Eloisa James (9 page)

Seven

A conversation between the Duke and Duchess of Ashbrook

“D
aisy!” The duke strode into his wife’s sitting room. “What in bloody hell has happened to Colin? Your note said he was incapacitated, but now Featherstone tells me that he’s on the way to Arbor House, so the lad can’t be too badly off.”

Theo—or Daisy, to her husband—looked up from the letter she was writing and, as always, her heart said, There he is. James stood in the doorway of her sitting room, an almost palpable air of command hanging around his broad shoulders. His hair was tousled and there were streaks of silver here and there, but time had only made him more beautiful. And more dear.

She rose and came out from behind her desk, picking up her gauze skirts and sweeping them with her. Her gown was a new one, calculated to drive a pirate mad. The bodice was a pale pink silk satin and the skirts were cream weave gauze, brocaded with roses that grew more dense toward the hem.

And those skirts? They were transparent. As the mother of a grown daughter, Theo considered herself too matronly to wear the sort of risqué garments with which she had enticed her husband as a young woman.

Besides, James’s eyes were only for her. She had no need for extravagant gestures—though that didn’t mean she ignored the seductive power of clothing. Now she pushed forward her leg just enough so that he could see its shape under the frail fabric.

James glanced down and the corner of his mouth curled up. “You’re smiling, Daisy, so I’m thinking that Colin is not incapacitated.”

She smiled back. “He is suffering from blindness due to a cannon flare, but the doctor seems convinced it is temporary. He’s wearing a blindfold, but he can take it off tomorrow.”

“Damn.” James ran his hands through his hair again. “I don’t mind saying that your note terrified me, Daisy. I love that boy.”

Theo drifted a bit closer. “It’s actually quite good news, James. Colin is out of the Navy now. He’s free.”

James’s eyes clouded again. “What a god-awful experience it’s been for him. Griffin and I thrived on danger, being a pair of thoughtless rapscallions, but Colin’s heart is in a different place.”

Theo slipped her arms around his neck. “You weren’t at war, James. You and Griffin were larking about on the high seas, occasionally fighting pirates. That’s where the difference lies.”

James’s arms closed around her and he opened his mouth, likely to ask more questions, so Theo decided it was time for action. “I’m so happy for Phoebe and Griffin,” she said, moving even closer so that her bosom brushed her husband’s chest.

His eyebrow shot up and those big hands she loved so much slid a bit farther down her back. He brushed his mouth against hers. “Daisy, my dear,” he said softly, “just how happy are you?”

“Very.” She gave him another smile, thinking how lovely it was to be married so long that one’s spouse could almost read one’s mind. Although it was a good thing James couldn’t truly read her mind, because she could almost hear the bellow that would come once he learned that his darling daughter Grace had gone off in a carriage with a young man who showed no signs of being in love with her.

Let alone if he knew that Grace had plans to seduce that young man.

“Ah.” James’s voice was a deep purr and his hands rounded her bottom. “As your spouse, I should point out that it’s your marital duty to ensure that your spouse is as joyous as you are.”

Theo pushed away her worries about her eldest daughter. “I live to please,” she whispered.

It wasn’t until more than an hour later, when James was lying on his back in bed, happy as any king, and Theo was lying half across him, her face against his chest, that she decided he was sufficiently prepared to hear the truth of it.

His bellow echoed down the stairs and made their butler, Featherstone, pause in his silver polishing, before shaking his head and returning his attention to the fork he held. The duke and duchess were known for shouting at each other like bandits, then retiring to their bedchamber, even when it was broad daylight.

“What do you mean that Grace took off with Colin?” James wasn’t lying peacefully on his back any longer; he was sitting up, glaring at her, his eyes as wild as they’d ever been as a young pirate.

Theo choked back a smile. “Grace loves him.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” James demanded. “She’s always loved him. Or she thought she did. She’s got John now, a nice, solid lad. With a fine estate as well.”

Theo shook her head. “Grace doesn’t love him, dear.”

“Of course she does,” James said, stubborn as ever. “And if she doesn’t, she will.”

“I want her to have what the two of us have.”

“She’ll have it!”

“Not with John. He doesn’t make her heart race merely by walking into a room.” Theo came up on her knees and ran a hand along James’s cheek. “It’s Colin she wants, James. Colin’s the only one for her.”

“Nonsense!” He scowled. “The boy doesn’t want her, Daisy. Doesn’t want my Grace!” His voice veered near a bellow again. “He’s a fool!”

