Christmas in The Duke's Arms

by Grace Burrowes

“Oh, the advantages resulting from regular association with criminals.”

  Stoneleigh winked and departed, leaving a resounding quiet in his wake. A man of the law learned to make these exits, to slip away before the client’s self-pity became hysteria or resentment turned into violence.

  Though how interesting, that an arsonist was recommended by the very traits that described a successful man of business: competence, discretion, and reasonable rates.

  *

  “I have been haunted by a kiss.”

  Franklin regarded his mistress with an unblinking bunny-eyed stare. He’d been a breeding buck and was a worthy repository of concerns relating to matters of the heart.

  “I never knew. I simply and completely never knew. And now—” Now Penelope wanted to know a great deal more than Levi had shown her with a few kisses. He’d become a different man, a different animal too, in the course of that kiss. One whose greatest strength lay not in his legal mind, but in the sheer power and appeal of his male body.

  “He was aroused, ready for the breeding pen. I marvel that a single kiss—a kiss with me—could affect him so.” Penelope glanced out the library window, a location she’d chosen because it afforded a view of the drive. Franklin was keeping watch too, having sprawled along the cold panes of glass at the window’s base.

  “I am hatching a plot, Franklin.”

  Himself thumped a back leg, which had Socrates, the marmalade library cat, squinting sagaciously from a reading chair. They had a thoroughly negotiated truce, and posturing, like that thump from Franklin or the occasional hiss and growl from Socrates, were required protocol.

  “My plan is flawed by a lack of adequate intelligence with which to execute it. Sixtus was forever gathering intelligence on his investments.”

  A sizable bay riding horse turned up the drive at a businesslike trot. That would be Thomas, a fellow of sober mien and reliable work ethic—like his rider. As Penelope slipped on her cape and made her way to the stables, she wondered if long ago, before becoming uninterested in breeding matters, Thomas had dreamed of passionate horsy-kisses, and if the fillies had speculated about offering him more than kisses for their own pleasure.

  Levi was handing the reins off to a groom when Penelope gained the stable yard.

  “Madam, good day. You need not have braved the cold to greet me.” He took her hands in his—drat their gloves. Levi’s perusal was no different from every other perusal he’d given her, though he did not kiss her cheek. “You’re looking well.”

  She was looking tired, from having spent the entire night in the unaccustomed endeavor of scheming.

  “The weather is moderate today, Levi, and I haven’t ventured out since yesterday. I hope I’m not keeping you from other clients?”

  For the first time, she wondered how many of those other clients were also widows. Spinsters, distant female relations, lonely women…

  He brushed his lips over her cheek, bringing her a whiff of lemons and cinnamon. “You are not a client, Penelope. Sixtus was my client, you are…not a client.”

  And not a friend? Maybe that was a good thing. She took his proffered arm and steered him toward the foaling barn.

  “We’re not to pay a call on the leporines?”

  “We checked on them yesterday, and Franklin sends his regards. He’s taking tea in the library with Socrates.” Where Penelope ought to be with her guest—and where the ghost of Sixtus lingered a little too closely for what Penelope had planned.

  “One wonders what a buck rabbit and a tom-cat have to discuss,” Levi mused, “beside the obvious.”

  Whatever he alluded to, it wasn’t obvious to—oh.

  “Do men often discuss that sort of thing when private with each other?”

  “Young men discuss almost no other topic, except their wagers, their horses, or their bodily miseries. Why are we wandering about the stable yard, Penelope? We ought by rights to be having a cup with Socrates and Franklin while we assassinate the character of any bachelors or widowers who escaped scrutiny yesterday.”

  “Odette foaled out last week, a fine filly.”

  He gave her a look, not a man-of-business look, perhaps a man-who-means-business look.

  “My congratulations to the new mother.”

  Drat and blast. How was a woman to advance her scheme upon a fellow when he could detect her intentions in less than a moment?

  “We brought Agnes in to keep them company. Agnes isn’t due until March, though Mr. Davey suspects twins because she’s carrying so low.”

