The Duke's Secret Seduction

by Donna Lea Simpson

  • • •

  On the way back up the sloping path to Bodenthorpe Cottage she learned that her apprehension had just cause. The conversation seemed innocent enough at first.

  “Are you enjoying all the company?” he asked, glancing sideways at her as Lily labored up the hill.

  Poor pony, Kittie thought. Maybe the girl was past anything but some warm mash and a field to roam. They would have to consider a younger animal and let Lily retire. “Of course. I have missed Rebecca and Hannah since coming north.”

  “But the gentlemen, too. I think my friends have found the female companionship pleasing; would you say the same for yourself and the other ladies?”

  “I think I can safely say that my friends are very much enjoying the male companionship,” Kittie said with a dry edge to her voice, thinking of Rebecca’s behavior with Sir John the day they joined the men on the hunt. She had been more circumspect since, but had made plain that she was thinking of setting up young Sir John as her lover once they left Bodenthorpe for London.

  “Yes, Bart and Mrs. Billings seem to have become very close very quickly.”

  Kittie beamed just thinking about it. Mr. Norton had Hannah smiling so often, she seemed a new woman . . . certainly a happier one. It was charming to see and warmed her heart. “He is a wonderful gentleman. I can’t believe he has never married.” She negotiated a tricky turn and set herself to try to enjoy the day more rationally. The duke was not an ogre to be trembled before; he was just a man, after all. It was foolish to be so agitated by his mere presence.

  “I find it hard to understand myself, except . . . Bart is a rare fellow. He could never marry unless he felt satisfied that his marriage was helping someone, I think.”

  “You underestimate your friend and my friend’s sincere attachment,” she said, stung by his reply for reasons she didn’t quite fathom. But it seemed to shift all the benefit from any possible match between him and Hannah in her direction.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “But she is, beneath her vapors, a shrewd woman no doubt. She would be feeble-witted not to see that attaching and marrying Bart is her best guarantee of a secure future for her boys.”

  Stifling a spurt of anger, she said, “I have to think, sir, that if Mr. Norton has remained unwed by now, when many ladies must have set their caps for him over the years, he knows what he wants and Hannah satisfies his needs. Therefore, the benefit is not all on her side, but equally on his.”

  “Not equally. Bart would be just as well to remain unwed, but Mrs. Billings would gain greatly if they married.”

  “Ah, I see; you understand benefit only in material terms.”

  “Is that not one of the greatest advantages to a woman of marrying or attaching a man?”

  “I pity you if you think that,” Kittie cried, glancing sideways at the duke and resenting his obdurate, hard-jawed opinionated attitudes.

  “It is naïve to think any other way.”

  “Then is love not to be considered at all? Can a man and a woman not find that unique happiness together?”

  “Love lasts only until the first conflict and quickly fades after that. If love was the basis for most marriages, there would be many more disinterested ones between wealthy ladies and destitute gentlemen, but one would be a fool not to consider the purse of their future spouse.”

  She bit back all the things she longed to say, that he was cynical and jaded, that he appeared not to believe in love, and that he was therefore belittling that which he didn’t understand. It was not her place, she cautioned herself. Not her place. They fell into a silence she knew was mutually urged by aggravation with the other’s views. He had kept his tone even, but he was clearly vexed by her defiance of his judgment.

  They went a ways in that obstinate silence, but finally he broke it. “Mrs. Douglas, I have a question to ask of you, and I hope you don’t take it amiss. But it is important enough that I feel I must, even though I will be prying.”

  She couldn’t imagine what it was, but she feared that it would be about her own feelings for him, for she often felt that she had shown her preference, blushing at his touch, becoming too vivacious in his presence, letting her glance linger and meet with his much too often. Even now, irritated with him, she was aware of a frisson of nervous attraction that hummed beneath her vexation. She swallowed. “I d-don’t have anything to hide, your grace.”

