Regency Romance: Duchess In Distress (Historical Billionaire Military Romance) (19th Century Victorian Romance)

by Sarah Thorn

  That, he supposed, was where all the trouble had started. He’d done everything he could to keep a fair distance from her, but Alice stood out in a way too remarkable to ignore. She had a true passion for her subject, and her papers were publishable even though she had yet to finish her graduate degree.

  And, of course, she was gorgeous enough that he fought his body’s reaction every time he saw her.

  Long, dark hair that she liked to keep pinned up in a no-nonsense way at the base of her neck, wide blue eyes that gleamed with curiosity; a full, utterly kissable mouth – and that body of hers? Bloody hell, it was a crime that she kept it so goddamned covered. Alice liked to wear modestly cut tops and demure skirts – clothes that didn’t do her a bit of justice.

  For weeks, Thomas had suspected the figure she was hiding beneath her dour wardrobe, but the reality had been beyond his wildest dreams. Lush, ample breasts, wide hips and a minuscule waist. God, how many times had he lie awake at night remembering the silky feel of her thighs as he gripped them?

  As he pressed deep inside her delicious warmth?

  He knew he was being an idiotic cad. Thomas had only just acquired his position at the college, and he’d already put it in jeopardy by becoming involved with one of his students. Of course, his graduate students were more than of age, but it was the principal of the thing that mattered. He’d always considered himself a morally competent man – and sleeping with his students had never been on his agenda.

  Lord knew there were plenty of willing women in the States who all but threw their knickers at him once they learned where he was from and what his profession was. It was like some kind of fetish to them…

  But not so with Alice. He’d always felt comfortable with her – at least, intellectually. Physically, it had been a struggle from the very first.

  A struggle that had culminated in him giving into his baser instincts and taking her right on the main desk in a classroom.

  He both revered and regretted the memory. In the heat of the moment, nothing could have felt more right than the way she moaned his name and clutched at his shoulders hard enough to leave bruises later.

  But in hindsight, he wished he’d, at least, had the willpower to get her to his office. At least, things might have been a little more leisurely there. He could have worshiped her body, spread her wide open on the couch and buried his head between those gorgeous legs of hers…bent her over his desk and…

  Christ.

  Thank God he’d been teaching long enough that he only needed to keep half of his mind on the lecture. The other half was firmly in the realm of reviewing what he hadn’t had a chance to do to Alice Cantor – and that, he knew, would never do.

  He’d already put his job in jeopardy enough.

  “Alright, thank you all for seeing your way to come to one of the last lectures of the semester. I’ll post notes within the next few hours and feel free to e-mail me with any questions that you may have. I’ll see you next week.”

  The twenty or so students set about to gathering their things as they spoke of their end –of-semester papers. He’d been looking over the few drafts that had been submitted to him, and they were, for the most part, readable. Thomas found himself worried, however, that Alice had yet to turn in her paper.

  While she was still doing perfectly fine with the assignments they’d been given, ever since the incident between them, she had stopped consulting him as she worked on her project. Though Thomas would never attempt to profess that the physical chemistry between them was mind-blowing, he found that he missed her quiet brilliance just must, if not more than the way she gasped his name when he touched her.

  As he gathered his papers near the edge of his desk, he watched her from the corner of his eye. These days, she was in a rush to be one of the first people out of the classroom. She all but shoved her papers into her bags and gazed around fearfully before fleeing the lecture hall.

  Except, today, something was different. As she attempted to beat her colleagues out of the classroom, she collided with another student who was entering.

  It was a spectacular event. Her bag ripped open completely, spilling books and papers all over the floor and Alice herself stumbled over long legs and landed hard on her pert behind with a yelp.

  Thomas was up like a shot – almost before he had time to think.

  “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry.” Even as the other man apologized, bending down to grab at the papers that had slid almost halfway across the room. “I wasn’t watching where I was going-”

  “Are you alright, Alice?”

  Thomas cut him off, reaching for Alice’s slender hand as she grimaced in pain. She reached out instinctively, her eyes only widening when she realized it was he who was helping her up. The young woman only maintained contact with him for long enough to make it to her feet. Then, she withdrew, almost as if she’d been burned.

  “I’m fine, Professor! Thanks!” Immediately, she turned from him to kneel and began gathering her things.

  “Christ, I’m a klutz. I killed your bag.”

  “It’s ok. Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, really…I’m an idiot.”

  Standing over them, Thomas tried not to watch as the young man all but fell over himself to apologize. Though Alice liked to wear her reading glasses in class and cared more about identifying different literary periods than attracting men, you’d have to be blind not to realize what a beauty she was – and this student – Ryan something-or-other, if Thomas’ mind served him correctly – was no different. Under the guise of helping Alice gather her things, he was trying to look down the front of her sweater, and the Professor found himself seething.

  It was none of his affair, he knew. So far as they’d agreed, nothing had happened between him and Alice. She wasn’t, nor would she ever be his.

  So...why did watching her interact with another man make his blood boil?

