“Of course, my lady. Shall I arrange refreshments in the parlor then?” James asked.
She glanced at the duke—her fiancé, she corrected herself.
Shaking his head, he declined the offer. “I won’t be staying long.”
With a bow the footman took his leave. Sybilla was slower to vacate. As she passed by Lucy she sent her a look that read ring if you need me, before dropping a curtsey in front of Sussex. Strangely enough, when she left the room, her maid closed the door tightly.
“Your father told me I would find you in here,” he murmured as he studied the contents of the room.
“No doubt he called it my Den of Eccentricities.”
“Curiosities, actually, but now I see it’s more a chamber of collections. I had no idea you collected dolls.”
“And houses. I have since I was a child.” They had been her only friends, except for Isabella, whom she rarely was allowed to see.
“You made their gowns. I am familiar with your craftsmanship.”
“Yes.” She was flushing, not from the compliment, but from the embarrassment of having her secret pastimes known. Only Issy had been in this room and had seen the things she had collected over the years.
“Marvelous collection,” he murmured as he walked around the room, studying the dolls, and what remained of the houses. “I have a room at my estate that would be perfect for you to showcase your collection. Lots of space to continue it, as well.”
Lucy shifted in her chair then turned her attention to sewing a black lace cuff to the sleeve of her gown. She did not want to hear of his estate, because it reinforced the fact that she would become his wife. Something she had still not reconciled herself to.
It had been two days since that disastrous night at the House of Orpheus. This was the first time that she had laid eyes on him since running from the chamber. Seeing him now brought the memory flooding back, and she could not look at him. Could not think of the words he had whispered to her. How she had believed it all, falling into his act. She had been so wrong, thinking she had misjudged him and that he was indeed a deeply passionate man. He was passionate—ruthlessly passionate was what he was.
He cleared his throat again. His boots thumped against the floorboards as he came up behind her. She felt him reach over her shoulder. “What’s this?”
“Don’t touch it!”
But already the object was in his hand, his fingers carefully pulling away the linen wrapping. When their gazes met, he was smiling. “What the devil is this?”
“My most treasured possession,” she snapped while taking the delicate piece of dollhouse furniture from his hand.
“Most treasured possession?” he asked, incredulity making him sound as if he were laughing at her. “There are heaps of beautiful gowns on the settee, a jewelry box over on that table that is spilling with diamonds and gems—all of which are not paste. There must be a king’s ransom in that box, and yet, this oddly shaped…”
“Bed,” she sniffed as she lovingly wrapped it back up in its linen blanket.
“This bed is the most treasured piece you own?” He watched her most intently, his gray eyes boring into hers. Shock registered in them.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she said as she gently placed the piece in a trunk.
“No, I don’t. But help me to. Help me to know who you are, Lucy. It’s all a man desires of his wife, to know and understand her as no other man ever has.”
She bristled and whirled around. He was looking at her again, those eyes that saw too much. The gaze that penetrated so deeply. She shrunk back from it. She had allowed him a glimpse that night, and he had betrayed her. Never again. Never would she allow herself to be vulnerable before him.
“Did my father not also inform you that I have been sulking in petulant female behavior for the past two days?”
“He did.”
“Then why did you bother to climb the steps, knowing I was intent on being taciturn and pigheaded, and an ungrateful female who doesn’t know the good fortune that has been bestowed upon her?”
He winced, glanced away. “It sounds like your father has climbed these same steps, as well.”
“He has. He adores lectures, and I have been forced to listen to the same one uncountable times since he discovered us.”
“And what was your reply to this lecture?”
“I informed him he might as well not exert any further energy on the matter, never mind stair climbing, for I am quite deep in my desire to sulk and pout, as is so common for my sex.”
“I agree.”
She froze, glared at his back. “I beg your pardon?”
When he turned, he was smiling. It was a strange smile, at once wistful, but sad. “It is the only avenue open to you at the moment. The only way to make us pay for the marriage you are about to embark upon.”
“That is a pretty speech, your grace, but seeing things from my viewpoint will not save you from my plan to make you utterly miserable, and filled with regret for this marriage.”
“For how long will you wage this war, then?”
“That depends, how long do you intend to keep breathing?”
He smiled. “I plan on enjoying a very long life—unless, of course, you are plotting to plunge a knife into my back.”
“I am not planning murder. It’s too expedient. I was thinking something along the lines of prolonged torture.”
“Indeed? That thought is rather interesting. Makes me wonder what sort of counterattacks I might be persuaded to implement.”
“I do not find your amusement endearing, your grace. The truth of the matter is I planned on making you absolutely miserable in your choice of wife until you are an old moldering arthritic.”
“There is the spunk,” he murmured.
“It is not spunk, but pure, unadulterated loathing. You betrayed me in the worst possible way, and I will not be swept up into this marriage and forget that the entire reason I find myself chained to you is that you arranged for us to be found! I will never trust you.” She took in a deep breath, her bosom rising in her gown. “I will never accept you and I most certainly will never love you. Now, if you are not sufficiently put off by my idiotic female melodrama, as my father calls it, you may have a seat and discuss whatever it is that drove you up here. Otherwise we are done.”
