Harry.
Damn it all. The reminder of his brother was enough to make him withdraw his lips from hers once more. Guilt settled heavily in his gut. How could he have forgotten that Harry had fallen for her, that she was too bold and unsuitable, that the last thing Spencer wanted, having narrowly survived his first marriage, was to undertake another?
Nothing made sense, not his reaction to her, not this burning desire within to make her his, not the way she could make him feel more than he’d felt in the last three years in just a moment of being within her presence. He wanted her, yet he didn’t, he longed to push her away, and yet to hold her forever to him. Regardless of the tumult within, he knew what he must do.
He stared at her, bemused but determined. “You’ll be my duchess.” It was a pronouncement rather than a question. Like it or not, she would wed him. He wouldn’t put his family through any further scandal.
She exhaled slowly, her hot breath colliding with his lips. “No.”
Spencer kept her where she was, in his arms, ripe body tucked to his. He touched their foreheads together. He didn’t understand this any more than she did, but life was an endless parade of false autonomy. Christ knew he’d never had a choice or a chance to live the life he’d once imagined for himself. Why stop now?
“Yes,” he insisted. “My honor demands it.”
“Your honor.” She frowned, attempting to shrug from his grasp.
He wouldn’t allow it, holding her fast. “Yours as well. Think of your sister. She and Thornton are not long off a scandal themselves, and he can ill afford even a breath of impropriety.”
He sensed her mind working, could read some of it in her flashing eyes. Her mouth went pensive, twin lines forming at either corner. Her beauty mark moved along with the frown. He watched, considered flicking his tongue against it in some nonsensical fantasy that he could lick it up and make it his.
Lady Boadicea unleashed an aggrieved sigh. “You are correct in one matter, if nothing else, Duke. The last thing I would wish is to cause harm to my dear sister and her husband. I love them both frightfully.”
A pang of jealousy beat to life within him. How embarrassing that he should know envy that the flighty creature before him loved her sister and her sister’s husband. It was only his baser nature at work. For love was an invention of man designed to allow him to believe himself better than a rude animal in the wild. It didn’t exist. It was a fancy, a chimera, nothing more.
In this instance, however, he could use that outlandish emotion to his benefit. “If you love them, then you know what must be done. Just as I care for my family and know the only course left to me. We must marry, Lady Boadicea. We owe it to those we could taint most by our indiscretion, if nothing else.”
Her rebellious and bold nature aside, he had no doubt that this argument appealed to her in a way that nothing else would. He looked upon her, drinking in her beauty. How odd that just yesterday, he had scorned her when in this moment, he couldn’t imagine her as any other man’s wife save his.
And then, before he did something inordinately foolish, like kiss her or take her up in his arms and carry her off to his chamber, he set her from him. He offered a hasty, mocking bow, and then he left her alone with her thoughts and the decision she must make.
funereal pall seemed to descend upon the entire assemblage at Boswell Manor. The gentlemen had come to enjoy the shoot, but a miserable, driving rain that afternoon rendered any such pursuits impossible. Instead, they settled for isolating themselves from their female counterparts and engaging in “indoor sport,” which Bo was sure was a euphemism for getting soused and fleecing each other at cards.
She and Cleo sat on the fringes of a massive drawing room decorated in gilt and an alarming amount of daffodil-yellow. Truly, it was akin to sitting within the sun itself, but it was where the ladies of the house party had assembled for nonsensical parlor games, and she had little choice but to suffer its brashness.
Cleo disagreed about the fleecing and the sousing, sotto voce. “Alex said they’d be playing at billiards or some such. A tournament, I believe he said.”
“Involving wagers and the consumption of an inordinate amount of whisky, one can be sure,” Bo grumbled back to her sister, for she was vexed and in a deleterious mood, and she had no patience for men and their double standards. Why couldn’t they be forced to witness Lady Abigail Featherhead pretending to be a chimpanzee during charades? It was hardly fair.
