Duchesses in Disguise

by Grace Burrowes

  She brushed the crumbs from his cravat and kept smoothing her hand over the froth of lace and linen when not a single crumb remained.

  “Madam?”

  “You asked me a question earlier.”

  “I am a font of curiosity. You’ll have to be more specific.”

  He smelled good, he looked good, and Francesca abruptly felt both bold and vulnerable. “You didn’t ask, exactly. You said, ‘I hope you took no offense.’”

  He caught her hand in his. “Because I kissed you. On the cheek.”

  “I took no offense. I haven’t been kissed, on the cheek or anywhere, for a very long time.”

  Then she kissed him. Not on the cheek.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  The last person to kiss Sir Greyville Trenton had been Professor Hiram Angelo van Ostermann, a Belgian with a passion for orchids. Grey had brought him several intact, healthy specimens from Mexico and had been treated to that Continental effusion, the triple kiss—left cheek, right cheek, and left cheek again. They’d been parting after a long evening of wine and science, and the professor was the sentimental sort when it came to orchids.

  Sentiment was too tame a word for the response Mrs. Pomponio—Francesca—evoked with her kiss. She was no blushing girl to ambush a fellow then go giggling on her way. She remained in the vicinity, her lips moving on his, tenderly, sweetly, intimately.

  Not a good-night buss, not thanks for orchids safely delivered. She offered a kiss as lovely, intriguing, and varied as the densest forests and loftiest mountain peaks, and by God, every sense Grey possessed begged her to continue her explorations with him.

  As her arms stole around his waist, and the soft, full female shape of her swamped his awareness, he could admit that he’d been starving for human touch and parched for sexual joy.

  Not mere erotic pleasure—pleasure was as close as his left hand. Joy. The delight of reveling in animal spirits with another, the glory of being a human creature in the full flood of shared biological imperatives.

  Grey took Francesca in his arms and settled her on the desk. A pile of notes went cascading to the floor, and he jolly damned didn’t care.

  She broke the kiss and rested her forehead against his shoulder. “Mother of God, Sir Greyville.”

  He stroked her hair and marveled at the arousal coursing through him. “Was that a happy Mother of God or a dismayed one?”

  She lifted her head enough to meet his gaze. “Both, or more accurately, impressed. Have you made a study of kisses, gathered data on many continents, compared findings?”

  Grey rummaged about for the pretty way to say what he felt, then gave up, because if he bungled his answer, this would be their first and last passionate kiss.

  “If I were to undertake such a study of kisses, I’d have to start in Italy, among the daughters of English diplomats.” He was distracted for a moment by the scent of Francesca’s hair, which bore the fragrances of lavender and jasmine.

  “To narrow the sample population further,” he went on, “I’d focus on the blond ladies with fine gray eyes, who have put the foolishness of youth behind them and yet gained impressive skill with the kiss. Ideally, my investigation would be limited to those subjects named Francesca Pomponio. If the subject were willing, I’d make a very thorough study of the topic.”

  She gave him her weight. “You are a very silly man.”

  “Yes.”

  Silly and, to use her word, happy. At that moment, with his notes littered across the carpet and Francesca in his arms, he was happy.

  He and she remained thus, arms entwined, while Grey wallowed in the pleasure of holding a willing woman, one who returned his embrace and enjoyed his kisses.

  “I’m distracting you from your work,” Francesca said.

  She was asking a question, exercising the delicacy of expression that preserved Grey from being the one to inquire.

  “You have distracted me from everything. I think perhaps I needed a distraction. What news do we have of your coach?”

  She eased away, and Grey let her go, only because he could console himself with the sight of her. Her lips were a touch rosier, and a single pearl-tipped hairpin was dangling from her chignon.

  “Our host says that righting the coach will take some effort, and then at least two wheels will require repair, and he suspects an axle has been cracked as well. He predicts, between spring storms, the Yorkshire roads, and the extent of the damage, we will be cast on his hospitality for at least two weeks.”

