The Duchess War

by Courtney Milan

  Chapter Six

  Robert’s dream that night—as so many of his dreams were these days—was charged with sexual longing.

  In this dream, he had Minnie where he’d first met her: behind the davenport in the Guildhall library, the curtains shielding them from all eyes. This time, though, instead of listening to someone else’s conversation, they heard the gentle murmur of ocean waves. Neither remarked on the oddity of the sea in a library. Instead of being fully clothed, Robert wore nothing at all—and she was stripped to the waist. The dream version of Minnie smiled up at him with inviting allure. Her honey-brown hair was down and it curled over her shoulders, framing naked breasts tipped with deep rose. Those breasts brushed his knees as she knelt before him and took the length of his cock in her mouth.

  The details of his dreams were always frustratingly vague. He couldn’t feel the wet heat of her mouth or the pressure of her tongue. There was only the fire of his own burning lust and a dulled sensation of want. But at least in dreams, one needn’t worry about morality or consequences. In dreams, there was nothing but the physical truth of desire, and that had him firmly in its grip.

  In his dream, she was very, very good. He knew it, even though he could not quite feel it. No matter how he pivoted, no matter how he held her, he couldn’t really touch her. Just the force of his own red-hot desire growing with every stroke. He could only lust, and lust, and lust again.

  “God, Minnie,” he begged in his dream. “Give me what I want.”

  But instead of taking him harder—or shifting herself so that he could plunge inside her—the dream Minnie simply looked up at him and sat back on her heels. “If you insist,” she said with a coquettish smile. She leaned in, and suddenly, as these things were in dreams, she was whispering in his ear. “I know who you are.”

  The shock was so great that it woke him. He blinked, blearily. It was the middle of the night, and silence reigned. His bedchamber was dark. Even though he’d tossed off most of the covers in his sleep, he felt as if he were burning with fever. His cock was rock-hard, his body shuddering with tension, demanding relief. And he couldn’t dispel the image from his dream. Miss Pursling, unclothed, her hair down to her shoulders, looking up at him with that brilliant smile.

  God.

  He’d thought that it would have been hard to explain what he saw in her to his friends. She wasn’t classically pretty; she wasn’t even striking. And while her figure had much to recommend itself, he was aware that there were better.

  Maybe it was simply this: When first she’d seen him, she hadn’t seen a duke, but a man who wrote radical handbills.

  I know who you are.

  His left hand slid around his erection.

  Robert believed in restraint. He made it a point not to emulate his father. He refused to be the kind of man who took a woman just because he fancied her. But, damn it, sometimes he wished he were. He wished he were with every part of his being.

  He threw off the sheets that still covered him and let the cold air wash over him. It did no good.

  It never did any good, not by itself. Instead, he slid his palm down his cock, ever so slowly, letting himself fall into that familiar rhythm. He let the dream play back in his mind—Minnie on her knees, Minnie smiling up at him as her lips closed around his member. He stroked himself in short, sharp jerks, letting them come faster and more urgent until the moment of climax came.

  And in that moment, he imagined Minnie giving him that smile—a smile that held nothing back—and saying that she knew who he was. He bit his lip against the savage pleasure that filled him.

  It took a few moments for reason to find him afterward, for him to admit that he found himself in a state that was unusually fixed on one person. This was not the first time he’d dreamed of her. It wasn’t the first time he’d awoken in a fit of wanton lust and indulged himself, either. In his mind, he’d had her against walls and in beds. The beauty of masturbation was that he always got what he wanted, how he wanted it. Nobody was hurt, and it left no lasting effects.

  I know who you are.

  He stared into the darkness of the night. It had just been a dream, of course. Things happened in dreams that had no bearing whatsoever on reality. If his dreams had any relation to the truth, he’d have been exiled from decent company years before. Still, dreams often served as a lever for his lust. He’d wake in a fever, would think about the images from his dream as he brought himself to climax, and the combination of the dream and his own efforts alleviated the worst of his frustrations.

