Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4)

by Scarlett Scott

  Her friend’s eyes were wide upon her. “Georgiana? Are you certain nothing is amiss? Leeds has not hurt you has he? If he has ill-treated you, I shall thrash him myself.”

  Georgiana chewed the remainder of her chocolate biscuit. She hadn’t even tasted it, but she wanted another. “That would be a sight, the Duchess of Trent, round with child, attempting to thrash the tall, ridiculously muscled Duke of Leeds.”

  “Firstly, I said nothing about a mere attempt, for I assure you that I would succeed. When I’m determined, all others ought to stay out of my path.” Daisy grinned then. “Is he tall and ridiculously muscled, then? I have yet to cross paths with him.”

  “Pardon?” Georgiana paused in the act of liberating another biscuit. “Who said that about him?”

  Her friend’s grin widened. “You just did, my dear.”

  “Oh.” She frowned. The man was invading her thoughts. Disturbing her faculties. Why, she could not even go an hour without thinking about the maddening sensation of his hand bringing her to pleasure. Without wanting more and making her body ache with a desire that could only be fulfilled by him.

  “Well?” Daisy prompted. The minx.

  “He does have the physique of a sportsman,” she grumbled, snatching up another biscuit. “While I fail to see how it signifies, he’s also so handsome it nearly hurts to look at him.”

  In the vicinity of her heart, but she wisely kept that to herself.

  “I see.” Her friend took another dainty sip of tea. “I do believe I may have uncovered the reason for your distraction.”

  “Leeds has nothing to with it,” she fibbed around a mouth of chocolate pastry.

  Daisy stared, her expression vaguely aghast. Georgiana could only suspect the cause was her appalling lack of niceties. But it couldn’t be helped. All the lessons in comportment she’d learned seemed to have dissipated like the gloom after a rainstorm. Here she was, without a crumb of refinement, a farm girl pretending to be a duchess, eating biscuits to drown out the unwanted emotions multiplying within her.

  “Georgiana, you seem…out of sorts,” Daisy began.

  She swallowed the biscuit, but it was a lump in her throat. Or perhaps that was caused by thoughts of Kit. Tea. She needed tea before she choked. Blast the man. She had removed herself from his very household, and he still haunted her.

  “Very well.” She closed her eyes. “If you must know, it is Leeds. His return has flummoxed and confounded me.”

  Daisy leaned forward in her seat. “Never say you are falling in love with him.”

  Yes, and it was horrible.

  “I could never love him,” she denied, hoping that if she said it aloud often and with enough conviction, she could persuade her heart of the rightness of it. “He doesn’t like my animals. He is surly as a bear interrupted from hibernation. He is condescending and rude, and he possesses an abysmal penchant for cussing whenever the mood strikes him. Would you believe that he insisted upon referring to Lady’s kittens as rats?”

  “Lady?” Daisy’s brow crinkled. “Have you taken in more cats since we last spoke?”

  “Lady Philomena Whiskers,” she elaborated, feeling a flush steal over her own cheeks now. “The dratted man insisted upon abbreviating her name.”

  “He sounds like a fiend.” Her friend’s tone was amused as she too took up another cocoa biscuit. “Never mind that I myself have told you on many occasions that is an awfully silly mouthful for one white cat. What else has he done?”

  “He has kissed me,” she muttered. “And not just once, nor were they the sorts of kisses that a gentleman would give a lady. They were bold and demanding and I cannot say I have ever experienced the like.”

  And she had loved every blissful moment of them.

  “Oh, Georgiana.” Daisy’s voice was soft, her eyes glinting with understanding. “You’re not falling in love with him, are you? You’re already in love.”

  Her friend’s pronouncement was the verbal and emotional equivalent of a pail of ice water thrown into her lap. She shot to her feet, sending her teacup and saucer flying as her voluminous skirts swayed with the force of her hurried movement. Thank heavens it was empty and the carpets would suffer no ill effect for her clumsiness.

  “I am not in love with Christopher Anthony Harcourt,” she disavowed, resorting to his full name for emphasis. As if the specificity would somehow render her impassioned repudiation closer to the truth. “I cannot possibly be. Did I ever tell you that he left me before the wedding breakfast?”