  Thank God for Yorkshire mud. “Are you disappointed?”

  She went to her knees and began picking up Grey’s notes. He assisted, passing them to her so she could restore them to order.

  “You will think me one of those forward, pathetic, Continental widows, but no, I am not disappointed. I am interested, Sir Greyville, in making a study of you.”

  They were on the rug, both of them kneeling, several pages still lying about.

  Her admission troubled her, while it delighted Grey. “I would like to be studied. I have so little to offer any woman, that my opportunities for… What I mean to say is, that in so many words, I rarely find myself… Bloody hell. I want to kiss you for the next two weeks straight.”

  She regarded him as if he’d lapsed into the native dialect of the upper Amazon basin.

  “I gather you neglected your kissing while you were so attentive to your science.”

  “I neglect everything when I’m absorbed with a project. I get crumbs on my cravat, forget where I put the glasses sitting on my very nose, and have been known to write on my cuffs rather than go in search of more paper, but for the next two weeks, I would very much enjoy getting to know you better.”

  That was as delicate as he could be, and damn anybody who intimated that a short mutual indulgence in pleasurable intimacies with Francesca Pomponio would put him behind on his work.

  Further behind.

  “You are bound to return to your jungles?” she asked.

  The jungle belonged to the Almighty or to the Fiend, depending on the day. Grey couldn’t tell whether Francesca wanted reassurances that he wouldn’t plague her with expectations, or wished he had more to offer her.

  So he gave her the facts. “I doubt I’ll return to the Amazon, but I will return to the field. I’m suited to investigation, and it makes me feel alive.”

  So did her kisses. Interesting coincidence.

  She cupped his cheek with her palm, soft female warmth to freshly shaven male angles. “I have been a widow for five years, and I do not undertake an intimate friendship with you lightly. I barely know you, and you know even less of me. Maybe that is what allows us to wander into this jungle together, the knowledge that we’ll part, and fondly, but we will part.”

  Englishwomen didn’t make speeches like that. They also didn’t seem a very happy lot.

  “We’ll part very fondly if our first kiss is any indication.”

  “That was our second.”

  Grey crawled to her side of the rug. “This will be our third.”

  * * *

  Francesca had watched all of the intrigue, drama, and influence-trading in the Italian courts with a certain dispassion. When affairs of the heart had entangled with political machinations, as they often did, she’d been honestly baffled.

  What could possibly be worth enduring such a mess? Such inconvenience and potential loss of dignity? Horrendously public marital discord, needless violence, lavish gestures, and plots behind every marble column had seemed like so much farce to her, much to her father’s amusement.

  “Someday, you’ll understand,” he’d said.

  Pietro, nearly twenty years her senior, had said much the same thing.

  Well, the great insight was at last befalling her. As Sir Greyville Trenton prowled on all fours across the carpet, Francesca gloried in the sense that nothing, not his science, not a servant banging on the door, not a promise of funds for his next expedition, would have stopped him from initiating
their third kiss.

  Better still, he wasn’t embarking on this frolic in the dales because he wanted political favor, or access to the family wing of the palace, or the cachet of having had intimate favors from the ducal widow.

  Sir Greyville wanted her.

  In her plain, borrowed dress, with her hair in a bun worthy of a retired governess, and not a jewel in sight, Sir Greyville wanted her.

  He touched her hair and leaned very close. “I need to lock the damned door.” He kissed her nose and got up in one lithe move, then locked the door.

  Francesca remained on the carpet, not trusting her knees to support her should she stand.

  “Madam, if you continue to gaze up at me like that… On second thought, I wish you’d always look at me like that.” He extended a hand down to her and pulled her to her feet. “When you regard me thus, I feel like one of those sinfully delectable cream cakes devised by the Italian chefs. All I desire is for you to consume me, and you are happily intent on that very goal. I have never been anybody’s cream cake. The sensation is rather like being addled by fever.”

