The Confessions of a Duchess (30 page)

She looked up as he reined in beside her and dismounted, and their eyes met.

For a long moment they stared at one another. There was something different about her, Dexter thought, an element of vulnerability in her face that he had not seen before. Her eyes looked tired, as though she had not slept. His heart stumbled to see it. Laura so seldom let her defenses down. All the impossible choices he had to make rose up to torment him and without intending to he took her in his arms and drew her close to him. She fitted perfectly against his body and he instantly felt comforted. It felt less like unbridled lust and more like something deeper and much more tender. She instinctively raised her face to his and he kissed her gently, and tumbled straight into the profound depths of his desire for her, made all the hotter by his memories of their night together.

It was several minutes later that he realized she was wearing riding breeches rather than a habit and that beneath them she appeared to be naked. He was so shocked his hand fell away even as his body reacted to the knowledge and he became even more rock-hard than before. This felt more like rampant lust.

“It is easier to ride astride,” Laura said, answering his silent question, “and with breeches a lady cannot wear underwear.”

Riding breeches. No underwear. Dear God.

He was not sure what showed on his face—the same uncontrollable hunger he felt inside, probably, because she took a step back from him. “I did not expect you to discover it,” she said. “I thought we were going to talk.” She shook her head slightly. “I suppose I might have realized, given that we do not seem to be able to resist one another. Have I shocked you, Dexter?”

“That hardly describes my feelings,” Dexter said.

She met his gaze very directly. “I suppose not. Not after last night. And yet we must talk. We do not appear to have a problem relating to one another physically, do we? It is in other respects that the problems lie.”

That went straight to the heart of the matter and he admired her for her honesty even as his body groaned with frustration to be denied. To take her here, now, on the windswept hillside, with the autumn leaves as a bed and the wide sky above them would fulfill his wildest fantasies. But that was exactly where his dilemma lay. To succumb to those feelings again and give himself up to their passionate affair would be irresponsible, reckless and dishonorable. It was marriage—or nothing. It had to be or he would have surrendered the last shreds of his honor.

“I did not come here today to resume our affair where we left off last night,” Laura said, echoing his thoughts as she walked a little away from him. “I have been awake all night trying to decide on the best thing to do and I have come to make it clear that what is between us must end, Dexter. I hope you will feel the same and agree with me. You need not for one moment feel obliged to offer for me because of what happened. You are a free man.”

Dexter waited for the feelings of relief to swamp him, as surely they must. Laura was refusing to contemplate a proposal from him. She was setting him free.

He waited. Nothing happened. He did not feel relieved. No calm reassurance washed through his veins. He looked at her with the wind in her hair and the pink color staining her cheeks and the jacket and breeches hugging her slender form and the hot, masculine possession gripped him like a vise.

“Is there some other man you would prefer to wed?” he asked. He thought of the fortune hunters lining up to court her now that she had money and the jealousy speared him like a knife. It was another new sensation.

She gave him a scornful look. “Not in the slightest. After everything that has happened do you still think me the kind of woman to take you into my bed—” her lips twisted “—or on my sofa, at least, and then profess a wish to wed another?”

“No,” Dexter said. “I do not think you that sort of woman.” She sighed. “It is simply that I do not wish to wed again. How could I, when my previous experience of marriage was so unhappy?” She saw he was about to interrupt her and held up a hand. “I know you are not like Charles. Of course you are not. But I could never wed a man who does not love me and I am not sure you even believe in love anymore, Dexter. I am not sure that you want to. Last night you called it a dangerous illusion and said that mutual respect was all you required in marriage.” Dexter shrugged. “When I was younger I believed in love,” he said. “I attributed the feelings and emotions around lust and passion to it. That was my naiveté and now I know that love is just a pretty word for physical desire. It makes it sound more acceptable.” It was only an articulation of what he had been thinking earlier but Laura looked disgusted by this piece of logic. “Congratulations, Dexter,” she said. “Somehow you have managed to sound both cynical and stuffy at the same time. I am not at all certain how you achieve it.” She snapped a twig of the hawthorn hedge and broke it sharply between her fingers. “I suppose that you see marriage primarily as a business arrangement?” A shade of scorn touched her voice. “It must be, I imagine—your rich, conformable marriage to your biddable heiress bride?”

