When the Duke Found Love

by Isabella Bradford

  He offered her his arm, and when she didn’t take it immediately, he gently took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm to lead her away. She sighed and followed, matching her steps to his.

  “You’ve a great deal of explaining to do, Duke,” she said. “You say that they are lovers who will wed, but how did they come to know each other? How did they fall in love without Lord Lattimore hearing of it? Tell me all, sir, tell me now!”

  He chuckled, clearly enjoying the role of storyteller as they walked away from the paths and across the lawns, with Fantôme racing in big looping circles around them. “You’re quite demanding,” he teased, “and you ask a great many questions.”

  “I am, Duke,” she said, unashamed to admit it, “and I do. I know ladies are supposed to be demure and accepting, but how else is one to learn anything if one does not ask questions?”

  “A fair point,” he said. “Very well, I’ll answer your questions, on the condition that you’ll cease giving me the respect due to a doddering uncle. I give you leave to forget that I’m a duke, and recall instead that we’re practically family. Call me Sheffield instead, and I shall call you Diana.”

  She did not agree at once. To leave off his honorifics as he requested was wickedly familiar, just as strolling about the park unattended except for Fantôme as their chaperone was far too familiar as well. True, they were practically family, but while Charlotte could call him simply Sheffield because she was a duchess and equal to him in rank, Diana had no such privilege.

  “Call me Sheffield,” he said again. “It’s wonderfully easy, a single word. Please, Diana.”

  “Very well, Sheffield,” she said with dramatic emphasis. She adjusted the brim of her hat and peeked out from beneath it, liking how she had to look up to meet his gaze. It was hardly Lord Crump’s fault that he was much the same height as she was, but she did enjoy walking with a man who was taller. “Now tell me everything, as you promised.”

  “It’s not that long a tale,” he said. “Dr. Pullings was tutor to Enid’s brother. Because she showed a prodigious interest in learning, she was permitted to share the lessons. Soon the shared interest turned into love, and she and Dr. Pullings asked for Lord Lattimore’s blessing.”

  “Which Lord Lattimore most certainly refused,” Diana said. None of her own little romances had ever progressed so far, but she could sympathize entirely. “Oh, poor Lady Enid!”

  “Poor Enid indeed,” Sheffield said wryly. “She was ordered to marry me, while equally poor—or perhaps literally poor, considering he’s a parson without an income—Pullings was dismissed without references. Fortunately, I’d no more wish to marry her than she did me, and thus we came to our agreement.”

  “To pretend to be betrothed?”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling proudly. “I agreed to help her meet Pullings with the aim of them finally marrying, while I am free of the meddlesome matchmaking of others who wish me married. It’s quite ingenious, isn’t it?”

  But Diana shook her head and stopped walking to meet his gaze.

  “No, it is not,” she said firmly, removing her hand from his arm and slipping it instead into the muff. “You’ve encouraged her to defy her father and follow after an unsuitable man who will ruin her and their children, no matter how much he loves her. You’ve offered the two of them empty hope, and that you’ve made them lie so that you can continue to amuse yourself isn’t brilliant at all. It’s low and deceitful, and—and appalling.”

  “Appalling?” he repeated, surprised. He bent down, took the stick that Fantôme offered, and hurled it off across the grass. “That’s putting a rather harsh face on it, isn’t it?”

  “It isn’t just Lady Enid and Dr. Pullings,” she said. “You’ve made me part of your duplicity, too. If Lord Crump had come with us, then you wouldn’t have dared do this. He wouldn’t have tolerated this, not for a moment.”

  “I know Crump,” he said, pointedly looking out at the dog and not at her, “and knew he wouldn’t squander his time coming to the park, even if he were asked a thousand times.”

  That stung, especially from Sheffield, for she was sure she’d heard an unspoken implication that Lord Crump simply didn’t care to come to the park with Diana. She scowled, her chin dipping lower over the front of her cloak.

