He could have her body, but not her heart.
Daisy heard the crunch of gravel along the garden path and looked up to find Nicholas striding toward where she sat on the ground. She watched the fluid movement of muscle and sinew and bone as he approached her. She knew his body intimately now and was able to imagine what he looked like without his clothes. Her gaze followed the length of him up to his eyes, which were amused.
“You look busy. Can you take a break to visit one of the tenants with me?”
As Daisy stood, Nicholas reached out a hand to help her up. She felt a frisson of desire that was unwelcome but unavoidable. “I’ll be glad to go with you. Just let me change into my riding habit.”
“Five minutes,” he said.
“Ten,” she bargained.
“Five. And I’ll leave if you’re not ready.”
He leaned over to kiss her mouth, and she felt her knees wobble. She backed away from him. How could he do that to her when she didn’t love him? Her vulnerability to him was frightening. There had to be a way to get the duke to stay at Severn. She had been meaning to speak to him about it for weeks now. Maybe today would be a good time to bring up the subject.
“Five minutes,” she said as she backed away from him.
Nicholas was appalled at how fast his heart was beating after just one kiss. She did it to him every time. Even when he told himself he was prepared for the power she had to bring him to his knees, he was caught by surprise. It hadn’t gotten any easier to be around her during the three months they had been married. The more he had her, the more he wanted her. The more he tried to stay away from her, the more necessary it became to spend time with her.
He had already conceded that he couldn’t leave her when he returned to America. The only problem now was convincing her to go with him. Not that he couldn’t simply kidnap her and take her along. After all, she was his wife. But knowing Daisy, if he used force, she would be on the next ship back to England.
He had been meaning to broach the subject for days now. He hoped there would be time for him to raise the issue during their ride to check on one of the tenants, who was having some problems with his cattle.
One of the things Nicholas had come to admire about Daisy was her seat on a horse. They hadn’t gotten far from the house before he offered to race her.
Daisy hesitated. She really ought not to be tearing around the countryside. It wasn’t dignified. Furthermore, she had to be more careful now—
“Afraid I’ll win?” Nicholas taunted.
Daisy threw caution to the winds. “First one to the cleared field wins,” she said.
“Go!” he shouted, spurring his horse.
She was riding an English Thoroughbred. He was riding his mustang. There was no contest over a short distance. The Thoroughbred had speed the mustang couldn’t match. But Nicholas had learned over the past few months that if he extended the distance of the race, his mustang outlasted the Thoroughbred and won.
This time Daisy had set the distance, and she was there before him. “You win,” he said with a grin as he admired her flyaway hair and windburned cheeks. “What forfeit do you want?”
“Anything?”
“Name it, and it’s yours.”
“I want you to stay at Severn. I don’t want you to go back to America.”
Daisy could see she had caught Nicholas totally by surprise. His jaw fell open, and his hands tightened on the reins, causing the mustang to shake his head and back up several steps. Nicholas quickly brought his mount under control. But she could see he was still shaken.
“That’s not amusing, Daisy.”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” she said. “You have everything a man could want right here, Nicholas. Power, position, land. Me.”
“I have all of that in America. Except the title, of course, which I’d willingly relinquish. And I could have you, if you’d back come to America with me.”
This time her jaw dropped, and her eyes opened wide. “Are you asking me to leave England?”
“It’s not a matter of leaving England. It’s a matter of coming to America.”
Her jaw snapped shut. “I’m afraid I don’t see the distinction.”
“What will you have here when I’m gone, Daisy? You wouldn’t be leaving anything behind if you came with me.”
“What about Severn?” she asked, her face taut, her body tense. “What happens to Severn?”
He shrugged. “I sell it.”
“I see. Oh, I see.” At last. Finally. She did see. Nothing she had done, none of the changes at Severn, could entice him to stay. “You really don’t care about this place, do you?”
“That’s not fair, Daisy. I do care. I just … there are too many memories here. Don’t you see? Everyone looks at me, and they see a man who might or might not be the real Duke of Severn. Can you imagine what that’s like? Can you imagine having to face that for the rest of your life? I would have to do that if I stay here. In America, it doesn’t matter who I was. Only who I am.”
“And what are you there? A bounty hunter. A man who kills other men for a living,” she said scornfully.
His eyes turned cold. “It’s an honest living.”
“A futile, violent living, you mean.”
“And this is better? Raising a few cows, some hay and oats? Where’s the challenge in that?”
“The challenge comes in watching things grow. In knowing that you’ve helped your tenants to prosper. In preserving the past and passing it on to posterity;”
“My son intends to live in America. And you can’t give me any more children. What posterity, Daisy?”
Nicholas was sorry the moment he saw the stricken look on Daisy’s face. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t give him children. It wasn’t her fault he was a bastard. He reached out a hand to her, but she jerked away.
“It appears we’re at an impasse. Again,” she said bitterly.
“You could come with me, Daisy.”
“You could stay here.”
“I’ve already explained why that isn’t possible.”
“What if you found out the truth about your birth? Would that make a difference?”
He thought for a long time before he answered her. “It might.”
“When is Estleman coming back?”
