The Perfect Duchess

by Jen YatesNZ

  ‘Good evening, Sher-ma-chère,’ he murmured, allowing his voice to soften to its deepest most caressing tone, the one countless women had assured him they couldn’t resist.

  Sheri scarcely blinked and there was no answering warmth in her eyes, nor any softening of the perfect bow of her mouth. In fact, her face remained expressionless, more so than usual.

  ‘Good evening, Your Grace. I would speak with you.’

  She looked directly into his eyes, not even trying to conceal her mood from him. That he’d not be happy with what she had to say was a given. He’d delay it as long as possible. What the hell had happened since lunch to turn her into this glacial statue?

  ‘After everyone has gone up. We’ll talk—in my study.’

  Her mouth compressed a little. The mask wasn’t completely frozen then. He could only hope in the face of his recalcitrance the mask cracked a little more, enough to allow him to strip it from her completely. Because this woman was his. There was no going back now. He might not love her as he loved Jassie, but he desired her with an obsession fast reaching the limits of his control.

  No other man should have her. Jassie was right in that at least.

  ‘Come and meet the Beau. He arrived only an hour or so ago and I believe he’ll be leaving again straight after the ceremony tomorrow.’

  Her mouth tightened again as if she was about to protest.

  ‘Later, Sher-ma-chère. Later you can say all you want. Right now we have guests to make welcome and I ask you to find that beautiful smile you gifted me while we shared some happy moments by the sea this morning. You’ve been putting on a show for years. I know you can manage one more night. It is the last night Veronica will queen it at the dinner table at Wolverton Castle—if that’s what is bothering you. We can allow her that—then I intend to banish her from the estate altogether. And tonight I intend to keep you close by my side so all the world knows just how important you are to me.’

  He watched emotions dart through her eyes. The rest of her appeared frozen rigid, but not even she could make eyes the rich brown of treacle look like ice.

  She was angry. At least he could still make her feel something. If it was only anger, he’d start with that. Anger could quickly lead to passion of another sort.

  ‘Smile, Sher?’

  She bared her teeth at him and he grinned back at her.

  A little of the rigidity left her body and she allowed him to lay her hand on his arm and lead her across the room to where the Duke of Wellington was holding court.

  ‘Your Grace, allow me to introduce my fiancée, Lady Sherida Dearing. Sheri, His Grace, the Duke of Wellington.’

  Dom was gratified by the man’s reaction to his first sight of Sheri as she came up from her curtsey. His dark eyes widened, the beaky nose almost quivered, and he suavely bent his tall form to raise her gloved fingers to his lips.

  ‘Lady Sherida. Delighted. I knew it’d have to be a diamond of the first water to bring Wolf up to snuff! I believe you’ll do Wolverton proud, my Lady.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace. You’re very kind,’ she responded, calmly retrieving her hand.

  ‘I hope we shall not be so formal. I count your husband a close personal friend. I should be honored if you’d address me as Arthur and perhaps I may address you as Sherida?’

  ‘I prefer, Sheri, Your—that is—Arthur,’ she murmured, inclining her head and allowing him a glimpse of a real Sherida Dearing smile. Dom knew the Beau would be her slave from then on. At least she’d make an effort to charm his friends, even now when clearly she was still not committed to their union. Again he wondered what had happened to stir the coals of uncertainty he’d thought successfully doused only that morning. Something had changed while they’d all walked in the gardens after luncheon.

  Bax and Chumsley sauntered over to join their group and Dom had to restrain the impulse to possess himself of Sheri’s hand again and lead her across the room, as far from his devil-may-care cousin as possible. Bax’s lazy grey eyes almost crossed in his effort to show appreciation for Sheri’s gown. Never one to pay heed to society mores, the big lout perused the enticingly modest front of the gown then stepped behind Sheri as if to make certain he really had seen the daringly exposed rear view.

  Dom was all but snarling by the time Bax came back around, made an elegant leg and raised Sheri’s hand to his lips.

  ‘Your beauty slays me, my Lady. My offer still stands.’