  Daisy nodded, her expression thoughtful. “Only one time or a handful, dearest. You may have also mentioned that there was lobster salad.”

  “Because there was!” Georgiana cried, and she didn’t know why, but all these months later, it still mattered. “I selected it for him, and he didn’t care. He left me with no word, no letters, not a thought for six months, Daisy. Then he reappeared, bleeding and out of his mind with fever. I nursed him back to health. I bandaged him, tended him. Do you know what the last thing he said to me before he left me on our wedding day was? I do not give a goddamn what our guests think, madam. My ship awaits.”

  “How beastly.”

  “Precisely.” Georgiana heaved a sigh, feeling the urge to pace the length of the room. “He is a beast, and I do not like him. This weakness I have for him…with some time and distance, I am certain it will go away.”

  Daisy rose and came to her then, drawing her into an embrace. Her golden curls tickled Georgiana’s cheek. “Love never goes away, my dear. It is stubborn and frustrating, frightening and wearying, and sometimes it may seem as if it will break us, but love is the bravest and most rewarding act of all.”

  Though she accepted her friend’s comforting encirclement, she remained stalwart. “I do not love him, Daisy. He is the most curmudgeonly, arrogant, vexing, unlovable man in all England.”

  Not to mention handsome and wicked. Heavens, mere thoughts of his hand up her skirt, his fingers dipping into her to tease and caress and bring her to her pinnacle...No. She would not think of any of those things now. Perhaps if she repeated the sentence to herself internally, it would aid in her quest to remove him from her thoughts for good. I do not love him. I do not love him. I do not love him.

  But then she thought about the way he had kissed her for the first time, with such hunger and reverence, taking his time to devour her as if she were both fragile and delicious all at once. She recalled the slow thawing of his ice regarding Lady. How gently he had stroked her fur. How lost he had seemed, as if he were at odds with himself.

  Remembered the soft expression on his face after she had revealed her memories of the war to him, the vital comfort of his hand over hers. His words haunted her. I wish to be your husband in more than name, Georgiana. And her desire for that too, unhindered by all her doubts and common sense. Her irrational need for him. To be with him. To touch him. Kiss his forbidding mouth.

  There, at last, was her answer, hitting her in the chest with the force of a barreling locomotive.

  I love him.

  Dear God, I truly love him.

  When had it happened? And how? It seemed to her that her love had slowly grown and developed, like the brushstrokes of an artist on canvas. What began as empty space transformed with each swipe of the paintbrush, adding colors, layers, shadows, highlights, depth. Until all at once, the picture was complete, and there she stood, dazed and helpless as she’d ever been, standing in her friend’s salon, staring numbly at the wall covering, realizing she had fallen in love with Kit. Kit, the husband she’d been so intent upon divorcing. The husband who had abandoned her once and quite possibly would again at the first opportunity that presented itself.

  Then came the most pertinent question of all: how could she undo it?

  “Georgiana?” Daisy’s worried voice penetrated the haze of confusion clouding her mind. “You’re trembling, my dear. What is it?”

  She withdrew from her friend’s embrace, stricken by her unwanted discovery. She’d nev
er felt more helpless. “I…oh drat it all, Daisy. This is horrible.”

  “What is horrible?” Daisy’s gaze searched hers.

  “I do not want to love him. Heaven knows I don’t trust him.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “But I do. I love him. And that is precisely what is horrible. I love a man who doesn’t believe in love.”

  More of Kit’s words re-emerged from the recesses of her mind, this time to haunt her.

  My dear, naïve American duchess, do you not realize that love does not exist?

  “There now. It cannot be so bad as all that. How do you know he doesn’t believe in love?” Daisy patted her shoulder, consoling.

  “Because the words emerged from his smug, beautiful mouth.” She clapped a hand over her lips before her wayward tongue could say more.

  Daisy, who never failed to see the good in everyone around her, offered an encouraging smile. “Then you shall have to disabuse him of that ridiculous and false notion. You have the biggest, most wonderful heart of anyone I know, Georgiana. Leeds is fortunate indeed to have claimed it. Trust me on this if on no other matter, if you love someone, you must fight for that love.”

