The Accidental Duchess (20 page)

He turned his head just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye. She laid the cloth over her palm for better purchase, but discovered it meant little fabric interfered with the feel of him. The sensation captivated her. Women were soft here, but his rounded swells felt hard and tense, even when she pressed her fingertips to check for certain.

“You probably could use this now.” He handed the other cloth over his shoulder.

She took her time, making sure every bit of soap was removed. He turned before she had finished to her liking, caught her waist, and pulled her tight against him.

“I do not think I have been so clean since I was a baby, Lydia.”

“I like to be thorough.”

He held her firmly. His gaze, serious and dark beneath his mussed, damp hair, scrutinized her. “But it was only a momentary distraction, I think.”

Had she become so transparent to him, so quickly?

He stroked her cheek with his fingertips. “Something troubles you. It is in your eyes. What is it?”

I discovered today that the only extraordinary thing in my whole life had in fact been so ordinary, so predictable, that I am ashamed of my failure to see it for what it was.
She wished she could say it. Standing like this, seeing the honest care in his eyes, she almost believed he would find a way to convince her that the conclusions forcing themselves on her were in error.

“Just thoughts that need sorting. I tire of how they plague me tonight, however. Hence my delight in the momentary distraction.” She reached around and gave his bum a little tap.

He caught her hand back there. “I cannot stop the thoughts forever, but I know how to for a while. As for your past and ongoing interest in male anatomy—” He brought her hand around and placed it on his erect, enlarged shaft.

That shocked the tiresome thoughts right out of her head. Too curious to pretend she was not, she rested her brow against his chest and inhaled the scent of soap and flesh while she looked down and tentatively stroked. It did not feel at all as she expected. She almost giggled when it swelled more at her touch. She tapped the tip and it moved. He let her play, pressing a never-ending kiss to her crown.

“How interesting. What a very fine momentary distraction. I am understanding why some people give them names, like Harry or John.”

“But we will not.”

“No?”

“No.”

She closed her hand around it and looked up at him. “You are sure?”

“Damnation, Lydia.”

The next thing she knew the floor and walls were sliding past. Her legs flailed against air, and her head was very close to that handsome bum. He bundled her under his arm like a carpet, and sped through the dressing room and into his chamber.

With a thump she landed on his bed and he was above her, knee high between her legs, braced up on his arms. He looked down so intensely that she thought she could be absorbed by his eyes. She quickly worked the buttons and ribbons on her undressing gown, so she could open the front and push aside the fabric. His head lowered and his mouth closed at once on her breast, still covered in her thin cotton nightdress.

Her arousal came like an assault. She clutched at his shoulders and pressed against his knee and tasted his skin wherever her mouth could reach. “Yes,” she whispered. “Make it a very long distraction. Take me where I do not think about anything except pleasure.”

 • • • 

S
he was wild in her passion. He responded in kind and ignored the sure knowledge that something drove her besides desire.

His mind clouded as a rare fever claimed them both. With grasping holds and biting kisses they pushed each other further. Her breasts, always so sensitive, stretched the thin fabric dampened by his mouth. Neither of them wanted to waste the time to drag the nightdress off.

Her hand closed on him again. Still tentative and careful, but Lydia was nothing if not bold. She quickly discovered what pleasured him, then turned ruthless.

He contained the ferocious drive that kept building while her caress created luxurious sensations. When he doubted he could control himself further, he knelt back, away from her, between her legs.

The undressing gown, with its ribbons and lace, framed her lithe body. He decided to keep it, and the nightdress that she still wore. He pushed up its hem, uncovering her legs. She watched, her eyes now filmed with desire, no longer so haunted as when he first saw her tonight. She breathed heavily, a series of gasps, each with a high, feminine note whenever she liked his touch.

He lifted the hem higher yet, pushing the dress up to her waist, exposing her mound and thighs. He slid his finger along the soft cleft, being as ruthless as she had been. She closed her eyes and moved into his touch. Pleasure softened her face to a beautiful, ethereal expression. He watched abandon claim her and branded his mind with her glorious joy.

He bent down and kissed her inner thigh. When he rose, she was staring at him, her eyes wary beneath those thick lashes.

“I am going to use my mouth now, Lydia.”

