What a Difference a Duke Makes

by Lenora Bell

  She tried not to disturb him as she lifted his arm and nestled back into his chest, but he started awake, his heart beating beneath her ear.

  “Are you awake?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Moonlight slanted across the bed. They hadn’t pulled the curtains because there was nothing but the wide sea beyond the balcony doors.

  He tucked her head into the hollow of his shoulder, stroking her hair. “How do you feel? Not too sore?”

  “A bit.”

  Her heart hurt a little bit as well. Because reality was beginning to intrude again. She’d given her body to him, and he’d stolen her heart in the bargain.

  This wasn’t going to end well.

  “I can feel your thoughts going to a dark place,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” She smiled up at him.

  “Would you like me to tell you a story?” he asked.

  “That would be nice.”

  She expected him to say something funny, a story about P.L. rabbit. Something to make her smile. She gathered her strength to oblige him. To laugh and make a joke and pretend everything was wonderful and there would be no tomorrow.

  No reckoning.

  “My father was a drunkard,” he began. “And by that I mean he drank nearly a half bottle of whiskey or brandy every single day. He was a pleasant enough man during the daytime, until the poison saturated his gut. Every night he transformed into a monster.”

  This wasn’t the story she’d expected. Mari held still in his arms, hardly daring to breathe.

  He kept stroking her hair, his voice growing deeper, rougher, more jagged with emotion.

  “When he was deep in his cups, he hit my mother. He hit me. He never hit India, thank God.”

  “Oh Edgar,” she whispered against his neck. “Why do people do such terrible things?”

  “It was the drink . . . and this great sadness and emptiness inside of him, that he couldn’t escape, no matter how much whiskey he drank.”

  She listened to his heart beating, to the words he wasn’t saying. I was scared. I was scarred.

  “We lived in fear, by his whims, his great rollicking highs and his evil, mean lows. That’s why it hurt so much when you accused me of being the same way. That everyone in my household lived by my whims.”

  “That’s not what I meant, you know that. I was teasing you. I wasn’t accusing you of being a monster. I was only trying to cut you down to size.”

  “It cut me. Made me think. Made me wonder if despite all of my rules, I’d become him, after all.” He sighed. Kissed the top of her head. “You couldn’t have known the demons I was battling. The ones I’m still battling.”

  Yes, she could sense that his demons were noisy, clamoring in his head, telling him he was bad, that he was wrong.

  She traced the whorl of hair on his chest with her finger. Keep talking, Edgar. If you keep talking, you drown out the demons.

  “When he had the drink in him, he chased after the servants. And when he wasn’t at home, he was whoring and purchasing mistress after mistress. Again, trying to escape his sadness, his anger, in a frenzy of meaningless sexual congress.”

  She held perfectly still, willing him to keep talking. She sensed that this was the first time he’d shaped these thoughts into something he could tell another soul.

  “When I was young, I couldn’t do anything about his reign of terror. I couldn’t defend the serving maids, or stop him from hitting our mother. He tried to kill us all. Here, at Southend. He was drunk and he set fire to the curtains. He wanted to die. He wanted us to die.”

  Mari soothed the hair back from his brow. “That’s too much for a young child to bear, Edgar.” And she’d thought her childhood had been hard.

  “When I grew older,” he continued, “I learned boxing. Fencing. Anything that honed my body to be a brick wall that he could batter, but never break. A wall that would deflect his fury from others.”

  A tear slid down her cheek. She ached for him. For the young man he’d been, trying to absorb all of that anger. Protect everyone else.

  “There’s something about you, Mari.” He lifted her chin. “Something that makes me trust you. Even that first night, in my library, I told you things I’d never told anyone else.”

  “Sometimes we need to speak of the bad things in order to silence them forever.”

  “I think you’re right. That’s why I’m telling you this story.”

  “Keep going, Edgar. I want to hear. I need to know.”

