by Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, Miranda Neville, Carolyn Jewel
“That was not the kiss of an indifferent woman, Your Grace.” Ellen had already established that Hardcastle had not gone directly to the boat race, as several other gentlemen had. “The more compelling reason I cannot marry Hardcastle is that I am needed elsewhere. My family needs me, and His Grace simply wants me. I want him too—desperately—but one has a duty.”
“Oh, duty,” the duchess said, taking a place beside Ellen at the window. “Yes, duty is a great comfort, when one is old and sore in the joints and can’t find one’s spectacles. A fine liniment for the conscience, is duty. What of joy? What of love, Miss MacHugh? You accuse Hardcastle of caring too little for you, but do you care for duty too much?”
The duchess’s tone was nearly bitter, as if somebody might have presented her with the same choice, between her heart’s desire and inevitable obligation.
“There’s your duke now,” the duchess said, as a rider on a dark horse came into view. “I recognize his gelding. You’ll want to take tea with him in his sitting room, though a proper duchess could never endorse such impropriety. The tray will be in his room in five minutes. A woman who loved him would be there in six.”
His Grace galloped up the drive, man and horse a single flowing unit of grace and power that left Ellen’s heart pounding in rhythm with the tattoo of hoof beats.
“The other young ladies are in the conservatory resting after the day’s earlier festivities,” the duchess said. “They won’t know he’s back. Upstairs with you, and if you’ll take a word of advice, Miss MacHugh?”
Ellen was half way to the door, but paused when everything in her wanted to race up the stairs to the duke’s rooms.
“You might have given Hardcastle your heart and your intimate favors, but you must also give him your trust. That last can be harder than the other two put together, but without trust, a marriage is doomed. Now, away with you, and I’ll be sure the young ladies remain occupied until Hardcastle can join you.”
Ellen fairly flew from the parlor, though in the past two weeks, she hadn’t set foot in Hardcastle’s rooms. She knew where they were though, a mere four doors down from her own and across the corridor.
She was waiting by the hearth, the silver tea service gleaming on the sideboard, when Hardcastle came through the door, his jacket already off and his riding gloves bunched in his hand.
The door swung shut behind him. “Miss MacHugh.”
Ellen slammed into him and wrapped her arms around him. “I thought you’d gone home to Kent.”
“You are my home.”
Then Ellen found herself in the ducal bedroom, Hardcastle’s nimble fingers undoing her hooks between passionate kisses and her own efforts to divest him of his clothes.
“I missed you,” she said. “Missed you awfully.” She had to let Hardcastle go while he tugged his boots off, and she allowed him to remove his shirt, then she pushed him back onto the bed and attacked his falls.
Hardcastle’s palm cradled her cheek. “My dear, your enthusiasm flatters me no end, but there are matters we must discuss.”
“Discuss later, Hardcastle,” she said, drawing his aroused length from his clothes.
“I’ve prepared a speech for this moment, madam. Short but impressively maudlin. I thought I’d blush to deliver it, but now I find I want to give you these words.”
Ellen swung a leg over his hips and tossed her chemise onto the nearest chair. “Give me the deeds, Hardcastle. The words can wait.” Especially maudlin words that likely dripped with parting sentiments, tender regrets, and swain-ly blather. “I have words for you too, words of explanation, because I owe you that much.”
“I’ll listen. I will always listen to you, Ellen.”
So with her hands, with her kisses, with her body, Ellen told Hardcastle she loved him, and she did not want to leave him, ever. She told him how very much he meant to her, how dear her memories of him would be, how much she longed to choose pleasure over duty.
Hardcastle’s response was tenderness itself as he joined them.
“You thought I could leave you?” he whispered as he gently pushed his way inside her. “You thought I could saddle up my ducal consequence, turn my back on you, trot out smartly for Kent, without a word of farewell?”
“I can’t think,” Ellen replied, undulating into the sheer bliss of their union. “I thought I could leave you, but—”
He surged forward, obliterating words, thoughts, logic, resistance of any type. Ellen met him, measure for measure, until she realized Hardcastle was waiting for her to surrender to their joining, waiting for her to capitulate to desire.
