Duchess in Love (6 page)

They neared the house when he stopped for a moment. “I just want to make sure that you know that I want to marry
you,
” he said, voice low.

“I know.”

He cupped her cheek. “Because I do. I want you as my wife. I simply don't want to ruin your reputation, that's all.”

She smiled. “I do understand, Sebastian.”

There was a country dance just beginning when they walked into the ballroom, so they took their places next to a flushed and laughing Carola. Every time the dance brought Gina back to Sebastian, she smiled at him so deliciously that the tips of his ears began to warm. “Gina!” he hissed as they turned in a circle.

“What is it…
love
?” she said, so quietly that no one else could hear it. She leaned back against his arm as he twirled her in a circle, and the way she looked at him! There was naked lust in her eyes, to his mind.

“Gina, what if someone sees you?”

She giggled, and Sebastian realized for the first time that his fiancée had indeed drunk far too much champagne. She stood alone for a moment as he processed in a circle before twirling her one last time and handing her to the next partner.

As he took her in his arms she flung her head back, and
smooth red curls fell from their moorings and slid over her bare shoulders and arms.

“Why do you have to look so…so seductive?” For some reason her whole demeanor was infuriating him.

She glanced down at her gown, a slim gown of floss silk with a deep rose trim. “The bosom is low, isn't it?” she acknowledged.

“Yes, it is!” Sebastian challenged.

“I feel as if you are always angry at me lately,” she replied. “This gown is no more daring than those worn by most women.”

She was right. “I apologize. It's just that—you are going to be
my
wife. I would like to be the only one admiring your bosom.”

She giggled and moved into his arms for their final twirl. “Silly,” she said softly, touching his cheek with one finger. He tightened his grip, and her hair flowed over his black sleeve. “You shall,” she whispered, her smile deepening. “I promise you, we will have a private viewing.”

 

C
amden William Serrard, the Duke of Girton, walked into the ballroom flanked by Tuppy Perwinkle and his cousin, Stephen Fairfax-Lacy. He looked about impatiently, hoping to see Gina. But there was no sight of her anywhere. A long winding line of dancers was slowly bouncing their way along a diagonal. Just then a gap in the line of dancers widened and he saw a gorgeous woman laughing up at her husband. Her body was so indicative of desire, bending toward the man like a willow toward the sun, that he felt a matching burn in his chest. She shook pale red hair over her shoulder, and it fell like rose silk down her back.

“My God,” he said appreciatively, “who is that beautiful woman?”

“Which?”

“The one over there, dancing with her husband.”

Stephen leaned to the left so he could see and chuckled.

“Why do you ask?”

“She'd make a lovely Aphrodite,” Cam said dreamily.

“She's a scandal, though, isn't she? I think she's going to eat her husband alive, right there on the dance floor.”

Stephen straightened, and the humor disappeared from his face. “That isn't her husband,” he said flatly.

“No?”

“No.” He cleared his throat.

“
You
are her husband.”

W
hatever Gina imagined she would feel on meeting her errant husband for the first time in twelve years, she never considered pleasure. None of her despairing fears came true. The moment she glanced up from the dance and glimpsed a man with a mobile, intelligent mouth and great slashes of black eyebrows, she dropped her fiancé's hands and shrieked, “Cam!”

From then it was only a second until she ran across the dance floor, babbling as she went. “You look just the same—no, you're so much bigger. Hello, Cam! It's me, Gina—your wife!”

His smile was exactly the same lopsided, teasing grin she remembered. “Of course it's you, Gina,” he said. He bent down and kissed her cheek.

She threw her arms around him, squeezing as hard as she could. “Oh my, but you've grown!” she cried. “I'm so happy to see you! I've missed you so much! Why
didn't
you write more often, you fiendish man?”

“You wrote so many letters I couldn't keep up,” he complained.

“You should have tried,” Gina accused him.

“I couldn't match your wifely devotion,” he drawled. But he took one of her hands in his. “When I first left England, I read your letters over and over. They were my only link to home.”

Her face brightened. “How silly I am, Cam! I was so pleased to see you that I forgot to introduce you to my fiancé.” She pulled forward the tall man behind her. “Cam, may I introduce Marquess Bonnington? Sebastian, this is my husband, the Duke of Girton.”

Cam was surprised to feel a flicker of dislike at the sight of the man. He was infernally handsome, for one thing. Undeniably one of those Englishmen who come to Greece only to complain about the lack of water closets and civilized food.

“I'm honored to meet you,” he said, bowing. “Gina has written me many letters about you.”

The marquess seemed taken aback by that. He bowed as well. “I hope that Her Grace's indiscretion did not cause you any distress. She should not have addressed such an intimate subject through the post.”

Cam eyed him thoughtfully. A prig, that's what the marquess was. But it was none of his business whom Gina wanted to marry. “She only did so because we are childhood friends,” he said.

