Put Up Your Duke

by Megan Frampton

  “Robinson, Your Grace.”

  “Of course. Robinson. Good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  At this rate, they’d be saying good morning until the afternoon.

  It was lovely of someone—perhaps Nicholas?—to hire a lady’s maid. Isabella had never liked the one she’d had at her parents’ house since she suspected the woman reported on Isabella’s activity to her mother.

  “I brought you some tea and a few pastries the cook thought might tempt you.”

  Excellent. They’d gone beyond the greeting stage in only five minutes. And Isabella was famished—not eating for a few days prior to one’s wedding would do that to a person. “Thank you, that would be lovely.” Isabella struggled to sit up, only to have her lady’s maid—Robinson—march swiftly over and begin to yank and plump pillows with a ferocity that did not seem, to Isabella, to be a first-thing-in-the-morning-type activity.

  “What time is it?” she asked as the woman positioned Isabella’s body just so.

  “Nearly nine o’clock.”

  Hm. She would have thought she’d have slept longer. Although she hadn’t done anything particularly strenuous the night before, and she had been exhausted by the day.

  “And the duke? Does he expect me at breakfast?”

  The woman’s attitude went even more proper, if that was possible. “The duke is already out, Your Grace.”

  Out? Out already? Where out? Only she couldn’t ask the lady’s maid that question; that wasn’t proper. A duchess, her mother had said, must behave as though she knows everything and is never surprised by anything.

  But even her mother would have been surprised by the events of the night before.

  Not that Isabella was going to share any of her wedding night experience with her mother. That was not only not proper, she didn’t want to tell anyone what had—or hadn’t—happened.

  She didn’t even know how she felt about it, except that she was more intrigued by her new husband than she had been when she only thought he was the handsomest, tallest gentleman she’d ever seen.

  And she had thought herself rather intrigued, even then.

  She picked up one of the pastries from the plate and took a bite. It was delicious, filled with apples and sugar and some sort of cream. An entirely duchesslike breakfast.

  As she chewed, she glanced around the room. Her room. She hadn’t taken that much of a look the night before, what with being terrified about the potential beastliness of her husband and all.

  The room was spacious, of course, as befit her new rank. It wasn’t nearly as crowded with furniture and other items as her parents’ rooms had been—on a few occasions Isabella’s enormous skirts had whisked a few items of bric-a-brac off a table, making her mother frown even more than usual. It was—pleasant, Isabella thought in surprise. Had this been the earlier duke’s mother’s room? Or perhaps the earlier duke had gotten it done up for her? Because she didn’t think the earlier duke—no matter how low she thought of him—was infatuated with the color pink, or any of its iterations.

  She giggled at the thought. Robinson, who’d been folding her wrapper, glanced over at her and smiled. Isabella nearly smiled back before she recalled that one did not smile at the servants.

  At least, that’s what her mother had always said, adding that the duchess, specifically the Duchess of Gage, would be correct at all times, no matter if she was at court with the Queen or at home with the servants.

  The Duchess of Gage. That’s who she was now, not Lady Isabella Sawford, not even the Earl and Countess of Grosston’s perfect daughter.

  What would the future hold? Who would the Duchess of Gage be, when all was said and done?

  “Just one more round, I promise.” Nicholas sat in the corner of the boxing ring, Griff dabbing at his face with a towel.

  “Do you want to get your nose broken? Or worse?” his brother said through his teeth, his eyes focused on his work.

  “What’s worse than having your nose broken?” Nicholas asked. Not that he cared about the answer, but he did care about distracting Griff enough so his brother wouldn’t insist he stop.

  He had to continue. He had to do something to release all this—whatever it was that burned inside him.

  He had barely slept after leaving Isabella’s room, his brain reexamining the images of the day—her, looking perfectly lovely in the church, speaking her vows in a soft, low voice. That evening, the look of poise replaced by a fearful look that seemed to pierce his chest somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. How she’d glanced at him when she’d thought he wasn’t looking, a hesitant, worried expression on her face. How that expression had eased as they’d played cards, then returned when he led her to the bed.

  How it had felt to have her lying next to him, so close. And yet so distant.

  “Just one more,” he said again to Griff.

  His brother stepped back and looked at him with a disgusted expression on his face. “Fine. You’re not going to mind whatever it is I want anyway, so you might as well get yourself pounded for a while longer. Maybe it’ll shake some sense into your brain.” He turned his head to yell into the main boxing area. “Anyone want to take on the new Duke of Gage? He seems to need a good pummeling.”

  Several heads turned, and then a few gentlemen, already dressed for fighting, stepped forward. Griff looked at each of them, then pointed to the largest. “You first. Make sure you don’t think about the fact that your opponent is a duke. Or maybe you should, if it’ll make the fight more intense.”

  The man laughed, spoke a few words to the other men who’d seemed interested, then stepped into the ring, his gaze fierce.

  Nicholas felt the man’s stare through his whole body, flowing out to his fists, which were itching to find their way to the man’s face. He needed some sort of satisfaction, and if this was the only type he would get—well, he would take it.

