How to Tame Your Duke (19 page)

Grimsby rose. The lamplight reflected against his spectacles in a flash of white. “I think His Grace is perfectly acceptable. But then, I’m hardly a judge, am I?”

Ashland felt oddly unnerved under the white light of Grimsby’s gaze. He looked at Freddie instead. “Your candor is priceless, young man. Grimsby, will you do me the very great service of hauling my ungrateful cur of a son upstairs to his studies?”

Grimsby bowed, and as the light ran over his skin, Ashland thought he looked a trifle pink. All the salty talk, no doubt. Poor, innocent chap.

“With the greatest pleasure, Your Grace,” said Grimsby, and he grabbed Freddie by his ungrateful collar and hauled him upstairs to his studies.

*   *   *

G
ood God,” said Emilie, as the schoolroom door closed at last behind them. “How the devil could you sit there like that, cracking jokes? We were nearly killed!”

“Oh, I’ve dodged the odd highwayman often enough, in my time. That leap across the hidden ditch behind North Tor unseats them every time.” Freddie reclined in his chair and idled his finger in his Latin grammar.

“
That
was no highwayman.” She stopped. “There really are highwaymen about?”

“Well, not really. Thieves, brigands, what have you. But not the
stand and deliver
sort of highwayman. The trains, I’m afraid, have done for the poor chaps. Still . . .”

Emilie paced across the room. “In any case, this was no common thief, that far away from the road, and a little-used road at that. No, the fellow knew what he was after. He knew where to find us, and when.” She drummed her fingers on her elbows. “This is disastrous. They must know I’m here. I shall have to write to Miss Dingleby directly.”

Freddie straightened. “What’s that? You really think it was some foreign agent or another?”

“Without a doubt. He was waiting for us. Miss Dingleby said someone was making inquiries in the district. My God! I hope my sisters . . .”

Freddie leapt to his feet. “Well, then we’ve got to tell Pater straightaway! He can post guards, hunt the chap down . . .”

She spun to face him. “Absolutely not! I can’t possibly embroil him in this.”

“Why the devil not?”

“Because . . .” She swallowed heavily. “Because it’s none of his affair.”

“
You’re
his affair.” Freddie paused. “Literally.”

“I won’t, Freddie. Not . . . not yet.” She closed her mind to the thought: confessing everything to Ashland, watching his blue eye grow colder and colder as he realized the magnitude of her double deception. Watching the emotion wink out of him, as surely as the wind howled over the moor.

One more evening, and she would tell him. One more meeting of Emilie and Mr. Brown. His kisses, his body linked with hers. She couldn’t deny herself that.

And then it would be over. She would wire Miss Dingleby first thing tomorrow. She would warn her that the agents had found Tobias Grimsby, had connected the Duke of Ashland’s tutor to the missing Princess Emilie. That her sisters were possibly in danger as well. She would slip away, she would take the train up to London and stay with her uncle, and that would be that.

No more Ashland. No more Tuesday evenings. No more excruciating, half-naked encounters in the basement of Ashland Abbey.

“In any case,” Freddie was saying, peering out the window in the manner of a cornered fugitive, “I’ll accompany you into town tonight and wait for you in the stables. You’re not going off by yourself, not with assassins lurking around every bend.”

“Oh, well played. And you’ll be doing
what
in town this evening? Off to the Anvil? Cat’s cradle with Rose in the corner? Sipping tea?”

Freddie turned and grinned. “I’ll be as good as gold. Word of honor. Her Highness’s Royal Guard does not malinger on duty.” He performed a strict salute.

Emilie smiled. He looked absurdly young, all of a sudden, as he puffed his chest with assumed manhood. “I am deeply honored,” she said.

“Oh, I’m not doing it for you.” He went to the door, swung it open, and stood aside for her. “I’m bloody well doing it for poor old Pater.”

E
milie arrived first in the Duke of Ashland’s private hotel suite. She spent a nervy seven minutes flitting about the rooms, fingering the curtains, adding coals to the fire. A week of steeling herself to him, a week of tempering her heart into hardness, and she had melted like metal in the forge the instant she had seen the duke standing behind his desk in the study, large and powerful and crackling in the exact center of that field of magnetic energy he carried effortlessly about him. His bright blue gaze had burned through her skin, and she knew she wouldn’t refuse him. Couldn’t refuse him.

She had already undressed to her corset and chemise. She would make no pretense that this was anything but a carnal meeting, a passionate reprise of the week before.

A knock sounded at last on the door. Emilie pulled her blindfold over her eyes and turned.

“Emilie?” His beautiful voice made the blood accelerate in her veins.

She held out her arms. “Here.”

She was expecting the touch of his hand, the formal press of his lips on her fingers. Instead she heard his quick footsteps approaching, and then she was hoisted upward and crushed against his endless chest. “Ah, God, Emilie. At last.”

She put her arms around his neck and breathed in the warm scent of his skin, just below his ear. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

He held her without speaking, as the coals sizzled and the clock ticked discreetly. He must love her a little, she thought. He must. She listened to his heartbeat, to the steady pace of his breathing.