She pushed herself up on her arms. She tried to bring her legs together.

“You will like it. If you do not, I will stop.”

“It sounds wicked.”

“Many think it is.”

She still looked shocked and skeptical. “Is it something most wives do?”

“No.”

“But you want me to.”

“Yes.”

She fell back on the mattress. “Wicked and unusual. Perhaps this will not be such a terrible day after all.”

What a Lydia thing to say.

He settled between her legs. He brought her along slowly, using his hand until her cries filled the chamber. He teased with his tongue until she overcame the first shocks. Even when she began moaning he restrained himself, even though her scent and taste sent him to a dark, uncivilized place.

Her release broke abruptly in a long series of quakes that flexed her whole body. He moved up and took her scream into himself with a kiss, then entered her and took her hard until he found his own furious finish.

 • • • 

H
e felt her moving, gathering herself to leave.

“Stay,” he said. “Perhaps it will provide further distraction.”

She reclined again. “Perhaps.”

“I thought you were with Emma and Cassandra today. Did they quiz you too closely about us?”

She shook her head. “Each said something, however, that changed many things and confused some others.” The night pulsed with silence. Then she spoke again. “Did you know that Lakewood was the man who compromised Cassandra years ago. The one she refused to marry?”

After talking to Greenly today, he had spent hours at the farm getting Lakewood out of his head. If what troubled Lydia touched on the man, he could swallow his distaste for the subject, he supposed. “Yes. We were friends then. His reputation was tainted by it, as surely as hers was. We were unkind to her as a result. Ambury presumably has been absolved, but not the rest of us. Not completely.”

“I always admired her for not being bullied into it. I thought she was very brave.”

Lydia had not been so brave. Was that what she mulled over so intently? Regrets that she had not been as bold as her friend?

“Did you know that the gentlemen thought your duel with Lakewood was fought over her?”

Hell. “Had they been talking to me, I would have explained they were wrong.”

“Emma says they thought this because Lakewood kept insisting he loved her and would love no one else.”

“I always assumed he claimed that to garner sympathy that might spare him the worst assumptions of the gossip regarding that compromise.”

“The others believed him, however. Do you suppose they also believed you had an affair with Cassandra, and that was why Lakewood called you out?” She turned and looked at him in the dark. “It is like one of your plots, isn’t it? It fits all the publicly known facts.”

It did indeed. They probably had believed that. It explained a lot of things. “I never had any affair with her, or even a mild flirtation.”

“Yet the duel was over a woman, you said.”

“Not a lover.” At least he did not think so. “We were not rivals over a woman, is what I mean.”

Did he imagine that she lightened suddenly? A dark cloud might have just blown away.

She resettled on her pillow. “Cassandra did not speak well of him today. She implied he would do anything for money.”

Even Cassandra did not know the half of it. If he told Lydia that, would she believe him? He could do without that ghost in his life, and even in this bed. “I do not know what she referred to. I do know that he had a talent for using people.”

She gazed over at him. A few glints of resentment flashed at the criticism, but he saw much more in her eyes. Sadness, such as he had seen in the dressing room. Disappointment too.

He suddenly realized what all of this had been about. This conversation, and her need for distraction tonight, and even her fury over that duel.

Damnation. He should have guessed. He should have at least wondered. Yet why would he? Lydia may show deep emotion about Lakewood, but Lakewood had never once spoken of Lydia with interest or admiration. Not once.

“I know you think badly of him,” she said. “You have to, don’t you? There could be no justification for what happened otherwise.”

It was the wrong thing for her to say, today of all days. Anger over the day’s revelations combined with resentment at how she kept this flame alive for a scoundrel. “I like to think that I am fair to him, and see the good and the bad. I also think I knew him better than you did, and I will tell you that he was not a friend to me, or to anyone else, if it suited his own purposes.”

She sat up. “That is not true. I knew him very well, better than you or anyone else knows. He was a friend to
me
. For years, a
good
friend. His death undid me. I grieved such as I have never grieved. You men would have never noticed how he dealt with me, how he was kind to the child and drew out the girl. He made me laugh and we shared confidences. I have never had as good a friend, and probably never will.”

It poured out in a furious rush, as if the words had been dammed for years. The chamber became unnaturally silent when she finished.