“I love you,” she whispered, as satisfaction dragged her under. “I will always love you.”
“And I love you.”
Hardcastle’s words struck Ellen’s heart like hammer blows, bringing both pain and freedom, as a smith’s hammer strikes shackles from a pardoned convict.
The pleasure was terrible in its depth and duration, a whirling black torrent that left Ellen dizzy and panting in Hardcastle’s arms. His breath came hot against her neck, her heartbeat thundered against her ribs.
And then… quiet. A breeze stirred the curtain. Laughter drifted up from the lawn. A plain, brown wren lit on the windowsill, then darted away.
Hardcastle was a heavy comfort over Ellen, and sleep tugged at her awareness.
“Wore you out, b’gad,” he muttered, lifting up enough to let cool air wash over Ellen’s belly. “Maybe you did miss me.”
“Terribly. Horribly. Wonderfully.”
“Addled your wits too, apparently,” he said, crouching up and nuzzling at Ellen’s breasts. “I like you muddled and rosy. Addled and drowsy. You’d best get used to it.”
“Hardcastle, we must talk.”
He sighed a great, bodily testament to male patience. “If you insist, but you will cease reminding me of your plans to abandon me and Christopher, the two fellows who love you most in the world.”
“You have learned a new word,” Ellen said, running her fingers through his hair. “You’ll use it indiscriminately, like a fashionable French phrase making the rounds of the ballrooms.”
He glowered at her, than glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Ballrooms, bah. This evening will be interminable. You will save all your waltzes for me.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
He slipped from her body, kissed her forehead, then prowled across the room to the privacy screen. In broad daylight, Hardcastle was a sumptuous argument against clothing, against allowing the sun to ever drop below the horizon.
Except he was breathtaking by candlelight too.
“Shall I tend to you?” he asked, sauntering over to the bed with a damp flannel in his hand.
Ellen snatched the cloth from him and only then realized he had spent his seed without withdrawing. Her Grace’s lecture about trust popped into Ellen’s mind as she got off the bed and made use of the privacy screen. Let Hardcastle look at her in the afternoon sunlight, let him memorize the sight of her as God made her.
And Ellen would trust her duke with even more than that.
“Is the door locked?” she asked.
“Holy jiggling debutantes,” His Grace muttered, marching into the sitting room and locking that door, then returning to lock the bedroom door. “The drawbridge has been raised, the arrow slits manned. Now into bed with you.”
“With you too, sir.”
With his hair sticking up wildly, not a stitch of finery upon him, the duke of Hardcastle bowed and gestured to the rumpled bed.
“Your servant, madam.”
Ellen snatched a green paisley silk dressing gown off the bedpost and shrugged into it. The fabric was cool and redolent of Hardcastle’s scent—also roughly the dimensions of Her Grace’s back terrace. Climbing onto the bed was an undignified undertaking, and that was before Hardcastle wrestled Ellen to his side.
“You mentioned talking,” he said, kissing her shoulder. “Talking is not your greatest strength, Miss MacHugh, but I will ma
rshal my patience and endure your conversation nonetheless.”
“Much obliged, Your Grace. I have a family.”
That put an end to Hardcastle’s kissing and nuzzling and petting. “Go on.”
“A small family,” Ellen said. “My parents, my sister, and me. We’re rural gentry, and when the harvest is bad, we’re impoverished rural gentry. I’ve sent my wages home, where they’ve been put to good use.”
“One would expect no less selflessness of a future duchess.”
Ellen hit him with a pillow, then settled back against his side. “I can’t be your duchess. I must be my sister’s governess. My parents have had that job too long as it is.”
“This would be your twin sister, Emily?”
The caution in his voice cut deeply, but Ellen had decided to trust him. Not to marry him—he’d realize that soon enough—but to trust him.
“Emily, yes. My younger twin sister. I took too long to be born, and Emily wasn’t breathing when she emerged from the womb. The midwife was able to revive her, but before we were a year old, it became apparent that Emily was not entirely thriving.”
