The Seduction of a Duke (21 page)

HE WASN’T SURE WHAT WOKE HIM FROM A FITFUL dream. Perhaps an overabundance of sleep had finally

jolted his mind awake. He’d done little else since this stomach disorder began. William cracked his eyes open, allowing his brain to register his surroundings. The porthole admitted the pale cool light of the moon, washing the too-familiar stateroom of color. The soft grays and relative stillness of the room brought welcomed relief. They must have survived the gale and moved on to calmer seas. Tomorrow, when sunlight shone through the porthole, he’d be able to test his sea legs and remove himself from this miserable cabin. The anticipation of breathing fresh air once again brought a thin smile to his lips. Perhaps he needn’t wait till morning.

A soft rustle of fabric and accompanying movement pulled his gaze to the aisle between the berths.

His breath caught. An expanse of smooth bare skin, broken only by wispy tendrils of dark hair, expanded above the most provocative corset he had ever had privilege to witness, and he had witnessed a great many in his time. Medium and dark stripes cleverly curved and molded the wearer into a tantalizing hourglass shape, while black lacing down the back teased the eye as it crisscrossed through a medium stripe. She stood so close, his hand was tempted to reach and tug loose the cleverly tied knots. But he didn’t, believing this to be a dream, or a figment of his earlier delirium.

Yet she seemed so real in this pale unearthly light. He clenched his jaw. This must be what happens when a man is so long without a woman. He can vividly recall an angel at will, one who encompasses the best of all mortal women he’d known. Either that, or someone had blessed him with a highly paid strumpet, one who understood the tantalizing play of color and form.

His eyes followed the captivating trail of the lacings to silk-encased buttocks. As if by his very thought, his dream mistress bent forward as if to retrieve something from the floor, the motion pushing her backside even closer for his observation. Lord, his mouth and throat dried to dust. His fingers twitched to feel the firm mounds presented so. But he didn’t for fear that one touch would cause this vision to disappear and return to the dream world from which she came. His bedsheet slid down his chest, the result of his rising erection.

She stood, a printed cotton garment with a design of tiny circular wheels in her hand. She placed it on the opposite mattress where more of the fabric lay. His brain whirled much like the tiny wheels; where had he seen that pattern before?

Her shoulder blades drew back, her elbows lifted at angles to her side; he knew she was unfastening the front of that amazing corset, and he prayed she’d turn around. He ardently wished it so, hoping that as before, she would act upon his thought command. Instead, she spread the unfastened garment wide across her back, like an erotic fan employed in the finest pleasure houses. She released one side of the corset and pulled it to the front of her, leaving a thin creased chemise in its wake. Just as he was enjoying the artistry of her disrobing, the memory of the pattern clicked with shocking reality.

“Franny?”

She gasped and spun about. Shielding her chest with her discarded corset, she pulled her elbows tight about her. Her eyes grew huge in the pale moonlight.

“What are you doing?” he asked, though the answer was obvious enough.

“I thought you were sleeping,” she said, looking shocked as if she’d just been caught pilfering sweets from the pantry.

“Did you, now?” he said, more as an accusation. Obviously, she was preparing to slip into his berth, and thus claim they’d enjoyed sexual congress to establish paternity for her bastard. Was there no level to which she would stoop? Did she think he would not remember such an event?

“I thought to change into something more comfortable. I’ve been sitting in that chair for hours.” She nodded toward a chair pulled near the foot of the bed.

He followed the tilt of her chin. “You’ve been watching me sleep?”

He couldn’t recall that chair placed just so earlier. Indeed, it would have made walking between the berths impossible, so narrow was the space. Perhaps he’d been too hasty in his supposition?

“I’ve been watching to see that you had no need of the bowl, and to assist you if you had.”

She’d been watching him, caring for him? Guilt challenged his earlier suspicions. He knew she had cared for him earlier in the day, but he hadn’t considered she’d continue the task into the night. He shook his head, in part to clear it of lingering lascivious thoughts of all he had planned to do with his dream angel. This was his wife, the last woman he wanted to think about in those terms. Damnation, whoever coined the phrase “Frosty Franny” had never seen her in that corset!

“Your ginger wine helped considerably,” he managed with guilt and gratitude. “My stomach has settled for the moment.”

He glanced up at her, clinging to that tantalizing contraption of lace and whalebone as if it were some bit of armor that would protect her from ravishment. Now that was a contradiction . . . if she planned to seduce him to cover the tracks of an earlier encounter, why would she cower much like a virginal miss? For that matter, why would a virginal miss wear a strumpet’s corset? It was too confusing to sort through at the moment. Then a new thought entered his tangled thoughts.

“Where is Hodgins? He’s not—”

“We moved him into my stateroom, Your Grace.” She looked askance. “It didn’t seem proper for me to spend the night confined with two men.”

“I see.” So in spite of evidence to the contrary, she did have a sense of decorum. It was a pleasing thought. “And Mary?”

“It is fortunate that you reserved a parlor suite. She insisted that she could make do with the divan. To his credit, Hodgins did protest displacing Mary from the stateroom, but this arrangement provided us with more freedom of movement.”

“Well considered.” He continued to watch her while she shifted uncomfortably. He supposed as a gentleman he should turn and face the wall. But then, as he glanced at her in abject appreciation, he
was
the Duke . . .

“Do not let me stop you from becoming more comfortable,” he said after a few awkward moments.

Her eyes grew impossibly large. “You’d watch me undress?”

“I am your husband.” Bloody hell, her portrayal of interrupted innocence could put Sarah Bernhardt to shame. Still, it provoked the devil in him. How far would she go before proving her lack of virtue? “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m in no condition to touch you.”

