Love Letters From a Duke (18 page)

A match, Felicity would point out, that had been the result of her inspiration—and some hard work.

“Whatever are you doing in Town?” Lord John—Jack to his friends, and Mad Jack to those who only remembered the libertine who had once wrecked havoc with his rakish ways—asked as he smiled broadly at her, until his gaze wandered over to Thatcher and his brows furrowed slightly. “We thought you and Tally were going to stay on with Pippin in Sussex for the time being until things could be settled.”

“The opportunity for a Season came along and we were
loath to pass it by,” she told him. “Besides, we couldn’t wait any longer. But what are you both doing in town? Especially with your time so near, Lady John! I can’t imagine that you should be bouncing around in a carriage.” She shot her best admonishing glance at Jack. Really, what was the man thinking?

Lady John, the former Miranda Mabberly, who had taught at Miss Emery’s as Miss Porter after a scandalous encounter with Mad Jack drove her from Society, smiled fondly at her former student. “Felicity, you dear girl. Always looking out for my welfare. But you shouldn’t worry so—I am quite fit and have another two months to go.” She swiped at the swell of tears in her eyes. “Botheration, I swear I cry at the least provocation these days.” She patted her rounded stomach and then reached for her husband’s arm, her gloved hand twining around his sleeve. “You should have seen me when we had to leave little Birdie behind.”

“A veritable watering pot for fifteen miles!” Jack declared.

They all laughed and Felicity felt all the ill will that Miss Browne and Lady Gaythorne had showered down on her soul wash away.

Friends are the balm that soothes the heart
, Nanny Tasha had always said, and how right their wise nanny had been.

“How big is Birdie now?” Felicity asked. “Why, she must be crawling about the place.”

“Walking,” Jack declared, ever the proud papa.

“Running is more like it,” Miranda added. “She’s got her father’s determined nature.”

“And her mother’s sparkle—she’ll lead all the bucks on a merry chase when it comes her turn to come to Town!”

Felicity grinned. “But still, why come to Town? Your last letter said you wouldn’t be leaving Thistleton Park until…” She blushed a little. “…until your confinement was over and you found a new nanny.”

Miranda laughed again. “Our nanny worries are over now that we discovered why they kept departing in the middle of the night.”

“I daresay Jack was regaling them with his Tremont family history and all the haunted doings about the park,” Felicity scolded.

“Not at all. It was all Bruno’s doing,” Jack supplied.

“Mr. Jones?” Felicity glanced at both of them. “But I thought he was utterly besotted with little Birdie.”

“Too much so,” Miranda told her. “Apparently he was continually objecting to how the nursery was being run, convinced that our nannies didn’t have Birdie’s best interest at heart. The poor women were fleeing in fear.”

Felicity covered her mouth with her mitten. Not that she blamed them! She held her own bit of unspoken terror when it came to Bruno Jones, Jack’s secretary and man of business. A mountain of a fellow, he wasn’t someone that any woman—or man—would brook easily. “He wasn’t threatening to pack them off with Captain Dashwell, was he?” she teased. “Or sell them to some faraway sultan?”

“That was the least of his threats,” Jack said, shaking his head. “But finally Miranda struck the perfect bargain to end our woes.”

“Which was?” Felicity dared to ask, knowing her former schoolteacher had a mercantile mind that left even the most hardened smuggler in begrudging admiration of her bargaining prowess.

The couple shared a guilty smile, and then Miranda answered, “We installed Mr. Jones as the new nanny.”

Felicity’s mouth fell open and then she laughed. “Surely you are jesting!” The vision of Mr. Jones with a lace cap and an apron was just too much.

Miranda shook her head. “No, not in the least. In fact, he’s a better nursemaid than he was a forger. And he can hardly wait to have the next one arrive.” She gave her stomach another
fond pat. “But I have been ordered to produce a strapping lad this time. Mr. Jones wants someone to pass on his trade to.”

Felicity giggled again, only because she could well imagine what Jack’s brother, the Duke of Parkerton, would say to such an idea. “Oh, if only Mr. Birdwell had lived to see such a sight. What fun he would have had teasing Mr. Jones.”

Miranda’s eyes welled again—as much from her pregnancy as from her fondness for the man who had done so much to bring her and Jack together.

Jack glanced at his wife and then said, “We probably would have had both of them up there arguing over the proper folding of nappies and the correct amount of fresh air!”

“You must miss him terribly,” Felicity said. Mr. Birdwell had been Jack’s faithful butler, having followed the madcap young lord into exile when Jack’s escapades demanded a hasty departure from Society…

“The note you sent when he passed last fall meant much to us,” Miranda told her.

