The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

by Jillian Hunter

  He drummed his fingers on the desk. “You took an inordinate amount of time responding to my call.”

  “Sorry if your grace had to wait,” she said, breathless and annoyed. “I-”

  A knock at the door saved further explanation. The duke snapped, “Enter,” and a footman wheeled in a tray that bore a porcelain teapot with steam rising from its spout, a single cup, a single plate, and three covered silver serving dishes. The savory aroma of fried bacon and hot buttered toast wafted in the air.

  Harriet’s stomach gave a loud rumble in the silence. Was the self-indulgent so-and-so going to stuff his handsome face while she stood here, half fainting from lack of nourishment and the aftereffects of the previous evening’s impropriety?

  He leaned back in his chair. “What happened to your hair?”

  She counted to ten. Then to twenty. She clasped her hands before her and thought of her former life. She thought of her newborn nephew and her half brothers, trapped by their own ignorance in the squalor of St. Giles. She resurrected long-buried images of intimidation, abuse, of hunger, and shame. But even after all that mental palaver, she was hard-pressed not to fly across the duke’s cluttered desk and smack him a good one.

  Instead, she bobbed an insolent curtsy and backed like a sleepwalker to the door. A voice-it sounded more like a toad croaking his last than her own-quoted the etiquette manual’s advice on how one properly disengaged from a perilous situation.

  “Excuse me for such a discourteous departure, your grace. But I feel a sudden spell of giddiness calling me to the chaise-”

  He stood abruptly.

  She groped behind her for the doorknob, her other hand fluttering to her eyes. “If you are going to apologize for last night-”

  “Apologize?”

  She peeked at him through her fingers.

  What had she been thinking? The fiend looked anything but sorry. Perhaps she was still dreaming. Had William the Conqueror, another famous duke who had been known to be a bastard, apologized for invading England? She wrenched open the door. He reached around her and closed it again.

  “Just what are you doing?” she asked indignantly.

  He caught her beneath her knees, lifting her into the air with a look of mock alarm. “I cannot allow you to go fainting in the hall, or I shall be blamed for it. There is a perfectly good sofa behind us that you may swoon upon to your heart’s content.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Isn’t it?” he muttered, hefting her up a little higher to navigate his way across the room.

  She locked her hands reflexively around his neck. It was either that or hit her head against the furniture. He bore her toward the sofa like a barbarian, apparently unconcerned that she might have a word or two to say about the matter.

  “There.” He deposited her ungently on the burgundy damask sofa that sat between two sash windows. “I will give you three minutes to recover before I call a physician to the house. While you’re at it, I suggest you do something about your hair.”

  “That,” she said, sitting up, “is the last insult I shall endure. I do not care if you are a duke and live in a castle made of diamonds. I do not care if every woman in the entire world dreams of becoming your wife. I-”

  He sat down beside her, his expression encouraging her to continue. Harriet lost her train of thought. She had never noticed how the daylight brought out the singular beauty of his face. “I-I forgot what I was saying.”

  He stretched his arm across the back of the sofa. “Something about diamonds, a wife, and-ah, the last insult. Which, oddly enough, leads me to the reason I summoned you with such urgency that you… you obviously had no time to prepare.”

  Harriet compressed her lips. He was going to dismiss her, and she hated him. She hated him not only because he was a duke but because he smelled divine and his sultry eyes sent little shocks into her deepest regions. She hated herself for not moving when his carved mouth suddenly hovered a mere breath from hers. And she might actually have fainted if all the gin in her father’s blood hadn’t made her as strong as a cart horse.

  “If you are going to let me go, your grace, then have the decency to do so before dark.”

  He frowned. “Certainly not before breakfast.”

  His shoulder pressed her deeper into the sofa. The ebony buttons of his cutaway black jacket brushed against her unadorned muslin bodice.

  “Do you still feel faint?” he asked, lifting a strand of her hair to the light. “If so, I think you’d better have a cup of tea and a bite to eat before I explain why I needed to see you. A hearty breakfast might settle your nerves.”

