“Why did you wait for me to look for the diary?” she asked. “Why didn’t you ask one of the other girls?”
“Because I couldn’t trust them to do what I wanted. They could have turned right around and said something to the duke and got me fired.”
“You knew I wouldn’t.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“By the way you kissed me.”
“Blast it all. You could have kissed them. Did you?”
“No. I wasn’t interested. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
“Another way to say that is, ‘I do what I want.’ An entirely selfish notion.”
“You ought to try it sometime.”
“Huh.” She crossed her arms and looked away from him.
“There’s another reason I didn’t consider any of those women candidates for finding my mother’s journal.”
“Why?”
“Even if they’d agreed to look, I couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t accidentally—or on purpose—reveal themselves. I learned very quickly that you, on the other hand, are obviously resourceful, clever, and adept at keeping secrets.”
“I know I’m resourceful and clever, but how would you know I’m adept at keeping secrets?”
“Because you hide yourself very well. On the surface, you’re a bit bookish, stubborn, and wary. But the real you is adventurous, playful. Bold.”
“You can’t learn all that in one day.”
“Oh?” He lifted her hair and planted a kiss on the back of her neck.
Her entire body tingled, and she felt compelled to turn to him. “Just as I can’t know that you’re an unusual groom. You’re probably like all the others. I’m not thinking straight. It’s the snow, and the dowager being the Queen. It’s Esmeralda and the puppies, and Oscar fainting. Oh, and the duke’s been very difficult to read, and Ladies Rose and Opal gossiping about me, and—and it’s simply been an extremely long day.” She released a sigh.
“I’ll get your coat,” he said.
She laid a hand on his arm. “Wait.”
He said nothing.
“The two sisters”—she swallowed—“they said a terrible thing.”
“What was it?”
She gave a hiccupping laugh. “That I was ruined by an old beau.” Her eyes watered, but luckily, he couldn’t see. “It’s awful for a number of reasons.”
“I can see why that would be.” His voice was rumbly, like a comforting roll of thunder far away, the kind you hear when you’re inside a house, safe and protected.
“So you understand why I’m even more foolish being here with you. Were I found out,” she said low, “the rumor would be proved true.”
He said nothing, but in the midst of the silence he laid his hand on her cheek. She leaned into his palm and closed her eyes. Shock at his sweet gesture quickly turned to longing. It was firm, that hand. Strong and warm.
She reached out and laid her own hand on his muscular thigh and marveled at its perfection—sturdy, rounded.
And then she turned to kiss his palm.
She felt him suddenly still. She kissed his palm again, and this time she opened her mouth and swirled her tongue around it, enjoying the salty roughness. His man’s hand opened something inside her, something enigmatic and untried.
It called to her, whatever it was—a dark, slow beat that began in her veins and worked itself through her arms and legs, her belly, the tips of her breasts, her mouth, her cheekbones, her bottom pressed against the bench, and found its home in the nubbin between her legs.
And still he cradled her face, and she sighed against his hand.
She never wanted to leave this moment.
But she slid into another bit of bliss when his fingers began to work at her temple. The darkness behind her lids filled with reds and blues while her scalp was invigorated by the bold raking of his fingers through her hair.
“Mm-m,” she said, her hand still claiming the curve of his thigh.
His fingers were no longer raking. His hand cupped her hair now—petting in that slow, sure way she’d seen him calm Esmeralda. Her head bobbed ever so slightly with the on-off pressure. Don’t stop, she thought, and mindlessly ran her hand over his thigh, quid pro quo.
It was such a lovely reciprocal activity.
He pulled her head closer and kissed her again. She turned at the waist to face him, the stretch of muscle and skin a welcome release of the tautness in her abdomen. But it came swiftly back, that tension, and left through her hands as she clung with one hand to his shirt and the other kneaded his thigh over and over.
“I don’t want to go,” she whispered against his mouth. “Don’t get my coat. Yet.”
“Straddle the bench with me.” He hooked her left leg—her night rail ballooned softly—and then she was facing him.
Before she knew what was happening, he grabbed the hem of her night rail and pulled it up. Bump went her bottom. Her breasts were exposed, her arms cold. A flash of white and the gown was over her head.
She sat with her mouth open.
He stared into her eyes—her equal—and unlaced his shirt.
Inside her lacy drawers, the wanting grew, the beat of that primitive pulse lifting her nearly off the bench. She couldn’t keep her eyes off his chest. With each loosening tug, more skin and curling hair were exposed, along with her own raw admiration.
And then there were his shoulders as the shirt came off, and his belly, ridged and hard.
She could barely breathe.
He tossed the shirt onto the floor with her gown and, without another word, pulled her close. The touch of his bare hands on the naked arch of her back made her cry out.
“I’ve got you,” he said into her eyes. “No matter what happens, I’ve got you.”
She believed him.
What came next?
The exquisite pleasure of her breasts crushed against his chest. Their thighs splayed and touching—her bare skin against his trousers as their tongues clashed. His hand lazily pushing through the barrier of her drawers and skimming her most tender flesh. Her moaning. His holding her. Her falling back on the bench while with one hand he teased that pearl at the center of her being and the other kneaded and played with her breasts.
