“Then Constance forced you into giving me a dancing lesson.”
“You weren’t bad at all for a beginner. At any rate you certainly proved better at dancing than you did riding.”
“Exactly! And now I have managed to be thrown from my horse.” She laughed in dismay. She rather liked saying what was on her mind. It was highly relaxing. Perhaps she should always drink brandy and invite men with kind eyes to undress her.
“Well, yes, that was rather badly done of you,” he allowed. “Hold still.” He propped her ankle back on the mountain of pillows and began to fashion little squares of ice wrapped in muslin.
“And then of course you kissed me,” she heard herself say.
She could actually feel herself turning red—the heat pricking first at her hairline, descending to her face, then flooding down her neck. The relaxing qualities of honesty had their limits, it seemed.
Westmead froze. For a second he paused in his ministrations to look at her. His eyes were dark. “And that was … humiliating?” he asked slowly.
There was a touch of something in his voice she couldn’t read—not anger, but far from the light, teasing tone he had used before.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She had gotten herself this far with the truth, so she might as well blunder ahead. “It was not exactly humiliating,” she admitted. “That is, until you stopped.”
It was madness, to speak to him this way. Anathema. She had not spent two decades learning how to outmatch every man in spitting distance only to shamelessly flirt with the Duke of Westmead as she reclined on his sofa with his hands on her bare leg.
He was silent as he arranged the packets of ice around her ankle and gently wrapped them in another layer of muslin to keep them in place.
Then he stood and removed the tumbler from her hand. He neatly downed the liquid that remained in the glass.
“Did you think,” he finally asked, “that I stopped because I wanted to?”
A man with more talent for self-preservation would have removed himself from the vicinity of Poppy Cavendish immediately. He would have noted the sight of her on his sofa in front of his fire and the effect it was having on him and discovered a sudden urgent need to balance the estate accounts or rekindle his boyhood love for conjugating Latin.
He would not have moved a pile of books so he could look directly into her eyes as he said: “Cavendish, what I wanted was a very different type of kiss.”
He would not have leaned into her ear and whispered: “And if you don’t want to be embarrassed, I’ll spare you what I wanted when your thighs were wrapped around me on my horse.”
A man who did not want to drown would have gotten up the second she had whispered back: “And what do you want right now?”
He would not have answered: “This.” And put his mouth on hers with the force of all the hunger he had been fighting since the moment he first saved her from the blasted plumeria in her bloody greenhouse.
If there was any doubt she wanted him back, it was lost in her lips, those soft, pink, pliable lips, which trembled, then opened for him. And in her hair, that long, dark mass that was forever tempting him with its wildness, exactly as soft and fragrant as he had imagined. In her mouth, sultry with brandy, allowing his tongue to dart inside, turning up at the corners as he took her lower lip in his and ever so gently pulled, teasing her with his teeth.
When she bit him back, and he was lost to sensation entirely, his jawbone chafing against her slender neck, his ear catching her sigh as his hands traced, unbelieving, the contours of her shoulders, her beautiful, delicate collarbone, the hollows of her throat.
He pulled her close to him, wanting to envelop her, to inhale her. Her hands reached out to run her fingers through his hair, to caress his face. Only when she yelped and reeled back was he able to find the strength of mind to break his lips from hers.
Ever so belatedly, he recalled her ankle.
“Codding hell. I hurt you.”
Her eyes were filled with lightness. “I didn’t mean to stop you. It’s only that I knocked my ankle against the sofa. Add that to my list of humiliations.”
She was relaxed, recumbent, and glowing in the firelight, her lips swollen from his kisses. He wanted to pick her up and carry her directly to his bedchamber and unwind her from her clever breeches. He wanted more of her skin on his. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to be touched in such a way that he now perceived he was starved for it.
And that was dangerous for her.
But unacceptable for him.
He let out a ragged sigh and stood.
“Oh no,” she whispered. “There you go, again.”
To his tremendous relief, a knock sounded on the door.
“Archer,” his sister cried. “What has happened to Miss Cavendish?”
Chapter 8
It was like a fairy tale: with a knock at the door, the spell was broken.
Westmead was on his feet, the vulnerable expression wiped clean from his face.
Poppy felt the change in herself as well. As if by some act of sorcery, the sensuous, curious woman in the firelight straightened and stiffened until once again she shrank into the contours of the tightly coiled nurserywoman with the rigid timetables and the ever-present ledger.
The door opened and Constance came rushing in.
“Oh, I was so worried about you,” she cried. “Is it thoroughly broken?”
Poppy shook her head quickly. “It’s only a sprain. I would have gone home, but His Grace insisted we return here for ice.”
Constance shot Westmead a look that Poppy couldn’t read. “Of course you should be here,” she murmured. “We will take such good care of you that you’ll never want to leave us. Todd has prepared a room for you. Archer, you’ll carry Poppy? She mustn’t walk.”
He bowed. “Where am I taking her?”
“The ivory room.”
