Had the duke...? Had he...No. The very idea was too horrifying to contemplate. All the same, it was imbedded in her head, as if that phantom archer had attached it to his arrow before firing it into her brain.
She gazed up at the ornate tester over the bed that was twice the width of the one she’d slept in the night before. No, this wasn’t her bed and it certainly wasn’t her bedchamber. This was a bed fit for an earl—or even a duke. Possibly a prince or king, but—how in heaven’s name did she end up in Bradbury’s bed?
And wearing nothing but her shift. Where were the rest of her clothes? She slowly rolled to her side to peer at the floor. She didn’t see any clothes, but maybe they were draped over a chair. All she had to do was lift her head to look, but her head suddenly felt as if it weighed more than the rest of her, as if the contents of her stomach had rushed up to it and filled all the nooks and crannies around her brain and that arrow still stuck there with that horrifying thought impaled on the end of it and—and—she reached under the bed. Please be on this side, please be on this side. Then it occurred to her that maybe her clothes were on the other side of the bed, but she couldn’t look now as her fingers brushed cold porcelain and—there it all went—whatever didn’t end up in her long, hanging strands of hair—all over the valance sheet.
I’m dying. All her strength was splattered on the floor, the valance sheet, and her hair. She feared if she tried to breathe, it would only expel any strength remaining. Whereas her heart hammered and her head spun in Bradbury’s presence, now her heart spun and her head hammered in his bed.
In his bed!
The fiend—the devil—had to have placed her here. Why, and where was he now? The strange man who’d come in here—probably the duke’s valet—had said something about an early walk or ride or something. He put her here, and then left her here.
But did something happen in between? She thought she might have removed her clothes herself, but maybe she dreamed it—which in itself was odd, because usually she dreamed hot, steamy dreams of the duke removing her clothes. Now, apparently, he’d actually done it—yet why did the reality seem like a cold nightmare?
Because he wasn’t here. Because the reality ended very much the same as the dream usually did. Just when he removed all of her clothes, she had to wake up. Did that mean he’d undressed her only moments ago?
Maybe this was a nightmare. Maybe the events of last night—from the moment she stole downstairs, to stubbing her toe on the suit of armor; her conversation with Bradbury about her writing—he knew!—and an utter blank afterward—were all part of that nightmare. Maybe if she tried to go back to sleep, she’d wake up for real in her own bed.
He knew all her secrets now. He knew she wrote horrid gothic fairy tales, knew she wrote that book about a duke inspired by none other than he, so he knew, like cousin Harry, that she wasn’t a real lady who engaged in real ladylike pursuits, ergo that made her no better than a lightskirt and he sought to take immediate advantage. That was how men’s minds worked.
“Merciful heavens! He ravished you!” This from a woman. Cecily opened her eyes to see Lady Cordelia standing in the open doorway in a white morning gown and matching lace cap. In Cecily’s befuddled condition, she might have mistaken the matron for an angel come to whisk her soul to heaven, had she not seen and heard what took place right before she stubbed her toe on that suit of armor.
Assuming, of course, that it all really happened and wasn’t part of the nightmare.
As if she did wear angel wings, the dowager countess flew to Cecily’s bedside, only to gasp, grimace, and jump back a step as she looked down at the floor. “Merciful heavens! How long has this been going on? Already you have morning sickness!”
“I don’t know what happened,” Cecily croaked, as Cordelia hastened to the other side of the bed. “Are my clothes over there?”
Cordelia responded by throwing back the covers all the way to the footboard. She looked startled and maybe even a little disappointed at the sight of Cecily’s shift that was bunched up past her knees. Cecily hastily pulled the shift down to conceal her limbs.
“I’m afraid that will do you no good now,” Cordelia said. “You may as well own up to it, and confess. You’re ruined, girl. Ruined!”
Maybe she could include this episode in a sequel to The Duke Is a Devil. And speaking of the devil...
“I see I’m too late,” came his voice from the doorway.