  He cast her a shrewd look, his thick eyebrows shadowing his dark eyes; she caught a mocking expression even in her side-glance at him. Her heart thudding sickly in her breast, she waited, but he merely watched her for a moment. She wanted to stop the cart and run away. She felt like squirming in her seat like a five-year-old child, but held the reins with what grace she could muster. Lily plodded on, and for once she wished the pony younger and livelier. They would be back at the cottage by now in that case.

  “I have noted, over the past few weeks,” he said, “a certain . . . softness or . . . how should I put this? Your behavior seems to me to be that of a woman interested in a man.”

  She felt ill. He had noticed. Swallowing, her heart thudding, she kept her eye on the road.

  “One particular man, in fact. I don’t know how else to say this, so I must be blunt. Please, Mrs. Douglas, forgive me for this direct questioning.”

  She waited, dreading his question. If she was honest, how would he consider her impertinence in that attraction toward him that had no benefit to either, no prudence? Especially given what she now knew of his cynical view of life and women. Did he ask her just to put to rest any hopes she might have in his direction? How humiliating it would be if that was so. She must maintain her dignity.

  “Are you truly leaving here with Lord Orkenay at the end of his stay?”

  The question, so unexpected, pulled all the air from her lungs in a whoosh, leaving her breathless and gasping. Spluttering, she feared, like a hooked fish, she knew her face was turning a fiery red. She glared over at him and swiftly looked away, back at the rutted road, thankful they were almost to the cottage gate. “I c-cannot believe you would ask me that question.”

  He was watching her; she could feel his gaze, steady, impenetrable, judgmental. “Will you answer?”

  Resentment welled up in her bosom. She stared straight down the road, tears threatening, as they did when she was most angry. How dare he even think that, much less . . . but then the thought tripped into her mind on tiptoes: What if Lord Orkenay had said something about his invitation to her? But no, if that was true, then he also would have told the duke of her absolute refusal, and the duke had merely said it was from his own observation. So he was just guessing and being unbearably discourteous, even if he was a duke and Lady Eliza’s nephew.

  She took in a long, deep breath, the threatening tears drying and coolness invading her heart. “I don’t think I will answer,” she said calmly, pulling the pony cart up in front of the cottage. Jacob hobbled out of the stable beyond the garden and took the reins from her as she clambered down, not waiting for the duke.

  “What do you mean, you won’t?”

  She turned, watched him climb down awkwardly, his large frame unfolding from the pony cart like a jackknife. “Will not; won’t is a contraction, your grace, in case you have forgotten grammar. And it means just what I said.” Her anger made her strong and she welcomed it like a fresh wave of cold air from the fell above. “I won’t answer.”

  He pointed a finger at her and said, “Orkenay is merely toying with you, Mrs. Douglas. He is accustomed to much more sophisticated women, so if you think he will eventually make you his wife, don’t for a second entertain the notion. If he ever does marry it will not be to a woman so far beneath him socially.”

  He had broken her, there, burrowed beneath her cool exterior with that scathing reminder of how far down on the social scale she was compared to him and his friends. Tears of fury welled into her eyes, but she would not let him see how his arrogance affected her. She turned away from him and strode to the house, spi
lling packages out of her basket as she fled.

  • • •

  Alban returned to his hunting manse and reflected for the rest of the afternoon on Mrs. Douglas’s behavior. If there had been nothing in what he was asking she would have just told him that it was ridiculous to even think. He couldn’t begin to figure out what the rapid shifts of emotion on her face had denoted, but he had read evasion at one point, being far too familiar with that from his experiences with Catherine and Jacqueline.

  Ah, yes . . . Catherine. His beloved, his wife, the woman he had graced with the title of his duchess. She had every refinement and every favor of birth, a fitting wife for a duke. And yet . . .

