Duchess Decadence

by Wendy Lacapra

  Well, she’d wanted him to have rakish talents, hadn’t she?

  There should be prohibitions against getting what one wanted. All Wyn’s kisses should be for her. If given the chance, she would do those kisses right. She would gather them up like rose petals and make them flutter all over her body.

  Gently, carefully she placed a hand over his heart. He was hot as a blacksmith’s workshop. Pish—he required her warmth. Ah, but if he only would insist on such a requirement. Every. Single. Night.

  She sighed, suspecting her very proper governess—who’d been chosen by Wynchester’s mother per the betrothal agreements—would believe Wynchester had somehow defiled her this night. But if she’d been defiled, she’d been deliciously defiled. And as far as she was concerned, he could rub his hot member against any part of her he wished, so long as he answered her please.

  Curling closer, she smiled against his skin.

  Something about that smile—its width, its depth, and its ease—caused the last of her carefully applied enamel to cleave. Cracks slithered down her body, allowing her inner light to glow.

  Wyn was exquisite. Hers to have and to hold. To protect and to honor.

  A distant bell rang deep within, as if calling to a wanderer off course, but Wyn stirred before the message took hold. He grunted and he grasped her hand. His eyes remained closed as he rolled onto his side, keeping her arm pressed to his chest, forcing her to embrace him from behind.

  “I said sleep,” he murmured.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  She fit her knees to his and rested her head on the pillow, breathing in his scent. Then, she did as she was told.

  Chapter Nine

  Early morning light roused Wynchester from the deepest sleep he’d had in, well, he could not answer. It had been a good sleep, anyway. Gradually, he became aware of unfamiliar surroundings—papered pink-and-gold walls, a dark wood bed with floral carvings, and the scents of talc and rose and woman.

  His woman.

  She slept facing him, one arm curled up under her chin. She was lovely in slumber. Serene and innocent…Although he could scarcely describe her as innocent after what they’d done last night.

  He rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his arm and admiring her slightly parted lips—the same lips that had cried Wyn in the heat of passion. Soon, she’d open those eyes and their ethereal blue depth would snag and reel him in, just as they always had.

  Always before, he’d stubbornly resisted the pull, flailing and sputtering with the same excuses: sentiment would be his undoing, she was far too caustic to be cherished, and she was far too prone to excess to be trusted.

  He couldn’t speak to the dangers of sentiment—not any longer. After riding into a riot, attempting to carry her off, and rutting against her body like a randy school boy, there was no question that horse had left the stall.

  As for caustic…she was caustic at times, and—he thought of his own biting set-downs—so was he. She was also prone to excess, in sentiment, in gambling, in risk and now, he knew, in passion. Last night he’d decided he was man enough to meet insatiable, but could he satisfy her in every way?

  The thought had once kept him rigid with fear. Now, he’d like to try.

  He had known her from childhood, but he was no longer certain he knew her as well as he should. Why the excess? Why the sharp wit? Why the penchant to run when she clearly had the strength to stay and fight?

  Who was she, this duchess of his?

  And, for that matter, who was he?

  He had never fit anywhere, except within his study, devising political tactics, analyzing and addressing the needs of his various properties. Impossible to believe he could come together in a perfect fit with the beautiful creature that was his duchess.

  Even when they were young, he’d seen the expectation in her eyes—large eyes that would read him in silence and then blossom with compassion or encouragement, depending on what she thought she had seen. She’d wanted his all—his secrets, his pain, his passion, his hope. So he’d stepped behind a stiff wall of formality.

  What if he gave her all and she rejected him? She’d left him once, and he’d survived only because he had not let her all the way inside. What if he cracked open his heart, she peered within, and at the end of the summer she still went away?

  Her eyes fluttered open and, after a moment of sleepy confusion, she blushed and smiled.

  …And he knew it was far too late to be asking questions. His heart had already cracked. There was nothing left to do but face his fate.

