by Darcy Burke
“William Allsop did that?” Mr. Tidmarsh marveled, aghast.
“The ink soaked in.” Sophie brushed her fingers over the scar and let her hand drop. “And I knew—if that had been my husband, as I thought—I knew that I could never trust him, or rely on him. I knew that even as a pauper, I deserved better.”
Sophie took a deep breath and looked up, right into Julian’s steel-blue eyes. Her own anguish echoed back at her, deepened and enlarged by its progress through Julian’s heart, bolstered by his pity and thundering with his fury.
He, too, had been wronged that night.
“Thank God you didn’t marry Allsop,” whispered Laura, and then she choked out a horrified laugh. “Thank God that I didn’t.”
“I, for one, hope we’ve seen the last of him…,” began Honoria, and the whole table erupted into conversation, each person promising retribution in their own way, shaking away the pall that Sophie had cast over her own wedding.
Only Julian remained silent, his attention focused with piercing intensity on her.
“We shall find someone else for you, Miss Tidmarsh,” promised Honoria.
“Mama has been thinking of visiting relatives in London,” replied Laura. “Can we count on seeing you there, Sophie? I know I’ll be glad to encounter a friendly face.”
“Of course!” Bettina beamed. “We’d planned to stay with the Dowager Duchess during our visit. But now Sophie will chaperone me! I’m sure you can join us.”
And so it went. It seemed every turn of the conversation brought up some aspect of the future that Sophie had forgotten to contemplate before accepting Julian’s proposal. She knew he’d risen to the rank of duke. She hadn’t thought very much about becoming a duchess.
Or, to be brutally honest with herself, a wife.
The breakfast dragged on through the afternoon. By the time Sophie bid farewell to the last guest, she had to enunciate each word very, very carefully. She sagged against Julian once they were finally alone, closing her eyes and shamelessly melting into his supportive arms.
She steadied herself so she could whisper in his ear, “Do you know what I’ve been thinking about?”
“Yes.” He spun her in a circle, making her laugh. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Right there.” She pointed at the table. Her finger may have wobbled. “Just sweep the centerpiece aside.”
Julian waltzed her out of the dining room into the corridor. He pressed her up against the wall and trailed kisses down her neck. “What about here?”
“Right here,” Sophie agreed enthusiastically. She fisted her skirts, began to raise them up.
Julian nipped at her collarbone and hustled her into the spiral stairwell. “Or here?”
“On the stone steps.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and rose up on tiptoes, bending his head toward hers.
Julian laughed into her open mouth, and she laughed back. He kissed her with the urgency and desperation she craved, his hands roaming as she tried to tug him closer.
And then he grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her up the stairs at a run, around the spiral and out into a new corridor. He danced her to the low balustrade overlooking the courtyard and dipped her backward over the drop. “And here?” He smiled wickedly. “You can balance on the stone rail while I make love to you.”
“I won’t let go,” Sophie replied, quite gravely.
“Sophie.” Julian lifted her, one arm braced along her back and the other under her knees. He carried her, moving quickly now, leather soles squeaking against wood. “If only that were true.”
Sophie bit into the arm of his dove-gray jacket. “Try it and see.”
“Not tonight.” Julian dropped her back onto her feet and opened one half of a set of double doors. He guided her through, positioning her so that she faced the door, which he closed behind them. Cupping her cheeks with his hands, he drew her close and kissed her gently, almost chastely, lip to lip and breath to breath, before turning her to face the room.
“What about here?” He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her tight against him.
All she saw, at first, was her own image reflected in the pier glass that filled the gap between the room’s only two windows. She looked sloppy and disheveled, her eyes too dark, her lips too red. The mirror reflected Julian’s profile, lips pressed to her ear, his shoulders framing hers.
The room’s two small windows pierced the rough-hewn stone wall on either side of the mirror, channeling yolky, late-afternoon sunshine onto the wooden floorboards. To one side lay a seating area, to the other a canopied bed.
It was the bed that drew her attention—absurdly tall, the top of the mattress breast-high, drapes of sky blue velvet roped to every post and hanging in swags along the canopy. The pillows and sheets appeared to be plain white linen, but thick knit blankets and furs in shades of gray and brown had been piled over them.
Sophie took a step toward the bed, only to jerk to a halt against her own dress, which did not move with her. “What—”
Her dress loosened. Julian, at her back, had been fiddling with the ties and laces.
