If the Duke Demands

by Anna Harrington

  She shook her head at his naïveté. “Your father was a duke. Did he outrank your mother?”

  He paused, the negative answer on the tip of his tongue. Then he admitted the truth with a lift of his brow. “Touché.”

  When he reached to unbutton his waistcoat, she sat up. The cashmere throw slipped to the floor at her feet. “Do you need Barlow to undress you? Should I wait in another room—”

  “No.” He held her gaze, then his shoulders slumped as the weight of the title, the fortune, and the family’s reputation slid away and left him nothing more than a man beneath her soft eyes, if only for the night. At that moment, he knew exactly what she meant earlier at the lecture about wanting to be with only the man and not the duke. He answered gently, “I want you right here.”

  Slowly, she sat back and watched as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, her eyes following each movement of his fingers. His heart raced beneath her close scrutiny as his blood began to heat. Who knew simply letting a woman watch him undress could be as much fun as undressing her? But that was Miranda’s doing, all right. The woman had inverted his world.

  “I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” he admitted quietly as he slipped off the waistcoat.

  “I didn’t expect to be here, either. But I couldn’t settle down and sleep. I kept thinking about you and what I said to you tonight at the lecture—I regret it.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for.” He shouldn’t have surprised her at the lecture like that. But he couldn’t help himself. As long as there was a possibility that she would say yes to being with him tonight, he’d had to try.

  And thankfully, he’d succeeded.

  “I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep,” she continued, “unless I spoke to you tonight to tell you that.”

  He fought down the smile of pleasure that threatened at his lips. “Have you been waiting here long?” He pulled loose the linen shirt tucked into his trousers. “Looking like that.”

  His gaze roamed over her, enjoying the deliciously comfortable and oddly arousing sight of her. He should have been angry to find her here wearing her nightgown. Had she been wearing a regular muslin dress, he could have managed some kind of excuse for her presence if they were found together. But in that—scandalous. Yet he grinned, finding a new appreciation for her sense of impropriety.

  “Two hours,” she answered.

  Guilt tightened his gut as he pulled the shirt off over his head. “If I had known, I would have returned sooner.” Hell, he never would have left.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, her eyes shamelessly drinking in his bare chest and the flat ridges of his stomach. “It gave me time to read.” She pushed the glasses into place on her nose in order to see him better.

  He laughed at her eagerness, his chest warming with affection.

  He approached her then, carefully removed her spectacles and set them on the fireplace mantel, placed both hands on the chair arms on either side of her, and leaned in for a soft kiss. Her lips parted beneath his with a welcoming sigh.

  Home, he thought as contentment fell through him. She felt like home…

  Pulling away, he sat on the floor at her feet and tugged off his boots, then leaned back against the chair, his shoulder resting against her leg, and closed his eyes. “That’s better,” he murmured when she reached down to brush her fingers through the hair at his temple.

  “Which,” she whispered when he rested his head back against the chair cushion, “being undressed or me combing your hair?”

  “Yes.” He turned his head and placed a kiss against her palm.

  She laughed lightly, and the comfort of the soft sound soothed him. How had he managed these past two years without her? And dear God, what would he do without her once they returned to Islingham? Already the pain of separation ached in his bones. And his heart.

  Leaning forward, she reached down to place her hands on his shoulders and massaged at the knots in his muscles. “Did you have a good time at Boodle’s?”

  “No.” He hung his head forward to give her access to his shoulders, enjoying having her hands on him in even so innocent a touch. Her kneading fingers felt wonderful, and he knew he could easily grow used to such spoiling. “But Quinton and Robert had a marvelous time.” They still were, in fact. Quinn hadn’t lied. The way those two were carrying on tonight, they would be there until dawn. Good.

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” She pressed her thumbs along the vertebrae in his neck and released the tension he carried there. “You’re so different from them, you always have been.” She lowered her head to bring her lips close to his ear, and a hot shiver of longing curled down his spine. “You were always the serious one, even as a boy. Even when I first met you, when you must have been fourteen or fifteen, you seemed so much older.” Her hands stilled on his back as she asked, “Why are you so different from your brothers?”

