The ball. Averting his gaze, he stepped back. He wasn’t a feckless man to blithely tup a woman by day, and court another by night. Especially under the same roof. Flesh in his smalls might plow happily onward, but right was right…for all the bloody good it served.
He clapped a hand on his nape and squeezed tense muscles. Perhaps his brains were in his ballocks because he was sorely tempted to let them have sway.
“Mrs. Chatham…”
“Don’t worry, Your Grace. I’ll administer the oil as quickly as possible and leave. I did not expect to stay in the room while you are in a state of undress.”
His shoulders sagged. She was sage and kind. They both understood his predicament without having to say it aloud.
She stuffed the cork back on the vial. “I told the dowager I’d put you in the least compromising position.”
He dropped his hand to his side as a dull ache flared along his outer thigh. The injury and mention of his mother doused the mood.
“Then who will attend me?”
She shrugged. “I can come back.”
“I would hope you would. I am in this predicament because you suggested it to Her Grace.”
She smiled fully aware that he, like his brothers, would do anything to restore their mother’s happiness. “Have you a banyan? You could wear it and—”
“And be stripped to my smalls underneath? Out of the question. There must be another solution.”
She set the jar on the floor and angled her head for a side view of his leg. “What if I cut the outer seam of your breeches? That way you keep your clothes on.”
Blessed relief filled him. “A fine idea.”
“Have you scissors in here?”
“In the top-right drawer of my desk.”
She retrieved them and hurried to his side. Staying mostly clothed restored his sanity and gave him a barrier from the invasion that was Mrs. Chatham. Hands on his hips, he stared ahead and let her undo the button at his knee—anything to keep from visually consuming the bounty of her cleavage.
This is no different than a fitting with my tailor. An easy argument to swallow while he forced his focus to the far wall. On the beige paneling. The white trim. The mirrored sconces newly polished. The matching brass candelabra, both with five, half-melted candles. The door to his bedchamber…
His neighbor’s tender assault weakened him. When he peeked down—his first mistake—she was a study in delicate striving. His thoughtful physic nibbled her bottom lip. Gentle, elegant fingers tested the seam of his breeches.
She slid a hand partway under the cloth, and rivulets of pleasure followed her touch.
Mrs. Chatham’s hand wandering up his breeches was an image that’d be forever burned on his brain.
He closed his eye, surrendering to the attack. She besieged him with her orange and ginger scent, her knuckles grazing his skin and the rustle of her velvet skirts. That jostle of cloth could defeat a man.
Is this what famished men experience? They gorge on crumbs?
Because this was as close as he’d get to being the center of Mrs. Chatham’s attention. Tender hands untied the garter holding up his stockings. She dragged silk down his shin. Air was cool. Her breath was steady and warm, trifling with his bare calf.
A tiny shudder skipped along his spine.
He was living in increments. The shears snip, snip, snipping his breeches. Broadcloth giving way. His fortitude crumbled when metal glanced his hip, and the imprint of Mrs. Chatham’s steadying palm seeped through cloth to his skin. He stilled.
A medieval device could be squeezing his chest, and this was contact with a barrier between them.
“I cut the bottom of your smalls, Your Grace, but they are intact.”
What a reverent confession. Mrs. Chatham, his heretofore saucy healer, was apologetic about nicking his smalls. Was the experienced widow nervous about the path both of them were about to tread? Fabric covered him. The nakedness issue was solved, as long as one didn’t make an over-fine distinction of the word. That hurdle surmounted, he had another to go.
Submitting to her rubbing oil on his bare skin.
Chapter 4
The duke’s resistance hung by a thread. Each time her skin glanced his, flesh pebbled. His and hers. Waves of pleasure washed over them from her touching him in this un-carnal manner. Yet both were swept into a tide of yearning.
She was kneeling on the floor, her heart racing and her mouth flooding with wetness. She couldn’t stop licking her lips.
“Now I must administer the oil.”
