Four Nights With the Duke (23 page)

“I won’t,” she said swiftly. “Do you think I could love anyone who would treat me this disrespectfully?” It was a lie. She loved him so much that she ached with it. But she couldn’t let him know. She couldn’t.

He would walk away, leaving her devastated. But at least if he didn’t know how she felt, she could keep the humiliation to herself.

His hand stroked her arm. “I know it can be hard for women to keep their feelings separate when they’re making love.”

Was he feeling sorry for her? Again? Mia straightened and glared at him. “Vander, there is nothing that could get me to fall in love with you after what happened years ago at that musicale, let alone your coarse behavior this morning.”

“That’s good,” he said immediately. Still, she could
tell that he believed he was so irresistible that she would fall for him anyway.

“I have been in love,” she told him, keeping her gaze unwavering.

“I know that.” His thumb rubbed across her lip. “You’ve been biting it again. Your bottom lip has turned the color of a ripe strawberry.”

“Not with you. That was a silly infatuation, and I was only a girl. I hardly knew you.”

His thumb stopped.

“My fiancé, Theodore Edward Braxton Reeve, courted me for a year and we were betrothed for another year. I knew him very well—and I fell in love with him.” She wasn’t precisely telling the whole truth, but it didn’t matter.

A dark emotion flashed through his eyes. “You still love the man who jilted you?”

Mia ignored that question. It was none of his business, and he would like her answer too much. “Edward is brilliant, handsome, and very kind. He is a professor at Oxford, and he knows your friend Thorn. In fact, I believe Mr. Dautry bought a machine of some sort from him.”

“The patent for a machine,” Vander said slowly. “I remember now that Reeve was the man who designed a continuous paper-making machine. Thorn made a fortune on it.”

“As did Edward,” Mia said, a trace of pride appearing in her voice, even though the last thing she should do is feel pride for the man who had jilted her.

Vander’s hand slid down to her throat, an indescribably soft caress. “I find it harder and harder to believe that he left you at the altar.”

Was it worse to say cutting things to her, as Vander
did, or to leave her, as Edward had done? Mia cleared her throat. “My point is that you needn’t worry that I will become infatuated with you, simply because you made love to me against the wall of the stable. If that is the right word for what we did.”

“It is not.” He leaned down and whispered a different word in her ear.

Mia felt herself turning bright red. “You mustn’t use that word in my presence, let alone
to
me.”

“It’s part of the madness I fall into when you’re around me,” Vander said, his voice rasping. “I want you, Duchess. I want you so badly that I’m having trouble thinking even right now. You’re telling me that you are still in love with that miserable son of a bitch you were betrothed to, and I’m sorry about that. All the same, the only thing I want to do is lie down and pull you on top of me.”

On top? Mia gave that a second’s thought before returning to the subject at hand. “You see my point, don’t you? You needn’t worry that I will fall in love with you.”

“Because of Reeve.”

“Edward broke my heart.”

His thumb swept along her chin, and he said, “I hate to hear that, Duchess.”

“Yes, well . . .” She suddenly realized exactly what she was feeling under her bottom.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have the most luscious arse in all Christendom?”

“No.” She shifted her weight, just to see that flare of dark lust in his eyes.

“I’m starting to get the idea that you have no idea what effect you have on men.”

Mia stopped wiggling. “I have no effect on men. And I don’t want you to pay me compliments that you don’t mean.” She cleared her throat. “That—
what we did earlier—it wasn’t ladylike. But on the other hand, it was real. It hurt to be characterized the way you did, but I can see that the truth is preferable to insincere flattery.”

He frowned down at her. “I would have complimented you, but lust had such a grip on my throat that I couldn’t do more than pant.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t start making what’s between us into some sort of romance. Or flattering me. I know what you think of me.”

His arms tightened again. “How can you know what I think of you?”

Mia put his arm aside and pushed herself to her feet. She had to get this straight. It was bad enough when he lashed out, calling her greedy.

But it would be worse if he started whispering things he didn’t mean. That would endanger her heart. She might begin to believe him.

