You May Kiss the Duke

by Charis Michaels

  “Consider it done,” said Bryson, and Sabine let out a satisfied breath. She released her grip on Stoker’s arm. Smiling, she reached for a second cup of tea.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Stoker had done many things in service to Elisabeth Courtland’s sponsorship through the years. He sweltered in waistcoats and strangled in neck cloths; he passed mind-numbing twenty-course meals among stupefying lesser royalty; he learned French. But one thing he had never done—one thing that never occurred to him to do—was attend a ball. As a guest. Who . . . reveled.

  Oh, he had lurked around Courtland events, but he’d never loaded his plate from the heaping buffet like a starving man or gambled irresponsible sums in the smoky card rooms. Certainly, he had never danced.

  And yet now here he was, descending the steps to the Courtlands’ glowing ballroom with his wife on his arm.

  “Are you in pain?” Sabine asked, glancing at him.

  “No,” he said. “That is, not because of my wound.” Actually, his wound was more like a scab now, and the only residual pain was from the broken ribs. He was fit enough to be at a ball or anywhere else for that matter—except that he resented trussed-up society functions. He had nothing to contribute to female gossip or male boasting. He was bored almost immediately and appalled by the dancing (how did full-grown men keep a straight face as they hopped in a line?).

  “Can you untwist your face, perhaps?” Sabine whispered. “You look as if I’m leading you to a funeral pyre.”

  “Would that you were,” he sighed. “I haven’t the slightest idea what we’re to do now that we’ve come. Is it typical to feel oddly conspicuous and gratingly idle? Like we’re wasting time and showing off all at once?”

  “If we are conspicuous, then we’re on task. Everyone hopes to be noticed at a ball.”

  Stoker thought Sabine would be impossible not to notice in her elegant, cherry-red silk gown and golden gloves. He’d seen a dozen men turn to follow her with their eyes, jackals watching unassuming prey, and he’d felt a pang of possessiveness so acute, he’d almost slid his arm around her waist and hauled her against him. But good sense prevailed, and he scowled at the room in general and the men in particular. Sabine carried on not knowing or not caring, wholly focused on identifying her suspected ship owner, Phineas Legg.

  “How will we identify your illustrious Mr. Legg if we don’t ask?” Stoker said.

  “Pray do not forget that Legg isn’t the only reason we’ve come. The Duke of Wrest accepted Bryson’s invitation, so we shall get a look at him too.”

  “We’re not approaching the Duke of Wrest,” he told her.

  “If we approach either of them,” she went on, “we must blend in with the other guests. Never fear. I shall navigate for us. You may rely on me.”

  He glanced at her, wondering if she realized how completely he had allowed himself to rely on her in these past five weeks, more than he’d ever relied on anyone in his life, even his business partners. Not for clinical care: she was an average nurse at best, despite having saved his life. But he had grown to rely on her presence, her nearness, her attention. He’d discovered delicious insights into her personality to which he’d not been privy. He knew now that she was reliably diligent, up early each morning; amusingly disordered, with strewn paperwork amid drafting tools and half-eaten apples; she was fiercely loyal to her dog; she was clever—so very clever—and bossy. He awakened each morning, straining to hear the sound of her footsteps on the stairs or whipping open the door. He fell asleep after hours of conversation and long, silent stretches, where they stared into the fire.

  He’d stored away every memory, every nuance, for after, when he was fully recovered, and this business with the smuggling was settled, and she was restored to Park Lodge in Surrey and he was . . . and he was . . . on to whatever his next act would be.

  A more prudent man might have tried to curtail the slavish sort of attachment he’d allowed himself to develop for her—to rely on her—but honestly, he didn’t care. So what if he admired her? So what if he thought of her to the exclusion of anything else? His proximity to her was worth any prideful restraint. Worse, his proximity to her was fleeting. He would not remain in her bedroom forever. He was in love with her. This truth had hit him like a boulder to the chest late one evening after she’d gathered up her notes and the supper tray and bustled from the room. Come back, he wanted to call after her. Not yet. I’m dying, even as you heal me day by day.

  I love every moment that we are together.

  I love . . . I love . . .

  I love you.

