At the Duke's Wedding (A romance anthology)

by Caroline Linden

  Oh, God, she was delicious. Hot and wet and eager. He wanted to kiss her like this, deep and wet, for hours. He wanted to know every bit of her mouth and tongue. Her lips. Her lips. Her perfect lips kissing him, tasting him, sucking on his tongue. An image of what else those perfect lips might do occurred to him.

  He thrust her away.

  Her eyes were half-closed, her lips damp and a little swollen from his kiss. “W-Wow,” she whispered.

  He raked his hand through his hair. He felt completely out of control. “I wanted to do that,” he said inanely.

  “I still want you to do that.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” His voice was gruff, unfamiliar to him.

  “Why?” She gave him a little one-sided grin that curved her delicious lips into the temptation he feared. “Are you an only-one-kiss-in-the-garden kind of guy, Trenton Ascot?”

  “Yes.” It was the hardest word he’d ever uttered. “Adamantly yes.”

  The pleasure faded from her face. “Was I that disappointing?”

  He choked. “Uh ...” He stepped back. “No. No.”

  “Then—”

  “Miss Cowdrey, at the risk of offending you unpardonably—”

  “Oh, no.” Her face crumpled. “You’re married, aren’t you?” She laid a hand over her eyes. “I knew it.”

  “I—”

  “This sort of thing always happens to me. Like my first year in grad school when Nathan Farquis vowed he just had to have me, then it turned out he’d been dating Liz Kinkaid in Cultural Anthropology for a year. We’d already gotten half-naked when she just walked in. I felt like a skunk. It was all totally his fault, but somehow he became the martyr to Liz’s vengeance, and nobody in Anthro spoke to me for the next two years.”

  Trent tried to still his spinning head. “I am not married,” he said. “And Mr. Farquis is clearly a rogue, which I am not.” Usually.

  Relief washed across her lovely eyes. “Oh, good. Here I was getting ready for Lady Everett to come running around that corner and—” She looked over his shoulder. “Speaking of running.”

  A shower of rapid footsteps sounded on the path behind him, but he couldn’t attend. All he could see was her “gotten half-naked” with a faceless rogue, who in Trent’s imagination had a paunch and hairy back, which was something of a comfort. But then Trent replaced the faceless rogue with himself and his vision got spotty.

  Her fingers twisted together. “I’m sorry. That was too much information—about Nathan—I realize. I’m nervous and I tend to talk a lot when I’m nervous ... or in front of a lecture hall, actually, too. I’m doing it again. Talking.”

  “You needn’t be ... nervous.” It was the biggest lie he’d ever uttered. He himself was currently a blithering mess.

  Then the untimely intruders were upon them. The white muslin crew that he had encountered earlier surrounded them, no longer entirely white. Their skirts were spattered with mud.

  “Trenton!” Charlotte cried. “Henry is a beast! Look what he has done!”

  “Oh, wow,” Miss Cowdrey said. “What a mess. We should get you all back to the house and cleaned up before anybody sees you.” She took his sister’s arm and the arm of one of the other girls, entirely oblivious of the mud smearing her own arms and gown.

  “Thank you, Miss Cowdrey.” Charlotte leveled a beseeching look at him. “Trent, please help us with Henry.”

  Their brother had gone too far this time. He wouldn’t listen to their father’s threats and reprimands. Trent would have to see to the problem himself.

  On the walk back to the house, Miss Cowdrey made certain conversation was lively and distracting enough that the girls were soon in high spirits again despite the mud. The American with the lush, eager lips and secretly scandalous history spoke with modesty and affection about her family in South Carolina and their “oyster bakes” that were popular among society there. Her stories enthralled the girls.

  Other than musing on how the ancients had considered oysters an aphrodisiac—which of course she didn’t know—Trent managed to keep his thoughts relatively pure. Then he met her gaze for an instant, her eyes glimmered, and he thought perhaps she knew about the oysters after all. She smiled a seductive little smile, and he was quite certain that she did, and that he was doomed.

  o0o

  Never before in her twenty-seven years had Angela felt sexy.