  But there weren’t enough orgasms in the world to give him relief from the want that coiled about him now. Up until this point, he’d had the good sense to indulge in desires that he could easily satisfy. No reason to change that now.

  I know who you are.

  He stared into the darkness and wished those words away. Instead, they hung about him, unsaid and yet still ringing in his ears.

  She didn’t think he was his father. He wanted her to know who he was. And he wanted to know her back.

  Despite Robert’s best efforts, it was a week before he saw Miss Pursling again—and that was a meeting he had to engineer.

  He’d made a donation of one hundred pounds to the Workers’ Hygiene Commission. That made him one of their patrons—and wouldn’t it make sense to see how his money would be spent?

  The Commission, however, didn’t meet in a respectable private room at the Three Crowns Hotel, or in the front room of the Bell. It met instead on the outskirts of the old town, at a run-down place called the Nag’s Head Hostelry.

  Robert arrived ten minutes after the appointed time and drew no eyes at all when he slipped into the room behind a barmaid. She bustled about the room in swift competence, filling the ladies’ cups with what looked like barley water, pouring weak beer for the gentlemen, swiping up the inevitable spills with a wide, dirty towel that hung from her apron strings.

  Nobody paid any attention, they were already so intent on their argument.

  He made his way to a chair in the back and sat down.

  Not only was this particular commission held in an odd location, but the composition was surprising. He’d sat on enough charitable boards to know what to expect—a few wealthy people, who’d been asked for their money and their connections, rather than their knowledge, interspersed with a few professional folks. But here, there was a man he remembered as a doctor. There was Captain Stevens. Miss Pursling, of course, seated next to a wealthy-looking older woman. Those formed the usual sort that made up these charity boards. But across the table, there sat a young woman, maybe Miss Pursling’s age, dressed in a serviceable shirtwaist. Next to her was an older, grizzled man dressed in well-patched tweed. One seat over was a plump woman in a high-necked black wool gown, complete with a round, black collar—the kind of uniform that shouted that she was in service. Half the participants had the look of working people.

  That made it like no charity that Robert had ever seen. He leaned forward in interest.

  Stevens was shaking his head. “Well,” he muttered, “we’ll worry about that later. Miss Pursling, you have your report on the disinfectant?”

  Miss Pursling nodded. Her back was to him, and he could see her curls dip against her neck. They were interesting, those curls of hers, not the fat sausage curls that were carefully constructed by maids with irons. These curls were a masquerade—a little too corkscrewed, too wild. He rather suspected her hair had a natural curl to it, one that no iron could tame into regular twists of hair.

  “The board of the Cooperative met last evening.” He had to strain to hear her talk. Her voice was clear, but so quiet. “They agreed to sell the disinfecting solution at their cost—provided that we mention the Cooperative in the handbill. They were eventually convinced that the advertisement was compensation enough.”

  A strange way to say it—they were eventually convinced. Another person would have said I convinced them, thus claiming the credit. Robert steepled his fingers.

&nbs
p; All he could see of her was the back of her head, the lovely flare of her waist, that small hint of hip before her bustle and crinolines obscured all her natural curves. As she spoke, she turned her head. She was still faced three-quarters away from him. He couldn’t see her eyes—just her cheek and that faint web of a scar. But she was wearing her spectacles and reading from the papers in front of her.

  Oh, yes. He’d thought of her in the intervening week. He’d thought of her so much that he was no longer put off by her quiet speech, her downcast eyes. No matter how unlikely it seemed, Miss Pursling had convinced everyone here that she was next to nothing. The truth of her competence seemed an intimate secret between them.

  “What’ll be the cost of the solution, then?” one of the working girls asked. Her voice was normal, but next to Miss Pursling’s quiet tones, she sounded almost loud.