“You did not take too long to be born, and I’ll thrash anybody who says otherwise. Your sister is physically impaired?”
Impaired. Such a tactful word for a condition that was not of Emily’s making, but created endless burdens for her and the people around her.
“Physically, Emily is quite robust. Intellectually, she is… limited. She can read some, she can play the piano a very, very little. Her embroidery is excellent, but her reasoning powers are those of a permanent innocent. She needs me.”
Hardcastle flopped about, and Ellen prepared herself to be left alone in the bed. Instead, he gently shoved her to her side and wrapped himself around her.
“The rest isn’t difficult to figure out,” he said. “Emily is very pretty and perilously friendly. All the reserve and self-restraint you’ve known from childhood is foreign to her nature. She is charming, despite or perhaps because of, her lack of accomplishments.”
Hardcastle grasped the situation more quickly than most did. To appearances, Emily was simply a pretty young woman, one well blessed with health and looks. She could manage pleasantries, she could behave appropriately at church services, but then in the churchyard…
“She likes to climb trees,” Ellen said. “In broad daylight. She’ll have her bonnet off and her skirts hiked before you can stop her. She laughs too loudly, and she—”
“Kisses boys,” Hardcastle said. “Or men. You slipped, Ellen. You claimed to have fled into service because you were caught kissing a fellow, then you informed me I was the first man to kiss you. Emily was the one sharing her favors, wasn’t she?”
He’d caught Ellen in the lie that others, her own neighbors, her own pastor, hadn’t questioned. “Emily was very fond of this fellow, and I think he was honestly fond of her.”
“The road to hell is paved with fondness. I also saw that you printed your letters to her.”
Ellen could detect no tensing in Hardcastle, no withdrawing. “I lied to you, Hardcastle.”
“You gave me your first kiss, Miss MacHugh. You’ve given me all your kisses, in fact.”
His smugness was like another species of kiss, a soft, comforting warmth pressed to Ellen’s heart. Dissembling in the interests of protecting family was expected behavior from his perspective.
How like a duke. How like this duke.
“The fellow who tempted Emily so badly before has moved back to Swaddledale,” Ellen said, “and my parents need me at home. They’re aging, and my years in service have been an embarrassment to them.”
A ducal toe ran up the back of Ellen’s calf. “They consider your status in my household an embarrassment?”
Hardcastle would get along with Papa very well, were they ever to meet. “My parents are proud, Your Grace. Emily’s situation has been a trial since her birth, though they love her fiercely.”
“I’m of the belief that daughters are a trial to any parents. Sons too, most likely. So I’m to send you back to Derbyshire, allow you to ensure the domestic tranquility in Mideast Hogwash, and protect your sister from the attentions of the dashing swains?”
Ellen drove her elbow back into Hardcastle’s belly as she rearranged herself on her back. “Don’t ridicule my family, Your Grace. Emily has apologized for her behavior and she tries very hard to be good. She was passionately attracted to Mr. Trentwich though.”
“Passion must run in the family.” Hardcastle shifted over Ellen, and abruptly, she was gazing into his eyes, where not a hint of levity shone. “Do you trust me, Ellen?”
“I’ve just told you my every deepest, darkest secret Hardcastle. You see why I must return home now? You need a duchess, not a squire’s daughter with an addled sister. Let the gossips get hold of that, and the talk would never cease.”
Hardcastle kissed Ellen for a while, as if he needed time to choose his words and sort options. Ellen kissed him back because she loved him, and loved kissing him.
“If you trust me, madam, then all will come right. I promise you this. Hadn’t you better scamper along now and start primping for the evening gathering?”
Ellen would rather kiss Hardcastle some more. The entertainments would go on until all hours, and this might be the last private moment she had with him.
“I do not primp, Hardcastle. Come tomorrow morning, you’ll send me home in the ducal coach, and there’s an end to it.”
“You’ll make a very fine duchess,” he said, settling closer. “Giving orders, making pronouncements, telling a duke how matters in his own life will unfold. Your imperious demeanor makes me amorous.”
