by Lavinia Kent
“Ouch. You should not abuse the poor man in such a fashion. He is my cousin, you know.” He crossed one ankle over the other, again drawing her gaze to his long legs—and higher.
Even wanting to strangle him, it was all she could do not to step toward him, to press her breasts to his chest, to hold his head tight between her hands, fingers locked in silky hair, as she plundered those hard lips with all the skill she had. Instead, she lifted her gaze to his face, meeting his steady stare. “And you dislike him even more than I do. You must know he is plotting to prove that you should not have inherited the title.”
“I suppose, then, that I will have to believe that he could not have fathered your child. He would not want to risk another potential claimant.”
Damn him—and she wasn’t even quite sure which “him” she meant. “There—is—no—child. Until you arrived in town I had not been alone with a man in months, perhaps a full year. Unless you think I am carrying on with a footman. Perhaps you think that as I came to your bed with such speed that I carry on this way with everyone.” Even as she spoke the words, she realized that she did fear he thought such a thing, that he believed she acted like this with every man.
“That is always possible, I suppose. And it has never been my bed you’ve come to.”
She knew he meant it as a joke, but still . . . If he wasn’t careful she was going to kill him someday—although she might be sorry afterwards. She did not want him dead, just gone from here, gone from her life, from her dreams and desires. But none of those seemed possible—and in truth, she was not even sure that was what she wanted.
“Are you trying to make me hit you with something?” she asked, her breath increasing with the effort to feign calm. “You know this whole conversation is preposterous. I am not with child and therefore there is no father.”
He stood again and stretched, his hands reaching toward the high ceiling. The man really was huge. It was one of the things she’d always adored about him. She was not a small woman, and yet next to him she felt petite and dainty. She should not be thinking such things, much less acting on them. She needed to leave London and soon. The blasted man was a most addicting drug. It would be hard to leave him, to be without him for a second time, but she knew things could not continue as they were.
She took a step nearer, pulled by invisible powers that held them both, her mind full of all the things she wished could be. His gaze met hers and the pull grew stronger. His eyes dropped to the pale flesh of her bosom above the fabric of her dress and she felt her breasts grow heavy with longing, with the desire for his touch. His eyes rose again and her breath caught at the naked longing they held.
It was an endless second of want, of need.
Then he turned away and strode to the window, his arms at ease by his sides, pretending that nothing had happened, that the second had not existed. “How can you be so sure you are not with child? After these last weeks we have spent together I’d think there would be some possibility.”
Blast. Leave it to James to come to the heart of the matter. How could he speak sense when her entire being ached for his touch? God, she wished she could go back in time and erase that first night of his return, erase the joy at seeing him after so long, erase the foolish way her heart had sped, the desire that had filled her, the thought that she was being given one last chance at true happiness. If she could erase that then she could erase all that had happened since then—erase her inability to stay away from him. It had all been a dream—a dream she needed to wake from.
She forced her brain to reason, her voice to normalcy. “I would have to admit that perhaps it is possible, but it is highly unlikely. I know my body well—those courses you were speaking of—and it is not likely that I would have conceived a child during this stretch of time. And in any case, if I were pregnant, it would be months before I looked anything like I do in these prints.”
Turning her desire to anger, she stalked over to the table and lifted the sheet of paper he had left behind. She spread it open and stared down—and felt her mood shift yet again. Her huge pregnant belly seemed to fill the whole page—or at least it did in her mind. What would it be like to be pregnant? To actually carry his child? One hand wanted to move toward her stomach, but she held it back. The gesture could easily be misinterpreted.
She studied the line drawing, looking past her sudden longing.
James looked fine. The eight years he’d been away had actually improved his looks, moving him from boyhood charm to a man’s hard angles—and muscles. She, however, looked like a melon with witchy eyes and straggly black hair.
She ripped the paper in half, crumpled it, and almost threw it in the empty fireplace, wishing there were flames so that she could watch it burn to ash. There were not, however, and she wasn’t sure she wished to leave the evidence of her upset and anger for the servants to find.
Not that it mattered much when half the shop windows in London were likely to have it pasted to them. These devilish cartoons had already cost her her best friend. Kathryn, the Duchess of Harrington, had not spoken to her since the last one had appeared, the one of Linnette and Kathryn’s husband—not that it had helped that Linnette had been forced to confess an affair with Harrington far in the past.
Damnation. How could one drawing incite so much trouble?
And who had even thought up the blasted thing? Nobody knew about her and James. Nobody.
Well, that was not quite true.
Elizabeth had seen that first kiss, had seen how quickly fire could ignite. Linnette didn’t want to think it could be Elizabeth, surely even she would not have . . . Their friendship had always been difficult, but Linnette still considered Elizabeth a friend.