Remember this.

“Mine.” He kissed her neck. “My Emilie.”

She took his ear delicately between her teeth. “Mine.”

The air sucked into his lungs. He hoisted her higher and carried her through space, set her into the cushions—the armchair, the sofa, she couldn’t tell—and laid his mouth over hers, kissing her ferociously as his hand dipped below the rim of her corset to stroke her breast.

Now.
He would take her
now
, before even a dozen words had been exchanged between them, and every atom of her body thrilled with wicked anticipation. She wanted to be taken right here, pinned to the cushions by his hammering body. She stroked his mouth with her tongue and arched her back to his caress.

But he pulled back. “Wait,” he growled. His chest heaved beneath her hands. “Wait. Before we go on.”

He rose, and Emilie struggled upward against the slippery cushions. The armchair, she thought dimly. “Where are you?”

“Here.” Something dropped into her lap.

“What’s this?” She laid her fingers atop the weight: a sheaf of papers.

“It is a contract, Emilie. A legal vow.”

Emilie ran her finger around the edge. Her heart took on weight and sank slowly into her belly. “I don’t understand.”

Ashland’s voice came from somewhere above her, several feet away. The mantel, perhaps. “We are past the point of subterfuge, Emilie. You were quite right last week. This cannot go on as it has, not after what passed between us.”

“I don’t . . . I don’t need . . .”

“Emilie, I am not Anthony Brown. I am Anthony Russell, the Duke of Ashland, and I have spent the past week in London arranging my affairs. I have instructed my solicitor to begin a suit of divorce against my wife, and we will be married as soon as the final decree is issued.”

Emilie sprang from her chair, clutching the papers. “
What?
No!”

“In the meantime, I cannot exist without you. You hold in your hands the freehold title of a house near Ashland Spa, a large and I believe quite comfortable house, which I have transferred to your possession in the name of Emilie Brown. I have already ordered my staff to clean and prepare the house for you. You may furnish it to your own taste at my expense. I have also arranged an initial draft of ten thousand pounds to be deposited in an account in your name, with a yearly allowance of two thousand pounds for your living expenses, to be made in perpetuity from my estate during your life. Should”—his businesslike voice wavered for an instant—“should we be so fortunate as to conceive a child, I have made provision of ten thousand pounds for each of our issue, to be paid at the earlier of marriage or majority, and a corresponding increase of one thousand pounds per annum in your own allowance. I hardly need add that I shall recognize such issue as mine, to be formally legitimized upon our marriage.”

Emilie stood speechless as the sterile words whirled past her ears:
issue
and
annum
and
perpetuity
. At his pause, she gasped out, “Your
mistress
? I am to be your
kept mistress
?”

“You are to be my wife.”

“Your
wife
? Are you
mad
?”

He ignored her. “But in the meantime, if we are to share a bed, with all the consequences that may arise from such association, you have the right to my protection. To my guarantee of care and comfort during your life.”

“How
dare
you! How dare you enter this room and issue
orders . . .”

“I am not issuing orders.”

She held up the papers. “And what do you call these, exactly? Only the means to control me with your money and houses and children.”

“Rubbish. I only want to provide for you, to make you comfortable . . .”

“This is ridiculous. I am perfectly comfortable.”

The mantel rattled under his fist. “The bride of the Duke of Ashland does not live in some
hovel
with relatives who do not treat her according to her due.”

“I am not your bride.”

“You will be.”

“Even if I were, should I instead live under your keeping before marriage? Your avowed mistress before the world? Every door would be shut against me!”

“I would exercise the utmost discretion. I don’t go out in society, and the house itself is remote.”

“The idea is lunatic.” Emilie tossed the papers into the armchair behind her, and in the next instant she was seized in Ashland’s embrace, his hand cradling her face.

“What is lunatic,” he said, in a fierce whisper, “is the idea of seeing you only once during each week, less perhaps, burning for you every other endless damned night, until the wheels of the English legal system can be made to free me from that betraying, unnatural bitch I once called a wife. I want a home with you, Emilie. I want to give you all the ease and luxury you deserve. I want to sleep next to you at night. I want to reach for you when I wake up in the morning. I want to feel our child growing in your belly, and I don’t want to wait—God only knows, a year, two years, more even—to claim you as mine.”

She was breathless, churning. He surrounded her with his heat and his demands, his tantalizing vision of a passionate future. He crowded out her outrage. He crowded out her reason.

“You don’t even know me.” His lips were so close, she brushed them as she spoke. “I might be anyone.”

“You are Emilie. That’s all I need to know.” Ashland kissed her softly. “I spoke in haste, just now. I’m too used to giving orders. I was afraid, you see, that if I asked, you’d say
No
.”

“I still said
No
.”

“If I ask you instead, will you answer differently?” He was nibbling her now, tiny, exquisite movements of his mouth around hers, eating her alive, bite by bite. Another moment, and she would die from it.