“There’s no need to fuss,” she said, giving him a big smile. “See? I’m fine. I’m not crying. There’s no need to flatter me.”

He stood up. And up. He was so tall, compared to her. She folded her arms over her breasts and looked at him. “I shall see how Charlie is. After I wash my face and change my gown, that is.”

“Perhaps we should retire to a bed and celebrate our newfound truce,” Vander suggested.

Mia felt as if she had been torn apart that morning and clumsily put back together. Not just physically, either. She shook her head.

Vander paused, a frown on his face, as if he guessed how battered she felt. She summoned up another smile. “Perhaps, if you’re very, very lucky, I’ll request the second of your four nights soon.”

He pulled her into his arms. “I’m amending the agreement.”

“Oh?” Mia discovered that she was trembling all over. Being enveloped in Vander’s arms, against his hard chest, was enough to make her want to moan.

“Four nights a month,” he said, leaning down and biting her earlobe.

“What?”

“Or, hell, four nights a week.”

“You cannot just change the contract whenever you please.”

“I set the rules,” he reminded her. “You agreed to whatever I decreed. As far as you were concerned, my letter could have said you had to appear in my bed seven nights a week.”

“It’s too late to change a legal agreement,” she managed.

His lips brushed her ear again and her knees turned liquid. “Maybe four nights a year, but also four afternoons a week. Starting today.”

“I don’t think—” Mia began.

But Vander cut her off. He hitched her up against his body in such a smooth motion that Mia could tell it was becoming second nature. He kissed her into silence, and when he raised his head, he said only, “Duchess.” His voice was dark as black velvet, and that smooth.

She bit her lip.

“No?”

“I’m . . . somewhat tender,” she confessed.

“I’m an animal,” he said, pulling her tighter. “I’m sorry, Duchess.”

Mia was beginning to enjoy the way he called her Duchess, even though she understood it was a way of avoiding intimacy. She wasn’t one of his friends; he wouldn’t call her Mia.

All the same, she loved being called Duchess. His duchess.

“I didn’t mind that much,” she whispered. She put out her tongue and very delicately touched the indent at the base of his throat.

He gave a strangled groan. “Right. Perhaps in a few days. I’m going to the stables.”

“All right,” she said, kissing the tiny patch of moistened skin on his neck. He tasted like sweat and desire.

“Do you think that we might renegotiate your ban on being touched here?” He put a finger on her collarbone and slid down.

“No,” Mia said instantly. She shifted her weight and he let her slide down his body to stand on her feet.

“Why not?”

“I told you already.”

Vander gave her a look that made heat shoot through her stomach. “You will have to tell me again.”

She didn’t want to talk about her bosom. It hadn’t slowed him down last night or today; obviously it wasn’t very important in the scheme of things.

The scheme of erotic things, that is.

Marital things.

“I’d rather not,” she said, walking through the broken door to her room and pulling the cord summoning her maid. By the time Susan poked her head around the bedroom door, Mia had managed to pull off her morning gown. The back, she saw with dismay, was stained the color of decaying wood.

“That won’t come clean,” Susan said, with a saucy grin. “The fabric was already pilling. I’ll give it to the housekeeper to make rags with. May I ask whether you had an accident, my lady?”

“Please don’t ask,” Mia said. “What should I put
on? I haven’t any gowns that aren’t black or gray. Though no one cares what I wear.”

“Yes, they do,” Susan said. “Believe me, they do. Everyone in this house thinks your husband is the next best thing to royalty.” She had opened the clothes press and was poking about in the shelves. “This will do.”

She brought out an amethyst gown that Mia had last worn two years ago. “It’ll be large in the waist, but it will do until Madame duBois arrives tomorrow morning. She might even get here as early as this afternoon.”

“A modiste?” Mia asked, unenthusiastically. Seamstresses promised miracles, but she always ended up looking like a stubby woman with large breasts.

“Madame duBois makes gowns for all the very best people.” Susan lowered her voice. “And some who are not: she has made frocks for Maria Fitzherbert, and you know what they say about her.”

