by Norma Darcy
The Duke silently pulled another note from his pocket book.
He was considerably lighter in the purse when the guardians of her ladyship’s fortress eventually stepped aside, and he ran lightly up the staircase, a look of determination upon his features. Everyone had their price, he thought with grim satisfaction.
He found the bedchamber door and threw it open.
Lady Louisa sat by the empty fire, in a travelling dress of violet silk, embellished with military style frogging and a hat set at an angle over her blonde curls. She was evidently upon the point of departure as she was pulling on her gloves. She looked up as he entered the room and gasped faintly.
“No,” she whispered as he locked the door, fearing a repetition of what had happened the week before.
He took a step towards her, “Louisa―”
She raised her chin, forcing steel into her spine and summoned a cold voice her old governess would have been proud of. “What are you doing here? Have I not made my feelings perfectly clear―?”
“I must speak with you. Immediately.”
“Please leave,” she replied icily. “My aunt will be here at any moment.”
He took another few steps towards her as she struggled out of her chair, reaching for the mantel piece to steady herself. “Don’t come any closer,” she said, knowing that if he tried to touch her, her will would crumble, knowing that she was unable to resist that wild passionate side of him now she had experienced it.
He frowned as he watched her limp across the floor. “What is the matter with your leg?”
“I sprained my stupid ankle yesterday,” she said crossly, “although what business it is of yours, I know not.”
“Is it swollen?”
“Of course it is swollen,” she snapped.
“Should you be travelling in such a condition?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have twisted my ankle; that is all. I am hardly at death’s door.”
She struggled, half hopping, half hauling herself along, using the mantel piece as a crutch.
“How are you going to get down the stairs?” he demanded.
“Slowly,” she replied flippantly. “Will you please go?”
“Not until I have said what I wish to say.”
“I do not wish to hear it,” she said coldly.
There was a footstep in the hall and then someone noisily tried the door.
“Oh.” Lady Garbey’s surprised and muffled voice could be heard from the other side of the portal. “The door is locked…how strange… Louisa? Are you in there?”
“Open the door,” Lady Louisa commanded him quietly.
The Duke came towards her, an expression of barely concealed frustration on his face. “How much longer are you going to pretend to ignore me?” he demanded.
“Pretend?” she repeated, colouring.
“We both know you are punishing me and that’s fine; I deserve it, but you cannot ignore me forever.”
There was a knock on the door. “Louisa, my love? Why is the door locked?” called her ladyship through the painted wood panelling.
Louisa’s eyes met those of the gentleman. “Open the door, if you please.”
“Not until you agree to speak to me.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. “Louisa? Are you quite well?” asked Aunt Garbey. “Shall I call Dr Reece again?” Tap. Tap. Tap.
Louisa tore her eyes away from his dark chocolate-brown gaze, which seemed to immerse her in feelings of heat and stifling tension and a need to have him as close to her as a second skin.
Tap-tap. “Louisa? My love? Have you fallen? I’ll fetch Pritchard and have one of the ostlers break down the door. Don’t move. Pritchard? Pritchard! There you are. Please have one of the servants break down the door. Lady Louisa is taken ill.”
The Duke rolled his eyes and hastily moved to the door and unlocked it.
“Malvern!” gasped Lady Garbey when the door was open, looking curiously from the angry, frustrated face of the Duke to the stiff, haughty features of her niece. “How good of you to come and say goodbye to Louisa,” said her ladyship, watching her niece colour up and look away.
The Duke struggled to hide his irritation but his good breeding came to his rescue and he found a semblance of his manners from somewhere. “Lady Garbey,” he murmured, bowing with less than his usual grace, “I trust I find you well?”
“Very well, I thank you,” she replied with a bright smile, “although the same cannot be said for Louisa. She stumbled on a cobblestone and her foot has quite ballooned up. In fact you should be seated, my dear, remember what the physician said? You are to rest it as much as possible.”
“I have been resting it,” retorted the young lady.
“Well rest it some more. Sit down, child.”
“The carriage is waiting for us,” replied Lady Louisa, hobbling across the room. “Goodbye, Aunt.”
“Yes, yes, but how determined you are to leave. Can you not stay another few days? It really is very pretty here and I have never been to Worcestershire before. I am sure your father would not miss you for another week. And then Emma and I could come with you all the way to Haymarsh for I must say that I don’t like the idea of you travelling home all that way on your own.”
“I am not on my own,” said Louisa. “I will have my maid―”
“Yes, but that is just what I cannot approve of. A gentleman escort is what you need and I do not think Nicholas counts for he is only a boy, you know.”
“I will be there in no more than a day’s travel,” said Louisa. “How you do fuss, Aunt. I hardly think I need trouble any of the gentlemen of our acquaintance with such a tedious task as shepherding me back to Hampshire.”
The Duke’s eyes rested upon her lovely face. “I would be honoured to escort you, my lady.”
