The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order (16 page)

Lady Jane’s timid friend drifted a few steps closer.

“Your Grace!” Lady Jane said and dipped a coquettish curtsey. Her friend shyly followed suit. He bowed slightly.

“Lady Jane, Lady Iphigenia,” he responded. He turned to Prudence, “Was Lady Jane regaling you with gothic tales of my domestic shortcomings? I warn you, it will take the afternoon. Mine is a bachelor’s establishment with few concessions to general opinion or propriety. I fear it must frighten off sensible females like Lady Jane.”

Prudence looked up into the duke’s dancing eyes and smiled in reply. What could Lady Jane say to that? To agree she was put off by his odd household would hardly further her aspirations to be duchess; to deny it would define her as foolish. He had punctured the lady’s pretensions neatly. Unless he meant to flirt with her. Either way, Ainsworth grinned like a naughty boy, dipping his head to hide his mischief. He was so easy to love. It was grossly unfair.

Lady Jane paled but recovered enough to bat her eyelashes and swiftly change subjects. “You find us here quite by chance, Your Grace. Last week, Lord Seelye recommended I avail myself of a complexion cream.”

“Ridiculous,” he said. “How can perfection be improved upon?”

“You’re too kind,” Lady Jane said with a smug smile at Prudence.

“My thoughts exactly,” Prudence ground out.

“I apologize, Miss Haversham, I am tardy. You’ll have to excuse us, ladies, I must take the cure.” With that, the duke dismissed them and moved to Prudence’s side.

“Good day, Your Grace,” Lady Jane purred. She curtseyed with a regal tilt of her head and exited with her bashful friend in tow.

After the door closed and their shadows slid out of sight, Prudence teased, “Careful, Your Grace, or you’ll soon find yourself with a duchess.”

“You seem equally determined to save me,” he teased back. “What am I to think?”

Her smile winked out. “I see. Perhaps you intended the rendezvous. If only I’d known, I could’ve lured Lady Iphigenia away to give you two more privacy.”

“Peace.” He bent his knees to look directly at her, “Let’s forget Lady Jane Babcock today.”

What of tomorrow and the next day, Prudence wondered.

Alone in her bedroom later that night, Prudence let her mind poke and prod the sore subject of His Grace, the Duke of Ainsworth.

A week had passed since the duke last invaded her bedchamber in person but still he waltzed through her thoughts and dreams with annoying regularity. Each time it happened while she was awake, she reminded herself sternly, he was meant for the likes of Lady Jane Babcock. She was, after all, a diamond of the first water and an obvious candidate for duchess. What’s more, he clearly underestimated Lady Jane’s determination to be the next Duchess of Ainsworth.

Prudence retired early, thoroughly dispirited. She climbed into bed, snuffed the candle and eventually fell into a restless sleep.

A
insworth solemnly swore to leave Miss Haversham undisturbed henceforth and forever more. He never made this vow to her directly but he certainly meant to honor it. The little apothecary distracted him from ducal duties. Unfortunately, his self-control was badly frayed by his sixth night of abstinence.

That evening, his resolve began to unravel the moment he happened upon Prudence Haversham with Lady Abingdon in the Upper Rooms. He immediately found technical grounds for an exemption in his vow of avoidance allowing a dance with her. Waltzing with her the first time made the balance of his pledge impossible to keep. For one thing, he enjoyed holding her much too close just to see how flustered he made her by doing so. For another, he simply enjoyed holding her much too close.

The following day, he went to the apothecary shop to see her because it was only good manners to call on his principal partner of the previous night and inquire after her health, or rather confirm she survived his raffish familiarities with her good humor intact. By doing so, he violated the spirit as well as the letter of his vow.

There, he found her pale and tense under the relentless barrage that was Lady Jane Babcock. Prudence Haversham looked woebegone. It couldn’t have been the threat of eviction. He already instructed Sterling by post to delay registering the sale and halt her eviction indefinitely. Something else preyed upon her mind — and that preyed upon his. Why he cared so deeply, he couldn’t fathom but his plans no longer included achieving her misery.