  He was going to run his cousin through, right here in his own salon. But to his bemusement a genuine smile suddenly lit his fiancée’s shadowed features as she whipped her hand back from Bax’s lingering touch.

  ‘You no longer own Zeus,’ she said with just the hint of a gloat in her voice.

  With a theatrical sigh, Bax cocked a brow at her and gave her the benefit of his best wicked bedroom glint. Most women succumbed about now, Dom fumed.

  ‘My humble self is not enough?’ he drawled, his voice all but smoking.

  ‘Bax,’ Dom growled, low and menacing. No one else would know of what they spoke but the three of them, but whatever else he wanted of Sheri, he didn’t want her put to the blush by anyone but him. With a little pressure on her arm he indicated they should move on, but she stood her ground. He was learning she had a mind of her own and liked to fight her own battles.

  ‘Thank you, Lord Baxendene,’ she said with airy formality, ‘but no, it’s not!’

  Then she turned to Dom and said, ‘I should like to go and meet Lady Sally and Lord Harewood. They must have arrived after—I went up this afternoon.’

  He must comply if he wanted to stay at her side, but it didn’t stop him from giving Bax a warning glare to which that scapegrace responded with a smirk of wicked satisfaction.

  Chapter 11

  If she ever had to earn her living, Sheri decided, she should take to the stage. She’d take Drury Lane by storm and the ton would flock to see her performances. No one had really noticed anything amiss. Mama was greatly taken up with Lady Olwynne and with Lord Hadleigh who seemed to have become a total fixture at her mother’s side.

  Lord Baxendene now seemed to be engrossed in teasing Lady Jane Rotherby, judging by the soft roses in her cheeks and the snapping fire of her usually placid topaz eyes. At least he’d found the decency to stay away from her, or the sense to stay away from Dom, who held her to his arm like a limpet. His presence had also saved her from any further venom from Veronica, who’d pulled out all the stops tonight for her last shining moment as the Duchess of Wolverton. Or perhaps she still hoped to divert Dom’s attention to herself by the stunning display of her bounteous charms in emerald green silk velvet and the most amazing parure of rare pale jade and diamonds.

  Only Jassie, who knew her so well, stopped in the middle of her happy prattle about the joys of motherhood, to ask if she was all right. It had been easy enough to allay her concerns by stating she was sure it was just the normal pre-wedding nerves.

  ‘And Dom will take care of all that tomorrow, Sheri! He doesn’t have his reputation for nothing, you know. Just leave everything to Dom. He’ll teach you all you need to know. It’s why men are so experienced—and we’re not! You’ll see, Sher,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘It’ll be wonderful, though strange at first. How can it not be? Oh, Sheri, I can only wish you as happy as Windermere and I. And when your babies come your happiness will be complete.’

  And she’d gone on to talk of how Jonathan now recognized both her and his father and how Rogan was more besotted than she.

  She’d been relatively safe during dinner, sitting at Dom’s right hand and with Prince Esterhazy at her other side. Whatever the conversation had been she’d managed to nod and smile and offer some apparently intelligent rejoinder from time to time. She’d studiously avoided Dom’s eyes, but was acutely aware of his looming presence, placing choice tidbits from each course onto her plate and urging her to try them; urging her to drink so he could refill her wine glass. She’d ignored that and scarcely drank more than a
few sips. He’d not befuddle her with alcohol.

  But she’d risen with alacrity when Veronica rose and suggested the ladies return to the salon and leave the gentlemen to their port. Dom rose also as she came to her feet and grasped her hand so she couldn’t immediately leave his side; had to turn and look up into his enigmatic gaze.

  Slowly, with fingers of steel, he raised her hand to his mouth. His lips were hot, searing her skin like a brand and his eyes were like emerald tipped arrows, piercing to some vital place within her—and she couldn’t help wondering if the reason she’d not voiced her pain and intentions to cry off, even to Jassie, was because even now she hoped he’d convince her that her fears were groundless. Was she so weak where this man was concerned?