  She combed her fingers through her hair, reclaiming the strand he was studying in fascination. Settle her nerves. Of all the gall. He’d done more to tangle up her inners than the month she’d shared a gaol cell with a murderess. But-she was hungry.

  “You had that breakfast ordered for me?” she asked, halfway to the table before he could answer.

  “I ate earlier,” he said. “Please, serve yourself.”

  She touched her palm to the pot. Still piping hot. The bacon and toast tempted her. It seemed a pity to let a decent meal go to waste, especially when she knew how hard the servants worked to please the young duke, in the hope he would keep them on.

  She seated herself in the chair at the table, folding her limbs as gracefully as the sticks of a fan, as she had been taught at the academy. In the old days she’d have attacked her plate like a farmhand. But now she forced herself to take delicate nibbles here and there.

  He turned to the window with a troubled frown. Harriet placed her toast back on the plate. She glanced at his desk, suddenly noticing the papers scattered everywhere, some even strewn across the floor, as if he’d thrown them in a temper.

  “I think you had better tell me what the matter is,” she said, biting her lip.

  He shook his head. “Finish that toast. I haven’t seen a lady eat a decent meal since I arrived in London. Perhaps I scare their appetites away.” Entirely possible.

  She took a delicate sip of tea, sighing in pleasure. There was nothing like a strong brew to start the day.

  Except for a duke’s kiss.

  “What happened to your desk, or shouldn’t I ask?”

  He pivoted. “My secretary quit last night.”

  “I wonder why,” she said without thinking. “But you don’t-you don’t expect me to-”

  “-take his place? Absolutely not. My aunt would never share you. I’m surprised she hasn’t shouted the roof down to find you.”

  “We went to bed late last night,” she reminded him. “It was light when I fell asleep.”

  “Well, while we slept, the devil’s printshops were hard at work. You have not read the morning papers?”

  “I didn’t even have time to do my hair.”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “I should have ordered a brush and ribbon to go with breakfast.”

  She vented a sigh. “You aren’t going to dismiss me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Last night… well…”

  “Do you think that was your fault?” His frown deepened. “As to dismissing you, I would not risk my aunt’s wrath. You may, however, wish to leave of your own volition after I explain what is being said about me.” He paused. “About us.”

  Silence fell. Harriet felt a little ashamed she’d been so preoccupied with her own assumptions that she hadn’t considered he might have had a good reason to summon her.

  “I know what has been said of you, your grace. I’ve been accused of worse.”

  “Do you know what is being said now?”

  She shook her head. He sounded so grim she decided she might be better left in the dark.

  “We have been accused of conducting a liaison.”

  “Oh.” She almost laughed in relief. “Is that all?”

  He looked at her in frustration. “It would be appropriate on your part to burst into tears and accuse me of damaging whatever good reputation you have
worked to achieve.”

  “Lady Powlis will murder me,” she said suddenly.

  “No,” he corrected. “She will murder me.”

  “But it’s all absurd,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a lie; you and I-”

  She didn’t finish. The dark glance he sent her seemed to be fraught with a message she was afraid to interpret.

  “Is it really that absurd?” he asked.

  She came slowly to her feet. “It is, unless you’re offering me a position as your mistress.”

  He gave her a fierce look. “I’m offering you the chance to escape before it comes to that.” He half turned. “Your door does not have a lock.”

  “How did you-” She saw the faint smile that tightened his face. “What if her ladyship reads the scandal sheets?”

  “Undoubtedly she will.”

  Harriet stared absently at the letters scattered around his desk. “Will she believe them?”

  “She did not believe I murdered Liam when the court of public opinion accused me. This, however, is another matter. There is an element of truth to it.”

  “Then I must be as guilty as you are,” she said under her breath. His head lifted.