  Penelope was babbling. Fortunately, they’d arrived at the foaling stalls, where Odette—nigh a ton of equine motherhood if she weighed an ounce—was standing over the foal who slept on the thick bed of straw. Agnes, a mare of equally imposing dimensions, dozed against the near side of her own oversize loose box providing the horsy equivalent of moral support.

  “Are they sisters?” Levi asked. “They’d make a nice matched team if one’s tastes ran to chestnuts.”

  Pen took off her glove and offered Odette a scratch under the mare’s hairy chin. “Cousins. Squire Hungerford would know their genealogies back to the Flood, did he own them.”

  “Hungerford, whom you will not marry.”

  Levi’s voice had come from directly behind her, and Penelope could feel him, a solid wall of Levi Sparrow in riding attire, his coat open, his hair windblown. She wanted to run her fingers through that hair, but would have to face him to do it. Instead, she stroked her hand over Odette’s great, velvety roman nose.

  “I certainly hope I’m not destined to become Mrs. Hungerford. I’ve set the squire on Diana’s trail. They’d suit admirably. Do you ever consider remarrying, Levi?”

  He reached around her, offering the mare a sniff of his fingers, which were bare now. “Not often. Marriage, particularly remarriage, is a complicated undertaking.”

  While kissing was the simplest thing in the world. Penelope turned, seized the lapels of Levi’s jacket, and went up on her toes to mash her mouth against his. She missed, hitting his jaw instead of his lips.

  “Penelope Carring—”

  She found his mouth, and he sighed against her kiss. He went still, not resisting, exactly. The blasted man was thinking about whether to kiss her, which would not do at all. Taking a leaf from his album, Penelope wedged her leg between his, snugly, unapologetically.

  Let him think about that.

  Except—Penelope’s initiative did not go as planned. Levi’s arms came around her just as snugly, and his fingers threaded through her hair. His tongue dallied with the corners of her lips, and Penelope could no longer manage her own balance.

  “I’ve got you,” Levi growled. In contrast to his voice, his kiss gentled, becoming lazy and seductive.

  Great balls of bunny fur, what the man could do with his mouth. He wheedled, he flirted, he dared, and offered worlds of sensation and emotion on a lemon- and cinnamon-flavored platter. Pen treated herself to the cool, silky pleasure of his hair beneath her fingers, heard the mare whuffling softly—encouragingly?—behind them.

  “No thinking, Penelope. Only kissing.”

  Only kissing? She was bent back, completely dependent on him to keep her on her feet, and against her thigh, even through her cape and his breeches, a solid tumescence arose. When Levi shifted to use his mouth at the spot where her shoulder joined her neck, Penelope understood why a lady’s knees might go weak.

  “I could take you here, Penelope. Right up against this stall. Is that what you want?”

  His voice flayed her remaining wits, until the sense of his words sank in. “It might be.”

  Gone in a blink. The heat, the strength, the passion of him, all whisked away to leave a dark-haired, considering stranger two feet away.

  “I suppose that wasn’t the right thing to say?” she asked.

  Irritation flicked over his features, and beneath that, something else—bewilderment? Men of business likely developed a fine sense of how to mask their emotions.

 
; “What are you about, Penelope? And no stalling while you organize your testimony. We’ll sort this out here and now.”

  “We’ll sort it out in the feed room.” She took him by the hand, which even given their two shared kisses was a bold gesture. He came along, though. That was heartening.

  They reached the small room in the center of the barn where grain, spare headstalls, lead ropes, and grooming supplies were kept. Foaling supplies were here too, though when a mare had decided it was time to give birth, one mostly watched and prayed.

  Levi towed her over to a bench and sat her down. When he’d closed the door behind them and flicked the lock closed, he turned to her, hands on hips.

  “What are you about, madam, kissing me without warning where anybody might come along?”

  “Do you interrogate witnesses like this, Levi? Behind closed doors, hands on hips, glowering like Headmaster with a naughty first former? Will I get a birching if you don’t like my answers?”