  She felt sexy now. She felt like one of those club bunnies who wore open-heeled stilettos and short-shorts and proudly displayed their deep cleavages. She didn’t have a deep cleavage, and she wouldn’t put her butt into mini-shorts if someone paid her a million dollars. She was poor, not desperate.

  But inside she felt like a bunny. Her blood was sizzling. Not like before. Now it was sizzly all the time.

  She refused to attribute this amped-up sizzle to a single passionate kiss with an unbelievably hot man on a garden path. Feminists worldwide would drum her from the league for thoughts like that. Men had been defining—and constraining—female sexuality for centuries. That sort of misadventure was not on Angela’s program.

  Still, the way he’d looked at her before he kissed her ... And then afterward ... She’d turned him on. When they’d kissed, she’d felt him get hard. Just remembering it made her unbelievably hot.

  But the sexiness bubbling in her wasn’t even about that. It was about freedom, as if suddenly she’d been released from prison, and she hadn’t even known she’d been in prison until now.

  And now she was free. Nobody here knew her. Nobody here knew she was a poor workaholic without a life. Nobody knew she was the Oldest Virgin in America. If only for a moment in twisted time, here she could be different. She could be anything she wanted.

  She wanted to be sexy.

  For the first time in her life, she wanted to tear a page out of her party-girl mother’s book and be uncompromisingly feminine and entirely available. Exclusively available to one golden-boy jock whose kiss made her want to wrap her legs around his waist and learn what it was like to ride a guy till dawn.

  It was, however, difficult to imagine doing this while wearing a virginal white gown covered in tiny rosebuds. That hadn’t deterred Trenton Ascot from giving her the best kiss of her life, of course. But if he really were the honorable only-one-kiss sort of guy, she’d need to generate some irresistible encouragement for him to break his rule.

  She sought out Lady Sophronia in her suite of chambers.

  “My lady, I have two requests.”

  “Impudent girl! I adore you! Where are your people?”

  “My family hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Then you shall live here in my suite with me and Henrietta until they do. I will have a bed made up for you. A girl like you shouldn’t be wandering about the house alone. There are rogues and rascals afoot, Miss Cowdrey.” She slapped a wrinkled hand over the knife she always wore at her hip. “We ladies must band together for safety. Until, that is, a particularly handsome rogue or rascal happens by, then it’s every woman for herself.” She cackled merrily.

  “Thank you. I’d really like to stay here with you. That was, in fact, my first question.”

  Lady Sophronia poked a macaroon between her cherry red lips. “The second?”

  “How might a woman go about learning more of a gentleman about whom she is particularly curious?” It wasn’t only her need to tempt him into more kisses. Trenton Ascot had a very bad opinion of Sir Richard. It was too big a coincidence, especially since Sir Richard’s illegal deeds weren’t public until 1814. And, of course, the Earl of Ware had briefly invested in Sir Richard’s shipping firm, though Angela thought that’d been years ago.

  She had a very strong feeling that Lord Everett wasn’t telling her something important. Professional pride was at stake. If she couldn’t get to the bottom of an historical mystery while living in the midst of it, she was a failure as an historian. More importantly, it had to be the key to why she was here.

  “What gentleman interests you?” Lady Sophroni
a said. “The deliciously brooding and enigmatic Lord Bruton?” She passed a bottle of smelling salts beneath her nose and her eyes rolled up. Angela started forward in alarm. Sophronia’s eyes snapped open. “I do adore a dark and mysterious man. If I were ten years younger ...”

  She’d still be fifty years too old for the Earl of Bruton.

  “Not Lord Bruton,” Angela said. “Lord Everett.”

  “Aha! I knew it. You’ve developed a tendre for him, clever girl.”

  Developing a crush on a man who lived two hundred years in the past didn’t seem very clever to Angela. “I need information about him.”

  “Gossip,” Lady Sophronia said with a snap of her bird-claw fingers. “Never fails.”

