As she had known they would, the servants made a to-do over the fact she wasn’t walking on her own two feet.
“The duchess is only wet and cold,” Nicholas told Thompson. “I’m going to take her upstairs. Ask Mrs. Motherwell to send up some hot tea,” he commanded. “And see about having some hot water brought up for a bath.”
Daisy felt the first stir of alarm when she realized the duke had no intention of setting her down at the foot of the stairs. To the contrary, he had just announced to the entire household that he intended to carry her upstairs.
Coward that she was, she kept her face hidden. Well, they were engaged, after all. If the truth were known, she had slept the past week in the suite adjoining the duke’s. Not that she hadn’t locked the door between them, but she supposed the servants had no way of knowing for sure whether the door remained sealed for the entire night.
Did the duke really intend to carry her all the way into her bedroom? What then? Would he leave without an argument? Somehow, Daisy didn’t think so. But what help could he possibly be if he stayed? Daisy shivered at the thought of the duke undressing her.
He tightened his grasp, pulling her even closer, so that she could feel the warmth of his body against hers even through the wool garments that separated them. “I’ll have you in your room in a moment, my dear. Then we can get you out of those wet clothes.”
Daisy made a sort of whimpering sound and snuggled her nose closer to the duke’s neck. He had called her my dear. It was appalling to find such pleasure in the endearments of a barbarian. But oh, it felt so wonderful to be held by him! Daisy knew she couldn’t let him stay to undress her. That way lay disaster. She would not lie with him until they were married, and she doubted she would have the willpower to deny him if he made even the slightest effort to seduce her.
Of course, she probably looked like a drowned rat, so maybe her concern was premature.
Daisy felt Nicholas lean down to open the door and then heard him kick it closed behind him.
Her heart began to pound. He had actually done it. He had brought her into her bedroom and closed the door behind them. It was outrageous! It was shocking! It was typical of the duke.
She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “You can put me down now, Your Grace,” she said in an even voice.
He shook his head. “Not quite yet.”
She saw the kiss coming long before it got to her. She could have struggled. She could have kicked or hit or bitten him. She could have slapped his face. She could have done a dozen things to save herself.
She kissed him, instead.
Daisy wasn’t prepared for the tenderness. She had been expecting Nicholas to plunder; instead, he caressed her lips with his, merely touching, barely tasting, then retreating. It was a revelation to feel his gentleness, his reverence, and the banked desire that shimmered through him and left him trembling.
“You’re like a potent brandy that warms me to the core,” he murmured against her lips. “I take one sip, and I want another.” His lips found hers again, and his tongue stroked into her mouth.
Daisy moaned. It was unbelievable that this was happening. He was in her bedroom and she was in his arms and he was holding her close. She clung to his neck and reached for him with her mouth, hungry for what he offered.
“Nicholas.”
The sound of his name on Daisy’s lips reverberated through him. Nicholas felt her tongue tease the edge of his lips seeking entrance. His blood surged. He felt her hands in his hair and her tongue in his mouth and his knees began to wobble as nature urged him to lay her beneath him, to mount her and claim her as his mate.
He was halfway to the bed when the door opened and one of the female servants appeared. He didn’t know who it was and didn’t care. “Get out!” he snapped. “Close the door behind you!”
He had no idea how ferocious his face looked, no idea how harsh and commanding his voice sounded. He was, in that moment, every inch a duke. The woman quickly retreated, closing the door with a quiet click.
Nicholas felt Daisy’s hand tighten in his hair, heard her tremulous sigh, and knew that she would resist him now. Whatever mood had come over her that had caused her to surrender in those first moments had disappeared and left the headstrong, obstinate, and fractious Daisy behind.
“Nicholas,” she murmured.
He felt her breath against his throat, and his groin tightened with need.
“That was Jane, my maid,” she said. “Jane would never confront you, but she’ll go for your aunt. They’ll both be back here any minute. You have to put me down.”