“I have him to thank for our current situation,” Felicity confessed, “for it was Mr. Birdwell’s recommendations that helped us get settled here in London.”

Jack’s gaze narrowed. “Don’t tell me Birdwell lent his expertise to your household?”

“Oh, Felicity, no!” Miranda exclaimed.

She waved their concerns aside. “Not to worry, he used his best judgment and found us a wonderful cook. Why, we have quite a proper household!”

Behind her there was a discreet fit of choking. Oh, no! How had she forgotten Thatcher?
Wonderful
. He’d reveal the truth of their situation to Jack and Miranda and that would end their Season before it began, with the couple insisting that she, Tally, and Pippin journey immediately to Thistleton Park until they could find a proper situation.

And by then, well, Hollindrake might have been swayed by some other young lady.

Not that she didn’t trust the duke. No, it was the Miss Brownes of the world she didn’t trust. She’d rather let loose Aunt Minty in a silver shop than allow Hollindrake to wander about London’s Marriage Mart without a firm and binding betrothal inked.

“And all the better to finally meet Standon—well, I suppose I should say Hollindrake now,” Jack was saying. “But of course I see you have already—”

“Felicity Langley,” Miranda interrupted. “Where is your maid? Your escort? My mind must be befuddled not to have noticed before! Miss Emery taught you, and I daresay I did as well, not to wander about unescorted—”

“I am not alone!” Felicity interjected.

Jack gently pressed his wife back into her seat. “Of course she isn’t. Don’t you see she has—”

“A footman,” Thatcher said, coming forward and bowing slightly to Miranda, “At your service, and Miss Langley’s.”

“Yes, I have Mr. Thatcher with me,” Felicity told her old decorum teacher. “I would never go out alone.”

Both Jack and Miranda made a snort that was both indelicate and disbelieving.

“Thatcher?” Jack remarked, his brows furrowing again.

“Yes, my lord,” Thatcher replied, and the two men eyed each other oddly, but Felicity dismissed Jack’s behavior as nothing more than his overly protective nonsense when it came to their welfare. Ever since she’d managed Jack Tremont’s match with Miss Porter, he’d become like an overbearing uncle.

“It is good to see you here, Mr. Thatcher,” Miranda said. “You look a sensible sort, and our dear girl here is…well, a bit madcap.”

“So I’ve discovered,” he replied, bowing slightly.

“Enough of this,” Felicity told them. “I am neither madcap nor do I require constant supervision.”

The three of them shared a series of glances before they all started laughing. Miranda covered her mouth, but finally
managed to ask, “Where are you living?”

“Brook Street,” Felicity told her. “Right around the corner from Grosvenor Square.”

“So old Elliott finally loosed the purse strings?” Jack teased.

“He was most generous,” Felicity lied. And following Miranda’s lead, changed the subject yet again. “You never did say why you’ve come to Town, and in this horrible weather! It must have been something very important to bring you all this way.”

“Actually, you’ve mentioned the subject,” Jack said. “There are rumors that our old friend Dash is here in London—he’s iced in and unable to get back to his ship. By chance, he hasn’t come calling, has he?”

“That pirate?” Felicity said, her hands fisting at her hips. “If Captain Dashwell does, I’ll put a bullet between his eyes! He quite ruined Pippin. She still considers him the finest man alive. I’m having a devil of a time convincing her she needs to settle on a proper gentleman, not that Yankee ruffian.”

“Pippin will have no choice in the matter,” Jack said. “For when Dash is caught, he’ll hang.”

Miranda was shaking her head. “I still say that seems rather hasty. When the war ends, he’ll make a good trading partner.”

Jack laughed. “Only you, my dear wife, would consider that rapscallion pirate a good trading partner. But there’s no getting around the fact that he’ll hang, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Bother Pymm,” Miranda said, mentioning their contact in the Foreign Office. “I’ll just have to talk some sense into the man.”

“That ought to be an interesting conversation,” Jack said. “And one that we are late for as we speak. Felicity, can we give you a ride home?”

“Oh, no, I have Mr. Thatcher with me, and it’s not far. But
you must come to call, and soon, Miss Porter.” She paused, then smiled and tipped her head as she corrected herself. “Lady John.”

“We will,” her former teacher said. “We are here just through the end of the week. So we will most decidedly see you at the Setchfield masquerade.”

“What are you wearing, Jack?” Felicity asked. “No, let me guess. You are going as a smuggler.”

“Hades,” Jack confessed with a woeful shake of his head.