  He watched Ryan’s half-hearted attempts to flirt with his best student until he was forced to pick up his lesson plans and leave the room. Once he reached the solitude of his office, he sank down in his chair and exhaled slowly, trying to clear his head.

  Alice was a perfectly attractive young woman. Of course men would try to hit on her – of course they would try to stake their claim.

  Even if he himself had already staked it quite thoroughly.

  It was odd, Thomas knew, but ever since the first day she had smiled at her, he’d begun to think of Alice as his own. She was both delicate and strong all at once – fiercely independent, intelligent and alluring while being demure and withdrawn. Had it not been for their little mishap, he might have asked if she’d like to intern with him, or even have him be her mentor for a possible PhD.

  But all of that had been shot to shite.

  “Fuck,” Thomas whispered quietly to himself. Three more weeks left in the semester. Then, hopefully, he could take the holiday break to forget about her entirely. If that meant he had to fuck his way through half of the city, he might be willing. Thinking about Alice was painful – and he didn’t like to be reminded of what could have been.

  **

  She couldn’t ever get a break.

  Shuddering, Alice spit up the last dregs of bile at the back of her throat into the small container the nurse held below her chin. She’d been out of sorts for the past few days, and though she thought she could handle the situation herself, she ultimately ended up in the university clinic when she could hardly keep anything she swallowed down.

  At her roommate’s urging, she’d booked herself a visit, only to run for the toilet the moment she was settled in the office.

  They did all the usual tests – they’d taken blood and urine samples before settling her as comfortably in bed as they could. The real issue, they impressed upon the young woman, was that she needed nutrients. Thusly, they’d hooked her up to an IV – probably one of the most sucktastic things in the entire cosmos, considering that she abhorred needles. But it beat passing out entirely.

>   She didn’t have time to be unconscious. She had a paper due, and it was hard enough to write when she couldn’t stop thinking about her damned professor. Out of the thirty thousand words she needed, she’d completed about half – and to go on seemed utterly useless sometimes. She couldn’t think about turning the damned think in without her stomach erupting in butterflies.

  She’d have to confront him…they’d have to interact.

  And she’d have to remember what his arms around her felt like – what his face looked like on the cusp of orgasm. The way he laughed when she made ridiculous literature jokes that no one else could possibly understand and that devastating smile of his…

  She had fucked up. Monumentally – and she had no one to blame but herself.

  It was hard to even look at herself in the mirror; For God’s sake, she’d made herself sick over it. What was she supposed to do for the next two years while she got her degree? Avoid one of the foremost minds in her department? Even if she never had another class with him (which, in and of itself, would be a minor miracle), he would still be one of the men in charge of awarding her degree.

  And after her behavior, she wouldn’t be surprised if things were stacked against her.

  “Well, Ms. Cantor, how are you feeling?’

  She looked up, surprised to see that the nurse tending to her had disappeared and that Dr. Brighton had returned. The kindly woman held out a small paper cup of water for her to wash out her mouth; and though Alice’s stomach twinged at the sight of it, she forced herself to drink. “Pretty awful.” She finally admitted, swallowing thickly and praying that she could keep it down.

  “Sorry about that.” Doctor Brighton gave her a small smile as she retrieved the cup before tossing it in a nearby wastebasket. “But I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that we’ve gotten to the root of the problem.”

  The root of the problem?

  Alice’s eyes widened slightly. It wasn’t just anxiety? She had fully accepted the fact that she must be psyching herself into manifesting physical symptoms. “So…it’s not just stress?”

  “Oh, no.” The doctor replied, shaking her head slowly. “I’m going to prescribe you some metoclopramide – twenty-five milligrams a day. It’s the best treatment for this kind of thing.” She wrote on a pad as she spoke softly. “Take one before you go to bed every night and you should be rid of that pesky morning sickness.”

  If Alice’s eyes had been big before, now they were the size of saucers. “Excuse me…morning sickness?”

  Doctor Brighton arched a brow. “Yes, of course. Didn’t the nurse tell you? It’s a classic symptom of early pregnancy.”

  Alice couldn’t have felt the impact of the Doctor’s statement more if the words had been a physical blow.

  For a moment, her mind went completely blank. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t even breathe.

  Pregnant. She was pregnant.

  Well, that explained a whole hell of a lot. She’d been exhausted lately. Exhausted, stressed, sick to her stomach…and come to think of it, she’d been so wrapped up in personal issues that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a period. Certainly more than a month at this point.

  Which meant that she was most definitely carrying…her professor’s child.

  “Are you alright, Ms. Cantor?”

  Alice was snapped back to the present by Doctor Brighton’s concerned voice. “Do you feel weak again?”

  “I’m…I’m alright.” The dark-haired young woman finally managed, even if she was anything but. She stared at the prescription in the doctor’s hand, her mind whirling.

  Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse. Life had a bizarre sense of humor, it seemed.

  Hours later, the young woman sat sequestered in the bathroom of her apartment, staring at the three separate pregnancy tests on the countertop. Not as if she needed their confirmation after visiting an actual doctor, but, somehow, seeing the little two lines in three sets of windows made things seem a whole lot more real.