A strange look crossed his face. “The ivory room?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, with a tone that almost sounded smug to Poppy’s ears. “She mustn’t climb stairs, and it is the only bedchamber on the ground floor. Besides your own, of course.”
She thought she heard Westmead curse under his breath, but before she could parse the meaning of this exchange, he was lifting her once again.
When they crossed the hall, she immediately saw the source of his discomfort. The ivory room, so-called, was clearly the bedchamber meant for the lady of the house. The one meant for his wife.
The walls and floors were of a dark, gleaming wood, but the furnishings were sumptuous and feminine. A thick woven carpet in shades of ivory and gold spanned the greater part of the room. Creamy marble and gilt work crowned the massive fireplace at the room’s far end. Before it sat a polished copper bathing tub, nearly big enough to swim in.
Westmead excused himself, and she was left alone with Constance, who fluttered around, helping her undress and insisting she pick at a tray of broth and toast sent from the kitchen.
The effects of the brandy were fading and her ankle throbbed. She hissed at the pain.
“Poor darling,” Constance murmured, lending her shoulder and helping Poppy hobble toward the massive bed. “Here, take a few drops of this to help you sleep.”
“What is it?”
“Laudanum.”
Poppy had read of the tincture, made from a solvent of opium, but had never taken it. The botanist in her wondered if the drug was indeed as effective for pain as people claimed.
She accepted the phial and placed a single drop on her tongue.
“That’s better,” Constance said. “Here, let’s tuck you in.” She lifted the counterpane and made a cozy berth for Poppy, piling pillows beneath her swollen ankle.
“This room is very pretty,” Poppy murmured, burying herself in the feather mattress. The sheets were scented with rose sachets. She could not remember ever feeling more comfortable.
“Isn’t it? I designed it myself. When Archer announced he planned to m
arry, I became excessively excited. I had so nearly given up on him.”
“He is betrothed?” Poppy sputtered before she could stop herself.
Constance either did not hear or was kindly pretending not to hear the note of horror in her laudanum-heavy voice.
“No, not yet. That is what the ball is for. They don’t know it, but the unmarried ladies I’ve invited have been handpicked for the role of the Duchess of Westmead.”
Oh.
So this was why Constance had been so insistent she be hired. Why the decor for the ball had to be so spectacular. She was building the very scenery beneath which the duke intended to woo his future bride.
Perhaps it was the laudanum, but all at once she felt so leaden with exhaustion she had to close her eyes. When she opened them again, Constance was still there, staring at her intently.
She ran her fingers along Poppy’s brow. “I’m glad I found you. I was so worried he was about to make a terrible mistake.”
She wanted to ask what that meant, but the thickness of the laudanum made her too drowsy, and the thought drifted away as lazily as it had come.
Constance patted her head. “I will leave you to your rest, my poor invalid. Good night.”
As she drifted off to sleep, Poppy found herself piqued at the woman whose future life she was borrowing for the night—the phantom duchess who would someday sleep in this bed and bathe in the shiny copper tub.
No doubt, she would be a fine lady of breeding and accomplishment. The sort of lady who did not engage in trade and whose fingernails were never lined with dirt.
Poppy had never been such a lady and never regretted that she wasn’t. She liked the feeling of dirt beneath her fingers.
But now she perceived that such a lady might have one advantage over an ill-tempered gardener who fell off her horse.
That lady would be permitted to luxuriate in the Duke of Westmead’s arms whenever she bloody well wanted.
Archer sat very still as he listened to the faint murmur of his sister attending to Miss Cavendish across the hall.
This feeling.
This was the reason why he did not dance.
Why he confined his intimacies to those that could be bought.
Why he had not slept with a woman—kissed a woman—since he was last in this house. A man of one and twenty so lost to grief he could not rouse himself from bed or meet his responsibilities. A man who had fallen, for a time, completely and utterly apart.
He stood and poured himself another brandy. To stew in the past was the surest, fleetest path to ruin. A decade’s forward, plodding march had taught him that.
There would be no further dallying with Miss Cavendish. No more twilight rides or dancing lessons or intimate conversations.
For her sake, yes. But most especially, for his.
He rose. He needed a distraction. He joined Constance for an informal supper in the library, drawing it out by teaching her five-card loo, allowing her to smoke a cigar, and, as a final act of desperation, looking at her sleeping arrangements for the ball.
When she wandered up to bed, he turned to work. He read his way through two investment proposals, responding with detailed notes and questions even though it was clear that neither venture offered adequate return on capital.
Somehow, there were hours still to fill before dawn. He paced his study, conscious he was stalking like some kind of brooding panther. He recalled that Constance had found a number of old boxes in the renovation and saved them for inspection in case they had pertinence to estate business.
He retrieved them from a cupboard. Nothing like mildewed accounts of historic wool prices to clear a roiling mind.
He took a knife and pried the first crate open, wincing at the mess inside. Ledgers were piled on mismatched stacks of correspondence, stuffed with faded bits of paper and damp-spotted bills of sale. He rolled up his sleeves and plunged in with a grim kind of satisfaction. Sorting papers into tidy stacks: one of his life’s finest pleasures.
