You May Kiss the Duke

by Charis Michaels

  “I said,” growled Dryden, “who knows?”

  Taking a moment to gather her strength and consider the arc of her arm and the best target along his tweed-covered leg, Sabine sobbed again.

  When he began to laugh, she sucked in a breath and cried out, “Bridget, bite!” The dog let out a ferocious half-growl, half-bark and sprang, fastening her jigsawed mongrel’s teeth into Dryden’s bony hip.

  Sabine drove her arm down an instant later, thrusting the letter opener into his opposite thigh. The man shouted, jerked up, and then flailed backward. His hands dropped, and Sabine slid from the desk, sending papers and beakers flying. She bolted through the mess, scrambling for the door. The knob was locked, of course, and she began to shake it, too frantic to see how to unlock a door.

  In the next moment she heard footsteps outside the door. Angry voices. Birdall must have gone for help. As she struggled to work the lock on the knob, someone rattled it from the other side. Pounding ensued, a frantic knocking that reverberated through the wood.

  “Bridget, come!” Sabine cried, casting a glance over her shoulder. The dog had released Dryden’s thigh and lunged for his jugular, a wiry ball of claws and bared fangs and sharp, feral eyes.

  “Bridget, heel!” Sabine cried, trying to be heard over the pounding on the door. “Release, now! Come!”

  Dryden pulled the letter opener from his thigh and used it like a dagger against the dog.

  “Bridget!” Sabine shrieked, desperate for the dog’s safety. Bridget skittered back and darted to her side, slipping on broken beakers and paper. Sabine turned her attention back to the knob and forced her hands and brain to work a simple lock on a standard door. When at last the bolt slid to the side, she wrenched the door open with a shout.

  The sight beyond the open door took her breath away. It registered slowly at first; Bridget’s barking was the only phenomenon that seemed to evolve in real time.

  Stoker was there, staggering back from the swinging door, his face torqued in fury and fear. Behind him crowded a small detachment of uniformed policemen. Scientists and students filled in behind the police. The corridor was mobbed with men in blue uniforms and white laboratory smocks.

  Bridget barked at them all, squaring her small shoulders and lunging at the closest uniformed officer.

  Sabine let her go and she reached for Stoker.

  He took her by the shoulders and bent down, looking into her eyes. “Are you badly hurt? Where did he touch you? Your nose is bleeding. Can you breathe?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, clutching him to her for a quick, tight hug. His size and strength were like a sharpening stone to her own knife-like will to fight. She felt her dulling strength revive and she gave him a final squeeze and thrust him away.

  “Dryden is there,” she said quickly, breathlessly. “He has one of my notebooks. I can show the police some part—”

  “I have the mural,” Stoker said, pointing to a satchel on the floor. “I brought everything I could find and sent the local watchman running for a detective and a squadron of police.” He reached for her again, taking her by the arms. “I’m so sorry you came here alone, Sabine. I’m sorry it took me so long to reach you. I’d never have found you in this building if not for the dog’s barking.”

  “But how did you know to bring my mural or the police?” she gasped.

  “Sir Dryden rode by Belgrave Square in an open cab. I was staring out the window like a—well, you saw the wretched state I was in. When the cab circled the third time and I caught sight of his face, I realized. There was no guarantee that he would call to Regent Street next, but if there was the slightest chance, I could not but come to you. I gathered the mural and summoned the police as an afterthought. I’m too old to rescue girls on my own.”

  Sabine laughed, a gurgle of pride and gratefulness and relief, crying at the same time. “I managed,” she said. “And you are not so old.”

  “You did manage,” he said, hugging her fiercely again. “You certainly did, my courageous wife.”

  She gave him a squeeze and wiggled away. “Will you take the police in?” She nodded to the office. “I can’t face him again.” She wiped blood from her nose with the back of her hand and reached for the satchel. “Which one is the detective?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Stoker leaned against the corridor wall and stared down at Bridget. The dog ignored him; her unerring focus was on the closed laboratory door behind which Sabine stood. After the struggle they’d had, he did not blame the dog for wanting to be close.