  That reply startled him. His reaction was limited to a momentary lift of his eyebrow and an instant of speculation in his blue eyes.

  “We will not discuss birchings if you expect me to remain coherent. I kissed you yesterday to make a point, and did so more or less at your invitation. Today you’re the one kissing me, and I don’t recall issuing any invitations.”

  He wasn’t as composed as he’d like her to believe. He kept glancing around, head up, like a horse in a new pasture. The air was thick with the scents of grain, hay and livestock, though Levi looked as if he expected the footman to intrude with the tea service at any moment.

  “I am a widow, Levi. Why shouldn’t I engage in a dalliance?” She heard the hounds of the shire baying in the distant reaches of her imagination and prayed her insouciant tone was convincing.

  “You may engage in any dalliance you please, Penelope, but why me? Why now?”

  Because with you it could be more than a dalliance. Much, much more.

  In defense of her wits, she studied his boots. “My marriage did not leave me with a great deal of experience. I would address that ignorance before I choose another mate.”

  Her marriage had left her with no experience whatsoever. No need to share that detail when Levi was regarding her as if she’d sprouted bunny ears.

  “All you seek is a dalliance?”

  Like any good solicitor, he was trying to pen her in with yes or no answers. Like anybody who’d raised rabbits, Penelope knew to dodge off to the side.

  “I enjoy kissing you, Levi. I have little practice with such matters, though, and there’s so much more—”

  He was beside her in two long strides, settling on the narrow bench uninvited. He also took Penelope’s hand in his, his grip warm and not the least tentative.

  “You must be careful, dear lady. You can’t accost anybody who catches your fancy. You’re a wealthy widow, as far as they know. Men will try to take advantage.”

  “You will not take advantage of me.” Not if she delivered herself to him naked and wrapped in a Turkey carpet.

  “A husband who esteemed you would not take advantage. You’re hell-bent on marriage, and this, this flight of fancy, is some form of bridal nerves. I’m sure of it.”

  A low shot, considering he wasn’t entirely wrong. “You’ve been a bride, Levi, that such an experience is within your ken?”

  “Two of my sisters were brides.” He kissed her knuckles. “I was a groom.”

  Not only did Penelope raise angora rabbits, she was also the mistress of a large working estate. Taking a hint from the mares who had refined hard-to-get to a rare art, she rose and headed for the door. She would have swished her tail if she’d had one, and tossed her mane.

  “If you cannot accommodate me, Levi, then I’ll simply invite Hungerford around on a weekday afternoon—”

  Levi’s hand slammed flat against the door directly in her line of vision, his breath fanned across the back of her neck. A buck bunny headed for the breeding pen would not have moved more quickly than Sir Leviticus Sparrow had crossed the feed room.

  “You will do no such thing. If you must have your infernal holiday dalliance, Penelope Carrington, you will have it with me.”

  Chapter Four

  ‡

  Any man who’d served on the Peninsula, any young man who’d completed his education in old London Towne, learned that some women gloried in the pleasures of the flesh. Such dear creatures gave up any pretense of propriety—Levi needed to believe this had been a choice on their parts—in exchange for a trade they found to their liking, or at least coin they found to their liking.

  In a separate species entirely were proper women, ladies who guarded their virtue unto death, ladies sheltered from all that was sordid and earthly. One courted and married such women.

  The theory of the two different types of women, with their mutually exclusive spheres of operation, had held up well throughout Levi’s marriage. Restrained passion, even thinly veiled tolerance for procreative activities, was to be expected in a wife.

  A loving husband did not complain about such restraint. He respected it, kissed his wife’s cheek, and repaired to his own bedroom after easing his needs. He engaged in frequent bouts of self-gratification, and he pursued his work with an intensity that made sleep a necessity at the end of each day.

  Alas, the theory that separated women into naughty and nice took a sound beating when, two years after Ann’s death, Levi had been called to London on a case, and he’d found himself keeping discreet company with the widowed cousin of a former neighbor.