There was little worth recovering, save for a lumpy, threadbare bag. He pulled the contents from inside: two square frames that felt like—
Miniatures.
Two portraits. A dark-haired woman with golden eyes. A smiling boy with white-blond hair.
Christ.
The old black feeling soared around him, as suffocating as an underwater current.
He shoved the paintings back in the bag and the bag back in the box and staggered backward until his shoulders met the solid door behind him.
He leaned his head against the wood and tried to breathe.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
It rose in his throat. It climbed up around his ears, roaring in his blood, making his skin so hot he wanted to rip off his shirt.
It had been a mistake to come back here. He longed for the low gray maze of London. For his empty, sterile house. For Elena. For the searing crack of leather on his spine. The engulfment by numbness that would follow.
He straightened up. There were other ways for a man to forget. Namely, brandy. And he was going to dose himself with it until he could no longer recall his own name.
“No!” someone cried out, faintly.
“Yes,” he muttered back, reaching for the decanter.
But the sound was not purely in his head. He heard it again.
He opened the door and listened.
Another cry, from across the hall.
The sound half returned him to the living world.
Foggy, he crossed the corridor and knocked softly on the door. The distressed murmuring did not cease—it was harsh and tinged with fear. He cracked open the door, calling her name quietly. He was answered with a moan.
He picked up a lamp and peered inside. “Miss Cavendish?”
From the dying light of her fire, he could see she was tangled in the sheets of the bed, asleep but tossing back and forth.
“Miss Cavendish?”
Her forehead was dewy with a thin sheen of perspiration.
He moved close enough to put a hand to her damp hair. “Miss Cavendish?”
She only whimpered.
“Poppy,” he said louder. “Wake up.”
“No,” she muttered, her voice nearly unintelligible with what sounded like anguish, or fear, or both.
He shook her gently, but she only struggled more violently with the nightmare, fighting with the air itself. He placed both of his hands more firmly on her shoulders, repeating her name until her eyes finally floated open. She flinched at the sight of him.
“No!” she cried again, putting her hands up protectively before her face.
“Cavendish. You’re safe. You’re at Westhaven. You were having a nightmare.”
She started and covered her mouth with both hands, only half-awake.
“It’s all right. I’ll leave you now. Go back to sleep.” He backed away, but another sound escaped from her, guttural and haunting.
Something sharp and urgent in him—the part that wanted to be dulled with brandy, gin, Elena—fell away at the sound.
He moved to the side of the bed and knelt, pulling her into his arms, and at the feel of her small frame, another scaffold within his ribs collapsed and he could not help but climb beside her and pull her to his chest and murmur nonsense, rub slow circles on her back. The motion came to him from the past, from the nights when he would comfort a small boy who couldn’t sleep. The memory intensified the roaring in his ears, but he ignored it.
He held her like that until she finally stopped shaking. After some time he heard her breath return to normal. He was fairly sure she had drifted off in his arms, but he would wait until he was certain his movements wouldn’t rouse her before leaving. He shut his eyes for just a moment, focusing on the steady pulse and warmth of her. The frantic edge that had constricted his own throat was less persistent with her body in his arms—reduced to a twinge. Almost bearable.
When he opened his eyes again, dawn had crept in through the window. He had fallen asleep beside her.<
br />
And something even more remarkable.
He’d grown calm.
He carefully slipped out of her bed and back across the hall.
In his study, the box was where he’d left it. It seemed less menacing in the pale morning sunlight. Not a relic of his father. Just a crate.
He would move it to the hall to be disposed of.
But perhaps first … Perhaps he should—
He took a gulp of breath and plunged his hand back in and found the threadbare bag. He took it to the seat beside the window and forced himself to withdraw the contents once again. Forced himself to look at them. To really look at them.
An hour passed as he sat, alone, and beheld the faces of his wife and child.
And for the first time in thirteen years, he wept.
Chapter 9
Bloody laudanum.
Poppy awoke to bleary eyes, aching temples, and a rainy morning that had practically turned to afternoon.
All night she had tossed with fretful, opiated dreams laced with the old visions that had plagued her childhood. Her mother’s bedside as the body in it grew cold. Her nurse struggling with a man in the shadows of the hayloft as Poppy hid, too frightened to make a sound.
Nightmares of her mother’s death had chased her all her life, but she had not dreamed of the attack on Bernadette in years. At the thought of it, she shivered. Some memories were best left unexamined.
Yet plaited through those dreadful apparitions was also the memory of Archer whispering soothing words. Had he really come to her in the night, forcing the dreams back down into the depths? Or had he, too, been a figment of her restless mind?
She dressed in a drab gray gown that fit her mood and limped to the library, hoping to find a quiet corner where she could finish drawing out her plans for the parterre near the terrace doors.
Instead, she found a merry party chattering over cakes and champagne. Two ladies and two gentlemen, elegantly dressed as though for traveling, bent their heads around Constance, laughing with the air of old friends.
The Duke I Tempted Page 7
