“You have to answer the letters,” Jane said. “It is not polite to receive so many and not respond.”
“I hate writing letters.”
“We all have to do things we do not like.”
“Next you will order me to eat up my mutton or sew a sampler.”
“If you had written over the years, even if you couldn’t visit them, they would not have been strangers to you.”
“You’re a tyrant, Jane Grey.” He shifted a little to put his arms around her waist.
“Why did you not visit your family more often? If you had the time and means to wander all over Europe, you could have gone to Ireland occasionally.”
“Because I did not like being beaten by my stepfather.”
“As a child, yes, but later? Was he as big as a titan?”
“Your rules may state that a gentleman likes to talk about himself, but I do not. Most likely it’s because I’m not a gentleman. Let’s talk about something interesting, like that reward you promised me.” He drew her down for a kiss. She didn’t resist but the caress was perfunctory and over quickly. Her mind was elsewhere.
“What happened to your family, Jane?”
“They died. I have no one. And that,” she said, proving that she wasn’t the only person in the room who avoided certain subjects, “is why you must answer your sisters’ letters.”
“I’m not entirely lacking in a sense of family. I’ve had Blackett invite some of his cousins to the castle for a couple of weeks. I have a few guests coming and I thought I might as well begin a reconciliation with the Fortescue connections. Do you approve?”
“It’s not for me to approve or not. They will be useful associations for your sisters. And you have invited some of your own friends?”
Julian considered and rejected explaining the reason for the gathering. He had no real intentions toward Miss Cazalet but, in his experience, mentioning another woman led to tedious arguments and a high likelihood of going to bed unsatisfied. “A few. I hope my neighbors the Windermeres will be back from France in time. You’ll like Denford. The castle is splendid and the grounds and gardens possess all sorts of fascinating byways. Once we’ve disposed of the guests we’ll have a glorious summer. We’ll send the girls off for long riding lessons while we explore together.”
He tried for another, better kiss but still she held him off. “You will write to your sisters?” She was like a terrier when she got hold of a notion.
“One letter for all of them.”
“One each.”
“I will do it tomorrow. Anything you want from me now?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll be able to think better lying down.”
Thank goodness she made no objection to a rearrangement of their positions, so finally he had her as he had frequently fantasized in this room, sprawled against the cushions, relaxed and ready for him. He stood back for a while admiring the view, but there was something missing. “Do you by any chance possess a hooped petticoat?”
“No. Why?”
“I’ve always thought it would be amusing to explore a lady’s panniers.” He knelt and slowly raised her skirts. “I’ll just have to manage with what is offered. This is very exciting, rather like opening a portfolio of drawings for the first time, savoring the anticipation of the treasures within.”
“Should I be flattered by the comparison?”
“Most certainly. What have we here?” White stockings covered her pretty calves and were secured by garters decorated with embroidered rosebuds. He stroked the smooth limbs—“So far your undergarments are living up to expectations”—and nibbled at the dimples in her knees, drawing a choked laugh and a slight but distinct upward tilt of her pelvis.
Pushing the skirts up further, he discovered creamy thighs and lushly curved hips. They weren’t the longest, slenderest legs he had ever seen but they were shapely and, as he had already learned, strong and muscled for a woman, suitable for carrying brave, indomitable Jane through the challenges of her life. He lingered on the thighs, devouring them with eyes and tongue, enjoying and resisting the wild gyrations of her hips. Her heat and scent flooded his senses. Desire gripped him and his cock tightened to the point of pain. No one had ever affected him as profoundly as Jane, no one.
She was clawing at his head, her throat emitting incoherent but demanding sounds as he kissed and caressed her, never touching the place where he wanted to be and she wanted him to be. He breathed into her sex, provoking a gasped “Julian!”
He loved to hear his name on her lips.
“Yes?” he said. “Have you thought about what you want from me?”
“Mon Dieu!” she cried. “You know it!”
He’d made love to Jane a few times now. Each time was better than the last and each time he wanted more. As he came to know the responses of her body and the accompanying sounds, he had become aware that she was holding back in a way he could not define. There was something about her attentions that was too practiced, too selfless, too consciously concerned with his pleasure and not enough with her own. Any man would think him insane to complain about such a woman and it wasn’t a complaint. Merely that he wished for . . . more.
“Is this what you want? You can have it if you ask nicely.” He parted her sex with his thumbs and gave her a long, languorous lick, planning to pleasure her until she lost her mind and was scrubbed clean of her secrets and mysteries and all thoughts of anything except him and the delight he brought her, and the joy they shared.
He’d barely started when she stiffened and placed a staying hand on his head. “Not that. I want you inside me. Now.”
He wasn’t a man to refuse an offer of a warm berth from a woman he adored. He also feared that there was nothing at all he would refuse her. If she knew he would be at her mercy.
Chapter 14
“It’s grander than Dublin Castle,” Maria said.
They were all awestruck by the first glimpse of Denford Castle from the carriage, provoking an unseemly scramble to sit near the window. Jane restored order and allowed them turns in order of age, except for Oliver Bream, who’d seen it before. She was impatient herself. “We’ll have all summer to explore, and judging by the size of the place we’ll need it.”