She blushed but did not look at him. “I am grateful for your kind offer, but really, there is no need. I am well used to junketing about the wilds of Hampshire on my own and indeed have been doing so all my life.” She bent down to kiss her aunt’s powdered cheek. “Goodbye, dear Aunt. I will write very soon.”
“Are you truly going then?” asked Lady Garbey, looking imploringly at her niece.
“I think I have been long enough away from home. My mother writes me to return, and indeed I think I have had more than enough of Worcestershire and its ways.” She cast a swift look at the Duke as she made this last remark.
“May I escort you to your carriage then?” asked Malvern.
She inclined her head. “You may have the time in which it takes me to hobble to my carriage.”
The Duke, expecting another refusal, was surprised and considerably thrown at being granted such a short space of time with her. He knew not where to begin to broach the subject that weighed so heavily on his mind. But she was walking, well hobbling, away from him and his time was running out like sand through an hour glass.
She had reached the door by now, grimacing as she balanced her weight momentarily on her sore ankle.
“You should not be walking on that foot,” he said softly behind her.
“You are wasting your opportunity, my lord Duke; I am already in the hallway.”
He caught her elbow and held it fast. “Come into the parlour with me,” he murmured under his breath, “I cannot say what I wish to here, in front of the servants and your aunt.”
“There is nothing you can possibly say that I wish to hear,” she replied stiffly, reaching for the balustrade and wincing heavily as her weight came fully upon her ankle.
“You are in pain. Let me carry you.”
She gasped, frightened of his touch as if he were contagious or somehow would do harm to her person. “No!”
“You can barely walk on that foot. Let me carry you to your carriage if you are so determined to travel today.”
“I am not so lost to all propriety as to let you carry me, despite what you may think of me―Malvern, don’t come any closer.” She thrust out a hand to ward him off but he took no notice of her
protests. “I don’t wish you to carry me. I have no wish to be made fodder for the gossips―Malvern, don’t you dare―“
But the Duke had taken matters into his own hands. Muttering a curse about stubborn women, he closed the distance between them and swept her up into his arms.
“You are wincing with every step you take,” he admonished gently. “If you fall down the stairs and break your silly neck it will serve you right, but I would never forgive myself.”
“Put me down this minute!” she commanded, a wave of heat sweeping over her face as she encountered the startled look of Lady Garbey and the fascinated stares of Mr Pritchard’s servants. She turned her face away, aware that the Duke was looking down at her with an expression she had last seen when he had all but seduced her.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said carrying her down the stairs.
“No,” she mumbled against his shoulder, sounding like a cross and petulant child.
He laughed softly. “I don’t want to drop you, now put your arms around my neck,” he repeated.
She did as she was told, but more from a sense of self preservation than ardour, and the Duke of Malvern tightened his arms protectively around her. The bottom of the staircase was gained all too quickly for him, and he carried her out into the yard and only released her at the open door of the post chaise. He assisted her inside the vehicle and before she knew what he was about, had jumped in behind her and closed the door on the startled maid. He took the seat opposite her and pulled down the shutter at the window, providing them with some degree of privacy.
Louisa gasped. “What exactly do you think you are doing?” she demanded, extremely put out by his high-handed ways.
“I wish to speak privately with you and this seems to be the only way for me to achieve it,” he replied calmly. “You have refused to see me and barred my admittance. What else was I to do?”
“Please get out of this carriage at once,” she demanded.
He shook his head. “Not until I have said what I came here to say. I wish to apologise for my behaviour. It was unforgivable of me to treat you the way I did.”
She turned her face away, embarrassed. His words brought a flush to her cheeks and with it the pain of the memory of her own foolishness, of her own willingness to let him do what he wanted to her and damn the consequences. “You humiliated me,” she said quietly.
He shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”
“You shamed me.”
“I know and I’m sorry.” He fell silent and gazed in abject misery at her beautiful face, seeing the hurt play out across her features.
“You made me feel like one of those women who…who…seduce men,” she said haltingly.
He bit his lip. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
“You might not have taken my innocence from me, but you took my trust. I trusted you completely and you abused it.”
“I’m truly sorry,” he whispered, leaning forward in his seat. “I was angry and hurt.”
“So you set out to punish me by making me feel like a…a…trollop?” she demanded, turning her wounded eyes upon him. “You made me ashamed to feel desire and ashamed of my wish to be desired. You made me feel embarrassed to have a woman’s natural feelings. You set out to punish me and you succeeded well in your aim, for no other man could shame me as you have.”
There was a painful silence.
“Please, Louisa, tell me I am forgiven,” he begged, his dark eyes intent upon her face.
“Never,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I never want to see you again.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I do mean it.”
“But you can’t. I love you.”
She was startled. Her eyes flew to his in shock. “I beg your pardon?”
“I love you to distraction. You know I do.”
She stared at him, completely in a daze, her mouth unable to speak the words to express her amazement.