  He sat in the library nominally reading a letter from a London friend before getting ready to join the ladies for dinner at Bodenthorpe, but in truth obsessively reflecting on the morning’s conversation with Kittie Douglas. He could not keep from going over every moment, the shadowy play of emotions on her lovely face. Anger. Fear. Regret. Anger again. And an evasiveness had strongly reminded him of how his wife had acted in the last days before her departure with her paramour, and how Jacqueline had behaved in the days before he discovered her perfidious treachery.

  Men had the mistaken notion that women were softhearted doves, when really, by necessity, they only looked out for their own benefit. If a woman could not or would not give him a straight answer then he must suspect double dealing. He had sworn to himself never to be misled again.

  Sir John poked his head through the library door and said, “I say, Alban, are you going to walk down to Bodenthorpe with Orkenay and I?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am. If I ever want to see Bart again, I must go there, eh?”

  The younger man grinned and stepped into the library. He glanced around and gave an appreciative whistle. “This is an impressive collection of books,” he said, scanning the shelves, “for a hunting box, anyway. You must be a bibliophile.”

  “My father was,” Alban said. He watched the younger man. “So why are you really here?” he said on a whim, and was surprised by the other man’s guilty start.

  “Whatever do you mean, your grace? I came to tell you Orkenay and I are ready to walk down to the cottage.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said, the flitting thought solidified by that jolt of guilt and awareness. “Why did you insinuate yourself in this trip? You never went out of your way to befriend me until you found I was coming north. And you are no dilettante. I know there are political stirrings up here, insurrectionist murmurings and Luddite talk. And I know that you have some position attached to someone in government. I think you can trust me, Sir John, if you have some other motive than just a hunting holiday.”

  “Sir,” he said, cocking his head on one side. “If I had anything to tell you, I know there is no one in the world I could more properly trust.”

  More evasion, Alban thought with a sigh, but at least this time he felt it had little to do with him. He stood and stretched, setting his letter aside to be perused another day. “Let’s go see the ladies. I wouldn’t want to keep you away from Lady Severn’s side any longer than necessary.”

  • • •

  Dinner had been dull, Alban thought, with even his aunt abstracted. They had retired to the small drawing room and Lady Severn was playing the piano, with Sir John to turn her music for her, while Bart and Hannah Billings sat together and murmured sweet nothings in each other’s ears, billing and cooing like lovebirds. Orkenay sat down with Lady Eliza and engaged her in an animated conversation about days gone past in London.

  Kittie Douglas had placed herself in the shadows almost behind Lady Eliza’s chair and deliberately chosen an activity, he noted, that was not a sociable pastime. She knitted. He sat back in a large chair and watched for a moment. Knitting. He was struck, suddenly, by the knowledge that the flood of gifts he had received in the last three years, all hand-knit goods purportedly coming from his aunt, must have been made by her very own beautiful hands, for Lady Eliza had never knit a stitch in her life.

  And such intimate items! Stockings and woolen garments to be worn against the skin to fend off the cold of a Yorkshire winter, all perfectly fitted to his large frame. Candlelight glinted off her needles and highlighted her pale, quick hands. He had worn a pair of her well-knit stockings just that morning against the chill, and as he thought of such things, he found the notion oddly to be faintly arousing, that she had been knitting away, creating items, reflecting on the right size for him, measuring, calculating.

  She looked up, noticed his gaze on her and, her cheeks pinkening, turned her attention back to the work in her hands.

  But she was aware, after that, of his observation and dropped a stitch on occasion, the rapid click of her needles slowing as she became clumsy under his regard. And that was more entertaining and gratifying than any mere conversation. He had never met a woman who so irritated him at the same time as she attracted him. Yet that could not last, his ability to rattle her just with his steady regard. With a murmured word to Lady Eliza, who nodded, she swiftly stood, took up her shawl, crossed the room and opened the doors out to the terrace. She slipped out into the night.

