A Duke by Default

by Alyssa Cole

  “He’s not technically a prince, though that situation is rather awkward. Best not to bring it up when you meet him,” Thabiso said. “But yes, that Prince Johan. He’s a good guy, really. Really . . . insightful, I’d call him. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

  “So that wasn’t his butt?” Portia asked.

  “Oh, it definitely was, and you should have seen the photos that didn’t get published,” Thabiso said. “His family paid a pretty penny to keep those under wraps.”

  “I’ve seen them,” Ledi said primly. “Thabiso is already mad at me, so I won’t comment any further. But Johan’s actually a cool guy . . . beneath all the other stuff.”

  “I could use some help actually. This is above my pay grade. Thanks for your help, guys.”

  “We would have come ourselves but there’s a new energy plant opening—the one with the waterfalls that Thabiso had prioritized—and we need to be there. Optics.” Ledi said the last word as if it was a horrible disease.

  “I know all about optics,” Portia said, fighting a sudden pang of homesickness as the end of the call neared. It tightened around her chest and tugged, pulling her toward the familiar. The reliable. “I miss you. The past few weeks have been . . . a lot.”

  Taking the night off to enjoy herself—and all that had come with that—had given her the space to realize just how hard she had been working. Now she was thinking and feeling. She should have never let Tavish take her tablet away.

  “Do you need me there?” Ledi asked. It was a ridiculous idea—they were en route to Thesolo—but Ledi was completely serious. She would come if needed, and that was enough for Portia.

  “No, I’m okay. Gonna go shower.”

  They said their goodbyes and Portia padded into the bathroom and stepped beneath the hot spray, ignoring the sore muscles that urged her into flashbacks of the night before. She took longer than usual in the shower, washing her hair, exfoliating her skin—trying to rid herself of that scent that she knew still lingered in her sheets. Trying to wash away the feel of Tavish’s hands and mouth on her body. She would be scrubbed free of everything that had happened between them the night before, his trusty platonic squire once again. That was all that she wanted to be, and that was all she would allow herself anyway.

  She threw on her pink dry-tech workout pants, a T-shirt with the armory’s new logo emblazoned on it, and her matching pink hoodie, then grabbed a coffee from the kitchen before heading to the gymnasium. She’d snap some pics of the kids’ morning program for social media and then do Jamie’s Extreme Defending the Castle workout, which she needed more than ever.

  When she got into the gym, Tav was working with Syed and some of the other children on a demonstration for the next exhibition. They had broomsticks with papier-mâché horse heads fixed on one end between their legs and were practicing jousting. She watched Tavish laugh and clap Syed on the back and felt a pang of longing.

  This will pass. For sure.

  “He’s great with kids. I wouldn’t have expected that.”

  She looked beside her to find Leslie, David’s sister. Leslie was wearing Prada from head to toe, and there wasn’t a single strand of hair out of place on her head, though Portia could hear the wind howling off of the bay. Portia felt like a knight who had showed up at the tourney field in her thinnest, schlubbiest armor. She’d muddle through.

  She stood straighter, made sure to turn the consonants in her words into sharp edges when she spoke, the better to wield them like daggers.

  “Why, Leslie, how lovely to see you. May I ask what brought about this unexpected visit?”

  Leslie looked away from Tavish then, and there was misery in her eyes, so plain that Portia wondered if she was even trying to hide it.

  “I’m here to seduce a duke.”

  “PARDON?” TAVISH ASKED, unfettered confusion scrunching his features. They were up in his office now, sipping tea. Portia noticed that Leslie stirred her tea in a circular motion, almost defiantly.

  “Well, technically I am supposed to offer you my assistance,” Leslie explained, her voice flat and refined. “You know, the season is wrapping up, and there’s the ball at Essexlove House two Saturdays from now, to mark the official turning over of the title and properties and David’s farewell to the peerage.”