It was a lie, of course. Had he not just admitted that he was no longer under the effects of that earlier malady? One could question his mental acuity, though. Inviting the one woman he had sworn to resist to disrobe was beyond lunacy. His fingers tightened in their grip on the rail in some vague hope that he could honor his statement. For one touch could well be his undoing.

Perhaps a stronger man would have requested she cover herself, but such a paragon had not seen Franny in the moonlight.

She hesitated a moment, then placed the corset alongside her day dress. She presented her back to him, then lifted the creased chemise over her head. She had the most beautiful, sensuous back he’d had ever seen. Skin that glowed in the moonlight and begged for touch like a luscious velvet. His groin ached in defiance of his earlier statement that he would not touch her.

“Turn around,” he said, finding it difficult to give voice to his words.

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked over her shoulder. “You’ll laugh at me. I’m not”—she glanced down, then looked back—“I’m not very big.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” Damnation! Why was he causing himself such misery? His cock thickened with need. He was putty in her hands. She would squeeze the seed from him with her tight little cunny and he’d forever question the paternity of her issue. But issues of forever faded with the temptation before him. He was a duke accustomed to giving orders, and she was the wife who had vowed to obey.

She turned to face him, her arms crossed over her chest, her silky pantaloons still tied to her waist.

 

 

FRAN THOUGHT ABOUT HER PURPOSE IN READING BRIDGET’S journal. This was the moment she’d been planning for. Bridget would have dropped her arms and shown her bosoms without thought. Yet she hesitated, suspecting it must be easier to expose one’s body to a stranger than to someone you would see the rest of your life, someone whose opinion mattered, because curiously, now his opinion did. As his wife, the Duke had a right to see her as God created.

Moonlight sliced down through the porthole highlighting her midriff while keeping her face in shadow. She bit her lip, summoning her courage, then slowly, very slowly, lowered her arms.

Her breath held in anticipation, she waited for his laughter. Granted, he had seen her in that lacy bit of nothing on their wedding night, but somehow this was different. She hadn’t even a scrap of lace to hide behind.

“Come closer,” he rasped.

She glanced down at her paltry denizens bathed in the soft light of the moon. He hadn’t laughed, but neither had he praised. Perhaps the lift of her corsets had suggested there would be more of her. Upon impulse, she placed her hands beneath her breasts, lifting them as her stays might. Her thumb strayed across a begging nipple causing a jolt of awareness to slice through her clear to her toes.

“Do it again.”

His strained voice rewarded her effort, boosting her confidence. Bridget would be proud of this inadvertent stumble into seduction. She glanced down at the Duke beneath lowered lids, wishing his lips—not her thumb—brushed the sensitive flesh. “Will you not do this, sir?”

“I promised not to touch you,” he fairly gritted between his teeth.

Why did he promise such a ridiculous thing? Didn’t he know how she yearned to feel the rasp of his chin against her tender skin, experience the pull of his lips on her berries? That promise he’d made to her on their wedding night about knowing her taste, the alluring stories from the courtesan’s journal that fascinated her with the possibilities, her father’s sage advice that she quickly get with child—none of these would come to fruition if he didn’t touch her!

A bit of moonlight glinted off the dark green bottle of ginger wine bracketed over his berth. The Duke had sampled a wine made of currants, yet refused her offering of berries. Her frustration sparked inspiration. What if she were to combine the two?

The brash idea slammed into her natural sensibilities causing gooseflesh to lift on her arms. She could never be so bold!

A soft inner voice chided. Frosty Franny would never attempt such artful seduction, but a courtesan trained to call attention to her best assets . . .

She hesitated, then reached for the bottle.

“What are you doing?” Bedford asked.

She bit her lip, reluctant to explain her purpose. He’d resisted her earlier attempts at seduction and might do so again. She pulled on the opening lever, releasing the ginger aroma into the cabin.

“I don’t need more of that,” he protested. “My stomach is fine.”

She tilted the bottle, pouring a shallow puddle of the golden liquid in her cupped palm. “Is it?” she asked with a false bravado.

Quickly, before the liquid could leak through her trembling fingers, she leaned forward, alternately pressing her breasts into her raised palm. The ginger richness coated the aching bud of each and proceeded to race down her bosom like a track of tears. She bent forward, letting the moistened nipple barely touch his lips. “Then, you may have no need of this.”

With a groan, he parted his lips and suckled her, sending intoxicating waves of ravishing heat through her veins. His tongue flicked over the appreciative nipple, making her knees buckle. He let the pebbled nub go, then dragged his abrasive chin over the side of her breast until he could again nip at the extended tip. She must have gasped though she wasn’t conscious of making a sound.

“Do you enjoy that, you seductive minx?”

Seductive! Pleasure flashed through her at his unknowing compliment, one far distant from Frosty Franny.

“Give me the other,” he demanded.

Happy to acquiesce, she braced one hand near the side of his head for balance. Her left breast hovered inches from his talented lips, while the right, still damp and aching from his administrations, stirred the black curling hair on his chest. Her other hand found purchase by his hip, pushing the sheet farther down his form. It was an amazing sensation, having a man draw at her breasts. No wonder women of Bridget’s ilk flaunted their virtues. She would be hard-pressed not to offer her berries up to Bedford’s lips at every turn.

While he energetically removed every trace of ginger wine from her breast, she noticed his manhood had stretched to great proportions, enough to nudge her arm. Rising from a nest of black hair, it reached toward her, begging attention.