“That’s not necessary. I was just leaving.”
Chapter 7
He was the duke.
Venus pushed her way out of the room, ignoring Mr. Valentine’s—no, Greycliffe’s—call to stop. If she didn’t get outside immediately, the walls were going to close in on her.
He was the duke.
Oh, God, how he must have been laughing at her all this time. The silly little provincial. The girl so green she could pass for grass. The little idiot who’d fallen in love with him.
She burst through the terrace doors and struggled to get a deep breath. Damn it, her chest was too tight. She panted, looking around.
All the elegantly dressed strangers were staring at her.
Her eyes met Mrs. Blackburn’s. The widow’s lips twisted into a smirk, and she bent forward to say something to the tight knot of people around her. Everyone sniggered, and two men pulled out their quizzing glasses to examine her from head to toe.
“You think this was what caused Greycliffe to leave Town so abruptly?” the fatter one asked. His tone left little doubt he found the notion beyond astounding.
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Blackburn said. “She’s at most a small diversion—a way to pass the time until Lady Mary arrived.”
Venus wanted to scratch the harpy’s eyes out, but she was shaking too much to do so. And the London people would just laugh at her anyway … the way Greycliffe had been laughing at her.
“Oh, there you are, Venus.” Mrs. Higgins, a tart in her hand, waved to her from a refreshment table set out farther down the terrace. “Will you tell Mrs. Edgemoor the food is running out here? Esmeralda would like more biscuits.”
“Yes, hurry on, do,” Esmeralda said, her mouth only partly clear of crumbs.
“You see,” Mrs. Blackburn said. “She’s really little more than a servant.”
Damn, damn, damn. She had to get away, far away, as quickly as she could. She rushed across the terrace and down the steps to the gardens.
“Miss Collingswood! Venus!”
Mr.—the duke—must have got free of Lady Mary. He called to her from the terrace door, creating an even larger spectacle. Mrs. Blackburn and her London friends must be memorizing every detail to relate at all the balls and routs and soirees once they returned to Town.
She would give them one more thing to talk about.
She picked up her skirts and ran.
“Lost something, your grace?” Chuffy Mannard called. He was standing with the Widow Blackburn and the other unwelcome London visitors.
Drew had always thought Mannard a fat boil on the ton’s arse, but he hadn’t until just this moment realized how stupid he was. Did the nodcock want him to shove his annoying grin down his throat? He would be more than happy to oblige.
Mannard must have realized his peril when Drew took a step toward him. “Er, no offense meant, of course, your grace.”
“I should hope not.” Drew swallowed—with great effort—the rest of what he wished to say. His words would not be at all appropriate for mixed company, and in any event he had more important things to do than castigate Mannard. He had to catch Venus.
Lady Mary slipped by him and linked her arm through Mannard’s. “Don’t mind his grace, Chuffy. He’s in love.” She might as well have said he was insane. She turned to Mrs. Blackburn. “This party is sadly flat, don’t you agree, Constance?”
Nigel must have given the widow her congé for she nodded immediately. “Yes, indeed. Such a collection of rustics. I don’t know how I’ve kept from falling asleep.”
“We should have room for you at Beswick’s party,” Mannard said. “What do you think, Nanton?”
“Right-o.” Nanton wasn’t as cabbage-headed as his companions. “Let’s leave now.”
“Very good,” Drew said. “Don’t let me keep you.”
Lady Mary sniffed. “I’ll have a word with Mrs. Higgins about fetching our things,” she said as she and her group of annoying Londoners left.
Thank God. Drew had never been so happy to see the backs of a set of people in his life. Now he could go after Venus. She had quite a head start, but—
“Greycliffe, I’ve been looking all over for you.” Nigel came up behind him, clapping him on the shoulder.
Drew bit back his impatience with effort and turned. Damn, Mr. and Mrs. Collingswood and Aphrodite were there, too. Why the hell did they have to choose this of all moments to emerge from the study? Venus would be all the way to the Colonies before he could go after her.
He forced himself to smile. “I hope you are enjoying the party?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” Mr. Collingswood said. “Far more than we expected, I’ll admit. Mr. Valentine is quite the classics scholar, you know.”
“I know. He puts me to shame.”
Nigel snorted. “I should tell you that his grace is a far better mathematician than I could ever hope to be.”
Drew kept smiling. Surely they were not going to waste precious time trading compliments?
Aphrodite came to his rescue. “But where is Venus? I thought we might find her here with you.” She blushed furiously. “I mean, we didn’t see her inside.”
“I believe I saw her heading into the gardens,” Drew said. “I was just on the point of following her to offer my escort.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Collingswood frowned. “She did say she wasn’t feeling well, but I thought she’d improve once we got here. Venus is never sick, you know.”
“Perhaps she went home,” Mr. Collingswood said. “It’s not far.”
“Nevertheless, I must make sure she’s come to no harm,” Drew said. It was unlikely now he’d catch her before she reached the vicarage, but he would knock on the front door when he got there and try to persuade her to listen to him.