  Tavish glanced at Portia, but she was already pulling out her phone and scanning emails. “Oh. Ms. Baker sent an email invitation last night,” she said. “I missed it. Because.”

  She cleared her throat. A flush cupped Tav’s cheekbones.

  Leslie reached into her bag and pulled out a paper invitation. “Yes. And I brought the paper one. There’s also the matter of the Queen’s garden party to kick of her arrival at Holyrood, which you co-host with Her Majesty herself. Three Saturdays from now.”

  “Bloody hell,” Tavish said. “The weans have their exhibition that day.”

  “Well, you’ll have to skip it. Queens over weans, I’m afraid,” Leslie said matter-of-factly. She handed off the invitation to Portia. “I was also supposed to see if you’d like to take me as your date to the ball.”

  “Me?” Portia asked.

  “No, though that would be lovely. Tavish. A night spent together at the ball, an offer of aid that would draw us closer—things that would of course lead to our eventual union.”

  “There are many problems with this plan, but first—aren’t we cousins?” Tavish asked, brow furrowed.

  Leslie tilted her head and regarded Tav. “Oh dear. You really don’t know anything about the aristocracy at all. How adorable.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Portia asked.

  “Because I’m tired.” Leslie picked at her cardigan. “David doesn’t have a wife. He was looking into some heiresses, and there was a music producer’s daughter, too. I’ve spent the last year doing all those duchess things for him—managing the estates, setting up parties, being friendly to people while he was off having affair after affair or stirring the political pot. Before that, as soon as it became clear that your father wasn’t going to have any children, my parents became obsessed with David and his eventual entry into the peerage. No one cared about what I wanted.”

  She glanced at Portia and her expression became guarded. “I don’t want to date. Or to marry. Anyone. I’m not . . . wired that way, I suppose. David said since I didn’t want anyone else, that it should be no matter to marry Tavish. That it was my duty to the family.”

  Portia knew family expectations could be painful, but her family had always wanted her to be happy and secure, even when their words hurt her. David didn’t seem to care about Leslie’s happiness at all.

  “Doesn’t he think I’m a disgusting social climber?” Tav asked.

  “Yes, but only because you didn’t go to Eton,” Leslie said. “That’s where proper social climbers meet, you know.”

  “And the refugee trash part?” Tav added.

  “I don’t want children, and suddenly what I want matters if it means the family name won’t be ‘tarnished by the fruit of miscegenation,’” Leslie replied, a grimace on her face. “David’s taken everything into account it seems.”

  “I’m sorry,” Portia said. “I’m sorry your brother would do that to you. He’s supposed to protect you.”

  Sudden emotion clogged Portia’s throat as a realization hit her. That was what she had drank and studied and fucked away from for all these years. She hadn’t protected Reggie, illogical as it was. How could she have protected someone from an illness? She couldn’t have. That hadn’t made it hurt less. And then she hadn’t even lived up to anyone’s wishes and dreams, compounding that failure.

  Portia took a swallow of tea. This wasn’t the time for plumbing her emotional depths, though maybe she should call Dr. Lewis after throwing her goals away for a night in bed and having traumatic revelations.

  “Honestly, I knew he was an asshole, but this is horrifying.” She fixed Leslie with a stern look. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t
want to do, especially not seducing someone you aren’t attracted to. You do understand that, right?”

  Leslie’s glossy eyes met Portia’s. “See? That’s it. I saw how you defended Tavish, how you looked at David like you would rip him in half when he insulted him, and it all fell into place. No one has ever . . .” A stray tear slipped down her cheek and she dashed it away. “Oh. Pardon me. Your sister must feel very lucky to have you, is all.”

  “Not sure she feels that way, but thanks,” Portia said, then realized something. “How do you know I have a sister?”

  Leslie did her head tilt thing again. “You two haven’t the slightest idea what you’ve gotten into.”

  She stood, threw back the rest of her tea like it was a tumbler of whiskey, and straightened her dress. “The offer still stands of course. I can be your date to the ball, and more, if you want, Tavish.”