The last place she wanted to be at the moment was here, trapped amidst a throng of ladies who she could count more as foe than friend. The Marlow family, even after the scandal of Bainbridge’s duchess, was nearly royalty itself. Only a select group of ton families were invited to join them for their annual house party, and none of those families included anyone Bo cared to know.
Chief among them, the Duchess of Cartwright, who had been eying her as if she were a smear of excrement befouling her hem all bloody day. The woman’s sour face was enough to make Bo quite cantankerous. But if she were honest, it was her meeting with the duke that had unsettled her the most. Her morning interview with Bainbridge had left her more confused and aggrieved than ever.
He had kissed her again. Aside from galloping through the countryside on her favorite mare, nothing else had ever given her such a rush of exhilaration. She’d left the salon feeling the same quivering in her stomach and leap in her pulse that she’d experienced the time she’d taken a dangerous jump with Deity that almost unseated her: dazed, yet also somehow euphoric.
This wouldn’t do. She had to put an end to the kissing. The man knew how to do it all too well.
“How would you know what gentlemen do when left to their own devices?” her sister asked then with a smug smile, interrupting her whirling thoughts.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s a great deal more entertaining than watching Abigail Featherhead make a cake of herself. And if Lady Lydia Trollop extols the virtues of Bainbridge one more time, I’m going to tear that silk rose cluster from her gown and stuff it in her mouth.”
Cleo compressed her lips together to stifle a smile, but then arranged her expression into one of proper, older-sister condescension. “You mustn’t poke fun at them so loudly. What shall you do if someone overhears you referring to the Duke of Buxton’s daughter as a trollop? You know very well that their surname is Trulle.”
“Near enough.” Bo sniffed, shifting in her uncomfortable chair. The Duchess of Bainbridge—whichever one had been responsible for this monstrosity masquerading as a drawing room—had deplorable taste.
The Duchess of Bainbridge.
How odd to think it was a mantle she could soon wear herself. Odder still to think that she’d arrived a mere three days past, eager to gain Harry’s support for her Lady’s Suffrage Society, never having been formally introduced to the duke himself, an oversight down to his recent abstention from polite society and her relatively new entrance. Bainbridge had greeted her with icy arrogance on that day, and she’d felt rather like a tradesman who’d shown up unwittingly to the wrong door.
But now, she felt…oh, she didn’t know…as if her corset was laced too tight. As if her heart was about to leap from her chest and gallop away. As if she was firmly down Alice’s rabbit hole, with no chance of ever returning to reality.
How was it that she was even contemplating marriage to the man? She, who had prided herself on the ambition of remaining a spinster wedded to her cause rather than accepting the life society apportioned for her? Cleo, she told herself, and Alex. It was for their sake alone.
“The duchess spoke with me earlier today,” Cleo said, her tone sympathetic.
Bo stiffened. “Not of Cartwright, I hope?”
The ladies tittered and clapped as the Countess of Carnes apparently stumped the entire congregation with her attempt to invoke a vicar.
Her sister shot her a telling glance. “Of course not. The Duchess of Bainbridge. She expects an announcement, though I must warn you that she is not please
d.”
What perversity. The duchess and her sour-faced friend had witnessed a lapse of propriety. They could have chosen to ignore it, but they were the sort of ladies who imagined their principles would save them. The reaction of Bainbridge’s mother alone had told Bo that the woman deplored her. And yet she would force her son to marry a dreaded Harrington, all to avoid another scandal.
Her heart ached as she recalled Bainbridge’s bitter words from that morning. She couldn’t help but feel that she’d gotten her first, real glimpse of the true man hiding behind his cold façade. What I’ve seen would gut you. She had no doubt that it would.
“An announcement,” she repeated, the phrase enough to curl her lip. For she didn’t want to marry the Duke of Bainbridge.