To her shock, he pulled out a chair and sat down at the worktable. When he met her gaze, she could tell he was settling himself in for a while. Rather like digging a trench in preparedness for their impending warfare.
“I’m certain my father informed you that I would be quite unmanageable in my present state of selfish indulgence.”
“He did.” He released a long, heavy sigh. “I don’t want to manage you, Lucy. I want…I want—”
“Yes, I know. A wife and broodmare. It’s what any aristocrat desires, is it not? Perhaps we should get on with it, shouldn’t we? Lay the ground rules, so to speak. What do you require of me in my role as your duchess?”
He frowned, but his gaze was watchful. “I know you are indulging in a fit of outraged womanly honor. I can appreciate it, actually. I’ll even accept it—for now. You have made your views clear, and despite all this, I would have you know that I vow I will take care of you. You’ll want for nothing.”
Just a different husband, she thought viciously, just for the pure enjoyment of being hurtful.
“Well, that is something, your grace. But I cannot be bought. If your plan is to buy yourself out of my petulance, you may save your coin. As you see, I have little care for trinkets and baubles. Every man attempts to placate a woman’s ire with some piece he orders a shopkeeper to wrap up.” She glanced at the doll’s bed tucked lovingly in the chest. “No,” she murmured, “I have long ago learned to look past a glittering surface.” His gaze followed hers to the trunk.
“Tell me about it.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I find myself wondering how you came by it.”
She shrugged off the pain
of that long-ago day, and refused to meet his determined stare. “It hardly matters now, does it?”
There was an odd wistfulness to his voice. “It matters to me.”
Closing her eyes, she hardened her heart around that soft voice. She didn’t want his kindness or understanding. Despite her attempts to remain aloof, she started to speak. She had not even told Isabella the true story of that misshapen little piece of furniture.
“My…my friend. At least I would like to believe we were. I was only twelve when I met him.”
Sussex’s hand tightened around her wrist, as he watched her. “Him?”
“Yes, Gabriel. He was the butcher’s boy. He must have been a year or two older than me, but he was so much bigger that he looked older. He had such a fierce expression—almost wild. He came every Tuesday with the butcher.”
“And why were you in the kitchen? It seems a strange place for a young lady to find herself.”
She shrugged. “I always played in the kitchen. I used to get under Cook’s feet, but she wouldn’t scold me or send me to my room. She would laugh, and feed me, letting me help sometimes with the bread and cakes. You see, my parents never noticed me, unless it was to their advantage.”
Here is a new dolly, my dear. Now, you must be a good girl, and come to tea and behave yourself. You must be on your best behavior and make Mummy and Papa proud.
They had bought her—always. Never had they come to her empty-handed, and never had they given her anything that did not have some hidden catch behind it. In truth, the gifts meant nothing. She had only wanted their affection, an embrace, and perhaps for them to come to her at night and tuck her in and tell her a story. But those were her governess’s duties and she had been every bit as frosty as her parents. The isolation had destroyed her, making her retreat into a hard shell. She had been a quiet, withdrawn creature, a gentle spirit with feelings that were easily hurt, and a heart that was just as easily broken. She knew she must harden it herself if she was going to survive.
“There’s more to it.”
She paused—stilled as she listened to the conviction in his voice. He would not pull this out of her—not take it away from her like her father had. Tears began to burn her eyes, and she forced them back. “There is nothing more to it. He came, and then weeks later, he presented me with this bed he had made for my dollhouse. Then he left, and I never saw him again. He’s probably dead. No one lives long in the rookeries.”
He wouldn’t release her hand, wouldn’t let her look away from him, either. “Why didn’t he come back?”
There was a darkness in his voice, and Lucy’s breath caught at his expression, the way his eyes watched her so carefully. The scar on his brow made her pause and she almost reached out to touch it, but she didn’t. His voice, insistent in the quiet, made her go on.
“Why did he leave?”
“My father forced him to,” she whispered. “He said he was nothing, treated him like rubbish and then…” She closed her eyes and told him. “Papa took the bed from me, said I wasn’t allowed to have anything made by his filthy hands. He threw it in the rubbish bin—so carelessly—and it had been the only thing ever given to me that was not intended to buy me—and then…then papa struck him. He was bleeding. I can still see the blood running from his forehead. I tried to go to him, but Papa caught me, and Gabriel looked up at me and then left. I never saw him again.”
There was something that sounded very much like shock, and perhaps awe, in his voice when he said, “You took this from the trash and hid it, knowing your father would be livid with you for doing so.”
“I couldn’t be parted from it. It meant everything to me. He left, believing me to be like my father. I can’t bear to know that, to imagine him alive and thinking the worst of me.”
His gray eyes flashed. “He doesn’t. He couldn’t possibly think ill of you.”
There was stilling of that moment, when their gazes met. Fear mixed with curiosity shone in her eyes. “How could you know such a thing?”
“Men, from whatever walk of life, are not so different, Lucy. We all have honor and pride, and I know this butcher’s boy you talk of would be honored to know you saved his work. I know this duke is.”