  Alice placed a hand gently against her still very flat stomach, somewhere between terrified nauseous, despite the pills that the Doctor had given her.

  A baby.

  She couldn’t have a baby right now. She was in the middle of trying to get her graduate degree – pulling all-nighters every other day and spending most of her time in the library. She didn’t even have a part-time job. She had stopped working when the university had offered her a small stipend as part of her scholarship. It was barely enough for her to get by on, let enough to raise a child.

  The best thing to do would be to get rid of it. Honestly, what other option did she have?

  …Besides keeping it, of course.

  The very thought had her eyes sliding tightly shut.

  There was no way. She couldn’t even take care of herself! She’d made all the wrong decisions in the past year – spending time with a professor, she knew she had more than platonic feelings for, sleeping with said professor, neglecting her birth control when it was most important…what the hell kind of mother would she be?

  Sighing, she took a look at herself in the mirror.

  No one would deny that she looked a goddamn mess. Her dark hair hung lank and haggard around her face and the circles under her eyes were dark and deep from lack of sleep. Her roommate insisted that she worked herself too hard, but it was only in the past week or so – since the pregnancy had really started wreaking havoc on her boy – that she’d felt so sincerely awful. It was physical and emotional turmoil all at once, and, for the life of her, Alice wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep it all off.

  But she was an academic, not a complete pussy.

  Some decisions had to be made – first and foremost what she was going to do about this child.

  Alice stared at herself, long and hard.

  Could she really walk into a clinic and purge part of herself from her body?

  Part of…him?

  And then the next obstacle came into play…if she was going to keep the baby, she couldn’t very well keep it from Thomas. When her belly started rounding out the next semester, the man was bound to notice. Unlike her classmates, her professor was a very observant and acutely intelligent man. He’d probably be able to guess…which meant that they’d have to discuss it before it became an issue.

  Slowly, Alice exhaled.

  She would not, she promised herself, beg him for anything. She wouldn’t demand anything. That had never been her game, and she never planned it to be. Certainly, her pregnancy hadn’t been expected, but her aim would be to simply speak to Thomas about things like a rational adult.

  Even if the idea of being alone again with him, face to face, made her stomach tighten and her heartrate quicken.

  Christ, Thomas. She missed him.

  Resisting the urge to speak with him every time she found something new and exciting in her research was almost like a physical pain. Going to his lectures and forcing herself not to look at him akin to torture…

  Surprisingly enough, the notion made her lips quirk in a slightly amused smile. She had to be a lit student if she was espousing to poetically on love and loss.

  All at once, Alice stiffened.

  Was that what this was? Love? Thinking about the man every waking second of the day, actually wanting to keep his baby when she might not have the means, needing his body against hers with every goddamn fiber of her being?

  Well, she supposed that Shakespeare had known what he was talking about.

  Her smile still lingering about her lips, the young woman tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ears as she rubbed her stomach fondly, imagining the life growing there. Whether Thomas wanted anything to do with the baby or not, she would always have a piece of him – a reminder of the way her heart swelled at the very sight of him.

  And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough.

  **

  Thomas had to admit that the ends of semester Stateside were a far
sight less rigorous than they were in Britain. Here, students were required to do much less – a product of the education being stretched out over six years instead of the three required across the pond. This, in turn, lessened his workload considerably.

  And gave him plenty of time to think.

  At present, he didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse.

  He stared down at a paper he was grading, trying to concentrate on the twelve point font as the gray clouds beyond his office window threatened snow. It would be the first of the season – and an idea he still hadn’t gotten used to. It almost never snowed in London. The weather there was far too mucky. If anything, there would be a disgusting coat of slush that covered the entire city in a layer of gray that served to dampen the mood almost as much as it sullied the streets. Here, he would see snow. They would cancel school for it- and he’d be allowed to stay home in his cozy apartment with a fire blazing.

  Alone.

  The thought made him frown.

  The last person he needed to be thinking about right now was Alice Cantor. She’d already distracted him enough, and if the way she continued to act towards him was any indication, she had long gotten over whatever had once been between them.

  A twenty-five-year-old woman was ready to move on before an experienced professor – he didn’t know whether to be insulted or amused. Alice continued to surprise him- which was probably why he wouldn’t be able to forget her anytime soon.

  Setting his pen down, Thomas ran a slender-fingered hand through his hair, removing his reading glasses.

  What he needed to do was get some fresh air. He had long learned that, as much as he loved his books, there was little that a jaunt around campus couldn’t solve. It was important to hone the body as well as the mind – and sometimes, his little sessions could be his salvation. He didn’t think he’d had a decent run since he and Alice had fallen out.

  Maybe it was time to get back to his normal routine.

  With a soft chuckle, he rose from his desk to reach for the bag handing on the coat rack just next to the window. He always kept a set of jogging clothes there for when he decided to exercise on a whim, and he had no issue changing in his office. It was more convenient than making a visit to the men’s room, in any event, and cramming his tall form into a stall.