  “Because someone had to keep those two from killing themselves.” He reached for her hand, drew it down over his shoulder, and kissed her fingertips.

  When she didn’t laugh at his teasing, he tilted his head back to look up at her. Concern darkened her pretty face, and it pained him that she should be so worried about him. He didn’t dare let himself consider that her feelings for him might go beyond friendship. He couldn’t. Not without hating himself for never being able to return those affections.

  “Because I was the firstborn,” he admitted, saying aloud to her what he’d never uttered to anyone else in his life, not even to his parents. Yet confiding in Miranda like this was easy, and with each word of his confession, his shoulders lightened. “Because I knew that I was the heir, that someday I would be responsible for the title, for Chestnut Hill and the estate, for my family’s well-being.” He reflected soberly, “If a man cares about his family and his reputation, the responsibility of all that changes him.”

  He knew plenty of peers who cared nothing for their families nor the estates they owned. They were spoiled and arrogant men who spent their days wasting time on one frivolous pursuit after another and their nights whoring, drinking, and gambling away not only their fortunes but the inheritance of their progeny. He would never allow himself to be one of them.

  “Everything he does, every decision he makes, it all has ramifications not just for himself but for those he loves. And the weight of that…” He shook his head, unable to articulate the heaviness that constantly plagued him and always would, the knot in his chest that never seemed to ease, the responsibility he felt not just for his family but every one of the villagers and tenant farmers on Trent land. Oddly enough, except when he was with Miranda. “It wears.”

  She placed a soft kiss at his temple, and he closed his eyes, drinking in the sympathy and solace she offered.

  “I understand,” she whispered. He was certain she did. Miranda had a way of understanding him better than anyone else. But when she slipped her arms around his neck to pull herself closer, guilt surged through him that even now she worried about him slipping away and leaving her. “But something tells me it’s more than that which troubles you.” She brushed her fingertips through his hair at his temple. “What is it? What’s making you so unhappy?”

  He sucked in a deep breath, suddenly shaken that she was able to see into his heart so easily. “I made a promise to my father when he was awarded the dukedom that I would do everything in my power to make myself worthy of the Carlisle legacy.”

  “You have,” she told him softly. “Your father was always so proud of you. Oh, he loved Robert and Quinn, and Josie was always precious to him, but you, Sebastian…” She trailed her fingertips along the side of his face. “When he looked at you, his eyes would shine with pride, and his chest would swell. If he could see you now, he would be so proud of the respect you’ve brought to your family, all the good you’ve done for the estate tenants and the villagers, the responsibilities you’re taking on in Parliament for England.”

  Instead of comforting him, her words only stirred a wretchedness in
side him, one he’d been fighting to quell since his father died and his life ceased being his own. “You don’t understand. He expected me to be selfless in every decision, to put the dukedom before everything else, including my own wants.”

  “He didn’t mean before your happiness.” She shook her head. “He certainly never thought that holding you to that promise would make you unhappy or—” Her voice broke, and she finished softly, “Marry a woman you don’t love.”

  He took her hand and brought it down to his chest, pressing it over his heart, where he was certain she could feel its beat beneath her fingertips. And where he hoped she would ease his anguish as he admitted bitterly, “Perhaps not…but he certainly wanted respectability. At all costs.”

  Her fingers tensed in his, and he felt her draw a sharp breath.

  “Right after he was awarded the dukedom, Mother fell ill, do you remember?” he asked gently.

  “Yes.” She squeezed his hand in empathy, and a rush of comfort seeped through him from that small gesture. But not nearly enough to compensate for the anguish of the memories he was sharing with her.

  “When Father came to tell me, he found me with a woman. One he did not approve of, and one he thought was not worthy of our family.”

  “You were planning on marrying her?”