  Full circle, Georgiana thought grimly. They had returned once more, to Daisy and Trent’s bountiful love. Where were the chocolate biscuits when she needed them most? She was jealous, and she was conflicted, and her entire being felt as if it were in agony. “Darling, I know you and Trent are madly in love, and I am happy for you. But you must realize how rare that is, if not impossible.”

  Daisy pursed her lips, taking on a determined expression. “Rare perhaps, though never impossible. But you, my friend, deserve only the best. I shall have to meet Leeds myself to determine his worthiness. You must bring him to dinner. I’ll send an invitation. It will be a small affair, no one but the four of us.”

  “No.” Georgiana’s reaction was instant. “All I want is to stay as far away from him as possible so that this inconvenient love nonsense that is troubling me will dissipate.”

  “I’m afraid to tell you that it won’t fade.” Daisy frowned. “It only grows deeper and larger with time, until the love is all there is and there’s no longer room for anything else.”

  “With you and Trent perhaps,” she stressed, casting a side eye longingly toward the abandoned biscuits. How she longed to stuff one of the confections into her mouth. When she returned to Leeds House, she would order a plate of raspberry tarts and a glass of wine. She’d feel horrid afterwards, with a dreadful stomachache, but it would be better than seeking out Kit and making herself even more vulnerable to him.

  “You will come for dinner,” Daisy said with an air of finality that brooked no claims to the contrary. “I insist.”

  Georgiana sighed. “I do not think it wise.”

  A knock at the door interrupted their conversation.

  “Buttercup?” The rich, deep voice on the other side of the portal belonged, unmistakably, to the Duke of Trent.

  Buttercup? Georgiana’s gaze flew to her friend, whose cheeks were rosy for the second time. But a smile of unabashed happiness curved her lips in the next breath, her eyes sparkling as she shrugged.

  “Yes, my love?” she called out.

  The door opened, and the duke stepped inside, tall and imposing in his black trousers and jacket coupled with a navy waistcoat and crisp white shirt. His eyes flitted over Georgiana before settling on Daisy, his expression one of open adoration. “How are you feeling, darling?”

  “I am well, my love, as I told you not an hour ago and as I shall tell you an hour from now when next you ask.” Daisy grinned at him, her love reflected in her gaze as well. “Come and take tea with Georgiana and me, won’t you? Cook has made your favorite cocoa biscuits, and Georgiana has been threatening to retch on them, so you must enjoy one before they’re spoiled.”

  Trent shot Georgiana a perplexed look. “Is this coded woman language at which I am hopelessly inept, or did you truly suggest you would commit such a flagrant sin against Cook’s cocoa biscuits?”

  Georgiana laughed, charmed as she always was by the Duke of Trent’s endless adulation for Daisy and his easy sense of humor. A more perfect pair could not exist than the two of them, Daisy the beautiful light to his dark handsomeness. “Never fear, Trent. Your biscuits are safe. I swear it.”

  But her heart was not.

  The unbidden reminder shot through her like the bolt of an arrow, swift. Painful. Terrifying.

  The duke sent her a boyish grin before dropping a kiss on Daisy’s forehead that lingered a bit longer than necessary. “In that case, I should love nothing better than to enjoy some tea and biscuits with you two lovely ladies. Indeed, I thought you’d never ask.”

  Georgiana suppressed a sigh of envy at the sweet, domestic ease between Trent and Daisy. Her foolish heart dared to hope, for just a moment, that one day she and Kit could share the same loving bond. But just as quickly, she dashed that hope, silenced it with another cocoa biscuit, and drowned it with tea. For she knew without a doubt that she and Kit and love simply were not meant to be.

  he had been avoiding him for far too long.

  Eleven days.

  Almost a fortnight.

  And he’d had enough.

  On day one, he’d hoped he had made inroads with her. For in spite of all his best intentions, regardless of his determination to recover his reputation and his rightful place in the League, he had decided the day he’d made her spend against the wall of his bedchamber that he would have her at any cost and certainly despite the cursed warmth that spread through his chest whenever he saw her or thought of her.