  Stoker had suggested that the detective might take her mural more seriously if she explained without the growling presence of a suspicious dog.

  “It won’t be long now,” he told the dog, hoping this was true. A second and third detective had arrived shortly after the police cleared the scene. They introduced themselves as an explosives regulator and a detective who specialized in smuggling and joined the interrogation of Sabine. She now captivated a growing circle of men gathered around her mural. They were well into their second hour of questions and studying her evidence. The men had been shocked when Stoker declined to remain in the room for the discussion—in truth, they were shocked that he did not conduct the discussion—but this was her investigation.

  Now he and the dog would wait. He wondered how Sir Dryden fared in his Whitehall holding cell. In the confusion of a dog barking, a bleeding woman, and a frantic professor who began a guilty recitation of ridiculous excuses, there had been ten stray minutes when Dryden had been left alone under very distracted guard. Stoker had used the time to slip into the destroyed office and have a few words with the sadistic git. A handy pen had somehow escaped the melee on the desktop. Stoker had snatched it up and dug it, nib first, into the shallow wound Sabine had inflicted on this thigh. While the older man tremored and begged for mercy, Stoker told him in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if ever he approached Sabine again. He assured him that the police would prevent him from ever residing at Park Lodge and the older man dared not contradict him.

  Later, when the last detective had gone, Sabine asked Stoker if they might walk for a while before they made their way home. He wanted to ask her again to seek out a doctor, but she’d cleaned up her nose and swept up her hair, insisting that she was otherwise unharmed. He would not cluck over her, she didn’t like it, and he was trying very hard to do what she liked.

  A memory from the morning flashed in his mind.

  “Remember this morning,” he ventured, “when you referred to me as unsatisfying and boring?”

  Sabine chuckled. “Of course this is how you would remember it. I did not assign these words to you, as a man. I was describing certain . . . er, interludes. Not all, just some.”

  “Forgive me if I saw only the forest of your message and not the trees.”

  “Actually, I was paying you a compliment.”

  “Oh yes, how complimentary to hear that I bore you and fail to satisfy.”

  “If you are waiting for me to say that I regret the conversation, I do not and I will not.”

  “Sabine Stoker,” he sighed, “woman of no regrets.”

  She laughed. “I wouldn’t say that. But I am decisive and I aim to be sensible, to consider cause and effect. I am not cavalier when I make decisions. What are you getting at?”

  He stopped walking and turned to her. “At the risk of rehashing the topic of Sir Dryden, I merely want to point out that, if I bore you, I am endeavoring to be the opposite of your uncle. I endeavor to be the opposite of every terrible man I have seen bullying a girl—”

  She tried to cut in, but he rushed to finish. “Certainly, I am big and strong and aggressive, and my desire for you is so great, it takes my breath away. But possessing these attributes does not mean it is safe or reasonable for me to inflict them on you.”

  Sabine nodded and looked away. Bridget paused on the sidewalk to drink from a puddle. A day of storms had washed Regent Street in cold rain. They stared down at the dog.
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  “Your caution is a gift. Truly it is,” Sabine said. “Forgive me if I have not shown gratefulness in addition to my, er, demandingness. But what I endured under Sir Dryden has no bearing on what we enjoy when we are intimate. Sir Dryden’s violence was about power. When you are passionate, your, ah, fervor does not come from a place of power, but of—well, I assume it is enthusiasm? Attraction? Passion for passion’s sake?”

  It’s love, he thought, but he said, “Yes, it is all of those things.”

  “Power does not enter into our intimacy—not in my view. Well, perhaps that is not entirely true. If I’m being honest, I feel a small amount of power over you. That is, when you are doing it right—”

  “Oh yes, on those rare occasions . . .”

