Dancing in The Duke’s Arms

by Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, Miranda Neville, Carolyn Jewel

  “Was she like your sisters?”

  “Not a bit, thankfully. She was kind and not very forceful and disliked pomp.”

  “Not at all like your sisters then,” she said with an impish grin.

  “None of them has any taste for the simple life.” He smiled at the memory of his gentle, rather vague parent. “My mother used to feed me sweetmeats and tried to protect me from them.”

  “Poor child. A mere boy, and a duke too. You must have needed lots of protection from those girls.” Her teasing seemed almost affectionate, and he liked it.

  “They saw their little brother as a pestilence best crushed underfoot for the offense of causing joy to my parents. If you didn’t know, and you must have guessed from the ghastly turbans that Mary uses to disguise her gray hair, I arrived many years after they’d given up hope of an heir.”

  “I’ll refrain from comment on Lady Mary’s millinery.”

  “I seem to recall less than complimentary remarks in the past.” He could have bitten his tongue. The last thing he wanted was to start a quarrel. The disparaging, and well-deserved, criticism of Mary’s hats had come in the context of a row about Althea’s dressmakers’ bills. He didn’t want to revisit that argument now. He didn’t even know why he’d made such a fuss then. He could stand the expense, and Althea always looked charming, if a little too dashing for so young a lady.

  To his relief, she didn’t remember, or ignored the provocation. “What was your father like?”

  “He was occupied with his own affairs. I was under the care of tutors and didn’t see him much. Then he died.”

  “He sounds better than mine.”

  “He was an honorable man. There was never any reason to be sorry for me.”

  They exchanged tentative smiles. He felt like an explorer, picking his way gingerly into new territory, careful of pitfalls ahead yet eager to reach an unknown but potentially marvelous place.

  “We never talked like this when we were married,” she said.

  “We’re still married.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He wasn’t sure why he confided in her now. When they wed, he’d been aware of his great condescension in choosing a young girl of respectable family, but much lower than his rank merited. He’d expected gratitude and obedience to his will. What a fool he’d been. Instead of an adoring wife, he’d discovered a rebellious hellion; instead of a faithful helpmeet, he’d married a woman who always put her brother’s needs before those of her husband.

  “Anyway,” she said. “Thank you again for helping Nick.”

  Always Nicholas. Surely he wasn’t jealous of that wayward boy?

  Yet today he’d thought Althea’s twin wasn’t beyond hope. He was a promising oarsman, and if nothing else, Linton owed him gratitude for getting him back in a boat with a pair of oars in his hands. Even if parts of his body ached like the devil. He shifted his arms.

  “Are you in pain, Linton?”

  “Just a little sore. Rowing uses some muscles I haven’t exercised in a while.”

  “Your shoulders seem to be troubling you. Would you like me to rub them?” She looked at him with artless concern, while the prospect of her hands on him stirred a different kind of ache.

  “If you don’t mind, I believe that would help.”

  “Don’t get up.” She walked around behind him and held his upper arms in a light grasp. “I won’t do much good through your coat. You’d better take it off.”

  His heart beating a tattoo, he removed the garment with her assistance.

  “The waistcoat too.”

  He’d never undone buttons with less care. About to offer his shirt too, he decided better not. Her touch on his skin might make him do something he’d regret. She laid light fingers either side of his neck, making him shudder with anticipation.

  Then she walked away, and he almost cried out his frustration. He wanted her hands on him now.

  Roaming the room, she found an ottoman and dragged it over to the fire. “Sit here and lean on this.” She arranged his arms on the back of a small chair. “Now I can reach everywhere,” she said, her cool tone not matching the lascivious images that possessed his mind at her words.

  She began gently, working nimble fingers from his shoulders inward to his neck and over the upper part of his back. “This will have to go,” she said, and unwound his starched neckcloth.

  He closed his eyes, the better to savor the sensation of being undressed by unseen hands. Enthralled, he shivered when she unlooped the top button of his shirt and her fingers skimmed over his collarbone.