“Ideally it would be,” Dexter said. “I am not a man to indulge in meaningless affairs, so I have always hoped the marriage relationship would also have a physical side. I hoped it would be enjoyable.”

“Enjoyable!” Now there was no doubting Laura’s scorn. “Is that how you felt about last night, Dexter?” she snapped. “That it was
enjoyable?
You reject the power of emotion and yet you cannot quite eliminate it from your life, can you? So you pretend that love is less important than it really is by calling it by other names and thinking to keep it in a box and under control. You know, I
pity
your poor bride!” She took several angry steps away from him. “You are offering her a fake—a marriage where you want no more than her money and a quiet life—oh, and a
pleasant
time in her bed! What sort of existence is that?”

“A rational one,” Dexter said. He looked at Laura’s flushed face and bright, angry eyes, and her luscious body stiff with indignation, and wanted to grab her and kiss her even though his attraction to her contradicted every last commonsense principle he held to, and drove him mad into the bargain. “A calm, ordered life is the ideal,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“How very tedious!”

“That is rich criticism coming from you, madam,” Dexter said, feeling his temper slipping and, as always with Laura, utterly powerless to resist. “Why, from the very first you have hidden behind a facade of propriety when really you are wanton and passionate and shameless and
wild
—” He had unconsciously taken a step closer to her with each word and now he grabbed her upper arms and kissed her with all the pent-up denial and frustration that was in him. His mouth seduced hers relentlessly, plundering its softness, demanding her response.

“I admit it!” Laura wrenched herself from his arms and stood looking at him, her breasts heaving beneath the tight riding coat as she gasped for breath. “I have acted the part of the perfectly proper duchess in public but at least I am honest enough to admit both to myself and to you that I
am
wild and passionate under the surface.” She glared at him.

“When I marry—if I ever marry again—I would want my husband to understand that and to want me as I am. He would not seek to change me to fit into his conventional view of life.

So I cannot marry a man who secretly deplores his attraction to me and wishes he could make sense of it!”

“You mistake,” Dexter said. His breathing was ragged. He took her in his arms again.

“You will marry me, Laura.”

“No, I will not.” Laura looked defiant. She wriggled, trying to free herself from his grip. Dexter gritted his teeth at the provocative slide of her body against his.

“You do not really want to marry me,” she said. “What you want is to be free of your passion for me so that you can wed a nice quiet girl who fits all your ideas of a perfect wife and a perfect marriage. That was what last night was about, you wanted to break the spell between us!”

“And I failed,” Dexter ground out.

She was right. They both knew it. She was not what he had sought in marriage. He did not want his life to be driven by so demanding a passion. But with the insistent pressure of Laura’s body against his, Dexter knew only that it was Laura he had to have or run mad, a situation that was even less practical, even less desirable than the one he was in.

“I have no choice, Laura, and neither do you,” he said, his mouth only inches from hers. “We have to wed. It is the only way I can have you in honor.” He brought his mouth down on hers again and Laura’s gasp of shock turned to a moan as he drank deep from her. He wanted to pull her down onto the soft bed of leaves behind the tumbledown wall and peel away her saucy red riding jacket and the tight breeches. He thought he would burst just to think of it. He knew that he was every bit as driven by the demand of his senses as his foolish, feckless father had been and was equally as powerless to resist. But he could bind Laura to him in marriage. That would make matters right. He could conquer this need in him by keeping her with him forever.

Laura dragged herself away from him. She was breathing hard. She looked frightened. His heart clenched at the expression on her face.

