A Duchess for all Seasons: The Collection

by Jillian Eaton

  “I am not crazy,” she said defensively, not liking his tone or what it implied. “I have a very good reason for being there.”

  “And that reason is?” he drawled when she fell silent.

  “I need a wealthy husband, Your Grace.” She hadn’t intended to be so blunt, but Wycliffe seemed like the sort of man who would appreciate candor. “And if the state of your household is any indication, you are badly in need of a wife.”

  “What does my household have to do with anything?” he scowled.

  “Nothing. It’s just that…well…” Her gaze flicked to a large vertical crack in the plaster wall behind Wycliffe’s head. “Everything’s falling apart a little bit, isn’t it? And – and I hate to be the one to tell you, but I believe you may have a rodent infestation.”

  “So I’ll get a cat,” he said with a negligent shrug. “Why the devil do I need a wife?”

  “Someone to help organize your personal affairs?” she suggested.

  “That’s what my valet is for.”

  “Someone to entertain guests?”

  “I told you.” Those dark eyes peered into hers with such intensity she wondered if he wasn’t gazing into her very soul. “I do not receive many guests.”

  “Maybe you’d get more if there weren’t mouse droppings on your furniture.” She looked meaningfully down at her armrest. When he simply stared at her she cleared her throat and said, “What about companionship?”

  “I’ll get two cats.”

  Hannah huffed out an exasperated breath. Her sister had said the duke was a tad eccentric, but she’d failed to mention he was stubborn as a mule. At least now she understood why some men dragged their heels at proposing marriage. It was embarrassing, to be turned down. Particularly when your only competition was a cat.

  But she couldn’t give up.

  She wouldn’t.

  Not when her family was depending on her persistence.

  Sitting up as straight as her spine would allow, she frowned at Wycliffe and adopted her best, most businesslike tone. The same tone she employed when the twins needed to be put in their place, or Cadence needed to be told that no, she couldn’t buy three pairs of the same exact shoe just in case one pair got muddy.

  “Your Grace, I would not be here if my circumstances were anything less than dire. You see, my father is struggling to keep up with creditors and–”

  “So you want money,” Wycliffe cut in. The corners of his mouth curled in a derisive sneer. “I should have thought as much.”

  “No,” Hannah corrected him sharply. “I want a husband. I am not a beggar and I am not looking for a handout. I am a woman of marriageable age and impeccable social standing who does not have the luxury of time. If I did, you can rest assured that I would not be here asking a complete stranger to marry me.”

  The duke’s chair gave an ominous creak as he leaned back and canted his head to the side. “No other man would have you, would they?”

  Hannah shifted uncomfortably on the chaise lounge. “You could say that I’ve been very…selective.”

  Wycliffe didn’t bother to disguise his snort. “And I just so happen to fit the bill, do I? Since this is the first time we’ve met, let me tell you a little about myself, Miss Fairchild. I’m a bastard,” he said flatly. “Perhaps not in the literal since, but every other possible way. I live all the way out here for one reason and one reason only: I dislike people, women in particular. I am often rude, callous, and insensitive. Then there is my physical impairment, which I am sure you have noticed.” His jaw hardened. “Suffice it to say, I am not husband material. You have wasted your time, Miss Fairchild. Worst yet, you’ve wasted mine.”

  “I don’t think I have,” Hannah said softly.

  “Oh really?” he asked, the bite of sarcasm in his voice unmistakable. “And how is that?”

  She glanced down at her lap. “You’re correct. You are rude, callous, and insensitive. Not to mention boorish, arrogant, and unkind. As for your physical impairment, well, none of us are perfect, are we?” She looked up. “I am not seeking perfection, Your Grace. I have flaws, although admittedly not as many as you.” Her mouth creased in the tiniest of smiles which Wycliffe did not return. He watched her intently, his expression unreadable save a faint tick in the corner of his jaw.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “What I want – what I need – is a husband who will settle my father’s debts. In return, I will not interfere with your life or how you wish to live it. I will care for your household, such as it is, and turn visitors away, if that’s what you want. I will make no requests of you, nor ask you to change in any way.”