“And I will be dressed as Persephone,” his wife said.

“We haven’t decided on our costumes,” Felicity said, not wanting to reveal that unless they went as penniless debutantes, they wouldn’t dare show their faces. “But we shall see you very soon.”

“Yes, we shall,” Jack said, sending a direct glance at Thatcher.

“Dearest,” Jack said as they rolled away. He glanced back at Felicity and her “footman” and frowned. “I think we will need to change our meeting with Mr. Pymm.” He looked over at her. “Besides, you look chilled.”

“Botheration, Jack Tremont, don’t gammon me with such flimflam. Your brows don’t crease like that unless something’s amiss, and I would wager it has to do with that footman of Felicity’s.”

He smiled at her, but the expression was merely a turn of his lips and didn’t reach the furrow of his brows. “That man is no more a footman than I am honest.”

“As bad as all that?” Miranda said, glancing back as well. “Then I insist you turn this carriage around and we straighten the matter out right now.” She clucked her tongue. “And here I thought him quite a handsome fellow.”

“More handsome than me?” Jack teased, knowing the answer to the question. Miranda’s unwavering love for him was the rock of his life. Had anchored his reckless existence.

She lay her hands over her stomach and smiled. “I would never admit how handsome you are in public, my lord. It isn’t proper for a wife to be so infatuated with her husband.”

“Only infatuated?” he asked.

“Besotted,” she confessed. But she pressed her lips together and looked back at her former student. “You will see to her welfare, won’t you?”

“Before the day is out,” he vowed.

Thatcher shook his head as the carriage pulled away. “Mad Jack Tremont leg-shackled,” he muttered. “I never—”

“I would hardly call his situation so dire,” Felicity interjected. “Jack’s changed, nothing more. All men do…eventually.” She spoke as if she had years of experience on the subject.

And her worldly air made him laugh. “Not as much as you would like to think, Miss Langley.” He moved closer to her, forgetting himself and thinking only of proving how little he’d changed since his rakish days. But to his chagrin the lady just poked her nose into the air and ducked around him.

So much for his rakish charms. There had been a day when a lady wouldn’t have escaped his clutches so readily. He shrugged his shoulders and set off after her, asking the
question that had been on his tongue since Jack had greeted Felicity like a long lost niece. “How is it that you, Miss Langley, are acquainted with Mad Jack?”

“You shouldn’t call him that. It isn’t proper.”

“Lord John then,” he corrected.

She nodded at his concession and then answered his question. “Miss Porter—well, I mean Lady John—was our decorum teacher at Miss Emery’s and when—”

Thatcher nearly tripped. “Mad Jack married a decorum teacher?” At first he couldn’t believe it, then he couldn’t help himself—he doubled over in laughter.

Miss Langley came to a dead stop. “I don’t see what is so amusing! Miss Porter was the perfect lady for him.”

Thatcher tried his best to stop laughing, but it couldn’t be done.

Her foot tapped a staccato beat against the icy sidewalk. “You are making a spectacle of yourself over what is a beautiful love match.”

That caught Thatcher’s attention. Who would have thought it possible that such a heartless bastard as Jack Tremont could fall in love? “A man goes to war for a few years and the entire world turns upside down. I am starting to believe that the French won.”

“Now you are being ridiculous,” she shot back.

“Ridiculous?” He shook his head. “Just incredulous. I just can’t see the man I remember—hearing about,” he added hastily, “turning into a docile example of domestic bliss.”

“It wasn’t easy, believe me,” Felicity said, pulling her cloak tighter around her neck, and starting down the street again. “It took some doing to get him to see the sense of the match, and Miss Porter, well, she all but refused to see how our plan—”

“Our plan?”

“Well, mostly me,” she confessed, stopping. “But Tally and Pippin helped, so they deserve some credit.”

Thatcher crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re responsible for all that?” He pointed back in the direction Jack had gone.

Demmit, if she didn’t puff up with pride.

“I might have come up with the idea that they may suit,” Felicity said, meeting his gaze without any reservation. “Oh, don’t gape at me like that. Something had to be done! Why the man was a veritable recluse, lost to society and family, while Miss Porter was—”

“You meddled!” Oh, if that wasn’t warning enough, he didn’t know what was. This little slip of a chit had managed to outflank Mad Jack Tremont. If he hadn’t been afraid of her before, he was now. Here he’d thought all her matchmaking bluster was just that, but the minx had credentials.

Demmed impressive ones. No wonder she’d been able to hoodwink his grandfather.