“It sounds as if he was more than a friend, Lydia. Was he?”

Her face flushed. She started to leave the bed, but he caught her arm and held her in place.

“Was he? Both your loyalty and your emotion suggest it. If you are going to throw your anger and resentment at me, if that ghost is going to always interfere, you can damned well admit the reason.”

She tried to retreat behind the sphinx mask, but the tears in her eyes would not allow it. “He was the great love of my life,” she said. “So now you know why you are the last man I wanted protecting me, or obligated to marry me.”

“Yes, now I know. But here we both are anyway.”

She tried to leave again. He held firm.

“You will stay here tonight, Lydia. Lakewood might be the great love of your life, but you are mine now. I’ll be damned if you will go back to your bed and spend the night burnishing his memory.”

She said nothing. After a few minutes she turned on her other side, her back to him, and pretended to sleep.

She looked fragile there, her legs drawn up and the undressing gown still bunched around her form. Eventually her breaths lengthened and he knew she really slept. He wrapped his arms around her, tucked her against his body, and fell asleep himself.

A
week later, Lydia made quick work of her morning mail after finishing her breakfast. Rosalyn sat nearby, her sharp eyes missing nothing.

Several of the letters were invitations. Rosalyn knew the senders after merely glancing at the paper and handwriting from across the table, and offered recommendations on which to accept without prompting. Lydia hoped she would make at least one error, but she never did.

A few other letters contained petitions from charitable causes. She read the latter. Most were from large, notable charities taking a chance that a new duchess might want to patronize them along with so many of her peers. One, however, came from a charity that she had contributed to already.

That charity had never written to her before, and the letter broke her heart. It read like a parting letter. The women who ran it thanked her for her past patronage, and wished her well in her new life. They seemed to assume that she would find more fashionable recipients of her largesse in the future.

Perhaps she would, but not quite yet. Lydia Alfreton would make at least one more contribution, she decided. Soon too. With winter coming, the money would be needed.

She thumbed through the rest of the mail, halting at one. She recognized the hand. Sick with foreboding, she unsealed it.

The letter was not signed. Of course not. She wanted to curse when she read it.

Your Grace,

I am delighted to learn of your good fortune! Well done. Under the circumstances, it might be best if our business is concluded faster than you proposed, since a duke might find your prose even more problematic than an earl. I await your reply.

The despicable scoundrel. The lying cheat. They had an agreement. He already had almost three thousand. She should not even have to think about him for a year.

“Did you receive bad news, Lydia?” Rosalyn peered at the letter while her teeth pierced one of the cakes.

“Not bad news. Just unexpected.”

“Then you will not disfavor my plans for the day. I would like you to accompany me on some calls, so you can spend time with some of your equals. There is much you can learn from them.”

“I am sorry, but I have plans of my own. There is the appointment with the solicitor this morning, then I need to call on my aunts. I have neglected them.”

“I will join you instead, then. I have not seen Amelia in some time. Let us go there first, then you can visit your aunt Hortense later, on your own.”

There was no way out of it without being rude. She excused herself and went up to her apartment so she could stomp and yell and curse Mr. Trilby in private.

By the time she read the letter again, however, she had grown too disheartened for histrionics. Of course he would not honor their agreement. He had no honor. He was a blackmailer.

Sarah noticed her mood, and stopped sorting through the winter wardrobe. “Is something amiss?”

She handed over the letter. “I thought all was settled. Now, he sends this. It is as if he does not know his own mind. He agrees to one thing, then a week later changes what he wants and expects. How am I supposed to buy off a blackmailer if he will not stay bought?”

“He is a bold one, that is sure.” She handed back the letter. “He believes he has you well cornered now, with your marriage, I suppose. The price of scandal has gone up.”

It certainly had. It had gone up by the price of a duke. The cost to Penthurst of such a scandal had increasingly preyed on her mind.

Two months ago, she might have taken a wicked pleasure in seeing him humbled. She might have considered it delayed justice. Now, however . . .

She might never love him, but she could not deny that affection had grown and not only because of the pleasure. She still grappled with the role he had played in her life, and with the results of that duel, but she found it harder to assume he had done it over something insignificant.