Ellen lifted her hips and met… evidence of the duke’s veracity. “Simply being around you makes me amorous. I will miss you terribly.”
That was the last thing she said before joining the duke in shared amorous activities, but that evening, as Ellen donned a lovely green ball gown lent to her by the duchess, a thought intruded:
Hardcastle had mentioned a prepared speech, a maudlin prepared speech, and he’d not delivered that speech. Whatever the sentiments—of parting, true love, regret?—they apparently no longer signified.
Now that Ellen had confided her situation to him, perhaps they never would.
*
“If you look any more fierce, even the intrepid Miss Pendleton will banish you from her dance card,” Sedgemere muttered beneath the trilling of the violins.
“If I look any less fierce,” Hardcastle replied, “she’ll knock me over the head and drag me to her room. This house party has not gone as the mamas and debutantes planned.”
“The house party has gone as Anne planned,” Sedgemere said, beaming a smile across the dance floor at his duchess. “The Dukeries Cup made for some excitement today, and now we’ll round out the gathering with a nice, boring ball. My duchess is very much in charity with her duke.”
“For God’s sake, Sedgemere. Have some dignity.” The receiving line had disbanded, and yet, not all the guests had arrived. Hardcastle’s own dignity was imperiled by that fact alone.
A footman sidled up to Sedgemere. “Late arrivals, Your Grace of Sedgemere. They asked that His Grace of Hardcastle be notified.”
Relief coursed through Hardcastle. “I’ll tend to the new arrivals. Sedgemere, keep an eye on Miss MacHugh, and do not allow Greenover within twenty paces of her.”
Sedgemere offered an ironic formal bow, and Hardcastle followed the footman up the stairs to the entrance hall.
“We’re here!” Miss Emily MacHugh said, bouncing on her toes. “You told us to come, and we’re here!”
In her pale green ball gown, she was charm personified, not an ounce of guile in her, and thus Hardcastle deviated from protocol and bowed over her hand before greeting her parents.
“I am exceedingly glad to see you,” he said, “and I know your sister will be too. The first waltz will start in a very few minutes. Do you recall what we talked about, Miss Emil
y?”
Emily was taller than Ellen, but she had Ellen’s perfect complexion, also the joie de vivre Ellen kept hidden under most circumstances.
“I recall, sir. I’ve been practicing with Papa.” She winked at Hardcastle, a slow, solemn undertaking that boded well for the rest of the evening. “Come along, Duke. I’ll show you.”
Sedgemere had positioned himself at Ellen’s elbow, and when the orchestra had brought its delicate minuet to a final cadence, the herald thumped his staff to announce the latest arrivals.
From the top of the stairs, Hardcastle watched Ellen start forward, only to be checked by Sedgemere’s hand on her arm. She was delectably attired in dark green velvet, and Hardcastle had reason to know the décolletage, though quite flattering, would reveal not a single additional freckle.
Perhaps that might change in future.
Emily tugged at his arm. “There’s Ellen! There’s my Ellen!” She waved enthusiastically, and Ellen waved back, more slowly.
Hardcastle waved at Ellen too, then Sedgemere returned the gesture, as did the Duchess of Sedgemere from her corner of the ballroom, and all around the ballroom, curious glances were exchanged.
“Shall we dance, Miss Emily?” Hardcastle asked. “I’ve been looking forward to this waltz since we parted earlier today.”
“So have I! Will Ellen dance? Is that your duke friend who looks like Wotan? I have a storybook about Wotan and Thor and their friends. They weren’t always nice. Loki was a rotter sometimes, but I like him too.”
Emily MacHugh was exhausting in her chatter, in her mental nimbleness, in her artless observations, and she was very, very dear.
“Do you hear the orchestra, Miss Emily?”
She stopped dead at the foot of the steps and cocked her head, her parents pausing three steps up.
“Yes. I can’t wait! I’ve waltzed before, at the assemblies, with the vicar or Papa. You are handsomer than they are, but I should not have said that.”
“We’ll let that be our secret,” Hardcastle said. “May I have the honor of this dance, Miss Emily?”