  She feared she was. A new fear to overlay all the rest.

  The moment she’d both longed for and dreaded arrived. With the last of their guests trailing upstairs Dom took her arm and led her swiftly through the vast library with its soaring three-story high galleries of rare books and art works.

  Stopping only to tell Broughton to lock up and just leave a lamp burning in the main foyer, he pulled Sheri into the room at the far end of the library she’d noticed last night, which was indeed his study. Before she could properly assimilate anything about the room, other than the only light came from the fire, he leant back against the sturdy oak door and pulled her body hard against his. Thrusting his fingers up into her hair with a total disregard for the diamond pins holding it in place, he tilted her face up to his and took her mouth with a force and expertise allowing no chance for her to gather breath, thought or argument, let alone articulate any of it.

  How her body craved this, him. Why must she repudiate it? How could she? Her hands slipped beneath his arms and clung to his taut straining back.

  Easing back a little with the force, his mouth simply seduced hers, gently but hungrily feasting on her lips, delving for her tongue, demanding she reciprocate. And she did, little moans humming in the back of her throat.

  He could take her from minus zero to boiling plus, in seconds—with just his mouth. She’d always known it was his most lethal weapon and if he were ever to unleash it on her body she’d have no defenses against it.

  He was kissing her eyelids again, melting every last icicle of her resistance. God, she’d wanted this, though she’d not known what this was, before now.

  And she’d wanted Dom to want this—with her. Could she believe he did?

  He was kissing her ears with the same fervor he’d been attacking her lips. How could that weaken every last muscle in her legs so her body sagged helplessly, softly against the whipcord length of his? Hands sliding down over the naked curves of her back to cup her bottom, he pressed her even closer against him—against the long hard ridge in his trousers.

  ‘Feel what you do to me, Sher. You’re driving me crazy. I need you. I need to possess you.’

  His voice was harsh with strain.

  Now his hands roamed upwards again, over the burning skin of her back to reach the collar of diamonds holding the dress in place.

  ‘How do you undo this infernal thing, my love? You’ve driven me mad in this gown all night! How does the catch work?’

  As swiftly as the heat had weakened her limbs, did icy terror turn them rigid. Flinging her body back from his grasp, she stepped further into the room. Grasping the back of a fine Hepplewhite chair with one hand and clasping the other at the neck of her gown, she swung the chair around between them.

  If she didn’t keep her wits about her he’d yet know how imperfect was the woman he sought to take as his duchess. The disfigurement would be obvious, even in the flickering light from the fire!

  ‘You’ll not do this to me again!’ she said, alarmed at the weakness of her voice. She meant to yell the words at him, but they were little more than a hoarse whisper.

  ‘You want it as much as I do!’

  It was a flat unemotional statement of fact she couldn’t refute.

  ‘I do!’

  The admission hung in the air between them as if rung from a gong. Waiting to see what he’d do with that knowledge, she saw the emerald fire in his eyes bank to a lazy smolder as he came slowly away from the door to place his hands over hers on the back of the chair. She couldn’t look away although she knew she should if she wished to retain any position of strength in order to fight this battle.

  ‘What then do you want to talk about? Get it said so we can get back to what we both want.’

  ‘The bet!’ she managed to husk out. ‘Do you deny there was a bet between you and Lord Baxendene?’

  ‘I do not.’

  Sheri gasped at the arrogant admission, uttered with not one hint of contrition. Fury all but spluttering from her, she strode further into the shadows of the room to where a large globe of the world hung in its mahogany frame.

  Never had she known such anger, never been so near to losing control, a feeling she hated and had spent her entire life denying. Giving the globe a vicious spin, she tossed a loosened lock of hair back from her face and glared across at her fiancé—soon to be ex-fiancé!

  ‘You’d make me, the woman you say you desire as your duchess, the subject of a common wager? Who else knows—besides Chumsley and his—prune-faced sisters?’

