You May Kiss the Duke

by Charis Michaels

  Although his crew and his friends took him as careless and undomesticated, he would not, in his own room, allow newspapers to blow to and fro; he would not tolerate the scattered lack of order on the desk, or books on the floor, or the loosely folded wash. He would not, but someone, obviously, did.

  He thought he should call for his host (captor?). Most people would do this; they would simply summon whomever was responsible for the soft bed and the sunny room. But Stoker was not most people. It was one thing to be bedridden but quite another to lie prone and cry out. God grant him death before he reached the point of bellowing from a sickbed.

  Instead, he closed his eyes and forced himself to call up his last cogent memory, before the pain, and death, and descent into hell. Before this room. Before . . .

  Had he been in Spain?

  No—Portugal.

  Yes. He’d sailed to Portugal to . . . to look in on a villa.

  Cabo de San Vicente on the coast in Portugal, and then there had been—

  Creeaakk.

  His thoughts froze on the strained sound of hinges on a door. Next, he heard a female voice, her words indistinguishable. He heard the clunk-clunk of possessions piling onto a wooden surface. He heard laughter and then . . . growling?

  There were footsteps, a pause, and then the determined click, click, click of tiny paws on stone floor.

  Moments later the ugliest mongrel Stoker had ever seen—part dog, part . . . weasel?—clicked into the room and continued to the bed as if they shared it. Stoker held his breath when he saw the dog’s intention, bracing his damaged body for impact. The animal leapt and landed unevenly at Stoker’s feet, scuttling up his legs and belly and stopping on his chest, sniffing along the way. The tiny tapping paws from the floor felt like talons against his skin. Only when the animal hovered over him, nearly nose to nose, did the dog pause and stare down into Stoker’s face.

  Stoker opened his mouth to say, “Off,” but the dog beat him to it, filling the quiet room with an explosive round of frantic barking.

  Now Stoker did say, “Off!” but it was drowned out by the dog. The animal crouched in a defensive position on his chest, baring its teeth between barks. Four razor paws dug into the thin barrier of sheet and nightshirt.

  “Bridget, down!” said a voice from the doorway, and Stoker craned his head, trying to see.

  “Bridget,” repeated a firm female voice, “I said, down!”

  Footsteps—and then there she was, plucking the dog from his chest, its short, mangy legs windmilling in midair—a blur of yellow dress. Stoker lifted his head, trying to see around the dog to the woman. He saw yellow again, black hair, swift, efficient movements, and then—

  He dropped his head back to the pillow.

  Sabine Noble.

  His wife.

  Chapter Four

  The up-and-coming neighborhood of Belgravia sits atop colorful Mayfair like the stiff white hat. Uniform stucco crescents surround a verdant private garden. Shiny black ironwork cordons walkways and steps. The result is regal and important, not unlike the well-heeled Londoners and foreign dignitaries who have made Belgravia their home.

  But don’t be fooled; these pristine terrace mansions only appear to be cut from ivory or marble; they’re actually made of painted bricks fired from the mud that formerly moldered beneath the area’s original landscape, which for centuries was Middlesex marshland and bog.

  —from A Noble Guide to London by Sabine Noble

  Sabine deposited Bridget on the floor and rose, taking up a stack of clean towels from Stoker’s bedside. She peered down at him, curious at what had set the dog off. After four days Bridget should be accustomed to a semiconscious man lying in their bedro—

  Sabine let out a little yelp and dropped the towels.

  “Good God!” she gasped, staring at the man in her bed. Bridget resumed barking, jumping, and spinning at her feet. “Bridget, quiet!”

  The now-awake Jon Stoker stared straight up at the ceiling, ignoring her, ignoring the dog, and Sabine had the panicked thought that he had, at long last, died.

  She took a tentative step closer, extending her neck for the best view from the greatest distance. He lay motionless, eyes unblinking.

  He is dead, she thought, taking another step.

  His eyes slid left, the alert gaze of a decidedly living man, and locked on her face. Sabine drew back. He looked back to the ceiling.

