The Duke’s Embrace: 12 Dukes of Christmas #7

by Erica Ridley

  And so would he.

  Chapter 11

  Bastien’s breeches were so tight he feared his fall might burst open on its own, flinging buttons left and right as his arousal broke free from its restraints. Or perhaps it was Bastien who was ripping away the feeble wisps of propriety that had kept them from stealing anything more than a kiss.

  Eve didn’t want restrained kisses. Her fingers twisted in his hair, locking him to her breast, as though there was anywhere else he’d rather be.

  Perhaps there was.

  Her erotic little moans and the irresistible way she writhed against his stroking fingers indicated she was very close to the precipice. He wanted to be there to taste it.

  He left his hand where it was and lowered his mouth between her legs.

  “Sébastien,” was all she managed before coming apart.

  Only when the last tremor faded did he kiss his way up her body, over her chest, up the curve of her neck, then lay down beside her.

  She frowned. “What are you doing?”

  “Cuddling you.” He stopped. “You don’t like it?”

  “I adore it. But can we do it… afterward?”

  “After…” His throat dried.

  She wasn’t done with him. She was just getting started.

  He touched her cheek. “Eve…”

  She untied his cravat. Rather than toss the linen square aside, she left it hanging about his neck and used both corners to pull him to her.

  An excellent rebuttal. Now that his body pressed against hers and their mouths were locked in a kiss, Bastien was completely incapable of heroically summoning a single whisper of restraint.

  By all accounts, Eve should not give herself to him but hold out for marriage—or at least someone who would still be here in the new year. He was not the man her father hoped she’d find, and they both knew it.

  But she was also Eve. Who should be in charge of her life, but her? Should her limitations be what others placed upon her, or what she herself wished to have and to do? She wanted him. He wanted her. This moment was about pleasing each other, not the rest of the world.

  And there was nothing he wanted more than to please her.

  If his kisses were hungrier than before, his movements more urgent, it was because now that he realized they could have it all, he didn’t want to waste a single moment.

  Why was she still wearing a dress? Gone. That flimsy linen shift? Gone. His waistcoat, shirt, breeches? Gone, gone, gone. Now there was nothing between them, not even a breath of cool air. Just heated flesh against heated flesh, rubbing, touching, teasing, kissing, tasting.

  When he nudged within her at last, fingers entwined atop the pillow, her hands tightened on his and a slight gasp interrupted their kiss.

  He paused, his heart twisting. He hadn’t meant to hurt her; had never been in a situation where it might happen. But already her kisses were impatient, her thighs relaxed and welcoming.

  She wrapped her legs about his hips and all control was lost. His only goal was to coax her to the peak again, to send her flying over, and then to join her in succumbing completely to pleasure.

  Only after she breathed his name a second time and clamped her muscles around him in ecstasy, did he allow himself several uninhibited thrusts of absolute heaven before burying his hips in the blanket beside her and muffling his moan in the pillow.

  Spent, he flung an arm over her, curled himself about her softness, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He closed his eyes, breathing in her scent and enjoying her warmth as he drifted half in and out of consciousness.

  He would have happily held her snuggled close to his chest all night long, had her dog not chosen that moment to release an ear-piercing howl just outside Bastien’s bedchamber window.

  “Duenna.” Eve sprang out of his arms in a heartbeat. “I have to go.”

  She was tucked away inside her shift and her gown faster than Bastien could pull on his shirt and breeches.

  Was she happy? Horrified? Embarrassed?

  He hopped after her with one boot on and the other clutched in his hand. “Eve—”

  But she was out the door and gone, her dog bounding along beside her.

  Bastien leaned against the wall to tug on his other boot, but did not give chase after her. If she wanted to go, that was her choice. If she’d wanted him to come with her, she would have said. If she regretted their intimacy, he would not press unwelcome advances upon her. If she’d enjoyed every moment and wished to do it again…

  Well, his calendar could be made free tomorrow.

  Lucien walked around the corner and glared at him. “Why is the door open?”

  “I was… looking outside.”

  “We have windows.” Lucien arched a brow. “And it is dark.”

  Bastien reached for the door handle, then paused to see two figures striding down the path toward the cottage, one in skirts and the other in a tailcoat. His hands went clammy.

  Lucien narrowed his eyes. “Qu’est-ce que c'est?”

  “I might have just…” Bastien lifted a shaking hand to tug nervously upon his cravat, only to realize it still lay discarded on his bedchamber floor. “Er…”

  “Is it too late at night for a neighborly visit?” called out a cheerful female voice.

  Was it possible to have an apoplexy out of relief? Bastien’s heart was certainly making the attempt. The unexpected visitors were not Eve and her father after all, but Olive Harper and her father Gilbert from the stud farm next door.

  Lucien crossed his arms rather than respond. He understood the question, but hated to appear less than perfect in anything. Lucien would rather be judged sulky or a misanthrope than to falter in his English. He believed displaying one’s vulnerabilities to be a sign of weakness, and did not realize that by practicing his English with the people he was so careful to avoid, he might rid himself of the supposed weakness altogether.