  She’d yodeled her passion to the rafters and clutched Levi to her breast like a female sailor on shore leave after two years at sea. She’d expected him to stay the entire night in her bed, availing herself of his charms as much as three times between midnight and dawn. She had, in short, opened his eyes.

  When her immediate successor—a vicar’s widow, no less—had behaved similarly, Levi’s theory of differing varieties of women had been bludgeoned into oblivion.

  He had accepted the intriguing notion that decent women could be passionate.

  The corollary under consideration now was that Penelope Carrington was such a decent woman, and she wanted to be passionate with him.

  “Levi, where are we going?”

  Sweet Saints. He was holding hands with her before horses, rabbits, and any other curious onlookers. He untangled their fingers, wrapped her hand over his forearm, and continued their progress toward the house.

  “We are going to bed, Penelope, because that seems to be what you want. A gentleman doesn’t argue with a lady.”

  Not when she was Penelope Carrington offering a dalliance to Leviticus Sparrow. He would deal with the rest of it—the courting, the threat of litigation from that woman, the sorting and cataloguing and pondering, later.

  Beside him, Penelope kept pace. Her staff would be discreet, of course. Levi would be discreet. A man trained in the law might wonder if one could be discreetly passionate. Levi, however, didn’t give a flying, fur-lined damn.

  He held the door for her. “Say something, Penelope. Make polite protestations, pretend to misunderstand, or indicate your consent.”

  As she walked past him, her hand brushed delicately over his falls. An accident, to all appearances, the sort of touch that happened and was assiduously ignored.

  “My cloak, if you please?” She turned her back to him, the gesture both imperious and submissive—or maybe Levi was simply that ready for the breeding pen. He peeled the garment away from her and hung it on a hook. Before he could shrug out of his coat, Penelope had come around behind him to ease it from his shoulders.

  She let his riding coat slide down his arms, then folded it, and while he watched, took a whiff of the sleeve.

  “Cinnamon and lemons.”

  His corollary underwent a refinement: Certain decent women used propriety like an incendiary device, such that a man became so bloody aroused he was at risk for taking her in the foyer of her own domicile.
r />   Levi slapped his gloves onto the sideboard. “Upstairs, Penelope.”

  He’d lecture her later about a staff that left the front door unattended, and lecture himself about ordering a woman into bed.

  Though she was already on the presentation staircase, five steps ahead of him, and probably swaying her backside about like that purposely. He followed her, eyes on the prize, and wondered if this was what the buck rabbits felt—stupid, happy, aroused, and determined.

  Ambling the barns with old Sixtus, Levi had seen a few of those occasions. Seen the frantic gleam in dark rabbit eyes, seen the young fellows spend before they even reached their lady’s side. The memory gave him some purchase against his disintegrating composure.

  Penelope paused outside her private sitting room. “Shall I ring for a tray, Levi?” Her voice held a gratifying hint of a tremor. “Perhaps later.” He reached past her and opened the door. “After you?”

  She squared her shoulders and sashayed past him, leaving a hint of roses in her wake. He followed her into the cheery haven of femininity, where he’d taken a hundred cups of tea, and locked the door behind them.

  Penelope kept walking, marching toward her private apartments.

  “Penelope?”

  She stopped, turned, and gave him a look more impatient than seductive. “The bedroom is this way, Levi.”

  “I’m aware of that, but you seem to have lost track of one pertinent detail regarding the present situation.” His voice had no tremor. His self-restraint, however, was quivering at the breaking point. “Come here, Penelope.”

  Being female, she held her ground, looking him over again. Levi stayed where he was and kept quiet until she stepped closer, then closer still.

  “What am I forgetting, Levi?”

  Without touching her anywhere else, he grazed his lips across hers, gently, slowly. A great sigh went out of her. He repeated the caress of his mouth over hers as her arms settled about his waist.

  “I forget everything when you do that, Levi. Your kisses—”

  On the third pass, he did not retreat. He sipped at her mouth, tasting peppermint and eagerness—also a little uncertainty. “You forget, my dear, that—”