“Laura—” He put out a hand to her. He wanted to reassure her and tell her that everything would be all right. They would marry as soon as possible and then this wild and spontaneous passion between them could be controlled within the bonds of matrimony….

“I cannot marry you,” she whispered. “Not when you do not love me and when you do not know—” She stopped. She looked terrified.

“Everything will be all right,” Dexter said. “Laura, trust me. We will be wed soon. I will get a special license—”

Laura shook her head. “No, Dexter.” She looked at him and made a little hopeless gesture. “There are many very good reasons why I cannot marry you, although being with you almost makes me forget them.”

Dexter caught her arm, suddenly anxious not to let her leave on this denial.

“Is it Hattie?” he asked. “I understand it might be confusing for her at first but she is young and children do adapt. And I have six younger brothers and sisters, so I know a little of what to expect. I swear I would be a good father to her and I am sure that in time she would come to accept me—”

He stopped. Laura’s eyes were brilliant with tears. It shocked him to see them. There was so much grief and uncertainty in her face that he instinctively tried to draw her into his arms, but she held him back. Her evident distress reminded him of the previous night, when she had struggled so hard to deny her love for him and he had known that there had been something frightening her.

“It is not that,” she said. “Oh, Dexter, you are a good man.” She gave a little laugh that was almost a sob. “You
are
a good man, despite your misguided views on love.” She shook her head a little. “I am sorry. It is my fault, but we cannot wed.” Dexter stood and watched her walk away. He wanted to call her back and insist that she explain to him. His need to understand and to uncover the truth drove him. Yet she looked so sad and so determined that something held him still. He could not rid himself of the feeling that when she had apologized, it had not been for refusing his offer of marriage but for something else entirely, something he did not understand.

BY THE TIME
Laura had rubbed the horse down, stabled and fed her, she had started to feel a little better. The stifling guilt that had gripped her when Dexter had spoken so gently about Hattie had ebbed a little.

She wondered if she might have given a different answer to Dexter’s proposal if he had said that he loved her. She had loved him for four years and she was in love with him still but she knew that he did not feel the same. He desired her but that was not the same as love. And Dexter was, at heart, deeply conventional. The heat of his lust for her drove out the more conservative elements of his behavior but he was struggling against it all the time.

She did not want to be married to a man who fought against his attraction to her rather than celebrated it. One day he might actually succeed in conquering it. Nor did she want to be in another marriage where her husband required nothing more than for her to conform to his ideal of proper behavior. She had already done that and she had not buried Charles in order to do it again.

She thought about telling Dexter that she had borne his illegitimate child out of wedlock. Knowing him as she did now, she could see that he would regard Hattie’s parentage as yet another reason why they should wed and regulate yet another irregular situation that had occurred between them. He would be proposing because he wanted to do the right thing but also because it would make matters neat, tidy and appropriate. It would be the responsible thing to do, to provide for her and for his child. It would fit his notions of proper behavior.

She sighed. She had not denied him knowledge of Hattie because she did not want to marry him but because she was fearful that Dexter’s absolute conviction of what was right, that very inflexibility within him that had led him to pursue her relentlessly for the truth, would mean that he wanted to acknowledge Hattie openly. She was afraid that he could not compromise nor understand her reasons for wanting to preserve the fiction. She was afraid that he would not understand her reasons for wanting to protect Hattie.

She strode through the front door of The Old Palace to find Alice Lister in the drawing room with Hattie on her knee, the two of them reading
The History of Little Goody
Two-Shoes.

Alice looked up and smiled. “Good morning, Laura. I came to make sure you were quite well this morning.”

“That was very kind of you considering what I put you through last night,” Laura said, feeling a little inadequate. “I am so sorry, Alice. I am sure that you were most dreadfully shocked.”

“Not really,” Alice said serenely. “That is, yes, I was somewhat taken aback but I had observed from the first that you had a partiality for Mr. Anstruther. And you must not forget, Laura, that I was not always a debutante heiress. When I was a servant I saw things that would shock
you
to the core.”