Perhaps not New York. Perhaps somewhere else. Paris beckoned, in fact, and she had never been to France. Wistfully, she imagined herself living there, only to wonder how she would earn her bread if she were to bear a child. She had saved funds, of course, and one of her reasons for taking on the position in the Special League had been the lucrative offer made to her by the Home Office. She had been able to take a leave from her position as a Pinkerton agent. She had always imagined she would return, take up where she had left off, but now, for the first time, the lure of something else called her.
“Hazel,” he repeated, for he was not a fool, and he knew what her silence meant. “Promise me you will not leave if there is a child. Promise me you will marry me so the child can bear my name.”
But she could not make such a promise. “Lucien, I cannot be a duchess. I do not belong here in your world.”
“Hazel.”
His voice was uncompromising. But she had not risen to the ranks of the most esteemed Pinkerton agents because she folded easily, like a gambler with a bad hand of cards. She was steely when she needed to be, which had been just about every day of her life thus far.
Still, she had no wish to argue with him. “Lucien, you cannot change the truth. I would make an abysmal duchess. I wear trousers, I am a Pinkerton agent, and I have no desire to be a debutante.”
“That is just as well,” he said, his body pressing more intimately against hers, so she felt the heavy thickness of his shaft rising against her. “Because I have never desired a debutante. But I do desire you.”
Heaven help her, he wanted her again. The knowledge lit an answering fire of need within her. This was where she could meet him. The physical connection between them: they were electric together. It was uncontrollable, undeniable. And she could not resist even if she wanted.
Because she could not give him the promise he desired, she tipped her head back, her gaze meeting his. She could never become his wife, but neither could she deny herself the opportunity to know him. To run her hands over his body, to kiss him, to welcome him inside her. Joining with him fulfilled her in a way she had never previously imagined possible.
“Good,” she said, running her nails over the blades of his shoulders, up his neck. “Because I desire you as well, and I fear we have already wasted too much time this evening in worrying over something that will never even come to pass.”
“If it should—”
She pressed her mouth to his, ending their discussion in the best possible manner. She would never promise to become Arden’s wife, because he did not want a wife, and she did not want a husband. No matter how much she wanted him, and no matter how deeply knowing Lucien had changed her, she could never marry him. She would not chain them both to a life of regrets.
To her relief, he kissed her back, forgetting—at least, for now—the promises he had demanded from her. They moved together to the center of his bed, mouths fused, bodies straining, ready for each other again. This time, when he entered her, they both sighed. It was not just a joining, but a homecoming. She clasped him to her, riding the waves of ecstasy as they pounded through her in time to his thrusts, and they reached their release simultaneously. He withdrew in enough time, spending himself all over her belly. She shook beneath him as the spasms of her own pleasure overtook her.
Afterward, he settled alongside her and drew the coverlets over them both, settling her back against his chest.
“I ought to return to my chamber,” she protested sleepily. But her body was humming with sensation, and the muscled warmth of him at her back proved too tempting a lure.
“Hush,” he commanded, his arm going over her waist, as if that was where it belonged. “Stay with me for a time.”
She was tired, so tired her bones melted, her body sated in the most glorious fashion possible. And nothing could rival the feeling of Lucien’s big body wrapped around hers, his heart beating against her shoulder.
“Only for a bit,” she acquiesced, on a sigh of pure contentment.
“For as long as you like.”
She felt his lips upon the crown of her head, a simple kiss that landed somewhere in the vicinity of her heart. She allowed the false joy to remain, even though she knew this was a fleeting happiness, that they came from opposite worlds, and all too soon, she would return to hers. Or to her next adventure. Whichever felt right. Whichever came first; the need for duty, or the need to wander. She had devoted herself to both in her life.
She would miss him, Hazel thought, when she left, and this realization, more than any other that evening, was a revelation. Hazel snuggled more firmly against him, taking what comfort she could get from him while it lasted.
Lucien awoke, burning with an absurd desire which refused to be ignored, along with an inevitable sense of realization. A realization something had changed inside him. Perhaps it had been gradually altering over the course of weeks. Perhaps it had been sudden, spurred by his weakness last night. He did not know.
It was a new sort of desire. Not one of the flesh. It nattered at him as he rose from bed. It battered down his defenses as he rang for his valet to help him prepare for the day. No matter how hard he tried, the desire would not dissipate. If anything, it gained strength and insistence, prodding at him, until he acknowledged it with a sigh as he tightened the belt of his dressing gown with an irritable yank.
He wanted to make Hazel happy.
There it was; that foreign, undeniable sensation, rising up within him. For the first time, he wanted more from a woman than the slaking of his bodily needs. He did not just want a bed partner. He wanted to make her feel protected and wanted and cherished.
He could do none of those things now as the sun rose over London. She was long gone, of course, having once more slipped from his arms and from his bed in the early hours of the morning, before the sun had risen. He had watched her in the moonlit shadows as she donned her robe and belted it firmly at the waist. Her pale curves were glorious, even in the darkness.