Besides, it was past time he attended to his own misery. This involved finding himself a duchess. There was no time to lose, as his sister and every dowager in his late mother’s circle of friends reminded him
ad nauseum
in person and in correspondence. (It was as if his procreating within the bonds of matrimony were a matter of national significance.) Ainsworth knew a dowagers’ cabal stood poised to close ranks and herd him toward someone or other when he returned to London, so he lingered in Bath to enjoy what freedom he had left with prickly Miss Haversham instead. He dismissed this compulsion to be with her as nothing more than his contrary nature. Miss Haversham offered him a tart, refreshing respite from the toadying and awed respect he generally received in Polite Society. Still, he knew he mustn’t let her continue to distract him from What Must Be Done.

So why did he cross Pulteney Bridge in the wee hours for more distraction? He concluded that he did it as a selfless act for the sake of the dukedom. It was necessary to see her once more before he braced himself to face his fate. Indeed on this his absolutely final midnight visit to Miss Prudence Haversham, Ainsworth intended to get her completely out of his system once and for all. Once he exorcized the enchanting girl from his thoughts, he could return to London and do his duty.

With this rather convoluted bit of self-justification, the Duke of Ainsworth excused his third, inexcusable foray to Miss Haversham’s neat, stone cottage.

As he walked, he contemplated his marital prospects. Lady Jane Babcock certainly had a duchess’ sense of entitlement, self-consequence and superiority. Perhaps that was why he had no desire to marry her. She also took exception to Smeeth and Thatcher, who were nonnegotiable as far as he was concerned.

The waning moon cast light enough for him to find his way over the bridge and through Bathwick.

Silently, he skirted the cottage and stayed in the shadows. He sidled through the rasping, overgrown roses to the ivy-covered wall, muttering threats to prune the blasted bushes to mulch. With practiced confidence, he climbed the ancient ivy to her dark window, which he found open a few inches. Again, he lifted the sash and slipped inside. Miss Haversham stirred in her sleep when the window closed with a thin squeak.

His heart stilled.

Her head surfaced, mussed hair escaped her thick braid. Her luminous eyes blinked several times. She rose up a few more inches and smiled.

That smile! Miss Haversham made him her champion with that tremulous smile. (How could that be? Hers was an ordinary smile, nothing remarkable, though her teeth were fine, white and even. Her lips were, admittedly, rosy and plump as pillows. Still. It was only a smile.)

That was the precise moment he knew it was hopeless.

He couldn’t hope to get her out of his system. Not tonight or ever. It was much too late for that. At the sight of her, his heart boomed in his chest like a mad timpanist played it. Blood pounded in his head and elsewhere. Prudence Haversham made him greedy in a way he never felt about a woman before. He wanted her every waking smile, every kittenish blink. He wanted to be with her not for one or two chaste nights of painful frustration, but for all nights to come clasped skin to skin in sweaty ecstasy.

Staying away had shredded his self-discipline. Waltzing with her last night made even fretful sleep impossible. Here, now, even in his sleep-deprived state, things suddenly snapped into focus. As much as he knew he shouldn’t have come, he was absolutely certain this was where he wanted – no, needed — to be.

Because he loved her.

Standing in the moonlight, he rumbled, “Your window was an open invitation, Miss Haversham.”

“It was not.”

“You deny it was open?” He murmured.

There was a long-suffering sigh before she replied, “I prefer to sleep with fresh air, Your Grace, so I left it open a crack. You couldn’t have known it was open unless you climbed within inches of it!”

“So you admit you left it open,” he drawled.

“Don’t be exasperating. You’re in my room uninvited.”

“Uninvited? But the window…” He said in feigned confusion and came to the foot of her bed. She blinked at him and slowly mirrored his smile.

“I concede the point,” she chuckled. “You were enticed.”

“Hello, nymph.”

“Hello, Your Grace. How kind of you to answer my summons.”

“I live to serve you.”

“What brings you here, apart from my shameless invitation?”

“Lady Jane can be exhausting but she’s harmless.” He leaned against the bedpost. “You mustn’t let her put you out of curl.”

“She’s tiresome, certainly,” she replied, “but what has Lady Jane’s harmlessness to do with me?”

“You seemed out of sorts today in conversation with her.”

“I haven’t slept well recently.”

“Ah. You missed me.” He swept his hand slowly over the counterpane at the foot of the bed.