The grinding of her bottom into the bench, the arching of her legs in the air, her heels leaving the ground.
The absolute ache for his fingers to enter her.
The out-of-body experience that brought her to wave after wave of pleasure while his body curved over hers—
His kissing her while she spoke the new wonder with guttural cries.
Luke pulling her up.
Her seeing the bulge in his trousers as he kissed away one stray tear of utter depletion from her cheek.
Her night rail that he put over her head and arms and smoothed down her body. The way he lifted her in his arms again, blew out the candle, and walked her silently back to Esmeralda’s stall, where the little mother twitched in her sleep in haphazard time with nearly all her puppies, save one. The forlorn little thing lay a foot away and backward, facing the two of them—fellow night owls—his eyes sealed tight shut.
Theseus.
“I knew he’d be the first to wander,” Mr. Callahan said proudly.
Janice giggled. “Esmeralda is going to have her hands full tomorrow.”
A moment later, the groom walked the lady to the house under the moonlight.
“I won’t be found out,” she assured him.
“If you are, send me a note. You came out to see the puppies. I’ll tell Oscar to verify that story. What door will you use?”
“The front.” She felt suddenly shy.
“Of course. Thinking like a future duchess.”
There was no recrimination in his tone. And she had nothing to apologize for. She was the daughter of a wealthy, influential marquess and would make a suitable wife for a duke. But her cheeks burned hot all the same.
He turned to go.
“Mr.
Callahan—”
“Yes?”
“You never had to coerce me to help with the journal.” She thought about how he’d bent her on the bench and the lingering pleasure she still felt between her thighs. “I would have looked for it anyway.”
He looked at her a moment. “I know,” he said eventually. “But old habits die hard.”
She watched him make a new path through the snow back to the stables and mourned the boy who’d become the groom with the unyielding back, the shadowed eyes, and the heart so wounded he knew no other way.
Chapter Thirteen
“Wha’?” Grayson sat up in his huge bed—which he’d once dubbed the small country of Carnalia—and looked around him. There was usually one, two, or even three women sprawled upon the ducal sheets with him (not under the sheets; he never shared that way), but this morning he was alone.
He looked down at his erect member and didn’t like that it was doomed to wilt. He never had to pleasure himself these days. That was someone else’s job.
And something else was wrong. He winced, but his head didn’t pound from too much drink.
Why not?
Then he remembered … that female, the blasted Sherwood girl, Lady Janice. She’d changed everything with her arrival at Halsey House. He’d finally gotten the Yankee chit to strike his rear end with a horsewhip with just the right amount of wrist action so that the sting was pleasurable. And as for the two sisters, he was ready for them to depart. The younger one cried every time he wanted all three women at once. And the older sister wasn’t attractive enough to bed in daylight, which was his favorite time to rut.
He’d been on the verge of sending the two siblings packing, but he couldn’t now. There was the snow, of course. But the primary reason they must remain was that he feared one of them might seek petty revenge by blurting out the truth to Lady Janice: not that he was wicked—which he could deny if he had to—but that he couldn’t finish off any coital activity without wearing a certain diamond necklace he’d picked up in Venice. Supposedly, it had belonged to one of the former czar’s concubines.
That would be a much more difficult story to fob off. It was too interesting, too detailed, to be entirely false.
Of course, it was entirely true. He looked longingly at the necklace on the dresser—unworn last night. Word certainly couldn’t get out in London. He’d become a laughingstock.
He chuckled. Even he thought his fetish amusing. He might be wicked and indulge his sexual appetite in an unusual way, but at least he had a sense of humor. Not that he let other people know. It was much more exciting to let them be afraid of him.
Entirely naked, he slid out of bed. “Prescott!” he called.
A mere second later, his valet opened the bedchamber door, a silk banyan already over his arm.
“Where’s Lady Janice?” Grayson asked him as he held out his arms.
“In the breakfast room,” said the valet as he wrapped Grayson in the royal blue fabric.
“Is she being as obstinate this morning as she was last night?”
Prescott never made eye contact as he tied the banyan’s belt in a smart knot. “According to the footmen, she’s very agreeable.”
“Agreeable? Hah.” It was only Grayson that she said no to, and he didn’t quite understand.
He stalked over to the looking glass and smoothed back his hair. He wasn’t a fool—some females recognized that men lusted after the unattainable and so threw up obstacles at every turn, but this young woman was carrying the age-old strategy to the extreme. He’d had a difficult time not laughing the night before when she’d said she hated all of Shakespeare, but no one else seemed to recognize her game.
Yarrow and Rowntree—the idiots—had fallen for it. For her.
They wanted her.
Grayson did, too. But only because he believed that she really was here to see his grandmother and that, despite her toying with him, she didn’t give a fig for him.
Good God, why didn’t she?
He was handsome, and he was a duke.
He didn’t like when people didn’t crave his company.