  He was fearless, if a bit eccentric in his choice of comparisons.

  “When you look at me,” Francesca said, “I want to kiss you. I can’t believe I said that. I’m not normally… That is… The Italian court culture is interesting. The men can be hounds, but then, with whom are they hounds, if not with the women? Some men prefer the company of other men, of course, but on the whole, between wives, mistresses, ladies of easy virtue, and affairs, a great deal of…”

  In no language could Francesca finish the thought she’d been bumbling toward.

  “A great deal of mating behavior takes place?” Sir Greyville suggested, kneeling to pick up the last of the papers.

  “Yes, exactly. Mating behavior. I did not participate in it. I didn’t want to compromise my privacy, or allow anybody undue influence over me.”

  “You flatter me,” he said, rising, “though I gather flattery is not your intent. I’ve been similarly unwilling to embroil myself in any situation that could prove inconvenient when it came time to embark on another expedition. One must avoid creating expectations, on the one hand, and subjecting oneself to the risk of disease, on the other. One must be prudent, and that is a bloody nuisance I am happy to temporarily depart from.”

  He stacked the papers, tapping the edges of the pages against the desk until the lot was tidy, if no longer in exact date order.

  “We must exercise discretion,” Francesca said. “My friends are ladies, as am I.”

  “And you are in the company of gentlemen. Have no fear that what transpires between us will become grist for the London gossip mill. I can’t stand Town, myself, and if I didn’t have to periodically give papers or meet with potential sponsors, I’d never set foot south of Oxford.”

  Well, thank heavens. Francesca was in the wilds of Yorkshire precisely because she too had no use for the London Season. A wealthy widow with a title was bachelor-bait, and she’d had enough of that in Rome, Paris, Milan, and Berlin.

  “How do we do this?” she asked.

  “You aren’t asking for a biology lecture, I trust?”

  He’d launch into one if she were. And if he did, she’d find it arousing. Ye gods and little fishes.

  “I was married for five years,” Francesca said. “My husband was thirty-six when we married and assured me he was quite competent in the bedroom. He was considerate and… considerate.”

  With his mistresses, he’d doubtless been passionate, but with a wife, his attentions had become downright boring. That hypocrisy was an aspect of Italy that Francesca didn’t miss at all.

  “Then he was a dunderhead,” Sir Greyville said, shaking a drop of coffee from his empty cup into his open mouth. “Meaning no disrespect to the departed, but he ought to have been passionate, wild, demanding, playful, inventive, tender, adventurous, accommodating, and—why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You are an authority on marital intimacies?” Pietro had accounted himself such, though Francesca had had her doubts. What woman would tell a ducal lover that he lacked playfulness?

  Though he certainly had.

  Sir Greyville set down his mug. “The institution of marriage is a uniquely human invention. In the wild, animals mate at will and, in many species, un-mate at will. In varying degrees, they cooperate to raise the young, but just as often, the union is based on mutual protection or passing whim. One cannot escape biology, and if the male of the species doesn’t want his mate growing bored, uninterested, or quarrelsome, he’d damned well better show some willingness to contribute to her contentment.”

  “I’m in the presence of a radical,” Francesca said, but then, Sir Greyville was likely passionate in all his opinions.

  “Marriage,” he said, “has no counterpart in nature, unless you allow for a few species that pair for life to raise young, though their sexual fidelity is far from assured. The human parties, by contrast, speak their vows and are stuck with one another. If the lady plays a man false, he is compelled by law to support the resulting offspring. What is radical about taking steps to ensure those offspring are his? If he is the most attractive source of intimate pleasures, those odds increase. I’m considering writing a paper along these lines, but Stratton says he’ll disown me if I publish it.”

  Sir Greyville had taken to pacing, as if his mental energy was so abundant, it even moved his body.

