“Are you ill again?”
“I don’t mean to be a nuisance.” She swallowed hard and still felt sick. He handed her one of the biscuits they’d discovered fended off the worst of her nausea. Gratefully, she nibbled on it.
She tried not to be obvious about staring at him, but she couldn’t help it. If the duke of Cynssyr had physical imperfections, she had no idea what they were. She had, during her time at Satterfield, read everything even remotely connected to the duke. The Times, The Court Journal, anything at all. Her husband, she soon learned, was brilliant. She had good reason to feel intimidated. And embarrassed to have dismissed him as a dilettante. He was anything but.
“Better?” he asked after a bit.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He opened the door. A footman held it open, grey periwig and tricorn hat misted with light rain. Cynssyr stepped down and, boots crunching on the gravel, turned with one of those carelessly melting smiles on his face. He held out a hand.
Something inside her reacted to that breath-robbing, heart-pounding smile so that for a moment she sat frozen on the seat, leaving her husband with his hand extended and the footman holding the door and both getting wetter by the moment. Down she stepped. Another footman hurried forward with an umbrella, ready to escort them inside. Cynssyr moved to her side as grooms led away the coach, and she saw for the first time her husband’s home.
Cyrwthorn melted into a backdrop of low grey sky. Somewhere above a flag whipped in the breeze, but fog shrouded all but the bottom of the flagpole rising from a central dome. Mullioned windows on the lower floors would let in whatever light there was on such a chilly, rainy day. The upstairs windows were wide and sashed. Brass gleamed atop the wrought-iron fence enclosing the courtyard.
Behind her, the gate clanged shut with a hollow ring. Turning, she saw portions of the Cynssyr coat-of-arms fashioned on the black curves. Growling stone lions glared at the street from the gateposts and from the pillars flanking the stairs, holdovers from the days when the Bettencourt titles had not yet included the dukedom.
Cynssyr took her hand and led her up the stairs. On cue, the massive front door opened. Two unsmiling footmen in powdered wigs, green frockcoats and knee breeches bowed at either side of the entrance. Above their heads loomed the lintel and the stone-carved crest of the ducal title. A butler as distinguished as he was severe inclined his head in a respectful bow. Cynssyr released her hand to peel off his gloves. She tried to keep her eyes off a monstrous stuffed tiger positioned so its snarling, glassy-eyed glare confronted anyone entering the house.
Her knees shook, they actually shook because any moment, any moment at all, someone would declare her a fraud. She was no duchess. But the footmen stood at military attention, eyes forward, necks stiff. If they had such thoughts, Anne couldn’t tell. She didn’t dare move from Cynssyr’s side. His gaze shifted from his hands to her with a small sideways glance. The corner of his mouth curved just so. A flare of heat danced in the green eyes, unmistakable and intensely hot. When she looked away from him because if she didn’t she wouldn’t be able to breathe, she caught the butler staring. The man had no expression whatever, but he was staring. He was shocked by her, she felt, because she was not the beautiful princess they had been expecting of Cynssyr.
“Merchant.” Ruan nodded as he led Anne over the threshold. Merchant, he saw, had been knocked back on his heels by the look he’d just given Anne. He’d been with the family for years, and Ruan was expert at reading his shades of expression. A layer of mist covered the coat and hat he handed to his stiffly standing butler.
“Castlereagh sent several messages.” He deftly caught the gloves Ruan tossed him. “All urgent, your grace. There are two from Lord Eldon and one from Norfolk.”
“No others?”
“None important, your grace. Lord Buckley sent a case of champagne.”
“A good vintage, I trust.”
“An excellent one.”
“Tell Hickenson I will see him first thing tomorrow. Put the knocker on the door, but we are not at home tonight.”
“Yes, sir.” Merchant edged toward Anne, effortlessly positioning himself to take her pelisse. She slipped free of the garment and took several steps ahead.
