The Accidental Duchess (17 page)

“Lakewood did not have the position to influence commissions. He had friends, however, who did.”

“Which friend did he use with this Greenly?”

“Me.”

He felt Ambury’s gaze peering his way in the night. They turned and retraced their steps.

“Greenly could not hold his drink and spoke of it to a fellow officer one night. How he had paid dearly for his commission, and far more than was known. My word as a gentleman that he had not paid me was enough to silence the matter, but he was invited to sell out at once. I confronted Lakewood, since I knew what must have happened.”

“I am seeing the map that brought you to that field that morning, Penthurst. And I find myself scouring my memory for whether Lakewood ever asked
me
to put in a good word for a young man seeking a commission.”

“I suggest you do not search too deeply. Just find Mr. Greenly, so I can learn whether I misunderstood the matter in some way.”

L
ydia did not sleep quickly that night. She lay abed with the lamp still lit, trying to distract her unaccountable restlessness by planning how she might decorate her bedchamber.

Toile, perhaps. In green. She would not want her apartment to drip with satins or velvet. Better to live in a fresh open garden than a ballroom. She would replace the heavily carved furniture with items showing Roman influence, perhaps in a light-toned wood.

While she debated wall coverings, she listened for the sounds of Penthurst returning. Of course he would eventually. Even if Rosalyn’s fears had been realized and he had issued some challenge, the duel would not be fought right away.

She should have asked for a promise he would never do that again. She doubted he would have given it, but she could have at least tried. She hated duels, and how men resorted to them at the least provocation. Penthurst seemed to do that faster than most too.

She remembered the day she learned about that other duel. The news had come from Southwaite, in a brief note while she was visiting her aunt Amelia in Hampshire. He had been distraught, she could tell, over the death of his friend. His words offered little comfort to her, but then he did not know how she felt about Lakewood.

No one had guessed. Not her aunts and not her brother. No one ever knew how she had cried into her pillow night after night for weeks on end. And when the pain finally receded, it had left her numb and uncaring.

The memories had dazed her. She blinked them away, and saw her bedchamber again. And at the door to the dressing room next door, she saw the duke.

He watched her. She could tell even though he appeared a dark form in a dark threshold. The lamp picked up tiny golden lights in his eyes. How long had he been standing there, watching?

It burned when she swallowed, and she realized she had shed a few tears while remembering. Had he seen that?

She collected herself. She put aside the love-struck, miserable girl and found the woman of the world. She could spend her whole life hating the duke, and hating her fate, but that would be a stupid choice.

“Your aunt told me you went to your clubs to issue challenges if necessary. I trust we will not be entertaining a line of seconds tomorrow.”

“No seconds will be calling. No challenges were issued.”

“I am glad.”

“For my safety?”

“For the friends and families of everyone, including you.”

He came into her chamber. He wore a loose patterned silk robe. She guessed that was all he wore. “Sometime we will have to talk about that. About the friends and families.” He reached out and ran his thumb over her cheek. When he lifted it, moisture glossed its skin. “We will have to talk about this too.”

She wiped her eyes quickly. “Not tonight, I hope.”

“No, not tonight.” He turned to go.

An odd emotion prodded her. Disappointment? No, embarrassment. He had come here and found her weeping like some child.
He has no interest in young innocents. None at all.

She would have to live a lifetime with this man.

“Are you going? I thought you had come to collect on the second debt, the one from Morgan’s.”

He paused, and turned. “You are nothing if not unpredictable, Lydia. And still a little reckless too.”

“I hope so. I would not want to be predictable and staid. Life can be dull enough without being determined to make it so.”

He sat on the side of the bed. “It sounds as if your goal as a woman was excitement, not marriage. That explains a lot of things.”

She wondered what things. Perhaps she would be better off not knowing what he really thought of her, since they were stuck with each other. “I will admit that I have preferred experiences that are out of the ordinary. Perhaps it was the excitement.”

He gave her hip a little swat, and gestured for her to move over. He drew off the robe and lay beside her, then moved so he lay atop her, his hips settled between her thighs. His physicality startled her as it had the first time. The sensation of his skin on hers, and of his body pressing hers, had her senses all alert and waiting.

