How to Catch a Duke

by Grace Burrowes

  He sat and held out his bad leg to her first, then the other one. “When we go shopping, I will buy you some chemises that do more to inspire a man’s imagination. Every trousseau needs a few dainty negligees and wedding night—”

  Abigail straddled his lap and kissed him into silence. They would never have a wedding night, but they could have a consummation. When she sensed hesitance in Stephen’s kisses—not delicacy, but a hesitance—she desisted.

  “Abigail?”

  “I’m marshaling my self-control, and you are being a goose, my lord.”

  “More of a gander, actually.”

  “Ganders don’t care what their knees look like,” she said, standing, “and I don’t care what your knee looks like.”

  He peered around at his study, which now resembled a theater dressing room. Abigail’s stockings were draped over the back of the reading chair, her dress adorned the desk. Stephen’s waistcoat and shirt were half falling off the bookshelf, and his coat graced the reading table.

  “The knee is ugly,” he said. “I’ve tried ignoring it, but then the lady eventually catches sight of the scars, and she’s horrified, so I’ve tried keeping my breeches on, and that limits the opportunities. There’s always waiting for dark and moonless nights, but—I hate this.”

  “You hate being imperfect.” Abigail knelt and started on the buttons of his falls. “I’m none too keen on some of my shortcomings either. My breasts are different sizes. I never noticed, until Champlain kindly pointed it out to me.”

  “He pointed it out to you?”

  She finished with his falls. “He made something of a study of the matter, and even wanted to measure…It’s all ridiculous. Do men go around measuring their cocks?”

  “Some of us, figuratively if not literally. Promise me you won’t run shrieking for the carriage?”

  Abigail wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his bare chest. “I won’t run shrieking to the carriage.”

  “There’s something else. About my canes.”

  She swiped her tongue across his nipple. “Hmm.”

  “I can’t…you know…unless my cane is within my reach. That feels lovely.”

  She teased him for a moment, long enough to get herself stirred up—more stirred up—then she sat back. “I will take off my chemise when you remove your breeches.”

  “Dear God, Abigail, that’s rather…Oh, very well. You first.”

  He’d risen to her challenge, but she had expected no less of him. Taking off her chemise was harder than she’d thought, though. Perhaps one lost the habit of physical intimacy, or perhaps one learned the price of folly. Abigail remained kneeling before Stephen and drew the shift over her head.

  “The right one is larger,” she said, looking down at her bare breasts.

  “Nonsense. They are both perfect.”

  If Stephen’s expression was any indication, they were. “Champlain was an idiot,” Abigail said. “Thank you for illuminating that fact. Your breeches, Stephen. Now.”

  He stood, put a hand on her shoulder, and used her for balance as he stepped out of his breeches and kicked them onto the reading chair.

  When she’d risen to stand next to him beside the sofa, he took her hand and bowed. “Miss Abigail Abbott, may I make known to you Lord Stephen Wentworth, in all his abundant natural glory, and more than a bit aroused. Will you please come to bed with me?”

  She wrapped her hand around his shaft, which was arrowed straight up along the midline of his taut, muscled belly. “Yes. Yes, absolutely, I will come to bed with you.”

  “Don’t you want to inspect my knee?”

  “No. Stephen, I do not want to inspect your perishing knee.”

  He pulled her close and fell with her straight back onto the sofa.

  Stephen did not normally make a fuss about taking off his clothes. He was usually too eager to get to the part about mutual pleasure and bone-deep satisfaction. Abigail Abbott, however, had ambushed him.

  He hadn’t been able to manufacture subdued lighting, a big bed that sat low enough that no steps were needed to climb into it, a perch for his canes, and other accommodations that freed him to focus on frolicking. Instead he was sprawled on the pulled-out sofa in a room full of ledgers and correspondence, sunlight finding its way through the cracks in the curtains.

  Abigail crouched over him, her breasts a soft wonderment against his chest. “There’s a name for this,” she said, nuzzling his neck. “When the female is atop the male. I forget what it is.”