The duke braced himself. “Do what you must.”
His voice was thick. Hands resting on his hips slid higher to his waist and dug in. That simple move humbled her. His Grace was trying hard to be the moral man his mother and father had raised him to be.
Head bowed, she swallowed the lump in her throat. One caress in the right place, and this afternoon could easily take a different turn. They both knew it.
If she truly cared for him, if she wanted his happiness above her own, she would keep what he valued in place—his sense of goodness and all that it entailed. For there was more to his inheritance than title and wealth. The Richland name was defined by its noble disposition, and Lord Nathaniel was the best of the breed. Generous, hard-working, decent to all.
Who was she to tempt such a man?
She’d honor his reputation, his dignity, and ready in him for tonight. No more teasing. No more flirtation. She’d do what she was tasked with in the first place.
Tears pricked her eyes. This was newfound misery. Truly, Hades added a new level today. It would be torturously known as Preparing a man to dance with another woman.
Three of them actually, and one would become his wife.
As a mature woman she should be able to do this. Contemplating his leg, the slivered view of his thigh with its bits of springy masculine hair, she accepted a truth. Experience didn’t take the sting out of loss. It confirmed it. As much as it promised she could live life happily again…someday.
She sniffled and poured the balm into her cupped hand. Yes, someday. If she sold her cottage and removed herself to another corner of the realm.
Excess oil dripped onto her dry hand. “I am about to administer the oil.” Her voice was shaky. That was the second time she’d warned him.
His good eye was closed. “I am ready.”
She took a bolstering breath and slid her hand up his thigh. The breeches parted. Dark auburn hair crinkled against her palm. She concentrated her strokes around his knee. Rubbing, kneading, feeling him. Muscles knotted under her touch. Angry pink-red scars ridged his skin in places, then ran slick.
Studying the carpet, she offered a bland, “Oil of amber reduces inflammation.”
Explanations were safe. Her hands going above his knee was not.
The duke was silent. His mouth was compressed, and sinew popped visibly on his neck.
“If you continue to exercise the limb…” Her lungs constricted and she let her words taper off.
“Yes?”
Her hands ventured higher, finding well-developed thigh muscles and no scars. “If you—If you exercise the limb and soak it often, you will see much improvement.”
Sweat beaded in her cleavage. She shut her eyes, and her strokes became more vigorous. She was in peril of reaching his hip…and other places.
A hand settled on her shoulder. “Mrs. Chatham, perhaps now is a good time to introduce me to the butter churn?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she fairly breathed the words and withdrew her hands from their hold on his leg.
She was clumsy, getting off the floor. Her legs wouldn’t cooperate, and her corset stuck to heated skin. Whalebone jabbed her. More strands of hair had come loose and were clinging to her cheeks.
“Here.” The duke grasped her by the elbows and helped her upright.
They were quite close and quite intimate. Her limbs were heavy, and her blood was sluggish in her veins. She was sweetly drowsy. She coul
dn’t leave if she tried.
He’d bound her with a spell.
The center of his eye was a black pool. The fire’s blaze danced bronze-like and dangerous in that dark depth. An auburn wisp fell over his forehead. She brushed it back, tucked it neatly along his temple.
“You should put your leg in the churn.”
“I should.”
They were somehow closer. Velvet-covered breasts brushed a wall of silk, and the duke’s hand slid possessively, neatly into the curve of her waist.
She allowed herself the luxury of tracing his jaw. Barely-there afternoon whiskers scratched her fingertips. Simms would take care of them, but for this moment those whiskers belonged to her.
His nostrils flared. She’d swear he scented her.
The duke’s one-eyed concentration was so, so…intense. She’d burn up from it. A little wetness trickled between her breasts, the single, private drop taunting her.
“You’re flushed, Mrs. Chatham.”
“Velvet was a poor choice to wear today. Spring in Kent seems…warmer than usual this year.”
“Indeed.” He didn’t break his potent stare.