  “A shilling per bottle. If used sparingly, that amount ought to last a household of six or seven a full month. Miss Peters, is that a reasonable sum to expect of a working family, or must we find a way to further subsidize the cost?” Miss Pursling tilted her head toward the youngest of the working girls.

  The other girl bent down to a notebook and flipped through it. “Mm,” she said. “That…should be sufficient.”

  “Foolishness,” Stevens interrupted. “It’s all foolishness, as I’ve said—the instructions on disinfection, the solution, the handbills.” He cast a hard look at Miss Pursling. It was a look that said that he’d not taken Robert’s last warning to heart—that he still thought ill of her.

  “Surely not all foolishness,” Miss Peters put in. “After all—”

  Robert leaned forward.

  Stevens slammed his hand on the table. “There’d be no need for disinfection if those infernal monkey workers would just vaccinate their children as required by law.”

  The man in patched tweed shot to his feet. “Blast me if I let some vaccinator stick my children with pins made of some disease!”

  “My mum, she was inoculated and died the next week!”

  The plump woman leaned across the table. “Well, I had my Jess get the vaccine, and he still took sick of the smallpox and lost his sight. Turned out the vaccinator had run out when we came, so he just used spirits and charged the same anyway!”

  Half the people at the table had come to their feet; they glowered uniformly at the captain. One wrong word, and the whole thing might explode into violence.

  In that tense atmosphere, Miss Pursling slid back in her seat, her back utterly straight. Her hand rose to touch the scar on her face, fingering it as if it were a talisman against future harm.

  “Stevens,” said a man with a low drawl, “surely I have as much interest in vaccinations as you do.”

  That came from a dark-haired man sitting near the foot of the table—Doctor Grantham, a young man who had a practice on Belvoir Street. His words cut through the gathering tension, and Miss Pursling let out a little sigh, leaning against the back of her seat.

  Grantham toyed idly with his fountain pen. “But in my practice, I’ve learned that I must treat the patients I have, not the ones I wish I had.”

  Stevens glowered. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Grantham shrugged. “I wish I had patients who had meat and vegetables at every meal, clean water to wash with, and windows in every room. I wish I had patients who didn’t need to stoop to work.” His pen tapped against his knuckles as he spoke. “Hard on the spine and the internal organs, stooping.” He shrugged. “I wish I had patients who made twice as much in the factories, too. But alas, I take the patients I have.”

  “You tell him, Doctor,” murmured the plump woman.

  “Letting them make such decisions on their own leads to thoughts of self-governance,” Stevens hissed. “Talk of making their own rules. Next you know, we’ll have another episode of the Chartists to put down. Already people are talking about the vote. This town is a powder-keg of unrest, and you lot are waving a torch.” By his gesture, Stevens implicated not only Grantham, but Miss Pursling as well. “All this talk is giving them ideas.”

  Grantham smiled and leaned forward. “In the course of my medical training, did you know that I learned that all people use brains? Even paupers and working men. They don’t need a wealthy person to give them ideas. They get them all on their own.”

  “Gentlemen.” Miss Pursling rapped the table with her knuckles, the first loud sound she’d made. “The question of vaccination is one we must put off for later. The topic for the moment is disinfectant—and might I remind you both that disinfectant helps prevent cholera and influenza, two diseases we cannot inoculate against in any event.”

  “Ah, Miss Pursling,” Grantham said softly. “Using facts to settle disputes. How bold of you.”

  Miss Pursling didn’t blink in response, but Robert rather thought she was discomfited by even that much recognition.

  “It’s settled then,” she said. “Marybeth Peters and I will post the handbills—”

  “Two women, wandering the streets alone?” Stevens said. “I should think not.”

  “If it comes to that,” Grantham put in, “I’ll come along. And Miss Pursling, perhaps you could bring your friend—Miss Charingford, is it not?”

  That would be the woman who had so recently baptized Stevens with her drink. At that jab, Stevens’s face mottled almost as red as the punch that had been tossed in his face more than a week ago.