Theo shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about it, James, and I don’t agree. I think Colin loves Grace. She wooed him with those letters, and she won him.”

“Even if that’s true, I don’t see why she’s gone off with him, without a proper chaperone. You’ve bollixed it up, Daisy. If he loves her, he can court her.” James swung off the bed and snatched up his smalls. “I’ll catch them before they get too far.”

“They’re already in an inn by now,” Theo pointed out.

“An inn! A bedroom! My daughter!”

Theo nodded. “Your daughter who is desperately in love, James. As much as you and I ever were. She deserves a chance to make Colin listen to her.”

“That’s not the way it should go,” James retorted. “He should be at her feet, trying to make her to listen to him.”

Theo reached out and caught his hand. “Do you know what she’s doing, James?”

“Risking her good name, if not her heart? What if he breaks her heart, Daisy? What then?”

“She’s fighting for him,” Theo said softly. She pulled her husband closer. “You and I . . . we didn’t fight for each other when we encountered our first obstacle. She’s fighting for him, James. I’m proud of her.”

His scowl was truly ferocious. “I fought for you.”

“Seven years after the fact.” She tugged again, and this time he sat back down on the edge of the bed. “I love every bit of you, James, including the parts you gained abroad. You changed during the years away from me, and only for the better. But I do wish that I’d fought for you, instead of pushing you away.”

He wrapped an arm around her. “You know how I feel about it, love. I should have pushed you into the bedroom and locked the door.”

She was silent.

“No!”

“I did point out to Grace that there was no need for rash action, given that she is compromised merely by the journey itself.”

James fell backward onto the bed. “My baby girl.”

“She’s not a baby any longer,” Theo said, dropping a kiss on his nose. “She’s your grown daughter, and I think we should be very, very proud of her.”

“He’d better go along with it,” James said grimly. “Or I’ll split him from his chin to his gizzard.”

“Like any good papa would,” Theo said, nodding. “But I’m not worried, James.”

“You’re not?”

“Well, perhaps a little worried.”

James pulled her down on top of him. “If I’d known what parenting was like, Daisy . . .”

“You wouldn’t have come back to London at all?”

He smiled at that. “Life’s not worth living without you. And the babes. Even though they’re not babes any longer. You make me happy.”

It was such a perfect thing to say that Theo managed to push all that worry away once again. “It’s your marital duty . . .” she began, but the Duke of Ashbrook was never a man who needed prompting.

Eight

L
ady Grace Ryburn wasn’t a virgin anymore.

Not that the man who did the deed seemed aware of that fact. Colin was lying flat on his back on the opposite seat, one arm over his bandaged eyes, the other hanging free so that his fingers curled against the coach floor. He was dressed, but the front of his breeches gaped open.

And his member . . .

That was not a very attractive look, to Grace’s mind. She had quite liked how he looked, before. In fact, she had almost reached out to touch him.

She had absolutely no wish to touch him now, but obviously, someone was going to have to button his placket before the coach stopped.

Then she looked down at herself, slowly recovering from the shock of it. Her gown was torn. Her chemise was hanging off her shoulder. Thank goodness, she never wore a corset while traveling, because presumably he would have bitten off the whalebone stays with his teeth.

Worse, there was a smear of blood on her leg. And she hurt. In fact, she hurt quite a bit.

Tears pressed the back of her throat, but she made herself think it through. She’d enjoyed it, until the actual possession, so to speak—which she found most unenjoyable. It was rather surprising to find out how much she disliked that part of the marital act, since her mother had always led her to believe that it was great fun from beginning to end.

Colin
had had fun all the way through. But then she felt a flash of guilt. Lord knew whom he thought he was making love to. He hadn’t chosen her. The thought of Lily skittered across her mind and she shoved it away. No, he was surely thinking of a mistress, some woman he’d made love to before. Not Lily. That woman, whoever she was . . . she was
his.
He had said so, in a hoarse, possessive way that thrilled her to her toes.

The jealousy she felt was blinding, and entirely unwelcome.

Frankly, Colin had been like an animal, mad with desire. She shivered at the thought of how he had lost himself inside her, and then found herself shivering again with a delicious pulse of heat.

The wonder of it was that she had somehow managed to seduce him, even though she could hardly congratulate herself on her effort. He had simply taken matters into his own skillful hands.