  “Good morning, Your Grace,” he said.

  “Good morning, Your Grace,” she replied.

  He ran his finger down her inner arm, following the path with his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Tracing your vein.”

  “Hint—it leads to my heart.”

  Ignoring her jest, he looked up into her eyes. “After our first meeting, as my parents and I left Hartcombe, my mother said to my father ‘she has the bluest of blue blood.’”

  “Blue,” Thea repeated, unimpressed. “Well, my family traced back to the Doomsday Book, and my fingertips were occasionally blue.”

  There was something in her voice he had never heard. Something that made him want to gather her in his arms.

  “What are you saying?”

  “The manor was drafty because we could not replace broken glass.” Her voice begged for neither pity nor understanding. “There were nights we had nothing to fuel a fire.”

  He frowned. “You were not poor.”

  “We were indebted.” She wet her lips. “That is, before your father bought me.”

  He recalled that first visit to Hartcombe, remembering nothing amiss. Although, now he considered, something had been odd.

  “Your servants were thin.”

  Thea groaned. “Yes. The few we retained. They were too old and feeble to seek other positions.”

  He frowned. Hartcombe had been large. Far too large for the skeleton staff that had been there when he visited. “Your father said the rest of the staff was in London.”

  She held his gaze with steady eyes. “The house in London had been let to deep-pocketed cousins.”

  “Was it very bad at Hartcombe?”

  She made a low sound in her throat. “One Sunday, my father, his mother, and I were returning from church and a bailiff dragged my father right out of our gig. This scar,” she pointed to a small scar beneath her elbow, “is the result of my attempt to intercede.”

  “An outrage.”

  “An outrage, yes, but true.” She sighed. “My father could not be taken to prison because of his station, but he owed everyone in the county. After the magistrate refused to take my father’s complaint against the Bailiff, my grandmother sold her last diamond necklace. When he made the arrangement with your father, his creditors were no longer observing rules.”

  “My father,” he said, for the first time realizing the truth, “bought your father’s debts in exchange for your land.”

  Thea nodded. “My grandfather—my mother’s father—was stricken as trustee of the property willed to me by my mother, and your father put in his place.”

  He touched her scar. “You never told me things were difficult.”

  “You never asked.”

  He blinked. No, he had not. “When we visited that first time, how much did you know?”

  “I knew it was my life or that of my father and my grandmother.”

  “In other words,” he brushed aside her hair with gentle fingers, “you knew you had no choice.”

  “Yes,” she acknowledged.

  “Bought” was not so poor a description after all.

  “Was there anything you liked about me?” he asked, immediately feeling a cad.

  She gazed at him for a long moment and then mischievously smirked. “Yes.”

  “What was that?”

  “Your spaniel was fat.”

  He lowered his lids to veil
his gaze. “I see.” He deserved that, fishing for some unfathomable sign of affection.

  “Wyn?”

  He looked up.

  “You were,” she swallowed, “you are…quite easy to admire.”

  “Ah yes,” he said ruefully, “my attention to duty.”

  “No, Wyn.” She reached out and smoothed his cheek. “…not that kind of admire.”

  “Oh.” A warming sensation not at all unpleasant traveled up his spine.

  “Was there anything about me you liked?” she asked shyly.

  “I liked—I continue to like—your eyes.”

  She smiled. “I like your hands.”

  He lifted one up and examined it front and back. “I see nothing remarkable about them.”

  She leaned forward and kissed his knuckles. “Perhaps not, but there’s unexpected talent in those fingers.”

  He pressed his fingers against her lips and she caught the largest between her teeth in a light nip. His cock responded. How many nights had he wasted, when he could have had this sense of closeness? This easy conversation?

  “I was not your first,” she said.

  “No.” So much for easy conversation.

  “Who was she, Wyn?”

  He gave her a speaking look. “You ask too many questions.”

  “And you,” she said softly, “not enough.”

  He sighed. “My first was the widow of a tenant.”