  “Are my hands too cold?”

  “No, they’re perfect,” he managed to say. The shirt too, he managed not to say. Contrary to his instincts, he ceded control to Althea.

  She started at the base of his head, using her fingertips with a light but firm pressure, progressing down the sides of his neck and pulling down his shirt to work on the upper part of his back and between his shoulder blades. She settled on a spot below the nape of his neck he hadn’t known hurt, circling her thumbs with increasing strength that pained and soothed at the same time. “Yes, there,” he rasped.

  “Be quiet and still. Don’t think.”

  Think? Was she mad? He was awash in pure sensation: her scent, her breath on his neck, a soft loose curl that brushed against him when she leaned in for a special effort.

  Then she stopped.

  “Don’t stop.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to pull down your shirt. I can’t reach your shoulders and arms, and the effect isn’t the same through cloth. Do you mind?”

  Mind? He nodded numbly, keeping his eyes open so he could see her hands reach down to unfasten the rest of the buttons. She pulled the garment down, but there wasn’t enough slack, and it got caught on the angle of his shoulders. Without a thought, he grasped the placket in each hand and ripped it all the way to his waist.

  “Linton!”

  “As you remarked lately, I have many shirts.” Only two days had passed since then, which was hard to believe, so differently did he feel about her, a hundred miles from the sour resentment with which he’d found her at The Chimneys.

  She laughed softly, drew the ruined garment down to the crook of his elbows, and began to rub his shoulders and upper arms with strong, smooth strokes. He relaxed blissfully into the motions.

  “Why did you give up rowing?” she asked.

  “After I won the Dukeries Cup, it seemed the right moment to stop. I came of age that year and into the full responsibilities of the dukedom. Being a good oarsman requires a lot of time. I fit bouts of boxing and fencing in between my duties in Parliament and seeing to the estates.”

  “You are always busy.” His aching shoulders melted beneath her ministering touch.

  Too busy for a man with a young bride, he realized. If he’d given her more attention when they returned to London after the honeymoon, made time to introduce her to the delights and temptations of the capital, maybe she’d have approached the delights with moderation and resisted some of the more pernicious temptations. That wasn’t how things worked in the ton, where men of his stature went about their business without their wives hanging on their sleeves.

  “Did you feel I neglected you?”

  Her fingers stilled. “No,” she said cheerfully. “I had Nick for company.”

  Bloody Nick. Always bloody Nick.

  Though she continued to work her magic on his arms and shoulders, his state of euphoria had abated a measure. Not, however, his inconvenient state of desire. His mind filled with earthy images involving himself, his wife, and somewhere soft and horizontal. Damn it, he didn’t want to want her like that. It upset the life he’d resigned himself to.

  “Why don’t you divorce me?” she asked. He jerked his head around to look at her. “Why, Linton? I’m a dreadful inconvenience to you.”

  True, though at this moment not in the way she meant. He returned to his leaning position, and she continued her strokes.
<
br />   “Divorce is difficult and requires an act of Parliament.”

  “With your influence, any obstacle would be a bagatelle.” She snapped her fingers, and he missed her touch.

  “There’d be a lot of talk.” That was the excuse he always gave his sisters when they urged him to dispose of his erring wife and find a lady to produce an heir.

  “So it’s the scandal?”

  “Partly, yes. Such an action would be ugly.”

  “Partly?”

  “I haven’t sought a divorce because of what it would do to you. In my position, I’d weather the scandal, but you would be ruined. You’d never be received anywhere again.” He was embarrassed to admit it; it sounded sentimental and weak. Certainly Mary would say Althea deserved it.

  “Why would you care about that?”

  “Because you are my wife. I married you and vowed to care for you. Nothing changes that, even if we never speak to one another again.”

  “Oh,” she breathed and said nothing more.

  Perhaps, he thought wryly, she’d taken him at his word and silence would reign forever. She did, however, continue to rub his arms and shoulders with a firm touch that seemed to penetrate deep into his muscles, until he felt boneless and more at peace in his body than he had in years.