  His love had become such a fundamental truth, the admission didn’t even alarm him. It felt, in fact, more settling to simply acknowledge it.

  He loved her, but he was not stupid with love. He knew they would part ways. Another settling acknowledgment: He should savor her while he could.

  Savor her at an arm’s length, of course. Always and above everything else—perhaps his greatest achievement. By some great miracle, he was not guilty of taking her virtue or pawing her body. His desire for her, which seemed to intertwine itself with his love for her, confused and unnerved and worried him. He worked, daily, to tap down his persistent, driving need to touch her.

  He laughed now, thinking he’d been tempted by the impersonal annual exchanges of previous years. These were nothing compared to spending hours every night talking, listening to her laugh, watching her face as he told her stories of his life at sea.

  The days of merely savoring the idea of Sabine Noble were an afterthought; now he bloody knew her. He knew her wit and her artistry. He knew what she found ridiculous and what pricked her fierce sympathy. And he knew how she looked at the end of a long day, when she had burrowed herself into the chair beside his bed, long legs doubled up beneath her skirt, stockinged feet poking out, chin resting on her knees. And her hair—God, her hair—falling down from whatever hasty twist or braid that had survived the day but finally slipped free.

  “Look, there are the Courtlands,” Sabine exclaimed now, nodding to a bunting-draped alcove, thick with potted palms. “Let us say hello and thank them. And then we will eat something. We’ll get a broad view of who is here and also save you from dancing.”

  “I will not dance,” he vowed, not for the first time. She’d tucked her gloved hand so tightly around his biceps, he could feel the shape of her fingers. The lushness of her body pressed against his; her skirts lapped at his leg as they walked.

  He glanced at her, hoping that she hadn’t noticed he was overwhelmingly aware of every bat of her eye, every swipe of her hand. Other men, he knew, did not nearly incinerate at any idle touch from their wives. He would die if she knew he went nearly out of his mind when she touched his arm. She smiled up at him and Stoker jerked his head away. She was easily the most beautiful woman in this ballroom, likely the most beautiful woman in London, and it almost hurt him to look at her.

  But it hurt worse not to touch her. To really touch her. To this end, a bloody ball was actually quite useful. Three hundred revelers closed in on all sides. Candles shone, food and drink kept them occupied. Beyond her escort on his arm, it would be impossible to touch her. The cellar bedroom had been a different story, and he’d fought a daily battle with his mounting—nay, avalanching—physical attraction to her. So deep was his desire for her, he could feel the sharp points of it sinking into his very bones, the heavy pressure of it expanding inside him. He would die for wanting her, he thought.

  And so he had frightened her instead. The words had come out before he’d known it, but they had worked. The most reliable safeguard against his desire that he knew: threatening her with the truth. He’d used language coarse enough to offend a veteran sailor and swore to her what would happen if she continued to press. It was a sharp nail in the door to her curiosity, and it hit his mark. She’d not asked again. He’d been shocked that she’d not disappeared for another week, but she’d carried on sharing dinners, asking him about her investigation, and allowing him
to fall deeper in love. His baseness and his darkness and his raw, pounding need were his own cross to bear.

  “Stoker,” Sabine called, trying to keep up, “we cannot simply walk to the front of the receiving line.” He pulled her along the perimeter of the dance floor, skirting a throng of guests queuing to shake hands with the Courtlands.

  “Oh, let us simply try,” muttered Stoker, stepping up to Bryson and whispering in his ear. Bryson glanced at him, said farewell to the gentleman shaking his hand, and then reared back to pull them in beside Elisabeth beneath the festooned trellis.

  “Look who’s turned up,” Bryson whispered, catching Elisabeth before she drew in the next guest.

  Elisabeth turned. “Oh, thank God you’ve come,” she breathed. “I’m saved.”

  “Not quite yet, darling,” Bryson said with a smirk. The queue was rapidly growing.

  “Oh right,” she said, sagging a little, pulling a defeated face. But then she rallied, winking at them. “Shouldering on,” she said brightly. “You look radiant, both of you.”

  “Have you eaten?” Bryson asked. “I can have drinks brought ’round, or a footman fetch plates from the buffet. Your Mr. Legg can be found very near the drinks table, I believe. Although I recommend you fortify yourselves.”