Braced on his forearms, he toyed at a tendril of her hair. “At night we will find excitement, Lydia. Whether it is out of the ordinary will be up to you.”

She puzzled what he meant, but only for a moment. He kissed her and distracted her from pondering meanings and innuendos.

She knew what was coming this time. Her body relished the pleasure as it began its sly titillation. He let her embrace him, and she held his shoulders, then ventured a little caress that revealed the smooth texture of his skin and the firm frame and muscles of the hard body it covered. He did not appear to mind, so she explored a little further, fascinated by the feel of him, admiring the shoulders tensed above her, gazing past his head while he kissed her so she could watch her fingers play along the hills and ridges of his body.

His lips smiled against hers. He broke the kiss and looked down at her. “You are fairly distracted by something.”

“I— That is, not distracted as such, just—”

He rolled onto his back. His hands closed on her waist and with an easy swing he set her atop him, straddling his waist. “Just curious. This will be better for you, then. You can look and touch as much as you want, Lydia. Your hands give me pleasure, just as mine do you.”

She assessed her position. “This is not exactly ordinary, is it?”

“Not completely ordinary, but not so unusual either.”

It felt quite daring. Exciting. She settled in better. A prod on her bottom startled her. She looked back and realized that the tip of his shaft poked at her, low on her bottom, as if searching for her— The possible implications left her astonished.

He kissed her crown and caressed her breast. She squirmed a bit. That prod responded. She wondered if she could scoot forward just a bit so—

“Do not worry. That is for another night, not this one.”

That hardly reassured her. She thought, however, that if she sat up, she might not feel as vulnerable. Once she did, she understood what he meant about this being better. She could see him nicely now, those shoulders and arms and his chest down to where she sat. She fluttered her fingertips over him, to judge whether all of him felt like his shoulders.

Better, she decided. She laid her palms flat against him high on his chest. She felt his heartbeat, its rhythm pulsing right into her, up her arm and down her body.

Other than a slow caress on her arm, he had left her to her explorations. Now abruptly he guided her head down and kissed her hard.

He held her like that, his hand behind her neck, while he ravished her mouth. She sensed the power of desire in him far more than she had the last time. His kiss did not so much lure as demand. Her body became sensitive all over, alive with anticipation. When his tongue entered her, he held her head in both his hands so she could not refuse, or in any way pull away even a small bit.

He kissed her breathless before releasing her. She pressed her weight onto her arms and hovered, thinking she might fall over.

He dragged the skirt of her nightdress up. “Take this off.”

She had to kneel up high to do that. She slid it up and over her head. The cool air lapped at the fine sheen of sweat that passion had raised on her skin. It seemed another tease, one more thing designed to make her think and care about nothing except being touched and kissed and driven to sensual insanity again.

Holding her around the waist with his two hands, he lowered her again. Only this time she landed a little farther back, and on top of his shaft. She felt it beneath her, hard and big, pressing against her softest flesh. Shudder after shudder trembled through her loins.

This position might be better for her to see him, but he also could see her. He watched her reactions when he gently stroked her breasts’ tips. He saw how she struggled to contain it, and deliberately made sure she could not. He aroused her until she could barely stay upright, and until her exposure to his gaze undid her. She wanted to hide her madness by cowering beneath him, not show him how he made her die of want.

Finally he guided her down for another kiss, then spoke. “Do as I say now, and I think you will know a pleasure most extraordinary, Lydia.”

He rose up and stacked pillows so his upper body rose. He reached for her and moved her forward. “Put your hands here and press to steady yourself.”
Here
was against the headboard, a foot above his head. Doing that meant angling forward while kneeling, so she hovered over his torso and head.

He moved her knees farther apart, wide. Her stance alone aroused her profoundly. He took her breasts in his hands and that made it worse. He caressed the tips again and again until she could not contain her cries.

“Some night I will put you like this, but kneel behind you and take you that way. Do you understand? But not tonight. Tonight I want you to accept the pleasure. I want you to weep and cry and scream with it. Obey me and you will be glad for it, I promise.”