“Is it the biggest castle in the world?” Laura asked.
“I bet it isn’t bigger than Windsor Castle,” Fenella said. “Julian isn’t as important as the king.”
“I think he is.”
“They could put you in the Tower of London for saying that. It’s treason.”
“They wouldn’t!” Laura didn’t sound entirely certain.
“They would. And chop off your head too!”
“Ow! Fenella pinched me, Miss Grey.”
Jane closed her eyes and drove her nails into her palms. All day cooped up in a small box with the three girls had made her pity everyone who had ever, by choice or duress, become a governess. Mon Dieu, no wonder women preferred marriage or polite prostitution. At least husbands and lovers left the house for a good part of the day, and often the night too. She never thought to regret the day she’d left Henri.
She didn’t, of course. She was merely irked and disappointed that Denford wasn’t there. He was supposed to have made the journey to Sussex with them. Then, at the last minute, some piece of business had come up and he’d remained in London. Instead of the duke, who would not have put up with the bickering for five minutes, they’d been offered the company of Oliver Bream, who’d dozed most of the way from London. He still claimed to be in love with her, but he didn’t lose sleep over his infatuation.
To add to the misery in the overcrowded carriage, Oliver’s luggage wouldn’t all fit onto the outside, so a large portfolio, several rolls of canvas, an easel, and an untidy basket of artist’s paraphernalia were crammed in with them. Jane didn’t mind his company for the summer at Denford; she did object to traveling with a paintbrush in her ear.
“Change places with me, Maria. It’s my turn.�
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“But I want to see the portcullis.”
Letting the words wash over her, Jane contemplated a night in a lonely bed. It was dreadful how much she already missed Denford when she’d awoken in his arms only that morning.
When the carriage passed through an ancient arch, her heart plummeted to her boots. A vast courtyard flanked by a pair of soaring gothic wings with crenellated battlements and, at the far end, a huge circular tower, bore witness to Denford’s origin as a château fort. She’d never felt inferior to the duke in a worldly sense. She was a Falleron, even if the family had lost its former glory. But compared to the massive power of Denford Castle, her father’s pretty Louis XIV–era château was a frivolous thing. Nothing before had driven home the social chasm that now lay between them, no matter what she had once been.
Denford was a duke; she was nothing. Their only future was for her to live as his mistress until he became tired of her, and she retained enough pride to reject that fate. She’d promised herself the summer with him, but that was all.
She went through the motions of reminding the Osbournes to behave like correct young ladies as they left the carriage. The act of performing her duty restored her equanimity. She had always managed to enjoy the good moments, and truly there was nothing so terrible about this one. She’d survived much worse than a visit to an extraordinary castle and estate, even one marred by the absence of its owner.
They were welcomed by the house steward, who led them along ancient stone passages lined with tapestries, old weapons, and suits of armor. Immediately Jane could see that this was a very different household than Fortescue House. If the cleanliness and good repair of all wasn’t enough evidence of a large staff, the presence of numerous liveried footmen told its tale. The steward informed them that this part of the castle had been the living quarters of the family for the past century or so. The substantial children’s quarters occupied the far end of the wing, on the same floor as the other bedchambers. Jane wasn’t placed in the duchess’s rooms. In the haphazard London household, no one seemed to think much of her occupying the best bedchamber. The castle staff, she felt certain, would be scandalized. She was allotted a pleasant, perfectly comfortable room the other side of the schoolroom from the children’s bedrooms.
Three days later the girls were blissfully happy with a stable full of ponies and kittens; Jane was not. With not a word from Denford, she began to fear he wouldn’t come down from London before the arrival of his guests. The Osbournes’ riding lessons gave her time to cultivate the acquaintance of Francis Hillthorpe, a retired land steward who now kept the muniment room in order.
“Are there many Fortescues who are not related to the Dukes of Denford?” she asked her informant. “Or perhaps only distantly?”
Mr. Hillthorpe’s wrinkled face brightened. “There are a number of branches descended from Richard Le Fort who saved William the Conqueror’s life at the Battle of Hastings by protecting him with his shield. That’s what the name Fort Escu means—strong shield. The ducal line broke off from the Devon family in the sixteenth century and acquired Denford Castle by marriage to the Lestrange heiress. The castle itself goes back to the early Norman period.”
Giving up hope, for the present, of disentangling the various Fortescues, she listened to Hillthorpe’s description of the castle’s history and found it engaging enough that she accepted his invitation to visit the oldest part of the castle, the round tower known as Maiden’s Keep.
“What is that part of the castle used for?” she asked idly as they crossed the courtyard. She’d noticed a good deal of coming and going at the opposite wing, but so far she hadn’t seen much beyond the family quarters and gardens.
“The south wing contains the state rooms, which are to be opened for the coming entertainment. The duke has ordered the refurbishing of the Long Gallery, which runs almost the length of the building on the second floor. I’ve never seen the chamber in use, a shame since the strapwork ceiling is very fine.”
“May we look at it now?”