  “A widow!” She frowned. “Not Widow Norton.”

  “No.” He scowled. “Do you think I’d dangle after Eustace’s nurse?”

  “I should hope not,” Thea said with a giggle. “Who then?”

  He cleared his throat. “The woman re-married and left Wynterhill before you came.”

  “Well, that much is a relief. You must have been much younger than she.”

  “Fourteen, I think. Maybe fifteen. She had a penchant for, as she put it, wee little masters.”

  Thea coughed. “That is terrible!”

  “At the time, I did not think so.” He traced her lips with his thumb. “And—before you ask—there has been no one since we wed.”

  Her blue eyes turned liquid and churning. “But you never…I mean…our couplings were…”

  “Chaste?” he supplied. “Yes.” He snorted. “I apologize for that. I had been warned a wife could become insatiable if introduced to true passion. My widow seemed proof enough.”

  For a moment she looked horrified, and then she broke into a grin. “Insatiable, you say?”

  He closed one eye. “Has it happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with mock seriousness. “I have a strange heat between my legs.”

  He groaned low in his throat. “Any other symptoms?”

  She moved her hand to her breasts. “Stiff nipples.”

  He rolled until he had her pinned. “I bet you are wet and ready, too.”

  “If I asked you to touch me and find out,” she said with husky speculation, “would you think me wanton?”

  “Oh,” he kissed her sweet little mouth, “I’d think you very wanton, minx. And if I told you,” he kissed her again, “I wanted you to touch me, would you think me wanton?”

  Her alabaster cheeks turned a delightful shade of pink. “No.” Shy desire softened her eyes. “I’d think myself advantageously paired.”

  His already-hard cock swelled—no prime male could have resisted such a look—but his heart swelled, too. The joint sensation of fullness was almost too painful to bear.

  He wanted to take, and he wanted to keep and protect. He wanted to tell her that, from the moment he’d taken her little fingers into the large and awkward hands she professed to like, he’d loved her with a wild, untamable love. He wanted to tell her she’d never be cold or hungry or alone as long as he lived. But—as happened when his depth of sentiment out-sized his command of language—the words balled up in his throat and stuck.

  So instead, he used those awkward fingers to make her cry his name, stroking her skin and capturing her sighs inside the hungriest of kisses.

  …

  By mid-day next, Thea and Wynchester, along with a select group of servants, were prepared to leave. From Polly, Thea learned Mr. Harrison, along with Sir Bronward and Lord Randolph, had arrived early that morning and persuaded Eustace to take up temporary residence with Mr. Harrison. Not that Thea had wasted much concern on her brother-in-law. Lavinia trusted Mr. Harrison, therefore she trusted Mr. Harrison. Besides, her thoughts were consumed by her husband and her heart, lighter than it had been in years.

  In front of servants, Wynchester treated her with the same civility he always had, but his gaze had lost its icy distance and, on the occasions those onyx eyes met hers, they twinkled with warmth born of a shared secret.

  Not that she expected two acts of passion to transform him into an expressive man, but some verbal sign of affection, especially once the cavernous, German-made landau had left the busy London streets, would have been welcome. She supposed the fact he rode inside the carriage at all could be construed as a sign of his regard, but if so, he’d left a poor clue. He sat opposite her and Polly, eyes closed and head resting against plush velvet. The only evidence he could be thinking of her was the merest hint of a satisfied smile.

  Polly folded and refolded her hands in her lap, occasionally casting Wynchester a furtive glance. Not until they were alone in the retiring room of the first coaching inn did she take Thea into her confidence.

  “Pardon my asking,” Polly said, “but is something wrong with the duke?”

  Thea leaned toward a looking glass and inspected her appearance. “Why would you ask?”

  Reflected in the glass, Polly wrinkled her nose. “His smile is unnatural.”

  “Do you think so?” Thea tucked a wayward curl back into her coiffure. “I think it is very fine. Intriguing, even.”