  “I suspect the Church of England would ex-communicate me,” he went on, “which means my mother would have an apoplexy. Over a simple theory supported by common sense and abundant observation. You see the frustrations a man of science endures on every hand?”

  His friends probably told him he’d been in the jungle too long and had no idea how their teasing bewildered him.

  “Galileo was threatened with death for propounding a theory,” Francesca said, “one that has been proved true.”

  If she’d kissed him, he could not have looked more pleased. He took her by the wrist and led her to the sofa.

  “You asked a question earlier,” he said, waiting for her to be seated, “about how we go on with this intimate friendship. How would you like to go on with it?”

  Ten minutes ago, with kiss number three a heartbeat away—kisses to the nose didn’t count—Francesca would have said she wanted to go on immediately, on any handy surface that wasn’t too far from the fire.

  “May I have a day to think about that?” she asked, feeling very bold—also stupid. What woman delays eating a cream cake after five years of going without?

  “That is an excellent notion,” he replied. “My best experiments have all been the result of focused contemplation. If I might make a suggestion, though, I’d like our first encounter to be in a bed.”

  Good heavens. “Not too much to ask.”

  “I am easily chilled in this climate and in this house, and cold is not conducive to optimal reproductive functioning for the human male. Beds are not cold when occupied by an enthusiastic couple.”

  Sir Greyville Trenton was not cold either. He was brilliant, unusual, fearless, and unique, and even before Francesca had become his lover, she knew one other thing about him: When she climbed into the repaired coach with her friends and left the Yorkshire Dales behind her, she’d miss Sir Greyville Trenton for the rest of her life.

  “Beds are cozy,” she said. “I will look forward to embarking on this adventure with you in a warm, cozy bed. Shall we get back to work now? I’ll start on that stack of notes that was knocked asunder by our… that was knocked asunder.”

  By their mating behavior.

  “A fine plan, though given your skill with a pen, I might have word of funding in less than our allotted two weeks.”

  He didn’t seem entirely pleased with that prospect, and Francesca took what comfort she could from the briskness of his observation.

  * * *

  Contrary to common perception, the scientific mind was driven as much by imagination as by ratio
cination, at least Grey’s was. The prospect of an intimate liaison with an intelligent, lovely, learned, and discerning lady—and no messy entanglement to follow—ought to have distracted him from his work.

  To his surprise, the opposite was true.

  With Francesca rustling about in the office, Grey could finally settle to his writing. He could let his mind roam over hypotheses, data, and conclusions, over descriptions of specimens he’d not seen for more than two years, but must bring to life on the page for his scientific brethren.

  And sisters. The occasional woman plied her hand at science, usually side by side with a spouse, father, brother, or uncle. Intrepid lot, though none of them had ever stirred Grey’s mating fancies.

  “Your lunch,” Francesca said, causing him nearly to jump from his chair. “Which you will please eat.”

  She stood beside Grey’s desk, arms crossed, looking like a delectable governess—a contradiction in terms, based on his childhood acquaintance with the species.

  “Is it noon already?”

  “One of the clock. You ordered a tea tray at ten and then didn’t touch a thing on it. I was compelled to help myself lest the staff be offended.”

  “What is this staff you speak of?” Grey lifted the lid from a bowl of soup. The scent of beef and potatoes alerted him to the fact that he was hungry—famished, in fact. “I don’t recall seeing evidence of any staff.”

  “I refer to the footmen who came in twice to build up the fire, once to deliver the tea tray, and once more to inquire regarding our wishes for the midday repast. I’m off to assure my friends I yet draw breath, while you, I suspect, must remain in the wilds of Peru.”

  “Brazil, actually. I won’t reach Peru for a week at least.” Grey’s desk was littered with paper, most of it covered with writing and sketches, a few pages bearing a single heading.

  The tray at his elbow included sandwiches and a bowl of stewed apples. He adored stewed apples, had dreamed of them in the jungle, which was probably a sign of mental imbalance.