  She laughed and started walking again. “When we are both caught up in the moment, I feel as if I am irresistible to you. It is a powerful feeling, and an intoxicating one. I quite like being irresistible to you.”

  I have never known anyone or anything more impossible to resist, he thought. He said, “I’m sorry to raise the topic after the day you’ve had. But I felt compelled to mention it. In my defense.”

  Sabine paused and looked up at him. “I never meant for you to defend yourself, Jon. I only wanted you to love me the way you did the very first time. When we were hiding in that bedroom at the Courtlands’, you touched me as if I was something that felt very . . . precious and almost fleeting. It was as if you wanted to swallow me whole, lest I slip way. And I had never felt more revered. Or looked after.” She flashed an expression that said, Don’t you see?

  They stared for a moment and Sabine shrugged. She continued down the sidewalk and Stoker watched her progress. “Noted,” he finally said.

  “But you raise an interesting point about power,” she said when he caught up. “I’ve come to believe that how a man wields his power is a real measure of his character,” she said. “Sir Dryden had a small amount of power over me, and he used it to terrorize and control. But look at someone like the Duke of Wrest. At one time he had considerable power and he chose to do practically nothing but serve his own folly. In the scheme of things, the amount of power a person has matters less than how he or she applies it.” She shrugged. “But it’s all relative, isn’t it? A woman has very little power at all, not beyond her children or her staff. Women in particular are keenly aware of men who take advantage.”

  She looked up. “You never take advantage, Jon. Never. You have respected my interests and my intelligence. You have quarreled with me as if I am an equal.”

  “Only you would appreciate the manner in which I quarrel,” he said.

  “The way we quarrel,” she listed, “the way we make love, the way you convalesce. Good lord, I am demanding.”

  “You are perfect,” he sighed, and he scooped up her hand and tugged her against him. They walked arm in arm until they came to the corner of Regent Street and Great Castle. He stopped in front of the familiar millinery shop and collective of florist stalls that crowded the corner. The dog circled back and sniffed a lamppost. She looked at him expectantly and he realized he had run out of time to avoid saying the words that must be said. He wanted to say them. He would perish if he did not say them, but he was also terrified . . . as afraid as he had ever been.

  If she rejected him because he amused her but she did not need him, not really . . .

  If she sent him away because he was well and the investigation was over . . .

  He felt himself begin to sweat. The bustle of the sidewalk and the noise of the road fell away. He cleared his throat.

  “I wasn’t sure where you wished to walk,” he began.

  His voice sounded odd and he cleared his throat.

  He continued, “Regent Street is my neighborhood, actually, when I am in London. I think I mentioned the suite of rooms I keep for when I am in port.”

  “Oh right,” she said, looking around. “I’ve never heard of anyone actually living in Regent Street. My research suggested that it is only shops and the science institution.”

  “Someone has to live upstairs,” he said. His heart was pounding. “I knew I did not want to stay anywhere near the neighborhoods where I ran wild as a boy, and the stodgy squares of Mayfair did not suit me. No proper neighborhood seemed quite right, and I was so very rarely in the city. The traffic and commerce and life on this street appealed to me. I wasn’t searching for a home when I let it, just an active, distracting place to stay.”

  He glanced at the shiny facade of his apartments above them. Someone had slapped on a fresh coat of paint and the windows looked clean. He wondered if she would like it.

  “And now?” she asked, brushing away a stray lock of hair. “What do you search for now?” She stooped to pick up her dog.

  “I feel like I’ve spent my entire life searching for you,” he whispered.

  If he believed she would have some response for that, he was mistaken. She dipped her head into her dog’s fur and looked up at him through lowered eyes. She waited. Stoker shifted on his feet. Two women rushed from the milliner’s shop, and the bell on the door chimed. He swallowed hard.

  “I climbed in and out of so many terrible places, searching for you, Sabine,” he said.