  “You will forget the day of the week, if I acquit myself properly. The term for it is happiness, at least for the male. I want to be inside you.”

  Oh, that was gracelessness incarnate, that was.

  She nipped his ear. “One did get the impression you were interested in making my intimate acquaintance. Guess what I want?”

  To have me inside you. “To have the size of your breasts compared by a man with science running in his very veins.” A trickle of science, next to a roaring torrent of lust.

  Abigail brushed her sex over his cock, and the roaring torrent threatened to overflow its banks.

  Get hold of your damned self, bucko. Show the lady some consideration. Stephen palmed Abigail’s breasts and she ceased sucking on his earlobe. His next foray was to trace the curve of her hip and stroke his hands over her bum. She sighed, her breath breezing past his ear.

  She liked to be petted. Thank the heavenly powers, Stephen could work with that.

  “Let’s get comfortable, shall we?” He elbow-walked himself over the cushions so the sofa could serve as a proper bed and tugged Abigail down beside him. “There’s a quilt…” He hooked the blanket with his good foot and dragged it up within reach. “Wouldn’t want you taking a chill.”

  He’d no sooner arranged the quilt than Abigail had a knee resting on his thighs and a hand drifting across the hair of his chest. She was gently pinning him down—as if he might totter off to do a spot of naked accounting when she wasn’t looking?

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now we get to know each other. I’m ticklish.” He took her hand and placed it right beneath his ribs. “I suspect most people are, but you can reduce me to begging if you tickle me here. What about you?”

  “I won’t tickle you if you don’t want me to.”

  “Good to know.” She sounded in complete earnest, and Stephen’s desire ebbed the tiniest bit. He tried again. “I like to sleep with a window open on even the most bitter nights. If a window is locked, I can’t crawl out of it.” He’d never told that to anybody. Duncan hadn’t remarked it in all their travels, probably considering a cracked window just one more among numerous eccentricities.

  “I sleep with a window open in summer, I suppose.”

  The lady who’d been so eager to get Stephen into bed had retreated somewhere behind a locked window. Why?

  “Abigail, what’s wrong?”

  Her hand remained right where it was, no happy explorations to the south. “Nothing. I like that you use my name.”

  Stephen plumbed the depths of that admission and came up with a few possible insights, none of them reflecting well on the late Lord Champlain.

  “I like that we are to become lovers, Abigail.” He wrapped his arms around her and wrestled her over him. “Kiss me, please.”

  She obliged, and by slow degrees and sweet caresses, he felt the passion rising in her once more. Her breasts were sensitive, and he’d just graduated from teasing her nipples with his fingers to indulging that same pleasure with his mouth when she gave his cock another delicious caress with her sex.

  “Whenever you please,” he said, lifting his hips to move with her. “You choose the moment, Abigail.”

  She sat back, and he died a little, though the chance to behold her was lovely.

  Her expression was thoughtful as she casually circled the tip of his cock with her index finger. “Champlain would be done by now. Dressed and one boot out the door, tossing a string of stupid
pet names at me over his shoulder.”

  “As a wise woman once said, Champlain was an idiot. Lovemaking with you is worth savoring, Abigail. I will tarry on this sofa all afternoon if you’ll allow it.” All week, all year. Stephen traced the curve of her jaw, then her brows, wishing he could make her smile, loving that she wasn’t pretending jolliness for his sake.

  She caught his hand and kissed his palm. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought to bring memories to bed with me, but then…” She curled down against Stephen’s chest, the sweetest gesture of trust a woman had ever bestowed on him.

  He stroked her hair, searching in vain for some sophisticated witticism that would ease the moment.

  No such witticism obliged him, but he had to give her something. Had to. “I want joyous memories with you and for you, Abigail. If now is not the moment to make them, then please stay with me and let me hold you, for that will be delight enough to fill my heart.”

  He let his hands wander, over her neck and shoulders, across her chest, along the individual features of her face. He at first feared he’d made a terrible hash of the situation. What woman wanted a mere cuddle when she’d invited a man to be her lover?