Linnette lifted her face and tilted her head to consider James as he stood staring out her parlor window—no, his parlor window. She must begin to remember that this was all his, or at least near enough so it made no difference. If nothing else, the print made clear that things must change between them.
“You’re staring,” he said, turning toward her. “Do I have jam on my chin? Would you like to lick it off?”
He didn’t, of course. He only meant to tease her, to lighten the heavy mood that lay between them—but the images that filled her mind made her wish very much that he did. Her fingers clenched. The paper crunched. She looked down at the print, wished she’d thrown it on the hearth, wished she could just ignore it completely. But she could not.
She stepped away, deliberately turning her back to James, to the continued shift of emotion between them.
“I wish the world were different,” she said with a weariness she had not realized she felt.
She heard his steps behind her and then a prickle of shock as he laid a hand on her shoulder, his thumb brushing the nape of her neck. She should have shaken him off, drawn away, but it felt so good. She longed to lean back against him, to let his touches, his kisses, his passions, take her away from this place, back to the past, to the distant past when she’d still had belief—and hope.
She crushed the print in her hand again and then held up her fist, the bits of crumpled paper visible between her fingers. “This could ruin me, ruin both of us.”
“It’s only nonsense.” James closed his large hand about her fist, hiding the remnants of the cartoon from view. “Nobody cares. I certainly don’t. What does it matter if the world knows about us? I’ve never thought much of society and see no reason to start now.”
“Nobody cares? Not even you can be that naive. You’ve been too many years in the wilds. The whole world will care.”
“Why on earth should they?” He trailed his thumb across her neck again. “And why do we care if they do?”
Linnette let herself go for one brief second, relaxing against him, and then grabbed for her strength, for the rationality she should never have relinquished, and turned to face him full on. She could not help the bitterness that seeped into her voice. “Not care that the Dowager Duchess of Doveshire is sleeping with, havi
ng sex with—indeed fucking, James Sharpeton, the new Duke of Doveshire? The Dowager and the new Duke. It sounds like a Minerva Press novel. I think they will care very much. Nobody will care that you were only distantly related to my husband or that we grew up together. Instead every strata of society will be talking of how I am trying to manipulate you or how you are taking advantage of me. And among the ton, among my friends, my acquaintances, I imagine the gossip will be of nothing else. Everyone knows I’ve run the dukedom for years and enjoyed doing so, fought to do so. Now they will all be saying that I seduced you to keep my power, that I am doing everything I can to control the one man who will take it all away from me.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I’ve never had any intention of taking what is yours, Linnette.” James had not once guessed that she thought that way, but he could feel her own fear as she spoke of what others would say. She’d always seemed so confident, so sure. Even now, Linnette projected anger over the print, not worry or despair. It was only because he understood her so well that he could see more, could see the full range of emotion that held her from moment to moment. “I could not have been more stunned than when I found out I was the new duke. I’ve told you I never imagined, much less wanted such a thing.”
“That does not change the fact that you are the duke—and that you are home, returned.” Linnette spoke with quiet dignity, her face but inches from his own, her body held close by his continued grasp on her fist, by his hand against her neck. Her sweet breath brushed his cheek. “Even in these last few weeks, since everyone has known of your arrival, I have felt the difference. I may have been the dowager duchess for several years, but only now do I feel it. I always considered it a lark—I certainly never felt a dowager—until you arrived and turned my world upside down, leaving me no purpose.”
“I know we have not talked of it—perhaps we should have, but my days have been so busy with learning to understand my new role in life. You have never mentioned that you were not happy with the change in affairs. I had imagined you were relieved to see the last of the account books, to have somebody else take the responsibility. And as we have discussed, I will still need a hostess—and despite this—,” he squeezed her fingers about the cartoon, “—and what lies between us, I see no reason that you cannot fulfill the role. I understand that you throw a magnificent party and you’ve certainly managed my houses smoothly.”
“But that’s just it. They are your houses now. Perhaps I should have said something earlier, but there has never been a good time. When we are alone we—we are always occupied with things other than talk.” She said it flatly, but her eyes spoke of memories. “And when we are in company it would hardly be appropriate. Women do not run estates if there are men about. I have always known that there would be a new duke and that my position would change. But if you think that I would be happy managing your houses and arranging balls—all the while waiting for you to marry and for your wife to come and usurp my role, you have not been paying attention. Is that really the type of woman you think I am?”
God, how did a man begin to answer that?
“First of all, I have no intention of marrying any time in the near future—or even the not-so-near future. Until I inherited I hadn’t thought to marry at all.” Not since he’d left her, but he did not say that. “And as for what type of woman you are—how should I know after all these years? You are correct that our time alone has not been spent in discussion. All I know at present is that you pour tea with elegance, know the names of every single servant I employ, have apparently decorated my homes in a style that is fashionable but still allows a man to relax—and that you still gasp my name when you climax.” He knew he should not have added that last, but sometimes he needed to provoke her, to find out what she really felt, really thought. It was clear they had not spent enough time in honest discussion. “That hardly seems enough to define you. The girl I knew would have been quite happy managing my home and raising my children. You used to say it was all you wanted, all you dreamed of. Has that changed?”