  “But you knew that I would,” she said, anger and bitterness mixed in her voice. “You believed that if I rode in your carriage like a—a chaperone, everyone would take note that the three of us had been in the park.”

  “It was never that calculated,” he began, but Diana had heard enough.

  “You thought I’d oblige you and be complicit with your plans,” she said, fuming. “You were certain I’d become one more liar and help you keep your precious bachelor freedom intact. But I won’t, sir, and I mean to put an end to this directly.”

  She turned away and headed off in the general direction of Lady Enid and Dr. Pullings. She didn’t exactly run, because the curved heels of her shoes kept sinking into the grass, but determination made her move at a brisk pace, her arms swinging at her sides. She would tell them she wanted no part of this whole ruse, and she’d demand that—

  “Diana!” he shouted. “Halt, blast you!”

  She heard him come after her, but she didn’t turn, and she certainly wouldn’t stop after being addressed in that way.

  “Diana!” He grabbed her arm to make her stop. His hand tightened on the swansdown muff on her wrist, and when she instinctively pulled her arm away from his grasp, she slipped free of the muff and of him, too.

  She looked over her shoulder just in time to see him staring down in disbelief at the fluffy white muff in his hand. Any other time, she would have laughed—would have, at any rate, until he threw the muff away in frustration. At once Fantôme came racing on his short, stocky legs, every stick, branch, and squirrel in the park forgotten in favor of the delectable white muff.

  The thought of that lovely muff crushed in Fantôme’s jaws and covered with dog slobber stopped Diana more sharply than Sheffield could. She wheeled around, barely seizing the muff from the grass before it became Fantôme’s prize, and leaving him whining and disappointed at her feet.

  “Come with me,” Sheffield said, taking her firmly by the upper arm. “I mean to give those two excellent people their time together, and I’m not going to let you interfere.”

  “Why should I do anything you say?” she demanded as he forcibly led her away.

  “You’ll do it not because I say so but because it’s the proper thing to do,” he said, stopping before a bench shaded by a large oak with smaller trees around it. “Now sit, so I may talk to you in a civilized manner, and not as if you’re some raving bedlamite.”

  He released her arm. She didn’t sit, but she didn’t run away again, either.

  “I’m not Fantôme,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “You cannot order me to sit as if I were.”

  He made a rumbling noise of exasperation. “Very well, then, stand. But sitting or standing, you will listen to me.”

  He swept his hat from his head, tapping it lightly against his thigh for emphasis. He couldn’t possibly have become out of breath from chasing her a dozen paces, not a man as large and strong as he was, but she could think of no other explanation for the three deep breaths he took before he spoke.

  “I believe no one should be forced to marry another,” he began, “simply because their properties need joining or their fortunes combining, or because they have the same bloodlines, like horses. I do believe men and women should marry for love alone, which is why I won’t marry Enid, and why I’ll do my best to see her and Pullings wed instead.”

  She stared up at him from beneath her hat’s brim, not sure whether to believe this tirade from him or not. Why couldn’t he accept that people of their rank didn’t marry for love? It was the same for them all, and she couldn’t understand whether he was truly being rebellious or only saying such a thing to capture her attention. He had managed that much; s
he couldn’t recall ever having heard a gentleman make such a speech to her. But then, it was difficult to remain objective when he looked like this, his hair tousled and tossed by the breeze, his profile sharp against the late afternoon sky.

  “You believe in love?” she asked warily. “You? With your married French mistresses galore?”

  He winced. “You know of that?”

  “Who in London does not?” She felt vastly worldly, speaking of such things to a man like him. It was also dangerous, exactly the sort of conversation that the future Lady Crump had no business conducting. “Everyone speaks of it.”

  “Everyone,” he repeated more softly. “But you’re not everyone, Diana.”

  There was something in his voice that made her shiver, an implied intimacy that should not be there between them. She knew she should leave him now and go find the others. She knew she must not be alone with him any longer.

  And yet she did not move.