  “Go,” he said in a controlled voice. “And do not give any person who questions you about this scandal the satisfaction of a reply.”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  She turned in hesitation, torn between what he ordered her to do and what her heart told her he really meant. “May I say one more thing?” she asked, hurrying on before he answered. “Words can’t hurt you unless you let them. I’d have shriveled up into dust years ago if I had believed what my own father said about me.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t give a damn what I am accused of being. I’m perfectly able to defend myself. But when my name is used as a weapon against those I care for, it is a different thing altogether.”

  “I think I understand.” She stepped back, resisting the temptation to tidy the room before she left. It was unsettling to leave him in such a mess, even if it was of his own doing.

  “Harriet…”

  “Your grace?”

  “For the love of God, do something about your hair.”

  Her hair. Griffin released his breath as she left the room. No other lady’s companion could have brought the fortune Harriet would command on the market as a courtesan. She looked for all the world like the Irish Princess Isolde of the pure healing hands and secret passions. Would she heed his warning? Had he given her fair notice of his intentions? He believed he had. He’d done his best to explain himself. She claimed to understand, but if she understood the strength of his desires, she would not be so brave in his presence.

  He glanced around the room, smiling unwillingly at the image of Harriet feigning an attack of the vapors. She’d had him half convinced as he lowered her to the sofa that he had sent her into a swoon.

  She might indeed have been a duchess for how well she pretended indisposition. Only the mischief in her eyes had betrayed her.

  His gaze lit upon the drawstring pouch that sat amid the disarranged papers on the desk. He had discovered it on the carriage floor the night he had brought her home from St. Giles. He’d meant to give it to her, although the strand of false pearls within seemed hardly worth the bother. Perhaps the necklace held some personal value, a gift from an early admirer. The cheap paste used to coat the glass beads had crumbled off in his fingers. In truth, he had felt so insulted on her behalf that he remained uncertain whether he would return the tawdry bauble to her at all or replace it with something more befitting her importance in his life.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  What his feelings were whom I pursued I cannot know.

  MARY SHELLEY

  Frankenstein

  Lady Powlis had read the morning papers and was not pleased. Whether she blamed Harriet or her nephew or the gossip reporters for the rumors of their liaison, she did not immediately articulate. She did manage, however, to exile to the basement every servant who crossed her path, for some imagined misdeed.

  By late afternoon she had dismissed her companion so many times that Harriet finally threw up her hands and said, “Don’t trouble yourself. I’m already leaving.”

  “You shall not leave this house, Miss Gardner.”

  “I wouldn’t stay for all the tea in China.”

  She wheeled, snatching her cloak from the hall-stand, and walked into the tall figure coming through the front door. Wisely, the duke had been gone all day, leaving Harriet to bear the brunt of his aunt’s distress. His black hair was ruffled from what must have been a hard ride.

  “I’ve been knocking for ages. Where is Butler? The footmen? What has happened now?”

  “Ask her ladyship,” Harriet said, flinging her cloak around her shoulders.

  Lady Powlis scowled up at him. “Miss Gardner is threatening to leave me. What do you have to say about that?”

  “I say it’s a blessed miracle she has lasted this long.”

  “I’d dismiss you, too, if I could,” his aunt fired back at him.

  “Go ahead,” he said, tossing his gloves at her feet like a gauntlet. “I’m fed up with you bellowing like a sailor night and day.”

  “How dare you, you… wicked duke.”

  He folded his arms in disgust. “You aren’t telling me you actually believe what you read?”

  Harriet glanced from the duke to Lady Powlis in consternation. They looked as though they would face off like a pair of street brawlers at any moment. Over her. “Madam,” she said, positioning herself between the pair of them, “it is clear that my presence in this house is a disruption to his grace and-”

  “Nonsense. Everything is a disruption to the duke. Where are you going with that cloak, Miss Gardner?”

  “I’m leaving before I cause any more consternation.”

  “You cannot leave,” Lady Powlis said. “I have paid you in advance. You accepted your wages, and I insist you work out what you owe me.”

  Griffin bent to pick up his gloves, muttering under his breath, “I shall turn and walk out of this house forever, Primrose, if you confess that you actually believe what has been said of me.”

  “And me,” Harriet said, suddenly tempted to sneak out to buy one of the papers that the servants had been ordered to destroy.