He slid her down the front of him, opened his cape, and pulled her tight so she could feel his arousal. Her eyes widened in surprise, but he saw the pleasure there, as well. Then he looked down and realized she had soaked his new frock coat and that his boots were layered in mud. Porter would kill him, he thought fleetingly.
He released her, though he didn’t want to.
She stepped back, just one step. No more.
“I can’t wait two weeks to have you, Daisy,” he said in a low, fierce voice. “And I don’t feel like fending off the servants. I’ll make arrangements tomorrow for a special license. We can be married the day after that.”
Daisy’s eyes widened in alarm. “You can’t do that. What about our plans for the reception?”
“We can have the reception two weeks after the wedding. In fact, it only seems fair that we should have a honeymoon before we entertain a lot of strangers.”
Daisy shivered.
“Damn! You’ll catch your death of pneumonia if you don’t get out of those wet clothes. Turn around.”
Numb with shock, Daisy did as the duke ordered. She was to be married in two days instead of two weeks. And she hadn’t even made a peep of protest.
What’s wrong with you, Daisy Windermere? Where are your guts and gumption?
I want him. And he wants me.
For how long? A few days? A week. More likely, one night in your bed will send him running.
It won’t be like that. It will be different with him. I know it. I can feel it.
Daisy was so caught up with her thoughts that it wasn’t until she heard the gasp from the doorway that she realized Nicholas had completely unbuttoned her dress and drawn it off her shoulders. It was currently resting in a puddle on the floor. He was working on the ties of her corset, but his large hands were finding it impossible to untangle the wet knots.
“Please leave us, Your Grace! This instant!” Lady Celeste ordered.
“The duchess was cold and wet. I—”
“I can see exactly what you were doing,” Lady Celeste said in an imperious voice. “That sort of behavior belongs in the boudoir of a mistress, Your Grace. Not in the bedroom of a duchess. You will kindly remove yourself from Her Grace’s presence.”
Nicholas didn’t argue, although he certainly disagreed with his aunt. He was truly grateful that he hadn’t grown up with the notion that a lady couldn’t be a whore in bed. He had a lot of plans for the duchess that included everything he had been taught about what a woman—and a lady was a woman, whether his aunt was willing to acknowledge it or not—wanted in bed.
However, Lady Celeste was reinforced by Daisy’s maid, Jane, and Mrs. Motherwell, who had brought the tea up herself when she had heard of the shocking goings-on in Her Grace’s bedroom, and a maid-of-all-work, who carried the first pail of hot water for Daisy’s bath. Nicholas nodded his head in defeat and abandoned the field of battle.
On his way out the door, he remembered that he had wanted to question his aunt. He wondered whether she would even agree to stay in the same room with him after this incident. He retreated quickly, with as much dignity as he could muster. “Be sure you get her warm and dry,” he intoned in a ducal voice.
Lady Celeste gave him a look that would have melted icicles and shut the door in his face. Behind the door, it was Daisy who received the brunt of the older woman’s displeasure.
Lady Celeste was greatly agitated and wandered about the room picking up several of Daisy’s collection of lifelike porcelain and crystal birds and setting them down again. “I would think there has been enough injudicious behavior by both men and women in this family to last a lifetime.”
Daisy paused, arrested by what Lady Celeste had said. “What is that supposed to mean? To whom are you referring? Who has been injudicious?” Daisy demanded. “Besides myself, of course.”
Lady Celeste threw up her hands, making Daisy long to rescue a Wedgwood robin from her grasp. “I couldn’t begin to name them all,” she retorted. “From the old duke on down, all the Windermere men have sowed their wild oats without thinking of the consequences.”
“Tony?” Daisy said, her face white. “Are you referring to my Tony?” She hadn’t thought it could hurt her to hear it spoken aloud that Tony had had a mistress. But it did hurt, terribly, even now.