Slowly, she sat up, wincing, and pulled off the remnants of her gown. Her mother had trained her long ago to be prepared for an emergency such as the luggage carriage going astray, so her traveling bag was in her carriage, and contained another gown.

It took a few minutes to wiggle into it, and she didn’t have a spare chemise. But even her mother’s exquisite planning couldn’t cover all eventualities—such as the one where Grace had to hook up the back of her gown after being ravished in a coach.

Since she couldn’t fasten her gown, she wrapped her cloak tightly enough around her to cover her bare back. Her maid would realize, of course. Looking at her discarded chemise and the gown, and particularly the blood staining her chemise, there would be no disguising anything from her maid. She bundled them back into the traveling bag, trying to think how she would explain it.

She would simply have to hold her head high.

Finally, she got up and went over to Colin. He was unexpectedly vulnerable, lying there with his eyes covered. Yet when she touched him, he stirred, and somewhat to her horror, his tool began to thicken and straighten, right before her eyes. She bundled him hastily into his breeches and did up the button placket, her own private parts sending her a twinge of dismay at the mere thought of how he had employed that—that
thing
of his.

When they reached the posting inn where the Duke of Ashbrook stabled his horses, she assumed the haughtiness of a duchess and swept through the door before the servants’ coach had even entered into the yard. The innkeeper instantly escorted her to his largest bedchamber.

“My husband, Captain Barry, will require a room of his own,” she told him. “And I should like a bath.”

The innkeeper bowed. “Of course, Mrs. Barry.”

Grace flinched at the title she didn’t deserve, but kept speaking. “He has suffered an injury and, unless he has woken, he must be carried from the coach. He is temporarily blind.”

The innkeeper’s face twitched. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Mrs. Barry. We will take the best possible care of your husband.”

She nodded and he left.

Grace sank into a chair, and then started straight back onto her feet. It hurt. Her most tender part felt . . . well . . .
hurt
. How did women put up with this sort of thing?

She went straight back to her first reaction to the act. She had been enjoying it until a certain point. She frowned, realizing what must be the truth. That first part was for her. And the second part was for him. Presumably the second part wouldn’t hurt as much next time, though obviously it would never be as much fun as the preliminaries. She could probably live with that.

She took a pillow from the bed, put it on the chair, and then eased herself down while she waited for her bath to arrive. She would have to think about how often she would agree to have marital relations. Once a week at the outside. Perhaps once a fortnight.

No wonder young girls weren’t informed about the details of such intimacies. They’d probably run off to Spain and join nunneries.

She looked up, caught a glimpse of herself in the glass, and actually gave a little shriek. Lord knew what that innkeeper had thought of her. Her hair was tumbled over her shoulders, and her lips looked swollen. There was—she turned down her collar to examine it more closely—yes, there was a bruise on her neck. As if he’d
marked
her. Like a savage.

Yes, it was no wonder that married women kept all these details to themselves.

Nine

C
olin woke with an aching head. He rolled on his back and his elbow struck a wall; for a moment he thought he was on the ship again.

Then he froze. Where in the hell was he? This wasn’t the townhouse of the most elegant woman in England.

There was a smell of roast beef in the air. He seemed to be lying on top of a bed, fully clothed. The pillow under his head was lumpy, and of a quality that the duchess would never allow on a guest’s bed, and probably not even in the servants’ quarters.

He sat up, bracing himself against the wall. What in the hell had happened to him? He had an indistinct memory of another laudanum dream. He couldn’t remember all the details, but he knew it had ended satisfactorily, and that it was far more acceptable than those dreams that left him unmanned.

In fact, barring the headache, he felt better than he had in weeks. Since before the cannonball exploded just off the ship rail. Thinking of how he woke to total darkness, he reached up and patted the bandage around his head. It was still firmly tied.

The door opened and Ackerley entered. In the six weeks since he lost his sight, Colin had gained an extraordinary ability to judge people by how they walked: literally by how their feet struck the ground. Ackerley ambled. You could tell him there was a fire in the privy, and he would amble over to look. Hell, you could tell him that his own coattails were on fire, and he would think about it before he turned to peer at his arse.

“Where the devil am I?” Colin demanded, with no preliminaries.

“The Cow and Tulip, Captain, on the Bath Road.”

He was half way to Arbor House, then. That made sense. But somehow, he had lost a day or two, because he had no memory of getting in the carriage. In fact, the last thing he remembered was telling a doctor that he didn’t want laudanum . . .

Laudanum.

