by Maya Rodale
“And I can give you more experience, but not with these things that I’ve hauled halfway around the world.” Wycliff towered over her to supervise the removal of glass jars from the box onto the tabletop, as if his proximity and generally overbearing demeanor would keep his treasures safe, when he knew perfectly well it was more likely to rattle her. She was steady. Quite steady. Admirable.
“Why did you haul them halfway around the world?” she asked.
“Contrary to popular belief, I was not whoring and slaughtering my way across nations. I like to observe the natural order and immerse myself in other cultures.”
“Like the tattooing.”
“It’s the obvious, painful example, yes. The scandalous thing, really, is that I do not believe the English are the most superior beings to ever breathe air. Do not dare repeat that to anyone or they’ll revoke my title and execute me for treason.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
He wanted to bet the house that he would see those words in The London Weekly come Saturday’s issue.
“And stop saying that. I told you to call me Sebastian when we were in private.”
“Is that a family name?” she inquired.
“Of course. I was named after the previous duke, who was named after the previous duke, etcetera, etcetera. And yours?” he asked. From his travels, he learned what significance and meaning went into a name.
“My father named me after Eliza Hayward. She wrote novels and edited a newspaper. He’s a playwright.”
“Do you go to the theater, then?” It was pleasing, this working side by side, conversing freely. But it was so dangerous to learn her, to know her. Egad, next he would see her as a woman with hopes, and dreams, and feelings, and go right on and fall headlong in love with her.
Housemaid, he told himself. Housemaid. Housemaid. Housemaid.
Wycliff focused on the task at hand so he might keep himself under control. He would not ravish her here, now. They might damage the specimens that he had hauled halfway around the world.
“When I am able to, which isn’t often,” she answered. Her housemaidness hung awkwardly in the air between them. This was why one just romped with the servants and didn’t try to engage them in conversation. But he liked talking to Eliza. It wasn’t like Althea, which had him feeling like he was crossing fiery hot coals, and was a very good reason to ignore the summons she had sent. Or like other women, who were content with inane chatter about nothing in particular.
“The theater is one thing I did miss while abroad,” he said. “Although, stories told around campfires out in the bush can be just as captivating.” He missed those stories of local gods and goddesses, and mythical explanations for the natural phenomena or historical battles.
Eliza glanced up at him, smiling shyly, and it just did something to the region of his heart.
“All the jars are unpacked,” she said. An array of insects and butterflies were spread before them, along with paper and quill.
“Can you write?” he asked, because still, he needed to test her. He needed to because he could, quite possibly, experience a prolonged state of intense attraction and emotional attachment for her. Some might call it love. But not he.
When Eliza hesitated yet again, he wanted to kick himself. She was a housemaid, for heaven’s sake. Of course she could not read or write. Last time he checked, most daughters of the peerage could barely sign their names on their calling cards. And here he thought some lower class girl was a writer for a newspaper in 1825. It was ludicrous.
“My apologies. That is insensitive and idiotic of me. Just hand them to me and describe them, and I’ll write the name and some notes and then they all go back in the box for some exhibit I may or may not present to the world. If my reputation doesn’t scare everyone off.”
They worked in a pleasant, easy rhythm. Eliza would pick up a jar and describe the creature in it—blue wings with an iridescent sheen, shiny brown with hundreds of legs—and it made sense to him that she had been raised in the theater. She had a way with words. He wrote down everything.
Their hands kept touching as she handed the jars to him. Her hands were not those perfectly butter soft hands of a lady. Hell, his hands were rough, too. They worked, he and Eliza.
He was nagged by the urge to set her up so she didn’t have to work, other than cataloguing insects with him. But that would make her his mistress . . .
And the problem with that was . . . what? He didn’t have the funds, for one thing. And that reminded him, again, of Lady Althea’s letter. The damned thing kept intruding. He would have to visit her and put this matter to rest.
“There, that is the last of them,” Wycliff said, for they had finished up with this batch. The work had gone quickly and pleasantly with her company. “You were a good assistant,” he told her.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Eliza replied cheekily. She glanced up at him with a sparkle in her eyes, like sunlight on a calm sea. His heart tightened hard in his chest. For a second he couldn’t breathe.
“What did I tell you about that . . . ?” he asked in a pretend growl that broke into a grin and then devolved into a kiss. He caught her off guard. She was still smiling when his lips touched hers. For one scorching second she returned his passion in spades. For one brilliant moment in time all was deeply and unshakably right.
And then, glory to the gods, one second turned into another. The kiss deepened. Her tongue tangled with his, in a devastating combination of innocence and pure passion. Wycliff cradled her cheeks in his palms; they were warm to the touch.
She ran her fingers through his hair. His heart began to thud, hard and heavy like a tribal drum. He kissed her more, savoring her sweet taste. If his life had depended upon it, he couldn’t have stopped.
He wanted to explore her, to know more of her. Slowly he slid his hands lower, to her breasts. Eliza gasped and arched her back. Minx. His groin tightened and he closed the last little distance between them.
“Sebastian,” she whispered.
“Mmm . . .” It was imperative that he feel the warm, bare skin of her breasts. He wanted to take her in his mouth and lavish attention on her breasts until she was gasping with pleasure. The duke did just that.