  ‘Not so common, Sher,’ he drawled, moving around so the chair was no longer between them. ‘It was never to be written into the book at Whites, for instance. And I entered into the bet to save your honor. Bax bet he could seduce you into a night in his bed. I countered with the bet I could win your hand in marriage.’ He took another step towards her, his gaze having a paralyzing effect, rendering her incapable of moving, even to the other side of the globe. ‘We bet our latest equine acquisitions, his Zeus for Freya, the big chestnut mare I had finally inveigled Briersley into selling to me.’

  ‘And the Somerset estate?’

  The scar down his cheek twitched, catching the glow of the flames from the grate, and a hint of resignation appeared in his eyes.

  ‘In the event he won, I told him there had to be some compensation for the fact he’d have ruined you—in the eyes of society. Which meant I had to match it with my Somerset estate. They came to us through our paternal grandmother. I would’ve written it into the marriage settlement anyway.’

  Suddenly all trace of laziness vanished from his tall frame and he stepped to within a few inches of her. His jaw clenched and the scar gave him a sinister air, enhanced by the dancing shadows in the room.

  ‘I’ll not let Bax—nor anyone else—come anywhere near you. You—are—mine!’

  Sheri so wanted to slap him for his arrogance.

  ‘How can that be when you love Jassie?’

  She’d found her voice but finally lost control. She was shouting.

  Into the silence that followed, he grated, ‘It—just—is.’

  ‘Oh—no—it—is—not!’

  As the cobra strikes, Dom’s mouth closed on hers and the only sound in the room was the combined rasp of their harsh breathing.

  As if indeed infected with the deadly venom, her limbs trembled helplessly, breathing stopped and her heart seized in her chest. She couldn’t fight him, no longer even wanted to. And if what she’d really wanted was for Dom to take all choices from her, she’d got her wish.

  Surely she could find more stamina than this; had more self-respect than to just melt like a candle in sunlight under his undoubted experience. For that’s what she was responding to—an expert technique. Not passion or true desire based on love. He was a man seducing her—because he could, because she was helpless to stop him—what was she arguing about? Her brain had liquefied.

  Her hands crept into the curls at his nape, luxuriating in the ability to touch, to feel the thick black silk glide through her fingers. Finally she had her hands on Dominic Beresford. He was hers to touch. She was his to pleasure and oh, the pleasure of his mouth on hers, on her cheeks, eyelids, nose—the tender lobes of her ears!

  Her fingers cupped t
he harsh blades of his jaw and the soft rasp of his evening beard rippled flutters of sensation to the core of her belly. Then the ridges of the scar were under her thumb and she could indulge a long-held desire to caress and soothe the livid mark. Realizing how close she’d come to losing him made her cling tighter, tip back her head and offer him the expanse of her throat.

  …

  She was his. Protest and fight it as she might, once he had her in his arms, she was his. He could have her out of that damned tease of a gown in seconds, spread—where?—on the large estate desk, bared finally for his perusal and possession. She’d be perfect, a goddess, a virgin goddess, his, whom no man but he would ever—

  Slowly backing her across the room towards the desk, reveling in her willingness, he hungrily drank in the pleading moans and kittenish mewls issuing from her throat.

  The untouched Ice Queen was a veritable puddle in his arms and she wasn’t even attempting to stop him; would soon be begging and pleading for whatever he’d give her. And who better since he was the Master, who knew to the finest nuance of sensation how to take a virgin to the heights of pleasure—while remaining in perfect control of his own desires—and working always within the bounds of honor.

  God damn his over-developed sense of honor.

  Honor. Even as he laid her back on the desk he knew he’d honor the promise he’d made her the night she’d experienced her first orgasm. He was close to losing the Master’s restraint. Even Jassie hadn’t taxed his powers of control to this extent. He didn’t remember feeling this fiery burn in his muscles as if he’d run hard and fast up a hill, or the desperate wish he wasn’t so honorable.

  Even with Jassie in his arms he’d been able to maintain a measure of detachment to allow Rogue to finally possess her as a husband should, because Jassie had always been Rogue’s woman, regardless she’d confessed she could’ve loved him, Wolf—