  “Come in, come in.” Bastien welcomed them grandly. “We haven’t any tea, but we do have several chairs and a warm fire.”

  “We didn’t come for tea,” Olive said once they were settled in the parlor. “We’d like to make an offer.”

  Lucien leaned forward. “Une bonne offre?”

  “What kind of offer?” Bastien relaxed into his chair.

  “For the smithy.” She folded her hands in her lap and named a number.

  The stiff sides of Bastien’s wingback chair were the only thing that had prevented him from tumbling to the floor. He had worked out a best-case price and a worst-case price, and Olive’s number was barely a percentage shy of the best-case price.

  “Oui,” Lucien hissed. “Tell her yes.”

  He was right. This would be more than enough money to purchase a small gîte in France to live in while they awaited the outcome of their petition.

  Bastien crossed his arms. No one in the Harper family was a blacksmith. “What would you do with the smithy?”

  Lucien stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Who cares? We will be in France.”

  Bastien cared. If they sold the smithy to someone who couldn’t keep it open… what would happen to Cressmouth?

  Olive made several hurried gestures to her father.

  He responded in kind.

  Although Bastien didn’t comprehend the rapid hand signs, he never minded watching them converse silently. If anything, Olive’s relationship with her father held similarities to Bastien’s relationship with Lucien. Neither Lucien nor Mr. Harper could speak for themselves, but they very much still deserved to be an equal part of the conversation.

  Olive turned back to Bastien. “We’ll find a blacksmith to rent it from us at a profit.”

  They intended to make a similar bargain to the one Mr. Marlowe had made with Uncle Jasper. Only with the Harpers, Bastien suspected they would include a possibility for the new lessee to gain financial independence.

  “Magnifique.” Lucien stared daggers at Bastien. “Sell it.”

  “I need a fortnight,” B
astien answered in English.

  Olive arched her brows. “Has there been another offer?”

  “Not yet,” he admitted. “But we’ve an advertisement placed in the next Gazette, which ships on Tuesday. If there’s no interest within a fortnight, we’ll take your offer.”

  “And if there is interest?”

  “All things being equal, we prefer to sell to a blacksmith.”

  “I do not prefer!” Lucien hissed. “We prefer money.”

  Olive made more gestures to her father.

  He gestured back and gave a smug smile.

  This time when Olive turned around, the number she named matched Bastien’s best-case calculations to the penny.

  “Yes,” Lucien croaked in heavily accented but perfectly understandable English.

  “No,” Bastien said just as firmly.

  He hated gainsaying his brother, particularly at such a vital moment when Lucien had finally risked speaking his first word of English in front of actual English people, but Bastien could not chance that the best case for les frères le Duc resulted in the worst case for Cressmouth.

  He was willing to leave this village behind, not leave it in shambles.

  “A fortnight,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I will give you the courtesy of making a counteroffer before we sign any contracts.”

  Olive pushed to her feet and her father did the same. They did not appear to be perturbed in any way.

  As next-door neighbors, the Harpers and le Ducs had always shared a friendly, easy relationship. And as the richest full-time residents, the Harpers didn’t need the smithy. They could make virtually any investment they wished anywhere in England. They were intelligent enough not to make an offer unless it was a wise business decision for the family, but they were also considerate enough to direct their wealth in an act of kindness toward their neighbors.

  As soon as they were gone, Lucien spun toward Bastien. “What is wrong with you?”

  “A fortnight is just fourteen days,” Bastien reminded him. “We’ll be here for six more weeks. We have the time to do this correctly. Now that our new ‘worst case’ has become ‘accept every penny we’d ever hoped for from the Harpers,’ isn’t it worth a mere fortnight to see if we can get an even better ‘best case?’”

  Instead of glaring in response, the corners of Lucien’s eyes crinkled, and he grinned at his brother.

  “You did it!” He clapped Bastien on the shoulder and all but danced about the entryway. “If it’s the worst case, we leave the morning after Twelfth Night as planned with the Harpers’ gold in our pockets. If it’s best case, we won’t even need it. Louis-Philippe will help restore our land, and we can spend the rest of our lives doing anything we want.”

  Anything he wanted. Bastien certainly liked the sound of that. Except, anytime he tried to picture exactly what he wanted…

  All he could see was Eve.

  Chapter 12

  When Eve returned home from the market the following afternoon, her father was waiting for her at the front door with his walking-stick in one hand and her test print of the Gazette’s front page in the other.

  His face was purple.

  He shook the wrinkled test print at her as she hefted her purchases onto the closest table.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  “That,” she answered calmly, “is the front page of the December Cressmouth Gazette.”

  “Not anymore.” He crumpled the paper into a ball and hurled it into the fire. “I removed that ridiculous article from the type.”

  “You what?” Eve whirled to face him, no longer calm in the slightest. “I spent all night setting and perfecting that type!”

  “You said you were going to write about locals.” Father’s eyes flashed. “Not the le Duc brothers.”

  She pointed out the window. “Their smithy is half a mile down the road. They’re local.”

  His jaw was set. “They’re not from here.”

  “They are now!” Her muscles tightened at the unfairness.