“Ah, you don’t understand.” She laid her arms lightly about his waist, and her chest glowed when he didn’t flinch at her touch. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand everything. I understand that I can’t live without you. That I can’t live without
this
.” His fingers went to the fastening of her corset and released her body from its cage. He pulled down her chemise and enclosed her breast with his hand, rubbed the tip with his thumb. Every nerve of her body burst into tingling life. “Can
you
, Emilie? Tell me you can live without this, and I’ll stop. I’ll walk away.”

“No.” She tugged at his coat. “No, I can’t.”

“Emilie, listen to me carefully. I’m going to take you right here on this chair, hard and fast, because I shall go mad if I don’t have you now.” His mouth replaced his hand, and he suckled her breast with sudden strength, making her cry out needfully. “And then I’m going to take you to bed and make love to you slowly. I’m going to kiss every precious inch of you, from every angle. I’m going to see how often I can make you spend, and how hard. I’m going to take hours. And then I’ll let you sleep, and in the morning you’ll wake up to me sliding back inside you.”

His words made her blood heat to boiling strength. She was turning molten, a liquid pool of desire, her brain churning from the images he stirred there. Already her limbs were heavy and loose, preparing to receive him. “Wait.” She put her hands on his chest. “Wait.”

“I can’t wait. I’ve been imagining this all week, imagining you sitting in this chair with your legs spread apart, open for me.” His arm went beneath her bottom, and he was lifting her and settling her gently in the chair, drawing her chemise up to her waist, spreading her legs. “My God. Like this.” He parted her with one thick finger and eased slowly inside her, all the way to the knuckle.

“Ashland!”
She dissolved into the chair.

“God, look at you. Soft and wet . . .”

Emilie’s hands fluttered at his shoulders, urging him on despite the throb of warning in her head. “Ashland . . . wait . . . I can’t . . . I meant to speak to you first . . . I . . .”

“So beautiful.” His tongue flicked her nub, just above his knuckle.

She gasped out, “
Children
, Ashland . . .”

He lifted his head. “What’s that?”

“Children. I can’t. We can’t . . . I . . . It’s impossible.”

Ashland drew his finger gently from her body. “What do you mean, Emilie?” His voice was almost too low to be heard. “What do you mean? Do you not want children?”

“I . . . It isn’t that, it isn’t
you
 . . . but I can’t. Not now.”

A heavy pause rocked between them. “Emilie, I’ve told you already. I’ve laid it out in writing, legally binding. I will recognize our children as mine. I will give them my name. I will provide generously for any child with whom God chooses to bless us. You needn’t worry.” He said the words in a curiously emotionless tone. The tone, she knew, of his deepest feeling.

“Children need more than a banker’s draft,” she heard herself whisper.

He exploded at that. “Good God, Emilie. Do you think I wouldn’t be a father to them? My God, I’d dote on them. I’d spend every possible minute with them and with you.”

“But you have a son already.”

“Whom I love with all my heart. But he’s nearly grown. And I rather think he’d welcome the company.”

What had Freddie said?
I’d always rather fancied a brother. Or even a sister.

Ashland’s child in her womb, in her arms. The four of them, a doting family. Laughter over dinner, chess and conversation in the library. Emilie’s chest squeezed so tightly, she couldn’t breathe.

“In any case,” Ashland went on, more softly, “you may already be with child by me.”

“But I may not. And I can’t take that risk again. Not yet,” she added, purely to appease him, for there could never be another time.

Not after he knew the truth.

He remained still, breathing quietly into her skin. “Very well. That is your right, of course. I can take steps to avoid conception.”

“What steps?”

“I can decouple before spending. Or there are more secure means, if you prefer.”

She could hardly think, with Ashland’s body hovering over hers, hot with masculine power. The word
decouple
sent another surge of desire through her belly. “What means are those?”

He sighed and straightened her chemise, and then his body heaved away from hers. “Wait here a few minutes.”

As if she would leave. As if she
could
leave.

The door clicked shut. Emilie sat in the chair without stirring. In her black cocoon, every sense was unnaturally sharp. She could trace each tingling nerve, each concentration of heat, each symptom of sexual arousal that Ashland had awakened in her body. There was not a single parcel of her flesh that didn’t scream with the need to feel him inside her. She wanted him so badly, she hurt with it.

You are Emilie. That’s all I need to know.

Emilie forced her body from the chair and felt her way to the mantel. The fire was hot and steady, glowing against her bare legs. One by one, she plucked the hairpins from her chignon and laid them on the cool marble. The false knot, her former glory, fell away into her hands. She idled it about for a moment, measuring the silky mass, before placing it next to the hairpins. With shaking fingers, she untied the blindfold, folded it into a neat square, and set it atop the golden luster of the chignon.

The hotel was oddly still this evening. Even the wind had died away, heavy with falling snow, making the air seem hollow in its absence. The room, the elegant private suite of the Duke of Ashland, lay around her, every stick of furniture dear to her, though she had scarcely ever seen it. It was the smell she knew best: lemon oil and tea leaves, the trace of smoke, the snow-clean and tea-spiced scent of the duke himself.