Cecily surveyed him through bleary eyes. He looked as disheveled as she, as if he likewise just woke up, though he wore more clothes. It seemed all he wore were breeches, socks, and a white shirt open almost to his navel, revealing a muscular chest sprinkled with tendrils of dark gold hair. She felt an oddly pleasurable quiver in her lower regions, a welcome sensation after the throbbing headache and nausea.
He also looked as if none of this surprised him. His countenance was neither angry nor cheerful. He didn’t even appear resigned. If anything, he looked as if he’d expected this.
Cordelia threw out an arm, pointing her finger straight at Cecily. “You did this to her! You ravished her! You ruined her! Don’t deny it!”
“I’m not denying it,” he said, as calmly as if he ravished and ruined a female every day. And always before breakfast.
“Then you confess you did this! You brought her in here!”
“I did.”
“Why?” Cecily cried, hating that the word came out as a whine.
“You removed her clothes!” Cordelia snapped.
“I see no point in trying to deny that, either,” he said.
Then Cecily must have dreamed removing her own clothes, after all. “For what reason did you do this?” There, that didn’t sound so whiny.
“Oh come, ladies. Both of you. Why else would I bring an insensible female into my bedchamber, place her in my bed, and then remove her clothes? Surely you must have some idea, Cordelia.”
That phantom archer shot another arrow, this time straight into Cecily’s heart. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing from him. Then again, she was still having trouble believing what she’d been seeing since that manservant jolted her awake.
Right on cue, he said, “I know what you’re going to say, Cecily. That you can’t believe I would do this to you.”
That mind-reading scoundrel. “Very well, so that’s what I was going to say. But trust me, it’s not what I want to say.”
“Say it if you want. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Say it if I want? Because it’s the sort of thing a lady would never say, and now, thanks or no thanks to you, I’m not a lady anymore?” She finally clambered out of bed, taking care to choose the side where Cordelia hovered, as there would be no hideous puddles. Another shard of pain pierced her skull as she swept her gaze around the floor that seemed to rock under her feet. “What did you do with my clothes?”
“I suppose my valet picked up and carried away whatever he found when he came in to wake me up,” the duke said ruefully.
“Then you were in here the whole time!” she raged.
“Of course he was,” Cordelia chimed in. “Look at the mattress, and then you’ll see what he did while you were completely unaware.”
Fighting a wave of dizziness, Cecily spun around, nearly losing her balance as she glimpsed the small red spot in the center of the mattress.
“That can’t be!” she exclaimed, pointing downward. “That’s from my toe. It’s been bleeding since I stubbed it on that—that—” Clouds still eddied in her brain, like a brewing thunderstorm.
“Sabaton,” Bradbury helpfully suggested.
“Saba what?” asked Cordelia. “I don’t know what that is. But that stain cannot be from your toe, because it’s in the very center of the bed.”
Cecily seized the bedclothes bunched up toward the foot of the bed, and peeled them off the mattress. “I was curled up at one point, which would have put my bleeding toe right where you see that stain. Also, you see a similar stain here, near the foot of the matt
ress.”
“It matters not. You have been discovered in the duke’s bed—well, it’s really the earl’s bed, but the duke is using it in the earl’s absence—but you have been found in it wearing nothing but your shift, with a bloodstain in the center of the mattress. And the duke does not deny either placing you here, or removing all of your clothes save that shift. You, Miss Logan, have been compromised by the duke, and if he does not marry you, then will you be ruined. Ruined!”
“But he didn’t—he couldn’t have—” Cecily glanced wildly at him. He still stood in the doorway, his countenance still blank. “Did you?”
“I can’t deny it,” he declared. “I have ruined you.”
“But you didn’t—you didn’t really—well, you know what I’m trying to say! You always know what I’m trying to say! Tell me what I’m trying to say!”
“There’s no need. You already know what you’re trying to say, Cecily. You just don’t want to be the one to say it.”