“She has caught the prince’s eye,” Mia said. “But, Susan—”

“More to the point, Maria Fitzherbert is short. Tiny! Short as you are, if not shorter. I directed Madame to bring along any garments she might have partially constructed for petite clients. I promised her that the duke would pay three times her going rate for ready-sewn gowns.”

Mia sighed. Poor Vander had been forced to marry; the least she could do was not cost him too much money.

“You must dress as befits your station,” Susan stated.

If she was going to be a duchess for more than six months, then Susan was right. “Very well,” Mia said, resigned.

Her maid’s eyebrow rose. “Does that mean that
you’ll agree to lower your bodice below your collarbone?”

“Yes,” Mia agreed. Adding, “If I must. Perhaps only in the evening.”

“Unless you want to look like a maiden aunt who is pretending to be a young duchess, you must. I didn’t argue when you were at Carrington House, because you rarely attended any sort of social event. But it will be different now.”

“I don’t want that sort of gown every day,” Mia protested. “Only if I have to make an appearance as a duchess.”

Susan crossed her arms. “Mr. Dautry and Lady Xenobia live less than two hours away, and His Grace’s man told me that they visit often. Your appearance reflects on me, and I can’t imagine what Lady Xenobia’s maid would say of your wardrobe. I cannot face her if your clothing is not à la mode. In the evening and in the day.”

Mia knew when she’d been beaten.

She’d probably end up with a wardrobe full of gowns whose necklines landed just above her waist. The gleam in Vander’s eyes came back to her . . .

Presumably, he would enjoy them, even if she didn’t.

MORE NOTES
ON
C
ASTLE
P
LUM

         
~ the evil Lord Plum has
deceitfully
confused Flora’s affections by giving her lavish compliments and gifts. He rains insults on the man who jilted her.

         
~ what if Frederic happens on the castle, and is invited to dinner to meet Lord Plum’s fiancée: Flora!

Count Frederic was appalled to find that the lovely, modest, artless, bashful, yet warm-hearted girl he jilted at the altar has become a young woman of fashion, resplendent in jewels and displaying an Artful Fastidiousness in attiring herself.

         
~ Pale face now too thin for true beauty.

Two days later

C
harlie was proving to be a fine equestrian. He had a tendency to favor his weak leg, which affected the direction in which his horse turned, but in time he’d get over that. More importantly, he loved everything about horses, and he especially loved Jafeer.

And Jafeer seemed to be cautiously affectionate in return; Vander had the idea that his new stallion considered the boy to be Mia’s colt. Anything the duchess liked, Jafeer liked.

At the moment Vander was standing on the side of the yard, watching Charlie go around on his wife’s palfrey, Lancelot. He had a groom guiding the horse with a line.

His wife.
Wife.
Vander still couldn’t get around that word. He’d been blackmailed into marriage, but somehow a fact that had enraged him mere days ago seemed irrelevant now.

Mia Carrington was his wife, no matter how it happened. Jafeer adored her. Hell, everyone adored her.

She was the sort of woman who made a person try his damnedest to get her attention. He caught himself performing like a boy, trying to come up with witticisms to bring out that throaty laugh of hers.

He couldn’t even concentrate on his work, because he spent his time thinking about Mia and all the things he meant to do with her once she felt ready.

How long did it take a deflowered virgin to recover from said deflowering? It wasn’t the sort of question men talked about. He felt an absurd sense of pride, knowing that he was the only man who’d ever touched Mia intimately, plunged into her.

He wanted more. And more still. His lust had become so overwhelming that he had taken care not
to touch her at all in the last two days. He hadn’t even brushed up against her on the stairs. He didn’t trust himself.

In any case, she spent most of the time tucked away in her room working on her novel. She and Chuffy talked with great animation throughout the evening meals while Vander watched.

Mia’s hands would wave in the air, describing the spacious and magnificent apartments of some castle in which her heroine was taking refuge. Hell, if she wanted a castle, he could buy her one.

Chuffy had her in fits of laughter every night, suggesting wilder and wilder plot twists. Vander had nothing to contribute but common sense.