“Sebastian,” she said in breathless whisper. His mouth closed down upon hers. He was aware, dimly, that she was trying to tell him something. But talking meant not kissing, and in the moment not kissing was akin to death. And then she slid her arms under his shirt, pressing her small palms against the naked skin of his chest.
If that small touch gave him so much pleasure, he would likely explode were they to be utterly nude, together. In that instant he wished for that intimacy with her more than he’d ever wanted anything. More than Timbuktu.
He broke the kiss, shocked by that thought, unbidden.
Her mouth was gorgeously swollen from his kisses. Her eyes were dark in an immensely seductive way. Her attire was a bit askew.
More than Timbuktu . . .
Chapter 24
In the Den of the Lioness
Drawing room at Lady Shackley’s residence
“I wasn’t sure that you would come, Wycliff,” Althea purred as she swept into the drawing room where he waited for her. He wasn’t sure that he would either. And yet one devastating kiss and shocking, unbidden thought had driven him here. Wanting something—someone—more than Timbuktu, his lifelong dream, was utter madness. The more he thought about it, the more he confirmed that yes, his heart beat for this adventure.
He pictured Burke leading an army across the wide-open African plains. It burned.
He imagined himself discovering the city under a hot and fast African sunset. He could not give that up for a woman. For a housemaid.
Thus, he called upon Lady Althea. She had written, requesting he come, for there was some matter that could not be committed to print. He was curious, of course. And then there was the siren’s lure of Shackley money.
Wycliff was shown to the drawing room, and avoided the
settee where she might slink up against him and work her wiles upon his person. He wasn’t in the mood to rebuff her advances, or to discover he did so out of some misguided notion of loyalty to his housemaid. Instead, he sat in some dainty, rickety, spindly leg chair and prayed it wouldn’t collapse.
He was surprised to find himself there, too, because until the other day he was content to take that slap and leave it at that. But Burke and the Royal Society changed his mind. He had shockingly thought he might earn his way through his own merits.
Lady Althea ought to thank them, truly.
“And here you are. Here we are together, again. Mmmm.” Althea tapped one dainty finger against her rouged lips. There was nothing worse than kissing a woman with a painted mouth. He declined to mention this. They would not be kissing. But at one point in time . . .
Wycliff smiled politely at her. So much had changed since they were lovers. He had changed. He’d gone from being a wild and reckless rake to . . . a wild and reckless but wiser adventuring duke. The self-control and brains he’d inherited from his mother were asserting themselves on his Wicked Wycliff self.
“How long has it been?” she purred, lasciviously eyeing him from her perch on the settee opposite. He was glad to be risking the chair, rather than her.
“Just about a week or so,” he said, being deliberately obtuse and referring to the ball where she had slapped him, and not their violent parting ten years ago. He added: “Sufficient time has passed for your temper to have cooled enough to offer me an apology.”
She bristled openly. That was the problem with them: he could not resist provoking her, and she had a temper like a keg of gunpowder.
Perhaps nothing had changed at all.
“You deserved it and you know it,” she retorted.
“Aye. You are right,” he said, because it was true and because judging by her dress, jewels, and home, she seemed exceedingly wealthy and he was in the market for a rich wife. He ought to have sat next to her on the settee. There were worse ways to earn an expedition.
“You did. But my manners were deplorable,” she said, which was likely the closest thing to an apology he’d get. In a softer, more reasonable tone, she continued: “But to see you again after all these years brought back such strong memories, especially about the way you left . . . I was angry, Sebastian.”
He’d taken one thousand pounds from her husband to leave the country. He deserved the slap. Especially since he did not regret his actions.
“I am sorry to hear about Lord Shackley,” he said consolingly. The old codger had done him a favor he could never begin to repay. That one thousand pounds set him up for the life-changing voyage and the fresh perspective on the world he had needed—and that his own father could have never supplied. Not the wisdom, or the cash.
“You are not, neither am I, and we both know it,” Althea replied sharply, revealing that her understanding of life, or anything, really, was as shallow as ever.
“Tell me how you really feel, Althea. I’ve come all this way.” He risked leaning back in the little chair.
“I myself have also returned to London after an extended stay . . . elsewhere. The Outer Hebrides, in fact.” She had practically draped herself across the settee. Her long, birdlike arms stretched along the back, her back arched and bosoms thrust forward. It looked deuced uncomfortable—but tremendously flattering, he had to admit.
She wore a necklace with a small, gold, heart-shaped locket that nestled perfectly between her breasts. He looked, of course, and looked away.
“That must have been a peaceful holiday for you,” he said politely. The Outer Hebrides had to be one of the duller places on earth.
“Oh, it wasn’t a holiday, Wycliff,” she said, laughing bitterly. “Shackley sent me away, just after we were caught. While you’ve been cavorting all over the world on an expedition my late husband funded, I’ve been serving penance.”
His jaw fell open. He quickly shut it. A worse punishment for a social butterfly like Lady Althea he could not imagine. She fed off of the energy of soirees, of social intrigues, and off the lust of men.