At first he’d been annoyed with Lady Janice for ruining his preferred country routine—ride, wench, drink, play cards, and wench—but she intrigued him enough that he was willing to forgo his regular schedule and instead focus on her. She seemed very clever indeed, apart from her foolish nay-saying. How amusing it would be to bed her.
But she was off-limits, of course. Her stepfather wouldn’t stand for Grayson’s ruining her—not unless there was a wedding involved, which was the last thing on his mind.
So as of that morning, he was undecided what to do, other than to observe her a bit more, see what he could see, lust after what he couldn’t have, and wonder why he didn’t appeal to her.
“Sir Milo Falstaff is here,” said Prescott as he shaved him.
Grayson opened his eyes. “Is he? It’s about time.”
“Yes, he got snowed in at the village. He managed to make his way over here this morning on his Arabian. He’s in the stables now.”
“He’d stay there all day if he could. Are Yarrow and Rowntree awake?”
“Yes. In fact, they just walked out to see him.”
Grayson hated being left out of anything. It went back to the days of his childhood, when no one appeared to notice him at all—at least after his mother died. “Hurry up, then,” he told the valet.
Ten minutes and an empty stomach later—Grayson really did hate being left out and so skipped his usual toast and coddled eggs—he and his hounds were in the stable block with his so-called friends, sycophants all. It really began to wear on one, to have to endure the false joviality of desperate men and women both.
Nevertheless, Grayson indulged them, knowing that at any moment he could toy with their lives and ruin them completely. He was a good man for choosing not to. His mother would have been proud, or at least relieved—so he liked to tell himself.
As a groom brushed Milo’s black stallion, Grayson noted with jealousy the man’s muscular back and bulging thighs. He was a prime specimen of manhood, the same servant Grayson had taken to task the day before in front of Lady Janice. Funny how he’d not noticed him before. He must have stayed out of Grayson’s way in the stables.
Grayson would fire him as soon as the snow melted. No one on the estate was allowed to outshine the duke. That only made sense, of course, so he didn’t feel guilty in the least. The title must be propped up, revered, respected. He was doing his share.
“There was a lovely barmaid I had to part with this morning in Bramblewood,” said Milo.
“Good thing you got in a last romp.” Grayson pulled out a cheroot, held it up, and waved it back and forth. “What are you waiting for, groom?”
The servant paused in his brushing.
“Yes, you,” Grayson said.
It felt so good to have power.
Just don’t lose it.
God, he hated his father’s voice. Grayson was practically haunted by him. He’d been the most vile, cold father a boy could ever imagine, and Grayson had been so relieved when he was near death—until Father had told him he wasn’t the real duke and that some rotten bastard was roaming the earth at that very moment who was the actual Duke of Halsey, and that Grayson would have to take up his father’s pursuit of him, whoever and wherever he was, and be rid of him.
It was such a miserable burden to endure, day in, day out.
How would he be rid of this supposed duke if he was ever to find him? Grayson wasn’t a murderer, for God’s sake. He wondered if his father was crazy enough to ever kill someone over a title and properties, and sometimes Grayson thought he might have been.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
So Grayson preferred to ignore the entire problem, pay lip service to it by occasionally rattling the nerves of those nuns at St. Mungo’s Orphanage, where the trail of the real heir had run cold years ago.
No wonder he drank and wenched incessantly when he was
in the country. He frightened nuns. And at any moment he might lose everything, if this missing duke ever appeared.
The home estate was the only place Grayson could let go. In London, he had to pretend to be a sober, high-minded peer of the realm. Indeed, his glittering life there would have been quite amusing if he hadn’t had this diabolical secret.
While Grayson’s hounds milled about, the groom laid the brush on a wall, strode to the coal stove, and lit a small but tight twist of straw. He then approached Grayson with a purposeful stride and applied the flame to the end of his smoking stick.
Grayson inhaled, glad that he wasn’t a stable hand. “We have to be on our best behavior for the time being,” he muttered round the cheroot clamped in his teeth.
After a moment, the end of the cheroot began to glow, but before the groom could retreat Grayson blew a plume of smoke in his face.
Yarrow and Rowntree chuckled.
The servant refused to blink, and nothing registered in his eyes beyond a calm neutrality. Bastard, Grayson thought when the man sidestepped him and put the straw out in a pail of water. He took all Grayson’s fun away.
“Why must we behave?” Milo squinted at him.
God, the baronet was ugly. The only reason Grayson put up with Milo was because he was unsurpassed at selecting prime goers for purchase.
“There’s a decent chit in residence.” Grayson hid it well, but he was always restless, like Milo’s Arabian. “She’s here to see Granny. And she intends to stay a full month.”
Milo laughed. “For the love of God, Halsey, do you really expect us to be like choirboys? We’re snowed in. There’s nothing else to do but eat, drink, and be merry. Can’t you put her on a sleigh to the dower house and let her molder away there, arranging the library for you or some such thing?”
“No.” Grayson scowled at him. “She intrigues me.”
“This is a first.” Milo exchanged smug glances with Yarrow and Rowntree.
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