  “The three of you posting leaflets about the Cooperative?” he sneered. “I won’t allow such a gathering of radicals in my town. Not under my nose. No, I’ll accompany them—and tell Miss Charingford to stay home where she belongs.”

  “As you’re afraid of a solitary woman,” Grantham said silkily, “I doubt you’ll be able to provide the protection that the ladies require. I’ll do it.”

  “To h—Hades with you,” Stevens snarled. “In fact, to Hades with this entire—”

  “I’ll do it,” Robert said.

  At the sound of his voice, they all turned to look at him. Miss Pursling’s eyes widened; Doctor Grantham looked at him quizzically. But Stevens turned utterly pale.

  “Surely,” Robert said, “you don’t suspect me of radical tendencies, do you, Stevens?”

  “Your Grace!” Stevens shot to his feet. “Of course not, Your Grace. But we wouldn’t dream of discommoding you. And…and, what are you doing here?”

  Robert waved the question away. “No inconvenience. It will give me a chance to see the town on foot.”

  Miss Pursling shot him a repressive look.

  “Miss Pursling has gone to all the trouble of convincing the Cooperative to sell this solution at a good price,” Robert said. “It would be my pleasure to see all her hard work vindicated.”

  If anything, Miss Pursling looked vexed at having credit so clearly assigned to her.

  But—“Agreed,” said Doctor Grantham.

  “Agreed,” growled Stevens.

  And that left only the details to sort out with Miss Pursling. She gave him only the one venomous look before looking off into the distance and folding her hands. She didn’t glance his way again through the remainder of the discussion—not even to glare at him. She didn’t acknowledge him as they stood. Instead, she started to gather up her things.

  He came up to her before she had a chance to disappear.

  “Shall I send a note, then, to determine an appropriate time to distribute the handbills?”

  She didn’t look at him, putting papers and a pencil into a slim satchel. “If it suits you, Your Grace.”

  “We could decide it now.”

  “If that is your wish, Your Grace.”

  She was pointedly giving him her profile—the side with the scar again. Objectively, he knew that the scar was the kind of failure in perfect symmetry that would have most men looking away from her, unwilling to even glance at the mark. But it didn’t bother him. She wore it like a mask at a ball, as if she could use it to push him away.

  “I am goin
g to be out of town for the next few days,” he told her. “I’ve agreed to accompany my cousin…well, never mind.”

  Miss Pursling ducked her head. “As you require, Your Grace. The corrected handbills won’t be printed for a few days in any event.”

  “Shall we say Thursday, then?”

  “Whatever is easiest for you.”

  “Then let’s meet at two in the morning,” he suggested. “When the bears come out to play.”

  She finally glanced up at that, a quick flashing look of anger that was just as quickly suppressed. Robert sighed. She did her best not to draw attention to herself—that quiet voice, that understated way of discussing her accomplishments. He wondered if there was any connection between that mark on her cheek and her reticence. Hers was not the quiet of the naturally shy, after all, but a silence of a different quality altogether.

  “Come, Miss Pursling,” he said. “You can do better than all of this. I didn’t think you were the sort to make idle threats.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She turned away from him slightly. And was that a lift to her nose?

  It was. She’d actually turned her nose up at him.

  Robert suppressed a grin.

  “We had a deal,” he said. He spoke low—so quietly that Doctor Grantham, now standing at the door and adjusting his coat, would not hear. “I flirt with you, and you try to destroy my reputation. You’re not upholding your end of the bargain. You haven’t done anything to me at all. I never took you for a welcher.”

  She tilted her head to look at him sidelong. “A thousand pardons, Your Grace.” She sounded anything but sorry. “Were you actually expecting me to give you progress reports?” As she spoke she did up the buckles on her satchel.

  “I figured you’d get a few preliminary jabs in, yes.”

  She gave him a frosty look. “Clearly you hold yourself to low standards. Whatever your faults may be, I do not jab prematurely.”