His claiming hold on her waist slid comfortably over to the small of her back. And jammed her against him.
She ought to take matters in hand. She was an older, experienced woman after all. “I’m not going to let you do this.” She was breathy and desperate.
“You will.”
“Oh,” she whimpered, weak-kneed, clutching his waistcoat.
Apparently, that was all the duke needed. She gasped when his fingers tunneled her hair. Pins dropped to the floor. His mouth hovered over hers a final, agonizing second. They’d waited for this a long, long time. There was no going back.
If a single kiss was all she’d have of Lord Nathaniel, they’d do this right.
Something to make the one-eyed, dragon duke never forget her.
Their mouths met in a fury of bone-melting, seize-the-moment lust. The first contact obliterated her senses. Singed them down to her toes. She gave him a remember-me-for-the-rest-of-your-life kind of kiss. The duke set out to do the same. His embrace was passionate. Demanding. They could be floating on a wave. Lost. Happy. Together.
The memory of his lips would warm her many a cold winter’s night, though their kiss wasn’t pretty.
It was…
Hungry, carnal, scorching. All take…and take…and take.
Slickness poured like warm honey between her legs. Lust consumed her.
Their anxious, desperate hands sought skin and found none. Until she reached for the duke’s exposed smalls. Hip muscles clenched underhand. She scraped her fingernails along that hip.
He answered with a guttural growl against her mouth.
What delicious power. It was shocking. Wonderful. She wanted more.
She flattened her hand against him, seeking bare skin.
The duke broke their kiss. He staggered backward and grabbed the mantle with both hands. His head hung low.
“You can’t do that.”
Heels scraping backward, she put some distance between them. She was dazed, checking her surroundings. “Do what?”
“Touch me like that. It was—” His mouth pulled a grim line.
She was certain he forbade himself from finishing. She had no such compunction. “It was what? Overwhelming? Annihilating yet elevating at the same time?”
His laugh was low and lusty, the kind a woman heard from the corners of midnight gardens and dark alleys. “You have a talent for words, Mrs. Chatham.” He pushed off the mantle. “I can only say mine were of a baser nature.”
She wished to hear them, but this thing between them was too potent. Another kiss and they’d set the room on fire. Or find their way to his bed.
Whatever modesty his waistcoat afforded him was long gone. His breeches were shamelessly tented, and a rakish side-smile changed his visage. “Do we repeat this? Your rubbing oil of amber on my leg, my soaking it, then more…rubbing?”
She set her knuckles on kiss-swollen lips, stifling a giggle. Oh, he was awful, grinning at her.
“I like this game of ours, this patient and physic,” he said.
“Your Grace!” She was properly scandalized. “Please. Soak your leg.”
He eased his damaged limb into the butter churn. Water sloshed over the sides as he gave a playful, “I feel better already.”
Hair falling about her face, she swiped the jar and scissors off the floor, no small feat with her corset and heavy velvet gown. “Must I remind you that you have a ball to attend?”
“It will be a pleasure as long as you’re there.”
“Don’t waste your dances on me.” She looked crossly at the butter churn, the bloom of the kiss fading. He would dance other women. Not her. Never her.
“Why shouldn’t I dance with you?”
Her skin was terribly hot and the room felt over-bright. “This is only one soak and one application of the oil. There’s no telling how long this will last.”
“We can walk in the garden and steal a kiss.”
“Not with me, you won’t.”
“You’re pretty when your irritable. Your eyes darken and your move with such interesting precision.”
“Don’t flirt with me.”
“I’m not. I’m simply complimenting my healer. You’ve done a better job this hour than England’s best physicians. My leg feels good.”
He stood there, hale and hearty, leg in the churn, dressed in day finery, arms crossed over his chest, absurdly appealing. He’d trusted her, appreciated her, and that pushed past the protective, thorny parts of her heart. The kiss helped too, adding a new, dangerous dimension.
She set the jar and scissors on the mantle. “I’m glad to hear it.”