Oh, she was drawn to him, that much was undeniable. She could be honest with herself, at least, and own that the Duke of Bainbridge was a breathtakingly handsome man. His features were assembled in the sort of masculine beauty she’d never seen—lips too sensuous and full for a man, a long blade of a nose, high cheekbones, and a strong chin. With his dark hair, emerald eyes, and towering height, he was enough to rob the breath from any female, even herself.
She liked his looks well enough. She even enjoyed his exceptionally skilled kisses. But the man was a cipher she’d never be able to unlock. His past had wounded and changed him. He was hardened. The man she’d seen this morning, in spite of the heat in his touch, had been deadened.
It was as if his duchess had taken him with her.
Whatever part of him remained, she didn’t wish to bind herself to it for the rest of her life. But everything and everyone at this blasted house party seemed to be conspiring against her with one common goal: to force her into a marriage with the Duke of Disdain.
“Tonight,” Cleo added. “At the Welcoming Ball. As you know, Thornton has granted his approval on behalf of Father.”
Their father, forever occupied with pursuits of greater interest to him than his children, would be well pleased if his youngest daughter snared a duke. One less wild Harrington for him to fret over, she reasoned, etcetera.
Her freedom was down to hours. Dread commingled with the already tightening knot of trepidation in her stomach. Of all the times she’d defied propriety—and they were legion—she’d never been caught. The breadth of her foolishness shamed her now.
“And if I refuse?” she dared to ask.
Cleo frowned, her delicately arched raven brows snapping together into a sad frown. “The Duchess of Cartwright will not bend, I’m afraid, though her friendship with the dowager tolerated this brief delay to allow for an announcement that would not embarrass any of the parties.”
By any of the parties, the officious woman of course meant the Marlow family. The Duchess of Cartwright didn’t give a damn if she shamed Lady Boadicea Harrington. Or if she forced her into a match with a man known for driving his wife to kill herself before him.
Bo had to admit the gossip she’d heard about Bainbridge gave her pause. He had been cool and rigid, yes, but he also clearly possessed the capacity to turn his ice into molten flame. Do you know what it’s like to watch someone you care for lose their mind, Lady Boadicea? Had the duchess gone mad as he’d suggested? There had to be more to the sad, sordid tale than the gossips knew.
She needed to cling to that hope if she was indeed to be forced into cleaving herself to the man. Bo wished the Duchess of Cartwright to perdition.
“She will ruin me,” Bo simplified, keeping her voice hushed so that none of the eager ears surrounding them could become engaged.
Cleo patted her hand, her lovely face wreathed in sympathy. “Yes.”
Bo wouldn’t have cared so much for herself. She prided herself on her enterprising nature. Her parents had made every effort to stifle the rebelliousness from her and had failed as soundly as the Spanish Armada. But she loved her sisters—all of them—fiercely. She loved Clara and their Lady’s Suffrage Society. She believed in their cause, of giving the women being governed the fair chance they deserved to have a voice. And for all those reasons, she would not act in selfishness.
For the first time in her life, she would wave the flag of surrender.
“That woman is a hedgehog.” But though she decried, she knew what she must do. “I’ll do it, Cleo. For your sake, and for Alex, and to keep the Lady’s Suffrage Society I’ll do it. But I will not like it.”
“I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself for me.” Cleo’s lips compressed as she searched Bo’s gaze. “You are at fault for your actions, but I want more than anything else for you to be happy, dear sister.”
“I’m the architect of my own happiness.” She turned her palm over in her lap and gave her sister’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “I shall own the consequences and forge my independence by whatever means necessary.”
“Bo,” her sister protested.
“It is done.”
“Lady Boadicea, you’ve been selected next,” announced Lady Hyacinth Beaufort.
Bo had never met a female with a flower as her namesake that she’d liked. Lady Hyacinth was no exception, simpering and perfectly coifed, narrow of waist, melodic of voice, honeyed in her every manor, and dressed at all times as though she were a confection.
“Bo,” Cleo said again, her voice stern. “I meant what I said.”