“You are mistaken,’ she retorted, the truth of his supposition made her indignant. “I simply haven’t slept well.”

“I should think you of all people would have a remedy,” he flirted.

“I should think a night of uninterrupted rest would put me to rights, Your Grace,” she replied with waspish emphasis.

“You imply that I’ve disturbed your sleep but I haven’t visited you for lo these many nights.”

“Even so, whenever I hear the slightest sound, I wake.”

“Hoping it’s me, hmm?”

“Your arrogance takes my breath away.”

“And you find me breathtaking. I blush,” he chuckled as she snorted. “Well, now that I’m here, you may rest easy.”

“Mummification isn’t particularly restful either,” Prudence snapped.

• • •

What is wrong with me?

Here stood the literal man of Prudence’s dreams. Truthfully, she was more than glad he came for another inappropriate visit, even if only to defend his Lady Jane. Indeed, her body pulsed, her spirits lifted and her lips curved into a smile she couldn’t stifle. Simply because he was here.

Each day for the past week, she hoped he’d return; each night he hadn’t and her disappointment deepened. Then last night they danced. After which, Lady Jane descended upon her like a biblical plague. Now, in he popped to defend the plague-y blonde. The more she thought it over, the angrier she became.

“Nor do I find having a man sprawled on my bed soothing,” she added tersely.

“Perhaps with repetition…” he murmured.

“I think not, Your Grace. I prefer undisturbed sleep,” she huffed and slapped her bedclothes into order around her hips. Though she risked his leaving, she couldn’t help her simmering fury.
I may be an idiot to have fallen in love with the man but I won’t play the fool. Let him ply his wiles on Lady Jane Babcock!

“A gentleman wouldn’t be alone with an unmarried woman in any room, much less climb into her bedchamber at night,” she spat, “yet here you are, courting scandal. Again. Or is causing my ruin your revenge?”

“No,” he whispered, looking away.

“You would never dream of importuning Lady Jane this way!” She hissed at him like a distempered cat.

“No. I would not,” he said, his expression unreadable.

“Well, I won’t have you sneaking into my home at all hours to torment me because you wish to repay me for something I truly regret doing. I regret my mistake and most of all I regret it was you! Why won’t you leave me alone?” She vibrated with frustration. “Do you despise me so very much?” Her throat closed and tears stung her eyelids.

Now he would leave
. There’d be no more risk of ruin. No more warmth or laughter. She’d never see or speak to him again. Never dance with him. She slumped back into the pillows.

“No, I don’t hate you, Miss Haversham,” he said softly, the teasing tone gone from his voice.

“Then why are you here?” She glared at him in the dim moonlight. When he moved, he didn’t stalk away as she expected. He came closer.

“It seems I cannot help myself. When we’re not at loggerheads, you’re the most restful woman I’ve ever known.”

“Meaning I bore you unconscious,” she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest. He had plenty of other, proper ladies hanging on his lips, toad eating him, flattering and cosseting him at every turn. Prudence refused to take her place at the rear of the duke’s parade of adoring and more eligible females.

“No. I mean restful. Like you, I value undisturbed sleep,” he said quietly, watching her. “Lack of it makes me cross as well. But perhaps I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

He sounded so wistful, she almost regretted being angry. Almost. Then her temper flared. If his sleep was disturbed, let him stay home in his own bed. Have a glass of port. Review his estates’ ledgers. Read a dull book. She opened her mouth to say as much but made the mistake of glancing up at him in the moonlight. It was then she noticed the shadows under his eyes.

“What disturbs your sleep, Your Grace?” She asked, reverting instinctively to Miss H., apothecary. “Do you dream of battles?”

His large, long-fingered hand swept hypnotically over the counterpane and he smiled to himself. “Yes, I suppose some moments made quite an impression,” he said, smoothing a crease in the counterpane slowly. “May I?” He gestured to the foot of the bed. She nodded and something off-kilter righted itself inside. Her heartbeat slowed. He sat and then lay down fully dressed across the bottom edge of her bed.

“Do you dream of being wounded?”

“Occasionally,” he casually dismissed night after night of violent, blood-soaked dreams.

“I could prepare a sleep draught for you.”