“That’s not necessary,” Mrs. Collingswood said. “Venus is used to walking all over Little Huffington by herself. It is quite safe. She’s never met with unwanted attention.”
Except when she’d encountered him naked at the pond.
“And you can’t leave your guests,” Mr. Collingswood pointed out.
“I’m afraid I can and I must,” Drew said. “There is something I need to speak to your daughter about. It can’t wait.”
Mr. and Mrs. Collingswood gaped at him, and even Nigel looked surprised, but Aphrodite smiled broadly.
“Then of course you must go, your grace,” she said. “Don’t let us detain you another moment.”
He was so appreciative he could have kissed her—if it wouldn’t have shocked her and likely earned him a drubbing from Nigel. “Thank you.” He bowed. “Please excuse me.”
He crossed the terrace and descended the stairs, keeping himself to a brisk walk until he passed out of sight.
Then he ran full tilt toward the vicarage.
Venus stumbled down the narrow path through the trees. Branches caught her dress and tangled in her hair, pulling out her pins. Her lungs ached from running, and somewhere along the way, she’d got a pebble in her shoe. Now it was digging into the ball of her foot.
And she was crying. Damn it, she’d cried more in the last twenty-four hours than she had in her entire life. She wiped her nose on her sleeve—she still didn’t have a handkerchief—and sat down on a rock at the edge of the woods. She could just see the pond through the tree branches.
She tried to take in the calming scent of water and pine and dirt, but her nose was too stuffed from the blasted crying. All she managed was a dismal snuffle.
She jerked off her shoe and shook out the pebble. It bounced off her foot and vanished in the pine needles. Such a little thing, but it had felt enormous.
Maybe that’s what this problem with Mr. Valentine—no, Greycliffe—would feel like in a week or two: a little, insignificant pebble instead of a large, heavy, crushing rock.
It was possible. Time healed all wounds, didn’t it?
She swiped at her nose again.
Everything about him, every word he’d uttered from the moment she’d met him, was
a lie. So her feelings for him were a lie as well. They must be, no matter how true they felt now. She couldn’t love someone she didn’t know.
She pulled her shoe back on.
And what about Ditee? Dear God, it was her fault her sister had fallen into the clutches of the duke’s cousin. He must be as culpable as the duke; he hadn’t corrected them when they’d met him in the village.
Ditee would be heartbroken, and it was all Venus’s fault. She was never going to play matchmaker again.
She walked over to the pond. The water looked as cool and calm as it had when she’d met the blackguard duke. Well, calmer, actually. Archie wasn’t here to splash around and disturb the birds.
Had it only been—
Damn. Something—someone—was coming. She heard branches snapping in the woods behind her. She whirled around just as Greycliffe, the weasel, erupted from the trees.
Her foolish heart leapt to see him. He had leaves in his hair and mud on his breeches and he had never looked so handsome—except, of course, when he’d been naked.
She took a step back and raised her chin, daring him to even try touching her. “Why are you here, your grace?”
He flinched at her tone and stopped a good five yards from her. Her foolish feet wanted to go to him.
She turned to examine the pond instead.
“I’m here to apologize,” he said, “and to explain.”
Had he taken a step toward her? She would not look.
“You do not need to apologize, and there is nothing to explain. We have young men in Little Huffington. I’ve seen them play j-jokes before.” She swallowed more tears. “Someday I’m sure I will find this all very f-funny.”
And if she said another word, she’d burst into tears again and prove she was as great a liar as he.
“It wasn’t a joke.”
He sounded so bloody earnest. He stepped nearer, but at least he didn’t have the effrontery to touch her. She gave him a cold look to keep him in his place and then turned her attention back to the pond. The ducks were upending themselves to feed on the plants and insects under the surface.
“You see, Mrs. Edgemoor mistook Nigel—that’s my cousin—for the duke when we arrived; that’s what got the idea stuck in my head,” he said. “People forget dukes can be young.”
She hadn’t thought of his age. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
Her heart sank. That was far too young for a duke to marry; even she knew that. He would want to sow his wild oats for many more years.
“And then I came upon you, and you assumed I was Nigel, and I saw a golden opportunity, one I couldn’t let pass.”
“A golden opportunity?” She sent him a sidelong glance. He’d turned to gaze out over the pond, too, his hands clasped behind his back. He was standing even closer to her, so close their sides almost touched. “What do you mean?”
“A chance to not be Greycliffe for a while.”
She tilted her head to look up at him. His face was unlined; his features still had the curve of youth, but his expression had hardened with knowledge beyond his years.
“Everyone thinks I should be so bloody happy to be a rich duke,” he said, “but they don’t know what it’s like. They don’t know how often the title feels like shackles.”
He turned to face her. His eyes were so blue and clear and … honest.
“My life changed when I was thirteen,” he said. He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, I was no longer me, Andrew Valentine. I was Greycliffe. Men wanted to befriend me and women marry me—or climb into my bed—just because I was a duke. I could have been mad, old, crippled, vicious—it didn’t matter. As long as they could call me ‘your grace,’ they wanted a piece of me.”