  “What I did with her wasn’t love.” His voice was rough with urgency, as if it was important that she understand every word he spoke. “She might have been any doxie on the street instead of a marquise for what existed between us. It was a simple divertissement, a careless passion, a carnal desire—”

  “No more,” she said, swiftly turning away. “I—I can’t listen to any more.”

  “Diana, please,” he said, catching her once again, and she let herself be caught. “Diana.”

  And then, as she’d known from the beginning he would, he drew her close and kissed her.

  Sheffield hadn’t intended to kiss Diana. In fact, he’d vowed to himself that morning that he wouldn’t, that he’d treat her more honorably than he generally treated women. If true love wasn’t won without challenge or sacrifice, then it likely required noble restraint, too.

  Those thoughts, however, had taken place while he and Brecon were sitting in the jeweler’s shop, and it had been easy to make resolutions about noble restraint with his mother’s ring in his hand. Being alone with Diana, however, was an entirely different matter. It wasn’t as if she was trying to be enticing, not today. She’d been solemn and stern because she hadn’t agreed with what he’d done on behalf of Lady Enid and Pullings, and she’d even been judgmental about it, too.

  But to his bewilderment, Diana being solemn and stern was a hundred times more enticing than any other lady being purposely seductive. She simply was enticing, even with Fantôme jumping around at her feet, trying desperately to steal her muff. She was perfectly confident, perfectly assured, her skirts ruffling around her legs, that foolish flowered cape fluttering lightly around her shoulders, and the ribbons on her hat rippling like pennants. She’d tipped her head with equally perfect skepticism and disdain, her single dimple adding punctuation as she looked up at him from beneath the curving brim of her hat with her lips pursed and her bright blue eyes slightly narrowed.

  It was the pond at Marchbourne House all over again. Nothing was going as it was supposed to be between them. The more she acted as if she’d no gainful use for him, the more captivated he became.

  All he’d intended to do was explain how cleverly he’d arranged matters between Enid and Pullings. He’d expected her to be impressed. She wasn’t, and when she wasn’t, he went babbling on about love. Damnation, about love, the single most perilous word a man could ever utter. He hadn’t intended that at all. He didn’t love her, not to go bandying the word about like that. He was only considering loving her, a very different thing, at least in his head.

  Then she’d folded her arms to demonstrate her determination and inadvertently offered him an engrossing display of her breasts, raised beneath her forearms and framed by the sides of her cloak. That was enough—more than enough—to make him stop thinking with his head and let his cock take over instead. He’d been left so confused that before he’d realized it, he was explaining carnal desire and the Marquise du Vaulchier. Clearly words could no longer be trusted, not where Diana was concerned, and in desperation he’d automatically done what he knew never failed: he’d pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  She made an odd mumbled sound of protest that might have been his name, or might have been something much less flattering. He didn’t care, and after a moment, she didn’t, either. Her hands—and that infernal muff—fluttered briefly against his chest, not from anger, but more from amazement, and then they stilled, trusting him more than she should. He kissed her purposefully, brazenly, ignoring that they were standing in the middle of St. James’s Park. This was one thing he knew how to do supremely well, and there couldn’t be any misguided mentioning of love this way, either.

  But the longer he kissed her, the more he felt that confident control fraying and unraveling. This time, she required no gentle coaxing for her lips to part, but instead her mouth opened freely, welcoming him. She was somehow both innocent and eager, inexperienced but not shy, and the combination of curiosity and passion was like a torch to his own desire. This time, too, she didn’t rest her hands on his shoulders, but boldly reached inside his coat, allowing her palms to roam across his back, pressing her body closer to his.

  He slanted his mouth to deepen the kiss further, and she made a small, maddening purr of excitement. At least it made him mad, mad with unabashed lust, mad enough for his hand to slide away from her waist, lower, past the hard edge of her stays to the wonderful softness of silk skirts over the full, rounded curves of her buttocks. His fingers spread, caressing her and pulling her hips closer to his. Despite the layers of clothes between them, she couldn’t ignore the hard length of his desire now, nor did he wish her to. He’d hoped to make her forget that unseasonable mention of love, and he’d certainly done that. There wasn’t any flowery, romantic love in what they were doing: only lust, white hot and ready and—

  “Oooh!” she gasped abruptly, pitching against him so hard that she nearly toppled them both.

