pointed to the tall, sweeping oak they had just passed.

“What an ignoble beginning,” Aunt Sophie said.

“Nae at all,” Mr. Attenborough said. “Most Scots found it an honorable end to get themselves beheaded or drawn and quartered in their fight against the Anglish. It was a mark of courage and their sacrifice for Scotland.”

Aunt Sophie peered at Erik. “I thought the Sedgwick duchy was part of an original English patent.”

“It is,” Erik said. “But Sedgwicks have always been Scots.”

To Christine, the countryside lay like a breathtaking tableau painted by the color of the sky and thick oak trees. They traveled a northeasterly road meandering over rolling hills and across sweeping vales that slowly receded and gave way to lonely crags, and climbed steadily higher. Furtively, she glanced at Erik, looking out the other window, his expression as remote as the landscape. Even in the daylight away from the shadows, he was compelling to her, and she felt a strange impulse to ask him what he was thinking. He turned his head, met her gaze, and she watched the corner of his mouth crook. Like her, he seemed content enough to let Attenborough carry the conversation.

“We’ve close to four hours of this,” he said against her ear.

Tilting her head sideways as she stared up at him, Christine quietly asked, “Are you warning me or apologizing?”

“We’re sharing a coach with a lawyer,” he said in amusement, shifting so he could better adjust her against him. “You are welcome to use my shoulder if you want to rest.”

She told him she could remain awake—after all, in her mind, he’d had the same night as she—but the carriage’s movement lulled her, and her eyes drifted shut before a mile had passed. Her dreams were vivid and filled with a flame-spewing beast, sharp claws and wings extended. Not her father’s vision of a dragon but hers, and this one frightened her.

Something jolted her awake and she opened her eyes, her head leaning on Erik’s shoulder, her thoughts jumbled. Across from her, Mr. Attenborough and Aunt Sophie remained talking as if the world had not just stopped.

The terrain outside the window had become starker as they seemed to be climbing in elevation. Looking up at Erik, she met his eyes. His gloved hand came up and slid behind her head, resting at the nape of her neck, almost protectively as he gently stilled her.

“Rest, Christine. You have a long day ahead.” The warmth in his lazy tone told her she had a long night as well, and he must have glimpsed the carnal awareness in her eyes. “My staff is fervently waiting to welcome you.”

Unsure if he had just made a jest with that double entendre about his
staff
, she resettled her head against his arm, breathing him into her senses rather than challenging him with a smile. The beast in her dream faded into the mists, though she could not vanquish it entirely as she’d begun to recognize its source—a growing apprehension at the thought of her arrival at Sedgwick Castle. An edginess that had not completely solidified until last night when Erik had told her they
were already on land that belonged to the Sedgwick duchy. The carriage would be traveling on his land for hours.

When she had agreed to Erik’s proposal and later signed their contract, she had answered all pertinent questions she’d asked herself about being his wife, but she’d not soundly considered every detail about what it meant to be his duchess. Clearly, her title would not stop her from persuing her goals. She would discover her beast and make history, as long as she met her contractual obligations to him, which also included searching the estate for the bones of a past wife. Someone with whom he’d loved and had a child—
after
Christine had left him, all those years ago.

Absently, through her gloves, she fingered the silver “wishing” ring that had yet to come off her finger.

She’d never allowed herself to wonder what would have happened all those years ago if she’d remained in England and fought for the cursed duke of Sedgwick—and, if she had, would she have been the one who perished of scarlet fever? Would it now be her bones lost in the crags of Fife waiting to be found?

Even as she told herself the existence of magic and curses was about as likely as seeing a leprechaun, a kind of resolute logic had taken root this past month.

Because of Erik, she was on her way to getting what she had worked so hard to achieve her entire life, what she had sacrificed everything else to have.

So she did not understand her continued restlessness.

Finally, she gave up attempting to sleep, opened her eyes and rejoined the living, not realizing at first, that not only
had
she slept with her cheek pillowed against Erik’s chest curled up against his warmth like a contented feline on a feathered bed; but he’d allowed her
to sleep like that for hours. The terrain had changed dramatically. Somewhere a river roared and crashed in the form of a waterfall from the stone escarpment soaring behind her. She sat up abruptly, adjusted her spectacles and peered out the window just as the road came across the top of a basin overlooking the river valley. The verdant landscape vanished for a moment behind the trees, then slowly came back into view.

Sedgwick Castle sat in the distance in all its tempestuous beauty, half hidden in the mist and the glare of an outlying lake.

“Good heavens!” Christine heard Aunt Sophie’s whisper. “Sedgwick Castle really
is
a castle.”

“The tower is the oldest part of the keep,” Mr. Attenborough said with his usual authority about all things Sedgwick as he pointed over Aunt Sophie’s shoulder. “His grace rebuilt it some years ago to save it from crumbling to stone. We’re still farther away than it looks. The river divides the bottomland. Since the flooding began last summer…” His voice faded in Christine’s mind.