  “Stoker?” she whispered.

  Jon Stoker had opened his eyes several times in the four days, but his expression had been vague and cloudy. He looked but did not see; he’d been alert enough to take food and water, but he had not been sentient.

  Today his gaze was sharp. His eyes stared at the ceiling with full consciousness. His body, previously limp beneath the sheet, was rigid; his jaw was clenched. Even his beard looked wilder.

  Sabine hopped a step back. She’d taken to breezing in and out of this room at all hours; it was alarming, really, how comfortable she’d become with his inert form taking up silent space in her suite of rooms in the cellar of Arthur and Mary Boyd’s Belgravia townhome. But of course he posed no risk if he was out of his head, too feeble to roll over. And if his friends turned up soon to reclaim him. If he simply remained mostly asleep.

  But now . . .

  Not taking her eyes from him, Sabine stooped and retrieved her dog, hugging Bridget to her chest.

  “Stoker?” she asked again, more pointedly this time. Caution translated to timidity in her brain, and timidity felt like fear. When she left her uncle’s purview, she vowed to never be afraid again. “Stoker?”

  “Where am I?” he asked. His voice was raspy, hoarse—but his tone? Not vague, not even weak.

  And not particularly friendly.

  “It’s me, Sabine,” she said. “I’ve brought you home—er, to my home. This is the house where I reside in London. In Belgravia.”

  “Brought me from where?” He wouldn’t look at her.

  Had he gone blind? she wondered.

  “From the morgue on the hospital ship Dreadnought. In Greenwich. You’d been left for dead, I’m afraid. You’ve a wound in your side—the doctors say you were likely stabbed. Infection has set in.”

  She saw him grimace and endeavored to shift beneath the covers. Bridget growled and Sabine fastened a hand around her snout.

  “Careful,” she said. “Perhaps it’s best not to make unnecessary movements. I’ve hired a footman to care for your personal needs, and you suffer considerable pain when he, er, tends to you, I believe. From the sound of it, that is. I wait in the, er, corridor.”

  “I’m being tended to?” He gritted out the words.

  Sabine frowned at this. “Well, you are hardly in the condition to tend to yourself. You were left for dead, as I’ve said. You are well enough to have this conversation, which is an improvement, but I’d wager that is the extent of what you can accomplish at the moment. You are rather sick, I’m afraid.”

  Stoker squeezed his eyes shut. “If I was left for dead,” he ground out, “why did they summon you? What connection was made between a dead man and his estranged wife?”

  “There was no connection,” she said. “I came upon you quite by accident. I had other business on the Dreadnought. By sheer happenstance, a steward led me by the morgue and I noticed your—” She felt herself redden, thinking of the jolt she’d felt when she’d seen the serpent tattoo winding up his muscled forearm.

  She began again. “That is, I noticed you. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it was, indeed, you and you were not dead after all. The doctors wanted to move you to a proper bed and keep you on, but I could hardly abandon you there. Not when they had already failed to notice something as significant as your beating heart.”

  She made a face, remembering. “I cannot say I recommend the hospital ship Dreadnought, given the choice. Even the most fit patient was uncomfortable, to say the least. I could not, in good conscience, leave you there.”

  “You are under no oblig
ation to me,” he breathed, eyes still closed. He shifted again and winced.

  Sabine squinted at him. “A simple ‘thank you for saving my life’ would be sufficient in this moment, Stoker.” She forgot herself and stepped to the bedside, staring down at him. “I don’t require gratitude, of course, or even expect it, but cordiality would be appreciated.”

  He didn’t move; his eyes remained closed.

  Sabine marveled over his detached rudeness. She’d hardly thought he would be cheerful when he came around, but she had gone to considerable trouble to affect what she thought of as his “rescue.”

  She reminded herself that she didn’t know Jon Stoker, not really. Perhaps he was always like this. She’d spent all of two half days with him when they’d married; and they’d interacted only intermittently after that. Rarely did she see him in person.