  • • •

  The cool air welcomed Kittie, whose cheeks burned with mortification that the duke could still, for all his boorishness earlier in the day, affect her by merely watching her so closely. His presence haunted her day and night, and she would be glad—more than glad, rapturous—when he was gone. It was merely physical attraction . . . it had to be that! She had certainly had inappropriate thoughts about him, unfortunately finding that his breadth of shoulder and muscular build made her preternaturally aware of the sinew and entrancing brawn that flexed and shifted under his well-fitted clothes. It left her quite breathless.

  What was wrong with her? She flattened her palms over her flaming cheeks, feeling the heat even now as she paced to the edge of the terrace and gazed out over the moon-touched grass. His rudeness that morning had left her cold, that was for sure. And yes, it had a salutary effect even now, many hours later. Who was he to ask such impertinent questions of her? She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Anger cooled her. Perhaps it was a good thing that the duke was not the courteous, generous, loving man of his letters, for then she would surely make a fool of herself over him.

  The terrace door opened and someone slipped out, moving in the shadows. Oh, how she hoped it wasn’t the earl or even worse the— The duke. She smelled cigar smoke and heard the particular cadence of his stride. Did he follow her to make her miserable? Did he want to bait her? Torment her?

  He moved out of the shadows. “Mrs. Douglas, are you not coming back in? Lady Severn was asking where you were, so I said I would step out and see if you were all right.”

  Rebecca! Desperately inappropriate matchmaker. The woman, for all her practicality in her own life, had a romantic streak in her. The worst thing Kittie could ever have done was confess her attraction to the duke. She sighed in frustration and moved back toward the doors. “I will go in, then, and rejoin my friends. It certainly is rude of me to—”

  “No,” he said and put one hand on her shoulder.

  She stared at it, unable to raise her gaze to his face. It was a big hand, with blue veins tracing across the surface and brown hairs bristling. A strong hand. A capable hand. Perhaps it was not good to concentrate so fiercely on his hands. She looked up into his eyes.

  He circled her, leaning in and catching her scent. “You smell wonderful, like . . . roses.”

  She turned, watching him with uneasiness shivering through her to the marrow. The autumnal gloom of the stone terrace cast his hawkish features into harsh relief.

  “You’ve been less than honest with me, Mrs. Douglas,” he said, finally stopping in front of her.

  She felt a jolt of trepidation, thinking he might be talking again about his friend, the earl, and that man’s advances. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you have been dissembling about the woolen stockings a
nd other unmentionables my aunt regularly sends me as gifts. You’re the one who has been knitting them these past couple of years.”

  She sighed with relief. “Well . . . yes. But it would not have been seemly,” she said primly, pulling her woolen shawl closer around her, “for me to have sent them to you myself, and you a stranger and a duke, and not even related to me. I merely sent them along with her ladyship’s letters, without comment. There was no dissembling in that.”

  He moved to stand behind her and put his massive hands on her shoulders. They engulfed her wool-clad shoulders; he caressed and squeezed. His warm, moist breath bathed her neck and she felt a moment of panic at the yearning it raised within her and the fleeting shadow images that chased through her brain of midnight thoughts and longings. Thanking providence that she was not transparent so he could see and hear how her heart thumped at his touch, she stayed resolutely still.

  “I feel as if you know me intimately, for you know, never have my unmentionables clung to me so closely, nor been so superbly fitted to my form. The stockings caress my legs,” he murmured. “The singlets mold to my chest like warm hands. How much do you know about a man’s body, Mrs. Douglas?”

  “I was married, your grace,” she retorted, twisting out of his grip and facing him, reluctant to admit to the desire that warred with her caution. He was an attractive man and never had she been more aware of it than at that moment. “Or have you forgotten?”

  “Mmm, yes. So you know men’s bodies intimately.”

  “Only one man’s body, your grace,” she replied, keeping her tone acid. She squinted against the gathering gloom of twilight, watching him carefully and keeping a safe distance between them. In case he did not get her meaning she said, in a loud voice, “Only one man’s body, and he my husband.”