“I simply helped two people arrive in the same vicinity and then perhaps ensured that they stayed that way until they saw some sense in the notion,” she was saying, walking away again.

“You were matchmaking,” he shot back, keeping up with her, “which is meddling, plain and simple.”

“Did they look like they mind?” she said, a smug smile on her lips. “They suit, plain and simple. And best of all, they love each other.”

And then it struck him. For as much as her voice filled with pride over snaring Mad Jack in the parson’s mousetrap, it wasn’t so much the match that she found so worthy of note, but that the two were madly in love. Something only a blind man would have failed to notice.

Yet what her words concealed, her eyes did not. When she too looked back in the direction of Jack’s carriage, a tiny light of envy glowed in those blue eyes of hers.

“I don’t think either of them,” she was saying, “would have ever gotten married if they hadn’t found each other
and fallen in love.” Her mitten trailed along the edge of a wrought fence, skipping along the rails.

“And you expect me to believe you just trapped those two together and they fell in love? It doesn’t happen like that, Miss Langley,” he said as they turned onto Brook Street.

“Someday, you’ll have a different opinion on the matter, Mr. Thatcher,” she was saying, once again with that smug knowing tone. “When you fall in love.”

Why was it that every time a single man declared his disinterest in love and marriage, every woman within earshot considered it her personal mission to find him a bride? “No man in his right mind willingly wanders about Town with a bell on his neck like that fool Tremont.”

“I think he rather likes the sound,” she said over her shoulder, with that sly disarming smile that left him struggling to breathe.

Oh, the devilish little minx. She shot his defenses right out from beneath him.

And that was how they did it, he realized as he caught her taking another sultry glance over her shoulder at him. With their lithesome looks and promises of passion.

And the next thing you knew, you found yourself riding around Town like a pug dog on a silken lead, with a demmed bow stuck to your head.

Still, how was it that with just a tip of her lips and that come-hither light in her eyes, and his imagination—no, make that his demmed natural inclinations—he was seeing visions of her stripped of her plain gown, naked and lush and tangled up in the sheets of the enormous bed that took up much of the ducal suite? Beckoning him with only a glance to join her…join with her.

But when he looked up, she was already two houses ahead of him, as uncaring and unassuming as any regular, ordinary London miss. Good heavens, either he was seeing things or her company was driving him around the bend.

He chose to believe the latter. It was all this talk of love matches and happy couples. Why, it even had him feeling a tiny bit of envy for his old friend Jack.

Envious of Jack and his pretty bride?

Oh, good God, he was!

Thatcher tried to breathe and found he couldn’t. He plucked at the first three buttons on his coat, hell, all of them—opening his coat to let the cold, bitter chill of this miserable winter ice his blood and clear his thoughts, but still they rang with her words, her voice.

I have you…
And she did. In ways she couldn’t imagine.

Or perhaps she could…with a little help.

He took a great gulp of the freezing bitter wind but it was no use. Miss Langley made him feel rakish, and heroic, and almost ducal, but more to the point, he wanted her to look at him just as Lady John had looked at Jack.

With eyes that burned with a love no one could deny. With a glance that set his heart hammering, his loins hardening, his arms aching to cart her off to the nearest bed and bury himself inside her.

“Thatcher, are you well?” Miss Langley asked. She bustled back and glanced over him. “Well, of course you aren’t. Look at you, standing out in this wind with your coat wide open.” Without any ceremony or even a nod, she took hold of the lapels and tugged them together.

Pulled him closer to her. Never mind that they stood in the middle of Brook Street. With her teeth, she pulled off one of her red mittens, then the other, hardly the proper action of a lady, but it was quick and efficient. “Hold these,” she ordered, shoving her mittens into his hands, and then with her bare fingers started buttoning up his coat, beginning at the bottom.

He stared down at her in wonder—years abroad hadn’t made her “full of herself,” as Lady Gaythorne had claimed, but had given her a freedom of spirit that called to his own unconventional nature.

Truly, the more Miss Langley tried to be the proper English miss, the more miserably she failed.

And the more he, dare he say it, loved her for it.

An odd chill ran down Thatcher’s spine. He what? Loved her? Impossible notion! He didn’t, he couldn’t.

But life, he had learned, can change in the flash of a moment—on the battlefield or even the safe and proper confines of Brook Street. As his had in the past few minutes.

“Good heavens,” she was muttering, “What were you thinking, running about with your coat open? You’ll catch your death! And then where would
I
be?”

Not
we
. Not
us
. But
I
. The choice was telling. Or so he hoped.

He cocked a brow and stared down at her.