Her thoughts drifted back to that night when she had helped him wash. She had never told anyone except Sarah about her feelings for Lakewood. Penthurst had guessed, however. He had seen her interest in that duel for what it was. If he had not demanded she tell him, would she have done so anyway? The urge to do so had been building ever since they said the vows. Perhaps she had hoped that if she laid that down between them, there was a chance one of them would find a way to step over it.

That had not happened. Yet the revelation had changed how they dealt with each other. Not for the better, but not for the worse either. More honestly perhaps. She only knew that in giving voice to that resentment, she had been relieved of some of the resentment itself.

Now, this stupid letter had come, reminding her in the worst way that she still harbored secrets that could do far more damage than any admission of her girlish love for another man.

“I do not know what to do, Sarah. I picture little letters coming all through my life as he repeatedly threatens exposure and asks for more. I doubt he will ever say I have paid enough, and hand me that manuscript.”

“Seems to me you should have agreed to my first idea, that we steal it back.”

“Well, I cannot even consider that now. It would be a fine thing if I were caught breaking into Trilby’s home.”

Considering the story given out for her elopement, that would give the gossips something to talk about! Nor did she think Trilby kept the manuscript where he lived. The mounting evidence said he would be too shrewd to do so, and would not risk her sending someone to find it. For a dull man, Trilby kept making some unexpectedly sharp decisions.

She stared at the letter with increasing annoyance. He had also proved himself unreliable. No agreement would ever be honored. Trilby had not even made reference in this letter to her demand to see proof he still had the manuscript before further payment. No page from it had come with his letter. No promise to provide proof either. For all she knew he did not have the whole manuscript. Perhaps he had only come to possess a few pages, which he had used to lure her in this deeply.

The notion stunned her once it popped into her head. Was he that bold? That cunning? If so, she had been the worst fool.

If he only had a few pages, that did not answer the question of how he had come by them. No one knew about that manuscript, so its theft had always been hard to envision. A few pages, however, might more easily be obtained and passed along. A servant could have found it all, read it, and seen the value of those lists, for example . . .

Something else popped into her head. An old memory emerged from the cloud where it lived—the image of a sunny spring day, and the shade under a tree, and ivy picking at her skirt while a book of poetry was shared . . .

It was not true that no one knew about the manuscript. Lakewood had known. She had told him about it under that tree. She had even brought some of it with her when he next visited her, and amused him by reading a couple of pages.

Surely he had never told anyone else. Why would he? Nor could he have taken it himself. It had still been in her trunk when she received the news of his death.

“What are you going to do?” Sarah asked.

Lydia opened a drawer in her writing table and set the letter under a stack of paper. “I am going to do what I should have done from the start, and try to find out how Trilby came to have that manuscript, if indeed he has it at all.”

“It may be wise to put him off for a while with just a bit more money. I’d not want to have to explain all of this to the duke, if I were you.”

She rebelled at the idea of giving the scoundrel one more penny. However, Sarah was correct. Another payment might be unavoidable, to keep him at bay.

 • • • 

T
wo hours later Lydia sat in her brother’s study, beside his desk. He sat behind it and the family solicitor, Mr. Ottley, occupied a chair drawn close to the other side. On the desk lay several large, vellum documents written with a flourishing hand.

“As agreed between you and His Grace, Lord Southwaite, the lady is to receive a thousand in pin money per annum, paid quarterly. There is also to be an open account for her wardrobe of two thousand per annum, with an additional thousand this year so she might purchase the necessities of her new station.” Mr. Ottley handed one of the documents to Southwaite to read and check.

“And this itemizes the settlement you are making on her, to be in trust. This other one she must sign. She gives up her dower rights in return for a lump sum, to be apportioned to her children upon her death. The addendum to it lists the allowances for her household after the duke’s death, or if she should at some point live separately from him while he is alive.”

She looked at her brother. He ignored her curiosity on that last point while he perused that document too.

More followed. She was to have her own carriage and two footmen at her beck and call. She was to choose her own servants to attend to her personal needs. She would have free use of the family heirloom jewels, but most of them would not pass into her private possession. That page included a few unusual provisions too, such as the duke’s acceptance that he would not interfere with her family relationships.