He touched her then, just a light brush along her cheek. He’d lost his gloves somewhere between Hyndon House and the pond. His skin was warm and slightly rough as if he used his hands for more than reading and writing letters. “When I met you, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be me again. Not a duke. Just a man. Can you understand at all?”
She could. She wasn’t a duke, of course, but she’d spent her life wanting people to see her as herself, not as the vicar’s daughter or Ditee’s little sister.
“Y-yes.” She moistened her lips. She was suddenly breathless. “I suppose I can, y-your grace.”
His brows lowered into a scowl. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He was so close she could see a faint, thin white line at the corner of his right eye, likely a scar from some childhood mishap.
“Don’t ‘your grace’ me.”
She put her hands on his chest. “What should I call you?”
“Drew.” He bent closer so his lips were only inches from hers. “Call me Drew, Venus. Please?”
His voice sounded oddly husky. Was he going to kiss her?
She should pull away. She was only the vicar’s daughter. He was likely playing with her.
But she didn’t think so. She could be wrong, but she would trust her heart in this. Better to risk pain now than spend her life wondering what might have been.
“Drew,” she said, lifting her chin.
Chapter 8
Drew closed the small gap between them and brushed Venus’s mouth with his.
Lightning flashed through him to lodge in—
He jerked his hips back and his head up.
He was not a virgin—he’d accepted more than one invitation to dance in some high flyer’s bed—but he’d never felt this overwhelming emotion before. It was more than lust, though it was definitely that, too.
He put a good foot of space between him and Venus. He might not be a virgin, but she was.
Venus blinked at him as if she were waking from a dream. He felt rather proud of himself until she opened her mouth.
“That’s it?” She frowned.
“Of course that’s it.” He frowned back at her. “What more do you want?”
“I—” She blushed. “I don’t know. I just feel as if there is more.”
“Well, there’s not.” Damn it, the randy part of his brain was picturing in maddening detail all the other things he could do with her. It didn’t help that he’d seen her naked at this very pond—which he hoped was just as cold today. Once he deposited her safely at the vicarage, he might have to take a brisk, deflating swim.
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It was very nice.”
Splendid. Now she was criticizing his lovemaking skills. If only he could show her—
“Do you suppose we could do it again?”
His cock almost jumped out of his breeches. “No!”
God give him strength. Here he was, trying to be noble even if it killed him—which it most likely would—and she was tempting him beyond any man’s ability to resist. Not that she knew it, of course. She’d no idea the fire she played with, but he could feel it building, and it was hot enough to incinerate them both.
He should jump in the damn pond right now.
Venus’s face had gone white. She turned away, but not before he saw the glint of tears in her eyes. “You don’t have to shout.” She sniffed and then blotted her nose on her sleeve. “I’m not going to attack you or anything.”
His cock pleaded with him to encourage her assault. He reached for his handkerchief instead. “When we are married, I’m going to see you have a handkerchief for every day of the year.”
Her head whipped around, her jaw dropping. “Married?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yes, of course. What did you think I meant by kissing you?”
Venus’s tears dried like magic as anger replaced mortification. She wanted to hit something, preferably this idiotic man standing in front of her, holding out his damn handkerchief and looking at her as if she were the insane one. Now that she’d recovered from the newness of the experience, she remembered how he’d jumped away from her.
“You kiss me and find the experience so repugnant you almost run to the other si
de of the pond, and now you talk of marriage?” She grabbed her skirts so as not to grab his throat and raised her chin to look down her nose at him. “Perhaps I don’t wish to be married to a man who doesn’t enjoy kissing me.”
He shoved his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Of course you’ll marry me.”
“Of course I won’t, your grace.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? You’re acting as though you own all you survey.” Venus stepped up to him and poked him in the chest with her finger. “Well, you don’t own me, sirrah.”
“For the love of God, woman.”
His hands shot out and grabbed her, hauling her up against his body. One hand pressed her into a very large bulge below his waist and the other urged her chin higher. His mouth swooped down.
This kiss was nothing like the last. It was hot and wet, and somehow his tongue found its way past her teeth, plunging deep, sweeping through her.
Her knees gave out; if he hadn’t been holding her up, she’d have melted into a puddle at his feet. Part of her was melting.
“See?” he said, lifting his head and brushing a kiss over her cheek. “I like kissing you. Now we should—”
“Again.” She stretched to reach his mouth, running her hands through his hair and wiggling against his body—and the interesting protuberance—as she did so. “Please, Drew?”
“No.” He straightened, but he didn’t push her away. “We shouldn’t.”
She could tell it was only his brain protesting; his heart—and other organs—didn’t agree. She would persuade him. She kissed his chin.
“Stop that, Venus.”
“I don’t want to.” She nibbled on his bottom lip.
He held out for another moment; then he made a small, guttural sound, almost of pain, and opened his mouth.
She tried doing what he’d done, probing his dark heat with her tongue.
Things got somewhat frantic then. His hands moved all over her—her back, her derriere … oh, they slid up to touch the side of her breast. Her nipples hardened into tight little peaks, and she leaned back, silently inviting him to continue his explorations.
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