A Wicked Duke's Prize: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Henrietta Harding

  “My God, Owen…” she cried, her voice husky.

  But he didn’t have time to answer. He plunged deeper, filling her, and made love to her passionately. Her head dropped back as she felt herself begin to crest, floating into whatever heavens this sort of activity allowed, a powerful release that came within and seemed to clench itself around Owen’s cock, so that he felt it too and came hard, his hand across her cheek and his eyes enormous and glossy with lust and pleasure and something else, something like love.

  ***

  When it was over, Rebecca and Owen lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Rebecca had coiled herself around him, as though they’d always been attached and forever would be. A thought ran through her, that if she did marry him, she would be allowed same such afternoons for the rest of her life. She’d never imagined such beauty in marriage.

  “So,” she began, laughing already at the thought, “How has your quest to fight our impending marriage been? Have you found a way out of this?”

  Owen stroked her naked back, her hair. “Why do you ask me now?”

  Rebecca lifted her head, her chin on his chest and her eyes towards his. “Because I know you’ll fail. I love to see a man’s weaknesses in bed.”

  Owen arched his brow. “So, you’re admitting something about yourself. You’ve done all this before.”

  “A lady would never tell,” Rebecca returned.

  Owen chuckled. Rebecca’s heart surged. She recognised that listening to him laugh was something that thrilled her with a very unique type of pleasure. She yearned to hear the sound for the rest of her life.

  “No, but really, darling,” Rebecca said. “Tell me. What is your scheme? Have you found a way out of it?”

  She yearned for whatever banter he could toss back.

  But his response filled her with a horrid sense of dread.

  “Actually, I do have a way out of our impending marriage.”

  Rebecca clicked her tongue. “You’re joking. Aren’t you?”

  Owen’s smile faltered. “No. I’m really not.”

  Rebecca lurched up, collecting herself back in her petticoats. She gaped at him. “You mean you actually…”

  Owen nodded. Rebecca hadn’t expected this at all. Why on earth would he still go through with it, after they’d devoted such time and words to one another? She leapt off the bed and stood in only her underclothes. Her hands clenched into fists.

  “You must be joking,” Rebecca whispered.

  Owen slipped his legs over the side of the bed yet remained seated. “I don’t understand what the trouble is. You asked me a question. I’ve answered it.”

  Rebecca lifted a finger, rage permeating across her face. “I cannot envision a more evil man than you. You’re a wretched human, horrid in every way. You…”

  Owen tore up from the mattress. “You’ve misunderstood something.”

  “No. I haven’t,” Rebecca blurted.

  “Rebecca, think to yourself what has occurred thus far today,” he said. “You arrived to my house without warning. You tell me, in some sort of strange, convoluted way, that I’m not the most wretched person you could have been engaged to. And then…”

  Rebecca turned on her heel and rushed to the hallway, then tore down the steps. She couldn’t believe what an imbecile she’d been. She grabbed her dress and laced it up over her shoulders and busied herself with the buttons. Owen stamped down the steps after her, much slower, as though he hadn’t a care in the world. When he appeared at the base of the steps, he stood in only a pair of trousers, his muscles enormous and his black hair wilder than normal. As Rebecca stood before him, the smell of sex sizzled between them, memory of all they’d done.

  “Goodbye, Owen,” Rebecca blurted. “I hope to never see you again.”

  She grabbed the door handle and headed out towards the stables. When she was in full view of it, she was grateful to find that Anthony had, indeed, sent his carriage back. She ambled inside, enormous tears burning down her cheeks. Anthony and Tabitha’s footman turned and asked where she wished to go – back to hers or back to Tabitha’s. She blinked at the ground, where her the hem of her skirts dragged on the floor of the carriage. She could hardly muster an answer.

  Finally, she told him.

  Although she didn’t wish to return back home to her father’s estate, she felt she had nowhere else to go.

  Tabitha and Anthony had rebuked her, as had Owen.

  She wasn’t wanted anywhere. And she hadn’t a clue what she would do with her life next.

  Chapter 22

  The moment Rebecca’s carriage disappeared, Owen turned back up the steps and returned to his bedroom, slotting himself across the mattress once more and screaming into his hands. Throughout the previous week, he’d thought of little else than the horrendous position his father had put him in and, of course, his near-constant romantic notions for Rebecca.

  When he’d opened the door to find her staring back at him, he’d thought he’d entered a dream. Only when she’d pointed out the barren nature of his home did he put everything together. Time had pressed him far forward, and she’d come to find him, to demand something of him.