  “When Sophie left me, I was so furious with my father. More furious then I’d ever been.”

  His chest rose and fell more rapidly now. She deliberately slowed her own breathing, showing him how to be calm.

  “I came home one evening, and my father had . . . my father had . . .”

  The words twisted inside Edgar’s mouth, blocking his tongue, choking his throat.

  Her small hands framed his face. Rubbing his temples, soothing him with the scent of her. Warm and good and wholesome.

  He took a deep breath. “He’d tried to choke my mother. There were marks around her neck. She was sobbing in her chambers when I came home. Something snapped inside me. The rage swelled up, obliterating anything good. Anything human.”

  She didn’t betray any shock. Didn’t draw away in disgust.

  “I saddled my horse and I found him at his club, drinking brandy and laughing with his friends. I walked into that club and I spat upon his boots. I challenged him to a duel, in front of dozens of witnesses. He laughed at first. And then he saw I was deadly serious.”

  Noonday sun on his face.

  Raising the heavy pistol. Correcting the tremble in his fingers.

  His father’s mocking smile.

  The crowd that had gathered despite the privacy surrounding the duel.

  Grafton had been his second. He’d attempted to talk him out of his folly.

  Too much like a Greek tragedy, old boy, he’d said. Nothing good can come of it.

  “I wanted to murder my own father,” he said. “Actually imagined the bullet ripping through his heart, taking his life. In the end, I found I couldn’t do it. I fired at nothing, several feet away from him.”

  Mari inhaled. Let her breath out again.

  “The old duke experienced no such qualms. His bullet caught me above my kneecap. ‘I was merciful,’ he told me later. ‘Could have been your heart,’ he said.”

  Merciful.

  Edgar screwed his eyes shut.

  “But something came of my challenge. After that day he changed. Left us alone. He would leave for weeks on end and we had no idea where he was. Drinking himself to death in a squalid gin house, but harming no one but himself. My mother grieved. And she was angry with me for airing our filthy secrets before the eyes of the ton. She never forgave me for challenging him to that duel.”

  “You had to. You had no other choice.”

  “She didn’t see it that way. Mother is made of strong, aristocratic fiber. Bear everything in silence, is her motto.”

  “You had to speak out. So that he wouldn’t ruin other lives. You changed him.”

  “He changed me as well. After my wound healed, I left London. Renounced my heritage. Even changed my name. I became a foundry worker in Birmingham. I learned a trade. I was never going to return. And then . . . when my father died, I had to come back because he’d nearly ruined the family, and I wasn’t going to let my sister and mother suffer any more. My mother never forgave me, though.”

  “People grow apart,” Mari said, “but they also grow together as well. Like you and the children. There they were, minding their own lives, in their own little patch of sun, seeking roots and hoping for rain, when fate bent them toward you, another seeker, another thirsty soul. And together you form a whole.”

  “They’re still growing. My mother and I . . . it’s too late for us. So that’s my story. Not a pretty one and it doesn’t have a happy ending.”

  She lifted his hand and
planted a kiss in the center of his palm. “I believe you can mend the rift with your mother. You’re a good man, Edgar.”

  She made him feel that he could be good.

  That he’d never truly made love with anyone before, that this experience was something so wholly new he didn’t even have words for it.

  She kissed the center of his palm again, her lips cool and gentle against his skin. “I wish we could stay here forever,” she whispered. “London feels so far away. Life is simpler here.”

  She kissed him again, this time using her tongue, drawing circles on his palm. Which didn’t seem like it should be so erotic, but was making his cock swell and his heart race.

  Letting her touch him, caress him, made him so vulnerable, but somehow he didn’t mind.

  God help him, he was hers.

  Hers to torture. In any manner she might devise.

  She placed her palm over his heart, spread her fingers wide. I love you. Could he hear it?

  She hoped he could feel, hear, what she couldn’t say.