  She tried to remember her own demeanor when they’d first met, when she’d been the damaged one—eyes blackened, lip bloody. She’d been helpless and furious and embarrassed, and she’d tried not to look at him. But had she grunted out short sentences and failed to show gratitude?

  No, she reasoned, I did not.

  Sabine looked at him and said, “We are not well acquainted, you and I, and no one relishes infirmity, but I did snatch you from the jaws of death. Surely, you don’t resent the effort.”

  Prudence demanded that she not lecture him, that she not care whether he was resentful or silent or wouldn’t look beyond the end of his nose. Honestly, she’d hoped he would be gone or in the process of going when he came to. She’d sent word to his friends by private courier. Surely, they would arrive any day.

  Now he turned his head and looked up at her. The brilliant green had returned to his eyes, the redness and cloudiness gone. She sucked in a little breath.

  “Forgive me.” His tone was not the least bit repentant. “I am not resentful, I am mortified. I am not accustomed to being cared for.”

  “Oh,” she said, softening. “Well, I am not accustomed to providing care, so perhaps we are even. But never fear, I have written to your friends, and they will come for you soon, I am certain.”

  His head snapped back. “Which friends?”

  “Your partners, Joseph Chance and the Earl of Cassin.”

  He considered this and then nodded. “I worried that you meant Bryson and Elisabeth Courtland. I would not want them to see me—” he looked down at his body “—in this condition.”

  Bryson and Elisabeth Courtland were the wealthy couple who sponsored Stoker when he’d been a street boy. They had provided his education and were the closest thing he had to a real family. The couple had endeavored to meet Sabine after she and Stoker married, but she had resisted. She was not really married to Jon Stoker, not in a traditional sense. When the time came to send for help, she had considered them, but ultimately she decided the explanations and assumptions would not be worth the bother.

  “No, I did not contact the Courtlands,” she said.

  “Thank God,” he said. “Elisabeth Courtland would make a fuss and be sick with worry. My debt to Bryson and Elisabeth extends two lifetimes already.”

  “Well, you have no debt to me,” Sabine said briskly, “and you needn’t be mortified where I’m concerned. My rooms are modest and there is almost no staff. You will find that I am a distracted and, dare I say, reluctant nurse. I never pounce. I will not wring hands or swab your brow or administer any treatment not explicitly directed by the doctor—and several of those I have omitted because they seem extraneous or I can’t be bothered. As I mentioned, I have paid one of the Boyds’ footmen—you’ll remember the Boyds? I have paid one of their footmen to manage your, er, personal needs.”

  Now it was her turn to wince. She cleared her throat and released Bridget to the floor. The dog immediately leapt onto the bed, and Stoker grunted in pain.

  “And I have a dog,” she said. “She is terribly behaved and comes and goes from your sickbed as she pleases, which is frequent. Considering all this, you may yet have me send for the Courtlands after all.”

  Stoker eyed Bridget as she sniffed her way up his body, her short dog legs wobbling for balance on the uneven terrain of the bedcovers.

  “I won’t,” he said, wincing. “But I will hire my own doctor and staff and relocate. I keep a suite of rooms in Regent Street when I am in London. There is no reason for me to intrude on you. Despite the fact that you discovered me on a charity ship, we are both aware that I can provide for myself.”

  This plan sent a jab of something sharp in the area of Sabine’s chest. Relief, she guessed. Or gladness?

  No . . . she was not glad or relieved. She was—

  Well, to begin, the room felt suddenly chilled. She frowned at the open window. Bright sunshine coursed in, mocking her. It was August, and there was no chill.

  “Actually,” she heard herself say, “the doctor has said you absolutely may not be moved while the stitching in your side heals—that is, if you expect your stab wound to effectively close and stave off further infection.”

  Bridget continued her scrambling progress up his body, stepping on his groin, his stomach, his chest—tiny paws painfully close to the wound in question. Stoker let out a ragged gasping sound.

  “I will risk it,” he said.

  Without thinking, she said, “You’re joking.”

