Beguiling the Beauty (33 page)

The beauty of her words were almost beyond his comprehension. He embraced her fiercely. “I’m the one who should apologize. I started all the troubles and I was the stupidest numskull who ever lived.”

Someone cleared her throat. “Your Graces,” said Lady Avery, “my sister and I have come to a conclusion.”

He would have told them to bugger off but his wife took charge of the situation. She disengaged herself from his arms and stepped back, but not before she rubbed her thumb along his lower lip, a gesture of blatant promise. He was instantly hot with need.

She turned toward the gossips. The smile was wiped from her face; she was once again the Great Beauty. “You will be swift about it. The duke and I have other plans for the afternoon.”

Christian very nearly blushed. Lady Avery did blush, in fact.

She had to clear her throat again. “We have been conveyors of fine gossip for more than twenty-five years, my sister and I. We see so many failings and shortcomings, sometimes we forget that not everyone is selfish. You each sought not to protect yourself, but to shelter the other. And for that, we
are
willing to tolerate a stain on our otherwise spotless record. We shall not bring up Mr. Townsend’s name again, and when my son-in-law’s cousin arrives, I will escort him to the Continent instead of having him linger about London. In exchange, we ask that we be the first ones to inform Society of the duchess’s condition, in say, four weeks’ time.”

Christian could not believe it. There was some humanity left in Ladies Avery and Somersby. Who knew?

His wife nodded, as if in approval. “Accepted.”

T
he three women shook hands on their agreement. The gossip chroniclers showed themselves out. But before Christian could say anything, the dowager duchess was shown in.

“Stepmama, how did you know we are in town?”

“I gave particular instructions to your staff that I be informed as soon as you return, although”—she looked with speculation toward his wife—“I did not know the duchess has also come.”

“I could not bear to be parted from my bridegroom during our honeymoon,” said Christian’s wife, smiling at—and thoroughly dazzling—him. “So I’ve chased him to London.”

“I only came to take the tetrapodichnites out of storage and bring them to you.”

Her smiled widened. “You were going to do that?”

“Of course.”

“The tetrapo-what?” demanded his stepmother.

“Fossilized saurian footprints. My bride has a passion for prehistoric monsters.”

His bride dipped her head and peered up at him from underneath her magnificent lashes. “The duke encourages it. He is going to take me on his expeditions.”

The dowager duchess looked from Christian to Venetia and back again, her lips beginning to curve into a smile. “I see I’ve been worried over nothing. You could have told me all is well, Christian.”

He could scarcely take his eyes off his Venetia. “My humblest apologies, Stepmama. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

The doors of the drawing room opened again, this time to admit Lord Fitzhugh, Lady Fitzhugh, Miss Fitzhugh, and Lord Hastings. Venetia gave a delighted squeal, embraced them one by one, even Lord Hastings, and performed introductions.

“And how did you know to come so quickly, Lord and Lady Fitzhugh?” asked the dowager duchess. “Did you also bribe someone on the duke’s staff?”

Venetia laughed. “No indeed, ma’am. I cabled them before I left Derbyshire. There was something from my brother’s town house that I wanted. But I meant only for him to send it via courier.”

“As if any of us would stay behind when we know you are in town,” said Miss Fitzhugh.

“It’s excellent to see you, Venetia.” Lord Fitzhugh placed a hand on his sister’s arm. “You, too, Lexington. I see marriage agrees with the both of you.”

“A very pleasant state of affairs, I must admit,” said Christian, his gaze again straying toward his wife.

A look that his brother-in-law instantly comprehended. “And since you are still on your honeymoon, I believe we should make ourselves scarce. Shall we, Helena?”

Miss Fitzhugh complied reluctantly. “All right, if you say so, Fitz.”

“I left Mr. Kingston in the middle of a game of chess. That would never do. I’d better head home myself,” added the dowager duchess.

There was another round of hugs. Miss Fitzhugh handed her sister a wrapped package. Christian and his wife saw everyone to their carriages, then, side by side, they walked sedately up the stairs. The moment they were in his room, however, she leaped onto him and kissed him wildly.

“Shouldn’t you take more care in your condition?” he managed when he surfaced for air.

“Hmm. Not yet.”

He laid her down in his bed. “I am about to make love to you while you are visible. I’m not sure I’ll survive the experience.”

“You will.” She clutched his face between her hands. “And when there is light, you can see how much I love you.”

He kissed the pulse at her throat. “In that case, I could get used to it.”

A
fterward they held each other tight.

“I wanted you for my sister, you know,” she murmured.

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Your sister who is in love with a married man?”

“You remember that?”

“I remember everything you said to me on the
Rhodesia
.”

“Yes, that sister. My sister-in-law and I rather wistfully believed that if she’d only meet you, all would be well. So when we saw a poster for your lecture, we had to drag her to it.”

He kissed her eyelashes. “How did she like me before I began to slander you?”

“I’ve never asked her, but
I
was quite solidly impressed. So much so that even after you’d compared me to the Great Whore of Babylon—”

“I did not.”