“That girl—Flora, isn’t it?—would be a fool to go back to the man who jilted her,” Vander had pointed out the night before. “Frederic is as limp as a noodle. It’s despicable that he is ‘bathed in tears’ after jilting Flora. She should find someone better.”

“Frederic is the hero,” Mia told him. “She can’t simply ‘find someone’! There can be only one hero in a novel.”

In fact, Chuffy and Mia ignored most of his suggestions. Last night they had spent an hour discussing whether the castle should be haunted by the “moaning voice of some unquiet spirit.”

What with the unquiet spirit, the milksop hero, and the evil Lord Plum, the castle sounded like a version of Dante’s hell. Vander had jocosely suggested that the spirits of four slain princes, all heirs to the Crown, should haunt the castle ramparts—only to have his jest taken seriously and put into play with foolish Frederic.

When Mia wasn’t writing—or conspiring with Chuffy—she was sequestered with a seamstress.
Making herself into a duchess, by all accounts. It was ridiculous. He didn’t want her to change.

He loped across the yard to Charlie. “Three more times around. Don’t forget to groom your mount.”

Charlie nodded. His eyes shone and both his posture and his seat were good, considering he was a new rider. Vander reached over and tapped his weaker leg. “How’s this feeling?”

“It’s fine,” Charlie said instantly.

Beginning to ache, Vander diagnosed, seeing faint smudges under the boy’s eyes. Charlie was not a complainer. “Three more times,” he repeated, and headed for the house.

To find his wife. Ridiculous though that sounded, he’d hardly seen her except at evening meals, when Chuffy was there, taking all her attention.

Not that he was jealous of his own uncle.

It was merely that his irrational fit of lust had turned her from a near stranger to the only person he cared to spend time with.

Nodding at Gaunt, he ran up the stairs into his bedchamber and straight through to the bathing chamber. The door leading to his wife’s room had been repaired, he noticed. That broken latch had undoubtedly caused a storm of speculation downstairs.

He was devoutly hoping that he’d discover her in dishabille, perhaps naked to the waist while being fitted for a gown.

Alas, no such luck; her bedchamber was empty. He returned to the hallway, went to the top of the stairs, and bellowed down, “Where’s my duchess?”

Nottle had not been the sort of butler who would deign to raise his voice, but Gaunt was not as rigidly formal. He shouted back, “Her Grace is in her study.”

“‘Her study,’” Vander repeated, feeling like an idiot. “Where is that?”

He had no memory of her mentioning it at supper, and when else were they supposed to discuss things? He was out of the house all day working in the stables, and they weren’t sleeping together.

“Her Grace is using the Queen’s Bedchamber as her study,” Gaunt replied, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. “The great bed remains, but we moved a desk from the library.”

A moment later Vander pushed open the door to the Queen’s Bedchamber, only to find this room, too, unoccupied. Sunlight poured through the west-facing windows; he’d forgotten how much light this side of the house received.

He walked over to her desk and picked up a sheet of paper. Mia’s handwriting hadn’t changed much from when she was a girl, writing that love poem. It was a strong hand, with a beautiful, high-flung curve on some of the letters. It hadn’t a trace of the madness that clung to his father’s hand, or the timidity that characterized his mother’s.

After it became clear that he refused to be in the vicinity of Lord Carrington, the duchess began to write letters to him. Her words had been hedged in by excessive curlicues, ornamented with arabesques, and flourishes. He had read her letters impatiently and tossed them aside, condemning her for adultery, for selfishness.

Now his heart bumped at the memory of Chuffy’s revelation about the truth of his parents’ marriage. All those years he had felt burning resentment of his mother’s betrayal of his father, but the situation had been far more complicated and far more tragic than he had known.

With an impatient shake of his head, he focused on
the page he had picked up, headed NOTES: Chapter Three.

“I cannot bear to think of it!” Lady Ryldon cried pettishly. “Maurice must marry her. It has come to the very last ebb with us. We shall all be ruined if he doesn’t manage it.”