They were at impasse, surrounded by a sensual web of their own making. Air was thick with ardor and unsated wants and confusion. Gaiety from the house party’s outdoor entertainments broke into the silent room. Did she need another reminder why this interlude never should’ve happened?
New voices glided up from the stairs.
“Simms,” she said, suddenly stricken. “I must leave.”
“Stay.” The duke reach for her wrist which she yanked back. “You’re in my sitting room.”
“With your breeches cut in half,” she cried. “Look at me! He’ll know what we did.”
The kiss was a clarion call to how deep and wide passions ran between her and the Duke of Richland. No long smolder for them. They were fireworks, burning fast and bright.
It’d be best for all if the household assumed that she’d instructed His Grace on how to administer the oil and that he soaked his injured leg alone. It’d be best for all if she disappeared and lost herself in her gardening. What a lonely prospect.
Gripping handfuls of skirts, she headed for the door.
“Mrs. Chatham. Wait.”
She whirled around with a hushing finger to her lips. “Shhhh.”
By the volume of the valet’s voice, she’d guess he was at the foot of the stairs. Leaving unnoticed was still a possibility. Fortune favored her this day.
The duke smiled his pirate smile and shifted his stance, splashing more water onto the floor. “I haven’t properly thanked you. I will when we dance tonight.”
“We shall not,” she whisper-hissed.
“Then how shall I thank you?” he asked, a tad louder.
She glared at him with all the disapproval a thoroughly kissed woman could muster. “You are incorrigible. If you want to thank me, write a letter.”
Everyone else did. Cold, polite letters. With that lonely prospect on her heart, she sped off to the sanctity of her room, velvet skirts swaying furiously.
Chapter 5
Every fashionable person in Kent, and the next district over, was crammed in his ballroom. Chandeliers blazed with brilliant, piercing light. Sherry, wine, and champagne sparkled in glasses because the dowager had spared no expense. Men and women danced a minuet, their lines so long
he couldn’t see who was at the far end.
Ebullient laughter spilled from open doorways and washed over him. It was a pleasant thing for a man to watch his home filled with splendor. It’d be more enjoyable to share the night with a companionable woman. One given to spicy kisses and saucy quips. Yet, Mrs. Chatham was nowhere to be found.
“A fine night,” George said, tipping his head at the ballroom.
“It is.”
Lady Jacintha, the daughter of the Earl of Kendal, stepped out of the ballroom onto the back terrace. She flicked open a bronze fan, the silk flaring wide. The fan could be preening bird feathers. Three tittering young ladies clustered in the half-light around the earl’s daughter. Lady Jacintha smiled coyly at him over the rim of her fan.
His name had somehow landed on her dance card.
Between that mistake and the invisible Mrs. Chatham, his joy was quickly evaporating.
His brother rested a hip on the stone balustrade. “Your leg. Is it better from your medicinal treatment?”
“I’m well.”
“And apparently only capable of monosyllabic answers.”
He gave George a cross look which bounced off him.
Fire flickered from decorative brass bowls all around them. Enough light for well-bred ladies to feel safe; dim enough to invite a stolen kiss. Moths danced around the flames, dipping close and diving back. Rather like what went on with his elusive neighbor. There’d been missed opportunities in the past, chances to test courtship’s waters. He’d been set on his work. She with her…oh, he didn’t know how she’d filled her days, but he wanted to.
George tapped a flawless shoe on flagstone. “Everyone’s abuzz about which dance cards will bear the privilege of your name.”
“You said that an hour ago.” He scanned the ballroom again.
The room was a crush of panniered-skirts and frizzed hair. The square, ratted style was all the rage. Mrs. Chatham had blessedly not given into that fashion, which made him grateful for her genteel, countrified life. He liked her pretty blond locks, but the woman who bore them was nowhere to be found.
George chuckled and smoothed his jabot. “She’s not coming.”
Dukes by the Dozen Page 28