Ruan spent a long moment appreciating the sight. The woman walked as sensuously as she smiled. He couldn’t help thinking of her hips moving to meet his. Christ, he fairly itched to have his hands on her in intimate places, the inside of her thighs, that lovely, ravishing backside. How had he gone a month without that? Since the end of the war, he’d not lasted a week without making love, and now he’d gone an entire month. Even after indulging himself at Satterfield, he felt eager as ever for his wife’s bed.
Merchant cleared his throat. “May I offer the duchess felicitations on your marriage?”
“You may, thank you,” Ruan said.
“Madam, your grace, best wishes for your future happiness.”
“Thank you, Merchant.” Her fawn gown did no great service to her appearance, Ruan thought. Recent developments had taken their toll on her appetite and the dress hung limply on her shoulders. He knew she must feel much like she looked: tired, slightly crumpled, and glad to be done with the traveling. The journey to London had exhausted her, that was clear from the shadowed eyes and her pale, pale skin. She’d slept like the dead until he’d awakened her.
Merchant bowed, his face devoid of emotion. And yet, Ruan thought as he watched Anne, she possessed an air of serenity that must impress his butler, who considered composure among the highest of accomplishments. The three then walked forward into the great hall in which upwards of a hundred servants waited to meet their new mistress. Merchant began the introductions.
Anne was glad of Cynssyr’s presence. The gathered servants looked a stern bunch, wary and no doubt wondering just what sort of mistress the duke had brought home to them. “I am glad to meet you,” she said when the introductions were over. She raised her voice so the kitchen maids and stable boys arranged in the back could hear her. “All of you.” The corner of her mouth quirked as she glanced around. “And I thought Satterfield large. I shall certainly become lost in this house. If I shout hullo, I hope someone will come running to show me the way.” The moment she finished, she wanted to take it all back. How provincial that sounded. Unsophisticated and every bit the rustic she was.
Cynssyr leaned close and softly said, “Well done, Anne.” He gestured to Merchant. “The duchess and I will dine in her rooms tonight.” That incandescent smile of his appeared, and Anne turned from the sight.
“Your grace,” murmured the butler. Anne’s heart thudded, and she nearly missed Merchant’s gesture. “This way, Madam duchess, to your apartments.”
Anne walked at Cynssyr’s side. He kept a hand on the small of her back, and she felt the gentle pressure like sparks from a fire. They followed Merchant through the marbled great hall, the gleaming parquet upstairs, over thick wool carpets, past carved paneled walls, under high ceilings painted, molded or decorated with gold.
Gilt-framed dukes watched sternly from beneath powdered wigs, high lace collars and the gleam of polished armor. Crystal chandeliers that must take a team of maids an entire day to polish sparkled from cavernous parlors and withdrawing rooms just glimpsed as they passed. Lovely sidetables and exquisite vases, marble niches containing figurines of alabaster, marble or bronze. Rococo mirrors and oils painted by a master’s hand hung from the walls and from an arched doorway through which she saw richer rooms yet, an entire wall carved with gold tipped columns.
They stopped. She felt bereft when Cynssyr removed his hand from her waist. For a deathless moment, they stared at each other, oblivious to Merchant. Oblivious to anything but each other. Impulse had her brushing a lock of mahogany hair from his forehead, as if she’d known him for years and was entitled to a gesture of such intimacy.
He caught her hand in the moment before she would have snatched it back. Slowly, he brought her fingers to his lips. “Rest, Anne. I
will join you later.” And then he let go and strode briskly down the hall as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her.
“Your apartments,” Merchant said, opening the door for her.
“Thank you.” Without Cynssyr so near and addling her wits, she recovered her sensible, practical nature. In she went, through a private sitting room done in ivory and gold. On the far side, an interior door led to a small withdrawing room. To the right of that was a dressing room in which young Tilly, who had agreed to leave Aldreth to take on the position of Anne’s ladies maid, and another servant unpacked her trunks.