  “I already live my life how I want to without a wife.” One dark brow lifted. “What makes you think I wish to complicate matters by acquiring one?”

  “What about an heir?” Hannah’s cheeks suffused with color. She was loathe to discuss such an intimate subject, but Wycliffe had left her no choice. “Surely you wish to have a child. A son to inherit your lands and title. That will be impossible without a wife.”

  A flicker of emotion – Surprise? Curiosity? Annoyance? It was impossible to tell – passed over his countenance. “I’m thirty, not eighty. I’ve time yet to sire offspring, if I ever have such an inclination.”

  “But what about a wife?” she pressed. “You would need to be married for any child to be considered legitimate.”

  “Miss Fairchild.” His tone held a hint of amusement. “I had no idea you were so forward.”

  “I am determined,” she corrected. “And intelligent enough to realize a perfect opportunity when I see one. Men and women have married for far less sustainable reasons than the one’s I have just presented, Your Grace. Please say you’ll at least consider my proposal.”

  “And if I refuse?” he said coolly.

  “Then I will find someone who will.” It was a complete bluff. The Duke of Wycliffe was her last hope. Having eight failed seasons behind her, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe the ninth one would be the charm. If this didn’t work, her family was going to find themselves in the poorhouse for sure. She gritted her teeth. “Your Grace–”

  “I will do it.” He spoke it so abruptly that at first she was certain she’d misunderstood him.

  “You’ll…do what?”

  “Marry you. I will marry you, Miss Fairchild.” His eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that what you came all the bloody way out here for?”

  “Yes. It is. But…just like that? You’ll marry me just like that?”

  “Just like that,” he confirmed with a curt inclination of his chin. “I presume you’d rather the nuptials occur sooner rather than later?”

  “Ah, yes. Yes, the sooner the better. My father–”

  “I will ensure any outstanding credits in his name will be paid in full by the end of the week.”

  Her mouth opened. Closed. “But – but I haven’t told you the amount yet,” she said faintly.

  “The amount is of no consequence. I only ask that he show some financial restraint in the future.” Wycliffe’s eyes bored into hers. “I am an extremely wealthy man, Miss Fairchild, but I abhor frivolous spending.”

  At least we have one thing in common, Hannah thought silently.

  “It’s getting late, and you are no doubt weary from your travels.” Favoring his right leg ever-so-slightly, Wycliffe stood up. “I will have a maid show you to one of the guest bedrooms.”

  “One without mice, I hope,” she quipped.

  The duke’s mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “The mice are the least of your concerns, Miss Fairchild.”

  And on that ominous note, he limped out of the parlor.

  Chapter Four

  Evan woke at dawn the next morning after a night spent tossing and turning and regretting his decision to accept Miss Hannah Fairchild’s outrageous proposal. Unfortunately, there was no going back now. He may have been a bastard, but he was a bastard who stood by his word. Which meant for better or worse – in thi
s case, almost certainly worse – he was soon to be a married man. To a woman he knew absolutely nothing about.

  That’s not completely true, he mused as he rolled out of bed and immediately sank into the hot bath he had his valet draw for him at the start of each day. As the chamomile-infused water lapped over his aching muscles he rested his head on the edge of the porcelain tub and stared up at the ceiling.

  He knew the color of Hannah’s eyes. Soft gray, like the fur of a rabbit.

  He knew the shape of her smile, although he would have liked to see it without the brackets of tension framing the corners of her mouth.

  He knew the curves of her body. Shapely and plump, like a golden pear ripe for the picking.

  And he knew she was brave, as only a brave woman – or an incredibly stupid one – would dare ask a duke to marry her. But what was courage, he reflected as he stood up and walked naked across his bedchamber, if not stupidity in the face of the impossible?

  “Breeches or trousers today, Your Grace?” Entering the room after a courteous knock, Evan’s valet, a forty-something year old man of medium height and build, went to the large armoire in the corner of the room and held up one of each. After a moment’s consideration, Evan nodded at the pair of tan trousers.