Lady Celeste seemed to realize all at once the pain she was causing with her indiscriminate accusations. “Oh, my poor dear. I thought you knew. I was sure you did. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Who else besides Tony were you accusing?” Daisy asked. “Do you know something about Lady Philip? Do you know the truth about the duke’s birth?”
Lady Celeste suddenly stilled. She set the robin back on the bureau and carefully folded her hands in front of her. Her face became passive. “There’s no sense dredging up the past.”
“But Nicholas needs to know the truth!” Daisy crossed to Lady Celeste, but the woman looked so severe, so austere, that Daisy didn’t dare lay a hand on her sleeve, even to plead for information. “Please tell me what you know.”
“I promised my sister I would keep her secret. My lips are sealed.”
“Lady Philip is dead. Her son is alive. Please, Celeste, you have to tell me what you know.”
Lady Celeste’s eyes focused in the distance as if she were reliving a moment in the past. “There was a man …”
“Are you suggesting Lady Philip had a lover, a cicisbeo? That she was unfaithful to Lord Philip? That Nicholas is, indeed, a bastard?”
Daisy’s words tore Lady Celeste from the past. When her hazel eyes focused they were devoid of emotion. “I know what I know,” Lady Celeste said. “If my sister chose to go to her grave with her secret intact, I see no reason to reveal it.”
“What secret?” Daisy demanded. “Did she have a lover?”
“That, Your Grace, is no business of yours. Now, get into that tub and get warm before you catch your death of cold.”
Daisy couldn’t get another word out of the older woman. It was clear Lady Celeste knew something about the past. Whether she had the answers Nicholas sought was another matter altogether. Daisy made up her mind to seek out Nicholas so that he could question his aunt himself. The old woman might be no more forthcoming, but knowing Nicholas, Daisy was sure he would find a way to encourage her to speak.
Meanwhile, Nicholas had just reached the bottom of the stairs when he realized there was some sort of altercation occurring in the doorway. “What’s the problem, Thompson?”
“I’ve told the girl she should use the servants’ entrance, but she won’t leave, Your Grace,” the butler replied.
Thompson stepped aside and Nicholas saw a short but very buxom young woman. She had carrot-red hair and a face as full of freckles as Douglas Hepplewhite’s, only hers were red instead of gold. She was wearing a simple tan wool dress covered by a dark brown woolen shawl. She must have made the walk during a lull in the rain, because only the hem of her dress was wet.
“What’s your name, girl?” Nicholas could see she was trembling, and her face got so red it threatened to obliterate the freckles.
She bobbed a quick curtsy. “Nora, Your Grace.” She kept her head lowered in fear or deference, or both.
So this was Hepplewhite’s lady friend. Nicholas spared a moment of sympathy for the future children of two such vividly freckled parents. But the children should lack nothing in character. He knew Douglas had grit, and Nora had somehow managed to conquer her fear of the beastly duke in order to attend her young man.
“I’ll take care of this, Thompson,” the duke said.
“Very well, Your Grace.”
Nicholas smiled in an effort to ease the girl’s anxiety but could see it didn’t help. “You’ve come to see Mr. Hepplewhite, I presume.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Her trembling worsened, but Nicholas resisted the urge to reach out to her. He suspected that would only make things worse. He couldn’t even offer her a look of understanding, because she kept her eyes locked on a pair of very sturdy black shoes.
“Follow me, and I’ll take you to him.” Nicholas turned and started to walk away, but the girl stayed by the door.
“Nora? Are you coming?”
She looked up, and he saw her eyes were as velvety blue as a morning glory, large and innocent. “Are you sure it’s all right, Your Grace? I mean, me comin’ upstairs and all?”
Nicholas smiled at her naïveté. “If it’s all right with me, then I don’t see who else can complain.” He walked back to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She moved quickly then—to free herself from his touch, he supposed—and hurried up the stairs. When she got to the top she stopped and waited for him to direct her.