  There was one more thing that would make it perfect. Did he dare? His spongy brain sought the words to proposition his wife. Was he mad?

  “Is that enough?” she asked in a tone that gave him no reason to believe her mind was moving in the same direction.

  “Maybe a minute more. Just there, yes. How did you learn to do this?”

  “Life at home was very dull, so I used to read a lot, anything I could find in the Maxfield library. There were very few novels but quite a few travelers’ accounts. I don’t know why, because my father never went anywhere. I read about what is called massage in French in an account of the Orient. I used to do it for Nick, and he always liked it.”

  Of course he did, lucky devil. Linton’s sisters had never possessed such a splendid skill.

  “And now I fear I must stop, for my hands are tired.”

  “And I no longer feel as though I’d rowed ten miles.” He stood and stretched. “Thank you, Althea.”

  She tilted her head sideways with a twisted half-smile. “It was nothing. Do you want me to help you into your coat?”

  “Given the state of my shirt, I won’t bother.”

  She gave a laugh that was half gasp. “Do you realize the servants will think we’ve been fighting even worse than usual?”

  Flinging his coat over one shoulder, he touched her hand. “That is further from the truth than at any time in five years.”

  “I know, Linton, and I am glad.” But she backed away from him, the lovely line of her profile partly hidden behind the curls that had come lose during her massage exertions.

  He pinched his lips together and hesitated, trying to read her thoughts. “I think I’ll go up now. May I escort you, or do you have things to do here?”

  “No. Let’s go to bed.”

  A triumphant fanfare rang in his ears until he considered her tone of voice. She couldn’t possibly mean it in the way it sounded. There was nothing remotely erotic or even flirtatious in the way she looked at him, waiting for him at the door.

  He accepted a candle from the footman on duty in the hall and lit the way to their rooms, stopping at the entrance to hers from the passage. Not from his room. “Thank you,” he said again.

  “Thank you, Linton. For Nick.”

  “You’ve already thanked me.”

  “I suppose we can’t stand here all night thanking one another.” She raised herself on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Good night.”

  In his own chamber, he crept over to the connecting door, hearing the murmur of her conversation with her maid, envisioning the removal of her gown, the fall of her petticoats, the slide of silk stockings down her limbs. His hand reached for the doorknob, and he snatched it back.

  Tomorrow he’d go back to the lake with Nicholas and make him work until he won the Dukeries Cup. Then he’d find the young man something useful to do, preferably far away. And then… and then he didn’t know what he’d do.

  Chapter Six

  ‡

  The seat in the brick alcove was Althea’s favorite fair-weather retreat when she wanted to read, or merely think about things. She had much to think about, but half an hour failed to make any sense of last night, or of anything that had happened since Linton came to The Chimneys. His behavior confounded her. He’d changed so much, or perhaps he was the same and she had never known him.

  She’d offered to massage his shoulders because she wanted to touch him. She admitted that now. There hadn’t been the least need to half undress him in the drawing room, for heaven’s sake. It made her blush to recall her removal of his cravat and the bold way she’d undone his buttons. When he tore apart his shirt, she was ready to go up in flames.

  She’d invited him to bed. Let’s go to bed. The moment the unconsidered words dropped from her lips, she knew what she’d implied, though it wasn’t what she’d meant. Except that when he failed to respond to the ambiguous suggestion in the most obvious way, she’d felt disappointment. As she undressed, she thought about him coming to her room, caressing her, bringing her to the joy that had eluded her during their married life.

  He could do it, she was sure. He knew things about pleasing a woman that he hadn’t practiced on her.

  He kept them for his mistress, she supposed. She hadn’t heard a word about the house in Molyneux Street in years, but she had no reason to believe that Linton had dismissed Mrs. Veney. Or hadn’t found a replacement for her. Althea might behave like a wanton and live like a nun; her husband was doubtless the opposite, a monk in public and a satyr behind the doors of his mistress’s house.