  “He’s here?” asked Sabine breathlessly, craning to see.

  “He was among the very first guests to arrive,” imparted Bryson.

  “He turned up at four o’clock in the afternoon,” said Elisabeth conspiratorially. “I’ve never done this before, but I turned him away until a more appropriate hour. The staff was absolutely not ready. None of us were. His first London ball, I daresay.”

  “He’s entirely ridiculous, isn’t he? I’m so sorry. I hope he does not spoil your beautiful affair. I never meant—” She looked pleadingly at Stoker.

  “I assume this means he’ll be easy to spot,” Stoker said, unmoved.

  “Do not give him a moment’s worry,” assured Elisabeth. “We are glad to help, and there is always a contingent of boorish guests at these affairs. They provide valuable gossip, and no self-respecting ball would occur in this town without some number of early arrivals or tardy hangers-on. Oh, and the other honored guest—who was it?” She looked at Bryson.

  “The Duke of Wrest.”

  “That’s right, the old duke. He also sent his thanks and should be here somewhere . . .” She squinted across the ballroom. “But why did you say you’re looking for him—?”

  “Just another suspect,” cut in Sabine vaguely, taking Stoker’s arm. “But we are keeping you from your guests. Please carry on. We’re not so single-minded that we cannot enjoy a lovely night out for the sake of diversion.”

  She laughed a little and beamed up at Stoker, and his throat went tight. He couldn’t breathe when she turned her smile on him alone.

  Enjoy a lovely night out for the sake of diversion.

  And here he’d been congratulating himself for not pouncing on her. He was a bore and a social cripple and he had no idea how to relate to her as a woman and certainly not as a wife. She’d spent nearly six weeks beside his bloody sickbed, for God’s sake. Of course she wished for diversion. Instead, he’d brought her to a ball to hover about a suspected smuggler and a suspected murderer.

  Had he ever failed more spectacularly in his life? This was why he’d stayed away for four years. He would never be remotely enough for Sabine Noble.

  You don’t need to be enough, he reminded himself. You only need to protect her and leave her in peace.

  On his arm, Sabine was thanking the Courtlands again. “We will seek you out when you’re not so inundated with guests,” she called, tugging him away.

  “When we find Mr. Legg,” she informed Stoker, diving immediately into her investigation, “one of us will prove better suited to coax information out of him than the other, but it’s impossible to guess who. He may dismiss women on sight and have nothing to say to me. Or he may know who you are, considering the success of the guano venture.”

  As always, Stoker experienced an unjustified rush of gratification when Sabine mentioned the guano venture. He and his partners had been the first importers to bring nitrogen-rich guano fertilizer to the British Isles, revolutionizing agriculture in the country and making them three of the richest men in England. Stoker had given Sabine her due profits—hers was one of three dowries that financed the first expedition—but they’d never discussed the great windfall in detail. The fortune bored him, honestly, and she didn’t seem to care. But she knew. Each time she mentioned it, the money was a little less boring and a little more worth the months he’d spent chipping bird shite off an island in the baking Barbadoes heat.

  “I am your apprentice in this investigation,” Stoker said, scoping out the long buffet table, heavy laden with colorful food and gleaming china and silver.

  “Good God,” Sabine whispered, gaping through a dispersing crowd of young ladies to a high table crowded with bottles of liquor and tiers of empty crystal. Beside the table, standing exactly in the path of busy footmen conveying trays of drink, leaned an over-pomaded, snugly trousered young man—twenty-two if he was a day—strangled by a cravat so voluminous, it looked like a lion’s mane. He wore tall boots polished to a blinding gleam, a puce waistcoat, and a moss-green jacket so festooned with quivering gold buttons, he resembled an apothecary cabinet with fifty drawers and copper pulls.

  Two older women waited before the table while a footman ladled punch into crystal goblets, and the young man lunged forward to intercede. The women chuckled at his overblown gallantry, thanking him as he dispersed the goblets with a bow and a wink.

  “Surely not,” said Sabine, her face scrunched.

  “Shall I have a go or will you?” sighed Stoker.