“It’s this way.” Nicholas paused in front of the bedroom where Hepplewhite was staying. “He’s in here.” He opened the door and waited at the threshold until she scuttled past.
“Douglas, you have a visitor,” he said.
Nicholas felt a sharp jab of something—envy or cynicism, he wasn’t sure which—as he observed the reunion of the two young people. He recognized the light in Douglas’s eyes. It was love and hope. Poor fool. So what if the girl had come? Who said she would stay when she saw how he was crippled?
Nicholas knew he should go, knew he should leave them alone. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from them. They were totally oblivious to him, caught up in a world of their own.
He saw the tender way Douglas held Nora’s hand in his, the way he drew it up to cup his cheek. Heard the soft, caressing tone of his voice as he said in wonder and relief, “Nora. You came.”
“Of course I came, Douglas,” the girl replied. “I love you. I was only afraid—”
“You needn’t be afraid of the duke,” he reassured her. “He’s given me a job, Nora. We can be married.” He paused and said, “That is, if you still want to marry me.”
Something turned over inside of Nicholas, something very, very painful, as Nora reached down to touch Douglas’s leg below the knee. Her hand trembled as it moved down the sheet to where there was only a stump.
“Nora—” Douglas said in an agonized voice.
She moved the sheet away to expose the bandage over the stump. Then she leaned down and kissed the clean linen. Tears brimmed in her velvety eyes as she raised them to meet Douglas’s gaze. “It doesn’t matter to me, Douglas. I’ll love all of you there is. I won’t say you won’t miss your foot, but what’s done is done. It doesn’t change the way I feel.”
Douglas held out his arms, and she tumbled into them.
Nicholas pulled the door quietly closed. He was breathing hard, and his nose stung with tears he refused to shed. He moved quickly to his bedroom and let himself inside. He sat in the chair beside his bed and closed his eyes and tried not to remember.
But the memories spilled over the high wall he had erected to keep them at bay. He shoved at them, tried to force them back. But they flowed over him, demanding attention. Bringing it all back.
He was only fifteen, tall and lanky, with a beard that was embarrassing because it refused to grow all over his face. His voice had the disconcerting habit of breaking when he was in the middle of a sentence.
And he was in love, with a woman three years older than himself. Her name was Evie.
He had met her in the two-story house on the edge of town where his mother had last worked. The ladies there had taken pity on him when he was orphaned and let him sleep in the kitchen on nights when the wind howled and the snow blew into drifts. Evie wasn’t supposed to sleep with him because he hadn’t any money to pay her. But she had taken a fancy to him, she said, and invited him upstairs late one night, when everyone else was asleep.
He had come to her a virgin, and she had enjoyed teaching him how to please a woman. He had been so nervous at first that his body was stiff. Fortunately, at least part of him was supposed to be that way. She had made him laugh at himself, and after that first glorious deflowering when he had discovered the pleasure to be had from a woman’s body, he had limbered up and quickly learned how to bring her as much pleasure as he enjoyed himself.
They had passed most of the winter that way. He hadn’t been in love with her at first, just grateful for the use of her body. But they were both young and alone, and she began to share her dreams with him. He, young fool, did the same with her.
She was going to marry a rich man some day, a man who could take her away from the house. She was going to wear silk dresses and have a maid to do the housework.
He was going to have a ranch, a place of his own with cattle and horses. He would have a beautiful wife and dress her in silk and have a maid to do the work for her.
He hadn’t realized until much later that his dream had incorporated hers. He hadn’t realized he was in love with her. Not until spring came, and he had no more excuse to come to the house. He missed her terribly. Not just her body, but the quiet moments after, when they would share their secrets and their dreams.
That was when he realized that if he wanted to make his dream come true he couldn’t keep on working in the saloon. He was going to have to learn all there was to know about ranching. He was going to have to become a cowboy.
The Inheritance Page 14