  “No,” he told her as gently as possible, knowing how much this might damn him in her eyes, “because she was already married.”

  Sebastian held his breath and waited for her response, but thankfully, she said nothing, although he deserved any disparaging remark she might have leveled on him. But of course, Miranda would never have done that. She was always kind, especially when he didn’t deserve it.

  He let out his breath in a long sigh. “Mother recovered, and Father and I had a long talk about my responsibility to the family and our legacy, to the title and its responsibilities. That was when I made my promise to him, but even then I didn’t realize the full meaning behind it, or the effect it would come to have on my life. I was a Carlisle, after all. I wasn’t going to listen to reason, not when it concerned the women with whom I was intimate. So I kept doing what I did before, only I was much more careful to hide my tracks.” He folded his hand around hers and held tight as he murmured, “So careful, in fact, that the night my father fell from his horse and hit his head, no one could find me. I was hidden away for the evening, this time with an actress I’d met at Covent Garden. By the time I arrived back here at Park Place, Father was dead, and I never had the chance to say good-bye.”

  “Oh, Sebastian,” she breathed, so grief-stricken for him that she couldn’t find her voice. She wrapped both of her arms tightly around him and rested her cheek against his. He felt the wet of her tears on his cheek, but instead of increasing the guilt and anguish inside him, her tears were an absolution for the raw wounds he’d carried inside him for the past two years.

  “His death changed everything.” He paused, then repeated gravely, “Everything.”

  Her fingers stiffened in his, and he knew she understood his underlying meaning as she slowly sat back and swiped at her eyes with her free hand. “That’s why you think you have to marry someone like Lady Jane,” she breathed, so softly he could barely hear her, but each word ripped into his heart as painfully as if she’d sunk her fingernails into his chest. “Because of what happened that night.”

  “I owe it to my father to find a good duchess,” he said quietly.

  “You owe it to yourself to be happy, no matter whom you marry.” She inhaled a deep, ragged breath and offered, as if trying to convince both of them, “Your father would want that.”

  “I’ll be happy enough.” His happiness was not a consideration. Robert could court and marry Diana Morgan simply because he fancied her, and Quinn could spend his life as a confirmed bachelor. But not him. Even before he decided to find a wife this season, he knew the choice in brides would not be his own. Happiness, and certainly not love, would never enter into his decision.

  “You’ve settled on Jane Sheridan, then.” Her whisper was not a question.

  When she tried to slip her hand from his, his fingers tightened around hers, refusing to let her go. For tonight, at least, she was his. “No. I’ve decided not to pursue her.”

  Her lips parted with surprise. “You’ve given up looking for a wife?” Her voice held a timbre of hope, and that pierced him with more shame than anything she’d said before.

  “No.” Then, because he wanted no secrets between them, owing her at least that much respect, he added, “I still need to find a wife by season’s end.”

  And then Miranda would be lost to him forever. He wouldn’t make her his mistress, and once he took his vows, he would never go outside his marriage. He wanted the same kind of marriage his parents had, one of loyalty and fidelity, trust and comfort, and if he didn’t love his wife when he married her, well, that would come in time. But he would have the marriage that the title needed.

  So why did he feel as if he were about to lose everything?

  When he saw the crestfallen expression flit across her face, he told her, “Enough—I don’t want to talk about marriage anymore.” He squeezed her hand. “Not tonight.”

  Gratefully, a soft happiness returned to her eyes as she gazed down at him. “What do you want to talk about, then?”

  “Well, if we have to talk,” he teased seductively as he turned toward her, “then I’d much rather talk about you.”

  “I’m not very interesting.” Then she tried to chase away that self-deprecation by wryly commenting, “Perhaps we should discuss salmon fishing instead.”

  With a laugh, grateful for her teasing that chased away the somber turn that their conversation had taken, he rose up on his knees to bring his face even with hers and brushed his knuckles against her cheek.