“His Grace has declared it out of bounds for all but the workmen. I believe he is planning a grand unveiling during the party.”
“Perhaps he intends to hang his collection of pictures there.”
“Very possible. I would like to see the family portraits gathered in one place but I’m afraid His Grace was quite dismissive when I showed him the castle collection.” Mr. Hillthorpe shook his head sadly. “He seems more concerned with artistic quality than family history.”
They reached the base of the steep hill from which the tower soared over the rest of the castle. “Are you sure you can manage the path?” Jane asked with concern.
“I may pant a little but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to show the place to a lady as appreciative as yourself. Not everyone cares for the Fortescues as I do.”
“Why is it called the Maiden’s Keep?”
“That is a story best told from the summit.”
Within the massive stone walls, a staircase wound to a flat roof enclosed by a series of battlements pierced with arrow loops. In the center, a plinth bore a small statue of a woman in medieval dress while a stone bench faced an opening five or six feet wide. Jane looked over the edge. “I didn’t expect such a long drop to the river.” She stepped back smartly from a barrier that was only waist height. “Has anyone ever fallen from here?”
“I said I’d tell you the origin of the name. The legend goes that Sieur Adam Lestrange, another of King William’s knights, fell in love with the daughter of a Saxon chief. When she refused to give herself to one of her country’s conquerors, he seized her and imprisoned her in a room at the top of the tower.”
“A true gentleman, yes?”
“Those were different times, I suppose. Certainly no Fortescue would ever behave so dishonorably.”
“Oh, certainly not,” Jane said, refraining from giving her opinion of the universal virtue of Fortescue men. “What happened to her?”
“Rather than submit to her enemy, she threw herself off this roof.”
Jane peered over the edge again and shuddered. There was no chance of surviving such a fall. Far below, the river wended its benign way through sunlit meadows where cattle grazed and men in rustic smocks worked at haymaking. But the existence of the great castle was evidence of war, and the plunder and killing and rape that went with it. These battlements must have seen plenty of death apart from that of one unfortunate girl.
“I cannot imagine having the courage to climb up there and jump. If it were me I would have surrendered to the Norman lord.”
“I am afraid he did not offer marriage. He had a French wife already. The maiden would have been dishonored had she yielded.”
“So she had to die?”
“The greater sin was his, of course. I cannot but admire a lady who chose death over disgrace. Are you well, Miss Grey?”
Jane leaned her back against a solid battlement, the gray-green stone worn smooth by centuries of exposure to the elements. “Just a little queasy. I’m not fond of heights.” It wasn’t the height that sickened her, but the reminder that most of the world would condemn her for the choice she made in surrendering her virtue to Mathieu Picard.
Two things kept Julian in London. While the bulk of the Falleron collection was safely stowed in the south wing at Denford, a number of the canvases had needed to be restretched. The craftsman who’d done his framing for years expressed some concerns about the condition of a Claude Lorrain. He also wished to consult the duke about the frame of the Raphael, which had been damaged during the journey. Alarmed about any danger to the masterpiece, Julian decided he must stay in town and oversee the work himself.
Just as important was the arrival of the report he had commissioned from Bow Street on Jane Grey.
If that was indeed her name, a fact that appeared increasingly unlikely.
He’d stayed to interview the Bow Street Runner in person, and the man had described the course of his investigation in impressi
ve detail. As Julian sealed the letters he had finally got around to writing to his sisters, whom he was surprised to find he missed, his eyes drifted to the more concise written report, reduced to a few important points.
Before her arrival in London, there was no evidence that Jane Grey had ever existed. It seemed highly likely that she had come from overseas but not, however, from the island of Saint Lucia.
There had never been an English official named Johnson there and almost every story she’d told about the place was false. Since he already knew there were no ostriches, this was no more than Julian had expected. How disappointing to learn nothing of any substance, not her real name, or where she came from.
France was his best guess. If she was an escaped aristocrat—quite likely given her manners and speech—why had she not joined émigré circles in London? If a woman of the people, why had she come to England in the middle of a war? For a moment he toyed with the notion that she was a spy, and dismissed it out of hand. There was nothing of interest to Napoleon Bonaparte at Fortescue House.
While almost certain that Jane posed no danger to the future of England, his own future was a different matter. Gripped by fear that she would fade away as mysteriously as she’d appeared, he took up his pen and wrote another letter. However much he missed his sisters, it was nothing to how much he ached to lay eyes on their governess.
“We have letters!” Laura cried.
“Our brother has written to each of us. Mine is the longest.” This was from Maria.
“That’s wonderful,” Jane said, and meant it. Finally her nagging had worn him down. “What does he have to say? Does he say when he expects to join us?”
“I’ll read mine,” Maria said. “Look! It is addressed to Miss Osbourne and sealed with the Denford crest.
“ ‘Dear sister, I trust you are enjoying Sussex. I have decided that you are old enough to dine with my guests at Denford Castle. I commend you to the care of your excellent governess for the improvement of your conversation and toilette. If you follow Miss Grey’s example you will not disgrace yourself.’ ” She hugged the single sheet to her bosom.
The Duke of Dark Desires Page 18