  Lady Powlis shook her head as if she were waking up from a long nap. “Of course I don’t believe it,” she said in a rather unconvincing voice. “However, others will. And I cannot help but think that where there is smoke-”

  “-there is usually a Boscastle in the vicinity,” Griffin concluded with a wry smile. “You’re the one who filled me in on the family’s notorious history.”

  Her mouth pinched. “Yes. But even I did not expect history to repeat itself quite this quickly.” She regarded him with an unflinching stare. “You will find your every action closely scrutinized from now on.”

  “I don’t plan to attend another social event in my life,” he retorted. “The scandalmongers will have a hard time keeping an eye on me if I hide inside the house.”

  “That will only serve to heighten their curiosity. Furthermore, I shall be keeping an eye on you.”

  He unfastened his riding coat, reaching over Harriet’s head to place his gloves on the hallstand. Harriet hazarded a glance at him, surprised to see a thick bundle of papers tucked inside the waistband of his trousers. Had he been buying up the gossip rags as fast as they were printed? Wicked of her, Harriet knew, but she had to smile at the thought.

  Lady Powlis had calmed down considerably by the time a light dinner was served. She apologized profusely to the household staff, and to Harriet, for her bad temper. When Griffin inquired whether he was to be included in this act of grace, she scowled at him for several moments, then grazed his cheek with a grudging kiss. It did not take Harriet long to understand the reason for her employer’s lighter mood.

  Miss Edlyn had come to spend the evening with them, apparently of her own volition. She was w
earing yet another of her somber gray frocks. She still reminded Harriet of a lost wraith looking for a kindred spirit in a graveyard. But Edlyn took Harriet by complete surprise when, upon entering the house, she embraced not only Lady Powlis and Griffin but Harriet herself.

  Lady Powlis’s eyes grew misty with emotion. “I think your brief stay at the academy has done you a world of good, my girl. We have missed you, though, I admit.”

  They retired to the duke’s library after a dessert of raspberry trifle. His grace sat at his desk, sifting through his correspondences. Edlyn, dealing yet another welcome surprise, curled up on the sofa with her head resting upon Lady Powlis’s shoulder as they perused a stack of fashion magazines.

  Harriet took out her beloved novel. A cozy fire burned in the grate. The duke brought a bottle of his best French brandy, pouring four glasses to offer around the intimate gathering. Harriet refused at first. As the daughter of an abusive drunk, she harbored a fear of falling prey to the lure of strong spirits. Her father became a right demon when he was soused. Still, she took a deep swallow to appear convivial and to join the duke’s toast to her ladyship’s health.

  Her eyes watered as the brandy went down. Her throat burned like the blazes, and it was all she could do to catch her breath when she glanced up to discover the three others in the room watching her in mirthful expectation. Then Edlyn burst into giggles, and Harriet sputtered and started to cough, rising from her chair with her hand pressed to her throat.

  “Help her, Griffin,” his aunt said, passing her glass to Edlyn.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, approaching Harriet with a grin that did little to ease her breathless embarrassment.

  “Thump her on the back,” Lady Powlis insisted. But when he gave her a strong whack, Harriet only coughed all the harder and waved him away with the piece of paper she’d snatched off his desk.

  A deathly hush descended upon the room. The duke-in fact, all four of them-stared down in horror at the sheet she had plucked at random from the disordered correspondence on his blotter. She could not have snatched up just any inconsequential paper. This, she soon perceived, was neither an invitation to another party nor a benign business letter from one of the solicitors who handled Griffin’s London affairs. To her shock, she appeared to have picked out one of the scandal sheets he had gathered from the streets and intended to destroy. Harriet doubted he had meant to keep it for his personal titillation. And yet, if she had not been in polite company, she might have been tempted to study the salacious print herself. Something indeed drew the eye to the illustration of an amorous couple engaged in-well, the vulgar position of their unclad forms spoke for itself. As did the caption emblazoned beneath, which read: The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife from the Gutters of St. Giles!