Then he ensured she cried. Her breasts hung near his mouth and he used his teeth and tongue to push her past all sense of decency. The more he tortured her, the more she felt sanity slipping away. She pictured the night to come, when he would kneel behind her, and her bottom rose and her vulva pulsed as if he were there.

She had no choice but to accept the madness. It claimed her completely all on its own. It brought excruciating desire, however. He slid his hand into the slick damp atop her thighs, where her splayed legs left her open and helpless. He touched again and again, each sure, small stroke sending a sharp shock of pleasure into her chaos.

She cried out, frantically, shamelessly. With each touch she did again. When his caresses stayed on two spots of unbearable sensation, her cries turned pleading. As if learning what he needed to know, long deep caresses shook her essence. She moved to make it better, worse, more, and lost all control when she did.

Soaring now. Aware of nothing but pleasure so intense it was not real. It suffused her, then constricted more and more, increasing in power, frightening her.

Suddenly a shock of sensation burst out of the center of the intensity and shattered it apart, casting her into darkness. Wave after wave of bliss flowed through her while she existed in that unearthly place.

When she found some sense again, he was inside her and she was on her back. His palm now pressed the headboard while he leveraged his weight into a rhythm of thrusts. Not as careful as the last time, nor as gently, he thrust again and again until he too accepted the ecstasy.

 • • • 

H
e dragged himself back to alertness, and to the tangle of limbs they made. He moved off her and rolled onto his back, still half absorbed by the small death of release. He tucked her close instinctively, to ride out the rest in her warmth.

She stretched against him like a cat and snuggled against his side under his arm. They lay like that until his brain began working right again.

“You were right,” she said sleepily. “It was most extraordinary. Was it wicked of me?”

“We are married.”

“Yes. But . . .”

But still wicked, because he might as well have been a stranger, he guessed she meant. Wicked because women thought pleasure and love belonged together, unless a woman was a whore.

“What other experiences have you had in your determination to be extraordinary, Lydia?”

She yawned. “Not any this interesting.”

“You saw those men naked. That was not predictable for an innocent.”

“I can claim no credit. It was an accident, as I said.”

She pulled the sheet up, and curled on her side to sleep.

“Who were they?”

She went still. She did not speak.

“I know you are not asleep already, Lydia.”

She sighed. “If I tell you, do you promise not to do something noble and honorable about it. They cannot be blamed either.”

He liked that “either.” He suspected Lydia, the aspiring woman of the world, had looked at those bare asses good and long. “I will not blame them or ever speak of it.”

“Since you promise—it was Kendale and Ambury.”

Kendale and Ambury? Hell.

Very awake now, he glared at her peaceful, contented face.

“Are there any other extraordinary experiences I should know about?” He sounded a little harsh to his own ears. But the mind reeled. He remembered Kendale bringing up male brothels. It would be just like her to be curious, and visit one to see what it was all about.

No, that was a mad notion. She wouldn’t ever have done that. He eyed her. Would she?

“It would be best if I knew now, Lydia. For example, your brother mentioned something about a galley—”

She came alive in an instant. Her eyes opened and flashed anger. “I am going to scold him severely. How dare he speak of that. And to you, of all people.”

“He probably thought your husband should be prepared for prior adventures that might lead to talk.”

“No one knows about that. Except him. And now you. And of course the smugglers.”

“And of course
the smugglers
?”

“It was their galley, wasn’t it?” She sat up, exasperated at her brother’s indiscretion. “It was last summer. Do not tell anyone, but living on the coast as we do, we know some of the smugglers who ply the waters there. You really can’t avoid acquaintance with someone in that trade. One in particular we know very well. I think he helps Southwaite with that watching, but we have known Tarrington since I was a child. He is like you that way.”

“Except he is a criminal and I am a duke.” A small detail to her, no doubt, but one worth pointing out.

“He has galleys that go over to France and bring back wine and lace and such. Such adventure! Again and again he goes. I have never been to France at all.”

He covered his eyes with his hand. He knew, just knew, where this story was going.

“So I stowed away. He discovered me halfway over. It was so hot under the canvas pile where I had hidden that I had to come out. Tarrington was not very nice about it.”