But it had not been her luscious feminine form which had stirred him the most. Rather, it had been the way she had quietly padded to his side of the bed and bent down to press a kiss to the top of his head. He had closed his eyes and feigned sleep for her approach, keeping his breathing even and rhythmic.
A simple gesture, a mimicry perhaps, of the kiss he had bestowed upon her before they had fallen asleep in each other’s arms. But it had crept inside him, that kiss. She had lingered for a moment before leaving the chamber, and even then, not without kicking a chest of drawers and cursing beneath her breath, which was altogether Hazel, and somehow, also altogether endearing.
For a long time, he had lain awake after she had gone, staring blankly at the ceiling, her final, gentle kiss haunting him. She had kissed him as if he mattered to her. As if she cared. And it did not stop haunting him now, as his valet appeared and went through the motions of preparing him for the day. Fresh shirt, waistcoat, and neck cloth laid out, new trousers, and a shave.
Through his daily ritual, he ruminated in silence, wondering what this newfound desire to make Hazel happy meant. He had been accustomed to looking after himself and Violet. Was it the notion of potentially fathering a child, after all the efforts he had made to avoid doing so all these years, that had affected his wits? Or was it Hazel’s unprecedented reaction to his proposal?
She had denied him. Christ, she had dared to laugh first. He ought to have been infuriated. Insulted. After all, they were as disparate as she suggested on the surface. She was an American; he was an Englishman. She had been raised in an orphanage, and he had been born the son of a duke. His wealth derived from the Dukes of Arden who preceded him. Hers was earned.
As she had pointed out, she was no debutante. She swore when she thought no one else could hear her. He had no doubt she could not play an instrument or sing, that she had never dabbled in watercolors or needlework, or any of the other feminine arts. Undoubtedly, she would not even know the proper manner in which one poured te
a. She shook hands, she wore trousers, and she fell into her seat as if she were a sack of flour.
There was no reason why he ought to suddenly be seized by the urge to buy her flowers as if he were a suitor. Or to make her laugh. To make her smile. To watch her bright eyes light with inner joy.
And there was damn well no reason at all why he ought to feel disappointed she had turned him down. Why he ought to sit as his valet neatly shaved his jaw in swift, efficient strokes, and think about ways he could change her mind. He had vowed to never marry. The title could pass on to a distant cousin. The tainted bloodline would stop with him.
Yet, in the wake of his lapse of caution last night, the notion of siring a child had seemed real to him for the first time. Not just real, it had seemed possible. And as he had pressed his palm over the softness of Hazel’s bare belly, envisioning it swelling with his child, he had been attacked by a vicious surge of longing, accompanying the familiar dread. The two opposing emotions had blended into a confused tangle he was still attempting to sort out by the light of day.
“Dobbins?” he said into the silence, as his valet finished the shave.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Why did you marry Mrs. Dobbins?” he asked.
Ordinarily, he preferred to keep to himself and did not attend to the matters of his domestics. He usually kept busy attempting to manage his investigations for the Home Office and the Special League. But his manservant was enough a part of his daily routine, and he knew Dobbins had gotten married in the last few years.
If his valet thought it strange Lucien had chosen to discuss his personal life with him, he did not allow it to show. His expression remained implacable as he restored the razor to its case. “I married her because I love her, Your Grace. I determined I wished to spend the rest of my life with her, to have children.”
A normal response, Lucien supposed. Expected. In Lucien’s world, most peers married to either preserve or restore fortunes and old familial dynasties. Ladies married to save their fathers and brothers the burden of supporting them. Romantic love was often an afterthought, if one even believed it existed. Which Lucien did not. He loved his sister and Aunt Hortense, but that was different.
“You believe in romantic love, Dobbins?” he queried next, striving to keep his voice even, perhaps a touch disinterested.
The servant looked surprised for an instant, before he schooled his expression. “Of course I do, Your Grace.”
“Hmm,” he said noncommittally, as he shrugged into his shirt. He was not certain how to answer a man who seemed to believe love was as real as the sky overhead. “What would you have done if Mrs. Dobbins had refused to wed you?”
Dobbins paused in the act of aiding him with his necktie. “I suppose I would have persisted, sir, until her answer was yes.”
He mulled that over whilst he donned his waistcoat. Persistence in life was good. He and Dobbins could agree upon that score, at least. But persistence when one had already been dismissed was another matter entirely. It smacked of desperation, and he was not, nor had he ever been, a desperate man.
Did he want to marry Hazel? No, of course he did not. He did not want to marry anyone, ever. What the bloody hell was wrong with him? Where was all the maudlin sentimentalism heralding from? Why could he not shake this strange, incipient longing from his chest? Why was he now mired in this inexplicable notion that having Hazel in his bed every night, Hazel carrying his child, Hazel becoming his duchess, would please him in a way nothing and no one else could?
“How would you have persisted, Dobbins?” he asked at last, his curiosity driving at him with the force of a swinging cricket bat.
Dobbins was silent for a moment as he helped Lucien put on his coat.