The old sod must have given him a dose anyway. Well, he could hardly curse the doctor for giving him the best dream of his life. The memory shot a little pulse of fever through his blood.

“How did I get here?”

“In the carriage,” Ackerley said, without a trace of irony in his voice. “Would you like me to order your bath?”

“Yes.”

Colin brooded while Ackerley banged about the room. How the hell did he end up in a carriage? He must have had some sort of waking dream, because he managed to get out of the duchess’s townhouse.

Ackerley removed his clothing and steered him into the large tin bathtub. “Your hair, Captain Barry?”

He hated this. He hated having to be bathed with every inch of his soul, but there was nothing to be done about it. “Yes,” he said shortly. He closed his eyes as Ackerley pulled off the bandage and poured liquid soap on his head.

A moment later the man tied the bandage back around his wet head and handed him a toothbrush.

Colin used it and handed it back. “Put the towels and my clothing on the bed. You may leave.” He was at the limit of his tolerance; he would not allow another man to wash his body.

Only once he was certain the door was shut did Colin reach out, finding the edges of the bathtub, searching for the small bottle of liquid soap.

He caught the bottle just as it toppled off the side, pouring some into his left hand and rubbing his right arm. There was an odd little purr of well-being in his body, something he hadn’t felt in months.

Washing his other arm, he realized that he might not have felt this good in a year. Even his headache had disappeared. It was that dream, of course.

He washed his chest, thinking about it. No wonder men became addicts who wasted into scarecrows in back alleys. The dream had offered him everything he wanted: Grace.

When he had walked into the duchess’s townhouse, he had known instantly that Grace was in the entryway. He had
smelled
her; she favored soap that smelled like lemon verbena, and the scent hung on the air.

But just as he was about to greet her, there had been a shuffle of feet, and McIngle had stepped forward with his damnably pleasant voice. His words had been like a dose of ice water, but also a salutary reminder. Grace was betrothed to McIngle. She was going to marry the man.

So he hadn’t thrown himself at her like a ravening beast. He had been polite and cool, even though he felt a tearing pain in his chest. It made him realize that in some dark corner of his soul he had been hoping that Lily was wrong, and Grace wasn’t betrothed to McIngle.

But she was, and why shouldn’t she be? He had asked for Lily’s hand in marriage.

His hand slid farther down his stomach to his crotch—and froze. He was no mere stripling. He knew what his tool felt like when it had been in use.

Impossible.

But he couldn’t deny the feeling. He must have spent his seed in the carriage in the midst of that dream, which was a bloody embarrassing idea. He must be losing his mind. He couldn’t remember ordering the carriage, getting into it, opening his placket, buttoning it back up, never mind doing himself a service in the grip of that dream . . .

Thank God Ackerley wasn’t in the carriage. Or was he? A searing pulse of humiliation went through Colin.

He had put up with a great deal since the ship doctor ordered a bandage over his eyes. The man had said he would stay blind if even the slightest ray of light struck his eyes during the following six weeks. Hell, he might end up sightless anyway.

Ackerley had steered him to the water closet, taken his clothes off, handed him a toothbrush . . . This particular situation made those humiliations seem petty. Bloody hell, he hoped he hadn’t made an utter fool of himself.

Then he thought about Ackerley’s tone when he summoned the bath. The man wasn’t the brightest, but if he had witnessed his employer thrusting away at the air, there would be signs of strain in his voice.

Ackerley had been as placid and uninterested as ever. So Colin must have been alone in the carriage. In fact, he’d bet the duchess had sent along a second carriage for Ackerley and his trunk. That would be like her.

He briskly finished washing, his body responding with a wave of good feeling that made him think he had done himself a disservice by staying away from women for months. Nor had he enabled himself in a private way.

But now he was almost happy.

He carefully climbed out of the tub, and groped his way to the length of towel Ackerley had left for him.

Five minutes later, he was clean and dressed. Ackerley hadn’t returned, but he realized with a surge of energy that he didn’t want to remain cooped up in the room. It must be the English air. He felt like venturing outside, and be damned if he lurched about like a drunken cow.

Perhaps he could find someone to take him to the stables. As a boy, he’d dreamed of impressing his adopted father with an illustrious career at sea, and never paid any attention to horseflesh. But in the last few years, he’d spent a surprising amount of his shore leave in the stables.

There was something in a horse’s whiskery kiss, the peaceful way they cropped grass, and the comforting musky smell of a stable that helped put the terrible memories in their place.

In the past.