“I can see what you are thinking and you are an impertinent fellow,” she chided. “Of course if you got sick, I would have to take care of you. Believe me, you wouldn’t want Tally brewing your possets.”

She’d finished buttoning his coat, but her hands had found an easy resting place on his lapel, her hand over his heart. He brought his own up and covered her bare fingers. “You’d take care of me?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice catching slightly—and then her lips pursed and parted slightly, as they had yesterday on the ice when he’d been convinced she wanted him to kiss her. And he wasn’t such a fool to miss an opportunity twice.

Madness, utter madness, he realized as he dipped his head and let his lips touch hers. They made a moue of surprise, but the real surprise was his.

Mudgett hadn’t been too far off the mark when he’d said that Aubrey Sterling had once cut a wide swath through London’s female population, having seduced his fair share of madams and widows and ladies of questionable character, but that hadn’t prepared him for kissing the
right
woman.

She tensed in his arms, and he could tell this was her
first kiss, so instead of giving in to the need that throbbed through him, he made sure she found the experience worth repeating.

Often
.

Tentatively, he slid his tongue over her lips, drawing her closer still. Oh, hell, she tasted like heaven. He deepened the kiss, longing to find himself inside her.

And thankfully, this was Felicity, for while she might have been hesitant, almost proper at first, that didn’t last long. A soft moan escaped her lips and she opened herself up to him, her lips teasing his, her tongue sliding over his. Her fingers, once splayed over his coat, now tugged at his lapels, hauling him closer still.

Suddenly he could feel not only her wet, heated mouth, but her entire body as it wound up against him, her high, firm breasts, her hips rocking forward, her legs mingled and twined with his.

Desire and need assailed him, and his hand slid beneath her cloak and roamed over her well-fashioned curves. Cupping one of her breasts, his thumb rolled across the tip, and it puckered quickly, and she gasped in surprise, their mouths coming apart. Her usually clear eyes were dazed with passion. Yet just as quickly they cleared, and with that came the realization of what had just passed between them, the heat and fire that had come undone in a single kiss. And just as quickly, everything he’d succeeded in unleashing was washed away in a blinding wave of panic.

She tore her hands from his coat and stumbled back from him. For his part, he took a hasty step back as well—her lessons from Mr. Jones still fresh in his memory. They stood there, staring at each other, Felicity’s brows furrowed and her mouth parted as she tried to catch her breath.

“What were you thinking?” she sputtered before turning and fleeing.

“Oh, hell,” he cursed as he shot after her. He caught her by
the arm and swung her back into his embrace. This time she wasn’t as easily caught.

“I’m nearly engaged,” she said, twisting and turning in his grasp. “I have an agreement—”

“You have nothing!” he shot back. “With a man you’ve never met!”

She didn’t want to listen. “But he knows me, he understands me.” Her now angry gaze blazed up at him. “And he wouldn’t force himself on a lady when she was—”

Egads, he was sick and tired of listening to her extol Hollindrake’s virtues. His virtues. Virtues he did not possess. And to prove it, he kissed her again. This time with all the pent-up passion and impropriety he could muster, letting his lips ply hers open, letting his tongue taste hers, tease her again until she was trembling and sighing in his arms. When he pulled back, she wavered in his arms. “He wouldn’t force a lady when she was what?”

She stared up at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. Without his livery, maybe even without his clothes (well, a man could hope), and for a moment her lips fluttered as if she wanted to say something, but the words utterly failed to find a way out.

“Oh, heavens,” she finally managed, before wrenching herself free and starting for the steps and her door.

But he caught up with her again in a few easy strides and planted himself in her path. “How can you be so sure about him?”

She set her jaw and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, for one thing, Jack recommended him.”

“Mad Jack Tremont? One would think you’re mad. Hollindrake was one of his cohorts, his boon companions.
Do you know what that means?
”

She pinked, quite thoroughly, but to her credit her gaze never wavered. “He’s changed, just as Jack did.”

Thatcher snorted. “Men don’t change.”

“Yes they do. When they want to, when the right lady comes along.” She rose up on her tiptoes and looked him nearly eye-to-eye. “They change because they must if they are to keep her.”

This struck him. For she was right, but in his anger he wasn’t willing to concede anything. “And Hollindrake has changed?” He let his skepticism drip from every word.

She stood her ground and tipped up her nose. “Yes. Of course.”

“And you know this because…?”

For a moment she wavered, but then her shoulders straightened back into their taut and steady line. “Because he told me he has.”

Thatcher crossed his arms over his chest. “He told you?”

“Yes.” This she whispered.