She stood, shaking out her skirts, and forced a feigned smile to her lips. “It would be my great delight,” she lied to the chamber at large. She cast a glance back at her sister. “I did as well, Cleo. The announcement will be made, and that is that.”
And then she made her way to the forefront of the festivities, feeling like nothing so much as a doomed prisoner en route to the gallows. In more ways than one.
Bo slipped into the Duke of Bainbridge’s private library for the second time in two days. But today, she was more than aware that she trespassed and whom it was that she trespassed against. She didn’t give a damn.
Charades ended, and Bo had somehow managed to throw enough feeling into her representation of Anne Boleyn to be declared the unofficial—and unenthusiastic—champion of the entertainment. It seemed bleakly appropriate, if a bit silly for someone who made no secret of her distaste for trifles like insipid amusements.
While the ladies had thankfully dispersed, she hadn’t been able to return to her chamber for a quiet nap before dressing for the first of the Duchess of Bainbridge’s two balls that week. No, indeed. Her mind was far too preoccupied.
The door closed at her back, enveloping her in silence and the beloved scent of books blending with leather and another scent that her body recognized as the duke’s, although he was nowhere within the library’s charming confines. She rather liked this room, even if she didn’t belong here, and in spite of her inauspicious initiation to it.
“Hello?” she called out as she strode across the luxurious carpet, just to be certain that he was still otherwise engaged with the gentlemen of the gathering.
No one answered.
Alone, then.
“Good,” she murmured to herself, going to the wall of spines nearest to her in search of something that piqued her interest. She didn’t wish to have another clash with the duke. But she did require some distraction, and what better method than reading? Bainbridge had to possess something here, some volume, worthy of a read. He had stolen the only book she’d brought along with her.
“Latin,” she grumbled as she studied the spines before her, finger skating over them one by one.
“You don’t know the language?”
The voice, deep and low just over her shoulder and so delicious that it could have been velvet itself drawn over her bare skin, made her finger go still. Where had he been hiding? Of course, that explained the reason why she had smelled him.
She stiffened but refused to turn for fear of his nearness and his capacity to disarm her. “I know it well enough.”
“Ah. These works are not prurient enough for your voluptuary tastes, I take it, Lady Boadicea?” Hi
s delicious baritone raised gooseflesh on her arms. Was it just her imagination, or had he drawn nearer? Was that the heat of his breath that she felt upon her neck, just below her right ear? And why did the word ”voluptuary” uttered in his sinful voice incite tingles in her belly?
“Not nearly enough,” she quipped with a frivolity she little felt, wishing that the tomes before her hadn’t become a jumbled sea of nothingness. How he unnerved her. The knowledge that she would become betrothed to him tonight did not aid in the matter.
“Quid tu hic?” he asked. Why are you here? The question, bold and without a hint of artifice, somehow had the opposite effect upon her of what it should have had.
Instead of warning her, chilling her, reminding her that she had once again ventured where she didn’t belong, she was riveted to the spot. Intrigued. Keeping her back to him was somehow thrilling. How could his cool arrogance make the heat rise within her? It defied explanation, and yet her response to him was undeniable.
“Why are you here?” she returned. “I thought the gentlemen of the assembly were all otherwise engaged. Should you not be off somewhere drinking yourself to oblivion in the name of sport?”
“Undoubtedly yes, and yet here I am, once more discovering an intruder in my library.” He paused, and she glared at the stamped spine of the book nearest to her, trying to ignore the unsettling effect of his deep voice. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“You stole my book from me,” she told the wall of books.
“And you thought to find it alongside Ovid?” He sounded amused.
That did it. She spun about to face him, startled to discover that he was nearer than she had even imagined. Her gaze collided with vibrant green. Why did he have to possess such beautiful eyes, the lush, verdant hue of new grass in spring? All she needed to do was lean forward a scant inch, and her mouth would brush against his throat. For some reason, that realization wasn’t at all alarming. Indeed, she couldn’t help but wonder if he would smell every bit as divine there, in that sensitive and private place where his jaw met his neck.
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