  Abigail turned her head the better to move into his touch, though, and hope replaced uncertainty.

  She truly, truly liked to be petted. He started there, making a slow inventory of every bone in her back, then moving to her haunches and the firm musculature of her fundament.

  “Up a bit,” Stephen whispered, patting her bum.

  She obliged and he turned his attention to her luscious, perfect breasts and the nipples peaking so sweetly beneath his fingertips. She moved against him, a slow, sinuous reawakening of desire that was both more delicate and more insistent than her previous caresses.

  “I want…” She dragged her sex along the length of his cock.

  “Have what you want, Abigail.” A watchful, hopeful corner of his awareness realized that she needed to hear her name. She needed him to call her home to her own joy.

  “Please, Abigail.” He took himself in hand and used his cock to stroke her intimately. She closed her eyes, and Stephen glossed his thumb over intimate folds. “Say you’ll have me.”

  She opened her eyes, took his wrists, and pinned his hands to the pillows. “Yes.”

  The next two minutes were the most hard-fought battle for self-control Stephen had ever waged. Abigail pressed herself down over him in slow, rocking increments as she held his hands fast beside his head. He could have wrestled free—probably—but why on earth would he want to?

  “Move, I beg you,” he whispered when she’d hilted herself on his arousal. “However you please, but, Abigail, please move.”

  She moved—moved his whole world and the moon and stars beyond. He had the sense she was exploring the boundaries of her own pleasure while she enlarged his. He’d experimented with delayed gratification, with toys, bindings, drugs, and odd positions, but none of that was half so arousing as the knowledge that Abigail was taking her pleasure of him.

  This lovemaking proceeded at her whim and wish, and his great honor was to be her attentive escort on the journey.

  She hitched closer and her undulations quickened. “I like this.”

  “Good. I love it.”

  She smiled down at him, the loveliest sight he’d ever beheld. “So naughty.”

  Well, yes, he was naughty, and she liked that about him, so he matched her thrusts and then raised the stakes. She apparently liked that too, because she bundled in close, and Stephen wrapped his arms around her, the better to drive her ’round the bend.

  And that, of course, drove him ’round the same bend, until they were a single magnificent creature, writhing across a glorious firmament of pleasure and panting in a shared rhythm.

  Abigail subsided against his chest, even as echoes of passion communicated themselves from her body to Stephen’s cock. He used his waning arousal to send her off again, and that nearly sent him off again, which was not biologically possible.

  But this was Abigail, and anything was possible.

  “You are so good at being wicked,” she whispered some moments later.

  “Not wicked.” Loving. “Attentive, inventive, possibly inspiring. Please, not wicked.” He kissed her cheek and pulled the blanket up over them.

  “We’ll make a mess.”

  Stop, he wanted to say. Don’t let the world take you away from me so soon. “This is an old sofa. Don’t be like those fools who can’t linger in a lovely moment. Have a little nap. Dream of me, and when you awaken, I might be hard inside you again, making your dreams come true.”

  He’d never quite managed that feat before, but it was a delicious fantasy. Abigail looked as if she wasn’t sure whether he was teasing.

  He wasn’t sure either.

  She eased away from him and curled up against his side. “You nap too.”

  Lovely idea, lovely woman. “I will be here when you wake up, Abigail,” he said, spooning himself around her. “I will be right here.” Unlike a certain courtesy earl who’d apparently had the bed-manners of a stud colt.

  She took Stephen’s hand in hers and wrapped it around her middle, settling his palm over her breast. “See that I don’t waken alone.”

  She dozed off, her breathing becoming soft and slow, while the dragon on the ceiling appeared to smile down upon them. Stephen remained awake, mentally sifting through the puzzle of how to convince Abigail Abbott to become his duchess.

  His truly, forever, one and only duchess.

  Chapter Nine

  “This is serious.”

  Quinn’s duchess sounded serious, and Jane looked serious as she watched two enormous dogs get to know each other in the afternoon sunshine.