“How on earth did she come to have such a dowry? I knew her mother, and she was a worthy woman, but their fortunes were sadly depleted.”

“As I understand it, Lord Mortimer glimpsed her in the street and wrote her into his will. It sounds very curious to me; everyone is saying that she must be his natural daughter.”

That startled her friend. “Absolutely not! I knew her mother well before she was disowned by her father, the earl.”

A peal of silvery musical laughter interrupted them. “Here she comes!” Lady Ryldon said urgently. “Now, dear, you must make certain that the little fool marries my son. Our very lives—or at the very least our wine cellar—depend on it!”

Vander stared down at the page in some perplexity. It didn’t seem to match the plot he’d heard discussed over the dining room table. Who was Lady Ryldon? The whole desk was covered with drifts of paper, each sheet containing a scrap of dialogue or a list of notes. He picked up another.

“In the meantime,” said Count Frederic, with a polite bow, “may I not kiss you?”

“Indeed you may not!” Flora cried. She peeped at him over her shoulder, with a captivating giggle. “I do not like kisses.”

“Let me change your mind.” His countenance was not merry: instead, the very air trembled with a solemn—

Unfortunately, the text broke off just when it was getting interesting. Vander sifted through the mess on the desk, trying to locate the next page, but he couldn’t find it. He picked up Mia’s quill and struck through a half line or so, and scrawled a revision.

“My dear, do let me change your mind.” He pushed her back on the table, ran a hand beneath her skirts, and bent to kiss her silken thigh.

She threw her arms around his neck and cried, “But, sir, do you intend to ravish me?”

“Only if you desire such a wanton course,” he replied, quite untruthfully, because he intended to ravish her no matter what she had to say about it.

“Modesty forbids my answer,” she gasped, clapping her legs around his waist.

“Excellent,” he said, debauching her enthusiastically.

This was rather fun. Vander poked around until he found a couple of other scenes which, in his considered opinion, needed correction. Flora should never go back to Frederic, for example. He picked up the quill again.

Vander here: This is rubbish. He’s a fool who jilted her. She should treat him like the idiot he is.

The door opened. He hastily put down the quill and turned around.

It was Mia, naturally, and she was frowning at him. “What are you doing?”

“I seem to have been reading your memoirs,” he said, strolling toward her and doing his utmost to
look innocent. “I had no idea your life had been so enthralling before marrying me.”

“Oh hush,” she cried, her face turning rosy. “It’s horrid of you to look at my manuscript without asking me first.”

“I think you should spice it up a bit.”

“Spice it up?”

“Well, what sort of man would say ‘may I not kiss you now’?”

“My hero, Frederic, is extremely courteous.”

“He’s an addlebrained dunce. Who would want to kiss a man like him? Clearly not your heroine, since she makes up that whopper about not liking kisses.”

“Frederic is a complete gentleman,” she said defensively.

“And I am not?” Vander grinned and changed the topic. “What on earth have you been doing? I looked all over the house for you.”

“Reading,” she said, a bit guiltily. “I haven’t been able to put Miss Julia Quiplet’s books down in the last two days, even though I
must
write my own novel. Was there something you wanted, Duke?”

“Duke?” Vander looked insulted. “Surely we are on intimate terms?”

Mia had a moment of extreme irritation.

How was she supposed to guess what Vander felt was the appropriate degree of intimacy at any given moment? He still addressed her as “Duchess,” after all. She avoided the question altogether. “I thought you were in the stables. Is Charlie all right?”

“I set him to grooming horses. If it were up to him, he’d ride all day long, but I thought his leg had taken enough.”

“Perhaps I should check on his progress,” Mia said. Vander had a look in his eyes that she recognized, even after a few short days of marriage.

But it was daytime. Afternoon. Servants were about.

“Charlie will not miss you,” he said. He took a long stride, bent his head, and pulled her into his arms. Mia had to admit that his kiss was pure bliss. She even dropped Miss Quiplet’s novel.

In the last two days, she had done her best to ignore Vander at dinner, because every time she met his eyes, she felt herself turning pink. She stayed up late reading, but he never knocked on her door.