  “I’ve tried that.” Angela had skipped the formal meals; she didn’t want to bump into the duke or his mother. But at tea yesterday and breakfast and tea today she’d asked people about the viscount. No one had anything intriguing to say. He was a bruising rider, an excellent fencer, a splendid tennis player, a capital boxer, a dead-on shot, and any cricket team’s anchor. He was devoted to his brother and sister, a dutiful son, and exceedingly proper with all the ladies, who admired him for his good looks and fine physique. By all accounts he was pretty low key, not a big socializer or an extrovert. If Angela hadn’t turned to molten lava when he’d put his tongue in her mouth, and if he hadn’t saved her life then kept that secret from everybody despite his suspicions, from the reports of others she’d think he was a total bore.

  “You must look in a man’s drawers to discover his vital assets, child,” Lady Sophronia said.

  Angela’s mouth fell open.

  “Not those drawers, Miss American Hussy!” The old lady guffawed, then tapped the end of a cane decorated with silk flowers on her dressing table. “These drawers. Men are nincompoops. They hide everything of value in top drawers then wonder why their wives and servants know all their secrets.”

  Angela laughed. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  “Well?” Lady Sophronia pointed the flowery cane at her. “What are you waiting for? The gentlemen are all in the stables, or so says my maid who heard it from the second groom. This is your opportunity. Go!”

  “Go?”

  “Bachelors’ wing. Third door on the right. Hurry now!”

  “Shouldn’t I wait until it’s dark out?”

  “Caution, Miss Cowdrey?” Lady Sophronia threw her a skeptical look. “I hadn’t expected it of you.”

  “Not so much caution as I don’t want to be caught poking around in a Lord of the Realm’s drawers.”

  “Unless he is wearing them, of course.”

  In one second flat, Angela got hot all over.

  The feisty old lady wiggled her brows.

  Angela waited until dusk when Sophronia’s maid said all the lady guests had retired to bed. Then, candle in hand, she crept through the empty corridors until she reached the bachelors’ wing. Counting one door then two, she stopped before the third.

  It opened. No lock? Seemed careless for a man possibly hiding secrets about his father’s former business partner’s fraud and treason.

  She started by searching his drawers, as recommended. They were well ordered and sparsely filled. Despite his good looks and athleticism, Lord Everett was not a clothes hound or a slob. That was nice to discover. With the subtle, masculine scent of the cologne he wore wafting from his things, her nervous energy crept a notch higher.

  The dressing table produced nada.

  Guilt pricked at her, then anxiety. But seriously, what could they do to her if they discovered her snooping? Give her the cut direct?

  Her amusement didn’t last long. What if she never went back home? What if she ruined her reputation then got trapped in this era? There weren’t many roles for women in Regency high society: lady, servant, shopkeeper, actress, prostitute.

  She couldn’t think about it. She was going home, just after she learned the secret of Arnaud’s revelation.

  Through another door was a sort of big walk-in closet called a dressing chamber. It had plenty of space for the viscount’s traveling trunk and a handful of coats of excellent quality. She reached for the clasps on the trunk. No locks here either. He really didn’t seem to have anything to hide.

  She searched it anyway. Linens: drawers, shirts, and neck cloths, all neatly folded and clean. She dug beneath them and pulled out a large leather portfolio folder with a scrolly “E” embossed in gold in the corner.

  Sitting back on her heels, she opened it across her knees.

  The drawings were not of sports events or naked women. Instead, with great care, compassion, and whimsical grace, they depicted plants and animals. Not showy or sophisticated plants; there were no cabbage roses or orchids. Instead, in pencil or pen with occasional watercolor accents, there were humble flowers: buttercups, wild violets, honeysuckle. The animals weren’t horses or hunting dogs, but woodland creatures and wild birds—a hare, a door mouse, an ugly little blind mole, and an exquisite series of a single fox rendered with aching tenderness.

  Each drawing had a caption beneath: Lily of the Valley, Grass Snake, Green Woodpecker. The writing was the same as in the comic book’s captions. Exactly the same.

  Heart beating hard, she folded the portfolio closed, replaced it in the trunk, and left the dressing room. From the other side of the bedroom door, voices sounded in the corridor.