Southwaite scribbled his signature on the stacked sheets, and Mr. Ottley departed.

“I know little about these things, brother, but some of it sounded peculiar to me,” she said.

He shrugged. “It is wise to attempt to cover all eventualities. He understood that was all I was doing.”

“It will take some effort at extravagance for me to spend three thousand on my wardrobe this year.”

“He thought you would need more. I think that aunt of his does not restrain herself at the modistes, and that is his only recent reference, except—” He caught himself. He suddenly decided the inkwell would be more convenient on the left side of the desk. He moved it there with great concentration.

“Except his mistresses?”

Southwaite reconsidered his desk, and moved the inkwell back to its old position.

Her brother would know about the mistresses. He assumed the likelihood there would be more of them, as was so common among peers, especially those who made arranged marriages for financial or dynastic purposes. Or due to being obligated to do the right thing after comprising an innocent. She supposed that was why he included that bit about a separate household in the settlement documents.

Then again, maybe he thought the duke would want to put her in a separate residence if she became the problem wife just as she had been the problem sister.

“Thank you for looking out for me in this matter. It could not have been easy to bargain against a fait accompli.”

“There was little bargaining, Lydia. He agreed to almost everything without discussion.” He smiled. “The Dukes of Penthurst can afford to do that.”

“How fortunate for me. I am not being facetious. I know that few women have my good fortune, or even a fraction of that settlement. While I did not seek this match, or even want it, I am not so stupid as to ignore its many benefits.”

“I hope the day comes when you tell me you are not only fortunate, but happy, Lydia.”

She was not sure that day would come. She was not even sure she knew what happiness meant. Something like that time in Hampshire, she supposed. Perhaps only ignorant, silly girls could be truly happy.

“Before I go, please explain how this money comes to me. Do I have to ask the duke for my pin money?”

“It is not an allowance to be given at his discretion. I expect his solicitor will have it delivered to you, or put in a bank account for you to use. In a week or two the first amount should be available.”

Two weeks. She needed it sooner than that.

“Do you have an immediate need to buy pins?” he asked. “I am sure Penthurst will give you money, Lydia. He just has not thought about how you are without any funds now.”

“I would rather not ask him. I will have to wait.”

He pulled open a drawer and flipped up the top of a wooden box. “What do you need?”

“Two hundred and fifty?”

She received a sharp glance for that.

“I trust it is not so you can gamble.”

“No, not that.” Mostly not, at least.

He handed a small stack of banknotes to her.

She stuffed the notes in her reticule. “I will pay you back when my pin money arrives.”

He walked her to the door. “Between not having to buy your wedding wardrobe, and being spared the cost of your keep in the future, I can afford to make this a gift.”

“I had not considered that. You are now free of the worry and cost of me. This has turned out very nicely for you.”

He grinned. “It has indeed.”

 • • • 

A
unt Amelia clearly saw Lydia as a duchess now, and not a wayward niece. Delicacies poised on pretty plates on her tiny drawing room’s tables. Expensive tea filled their cups. Lydia knew her aunt could ill afford such luxuries, and felt guilty such money had been spent for this brief social call.

Rosalyn felt no guilt at all. She critically surveyed the plates, and complained that her tea was too hot. She found fault with one of the cakes and advised Amelia on a better shop where, for a few shillings more, superior sweets could be found.

Amelia fawned at everything Rosalyn said. They had a friendship, but poor Amelia was the supplicant in it, not the master. That her aunt now fawned at everything she said too was too odd for Lydia to bear.

“I expect that you will be adding to your wardrobe now, Duchess.” Amelia’s soft, round face shined with joy. “It will be exciting to see what you choose.”

“I have not begun thinking about that yet. And please do not address me that way. We are family.”

“Your niece still does not comprehend her new station, Amelia. Of course you must address her thus, as must everyone. Too much familiarity is unwise. Why, do you call the earl Darius?”

Amelia flushed. “Yes, I do. Only sometimes,” she hastened to add. “Not often at all.”

“As do I,” Lydia said. “You do not address me as Duchess, Rosalyn. If my aunt must, so must you.”

Rosalyn’s mouth pursed into a kiss of disapproval. “See what I must contend with, Amelia. One would think a marriage made like hers would engender gratitude and humility.”