  “I will not be riding this morning, Peterson. I have other matters to attend to.”

  “Would these matters having anything to do with our two guests sleeping in the west wing?” Peterson waited until Evan had put on the clothes he’d selected and sat down in a chair facing the window before he approached him with a straight razor. His movements well practiced and precise, he shaved his employer’s chin and jaw with quick flicks of his wrist while Evan stared straight ahead.

  “The guests to whom you are referring are Miss Hannah Fairchild and her maid.” When he’d woken the sky had been dark and gray, the clouds heavy and saturated with rain. After a light drizzle they’d begun to disperse, revealing a clear blue sky and the promise of a cool, crisp autumn day. “They will be staying with us.”

  Peterson paused with the razor angled along the side of Evan’s throat. “Might I inquire as to how long?”

  “Indefinitely, I suppose. Miss Fairchild and I are engaged.”

  For the first time in all the years Peterson had been serving Evan, first as a livery boy and then as a footman and finally as his own personal valet, his hand slipped and Evan hissed out a breath when he felt the sharp edge of the blade slice into his flesh. Gingerly touching his jaw, he regarded Peterson with a lifted brow when his fingertips came away covered in blood.

  “I think I’ve quite enough scars, don’t you?”

  "I - I'm terribly sorry, Your Grace," the valet stuttered, his entire face turning as red as the apples weighing down the trees in the back orchards. "It was an accident. I – I don’t know what happened. Please forgive me.”

  Evan brushed off the apology. He had more pressing matters to attend to than scolding his valet for one small mistake. "My waistcoat, if you would. I need to go speak with my bride-to-be."

  Hannah looked up when she saw a flicker of movement at the top of the stairs. Coming to a halt in the middle of the foyer, she watched without moving as the Duke of Wycliffe – and her future husband, although she’d yet to fully believe it – made his way down the steps.

  He descended the master staircase with the rigidity of someone who had to consider each individual footfall. There was not a limp in his gait per say, but there was certainly a stiffness. She assumed the injury had come from his accident as a young child and she yearned to ask him what had happened. Not out of morbid curiosity, but to try to better understand the man who would soon be her husband. One glance at his furrowed brow, however, and she knew any questions about his past would have to wait.

  “Good morning!” she said, her voice filled with a sunny optimism she didn’t quite feel. How could she? Wycliffe may have agreed to her proposal, but at the end of the day she was still marrying a complete stranger. One who scowled more than he smiled and didn’t seem at all keen to marry her, even though he’d agreed – for reasons that remained a mystery – to do precisely that.

  “Walk with me,” he said curtly.

  “Walk – walk with you where?” Bewildered by the odd request, she nonetheless fell into step beside him as he marched out the front door and across the overgrown lawn. Weeds, still damp with morning dew, slapped against Hannah’s skirts as she struggled to keep up. For a man with a physical impairment, the duke certainly kept a brisk pace.

  “Where are we going?” Huffing a bit – it was no secret she preferred eating to exercise – Hannah failed to notice Wycliffe had suddenly stopped until it was too late. With a gasp and a soft cry she slammed into his back, the force of her momentum sending them both tumbling down a short embankment to land in a thicket of late blooming goldenrod.

  The duke twisted as he fell, his strong arms wrapping around Hannah’s smaller body in a vicelike grip that held her anchored against his chest even after their reckless descent had reached its conclusion. For a few precious seconds neither one of them moved and the only sounds came from the thunderous crash of the duke’s heart beating against her breast and the quiet rustling of the goldenrod as it swayed in the wind.

  “Are you injured?” Wycliffe asked. Keeping one arm secured around her waist he used the other to prop himself up on his elbow so he could look down at her, his gaze every bit as formidable as it had been in the parlor save the tiniest, tiniest glimmer of concern.

  Or perhaps it was just a fleck of goldenrod.

  “Just my pride.” Her attempted smile emerging as more of a grimace, Hannah struggled to push herself into a sitting position. A rather difficult maneuver, given that she was still pinned against the duke’s chest. The duke’s very hard, very muscular chest.