  Polly looked doubtful. “Intriguing he is, but not when he smiles like that.”

  Thea smirked, delightfully entertained. “Why?”

  Polly whispered, “It looks like he’s thinking sinning thoughts.”

  “Polly,” Thea turned toward her maid with a tsk. “You know the good duke is all that is proper.”

  “I do,” Polly responded sincerely.

  “I wager,” she said, making a final adjustment to her long, leather gloves, “he would only misbehave if specifically requested.” And her heart fluttered in anticipation of a time when her proper duke would deign to misbehave again.

  When they rejoined their party, Thea became acquainted with the reason behind Wyn’s secret smile—a fine looking curricle. While they were still in the city, he’d arranged its purchase from a fellow peer. Wynterhill was situated just beyond what a well-cared for team of horses could travel in a day, but the smartly appointed, two-wheeled carriage and a matched pair delivered to the coaching inn the day prior meant the two of them could reach the estate by nightfall.

  He’d arranged shelter for the servants, and they could follow on the morrow.

  Thea joined him as the horses were put to.

  “Wynchester,” Thea said under breath, “are you certain? Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “Nonsense,” he patted the horse. “I’m well acquainted with these fellows. I had the pleasure of driving the pair at a house party over Christmas.”

  His smile was boyish. More genuine than she’d ever seen. How could she not respond to such a sight? “Very well.”

  He handed her up into the seat and took a place at her side. She remained reflectively quiet as he guided the pair onto the road.

  “You see?” he said, “Not just well-matched, but docile and agreeable.” He gave her a quick glance. “I prefer more spirit, but a curricle depends on a steady pair.” Although he gave no outward sign, she could have sworn he was laughing at her expense.

  Resisting the urge to hold to the seat, she folded her hands in her lap. “I did not know you liked to drive.”

  He gave her another brief, sideways glance. “I’ve had lit
tle to keep me at home these past years.”

  She frowned and he nudged her with his shoulder.

  “The past is past. This is not a day for scowls,” he said brightly. “Do you remember the rise a few miles east of Wynterhill? What do you think of stopping for a nuncheon?”

  She glanced up doubtfully at the heavy clouds, but did not wish to spoil his pleasure. “Are you to serve?”

  His smile deepened. “It would be my honor.”

  His gaze returned to the road and the horses. Begrudgingly, Thea admitted to herself that they were a beautifully matched pair—calm and responsive to his command. As they traveled along the road at a brisk but cautious pace, he pointed out the picturesque—clustering of flowers here, a grouping of houses there, and, once, an ancient tree, whose tangled branches stretched up and out in every direction, giving it the appearance of a wise, old sentinel.

  His efforts at conversation, at first, held an awkward first-time-at-an-assembly sort of air, but gradually, Thea’s unease lessened. Had he truly taken Sophia to heart? Was he attempting to court her with conversation? Within two hours they settled into a rare, companionable rhythm and she had her answer—yes, bless him. And she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him all over his face.

  In her mind’s eye, she was drawing a perfect image of doing just that when a sharp bark of a small dog startled the horses, and they jerked left. With a steady voice and a skillful handling of the ribbons, Wynchester brought them back under control. In a low voice he said, “Walk on. There boys, stay steady. Walk on.”

  The knots holding Thea’s breath in her lungs started to loosen. Just then a second dog appeared through the grasses, barking even louder and baring his teeth.

  The horses sped. Thea lost her hat.

  Wynchester did his best, but the horses would not be calmed. Their off-kilter pace strained the pole. Thea held to the seat with white-knuckle hands, but the wood squealed loudly—horribly—and then she was falling.

  She balled as she fell, landed on her thigh with a jarring thud, and skid across the road.

  Damp, rough gravel tore at her arms, but her sleeves and kid gloves protected her face. She thought she heard Wynchester shout her name, but she could be sure of nothing but the pain in her shoulder and the sound of her rushing breath.