“When Sophie married Henry Trent, against your father’s wishes, against our families’ expectations,” he continued, “I could hardly believe my luck. Suddenly I had become free of my obligations. Suddenly I was free to choose the woman I wanted. I knew that I had an opportunity to finally make you mine after all these years.”
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered.
“Don’t you?” he asked with a doubtful smile. “Are you still so naïve, my sweet Louisa? Can you not see what everyone else has known for years?”
She gaped at him. “Is it true?”
“You know it is. Why else do you think you have you always been able to run rings around me?”
“But you hardly ever noticed me,” she blurted.
He shook his head. “Not true.”
“You tell me to sit up straight and tidy my hair and not to slouch. You criticised me just at those moments when all I wanted was for you to notice me.”
He smiled ruefully. “I was trying to convince myself that you were nothing more to me than a younger sister. Sadly, I failed miserably in my aim and I couldn’t help but admit to myself that I wanted you by my side for the rest of my life.”
“Malvern, truly, do not jest with me―”
“This is no jest.”
“But you think me naive and immature.”
“I think you adorable.”
She gaped at him. “But I am not clever at all.”
“You do yourself a disservice by pretending to be only interested in shopping and Gothic novels but I know you better than that.”
“But I am interested in them,” she admitted.
“I know you are. And so am I. But there is much more to both of us than our public personas suggest.”
“But…but you can have anyone you want…and you want me?”
He nodded, smiling tenderly at her. “I have wanted you for years; since the night of your first ball, do you remember? You wore a white gown and blue ribbons in your hair and you looked like an angel sent from heaven. You were so damned beautiful and I could hardly believe that the girl I had known all my life had blossomed into such a bewitching creature. I ached to hold you. I don’t think you ever realised what you did to me, how when you smiled at me, my heart skipped a beat. I don’t think it entered your mind that I longed to take you into my arms and kiss you and claim you as my own. But you did not notice me. You were the belle of the season, the new Incomparable and you had all of London at your feet. I was nothing more to you than your big brother, to escort you and defend you against your unwanted beau. You gave your hand to me in some dance or other, and I could hardly speak for the pleasure of touching you, however innocently. Every touch of your hand on mine, every time our eyes met as you danced in my arms, I became more deeply ensnared. Every time you looked at me, or rather look through me as if I was part of the furniture, was torture.” He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “Had you no notion? Are you really so blind, Louisa?”
“You’re in love with me?” she breathed.
He leaned forward, his earnest eyes upon her face. “Completely. Desperately.”
“Oh,” she said faintly, trying to assimilate this newfound knowledge.
“So…am I forgiven?” he asked softly.
A reluctant smile tugged at her mouth. “No.”
“Not even a little bit?” he coaxed.
She blushed coyly. “Not even the tiniest bit.”
“Oh dear,” he said, forlorn.
Her lips twitched. “What are you to do?”
“Well, there’s nothing for it then,” he responded. “The situation is desperate.”
“Most desperate,” she agreed.
The Duke sat perfectly still for a moment, and then he reached up and rapped on the roof of the carriage. The driver, taking this as a signal for departure, flicked his reins, the horses sprang into action and the equipage moved forward.
She turned her laughing eyes on him. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged, leaning against the squabs of the carria
ge with nonchalant ease. “Abducting you.”
She gasped, half laughing. “Malvern, you do not mean it. Take me back this minute.”
“Certainly I mean it,” he replied coolly.
“But where are you taking me?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” he admitted with bruising frankness.
“You are jesting with me. You would never behave so improperly.”
“I have turned over a new leaf. I have been advised that being a gentleman is not going to win me your heart. Women apparently prefer a scoundrel to a gentleman. Therefore, I have decided to become a scoundrel…well, for as long as I can keep up the pretence at any rate. Come here.”
“Malvern, please, take me back,” she said.
“I mean to start my new scandalous life by seducing you in this carriage―behaviour which I have to admit I have indulged in once before but a lifetime ago when I was eighteen, and I was rather foxed at the time. I think we may manage if you hitch up your skirts and straddle me.”
“Malvern, pray be serious.”
“I am being serious,” he said as his dark eyes held hers. “Come here,” he said again softly.
“Jasper, behave yourself.”
“I want to touch you.”
Her face flamed. “We can’t.”
“We can and we will. I have wanted to touch you for a very long time. But a gentleman, my love, does not admit to such base thoughts. A scoundrel though…a scoundrel is something different entirely.”
With these words, he moved across the carriage to her seat, positioning himself so that his thigh was intimately resting against hers.
Louisa turned her face away, hardly knowing where to look.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She shook her head. His close proximity was stifling, the heat of him, the size of him made her feel small and vulnerable.
He laughed softly and put one finger under her chin, turning her face back towards him.
“Please Malvern,” she begged.
“Are you so frightened of me?” he asked, gently pulling the reticule from her hands.
“No―no,” she stammered.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” he murmured as he slipped one arm around her waist and drew her against him. “Now tell me, sweet Louisa, have you been able to put me out of your mind?”