  “Not for long,” Father pointed out with satisfaction. “You said it yourself in your little article. Their home is France, not England, and they’re finally going back to where they belong.”

  Her hands shook. “That is not what I said.”

  Now more than ever she wanted her story to run on the front page, just to prove her father wrong.

  Eve lifted her chin. “Bastien and Lucien are good people, and they’re important members of this community.”

  “The Cressmouth Gazette is supposed to please everyone.” He spoke as though she was a child. “They read it to hear about Christmas. No one cares about the le Duc family.”

  She stared at him. “You cannot make baseless assumptions about people just because they happen to be French. You might not show interest in their family, but plenty of others do. The Le Ducs matter. Literally half our village crowded into the castle chapel for a glimpse of Désirée le Duc’s wedding.”

  “Then write about weddings, if our subscribers must have idle gossip with their holiday cheer. And if the subject need be a duke… Why not Azureford?”

  Her jaw tightened. “His Grace’s wedding was a month ago.”

  Father continued undeterred. “How about… the Duke of Nottingvale?”

  “He’s not even here,” Eve bit out. “His annual Christmastide house party isn’t until Christmas.”

  “But he could fall in love at his party once he does arrive.” Father wriggled his brows. “Speculate on that. He’s an Englishman and an aristocrat. It’ll be a lovely article.”

  “Publicly speculate on the fictional marital interests of the very real, very powerful Duke of Nottingvale?” She let out a dry laugh. “That’s not an article, Father. That’s a lawsuit. He’ll shut the Cressmouth Gazette down if I invent ‘false news’ about him.”

  “It won’t matter.” Father shrugged without meeting her gaze. “This is our last issue anyway.”

  “What?” She staggered backward, her pulse skittering in horror.

  It couldn’t be the last issue! The Cressmouth Gazette was Eve’s life.

  “I’m old.” He lifted his walking-stick. “I’m in pain.”

  “But I do everything!” Her voice sounded tinny and desperate, even to her own ears. “I write, I design, I set the type… The inking and printing takes two people, and Margaret often helps. But now that we have a footman, I can ask Anderson—”

  “We have better odds of being able to keep our footman by ending the Gazette,” Father said wearily. “I am five-and-sixty. I’m more than ready to retire from responsibilities, but our household needs money. The paper turns a small profit, but we spend so much on shipping and materials that we would actually be wealthier if we sold the printing press and have done.”

  “I don’t want to ‘have done,’” she stammered. “You can retire, and I’ll run it by myself. I’ll be our footman too, if I have to be. Just let me—”

  “I am letting you.” His voice was surprisingly tender. “How many times have you told me the Gazette was your steppingstone to greener pastures? This is your chance to go find them.”

  Her one chance. The front page of the Gazette needed to be worth every single lovingly placed piece of type if she wanted a prayer of convincing a legitimate newspaper that she was capable of actual journalism.

  “You’re right.” She struggled for breath. “‘The Smithy at the Heart of Christmas’ is the wrong story to run.”

  Father patted her on the shoulder. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

  What she saw was that she needed something bigger. Much bigger. The smithy could be part of it, but she needed a hook, a controversy, a reason for everyone to ask each other, Have you read the article in the Cressmouth Gazette?

  She needed the le Ducs.

  Heart pounding, she pushed the basket of vegetables aside. “I’m taking Duenna for a walk.”

  Father nodded absently. “I’ll be in my study.”

&
nbsp; “What do you do in there?” she asked his retreating back.

  He paused to toss a rueful look over his shoulder.

  “Sleep,” he admitted. “Lying flat isn’t comfortable for me anymore, and when my joints lock, it’s hard to get out of bed. But I’ve found if I prop myself just so in a chair with a footstool before the fire… Sometimes I can sleep for thirty or forty minutes at a time.”

  She stared after him wordlessly as he thumped into his study and shut the door.

  He meant it, she realized. He was old, he was tired, he was in pain, and he might even think he was doing her a favor. Cutting the apron strings. Finally granting the baby bird the autonomy to fly free of the nest.

  But she couldn’t do any of those things without having proper credits to her name. Something thought-provoking and unforgettable.

  Someone like Bastien.

  “Come on, Duenna.” She opened the front door and her bullmastiff shot out like a cannonball.

  She’d write about the smithy, and why it was an important feature of the community. And with Bastien’s permission, she’d also write about what brought them here in the first place. How they’d gone from heirs to blacksmiths. How commoners had murdered aristocrats like the le Ducs’ parents. And, of course, she’d also explain exactly what it was the revolutionaries were fighting for.

  Was England one “peasant revolt” away from equality for all? Or, like France, would royalists win out in the end? Regardless of which side one believed to be right, was violence ever the answer?

  That was an article. Sensational, yet full of substance. Political and divisive. Written with both sensitivity and empathy. Editors of the broadsheets didn’t have to agree with Eve’s words. They just had to agree she could write. The Le Ducs weren’t mere news fodder. They were people, and deserved to be treated as such.

  Eve walked faster. She’d print the copies without waiting for her father’s approval. Eve was the one who handled the shipping; she could start a few days early. The paper would be inked and out of the door before Father knew what she’d done.