  He choked on a sputtering, outraged laugh and looked about. But there was no longer anyone around to hear that little remark.

  She folded up the sample handbill that she’d brought with her, now marked up with the Commission’s notes, and put it in her skirt pocket. “I surely don’t parade my strategy before my enemies. That would be idiotic.”

  “What you mean is that you’ve not yet discovered any kind of proof.”

  She gave him a level look and a shake of her head. “What I mean is that I’m not so foolishly prideful that I’ll disclose everything I’ve learned just because of a little inept needling on your part.”

  “Ouch,” he said ruefully. “You accuse me first of jabbing prematurely, and then of inept needling. Take pity on a man’s pride.”

  She smiled a little at that and leaned over and patted his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sweetly. “I had no notion that you would be so susceptible to the wilting of your…pride.” Said in a low, certain tone, that much innuendo sent a flash of heat through him. Wilting was the opposite of what he was doing. She hefted the satchel on her shoulder and headed for the door. She’d taken two steps before she turned around and gave him a low smile, one that seemed to stab straight through his gut. “I’m sure your prick is as massive as your head is thick.”

  There was no way he was going to let her walk out on that condescending, sexually-charged note, leaving him stewing in lust.

  He took three steps after her, setting his hand on her sleeve. “Wait.”

  But she didn’t, and so he found himself following after her, keeping silent as they made their way through the hostelry out onto the street. When they came out into the daylight, when they’d walked far enough that nobody was close enough to hear them, Robert spoke again.

  “What I meant to say was—I know you’ve discovered nothing. Under the guise of obtaining bids for that little handbill of yours, you’ve been to every printer in town, looking for evidence that they’re working with me. And you haven’t found a thing.”

  She paused at that, her head cocking, and turned to him. “You’ve been watching me,” she finally said.

  “Not as such. That would be rather sordid, having you followed about. But I have asked a few business acquaintances to let me know what you ask about.” He smiled at her. “As I didn’t precisely expect you to give me progress reports.”

  She shrugged. “It would be sordid if you had a lover followed about in a fit of jealous suspicion. But we’re enemies, recall. Keeping me under watch is merely prudent. I applaud it.”

  She started walking away again. Robert stared after her in bemusement.

  He tried to be honest with himself. He had to be, as so few others were. His friend, Sebastian, could charm the bloomers off even the most upright dragons of the ton—and had, on occasion. His brother had a razor-sharp wit on the one hand, and a way of making others comfortable on the other. Oliver could make ladies laugh.

  For himself… He could rarely think of how to respond when immersed in that heady back-and-forth. Sometimes he thought of clever things to say…hours later. Usually, he committed the worst sin possible: He said what he was really thinking. That was why he came out with gems like, I like your tits. Not one of his finest moments, that.

  “No,” he said, with a shake of his head, falling in step beside her. “Why do we have to be enemies? We could be…allies.”

  She squinted at him suspiciously. “Why? Because you need more half-blind near-spinsters on your side?”

  He winced.

  Her lips twitched. “Never mind. I saw you at the Finneys’. Clearly, you do.”

  He ignored this. “Because when you set out to prove that I was the author of the handbills, you first made a list of every printer in town, and then systematically visited them. You have a sense of…tactics. I appreciate that.”

  She tapped a gloved finger against her lips. “You keep saying that I found nothing,” she mused. “You’re wrong. I discovered that the handbills weren’t being printed in Leicester. As there’s only one possible suspect who is not a native, I think I’ve made quite an advance.”

  He blinked. He had the sense that he was lost in those quiet gray eyes, unable to look away from her. He was a duke. She was a—what had she called herself? A half-blind near-spinster. It shouldn’t even have been a fair fight.

  “You think,” she said, “because you’ve identified one purpose of mine, that you know what I’m doing. But this inquiry among the printers was something of a discovered attack.”