  “They’re playing,” Quinn said. “Becoming acquainted. They seem quite compatible.” The new dog, Hercules, was the larger of the pair, also the younger and more willing to frolic. Wodin was trying to stand on his dignity and even mustering an occasional growl for form’s sake, but when Hercules went gamboling off among the hydrangeas, Wodin woofed and gave chase.

  Much rustling in the bushes ensued, as well as some barking.

  “I don’t mean the dogs are serious,” Jane said. “I mean that Stephen would procure that dog for Miss Abbott is serious.”

  If any member of the Wentworth family could inspire Jane to frowning, it was Stephen. “My brother is generous,” Quinn said. “That’s one of his three fine qualities, but don’t ask me what the other two are.”

  Jane gave him a your-wife-is-not-impressed look over her embroidery hoop. She’d brought her workbasket out to the back terrace, and Quinn had brought some draft bills to read, though he wasn’t making much progress with them.

  “Stephen is loyal,” Jane said. “He’s hardworking, he’s kind.”

  “Kind? The man who seeks to patent a repeating pistol is kind? I grant you Stephen is loyal, but Wodin is loyal and causes much less drama.” Quinn loved his brother, truly he did, but he did not understand Stephen. From a young age, Quinn’s challenge had been to find paying work, no matter how filthy or miserable. He’d dug graves, he’d carried night soil, he’d worn livery and toadied to the wellborn. His pride hadn’t mattered half so much as his ability to keep his younger siblings fed.

  He no longer labored with his hands, but he worked long hours both at the bank and in the House of Lords. Stephen had been injured too early in life to have any experience of brute manual labor. He tinkered and sketched and flirted his days away, coming up with brilliant mechanical devices as more of a hobby than a vocation.

  “Wodin is a canine,” Jane said. “I hadn’t realized he’s lonely.”

  The dogs emerged from the hydrangeas, both tails waving happily. Wodin nipped at Hercules’s shoulder, and Hercules dodged off down the garden path.

  “Wodin is…” Wodin gave chase, looking much younger than he had five minutes earlier. “Why do you say that?”

  “Look at him, Quinn. He’s acting like a puppy. He’
s not watching you to make sure you are watching me. He’s being a dog.”

  Hercules chose that moment to lift his leg on a rosebush.

  “What else would he be?”

  “A bodyguard. Stephen keeps his distance from Wodin.”

  Stephen again. Stephen, who for some reason found the prospect of taking a wife and starting a family unfathomably burdensome. Quinn was losing patience with his brother’s delicacy, because it wasn’t as if Stephen had the sexual habits of a monk.

  Far from it. “Stephen is vain about his appearance,” Quinn said, “and dog hair does not comport with a dandy’s notion of acceptable turnout.”

  “I never took you for a dunderhead, Quinn Wentworth, but consider that your brother requires a cane for locomotion.”

  “He does, and sometimes he uses two, though they are generally weapons in disguise. What does that have to do with buying Miss Abbott a canine coach horse?”

  Jane jabbed her needle into a corner of the pillowcase she was working on and set aside her hoop.

  “Dogs don’t understand about canes. Wodin might cross a room to come to my side and accidentally knock Stephen over. Something as casual as jostling Stephen’s cane can send him to his knees. I’ve seen it happen.”

  So had Quinn. “When Stephen falls, I’m torn between wanting to put him in a Bath chair for the rest of his life and wanting to kill whoever so thoughtlessly bumped his elbow.”

  “And how do you think Stephen feels?”

  Quinn avoided wondering how Stephen felt. Stephen had barely survived his adolescence, so given was he to histrionics. Only Duncan’s timely intervention with a great lot of book learning and scientific twaddle had distracted Stephen from his self-pity.

  “I think Stephen feels resentful when he takes a tumble. Any man would.”

  Jane closed the lid of her workbasket. “No, Quinn. Any man would feel ashamed to go sprawling to the cobbles while his family looks on. A two-year-old can walk upright with reasonable assurance. Not Stephen Wentworth, but he hasn’t given up trying.”

  “Stephen is determined. I’ll grant you that.”