Gina had tucked her hand under Bonnington's arm and was smiling up at him in an irritating way. “You mustn't fuss about Cam. He's quite my oldest friend in the world, and so naturally I write him about everything important, just as I might to a brother. You see,” she said, turning back to Cam, “Sebastian is a fierce guardian of my reputation. He dislikes the idea that anyone might draw inferences about our future.”

Cam raised an eyebrow. The way she had looked at her marquess on the dance floor, someone would have to be
blind not to expect they would marry the moment an annulment was established. “Then stop simpering at him, Gina,” he said, surprising himself with the sharpness of his tone. “A person would have to be an oaf not to guess at your intimacy.”

At that, the marquess bridled and stiffened his shoulders again. “No such intimacy has occurred between us,” he announced. “Nothing has occurred that could cause Your Grace the slightest concern. I have far too much respect for the duchess.”

“Hmm,” Cam said. Looking at the marquess, he could almost believe that he had stayed out of Gina's bed. How he managed it, Cam didn't care to think. “Well, since we've aired our relations for the whole ballroom with this heartfelt meeting,
wife,
would you care to say hello to Stephen?”

Stephen had backed up a step and was watching with amusement from just behind Cam's shoulder. He stepped forward and bent over Gina's hand with great aplomb. “It's a pleasure to see you again, my dear.”

Cam looked around for Tuppy, but he had disappeared. “Surely you know my cousin, Stephen Fairfax-Lacy,” he said to the marquess. Bonnington had not lost his rigid stance and was looking more poker-faced than ever.

“I have had the pleasure of working with Mr. Fairfax-Lacy on matters to do with the House,” Bonnington replied, bowing even more deeply. “It is always a pleasure to meet a member of the duchess's family.”

“Do you address her as the duchess in private?” Cam asked with some curiosity.

Gina laughed. “No, of course he doesn't, you goose. But Sebastian's behavior is always irreproachable in public.”

Cam looked over her head at Bonnington. He looked about to explode, poor fellow. It couldn't be easy, being irreproachable
and
engaged to Gina. “Well, I believe Stephen
and I will retire to the card room,” he said. “I promised him a game of hazard.”

“Without dancing even one dance?”

“Not even one.” To Cam's mind, it would be better to give the poker-faced bridegroom a chance to recover his composure.

“Very well,” Gina said gaily. “But I shall invade the card room and drag you onto the floor if you stay there too long.” She leaned close to Cam, and he caught a drift of perfume, faintly flavored with apple blossoms. “I am trying to lure Stephen into marrying,” she whispered. “And I think I have found just the right woman.”

“Are you going to set me up with a wife, as well?” he asked, with some interest.

Gina looked enormously surprised. “Would you like to remarry, Cam? I thought you disliked the state.”

“It hasn't bothered me so far.”

She chortled. “Well, of course it hasn't, you stupid man. We live in different countries!”

Cam shut off his answering grin and stepped back. The last thing he wanted was for the marquess to get strange ideas about his friendship with Gina.

He bowed grandly. “What a pleasure it has been to meet my childhood playfellow after such a long parting,” he said clearly, allowing his voice to carry. “As soon as certain arrangements are taken care of, I shall look forward to furthering our acquaintance. And yours as well, Lord Bonnington.” There—that should put a sock in the gossips' mouths. Now everyone would know why he was in England. And he had made it quite clear that the marquess was welcome to his wife.

He and Stephen retired posthaste to the card room. “What a stick!” he said disgustedly, as they strolled into the smoke-filled chamber.

“Who? Bonnington?”

“Of course.”

“He didn't show to best advantage tonight,” Stephen said thoughtfully, “but actually he's a good man. I've heard that he takes remarkably good care of his tenants, for example. Inherited the title from his uncle. Whenever we're estimating votes in the upper house, I can always count him to be on the right side.”

Cam shrugged irritably. “So Bonnington's a bloody saint. He isn't right for Gina, and if you ask me, he knows it. He looks like a sick cow. She's going to drive him around the twig within a month.”

“What on earth are you saying?”

“The man's regretting it,” Cam stated, flinging himself into a comfortable chair.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Stephen took out his pipe.

“Yes, I bloody well do.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Anyone could see that he looks hunted. Probably asked her in a rash moment. Fell in love with her beauty—God, who would have thought that little Gina would turn out so well?—but he forgot to consider what she would be like at the breakfast table.”

Stephen was stamping down his tobacco. “I think she'd be a fine breakfast companion,” he put in.

Cam shuddered. “Too lively by half.”

“I disagree about Bonnington as well,” Stephen continued, putting a match to his pipe. “From everything I know, he's head over heels in love with your wife, and he considers himself lucky to have her.”

“But he's only beginning to realize what he has,” Cam put in. “The devil! Didn't I tell you not to smoke?”

“I didn't ask your permission. I only asked if you minded.”

“Well, I do mind. I hate that bloody smoke in my face.”

“What's put you in such a foul mood, then?”

“Brandy,” Cam snapped at a footman. “Foul mood? I'm perfectly cheerful. This is the real me, cousin. You've forgotten.”