  Standing this close to her, he could begin to see the difference. She was still looking down, still acting shy and quiet so that anyone more than three paces away would have no idea what she was saying. But there was a little more excitement in her hands. Her lips twitched, on the verge of smiling.

  “What do you mean, a discovered attack?”

  “A tactical term.” She touched her fingertips together. “When you make a move, you do two things. First, you move forward—and the space you now occupy has value. But you also vacate the spot where you once were, exposing your enemy’s flank to longer-ranged attacks. Be aware of where you are, and the space you’ll leave behind.”

  “That’s not a sense of tactics you have,” he said, blinking down at her. “That sounds like actual tactical training. Where would a half-blind near-spinster acquire that?”

  Where would any woman get that, for that matter? But Miss Pursling didn’t seem to be rattled.

  “I have collected a stack of papers that will show you to be the culprit. What have you accomplished, Your Grace? You’ve pretended to flirt with me.”

  He blinked, utterly startled. She wasn’t looking at him. Of course she wasn’t looking at him. She studied the pavement beneath her feet as if she were just another pale, downtrodden woman, unable to look him in the eyes.

  “Pretending?” He felt almost dangerous. “You don’t meet my eyes. You whisper your clever responses. You shy away from any hint that you’re an intelligent woman. You’re the one who pretends, my dear
.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “That—that is just conformity to the pressures of society—”

  “Is it? Look up, Minnie. Look in my eyes. Let everyone on this street see what we both know is true. You’re not deferring to me. You’re challenging me. Look up.”

  She didn’t. Her head remained stubbornly bowed before him. He wanted to grab her and shake her. He wanted to tilt her chin up and force her to gaze in his eyes. He wanted—

  He wanted a great many things after that, none of which he was going to get from her by force.

  “I’m not pretending to flirt with you,” he said instead. “There’s no pretense in it. I want you. God, I want you.”

  She let out a little gasp and then—almost involuntarily—she looked up.

  For just one moment, he saw something he thought was not pretense—a hopeless yearning in the way her face tilted toward his, a flutter in her ragged exhalation. Her lips parted, and she seemed suddenly, devastatingly beautiful.

  But she shut her eyes and looked down again. Her breaths came a little louder; her fists clenched at her side. She shook her head. “Lucky you,” she said bitterly. “Lucky you that you can plan and think and plot without pretense. That you can want openly, that you don’t have to stuff it all inside yourself to molder. Lucky you that you can lift your eyes to the sky without singeing your wings. Lucky you that you can consider the future without terror.”

  Her hands were beginning to shake.

  “I have looked high.” Her voice was an urgent whisper. “And I have fallen farther than you can imagine. So don’t you lecture me. All I want is to pretend that this is enough—that I can be satisfied by the scraps that remain to me. ”

  He had that sense again, of a great beast pacing in its cage. He wanted to touch her cheek, to turn her face up to his. He wanted to whisper that all would be well.

  “Minnie,” he said instead.

  She winced. “Don’t say my name like that. Please, Your Grace. If you have any care for me at all—pretend to flirt. But don’t actually do it.”

  “Minnie,” he repeated instead. “Who would you be if you didn’t devote three-quarters of your attention to hiding what you could accomplish?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t tell me to look up. Don’t ask me to want. If I do, I’ll never survive.” Her voice was shaking. He would have thought her on the verge of tears, by the sound of her. But her eyes were dry and clear and fixed on the pavement.

  In that moment, he longed to take her in his arms and hold her close, to make her safe from whatever it was she feared. If she’d looked up at him again for even one second, he would have kissed her, and to hell with everyone around them.

  She didn’t. Instead, she seemed to gather in that unnatural, graceful calm with every breath.

  “Marybeth Peters is waiting for me by the pump,” she said, her voice smooth once more. “If I might withdraw, Your Grace?”

  It wasn’t a question. He didn’t have a choice.

  And so he watched her walk away, letting her return to pacing the confines of her cage.

  Chapter Seven