Cordelia scooped up the bedclothes and shoved them at Cecily. “Cover yourself, girl! Don’t you realize he can see you in nothing but your shift?”
Cecily threw the bedclothes back to the floor. “What difference should that make now? I only wonder if—” She threw him another anxious look, hoping he could read her mind now. She pressed both hands on either side of her relentlessly throbbing head.
He finally grinned. “Oh, you don’t have to go that far to facilitate silent communication with me, Cecily. I see no point in denying that I already saw what’s under your shift.”
He saw. And he was grinning about it, as if amused by what he’d seen.
Cecily wanted to die. She just couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted to die to escape the misery of her headache and nausea, or of shame that he’d seen her naked body and found it inexplicably hilarious.
“I should leave,” he said.
“Leave and go where?” she cried. “Do you mean to abandon me here?”
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but Cordelia swiftly cut in. “Oh no, you are not staying here another night, Miss Logan. You will leave today, and I care not how. I intend to go to Bath, but you will not be coming with me.”
“Are you quite finished, Cordelia?” The duke was no longer grinning. He was frowning as he shifted his turquoise gaze from her back to Cecily. “I am only leaving you to clean up and dress. You will join me the rest of the way to London, and there we shall marry.”
Dear God. She almost wished he’d grin again, for he didn’t look at all pleased about this now. “You don’t have to—not if you didn’t really—”
“Yes, we have to,” Bradbury said firmly, and he gestured to Cordelia. “What do you think she’s going to do the minute we leave? Why, she’s going to sit down and write letters to everyone she knows to regale them with what happened here within the confines of her own glass house.”
But nothing really happened—did it? He might have placed Cecily in his bed, and he might have removed all of her clothing save her shift, and he might have stolen a peek at what was beneath it, but her virginity was still very much intact. If he’d truly ravished her, wouldn’t she be feeling sore between her thighs? Wouldn’t it be—well, a bit messy? This wasn’t the moment to lift the hem of her shift to look. Still, she felt nothing down there right now, except the occasional little quiver of desire every time she stole a glimpse of his partially bared chest.
“In fact,” he went on, “she will likely be very creative in what she writes—so much so that it would make a fitting extra chapter to The Duke Is a Devil.”
“I am not the author of that book, Your Grace,” Cordelia said.
“No, you’ll be the author of a competing work of fiction, one that won’t have to be sold,” Bradbury said. “Who will wish to buy the cow after the milk’s been spilled and lapped up? I’m leaving now. Anything more to be discussed will be discussed after we continue our journey.”
So saying, he left.
Cordelia pulled out the sheet from the tangle of bedclothes around Cecily’s feet. “Wrap yourself in this and go back to your own bedchamber. I strongly suggest you stay there until His Grace decides it is time to leave, which I trust will be within the hour.”
Cecily wrapped the sheet around herself and peered at the matron, who kept her gaze averted. “Now you know why His Grace didn’t want you last night.”
Cordelia busied herself with picking up the rest of the bedclothes and rearranging them on the bed. Cecily wondered why Cordelia, the widow of an earl and the daughter of a duke long deceased, didn’t ring for a maidservant to do this.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, keeping her back to Cecily.
“Yes, you do. I saw you last night. I was at the foot of the staircase, right next to that suit of armor, when I saw you come down the stairs dressed about as presentably as I am at this moment. You stole into the drawing room and tried to seduce His Grace.”
“You must have seen a maidservant,” Cordelia said, as with great difficulty she folded the counterpane in half, then with slightly less difficulty into quarters.
“No, it was you. You’re looking for a younger man now that you’ve been set aside by Lord Howland, who was originally engaged to your daughter. Tell me, my lady—what did you used to do that made Howland go mad with desire for you? That only made Bradbury feel so numb that he deemed it the perfect moment to have a bothersome tooth pulled?”
The dowager countess still had her back to Cecily, but her shoulders noticeably stiffened.