  She halted, the candle wobbling in her hand. The door handle turned. Angela held her breath. The door didn’t open. Beyond it, men’s voices rumbled. Laughter. The door handle fell back into place.

  Without thought, she set down her candle on the bed table and went for the only place of possible concealment—the window. During her long study of the house when she’d been hiding by the fallen oak, she’d noticed that some of the windows featured wide ledges. Slipping through the heavy drapes, she pushed up the pane and climbed out onto the ledge.

  It wasn’t as wide as it looked from the ground. In the dark, she shimmied down onto her butt and clung to the decorative iron rail that ran along the ledge at about knee height. The night air was cool, stirring a lock of hair that had worked loose from the pins. Her hair was way too straight for Regency styles, but she’d tried hard to fix it the way she saw the other women did. She simply couldn’t be discovered as a fraud before she learned how Sir Richard had come to be one.

  But this—this window ledge hiding—was really stupid. Even if no one on the ground noticed her, she couldn’t very well stay out here all night. She could try to creep out after he went to sleep. But what if he was a light sleeper?

  “Pondering the fate of cutpurses and thieves, Miss Cowdrey? Or are you planning on jumping?”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “You startled me.”

  “Now imagine my surprise.” Lord Everett leaned a shoulder against the window frame. He was wearing buff-colored trousers, a dark blue coat that hugged his broad shoulders, a snowy white shirt and elegantly tied cravat.

  “I heard you come in and I panicked. I was—”

  “Plotting your next crime?”

  “I am not a criminal.” Her emphasis threw her off balance. She grappled for the rail, but he’d already grasped her arm to steady her.

  “I think I believe that,” he said, not releasing her as he stepped over the windowsill and hunkered down beside her. Drawing up his knees, he set the soles of his boots on the bottom rung of the rail. His hand slid away from her, and he looked out at the park stretching into darkness. Only the corner of the stables was visible, and further away the glimmer of the lake. “Though I’m not quite certain why,” he added. “Perhaps it was the manner in which you handled my sister and her friends yesterday.”

  “A criminal wouldn’t have done that?”

  The corner of his mouth ticked up. “Not being acquainted with any criminals, I cannot say for certain.”

  He was acquainted with Sir Richard. But did he know he was a criminal? It had to be the reason she was here. Why else would the
river have transported her back two hundred years to this exact time and place? To him?

  “Are you sure you don’t know any criminals?” she prodded.

  His brow lowered. “Miss Cowdrey, what are you doing in my bedchamber?”

  “I’m not from Charleston, South Carolina,” she said, turning her face to look at him but mostly to catch his scent better. He smelled so good, not like pine-fresh soap or minty aftershave but like a real live man—like the way books smelled good, like real things you could touch and hold. In the delirium of kissing him she’d noticed it, and she’d been dying to smell him again. “I live in Michigan,” she continued, “and the only family I have is a mother who barely remembers I exist. But that’s the single lie I’ve told you. Aside from saying I had a horse in the stable, which I don’t. But that’s all. I swear it.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “I need to say something to you,” she said. “Tell you something.” The sizzling was all mixed up with a strange, fleeting hope.

  “Another confession?”

  “No. Actually, I need to ask you a question.”

  He waited in silence.

  “Did you draw the comic book?”

  He didn’t look at her like she was a lunatic. But he didn’t speak right away either.

  “Comic book,” he finally said. “Another study on maritime trade that hasn’t yet occurred, but in comedic style?”

  “No. A thin book depicting in sketches moments from your life. Your christening. A walk as a young boy along a garden path with a lady I think must have been your mother. Some sports events at college and afterward maybe. That curricle race where you got your nickname.”

  “I see.” He faced the park again. “Why would I have created such a book, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure you did.”

  “But I did not. Have you found it in my belongings here?”

  “No. I read it before I came to England.” There was no going back. She might end up in Bedlam hospital for the insane, but she didn’t think this man would be the one to send her there. “I found it in the future, in the place I came from before I showed up in that lake and you rescued me. So even if you haven’t drawn it yet, you might still. In fact, I’m pretty sure you do.”