“To your left, your grace,” said Merchant, opening doors, “the bathing room and watercloset.” Directly forward was the bedroom, also decorated in gold on ivory and large enough to hold two of the largest room she had imagined would be hers. “To summon a servant.” Merchant indicated a gold-embroidered pull. “Another by the bed.” Silk gauze tented the bed, falling in delicate ivory curves from a spot high over the center of the bed. “Through here,” said Merchant opening another door, “the boudoir.”
“Where does that door lead?” She pointed to the opposite side of the room, by now expecting a private library or office perhaps.
He coughed. “To the duke’s rooms, madam.”
“Yes, of course.” She felt herself go horribly red.
“Shall I send tea?”
“Thank you. Please do.” Tired to the bone, she sank onto a chair covered in gold-striped ivory silk. She thought of Cynssyr and his ease in this huge house, walking past an army of servants as if it were nothing. To him, it was. None of this was out of the ordinary for him. He took no notice of the luxury and splendor. Simply put, he belonged here, and she could not image she would ever feel at home. And yet somehow she must find a way to manage. “Merchant?”
“Madam?” He stopped at the door, his expression as starched and friendly as his cravat.
“You must see I am hopelessly over my head with him.”
Merchant’s face did not change, but she would have sworn his eyes softened in some indefinable way. She grimaced. She needed something to nibble on, something to ease her stomach, only there was nothing at hand. The biscuits had been left behind in the carriage.
“I do not wish to embarrass him,” she said. “Will you at least help me to master the household?”
“Madam.” He bowed and when he straightened, his expression was once again impassive.
“Thank you.” She clenched her teeth and willed the nausea to vanish. If she did not succeed, there was always the washbasin. An entire room distant. “One more thing.”
“Madam.”
“Perhaps it would be wise to have several basins on hand. In divers rooms.” She rose, her stomach now in full revolt. The washbasin would have to do.
“Basins, Madam?”
“I am not well. It is, I fear, unpredictable when I shall be ill.” She did not hear Merchant depart, nor see his pleased and knowing smile. Later, when there came a soft tapping on the door between her room and the duke’s, her heart beat just a little faster than it had been.
CHAPTER 9
Ruan opened the door and found Anne standing midway between the door and her bed, a look of utter panic on her face. She wore another dreadful gown. Periwinkle muslin in a countrified style; no lace, only a wide grosgrain ribbon beneath her bosom and limp ruffles in two rows straining toward her chin. For all its lack of fashion, the color smoothed her pallor of her cheeks and lent her eyes a sultry lavender cast.
That her figure was an excellent one could not be entirely concealed. Could he think of nothing but taking her to bed? She’d removed her hat, he could see the bedraggled thing sitting on a sidetable, and run a comb through her hair. Her shoes lay sideways on the floor, near the fireplace. Though her bare feet sank into the carpet, he saw her stockings nowhere. From the rumpled state of the bed, she’d only recently been sleeping. Her disarray appealed to him enormously.
There was a knock on her door from the hallway side, and she jumped like a quail to wing after the hunter’s gunshot. “Our supper,” he said, walking in. He raised his voice so as to be heard from the hall. “Enter.”
The door opened, and they waited in silence while servants set linens, china and silverware on the table and placed trays of food on a sidetable. She watched, twisting her hands in the folds of her drab skirt. An intimate arrangement, true. The table was, after all, in full sight of her bed, but he was damned if he was going to cater to any niceness about such matters. One of the footmen opened a French Bordeaux smuggled in from Calais by way of Sweden and Cornwall during the height of the war.
“Thank you, we’ll serve ourselves,” he said when the plates and trays were arranged. The servants bowed or curtseyed as appropriate and vanished without a sound. He came around the table and pulled out a chair. Having helped her to sit, he found himself admiring the pale back of her neck while she did her best not to accidentally touch him. It was all he could do to stop himself from caressing that soft, white nape. He forced himself to release her chair and walk to the sideboard. “Shall I fetch you a plate?”
“Just bread, please.”
“You should eat more.” He uncovered a tureen, breathing in the scented steam. He felt unduly conscious of her sitting at the table, her back stiff, hands clenched on her lap. “Excellent. Jubert has sent up his lobster soup.”