  “Let me begin,” said Sabine, squaring her shoulders, “and if he cannot be taken in, you may take over.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stoker swore inwardly, and then reminded himself that of course Sabine would approach Phineas Legg. Stoker had an instinct for detecting maliciousness and threat, and Phineas Legg gave no suggestion of either, thank God.

  No risk, Stoker said in his head, ambling behind Sabine. He promised himself he would not strike this person unless absolutely necessary. He would not cause a scene; he would not disrupt Sabine’s work; he would not be a raging jealous lunatic unless rage or lunacy were required as last resorts.

  “. . . but have we been introduced?” Sabine was already trilling to the man at the drinks table. He cast an appreciative look up and down Sabine’s body and appeared overjoyed by her suggestion.

  No risk, Stoker chanted in his head.

  “Mr. Phineas Legg, at your service, miss,” the man was saying. He affected a sweeping bow over her hand.

  “Oh, Mr. Legg, of course,” said Sabine, “of Southampton.” She made no effort to correct his “miss” to “madam.”

  Mr. Legg chuckled, “Of Portsmouth.”

  “Oh indeed? Portsmouth. But then perhaps we are not acquainted. I don’t believe I know anyone at all from Portsmouth. I am a resident of London these past five years. What luck for you to attend all the way from Hampshire.” She shot a glance over her shoulder at Stoker, her eyes bright with excitement. Legg looked up, noticing Stoker for the first time, and frowned.

  “Yes,” Legg said haltingly. “And who do I have the honor of meeting?” His eyes darted back and forth between Sabine and Stoker.

  Sabine fretted over her rudeness. “Oh, but do forgive me. I am Elaine Toble.” She extended her hand again. Legg smiled and descended slowly over her knuckles, casting another frown at Stoker.

  Sabine quickly added, “And this is the man employed by my late husband to guard my welfare . . . when I am out of the house.”

  “To guard you?”

  “We own several businesses that claim some . . . notoriety,” she said simply, waving the notion away.

  Stoker took a small step closer. Low risk or not, he did not relish being waved away, even
as part of a ruse.

  But now Legg was clarifying, “Your late husband?”

  “May God rest him,” said Sabine. The words were enthusiastic and dismissive at the same time.

  Phineas Legg raised his eyebrows, a suggestive, knowing look. Sabine raised one of her own perfectly arched brows as they shared the look. Stoker bit back a growl.

  “I assume your work is in shipping, Mr. Legg, like the other gentlemen here?” Sabine asked.

  “It is indeed, madam,” Legg said, pleased by her assumption. He motioned to the punch bowl and procured two glasses, handing her one. “I run a fleet of ships from Portsmouth Point. Across the channel to France and back mostly.”

  “A fleet,” marveled Sabine admiringly. She nodded to a nearby column, just steps away from the bar, and began to drift. Legg did not hesitate to sweep his hand beneath her elbow to guide her along. Long, pale fingers brushed the skin just above her glove, and Stoker’s heart lodged in his throat. Every muscle in his body went rigid. Even as they reached the column, Legg did not let her go. Sabine said something, but Stoker couldn’t hear; his ears had disengaged. Possessiveness was a roar in his head.

  You knew all along she would invent some identity, he told himself. Over meals in her bedroom, she’d explained the roles she played to elicit information. She did not aspire to widowhood; she was not an accomplished flirt. She was not affected by this man’s hands on her.

  Sabine tossed a glance in his direction, a casual tilt of her head, but the look on her face was very clear. Do not.

  Stoker stared back, not blinking, not breathing, his gaze homing in on the place the young man held her arm. He stepped silently behind her.

  “Your man is attentive,” commented Legg, narrowing his eyes on Stoker.

  “He is very good at his job, I assure you,” Sabine said. “But tell me, what do you transport on these ships of yours . . . ?”

  She engaged him for a time, exclaiming over his answers like they were the most fascinating truths of human history. Legg gave teasing, one-word answers at first, clearly expecting female shallowness, but she skillfully led him down a path of specific detail and self-important boasts. Within ten minutes he’d rattled off the boring history of his five meager boats, his itinerate crews, and his end-of-quay dock, all of which he inherited from a cruel mother.