“In the spring.”
“We’ll just have to wait until then, to see what he has to say.”
“And if he doesn’t have any answers? What then, Daisy?”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes. Are we agreed? Until spring?”
“Until spring.”
She kicked her horse into a gentle canter, and he spurred his mount after her. They arrived shortly at the small, slate-roofed stone house of James Johnson. When Daisy rode up, Sally was in the yard wearing a blouse that was cut indecently low and that fell off one shoulder. With her dark eyes and dark hair flying in the wind, she looked more like a gypsy than a proper English girl. “Hello, Sally,” Daisy said. “Is your father around?”
“He is, Your Grace. If you’d like to come inside, he’s working at the kitchen table.”
Daisy was ready to slide off her horse when Nicholas arrived to lift her down. He dragged her body along the length of his, and when she met his gaze, she knew he had done it on purpose. He was reminding her of what she would be giving up if she stayed. She rubbed her hips against his. Reminding him of what he would be giving up if he left.
“Touché, Daisy,” he murmured, his lips curved in the beginning of a smile.
Daisy turned and found Sally standing in her way. The girl gave Nicholas a sloe-eyed look from beneath lowered lashes and said, “Welcome, Your Grace. If you’ll just follow me I’ll take you to Papa.” Her hips swayed provocatively as she moved away.
Daisy glanced at Nicholas from the corner of her eye, to see if the girl’s blatant tactics were working. Nicholas grinned back at her.
“After you.” He gestured her ahead of him.
Daisy harrumphe
d. It would be just like Nicholas to compare her walk to the girl’s. Well, if he wanted a show, he was going to get one. She lifted the extra material in her riding skirt and looped it over her arm. Then she headed down the dirt path to the front door, making her hips sway as seductively as she knew how.
She waited for the sound of Nicholas’s footsteps behind her. When she didn’t hear them, she turned to peek over her shoulder. Nicholas had a finger in his collar, attempting to loosen it. Daisy laughed, a bell-like tinkling sound that made Nicholas frown.
“Come on,” she said. “I promise to be good.”
He quickly caught up to her. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
James Johnson rose and tugged his forelock and made sure the duke and duchess were both comfortable at his kitchen table before he reseated himself. His wife served tea and disappeared back into the kitchen, and he sent a sulking Sally back outside to feed the chickens.
“What seems to be the problem?” Nicholas asked, getting right to the point.
“I think my cows are sick,” Johnson said.
Daisy felt Nicholas tense beside her.
“What symptoms do they have?” Nicholas asked.
Johnson described symptoms that sounded like sick cows, but like no disease with which Nicholas was familiar. He relaxed only fractionally. Hoof and mouth disease had decimated herds in Texas. He wasn’t sure if they had something similar in England, but he imagined they must.
“Have you got a local vet?” Nicholas asked.
“A what?”
“A horse doctor. An animal doctor.”
“We only have one doctor hereabouts, and he tends people and animals both,” Johnson said.
“I think we’d better send for him. Meanwhile, I’d like to take a look at some of your cattle.” He couldn’t bring himself to call them cows. Cows gave milk. Cattle were bred for beef.
Johnson saddled a tired-looking workhorse, and the three of them rode out to the field where the cattle stood listlessly, their heads down. They weren’t eating. Worse, a few of them weren’t even chewing their cud.
Nicholas was baffled by the symptoms he found. The cattle were sick, all right. He didn’t recognize the disease, if it was one. There was one another possibility that had to be considered.
“Have these cattle been grazing anywhere besides this field?”
“No, Your Grace. They’ve been eating good English grass and naught else.”
“What are you getting at, Nicholas?” Daisy asked.
“The cattle might have eaten something, some weed—like the locoweed we have in Texas—that made them sick.” He turned to Johnson and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a ride around this pasture. Maybe I’ll see something.”
“Certainly, Your Grace. Shall I go with you?”
“That might not be a bad idea. If I do spot something, you’ll be able to recognize it yourself next time.”
Daisy noticed how Johnson’s shoulders straightened as he rode alongside the duke. Nicholas probably had no idea that dukes were supposed to delegate this sort of thing to their bailiffs. He probably didn’t know that tenants didn’t usually ride alongside dukes as equals. It probably had never occurred to him that it wasn’t a duke’s job to teach his tenants to recognize noxious weeds that might be sickening cattle.
Which was why, over the past three months, Nicholas had made tremendous inroads with the tenants at Severn. They had moderated their initial opinion of him. Not that they didn’t find him a bit intimidating. The duke’s size alone, not to mention his title, accomplished that. But he had made himself accessible to them in the way the nobility rarely did in England.
And he had earned their respect by understanding the basics of what they did and, in at least one other case that Daisy recalled, by working alongside them.
Clark Peters, who liked a jug of ale perhaps a bit too well, had imbibed before he went out to operate a piece of the newfangled machinery that Daisy had introduced the previous year. With the result that he had driven the modern Fowler steam plow, which was fueled by straw, into a ditch at the edge of the field.