  But he’d scorned her, at least in her mind, he had. His heart had swam with love and lust and when she’d propped her chin up on his chest and gazed at him like that, he’d felt the wildest notion, that the two of them could do that, lay there together in one another’s arms, for many, many more years without growing bored. Perhaps, in a sense, he’d answered the way he had because he enjoyed the wicked banter between them. He loved feeling them pitted against one another. And furthermore, it excited him sexually, forced his heart to race. He’d envisioned them rushing in for another round before her return home.

  Instead, she’d shown herself to be far more fearful and sensitive than he could have ever imagined.

  When she’d stared at him from the foyer, her eyes glossy with tears, she’d informed him that she never wished to see him again. That was altogether too dramatic, the sort of thing a child said when she hadn’t got her own way. Owen’s mind had raced for something to say, anything to keep her there. But she’d fled, rushed towards the carriage and sped away from the estate.

  Owen scrubbed at his eyes, mulling over his options. Downstairs, he heard the slam of the front door once more, followed by the muffled tone of his father’s voice. With a sudden flurry, Owen grabbed his shirt and swept it over his shoulders and buttoned as he fled his bedroom. When he reached the stairs, he blinked down at his mother and father, both forlorn, their eyes towards the ground.

  “I don’t understand why you can’t look at me,” his father muttered. “Not even once. Not even…”

  His mother’s hand crept over the stair bannister. “Look around you, Neil. Our house is barren. You sold all of my dead father’s things. Our family is nothing any longer. You gambled it all away. You’re no more a man than you…”

  She glanced up, stopped. Her thin lips pressed together tightly. His father’s eyes raced up the stairs to find Owen, gazing down upon them. His father collected his hat off his head and pressed it against his chest.

  “Good evening, son,” he said. His voice quivering.

  “Mother. Father,” Owen replied. Seeing them there, in the barren wasteland of their home, made him feel as though stones weighed his body down. He took a step, then another, and creaked down the staircase towards his mother. Up close, she looked even worse, little wrinkles forming like spider webs around her eyes. He eased forwards and placed a sad kiss on her cheek, but she seemed even to recoil at that. He supposed it wasn’t her fault. She was terribly unaccustomed to touch.

  “How was the doctor?” Owen asked.

  “He administered some medicine,” his father said, his voice bouncing a little, as though he wanted to masquerade another sort of mood. “And said just a few more days of bed rest. Then she’ll be right as rain.”

  “I adore it when you speak about me as though I’m not here,” his mother said. She then
ripped to the side and took to the steps, far faster than she should have, given her state. To Owen’s surprise, she reached the first landing and disappeared, as though the thought of abandoning her only son and husband had given her the strength she so needed.

  When Owen’s eyes returned to his father’s, he found him to look entirely defeated, a stooped man of a much greater age. He turned on his heel and walked towards the same chair in the parlour on which Owen had sat only a few hours before. Once there, he removed his pipe from his pocket and puffed at it absently, his eyes glazed.

  “I can’t envision a time when we’ll be happy again, Owen,” his father murmured. “Until you marry the Frampton girl. I suppose, from there, we will begin to rebuild.”

  In the wake of what had happened that afternoon, Owen hadn’t a clue whether or not he needed to find a way out of the marriage. He had a strange, sinister feeling that Rebecca would dig herself out of it herself. After all, she was far more famous for such a thing than he, having abandoned countless others over the years. He’d enraged her. She’d felt he’d belittled her, under-appreciated her. Anything she orchestrated, he felt sure he would deserve.

  And thusly, he would bring increased shame onto his family.

  “I received a letter from James,” his father said suddenly.

  Owen tapped the rest of the way down the steps and stood in the foyer, his head turned to watch as the clouds formed, thick and grey. Soon, they would kick out rain.

  “He said he’s settled in with his cousin in London.”

  Owen leaned heavily against the wall, unable to speak. His tongue felt thick, like leather.

  “I daresay, I can’t remember the last day I spent in this house without hearing the familiar sound of his voice. Without his checking in on me,” his father continued. “Do you suppose he thinks of it too? Or perhaps, it’s opposite, for him. He had to care for me, all those years. Care for you and your mother too. And now his hours are clear. He hasn’t a care in the world, perhaps. I daresay, once four arrives, he doesn’t jump upright and think, my! It’s time to alert the maid for Neil’s tea. No.” His father clicked his tongue and said, “No, it’s a sad thing, indeed, when you realise how much of your existence is tied up in the mind of a butler you paid to be by your side. Now, of course, your mother won’t look at me. All our things, our help, gone. Even you, you tend to the stables. My son. My only son. Now, a part of the property.”

  Owen hadn’t words for his father. He felt alien, enraged, and unwilling to keep him in the house that night, the way he had the previous week, with a glass of scotch, with conversation. Rather, if his father willed to go into the world, to gamble away the last of it, Owen couldn’t care. Not then.