  That was going too far. It was absurd to imagine her dignified husband leaping on a woman and ravishing her.

  On the other hand, he had ripped his shirt.

  She’d thought she was now indifferent to Linton’s infidelity, but the idea of him ripping off his clothes and touching his mistress made her burn with the same anger and hurt she’d suffered when she discovered he still kept a mistress when he married her. She could never forgive him that.

  And yet her treacherous body yearned for him.

  Well, it could yearn for someone else, for the nameless, faceless lover who often occupied her waking dreams in the lonely hours of the night. Lowering her eyelids, she pictured herself in a bed, no, in a fairy bower of flowers in a summer’s wood, moss soft beneath her back. He came to her quietly to waken her with a kiss and whisper poetic words of love while he caressed her. Then in her mind she heard a sharp ripping sound. In her daydream, the unknown hero had turned into her husband, the Duke of Linton. Without his shirt.

  No no no no. That was not what she intended. Ridiculous too, since Linton was the last person who would ever speak in poetry. But her imagination refused to be governed, and no matter how she tried, her husband seemed determined to invade her mind. Very well, then. It wasn’t real. She wanted a dream kiss, so Linton would have to do. Dreaming about kissing her estranged husband might be pathetic, but it was hardly sinful. No one had to know, least of all Linton himself. It would be her secret.

  She removed her bonnet to enjoy the sun on her face. Her pale skin would redden and freckle if she wasn’t careful, but five minutes wouldn’t hurt. Closing her eyes again, she relaxed and didn’t feel the hard bricks against her back. She lay in a pair of strong arms—she now knew those muscles very well. In seconds he would kiss her. She felt his breath close to her mouth, uncannily real. “Kiss me,” she murmured.

  The brush of those lips on hers was too real to be a dream.

  Her eyes shot open to find the odious face of Nigel Speck almost mashed into hers.

  With a shriek, she pushed him back and leaped to her feet. “How dare you,” she shouted. “You vile man.”

  “My dear
duchess. Allie. You asked me to kiss you.”

  “Not you, you brute.” She scampered backward to get away from even the possibility that he would touch her again.

  “Dear me. I wonder whom then? Were you expecting a caller while your brother and husband are playing with boats?”

  “Go away.”

  “I wouldn’t like to leave a lady unkissed when she so clearly wants it. Come, Allie, let us finish what we started at Vauxhall.”

  “I didn’t start anything. I’d sooner be kissed by a snake.”

  “That’s not the message I receive from you. You invited me to your house.”

  “Never, and well you know it. I let you stay only because of Nick.” She shuddered with loathing. “I don’t care how much money Nick owes you. I want you to leave at once, this morning. If you don’t go, I shall tell my husband.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You attacked me.”

  “That is not at all my recollection of events. We went to Vauxhall in the same party, and you invited me to come away from the boxes and walk with you. We left the crowds behind, and you led me into a deserted walk. You’re a very beautiful woman, and I’m not a man to refuse such an invitation. We kissed, many times, but you started it. I am far too modest a man to initiate advances to a duchess. You let me touch you through your gown, and you pressed yourself against my hardness. I could hardly believe my luck, and I was right to doubt. Tease that you are, as soon as I accepted the goods so brazenly offered, you thrust me aside with a mocking laugh and left me wanting.”

  Her mouth fell open in the course of this outrageous recitation. “That is not what happened. You’re a liar as well as a lecher.”

  “Who do you think people will believe if our stories were told side by side? Who would your husband believe?”

  “He will believe the truth,” she said with a good deal more confidence than she felt.

  “Truth is what people believe, Allie. You’ve hardly gained the reputation of a saint. The purest treasure mortal times afford, is spotless reputation; that away, men are but gilded loam or painted clay. Shakespeare said that, clever fellow. And what goes for men goes even more for ladies. Your clay, Duchess, is painted in very bright colors.”