  She blinked, listening with fascinated eyes.

  “Today,” he continued, “when I thought my own vanity and . . . fear had kept me from protecting you—my fit of pique after you denied me this morning—when I thought Dryden would reach you before I could locate your mural and rally the police and be of some proper use to you, all vanity left me. And I knew the greatest fear of my life. I thought I’d lost you.”

  “We are both very difficult to lose,” she said.

  “When I found you, you had sorted it out yourself.”

  “There was no guarantee Sir Dryden would not have given chase.”

  “I should like to see him defeat you and your dog in a foot race, especially with a letter opener jutting from his leg.”

  She laughed.

  Stoker exhaled deeply. “I honestly had no plan for where I would go or what I would do after I healed.”

  “I . . . I thought you were being very secretive about it or you had no idea. It was my very great hope that you had no idea.”

  He laughed. She was so honest and forthright and clever. She was everything he required. He said, “I wanted to come to some agreement with the duke. I needed to make certain my brig was not at the bottom of the ocean. After that my only plan has been to follow you, wherever you may go. If you will have me.”

  “Of course I will have you,” she whispered, stepping closer to him. She stooped to release the dog. “I have been working very hard to hold you captive in my cellar for six weeks, or perhaps you haven’t noticed. Pity you are so . . . virile. You healed and regained your strength despite my worst efforts. Now I must rely on you to willingly remain.”

  “You are a terrible nurse,” he said, reaching for her, spanning her waist with his large hands. These admissions were halting and difficult to reveal, but touching her was the most natural thing. He lowered his head until their foreheads bumped. There was more. His chest felt as if it would burst with all he wanted to tell her. He closed his eyes. He opened them. “I love you, Sabine,” he said on a rush of air. “I love you so much.”

  She sucked in a small breath and blinked. It occurred to him that he had surprised her. He was happy to reveal the unexpected but he marveled that she did not know. How could she not have known?

  “I love you,” she whispered back. The words flooded him with relief and hope and the courage to say the next harrowing thing.

  “I will endeavor not to—” he cleared his throat “—bore you. Or leave you unsatisfied. If you will allow me. As an authentic husband. In every way. If you will be my authentic wife.”

  She pulled her head away to look at him. “Not bore me?” she teased. “I am very demanding, I’m afraid.” But now she sobered. “I think some part of me always wanted to be your authentic wife. From the
very first day.”

  “A large part of me wanted that,” he said, and she giggled.

  Stoker made a sound of exasperation and rolled his eyes. “How clever you are. Clever and naughty. What a lucky man I am to have such a clever, naughty wife.”

  “In all seriousness, Stoker,” she said, “I will not hound you to, er, devour me. Of course, I will be happy to receive you however—”

  “Do not insult me,” he teased. “It was miserable—before. You were correct on every score. You are always correct.”

  “I am not always correct.”

  “Could I commission a mural with that headline?” he mumbled, looking around. “It’s convenient that we should find ourselves on this corner. Do you know why?”

  She studied the window of the milliner’s shop. “Are we going to . . . buy hats?”

  He laughed. “Perhaps later. My London apartments are here.” He gestured above the shop. “Would you like to see?”

  A slow drizzle began to fall, and Sabine shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed up. “May I bring my dog?”

  “No,” he said and took up her hand. She laughed, summoning Bridget, allowing him to pull her into a passageway beside the milliner’s shop.

  He unlocked the iron gate and they ducked beneath a stone arch. The gate led to a small brick courtyard blooming with roses. A stairwell led to a balcony and a wooden door. He scooped up the dog and deposited her beside a cat crouched disapprovingly in the corner. The dog ignored the other animal and sniffed around planters of roses and a stone bench. A sundial stood in the center of the courtyard, and Sabine stepped up to examine it. She brushed his shoulder, and he snaked out his hand to catch her wrist. Sabine looked up. He gave a demonstrative yank, snatching her to him.