  And in fact, only a few hours later, Owen did hear the click of the front door. Truly, his father was a sick man, a man who required assistance. But in these sad, dark moments, alone in his bed, Owen hadn’t the ability to fix it. He hadn’t the strength to mend anything, not even his own breaking heart.

  Chapter 23

  When Rebecca arrived home from the Crauford estate, she found the place nearly empty, only the maids milling about. Molly ducked out of the kitchen to say hello, her cheeks ruddy and her eyes bright with humour. “There she is. My darling girl. Where have you been? You missed dinner.”

  “Terribly sorry, Molly,” Rebecca replied, her stomach stirring with panic, with hunger. “I was caught at Tabitha’s.”

  “Ah! So you’ve eaten already,” Molly said.

  Rebecca pressed her lips together, shook her head. Molly beckoned her into the kitchen and pulled her into a kitchen chair. With the crank of her overly powerful arm, she sliced a piece from the freshly baked bread, added a large smear of butter, and placed a plate of roasted chicken and potatoes before her. Everything remained warm, beautiful, and Rebecca ate heartily, listening to Molly’s random gossip regarding the other cooks and maids she frequently met in the village. When Rebecca finished, her plate glinted clean and Molly whistled, impressed.

  “I daresay you must have worked up an appetite at Tabitha’s,” she said. “A surprise, truly, as the two of you aren’t girls any longer, are ye? No longer out running across the moors, scraping your knees. Goodness, I miss those long-forgotten days, don’t you? You were always a tan little thing, despite that red hair of yours, and your father and sisters could hardly keep you inside.”

  “I miss those days more than I can possibly describe,” Rebecca said, speaking mostly to the empty plate before her.

  Molly grabbed a bottle of wine from the worktop and sloshed a portion into a glass. She tapped it before Rebecca and gestured. “It seems you need it.”

  Rebecca drank heartily, her eyes closed. In the midst of it, she tapped her glass on the table and heard the creak of the front door, the heavy footsteps of her father’s boots. Her eyes flashed towards the door to see his shadow, peeking in, as he cut into the study door, just beside. Rebecca rose, her heart lurching.

  “I must speak with my father,” she said.

  Molly’s hand wrapped around her elbow. Her eyes looked suddenly fearful. “You’ve found a way to get out of it. Haven’t you? Oh, Rebecca, I prayed on end that this would be the one. I thought…”

  But Rebecca couldn’t remain, not like this. Her anger towards Owen felt like a fuel. She shot towards the open door and appeared before her father’s study, her nostrils flaring. Her father hadn’t yet bothered to close the door, as he’d busied himself at the fireplace. For whatever reason, summer temperatures had floated down, and a fire was required at this late hour. He swept the match into the fireplace and watched as a trickling flame rippled across the wood. He didn’t seem to notice Rebecca at all until she stepped inside and closed the door stiffly behind her. He jumped with sudden fear.

  “Good evening, Father.”

  Her father calmed his face and gestured towards the guest chair, the very one in which she’d sat to hear the news of her impending engagement. “Good evening,” he said. “Please. Sit down.”

  Rebecca did, although she resented doing what she was told. Her father poured himself a glass of scotch and sat across from her, his eyebrows burrowed tight against his eyes. He seemed mesmerised by her sudden appearance.

  “I’ve something to announce to you,” she said suddenly. She collected her hands across her knee and lifted her shoulders, so that she looked straight up and down, every bit the proper lady she’d been trained to be.

  “Ah. So there’s a reason for this sudden, very formal meeting,” her father said.

  Beside them, the fire crackled louder, created its own personality from thin air.

  “I’ve come to tell you that I will not marry Owen Crauford.”

  Her father’s reaction was expected. He cast his eyes back, turned his shoulders forward, and seemed to marvel at the words. “I’ve told you again and again, Rebecca. This one. This Owen Crauford. He must be your husband. We’ve already arranged so much.”

  “Father, I tell you now. I will not marry this man.”

  “Rebecca, we’ve been through this. With how many others, now? Can you possibly imagine how tired I am? Can you imagine how I ache to… to not hear my name and yours echoed out through the village? ‘He simply cannot find a proper husband for his youngest daughter.’ ‘I’ve heard she’s a bit of a freak.’ ‘What do you make of them?’” He gaped at her, his palms flattening out across his desk.

  But rage stirred in Rebecca’s soul. She hadn’t the energy to care at all about what some idiot townspeople assumed to be true. She scoffed and said, “Father, I don’t believe you're hearing me correctly. You may bring me any other man in the world. Any. Other. I don’t care his title, his face, whether or not he’s cross-eyed. Nothing. I will marry any of them, as you wish. But I will not marry Owen Crauford. He’s a wretched man, and I want nothing to do with him.”