“Then no wonder he’s almost five and thirty and still a bachelor,” Cordelia said. “No wonder he’s been jilted so many times, and by prospective brides all thought unsuitable by the ton.” As if the ton, or more specifically, the matrons thereof, were as one whole the true and final judge of such things. “His tastes do not run toward the fairer sex, Miss Logan.”
“Maybe they do not run toward the older of the fairer sex,” Cecily countered. “If what you say is true, then why did you do whatever you did?” She raised her voice to a mocking falsetto. ‘Oh, but Your Grace, what if I did this? What if I did that? Look at me, Your Grace. Behold my naked form. Doesn’t it make you want to run screaming into the night?’”
Cordelia finally turned to survey her with an unmistakable smirk. Cecily had seen it many times on Harry’s sneering face. “I didn’t believe the rumors were true. But it seems they are.”
“What rumors?”
Cordelia cast a scornful glance at Cecily’s bare feet. “Of course those bloodstains are from your toe. He never breached your maidenhead. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”
“It just so happens I don’t,” Cecily said icily. “And what rumors?”
“Bradbury must prove to the rest of the world that he’s a perfectly normal man, with perfectly normal desires for the fairer sex, and it seems he’s chosen you. Why, you may ask?”
“Oh, do enlighten me, my lady.”
“Consider the facts, Miss Logan. You have nowhere else to go, and at your age, you’re on the shelf. You’re likely desperate to marry whoever will have you, so you know jolly well that despite all of your protests, in the end, you will marry him and be his duchess. But he’ll never love you, if that’s what you’re hoping for. Indeed, it is what you’re hoping for. It’s what my daughter Lydia hoped for; that’s why she eloped with my niece’s fiancé. And it’s what my niece Felicity hoped for; that’s why she was all too happy to let Lydia marry the Earl of Renton while she disgraced herself with some highwayman who turned out to be the heir to Viscount Lockwood.” She reached up to pat Cecily’s cheek, not quite slapping her. “But don’t worry—I’m sure Bradbury will make some effort to get you with child. Or maybe not. He still has a younger brother who’s already married and whose wife—to wit, Lady Frampton’s daughter—just gave birth to a son. So the succession of the Bradbury dukedom is already quite secure.” The smirk gave way to a frown, and venom glittered in her eyes. “Now, since you
’re not yet a duchess, Miss Logan...do remove yourself from my sight.”
Cecily duly removed herself from Lady Cordelia’s sight without another word, but as she made her way down the dim passageway toward the guest wing, she thought she heard the older woman cackle like a wicked old crone in one of Cecily’s forgotten fairy tales.
Her mind swung back to what Cordelia said about Bradbury’s tastes and desires. The duke might be a devil, but her book didn’t have anything like this in it. No, the Duke of Madfury only liked to carry off unsuitable brides because they were unsuitable. Only one bride pursued him and never tried to escape. Only one bride dared to remain and tame the beast.
And only by doing so did that bride win his heart, because she was his true love.
Fiction was one thing. If Cecily wrote it, she had complete control over the outcome. But reality was another thing.
How to win the duke’s heart if he didn’t really desire her? If he was only marrying her for the sake of appearances?
She didn’t want to marry him unless she could marry him for love.
Her writing demanded it.
Chapter Twelve
When they finally left Tyndall Abbey later that morning, Lady Frampton insisted on riding alone with Cecily, meaning Lord Frampton—Dane’s uncle—could either walk, ride a mount, or hope that Dane invited him to join him in his own carriage.
Dane invited him. He had questions for Frampton, even as he knew the marquess was certain to have questions for him. Dane’s questions, however, were long overdue for answers. But before he could ask, his uncle started things rolling—at about the same time as the barouche in which they traveled—by making a rather obvious observation.
“Of all the women in this world, you had to compromise my niece.”
Dane glowered back. “Since when did you decide to recognize her as your niece? Don’t answer that, for I already know the answer. As of this morning, when you found out that I seemed to have compromised her.”
“I have never not recognized her as my niece. And what do you mean, ‘seemed to have’?”
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