She paled at his words, appearing wounded rather than angry, tried to step away, but his hand still tight about her fist held her in place. “Well, if you had not spent the last eight years in Canada maybe you’d know more than how I cry your name in passion. Not that I believe that you care. Why did you stay away for so long, James?” She tilted her chin up and glared, asking the question he had avoided for two long weeks.
“So finally we come to that.“
Why had he stayed away? Now, when he was close to her, when he felt her body so near to his own it was inconceivable that he had not come running the moment he was able. He had never wanted anything as much as he wanted her. It had never mattered that it was impossible—that the world stood between them—so why had he stayed away?
He shut his eyes, blocking her questioning eyes from his view and tried to find rational thought. For those first years away he’d been in the Army and he’d had no choice—and then there had been her marriage. How could he have returned when she had been married to another? Even worse, to his distant cousin?
The knowledge alone had been a form of torture.
But why had he not come back after that? Why had he not come back when he heard Doveshire had died?
He opened his eyes and stared down at her, trying to find the answer he had so long avoided. It was hard to meet her gaze and he dropped his glance lower. The yellow she wore this morning was a far quieter color than she normally chose. It was a simple gown with lacings in the front. He’d never seen a woman of her position clothed in such a dress. It was more something that a maid or farmwife would have worn.
Still, he liked it. It showed off her breasts to perfection—and he was so close to her—it would be so easy to unfasten, to open, to slide back and . . . Damn, his body continued to respond. He needed to be thinking with his head not his—. But despite his best intentions he found himself reaching, his hand gliding down the brushed velvet skin of her shoulder.
“Stop.” She stepped as far back as his hold would allow. “Are you going to answer me? Every time we try to talk we become distracted. I want an answer.” Her gaze followed the small gesture of his fingers, which still moved as if stroking her skin—and he did not miss the darkening of her eyes or the quickening of her breath.
There was some temptation to distract her further, to give in to what they both were feeling, to pull her to the settee and to make sure that no further words left her lips for at least an hour—he knew that he could, that she would not stand strong for long. He took a half-step forward, let their bodies brush, and then released her hand, turning away and walking back to the window.
“Well?” She was persistent.
“Why did I not return earlier? Well, you were married, if I recall.” He fingered the lace curtains.
“Doveshire died four years ago.”
He waited for her to say more, but she evidently felt that was response enough, forcing him to find the next words. “I liked Canada, the endless wilds, the rich forests, the immense possibilities. A man can be whatever he wants in a land like that.”
“That is no answer. You could have been whatever you wanted here—and you could have had me.”
It sounded so simple when she phrased it like that. “You were already engaged to Doveshire when I left. That does not sound like I could have had you.”
“I became engaged to Doveshire when I was five-years-old. I hardly think that counts. I would never have married him if you had stayed.”
He could feel her green gaze burning holes in his back. “I know.” He swept a hand through his hair.
“You know? You know and you left anyway?” He thought he heard her choke back a sound, but after a moment she continued in a voice full of deadly control. “If you won’t tell me why you didn’t come back after Doveshire’s death, can you at least tell me why you left? One day I slept in your arms in my mother’s summer cottage and the next all I had was a note saying you’d decided to
take up a commission and were off to the Americas. I didn’t even know it could happen so fast. I thought those things took time.”
“I never will get used to hearing you refer to Doveshire’s death while everybody around me calls me by the same title. I think I am drawn to you as much because you call me by my name, call me James, as for any other reason. I will never feel like Doveshire.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. He knew she wondered if his thought was sincere or merely an effort to change the subject. Then she spoke, her words carefully chosen. “I suppose it must be strange for you. Given that you are the fourth Doveshire I’ve known, it does not seem so odd to me. And it never seemed odd to Charles, to my husband—as well you know. He grew up knowing he was going to be duke after his father. I think he simply took it as his due.”
That was certainly true. Even as a lad Charles had acted like he was duke already. And he had hated to be called Charles, always wanting to be referred to by his courtesy title, Mithawk. “And my immediate predecessor, my unfortunate distant cousin, how did he manage the change?” he asked, turning to sit on the wide windowsill, leaning back against its framing.
“I never actually met him,” Linnette answered. “He kept delaying his return from India and then—well, you know the story—his ship sank and he died along with his entire family, including all three of his sons.”
“I was more sorry than you can imagine when I heard of it.” He looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. It was hard to hold still, he wanted to pace, to run, to fuck, to work his body until his mind was empty of her questions.