  Isabella wasn’t precisely waiting for her husband, but she also hadn’t done anything at all that morning except pick up embroidery and put it down.

  Up, down. Up, down. At this rate the fabric would travel more than she had.

  She was sitting on a surprisingly comfortable chair—again, nothing like her mother would own—in a small room that served as “the duchess’s own private tea room,” the butler had informed her. It had a large bank of windows on one side of the room, but the day was cloudy enough to require candles. Especially since she was supposedly embroidering. Even though she wasn’t.

  With the exception of the butler, who appeared at regular fifteen-minute intervals, she was alone. And she didn’t know when she’d ever been left alone for so long before. It felt—odd. Which was probably why she couldn’t concentrate on her embroidering.

  She dropped it—again—when she heard the door swing open, heard the butler’s voice speaking in a suitably obsequious tone.

  And walked into the hallway, casually, as though she just happened to be walking by when he arrived. She did not bring the embroidery; it had traveled enough. “Oh, there you are,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. No hint of Where in heaven’s name have you been/were you so disappointed by last night?, Thank goodness. Not that she’d even know how to speak as though she had any emotion at all—the only person to whom she’d allowed herself, her own self, to peek through was Margaret, and Margaret had gotten only a fraction of what Isabella was capable of.

  Whatever that was.

  He turned from handing his hat to the butler and she gasped at the sight. His face—his gorgeous, sharply planed face—looked as though someone had been doing embroidery on it.

  “What happened to you? You,” she said, gesturing to the butler, “go fetch some cloths, some hot water, and—and—”

  “Some whiskey, too,” he added, giving her a sly glance. “It looks worse than it is, I am fine.”

  The butler scurried off, leaving them alone in the hallway. She drew nearer, suppressing a gasp as she saw his face up close. “You are most definitely no
t fine. Come into the sitting room,” she said, taking his arm and leading him back where she had been without waiting for a response.

  He allowed himself to be led, his plum pudding scent tickling her nose, the heat and strength and all of him at her back, reminding her just what they had and hadn’t done the night before.

  “Sit there please, Your Grace,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing him down into one of the sturdier chairs. He glanced around the room, taking in the embroidery hoop, the tea things, and the footstool she’d been resting her feet on. “This is a pleasant room, isn’t it?” he asked, as though he were merely on a social call and hadn’t wandered in looking as though someone had mistaken his face for a door knocker against a particularly heavy door.

  Or something.

  He chuckled. “I haven’t really explored much of the house yet. You know I’ve just moved in, probably two and a half weeks ago.”

  Of course. Two weeks since they’d first met, two weeks since she’d had her freedom, for a brief moment, only to have it snatched away in a sea of legalities and honor and funds and livelihoods.

  What could one woman matter against all that?

  So even though she hadn’t the faintest idea of where she fit into this new life—her life—she couldn’t chafe against it. At least, not too much.

  And meanwhile, here he was, all bloody and bruised, but still with that roguish smile on his face, the one that, if she were that sort of woman, would render her weak in the knees.

  As it was, she was only mildly shaky.

  “Your Grace, Your Grace,” the butler said, nodding first to her and then to Nicholas. They shared a conspiratorial glance, both recalling his words from the night before.

  “You can put the things on that table, there,” Isabella said. “And then you may go. I will attend His Grace.”

  The butler nodded and deposited an armful of white cloths and a bowl of steaming water on the table, then made his way to another table set against the wall, picking up a bottle of brown liquid and a glass.

  “If there is nothing else, Your Grace, Your Grace,” he said, bowing as he placed the bottle and glass onto the table.

  Isabella drew nearer, taking one of the cloths and dipping it into the water, then wrung it out. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  He grinned and looked up at her. “Telling you someone hit my face isn’t something you don’t already know.”

  Isabella repressed a sigh, the kind usually only Margaret elicited, and instead concentrated on schooling her features into the neutral duchess expression she’d perfected after hours of practice.

  Only then, when she did that, his grin receded. And he looked away from her face, to somewhere else in the room.

  Had she somehow disappointed him? Was that why last night hadn’t happened? And what was she going to do?

  It didn’t help. Having the largest man Griff could find for him to spar with hadn’t reduced the impact of seeing her, still (as he well knew) a virgin, still impossibly beautiful.

  Now also, it appeared, slightly bossy. Which surprised him, since the night before, the only substantive time they’d spent together had left him with the impression that she was meek. Soft-willed. Pleasant, but not compelling.

  But this woman—she’d taken one look at him, and that gorgeous mouth had turned down in an expression of dismay, but she’d had the wherewithal to bark out orders to his butler—whose name Nicholas couldn’t even remember, much less remember to order around—and insist he come sit so she could tend him.

  “I know this will hurt, but it will hurt more if we don’t do something,” she said, seeming to have dropped her inquisition of just how he’d gotten himself so beaten.

  You should see the other man, he wanted to say, but he doubted she’d appreciate the levity.