  “But. You just said you didn’t want to?” Tavish looked as confused as Portia felt.

  “You will soon understand that one must do a great many things one doesn’t want to. David gave me a command. I wanted to give you a choice. We could figure something out, if you wanted to make it work.” She looked between him and Portia, then breezed out of the office.

  Portia’s phone vibrated in her hand, a message from Reggie on the screen.

  Incoming. We got scooped. #swordbae’s duke news is the Looking Glass Daily’s breaking news. Your notifications are gonna be a mess.

  Portia clicked on the link and held her breath—the Looking Glass Daily was world renowned for its sensationalist, lie-riddled stories—but this one was mild. It listed basic information about Tavish in a bullet point format, discussed the #swordbae meme, and talked about the Scottish peerage in general and what being a duke meant. There was the picture of them from the Bodotria Eagle, but the caption read “The new duke in town, and (more than?) friend.”

  “You might want to see this,” she said, handing the phone to Tavish. She hated his frown when he saw the still from the video she’d posted and how it deepened as he read.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. “This is only the beginning, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  He threw himself back into his chair. “What do we do now?”

  Portia felt momentary confusion at the “we.” Not at the pronoun, but at what it connoted. Tavish was still the Duke of Edinburgh, but where did she stand in relation to him after last night?

  “I really am going to have to pay you a million pounds for helping me manage this shite,” he said irritably, and Portia cringed. It was ridiculous—so ridiculous. She was the one who had said there couldn’t be anything more between them, but still, nothing clarified your relationship to a man better than an offer of pounds sterling for your services.

  “We’ll post a statement on the armory’s social media sites,” she said, already trying to figure out what angle to take in the wording. “I wrote up something fun and charming for Reggie’s site, and she’s likely hitting publish now if I know her well enough. We’ll play this calm and casual. It was a surprise. You’re an underdog. Who doesn’t love an underdog?”

  He looked over at her. “Okay. I can write the statement. You don’t have to take care of everything.”

  She thought about what Leslie had said. And Tav’s offer.

  “Since you’re talking about payment beyond the apprenticeship stipend, maybe you should consider getting a publicist. Or someone who actually knows what they’re doing.” She felt silly saying she didn’t want his money. Her entire trip to Scotland had been predicated on taking his money, though she was now going above and beyond anything she’d imagined her apprenticeship would entail. She was working hard and deserved payment for her work. But it felt . . . not great. Which was one of many reasons why she shouldn’t have slept with her boss.

  “I don’t want anyone else,” Tav said, so quickly and definitively that her pulse raced to catch up. “But I understand if this is getting to be too much. It’s too much for me and it’s my life. Just let me know. We can go back to the original terms of the apprenticeship.”

  His gaze searched her face and she tried to reveal nothing, like confusion as to why she would stay on as an apprentice—or anything at all—if he hired someone else. She didn’t think there was any going back to before, but she didn’t want to get into that.

  “I don’t want to mess anything up,” she said. That was the truth, if not the whole truth.

  “I don’t want you to assume you will,” he said. “It seems we’re at an impasse.”

  “Tavish, this is serious,” she said. He didn’t know any better and was relying on the fact that she was already there. “This is your life. I don’t want you to put it in my hands because it’s the easy thing to do.”

  “I think that’s exactly the reason I should put my life in your hands. It’s scarily easy for me. There’s that impasse again.”

  A thought that had somehow been lost beneath all the madness pushed its way to the front, putting everything into a perspective of sorts.

  “There are only a few weeks left in this apprenticeship,” she quietly reminded him. “You need to start thinking about what you’re going to do moving forward.”

  When I’m gone. In a few weeks she’d likely assume her position at her parents’ company, cementing herself in her new, serious life and forgetting this had ever happened. Or pretending it hadn’t. Forgetting didn’t seem likely.