“I don’t want your pride, in fact, I want nothing from you. But you desire something from me, or else you would not be here, would you?”
His jaw clenched and he hesitated. “About Thomas… The police found his body floating in the Thames. He carried identification on his person. I thought you should know.”
“Thomas,” she whispered, trying to sort out her feelings. She had been devastated the first time she had believed him dead. Now she was left feeling numb. She had her answer—he had been involved with this Orpheus. It had been him on the rooftop with Sussex—most definitely him the duke had seen murder Wendell Knighton.
She’d been so wrong about him—in so many ways. He’d made promises that he never meant to keep, and she was left with only one conclusion, that he had never really desired her in the first place.
“Black and Alynwick will continue to investigate how he came to be under Orpheus’s command, and how they both discovered the Brethren Guardians. I’ll share what I know with you. You deserve the truth, I think.” His head hung low, and Lucy watched as his hold slipped from her wrist, to her fingers.
“And is that all you have to say to me, your grace?”
“I must ask one thing—that you do not bring him up again.”
“Why, your grace, does it shame you to know your future wife has lain with another man?”
She was being intentionally mean, but she had to locate the coldness inside her once more. To hide behind it, to forget about both Thomas’s and Sussex’s betrayals.
His glare was furious, and she jumped as he unexpectedly reached up and captured her chin firmly in his hand. “No, it does not shame me. But mention of him makes me insanely jealous and provokes me to distemper that makes me want to unravel and smash things.” The violence of his words surprised her; so, too, the way he looked deeply into her eyes. “I trust you will remember that, and not seek to intentionally provoke me. Jealousy is a very new experience for me, and I am just learning how to manage it. Although, you may rest assured I would never lay my hands on you—not in that way.”
He held her captive, while they looked into each other’s eyes. “And what later, your grace? Will you seek to find ways to invoke my envy?”
“What do you mean?”
“You won’t, you know. For I don’t care what you do.”
“Ah, so this is my carte blanche to take a mistress, is it?”
She flinched at the word, at the very thought of some woman rutting beneath him. Why she could be affected by it, she did not care to examine. It was too soon, she told herself, much too soon since that moment of unbridled passion they had shared.
“I will grant you one night, your grace. You may have access to my body to consummate this marriage.”
“Once? You owe me an heir.”
“One night,” she repeated. “That is all.”
“Ah, I see, I am to have you as many times as possible in that one night. You will lay there dutifully, with your prim white linen night rail raised to your waist, your gaze cast up upon the canopy while I grunt and work atop you, filling you with my seed until I am drained dry, and all in the attempt to consummate this marriage, and conceive my heir.”
His gaze flickered to her mouth as he reached out and brushed her bottom lip with this thumb. “And what am I allowed, Lucy? What pleasures will you endure in the name of wifely duty?”
“You have me. For one night.”
“So you will endure anything I force upon you, is that right? Even suckling your nipples till they resemble dark cherries? What of indecent kisses between your thighs?”
She blushed, reminded of their exchange that night. “I will endure what I must.”
He smiled. “Oh, no. You will not endure. You’ll enjoy. And perhaps even beg.”
&n
bsp; “I will not.”
“Then I will wait until you do. For I am not the sort to lie atop a woman and take my pleasure—it will be my pleasure to pleasure you, as well. Did you think I would not? I know you believe me cold and indifferent, but I would never just take, Lucy. I want to give, and I want you to take—and to give to me as well.”
“Then you will be vastly disappointed, your grace. For I want nothing from you, and I certainly have nothing to give you.” Her glare was mutinous. “Now, have you said all you wished to say?”
“Ah, you wish to continue your pursuit of sulking and petulance, is that right?”
“I wish to get on with packing. My father informs me that tomorrow morning we are to be married, and then you plan to depart the city for your estate in Yorkshire.”
“Yes. I think it best for the start of our marriage.”
“As you can see I have a great deal of work to do before that. So, if that is all?”
He stood, reached into his pocket and withdrew a blue box, tied with a white ribbon. Placing it in front of her he said, “A wedding gift.”
Leaning forward, he reached across the table, pulled the ribbon free and opened the box. Pressing in, he lowered his face to hers. “Ear bobs, for I have been thinking of how very nice they would look dangling from your ears while I nuzzle your neck.”
Lucy glanced down at the pearl earrings with gold filigree. They were lovely and she tried not to be swayed.
“Pearls, because your skin is as smooth and luminescent as one, and because the first time my lips caressed your throat I thought your flesh as opulent and lush as one. Gold,” he whispered, moving closer, “because it reminded me of how your hair looked in the dying candlelight, how it burned and glistened, and how badly I want to lie in bed, in our chamber, and watch you at your dressing table, unpinning it for me. I will have that, Lucy, the rights of a husband to enter his wife’s room, to see her at her toilette, to watch what no other man will ever be granted. You do understand that? That I won’t settle for less?”
“You have made your line in the sand very clear.”
He grinned. “You can cross it anytime you wish, you know. You might even like it on my side.”
Pride & Passion Page 23