She giggled. “So that even after you did that, I still found myself drawn to you.”

“And believed me to be propositioning you even when I was not.”

“You can’t possibly understand—I take that back. You can very well understand what it is like to be repelled yet compelled by a person at once. I was beside myself.”

“Was that what made you wild in bed?”

She snuggled closer to him. “Probably. And I was wild, wasn’t I?”

“And wounded. And conflicted. And indomitable. When we were apart, I thought constantly of how you solved all your problems with your own hands—and made sure to emulate you.”

“Serving as an example to the Duke of Lexington—you don’t know how proud I am.” She laughed as she raised herself on her elbow. “Now where is my photograph?”

“Which photograph? Is that what you wanted delivered to you?”

She nodded. “A photograph of my
Cetiosaurus
. I didn’t take it with me to Algernon House just after we married because I wasn’t sure whether I could ever be at home there. But this time, I was determined to take it with me no matter what. Just as I was determined to drag you kicking and screaming into my bed.”

He rubbed a strand of her hair against his cheek and smiled. “Will you show me the picture?”

“I see I’ve dropped it by the door.”

She slipped out of bed, her hair loose, her person entirely naked.

“My God, put on something.”

Coquettishly she glanced over her shoulder. “So I won’t look like the trollop I am?”

“So we will actually get around to the photograph. Well, too late.”

He hauled her back into bed, and it was a while before either of them remembered the photograph again. This time, he left the bed to fetch it.

She opened the package and drew out the framed photograph. He studied it closely. “You look happy and confident—rather as you do now.”

“It’s because I feel now as I did then: that I have all my life before me and endless possibilities.”

Looking at the fossil reminded him that the British Museum of Natural History was still open for the day. “If we hurry, we can have a good look at your
Cetiosaurus
in the flesh—or in the bones, rather. Then you are going to dine with me at the Savoy Hotel, to make up for what you owe me. And when we come home, I will give serious consideration to what you might do on your knees.”

“Oh yes,” she cried. “Yes to all three.”

He helped her dress, then pulled on his own clothes. As they approached the door, beyond which they must be proper and ducal again, he pulled her close for another kiss. “I love you, mein Liebling.”

She winked. “And you will love me even more by the end of tonight.”

They laughed and walked arm in arm out of the house, all their lives and endless possibilities before them.

Even though she has remarried, Christian’s stepmother is referred throughout the book as the dowager duchess and addressed as “Your Grace.” According to an edition of
Debrett’s Peerage
from the late nineteenth century, “A Widow who remarries
loses
any title or precedence she gained by her previous marriage. From this rule there is not any exception. Society, however, from pure motives of
courtesy
, sanctions the retention of former rank, and … permits ladies who have remarried to be addressed as though their titled husbands were living.”

Mary Anning, who lived in the first part of the nineteenth century, was a significant fossil collector and paleontologist. She is recognized by the Royal Society in 2010 as one of the ten most influential British women in the history of science. She had a more aristocratic counterpart in Barbara Hastings, Marchioness of Hastings and Baroness Grey de Ruthyn in her own right.

1888

I
t was love at first sight.

Not that there was anything wrong with love at first sight, but Millicent Graves had not been raised to fall in love at all, let alone hard and fast.

She was the only surviving child of a very prosperous man who manufactured tinned goods and other preserved edibles. It had been decided, long before she could comprehend such things, that she was going to Marry Well—that via her person, the family’s fortune would be united with an ancient and illustrious title.

Millie’s childhood had therefore consisted of endless lessons: music, drawing, penmanship, elocution, deportment, and, when there was time left, modern languages. At ten, she successfully floated down a long flight of stairs with three books on her head. By twelve, she could
exchange hours of pleasantries in French, Italian, and German. And on the day of her fourteenth birthday, Millie, not at all a natural musician, at last conquered Listz’s
Douze Grandes Études
, by dint of sheer effort and determination.

That same year, with her father coming to the conclusion that she would never be a great beauty, or indeed a beauty of any kind, the search began for a highborn groom desperate enough to marry a girl whose family wealth derived from—heaven forbid—sardines.

The search came to an end twenty months later. Mr. Graves was not particularly thrilled with the choice, as the earl who agreed to take his daughter in exchange for his money had a title that was neither particularly ancient nor particularly illustrious. But the stigma attached to tinned sardines was such that even this earl demanded Mr. Graves’s last penny.

And then, after months of haggling, after all the agreements had finally been drawn up and signed, the earl had the inconsideration to drop dead at the age of thirty-three. Or rather, Mr. Graves viewed his death a thoughtless affront. Millie, in the privacy of her room, wept.

She’d seen the earl only twice and had not been overjoyed with either his anemic looks or his dour temperament. But he, in his way, had had as little choice as she. The estate had come to him in terrible disrepair. His schemes of improvement had made little to no difference. And when he’d tried to land an heiress of a more exalted background, he’d failed resoundingly, likely because he’d been so unimpressive in both appearance and demeanor.