  From everything Cadence had told her about him she’d imagined a weak invalid who rarely ventured outside the library, but it was clear – in more ways than one – that Wycliffe was neither weak nor an invalid. No, her husband-to-be was very much a man. A powerful, attractive–

  “Good. Maybe next time you’ll pay better attention.”

  –infuriating man.

  “I shall strive to do my best,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Wycliffe frowned down at her suspiciously, no doubt wondering if she was being sincere or mocking him. Hannah wondered the same thing herself. “Would you mind allowing me to get up?” Uncomfortably aware of just how intimate their current position was, she tried once again to free herself from Wycliffe’s embrace, but like a wire snare the arm around her waist only tightened.

  “I don’t like clumsy women,” he growled.

  “And I don’t like rude, overbearing dukes,” she retorted.

  They glared at each other as they’d done in the doorway except this time neither one showed any signs of backing down. Hannah couldn’t say how long they laid there in the goldenrod, but it was long enough for her to notice the shallow cut on the side of his neck. Long enough for her to realize his eyes weren’t black, as she’d initially thought, but a deep, deep midnight blue. Long enough for her to wonder what his mouth would taste like.

  Those blue eyes abruptly darkened as he followed the direction of her gaze, her only warning before his hand curled possessively around the nape of her neck and he claimed her lips in a drugging kiss that was nothing like she’d expected…and everything she’d secretly yearned for.

  Unlike the heroines in some of her favorite books, Hannah had never been kissed in the moonlight or in a gazebo. She’d never been pinned up against a brick wall or pushed into a lilac bush (the latter of which sounded rather painful, but who was she to judge?). As the seasons ticked by one after another she began to wonder if she would ever be kissed…and by whom. Thankfully she did not have to wonder any longer.

  Wycliffe’s kiss was as contradictory as the man himself. At turns soft and hard, then demanding and coaxing, he stole the breath from her lungs and the heart from her chest in long sha
llow sips that left her yearning for more.

  Heat pooled low in her belly as he deepened the kiss, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips before sweeping boldly inside. The hand at her nape moved down, fingers tracing the delicate bumps of her vertebrae through the thin fabric of her dress until his palm cupped her hip. He squeezed and she squirmed, instinctively – albeit tentatively – rubbing herself against the hardest part of his body.

  His savage growl stopped her short. Fearing she’d done something wrong, she peered up at him through her lashes, gray eyes wide and uncertain.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Have I hurt–”

  “Do it again,” he rasped, and so she did. Again and again as he continued to kiss her until the fire between them was raging so hot and so high it was a small miracle the meadow did not spontaneously ignite.

  He touched her breasts, the rough pad of his thumb scraping over her nipples until she was panting from the pleasure of it. They rolled across the grass, flattening sprigs of goldenrod beneath them as their kiss deepened into something far more wicked than the innocent brush of lips upon lips.

  Wycliffe blazed a scorching trail up her leg as he slipped his hand beneath her skirts and explored the creamy plumpness of her thigh. Hannah stiffened when she felt the gentle weight of his palm pressing against her curls, then softened like honey melting into a warm cup of tea when he began to use his fingers in a most extraordinary way.

  “Oh,” she whispered dazedly. “That’s…that’s quite nice.”

  He growled something indecipherable before he captured her mouth with his, drawing her bottom lip between his teeth and biting down with just enough pressure to elicit a gasp. He soothed the small bite with a flick of his tongue at the same time his finger slipped inside of her and Hannah was lost.

  Head flung back, eyes heavy with passion, body drunk with desire, she opened herself to pleasure she’d never dreamed possible. Like the most skilled of musicians, Wycliffe strummed her core as if she were a finely tuned instrument until every inch of her was quivering in anticipation. Anticipation of what, precisely, she couldn’t be certain…until all of a sudden everything tightened and held and then with a single stroke of his finger it came crashing down in wave after wave of mind-numbing bliss.