“I didn't forget anything. I used to have to thrash you once a week after you turned six or so.”

“What I remember is trying to beat the tar out of you on your twelfth birthday.”

Stephen shuddered. “Do you remember the consequences? God, I thought your father would never let us out of that sanctuary.”

Cam's eyes darkened. “He was a nasty piece of work, my father. I'd forgotten about that part. Spent all day in there, didn't we?”

“And half the night. It was dark and cold. I remember getting terribly hungry.”

“I just remember being terrified. He'd told me that my mother would haunt me whenever I was naughty. I was frightened by dark places for years.”

Stephen put down his pipe and looked across the table. “That was unconscionable, Cam. Did he really make your mother out as a ghost?”

“Unfortunately. Took me years to get over the idea that my mother might jump out of a closet dressed in a white sheet and scare the living daylights out of me.” Cam helped himself to a glass of brandy from an offered tray.

“I had no idea. I remember you telling joke after joke to make me stop crying. I felt miserably ashamed because you never shed a tear, even though you were five years younger than I.”

“You were visiting for the summer, weren't you?”

Stephen nodded. “My parents went to the continent.”

“I was used to it by then. But I still have a horror of the dark. And I still tell jokes to make it palatable.”

Stephen drew on his pipe, his eyes somber and kind.

Cam shifted his gaze. He hated pity, but he hated a false front even more. In the life he'd carved for himself, there was no place for lies only to protect his consequence. That had been his father's specialty.

“She doesn't blame you for never coming back,” Stephen said, after a pause.

“Who? Gina? Why on earth should she?”

“Because you're her husband, you ass. Because you had—have—responsibility for her, and you've neglected it for years.”

“What are you talking about? I've never taken a ha'penny from the estate, you know. I swore to the old man in a fit of rage that I wouldn't, and I haven't.” He looked across the table with a gleam of mischief deep in his eyes. “Of course, I live off the proceeds of fat pink statues, as you describe them.”

Stephen sighed. “She's your
wife,
Cam. Your
wife
. You married her when she was eleven, and didn't come back for twelve years—and you think the extent of your responsibility was turning over your bank account?”

Cam smiled, unruffled. “That's about right. You can try, but you'll never be able to cram that hidebound sense of English responsibility you were born with into my useless soul. The only thing I give a damn about is where my next piece of marble is coming from. Gina and I both know that we're not truly married, so why should I return before she asked me to?” He swallowed some brandy. “At any rate, here I am, ready to hand over my so-called wife to the marquess.”

Stephen snorted.

“Do you suppose she's dancing with him again?” Cam asked. For some reason, he didn't feel like sitting around in the comfortable male confines of the card room.

“What do you care? He'll likely throw her over after you annul the marriage. She'll have to go live in a cottage somewhere in the north.”

Cam stood up so suddenly that he bumped the table, spilling brandy onto the polished surface. “Any time you decide to stop moralizing long enough to breathe, just let me know, will you, cousin? I've had all the boredom I can take at the moment.”

He strode out of the room, conscious of a prick of guilt. He shouldn't have snapped at Stephen like that. But he'd had that lesson drilled into him one too many times—by a master of morality, his own father. His lip twisted. Responsibility! In the name of responsibility his father had locked him in every dark closet in the house, destroyed any reverence he had for the name of his mother, and married him to a woman he had, until the day of his marriage, thought to be his first cousin.

Gina stood out in the ballroom like a lighted torch among a bunch of squibs. As it happened, she wasn't dancing with her marquess. Instead, she was partnered with a stout middle-aged man. He leaned against the wall for a moment and watched. She wasn't strictly beautiful, his wife. Not beautiful the way Marissa was beautiful. Marissa had the deep-set eyes and rounded cheekbones of a Mediterranean goddess. Whereas Gina…Gina had a lovely mouth. His fingers itched to shape it in marble. Although coaxing that sweetness into stone would be a tremendous challenge.

Marissa didn't look real in stone. She looked like the embodiment of man's greatest fantasy about women: placid, sensual, gloriously languid, unspeaking. Gina was like a moving flame. Where on earth did she inherit those tip-tilted eyes? Her spirit leaped so clearly from them that they would be almost impossible to reproduce.

The dance was drawing to a close and Cam strolled over
to the side of the ballroom where she was standing. As he walked up, she turned and smiled.

He almost caught his breath.

My God, but Gina had grown up well! At eleven years old, she'd been a lanky, leggy wisp of a girl with big green eyes and hair that was always falling out of its braids. But here she was wearing a gown that barely covered her curves. In fact, what cloth there was seemed no more than a backdrop to her breasts and those long, long legs. No doubt about it: French gowns were made for figures like Gina's, he thought. Marissa would look positively plump in one of them.

“Hello, Cam,” she said. “Have you come to dance with me? Because I'm afraid that I promised this dance to—”

“A husband's privilege,” he said smoothly, taking her arm. Some couples were putting themselves into a circle so he towed her forward, enjoying the way she wiggled, trying to pull her elbow from his hand.