“Please, I can’t.” He knew it was early to be certain of her condition, but Ruan had no doubt she was with child. He knew with an absolute, terrifying and joyful certainty that he had made a child in her.
He covered the tureen. “Jelly or marmalade with your bread?”
“Nothing, if you please. Thank you,” Anne said when Cynssyr returned with the bread. He was a young man to have accomplished so much, and young for the weariness she sensed in him. Urbane, self-assured, and so far never once condescending, beyond all her expectations of him.
Dressed informally in trousers, soft boots and a white shirt without waistcoat or cravat, he still commanded attention. His hair fell straight and thick to just above his collar, the color of aged wood, a rich earthy brown and slightly mussed, as if he’d recently run his fingers through it. Relaxed though he was, she felt the vigor of him. No wonder women fell so hard for him. The man’s ease with himself was just as attractive as his physical appearance.
After fetching his own plate and a bowl of steaming soup, he settled on a subject as bland as her meal. “There is the small matter of your wardrobe. Wine?”
She nodded. “My things arrived from Bartley Green last week.”
“So I am told.” He filled a crystal flute for her and another for himself. “Did not that damned papa of yours outfit you for London?”
“The expense wasn’t necessary.” She didn’t get her wine halfway to her mouth when the smell sent her stomach into rebellion. From the label, she knew the wine was French and probably a better vintage than she’d ever had in her life. If things went on this way, she’d find herself subsisting on bread and biscuits. He seemed to understand the problem, for he whisked it away without comment.
“Most of what you have is remade from several seasons past. Expert work, I grant you, but the fashion for lace fichus is long gone.” He grinned. “I expect you hoped to disguise your bosom with such a trick.” Her cheeks turned pink and pinker yet when he let his gaze wander below her chin. She felt like a favorite pastry about to be devoured. “Can’t imagine how it could have worked, though it must have.”
She evened her expression to cover the uneasiness inside. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“What I mean is you’d have been hounded if any red-blooded man had noticed.” He turned sideways on the chair. “One of them would have at least kissed you by reason of your magnificent bosom alone. The best thing you’ve got,” he continued as if discussing her bosom was no more interesting than the weather, “is that green frock you were married in.”
“I wear that to Church.”
“Yo
u haven’t even a ball gown.” He applied himself to the tender slices of beef on his plate. “That I saw, anyway.” His shoulders lifted, and Anne had the oddest sensation that she could actually feel muscle moving beneath the fine lawn of his shirt.
“To be sure, the list of my deficiencies is a long one,” she said, smiling just a little.
His eyebrows lifted. “Be that as it may,” he said with a slight smile, “the raw materials are there.”
“I am an excellent seamstress. I’m sure I could have a ball gown made up before too long.” They looked at one another, and quite suddenly Anne was out-of-breath.
He picked up fork and knife. “You’re a pretty woman, Anne. You must know that. You’ve good bones. The spectacles disguise it, but you won’t wear them in public. You’ve a figure, too.”
“A figure.”
“Yes.” His eyes, partially hidden by the downsweep of his lashes gleamed in the light. “Indeed, yes. A figure that makes a man insane.”
Anne stared, unaccustomed to finding herself so completely out of her depth. Control of the conversation seemed to have been wrested from her if, indeed, she’d ever had it. “What perfect rot. I am too tall by far.”
“Not for me.” He ate the last of his haricot verts.
She crumbled a bit of bread. “I’m not dainty like Emily, or elegant like Mary nor have I the drama of Lucy’s coloring. I’m not anything men much admire.”
“Your father tell you that?” He leaned toward her. “The truth, my dear,” he said in a voice pitched deliberately low, “is that put you in a proper gown, something bright and low cut, and your sister Emily would have a few admirers the less.”
She laughed because she didn’t know what else to do. “You’re mad, your grace. Quite mad, if you believe that.” But she was surprised to feel pleased he’d even thought to flatter her.
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