  They stared at each other, and Portia was overcome with the urge to be hugged. It was the same feeling of homesickness that had overwhelmed her while talking to Ledi and Thabiso, except the hug she wanted—needed—was from Tav, who was about as far from home as she could get.

  “How’s your system?” he asked. His gaze was weighted, and not by frustration as it had been a few minutes before.

  “What?”

  He swiveled back and forth in his office chair. “Your system. Am I out of it? We didn’t get to discuss before I flashed your friends and was almost seduced by an aristocrat.”

  She should’ve given him a definitive “Yes” and continued about her business. But she’d mixed business with pleasure and, despite her intentions, after just one night they’d become hopelessly tangled. And like she’d just said, there were only a few weeks left of the apprenticeship. Whatever it was between them had an expiration date. It was only a question of sooner or later.

  “I think—I think there are still some trace amounts,” she said.

  She couldn’t even lie and say that she hoped pulling at this string would undo the knots last night’s roll in the hay had created. She knew very well that she was taking the express train to “Why the fuck did I do that?”-ville, but it was a very pleasant ride that made up for the final destination.

  She wanted Tav’s mouth on her again, no more, no less.

  “The thing with all these treatises I studied is that you have to be very specific when brokering a deal,” he said. “We were not very specific. Our agreement could technically be read as one day and done, right? It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Portia said. “But we have to work on your statement. And—”

  “It can wait. Come here,” he said, then added, “Please.”

  He leaned back in his chair, but it wasn’t imperious. It was vulnerable somehow, the way he sat back just a bit awkwardly and hoped that she came to him.

  “How polite of you.” She walked over slowly, placing her tablet down on the seat in front of his desk before making her way around. He reached out and tugged at the waistband of her workout pants. She thought he’d pull her into his lap, but instead both of his hands went around her waist and he marched her back until her ass was against his desk.

  He leaned down and pulled off her sneakers, then her ankle socks, tugging them off slowly and stroking the bare skin of her feet. She ran her hand through his hair.

  “Is this where you reveal you’ve got a thing f
or feet?” she asked.

  He glanced up at her, smirk on his lips and gray at his temples. Damn, he was handsome. “I’m discovering I have a lot of ‘things.’ Feet. Ass. Collarbones. Nose. Freckles. One common denominator, though.”

  Portia swallowed hard.

  He stood, his hazel-green gaze boring into hers, then his mouth was on hers, lush, warm, tasting of coffee and pleasure. His hands skimmed over her chest, unzipping her hoodie and smoothing over her breasts, constrained beneath her sports bra. Even the specially designed elastic couldn’t suppress her hardening nipples, and he teased them through the fabric, rubbing his thumbs over them achingly slow before pinching, then repeating, lashing at her gasps with his insistent tongue all the while.

  “Tavish,” she whispered, and his hands dropped back to her waistband.

  “I’m gonna take these off now, love,” he said. She nodded into the rough kiss he pressed against her mouth before pulling away.

  He hooked his fingertips into the waistband and pulled, dragging the material down to her ankles and off, finishing in the kneeling position. “See how easy that was after I was chosen by Pantscalibur?”

  His voice was too low to carry the joke, and his intent gaze rested between her legs. His hands went to her knees and pushed them apart.

  “Tav,” she whispered as the first soft kiss landed on her inner thigh. A shiver went through her at the scrape of his stubble against her sensitive skin. His hands slid up her outer thighs and up to her ass as his mouth and stubbled cheeks worked their way upward, upward until she could feel his breath hot against her mound.

  “Tavish.” She couldn’t quite whisper anymore. Or say anything other than his name.

  He pulled her forward, closing the space between them, and then she knew for certain she’d get no response because his mouth was busy giving her the best head of her life. Long, hard licks against her slit, followed by soft suckling of her clit that grew stronger and stronger until she was gripping the desk and grinding against his face trying not to shout.

  Her toes curled and her abs flexed convulsively to some innate rhythm as Tav nuzzled deeper into her folds, alternating between soft and hard licks against her sensitive nub.