  Her eyes closed at the soft caress, as if it was too much to bear, and his heart panged. She was unbelievably sensitive to his touch…And those lips, full and pink, so sweet— When he took her chin and tilted her face up to his, they parted with a breathless sigh so inviting that he couldn’t resist the urge to kiss her. Just a gentle touch of lips to lips, a caress so soft as to be barely a caress at all, but the innocence of it stole his breath away.

  “Miranda,” he admitted, his voice a hoarse rasp, “you are the most interesting woman I know.”

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed dubiously up at him as she bit her lip, somehow shy and wanton at the same time. A delectable mix of contradiction, just like the woman behind the stare.

  “For instance.” He ran his fingers over the edge of her night rail’s neckline. “You wore this to seduce a man.”

  “I didn’t wear this to seduce you, silly.” A smile played at her lips at the absurdity of that. “This is what I wear to sleep in every night, and I needed to see you so badly that I didn’t stop to change.” She shrugged a shoulder. “And anyway, I assumed that eventually I would end up in bed, so what was the point in changing only to have to change back again?”

  He fought down a smile. Only Miranda could make that logic make sense. “Well, if you’re tired, I won’t stop you from taking one of the guestrooms,” he answered, keeping his face carefully stoic as he tried to suss out her intentions for the rest of the night, “or going home in a carriage to your own bed.”

  A flash of grim knowing crossed her face, as if she’d expected that response. Closing her eyes, she nodded. “After everything you shared tonight, I understand if you—”

  He leaned in to kiss her. “But not before I ravish you.” Unadulterated heat poured through his voice despite his earnestness as he added, “Several times, in fact.”

  Her eyes darted up to his in a mix of wonder, excitement, and quick arousal. He heard the soft catch of her breath in surprise. “You still…want me?”

  The vulnerability underlying her whisper nearly broke his heart. Want her? Good Lord, she had no idea what he felt for her. It went far beyond simple want to something he could barely fathom. Something that
terrified him with its intensity.

  “Yes,” he admitted, cupping her face against his palm and brushing his lips across her cheek. “Very much. And I hate to correct you,” he admitted as he shifted away just far enough to rake a lecherous gaze across her, stirring up a blush in his wake, “but I find you surprisingly seductive in this night rail.” He trailed his finger down from her neck, between her breasts and down to her lower belly, making her squirm. “Because I know how beautiful you are beneath, inside and out.”

  Her eyes glistened in the firelight with telltale tears, and the sight clenched at his chest. “So I can stay?”

  “If you’d like.”

  She smiled. “I’d like it very much.”

  So would he. But they had one more piece of unfinished business to settle tonight.

  Ignoring the hot stab of jealousy in his gut when he thought of Robert and the feelings she held for his brother, he drew a deep breath and said quietly, “There’s something I need to know.” He lifted her hand to his lips to suck at her fingertips. She tasted like vanilla icing, sweet and addictive. “You love Robert, but you came to me. Why?”

  “I don’t love Robert,” she confessed softly, in little more than a breath. “I thought I did, but it wasn’t love. I know now that it was only infatuation and habit.”

  “And me?” When she hesitated in her answer, he touched the tip of his tongue to her palm, and she trembled.

  Her answer was so brutally honest when it came that it sliced through him, leaving him raw and wounded. “I can’t help myself.”

  “Neither can I,” he whispered, then reached up to unfasten her hair.

  * * *

  Miranda’s pulse fluttered at the heated look he gave her as he untied the ribbon and slowly unbraided her hair. She closed her eyes to revel in the wonderfully decadent sensation of his fingers sifting through her strands, loosing the waves until they lay in a thick curtain around her shoulders.

  When he reached for the hem of her night rail and peeled it slowly up her body to reveal her to the firelight, she raised her arms above her head to help him remove it. She sat still and let him look his fill of her, bathed in the soft light. A proper society lady would have been embarrassed, she supposed, to display herself so audaciously. But she wasn’t a society lady. She was simply Miranda. And she would never be embarrassed in front of him for this.