  She was thanking him for telling her the story, so that she understood why he’d fought so hard against kissing her. Because he didn’t want to become his father. Because he was a good, honorable man who had risked everything to protect his family.

  She thought: We’re attracted to someone for their strength, their beauty, their perfections . . . but we fall in love because of imperfections.

  Because of the pain they’ve overcome.

  He kissed her, and she surrendered to the pleasure, loving how right it felt to be held by him. To have his tongue inside her mouth and then . . .

  He was inside her again. It stung but it felt right.

  Pushing inside her with his whole body, propped up on his strong forearms, his hands, palms spread wide, on either side of her, anchoring her to the bed.

  Then sinking down on top of her, knotting his arms around her, the hard bulwark of his chest meeting her chest.

  Heart to heart.

  He rubbed his foot against the arch of her foot. Kissed her neck with soft little nips of his teeth.

  “God, Mari. Damn.”

  His movements increased, his deep, low moans of pleasure igniting her own pleasure.

  A few more deep, strong thrusts and his body tensed, and he pulled away from her, spilling into the bedclothes instead of her. He collapsed beside her.

  Reached for her and nestled her against his chest.

  His breathing slowed to a rhythmic sighing, like the noise of the sea, a soothing lullaby.

  “I want you to know it’s never been like this with another, Mari,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” she murmured.

  “I’ve told you so much about my past. What of your childhood?” he asked. “You said it was repressive. Your father was a clergyman?”

  The mellow warmth in her heart began to cool. She longed to confess everything. Tell him about the beatings and the harshness she’d endured at the orphanage. But how could she tell him about her past without fabricating more falsehoods?

  “I’m so tired, Edgar,” she whispered, keeping her face hidden against his chest. “Can we talk in the morning?”

  “Of course.” He kissed the top of her head. “Whenever you are ready.”

  He drifted to sleep but Mari stayed awake. She didn’t want this night to end.

  His heart beat in the steady rhythm of waves breaking against cliffs.

  He’d told her his dark secrets. It was time to tell him hers.

  No matter what happened, no matter if she lost everything. She could no longer live with this barrier between them.

  Tonight she could dream in his arms.

  Tomorrow she must tell him the truth.

  Chapter 29

  An idea pulled Edgar out of sleep; a thought tethered by a dream.

  Something trying to rise in his mind, like the sun would rise soon outside their window.

  Mari asleep in his arms. His children sleeping nearby.

  A heap of beach rocks and shells on the bedside table. He picked up one of the purple sea urchins the children had collected, turning it in his hand, feeling the hard little bumps and the long ribboned ridges that formed its structure. So simple. So elegant. So . . .

  “That’s it!” He bolted to a seated position.

  “What? What is it?” Mari rose on one elbow, hair the color of sunrise tumbling around her shoulders.

  He held up his treasure. “A sea urchin.”

  “Yes,” Mari soothed. “A nice sea urchin. Now go back to sleep.” She burrowed back into the pillows.

  “No. Mari.” He tilted her chin toward him. Her eyes drifted open. “Look at it. What do you see?”

  “Ah . . .” She rubbed her eyes. “A little onion-dome for an underwater church?”

  “Ribs,” Edgar said.

  “Ribs?”

  “Yes, ribs.” He lifted the delicate purple dome. “See here—how exquisitely thin this shell is, and yet it’s unbroken with no trace of the living creature that once inhabited it. How has it survived the vicissitudes of pounding waves and churning currents? Ribs!”

  Mari smiled at him indulgently. “All right then. Ribs.” She poked him in the ribs. “We all have ribs.”

  She wasn’t understanding him. He needed to slow down.

  “See here, and here.” Edgar pointed out the ribs that ran up the spherical shell-like lines of longitude. “We just need to add ribbing to the engine boiler to increase its strength. It’s so simple! Why didn’t I think of it before?”

  He kissed her on the lips and jumped out of bed. He must return to London while the idea was still fresh in his mind.