There were already several men and a brace of horses trying to rescue the machinery when Daisy and Nicholas had arrived on the scene. Instead of watching from atop his horse, as past dukes had done in days gone by, Nicholas was off his horse in an instant and put his London-tailored shoulder against the huge metal wheel along with the men in muslin shirts.
Nicholas never saw the stunned looks on the faces of Severn’s tenants, never saw the consideration that replaced it and the admiration that followed that. Daisy did.
When the steam plow was free, Nicholas asked enough questions to discover the problem and wrangled a promise from Peters to be more careful in the future. He shook hands with the other men—as equals—before mounting his horse and continuing his ride.
Daisy had tried to explain the significance of what he had done, but Nicholas had brushed off her compliments.
“I only did what any neighbor would do,” he said.
Daisy had realized then, for the first time, what growing up in America had done to Nicholas. He had no sense of class, of social distinctions. He judged a man the way he expected to be judged. For who he was. It was a radical proposition, but one that she realized would do the duke no harm in the eyes of his people.
He might treat them as equals, but it would be generations before they would be able to see the duke as anything except what he was. Severn. Whom their parents had served, and their parents before them. And whom their children would serve. It would be interesting to see how those beliefs were moderated over the years.
Daisy’s attention was drawn back to the pasture by Nicholas’s exclamation.
“By God, here it is! This is what’s causing the problem.”
Daisy nudged her horse toward the spot where Nicholas was kneeling on the ground with Johnson beside him. He held a small plant with prickly spurs.
“Larkspur. It isn’t locoweed, but it’s a near cousin,” Nicholas said. “You’re going to have to move the cattle out of this field until you can get rid of this stuff.”
“Move them where, Your Grace?” Johnson said. “I haven’t any other field.”
Nicholas scratched his head. He turned to Daisy and asked, “Any suggestions?”
Daisy was both pleased and surprised to be consulted. This was what she had imagined it would be like, the two of them working together, making decisions. It was hard to believe it was actually happening.
“Daisy?”
She flushed. If she kept daydreaming he would think she was a nitwit and look elsewhere for advice. The answer to his dilemma came in her next thought. “Squire Templeton has a field he might be willing to lease for a short term.”
Nicholas turned back to Johnson, and as the two men rose to their feet he said, “I’ll speak to the squire this afternoon. If he agrees, I’ll be back to help you drive the cattle over there today.”
“That won’t be necessary, Your Grace. I can manage.”
“You’ll need some help, won’t you?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then I’ll be here.”
Johnson’s eyes skipped to Daisy, and she saw the confusion there. It was hard for his tenants to understand this American duke, who was willing to labor beside them. “As you wish, Your Grace. I’ll wait to hear from you,” Johnson said.
Daisy noticed an aura of excitement about Nicholas after they had left Johnson’s farm. “What has you shifting in your seat?”
His eyes gleamed as he turned to her. “I’m going on a cattle drive. I hadn’t thought I missed things like that, but it seems I have. I think I’ll ask Colin if he wants to come along. He might enjoy the adventure.”
“What about me?”
“Ladies never go on cattle drives,” Nicholas stated flatly.
Which only made Daisy more determined to join him. Nicholas must have recognized his mistake because he quickly amended, “Ladies usually don’t g
o on cattle drives. It’s dirty, dusty work, Daisy. You won’t like it.”
“I’ll judge for myself,” she said.
Nicholas grinned. “This I’ve got to see.”
Daisy never made it to the cattle drive. But neither did Nicholas. Something else came up. Something so amazing, so astonishing, that it took him completely by surprise.
20
Daisy dropped her riding crop in the hallway as she entered Severn Manor with the duke on her heels. Thompson started to retrieve it for her, but she waved him away and bent over to get it herself. “Thank you, Thompson. I can—”
As she stood, the blood drained from her head, leaving her woozy. Afraid she was going to fall, Daisy reached out and caught Nicholas’s arm to steady herself.
“Daisy?”
“Nicholas, I—” Everything got dark around the edges. Daisy realized as she fell what was happening. “I think … I’m going to … faint.”
Nicholas bellowed for help as he caught Daisy in his arms. Servants came running from all corners of the house.
“Go for the doctor. Turn down my bed. Get her some tea. Get cool water and bring it to my room.” Nicholas shouted orders, then headed upstairs. He wanted to get Daisy alone where he could examine her and find out what had happened.
Fear clawed at him, and he realized how much the woman in his arms meant to him. It was no longer a matter of simply enjoying her, being intrigued by her, being delighted with her. He needed her. He couldn’t survive without her.
He loved her.
Nicholas forced that thought away. Now, when she had fainted for no good reason, was no time to admit to feelings she probably wouldn’t welcome, nor to feelings he wasn’t sure he welcomed himself.
He carried her to his room and lay her on the bed. Jane was already there and pushed him out of the way. She unbuttoned Daisy’s riding jacket and the blouse beneath it.
Nicholas’s mouth flattened in rage when he saw how tightly Daisy’s corset was tied. No wonder she couldn’t breathe!
“Get that damned corset off her,” he said, “before I rip it off myself. I don’t want her wearing another one, do you understand me?”
The Inheritance Page 28