“I would have courted her, Your Grace,” he said at length, his tone thoughtful, as if to suggest he had simply won Mrs. Dobbins’ hand outright, and it had required frightfully little effort on his part. Lucky chap. “I would have done everything in my power to make her smile and laugh.”
Courting.
Lucien had never courted anyone. Had never even possessed the slightest desire to do so. Courting led to marriage, and marriage led to children, and children led to the possibility of him inflicting his mother’s madness upon an innocent. And that, he could not do.
But there was that question again, that voice which would not be ignored inside him. Making him wonder what he would do if the outcome was already determined. What if Hazel were already carrying his babe? The die would have been cast, the decision made. If the choice was already out of his hands, what would he do?
He refused to examine it too closely just now.
Lucien smoothed a hand down each of his sleeves. “That is excellent advice, Dobbins. I thank you.”
“Are you…are you wishing to court a lady, Your Grace?” Dobbins dared to ask, perhaps emboldened by the personal nature of their dialogue this morning, quite extraordinary.
And Lucien found he was not bothered by the query. Nor was he bothered by his answer, though perhaps he ought to have been.
“I think I may be, Dobbins,” he said, the admission filling him with a curious sense of rightness. “Perhaps.”
Only one other man had ever proposed marriage to Hazel, and Adam’s request to make her his wife had occurred under decidedly different circumstances. He had been pleased to make the offer, for one thing. He had come calling to take her for a drive. She recalled the innocence of that long-ago moment quite fondly now, as she prepared herself to enter the dining room in Lark House.
The scent of breakfast wafted to her as she remembered how Adam’s cheeks had been tinged with pink, how his hands had shaken upon the reins, and how he had seemed nervous. Smiling too much, talking too loudly. When he had given her his mother’s ring, she had been moved to tears, an overwhelming sense of belonging blossoming inside her. The feeling that, at long last, after all her years without a home and a family, she would finally, finally have one of her own.
But that had not been meant to be, and the young woman she had been then would scarcely recognize the world-weary woman she had become. She still wore the ring upon her finger, but she had never been able to wear it as his wife. The ring and a carte de visite bearing his young, unsmiling countenance were all that remained, along with the love in her heart, which had never faded. But she had realized, somehow along the way, loving Adam did not mean she could not have room in her heart for others.
She hesitated outside the dining room, uncertain of how she should proceed after the duke within had proposed to marry her the night before. What if his aunt, the queenly Lady Beaufort, was present this morning? How would Hazel face her, without her face blushing crimson with guilt? What if Arden regretted his actions, his words? What if he wished he had never offered to marry her at all? Would it matter? Would she care?
There was such a contrast between the two proposals she had received, one from the heart and the other under duress. One receiving her instant yes, and the other her instant no.
And yet, she could not deny she was conflicted about not only Lucien’s proposal, but her reaction to it. She had spent most of the night in his bed. She knew him in a way she had never known another man: his scent, the groan deep in his throat when he lost himself inside her, the taste of his lips, the weight of him, thick and heavy and firm in her hand, the taut sinews of his back, the silkiness of his hair. Some foolish part of her wished his proposal had been made in the same spirit as Adam’s. Some part of her wished their worlds were not so disparate, that she could have said yes.
Silly, she knew. She was better on her own, just as she had always been. Life was simpler when she had no heart to worry after but hers. If she put herself in danger, she alone would pay the price. If she did not love Lucien, she would not have to lose him.
Realizing she could not continue tarrying at the threshold of the dining room, caught in the tangled web of her conflicting emotions and desires, she took a deep, steadying breath, and entered. She had t
aken care in her dress this morning, donning her divided skirt and bodice, instructing Bunton to confine her hair in a rather severe knot. She did not wish to look feminine. She wanted to remind Arden she was his partner, not his bedmate.
Last night could not be repeated, she admonished herself sternly as she entered the room with its striped wallpaper and immense windows admitting the morning sun. At least Lady Beaufort was not in attendance, and there would be no glowers of disapproval this morning, though she did wonder if Lucien’s aunt was avoiding her or if she was truly that ill. Hazel did not like to think of Lady Beaufort suffering. Perhaps she could check on Lucien’s aunt later.
For now, she would forget the way her body reacted to Arden’s. Pretend none of it had happened. It was only the animal within her, after all, a base need for pleasure. Pretending her thoughts were not so heavily burdened, she forced herself to smile at Reynolds, who was overseeing breakfast. He gave her an imperious look in return, his expression never wavering. The man seemed perpetually immovable.
Her gaze drifted inevitably to Lucien.
He had risen at her entrance, and offered her a courtly bow now, his emerald eyes burning into her. His formality rendered her immobile. She stopped halfway across the chamber, staring at him stupidly. Had he grown even more handsome overnight? With his jaw freshly shaven, his wavy, dark hair brushing the collar of his jacket, his charcoal waistcoat and perfectly tailored trousers, the crispness of his shirt and necktie, he was breathtaking.
He made her remember in vivid detail what had happened the night before. The way he had dropped to his knees, making love to her with his mouth. Between her thighs, she pulsed and ached at the memory.
Shameless Duke Page 21