  “What in blazes?” he exclaimed, grabbing her by the waist to steady her.

  “It was Fantôme,” she said breathlessly. The heady spell of desire had been broken, and she swiftly stepped apart from him. “He jumped and struck me. I suppose he still wanted the muff.”

  “Hell.” There stood Fantôme, shifting from one front foot to the other as he grinned up with endless devotion, completely unaware of the almost unbearable frustration he’d just created. “Thunder and hell.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her face was flushed, her lips were red and swollen from kissing, and her hair was coming unpinned—the very picture of a desirable woman half tumbled. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said, though he’d the distinct impression they weren’t sorry for the same things. His voice was gruff as he struggled to tame the beast raging in his breeches. Her general dishevelment wasn’t helping, either. “Damnably sorry.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” she said, taking a deep breath to compose herself. “Yes. No. Oh, whatever am I trying to say?”

  “No more apologizing,” he said. He picked up a stick and threw it as hard as he could, more for himself than for Fantôme. “That would be a start.”

  “Yes,” she said again. “I suppose we are even now. I have kissed you, and you have kissed me.”

  He stared at her, stunned by such confused logic and still incapable of thinking with his head. “We’re even?”

  “Yes,” she said, reaching up to try to shove her hair back to rights. “We’ve both erred, haven’t we? Two wrongs do not make a right, but they do balance things out. Goodness. My hat’s all askew, isn’t it?”

  “The devil take your hat,” he said. “The devil take your argument, too.”

  “Perhaps I should consign you to the devil as well, and be done with it.” She sighed and sank onto the bench, staring down at her hands instead of him. “You realize that this must never, ever happen again. Not if you wish to see this preposterous scheme for Lady Enid to a respectable ending.”

  “It’s not in the least preposterous,” he said, grateful for a topic other tha
n why they should never kiss again. “There is a small parish attached to my property in Hampshire. The living is mine to grant, and the present vicar is withdrawing at the next quarter day. I’ve told Pullings it’s his, to put him beyond Lattimore’s vengeance. All Pullings must do is marry Lady Enid, who seems eager enough to become the Greek-reading wife of a country parson.”

  She looked up at him from beneath her still-crooked hat’s brim. “You would do that for them?”

  “I told you I would.” He joined her on the bench, taking care to keep a safe distance between them. “No one should have to marry against their wish. I told you that, too.”

  Again she looked away. “I didn’t believe you.”

  “You should.” He wanted her to believe him. He didn’t know why it suddenly seemed so desperately crucial that she did, but it was. He wanted her to believe him in this, and in everything else as well.

  But all she did was shrug and shake her head. “It’s not just a question of Lady Enid’s happiness. Pray recall that I am promised to Lord Crump.”

  “I do recall it,” he said, more adamantly than he’d intended. “Every minute of the day.”

  “As do I,” she said softly, sadly. “It’s good that I do, too, before I make another ruinous misstep like that last one.”

  He frowned, for this was not what he wished to hear. “You consider kissing me a ruinous misstep?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Most ruinous, if it were to become known.”

  He had no answer for that, because she was most likely right. Kissing him would be ruinous to any betrothed lady. Even a month ago, such distinction would have made him proud, or at least laugh, but not now.

  Damnation, how could she have turned him so completely wrong side out?

  “It’s not just Lord Crump himself,” she continued, interpreting his silence as a request for more explanation. “It’s my mother and sisters and aunt, too. They wish only the best in life for me, and have persuaded me to see the reason in marrying an admirable gentleman like Lord Crump. Their own marriages were arranged with success, you know, excellent examples for me to follow. And then there’s also March and Brecon.”