  It did hurt, as she’d promised, and he inhaled sharply as the warm, wet cloth touched the corner of his eye, where his opponent had delivered one of his most lethal blows.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  So she had not dropped her inquisition at all. Add “stubborn” to the list of what he knew about his bride.

  He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. That forced her to move closer to him so she stood between his legs. Well. He couldn’t have planned that better if he tried, could he?

  “I like to consider myself a rather skilled pugilist,” he said. “I’ve had worse results after a fight.”

  He felt her step back, and opened his eyes. Her expression was as near horrified as someone so perfectly appropriate could look. “You mean you chose to do this to yourself?” she asked in a hushed tone. As though she were too horrified to speak too audibly. “Deliberately?”

  He wanted to laugh at just how appalled she seemed, but he knew that would scare her off probably more than his cut-up and bloody face would.

  “Yes, as it happens, I did.” Nicholas reached up to rub his palm along his jaw. “Can you pour me some of that whiskey?” he asked.

  She yanked his hand away, holding his fingers in hers. “Don’t touch your face, not until I’m done,” she said in that bossy tone. And not, he noticed, pouring him anything at all. “It’s hard to believe anyone would want to do this to oneself, but then again, I am not a man.”

  Nicholas let his eyes drift over her, from her gorgeous face and its lush lips, currently pressed into a thin line, down over the fragile bones of her neck, over her breasts, her waist, her hips. Felt how warm and soft she was between his legs. “No, you are most definitely not a man,” he said in a voice that had grown huskier over the past few minutes.

  She blushed, but kept working on his face, dabbing the cloth into the water, then cleaning with a gentle touch. Nicholas winced a few times, but it really wasn’t the worst he’d ever gotten. Never mind it hadn’t had its intended result of making him want her less—if anything, he wanted to claim the spoils of his own particular brand of war and hoist her over his shoulder, take her to the bedroom, and ravish her until they were both speechless.

  But that was not possible.

  “What are your plans today?” he asked as she made a few last swipes at his face with the cloth.

  She stilled. “I—I do not have any. I rather hoped, that is, I assumed we would spend the day together.” Of course. Because most couples, ones that hadn’t both been just thrust into entirely new situations, would be off on a honeymoon.

  Nicholas felt her words like another punch. He’d already messed this marriage in myriad ways, and they had been married only twenty-four hours.

  What might he accomplish in twenty-four days? Twenty-four years?

  “Of course, that sounds like an excellent plan,” he replied, as though he’d been thinking the same thing all along, and was just waiting for the opportunity to speak to her about it.

  “You didn’t even think about it, did you,” she said in a flat voice, stepping back from his legs, looking at the carpet, again.

  She didn’t exhibit it, not at all, but he knew he’d hurt her.

  “I hadn’t, but that is because I wished to consult with you. Isn’t that what a married couple should do? Consult with one another?” He had no idea, he hadn’t seen what married couples did or didn’t do with one another since he was small, before his father died, but it certainly sounded good.

  She unbent a little, so perhaps it was the right tactic. “That is reasonable. So what would you like to do?”

  Well, he hadn’t thought she’d turn the question right back around at him so quickly. He reviewed what he’d done before he was a married man: visit boxing saloons, visit houses of ill repute, sit at home thinking about at least one of the two activities he’d done while he was out, ride horses, and read serial novels.

  “Would you like to go for a ride in the park?”

  Her face lit up, and he felt the pressure in his chest ease. “That would be lovely. I will just go change.”

  “Good,” he replied. He would take her out for a ride in the
carriage, they would talk about things not related to boxing or sex, and he would be able to get to know his bride better. If only he could stop thinking about the latter in regards to her, he would be fine.

  He might never be fine.

  Epigraph

  From the unedited version of A Lady of Mystery’s serial:

  Princess Jane soon grew accustomed to a life, so different from her own, in the prince’s castle. She was awakened at dawn by the riotous singing of those brightly plumed birds, she was served by no fewer than three five maidservants at one time, she ate delicious fruits she’d never seen before and spent long hours escaping from the heat in a bathtub pool reserved just for her.

  But she might never become accustomed to her husband. He didn’t speak to her frequently, but when he did, it was always to question her—not to allow her to ask questions of him.

  She knew, from their earlier conversation, that there was something altogether strange mysterious about him, but she didn’t know if she wished to unravel the mystery, or leave it alone.

  What if her new husband was as dangerous as he’d seemed when she first met him? What if she still managed to fall in love with him?

  And how would she decide how she wished to proceed, when it came to him?

  —THE PRINCESS AND THE SCOUNDREL

  Chapter 9

  Isabella hurried up the stairs, an odd excitement fluttering in her chest. There had been something so—so foreign about him, not in the foreign country sort of way, she could absolutely tell he was from England, as she was—but in an unknown territory sort of way.

  He was entirely different from anyone she’d ever met. Even the men she’d met during her Seasons, even the previous—and unlamented duke—hadn’t had the same force of personality this one had.

  It was enticing and also frightening. At least, frightening to her. From what Margaret had intimated, he hadn’t had any problems getting females to pay attention to him.