  “This is what I’ve been searching for. I’ll take the sea urchin to Grafton. We’ll model the boiler on it.” As he spoke he ran around the room, shrugging into his shirt and coat and flinging his cravat over his neck.

  “Um . . . Edgar. Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Mari.

  Edgar looked down at his bare legs.

  Mari burst out laughing.

  “I think Grafton would prefer it if you wore trousers.” Her gaze flicked across his thighs. A slow grin spread across her face. “Though I wouldn’t mind if you decided to go bare.”

  “Oh you like the trouser-less look, do you?” He walked to the bed and knelt down, wrapping his arms around her. “Impudent minx.” He kissed his way from her neck to her lips, reveling in the way she returned his kiss so enthusiastically.

  “Mari,” he groaned, stroking his cheek. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  Her hair was even more tumbled now, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes bright with desire.

  “Go.” She gave his chest a little push. “Go and build your engine. We’ll be home before you know it.”

  Home. It was truly a home now with Mari and the children living there. He gave her one last lingering kiss and reluctantly broke away.

  First, find his trousers. Second, build his engine. And third . . . kisses. Definitely more kisses.

  This wasn’t quite how Mari had pictured the morning progressing.

  Edgar was throwing on his clothing, covering up all those sleek muscles. All she wanted to do was rip his clothes off and tumble him back into bed.

  He’d had some sort of engineering breakthrough and she was glad for him. But she’d thought they might share a sleepy morning tumble. And afterward, as they lay satiated, she’d planned to tell him the truth about how she’d come to work in his home.

  Now he was dressed and ready to leave, his face all angles and excitement in the new morning light.

  He tilted her chin up and kissed her lips. She closed her eyes, remembering what his firm, demanding lips had done to her last night.

  “I’m leaving now, Mari. But we definitely need to talk. About last night. About . . . everything.”

  His hand smoothed over her hair. “I want to know absolutely everything about you. I’ll need the name of your uncle, or whomever you were living with in Derbyshire.”

  Mar
i froze. Did that mean what she thought it meant? Was he planning to . . . propose?

  Of course he was. He was an honorable man, remember?

  Oh God. It was all too complicated now. She’d leapt into the fire so willingly.

  “Say something, Mari.”

  “Good-bye, Edgar,” she said stiffly. What else could she say? Her mind was reeling.

  Reality intruding so quickly, it felt like quicksand sucking her down into a darkness of her own creation.

  Duke. Governess. Not even a superior governess.

  She’d wanted this pleasure in his arms, but she hadn’t thought it all the way through.

  “I know this design will work,” he said with a delighted smile. “It’s all because of you, Mari.”

  “Good luck.”

  “I don’t need luck. I have you. Oh I almost forgot.” He paused at the door, and came back, drawing something from his inner coat pocket. “I was supposed to deliver this letter. What a fool I am. I can only say my head was addled.”

  “A letter for me?”

  “From a lawyer in Cheapside.”

  He handed her the letter.

  She sat, stunned, as he kissed her one more time and left.

  A letter from Mr. Shadwell.

  She hardly dared open it. She left the bed and put her clothing back on.

  It was still dawn. If she hurried, she could be down the hallway and back in her own room with none the wiser.

  She ran swiftly and made it to her chambers, collapsing on the bed, breathing heavily.

  She slit the letter open with trembling fingers.

  Dear Miss Perkins,

  My son informs me that you visited our offices and that he may have neglected to mention my existence. If you are, indeed, the child whom I sought at the Underwood Orphanage and Charity School, I would very much like to meet you. I will await you next Thursday at one o’clock at my offices. Please do bring any proof you may have of your claim.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Arthur Shadwell (the Elder. And the Sober), Lawyer

  Mari reread the letter for the third time. On the fourth reading, hope began to trickle. On the fifth, a rush of joy flooded her heart and she leapt out of her chair, dancing with the letter around the room.