  “No,” he breathed, watching the dog root up his body. “I’m not.”

  “Are you mad?” she asked. She would not restrict his movements, of course, but she’d already invested four days in his care, and considering the rapidly approaching deadline on her next travel guide, not to mention the investigation of her uncle, it would be such a waste to have him leave and then do something as inconsiderate as die. Four days for nothing.

  Now Bridget was on his chest, staring him in the face, her nose just inches from his.

  “I am a grown man,” he said to the dog. “I cannot tolerate being tended to by a hired footman or a wom—or you. I’ve a ship that is apparently missing and a crew with it. I must begin an inquiry that will locate them both. I’ve been attacked and left for dead, two circumstances for which there will be grave consequences. I need to discover who and why. None of this can be managed from your bed, regardless of how grateful I am for your care to this point. I don’t know what day it is, I don’t know what month it is, and I am ravenously hungry, but I refuse to lie prone in this bed and ask you, of all people, to hasten to the kitchen and feed me like an invalid.”

  She was just about to tell him that it was a Tuesday, in August, and that he was an invalid, but he pulled an arm from beneath the covers to push away the dog, and the combination of this exertion and his long proclamation of I don’ts and I won’ts overwhelmed him. His skin went ghostly white, his emerald-green eyes blinked and then rolled back in his head, and he collapsed against the pillow in a dead faint.

  Even Bridget’s fresh round of barking did not rouse him. Sabine scooped up the dog, sailed from the room, and went up the stairs to prepare his broth and cider. He’d said he was hungry—arguably the only sensible thing he’d said—and so he should eat. Although she did not have all day to wait around. Today she would return, finally, to the Dreadnought. Her plans to interview the scurvy sailors had been postponed while she settled Stoker into her house, but she’d always planned to go back.

  She had time to feed Stoker and carry on—or argue with him and carry on—but she did not have time for both.

  Chapter Five

  Stoker was roused from a deep, dreamless slumber by the smell of food. Onion, cloves, poached chicken—food. His mouth began to water before he opened his eyes.

  “Stoker, you must eat,” said a voice—her voice—and realization struck him like a punch to the gut.

  He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, willing her away, willing himself dead rather than subjected to this helplessness. The hunger in his stomach and dull ache in his side receded. He knew only his pounding heart.

  “Stoker,” she repeated, m
ore sharply this time.

  “I’m leaving,” he rasped. This had been his last thought before the pain and exertion had sucked him under.

  He felt ridiculous speaking without opening his eyes, but he didn’t want to look at her. Even more, he didn’t want her to look at him, or touch him, or, God forbid, feed him. He wanted to be whole again. In absence of that, he wanted to be gone from this house. To be feeble and helpless and pathetic in the privacy of his own quarters. He wanted—

  Clattery ministrations beside the bed distracted him from his long list. He blinked at the ceiling and then stole a glance from the corner of his eye.

  He saw the yellow dress, a tendril of black hair bob against her cheek. A familiar yearning, faint but insistent, rose in the pit of his stomach; he felt it even over the pain, even over the mortification. She wasn’t looking at him, thank God. She wouldn’t see his regard in his face. He’d always been so careful not to reveal it in his face.

  She dropped the salt cellar, swore, and then stooped to pick it up. Her hair was so black, it glinted bluish in the sunlight from the window. She’d twisted it on top of her head and secured it with a yellow ribbon. Never once had Stoker looked at her hair without the fantasy of seeing it long and loose down her back. For this reason, he so rarely gave himself the opportunity to look at her. Once or twice a year. Fleetingly. Ten minutes at a time. Long enough to notice her hair. And her skin, which was unblemished white, the color of fresh cream.

  In their brief encounters, he always marveled at two things: her stunning beauty and that she’d married him. She could have had any man. Or, she could have had no man and been a gift to the world, simply by moving through it.

  Now Stoker worked furiously not to stare. She didn’t like it; and, despite his desire to study her, feature by feature, he had learned at an early age to keep a distance from things he would never have.