Sedgwick Castle was indeed a real castle, with its vine-covered towers and turrets built around an older medieval stone keep. Sunlight captured the visual melodrama, and Christine had drawn in a breath at the sight of the rugged beauty spread out before her. Distant crags spiked upward like sharp dragon’s teeth against the turbulent sky—a perfect complement to the feudal citadel the hills protected. Unmarred by the opulence that usually plagued such ancient duchies, Erik’s baronial heritage was instead a world captured in time.

Behind her, the laird of that castle had not yet spoken but she could feel his thoughts, his presence inside her head more dominating than the dragon haunting her dreams. She twisted around to face him.

Having just spent the past few hours declaring herself magic free, he had to present her with a world taken from the pages of Grimm’s fairy tale,
Sleeping Beauty
. The irony did not escape her.

And she almost laughed.

A perfectly reasonable reaction in her opinion, except Erik, upon presenting her with his ancestral home, was looking to her for something more lucid than peals of laughter. But it was Erik who surprised her by chuckling first.

“No regrets,
leannanan
?”

This was the land he hadridden across as a boy. A world that had shaped him. A world she wanted to explore. She had no regrets.

The thought had no sooner formed and she’d spoken it aloud before the front wheel crashed into a deep pothole. The coach dipped, then lurched sideways, throwing her across Erik’s lap. This was followed by a sharp resounding crack of the axle shattering before the carriage came to a shuddering stop.

“Are you telling me this might not have been an accident?”

Four hours after the accident Erik stood in his library and faced his engineering foreman across the desk.

Erik had put down two of his best horses tonight. He loathed killing any animal. He tolerated the loss of life even less if the accident had occurred because of carelessness and outright neglect. But deliberate sabotage would have been reprehensible.

Hodges tipped back his floppy hat with a finger. He wore a rain slicker in deference to the drizzle that had begun to fall shortly after the accident that afternoon. “I am saying we were up there last week to inspect the road as ye required of us. The pothole was not there.
It
could
have been man-made. We found a pickax in the woods not far from the accident. Mayhaps someone intent on doin’ mischief. Lights have been seen flickering in those hills. Some credit the sightings to your late wife’s ghost and…” Clearly seeing where this dialogue was heading, Hodges cleared his throat. “Or maybe there be highwaymen in these parts—”

“Hodges,” Erik interrupted. “No highwaymen have been in this area for twenty years. And I find it highly improbable a ghost or anyone crashed the coach. That road is not the main one into Sedgwick or the surrounding hamlets and is rarely used by anyone, including me.”

He tossed last week’s engineering report he’d been reading on the desk. Most of that road, which cut through the crags separating Sedgwick from the rest of Fife, had been there for centuries, having been carved through the rock and forests by conquering armies that had overrun Scotland at one time or another. A rockfall had made an older portion of the road impassable years ago.

“Still”—Hodges scratched his bewhiskered cheek—“it would nae take much more than a gully wash to make a small hole into a crater. It was raining the evening before the accident. The horses come a cropper and went sailin’, yer grace. Terrible waste of fine horseflesh it was too.”

“Get Bailey here from Dunfermline,” Erik said. “He’s the civil engineer who repaired that road last month and reassured me it was safe. I want him up there by next week. I want to know why there is a four-foot-wide pothole that nearly swallowed my coach. If someone deliberately did this, then I will know who.”

“Aye, your grace.” Hodges hesitated at the doors leading outside onto the terrace, clearly circumspect
and considerate of the housekeeper who would not welcome the mud on his boots, and turned back into the room, aware of Erik’s dangerous mood. “Will her grace be all right?”

With a taper of fire burning in the lamp on his desk, Erik could not see Hodges’s face in the darkness. “She suffered a severe bump on the head. She is resting.”

When the carriage had dropped into the hole, her head had slammed against the door with a crack that seemed as loud as the sound of the axle breaking. Erik still remembered the sound. The physician had been with her almost from the moment Erik’s retainers brought her in unconscious.

Lady Sophia had reassured him she was still alive. His housekeeper had sworn she’d briefly spoken when they’d removed her gown and cleaned the blood from her hair. The physician told him that she did not suffer any broken bones and only needed rest.

But Erik had not been able to go to her room, stand over her bed, and look into her face. He wouldn’t have been able to do so without wondering if he were somehow to blame…if he really was cursed and had doomed Christine by marrying her. No logical man would have given weight to these fears, but at the moment Erik was not feeling logical.

“Make sure Bailey contacts me after he finishes the inspection.”

Hodges nodded then left by way of the terrace door. Erik reached for a glass and the crystal whiskey decanter on his desk. Movement behind him made him turn. His butler stood silhouetted against the light in the corridor. “I have lit the fire in your chambers and set out your brandy,” Boris said. “Lady Sedgwick is asleep.”