In South America, one had to be wary of bloodsucking bats. In England, there was Althea.
“In the Outer Hebrides,” she repeated for emphasis. Or had she gone a touch mad? Solitude could do that to some people.
“You must be thrilled to have returned to the social whirl.”
“With one yearly visit from Shackley,” Lady Althea said, and she punctuated it with a delicate shudder. The sleeve of her dress slipped off her shoulder.
“What would you like, Althea? An apology?” He was suddenly irritable. He wanted to be back at Wycliff House, of all places, so he could catalogue insects with his maid. The implications of this strange desire were not to be examined at present.
“To start, yes, I would like an apology.”
“I’m sorry things did not work out as you’d have liked them to, Althea, but that whole damned mess between you, me, and Shackley was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“But I have waited for you all this time, Sebastian. Does that not mean anything to you?” Her lips formed a pout. Her eyes glistened. She fingered the locket she wore around her neck. It was a cheap trinket, at odds with the rest of her. It seemed familiar . . .
“What did you wish to tell me, Althea? What is the grave matter that could not be committed to print?”
“The Outer Hebrides, Sebastian,” she said again, and he sighed impatiently. But his heart started to pound. The air crackled with danger, with warning. His skin tingled hot, then cold.
“We have established that, Lady Althea, and I’m assured your banishment was no secret.”
She treated him to a scowl. Dolt, her look seemed to say.
Viper. His look betrayed his thoughts of her.
“Why do you think Shackley sent me there?” she asked.
“To punish you for loud, blatant adultery in the marital bed,” he said flatly. It had been a magnificent afternoon. All her wild, evil passion was unbearable out of bed, but in bed . . . he had the memory. He felt no desire to relive it. But it had been glorious.
“Yes, Wycliff. But there was something else.” Her lips curved into the kind of smile that foretold doom.
She told him what that something else was. His heart stopped beating. He had sought her out in search of an expedition, when this news she delivered all but assured him he wouldn’t leave England for quite some time.
He thought of Eliza, too, and how it all was a tangled knot he could not possibly unravel. His Wycliff blood rang true, and fate had snared him despite his best efforts to avoid it.
Chapter 25
Sensational Novels
The housekeeper’s parlor
“Please keep reading, Eliza. It makes this sewing less tedious,” Jenny said, heaving a sigh and looking at the endless yards of white fabric gathered on her waist and spilling to the floor. All of it required hemming and sewing to turn it into bedsheets for the household.
Eliza was more than happy to read, rather than sew. She despised sewing.
“The reading and the tea livens things up,” Mrs. Buxby said, happily taking a break from her sewing and sipping her special afternoon blend. Jenny and Eliza shared a smile. They too indulged, but not to the same degree as the seasoned housekeeper. Who could blame her after all her decades in service?
“The tea certainly makes things . . .” Jenny held up a sheet with a row of crooked stitches. “Well, I’m not quite sure what the word is.”
“ ’Tis perfectly straight, my dears,” Mrs. Buxby said, squinting at the sheet in question. Eliza and Jenny shared appalled glances. “But do carry on with the reading,” she said with a wave of her hand.
Eliza was reading from a tattered old copy of Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded. It told the story of a maid who was relentlessly pursued by the lord of the manor. Virtue prevails, and he marries her. It was one of those novels that had been devoured voraciously by ladies for decades, in par
t for the love story, and likely in part for its more titillating aspects.
The parallels to her present situation were not lost upon Eliza.
She found her page and began to read in a calm voice, hoping not to betray her own tortured feelings:
“ ‘He has a noble estate; and yet I believe he loves my good maiden, though his servant, better than all the ladies in the land; and he tried to overcome it, because he knows you are so much his inferior; and ’tis my opinion he finds he can’t . . .’ ”
Jenny sighed. She, Lord help her, did as well.
“Skip ahead to the part where he ravishes her,” Mrs. Buxby urged. “It’s much more exciting than this romantic nonsense.”
“Very well,” Eliza said, turning only a page ahead. When she skimmed the words, heat suffused her cheeks. A fortifying sip of whiskey-tea was most certainly in order. She continued reading.
“ ‘I screamed and ran to the bed and Mrs. Jervis screamed, too, and he said, “I’ll do you no harm, if you forbear this noise, but otherwise take what follows.” Instantly he came to the bed; for I had crept into it—’ ”
Jenny paused in her sewing and looked up with a frown. “If his lordship is about to ravish her against her wishes, why does she run to the bed?” she asked. “That seems like the worst possible place, if one is so very concerned about her virtue.”
“It is remarkably stupid. But the housekeeper is there to protect her,” Eliza pointed out.
“Aye, but later in the book the housekeeper is a wicked procuress,” Mrs. Buxby said, calmly sipping her tea.
Jenny and Eliza paled.
“Oh, lords above, ladies,” Mrs. Buxby said, exasperated. “ I’m no evil Mrs. Jewkes. I’ve been with this family a long time and if anything I’ve spent countless hours protecting my girls from those Wycliff rogues. Now what happens after they’re in bed? I’ve read this before but I can’t recall, although if I suppose if virtue is rewarded, nothing much occurs.” The housekeeper’s disappointment was clear.