  And distinctly despite the dreaded feelings she unleashed in him, a peculiar weakness that continued to mystify him.

  After all, why should he not when she was lawfully his wife? Regardless of his every effort to the contrary, the woman had grown on him. She had shown herself to possess an intrinsic caring and benevolence that outshined her less-than-noble pedigree. It had ceased to matter to him that she had been born and raised on a farm and that she did not comport herself with the icy hauteur that a duchess ought to exhibit. If anything, it made him want her more.

  That day in the morning room, she had revealed a part of herself to him that he had never known. The moment of deep, intimate connection—on the heels of making her spend so gloriously—had affected him to his bones. But she had run from him then and had failed to appear at dinner that evening. The next morning, Dr. Gage had reappeared to bandage his wound.

  By day three—and yes, he had bloody well counted the days because the woman affected him that much—thoughts of a tiny, chestnut-haired Georgiana cowering as cannon fire thundered in the distance struck him in the heart with the precision of a dagger. It was all he could think about. He woke, covered in perspiration, and for the first time it had not been caused by fever but rather the nightmare of young Georgiana learning fear in the shadows of brutal war.

  She was once more absent from Dr. Gage’s visit, from breakfast, from luncheon, from dinner. To make matters worse, none of the domestics, when questioned, offered any inkling as to her whereabouts. They were either protecting her or they were truly in the dark. Ludlow, smug bastard that he was, would offer nothing beyond reassurances that she was safe and well-guarded at all times.

  On day four, his suspicions she was waging an intentional campaign to disappear solidified. There was no confusing her sudden wraithlike qualities. When he gathered his cane and stalked the halls, he could detect the phantom scent of lavender and yet no Georgiana. He appeared at breakfast to discover that she had enjoyed her repast before him. Another day he’d been early only to learn she had foregone her morning meal.

  Day five came and he cornered the bloody mountain yet again and demanded to know her location. She was once more visiting the Duchess of Trent, or the Daring Duchess, as she was known in the press. He awaited his wife’s return only to receive a missive informing him she was detained and would be spending the evening with the duchess.

>   The excuses seemed to collect like snowflakes on the winter ground until the days compounded and he had reached the eighth morning and had unwound his bandage himself, finding his wound favorably healed. His pain had lessened considerably, and no sign of infection had been discovered by the dubious Dr. Gage in weeks.

  Then had come his unexpected nighttime visitor and the subsequent altercation behind Charrington’s. It was a bitter, stark reminder that Georgiana was in danger. He had distracted himself by committing his mind and time to his investigation of the man who had put a price on her head.

  But he and the not-butler—after reluctantly partnering to examine the pilfered contents of the bastard’s pockets—found nothing to definitively connect the dead man to Georgiana’s father in New York. They discovered only the pistol and what appeared to be a love letter that reeked of cloying perfume, along with a ring that had been tucked into its envelope. There seemed to be no connection at all to the New York Fenians aside from the fellow’s distinctive accent.

  Kit’s entire life had become a goddamn stalemate. He continued to be on the periphery of the League, and his wife continued to keep him at bay. It was as if he had galloped in a perfect circle, expecting to arrive at a new destination only to realize he was precisely where he had begun.

  But today was where it ended. He was breaking the bloody circle and it was well past time. He was healthy. This morning, he had left his chamber without his cane, and though his leg ached and he could not escape his bloody limp, he felt stronger. Physically, he was reasonably healed.

  Inside, he was a goddamn disaster.

  Which was why he didn’t even knock at the door that currently shielded his wife from him that morning after a breakfast she had refused to attend. (Her Grace has taken a tray in her chamber, the mountain had snidely informed him upon his query into her whereabouts.) Which was why he turned the knob, opened the door, crossed the threshold, and closed it quietly at his back.

  Also why he had ignored the lackey Ludlow had placed at the end of the hall to guard his wife’s chamber. (The sight of which irked him mightily, for it was a reminder that his not-butler was not only in love with his wife but also had seen far more of her in the last week than he had.)