“Oh!” Sophie began plucking the pins in her hair, sharp rods of thin metal, and let them drop with a delicate tinkling sound onto the floor. Moments later, her dress fell down to cover them.
Wearing only her chemise and corset, Sophie twirled. “I’ll valet you,” she said, dropping down to one knee. “Let me take your boots.”
“Sophie!” Julian grabbed her by her armpits, hauling her up to a standing position. “You just scattered pins all over the floor.”
“And I could have brushed them aside,” she retorted, jerking out of his grip.
Julian held up his hands, palms outward, to signal that he didn’t mean to offend, and then began to loosen his cravat. “But would you have?”
The cravat floated down to land atop her fallen dress, revealing the strong column of his throat, the hollow notch at the top of his sternum.
Sophie swallowed. “I don’t mind a prick or two.”
Julian, unbuttoning his tailcoat, burst out laughing. “Or two? Careful, Sophie.”
“From the pins!” Sophie narrowed her eyes. “Though if you’re putting words into my mouth…” She grabbed at the fall of his trousers, fumbling for the buttons.
He tugged the hem of his shirt loose and, taking hold of her wrists, dragged her grip upward, to land on the flat surface of his abdomen as he stripped off his waistcoat and pulled the shirt over his head. Sophie spread her palms and fingers over the silky skin, ridged and hard, then melted against his chest as he bared it to her with a greedy moan, rubbing her cheek into the faint swelling of his pectoral muscles, exhaling hotly onto the pale coin of his nipple.
Her corset loosened.
Sophie swayed when Julian took a step back and pushed the corset down over her hips.
“Step out,” he instructed, holding her steady as she lifted her feet. He kicked the corset away and smoothed his hands along her sides, thumbs tracing the shape of her belly.
Sophie pushed the straps of her chemise off her shoulders and let the garment slide to her waist, reaching out for Julian again—his lean, lithe torso clad only in firm muscle, shifting and flexing under the unblemished stretch of his skin. “You are…”
“Go on.” Julian smiled, cocky, as he walked her backward toward the bed.
“The reason why clothes were invented,” she said. “Because all the men who do not look as you do could not bear to be seen.”
“And before I was born?”
“They must have felt desperately imperfect.” Sophie stroked his bare skin, hypnotized by it. “Full of shame and longing.”
“Don’t say that.” He lifted her up, letting her chemise drift to the floor, and set her down on the bed, so that she looked down at him—the curved ridge of his brow and the strong beak of his nose hawklike, from this perspective. “Is that how you feel? It’s not true.”
“Not anymore.” Sophie touched her scar. “Thi
s is what makes me beautiful.”
“You were always beautiful. You always will be.”
Sophie leaned down and whispered in Julian’s ear, “Then why are you down there when I’m up here?”
Julian reached for the fall of his trousers and Sophie toppled onto her back. Into layers of whisper-light cashmere, plush angora and dense sable, a cocoon of such enveloping, decadent softness that she groaned and rolled about in it like a wallowing pig.
And then Julian was next to her, the coarse golden hair on his long legs pricking hers as they tangled, his arms reaching for her waist and then her breasts and then her hips, and she only had to angle her head to invite a kiss.
She touched him, half wondering and half impatient, reaching for the hard shaft of velvet-clad flesh, yes, wrapping her hand around the length and stroking from base to tip.
“I remember…” Sophie stroked again and Julian undulated his hips, muscles in his stomach and groin tensing and releasing in a wave. “I remember thinking this was the best thing I’d ever felt.”
Julian’s expression shifted from bliss to strain, and Sophie wondered hazily if she’d said something wrong.
“I’ve never forgotten,” he said, gently shaking her hand loose from his male member and settling it, instead, on his shoulder.
Sophie narrowed her eyes. She shoved the shoulder onto which he’d relocated her hand, and when he rolled onto his back she followed, slinging her leg over his hips and climbing atop him, on all fours. She stretched like a cat, dragging her breasts down his chest. “You don’t want me to touch you?”
“I want you to.” He combed through the curls over her mound, as though for emphasis, his touch feather-light and fleeting. “So badly, Sophie. You can’t know.”
“I can.” Sophie reached for his sex again, spread her knees a little wider. “I do.”
“No.” He grabbed her wrist with one hand, stopping her, and her waist with the other, holding her too high to make an intimate connection.
Sophie frowned. She dragged her attention away from the mesmeric landscape of his body to his face, tense and unreadable. “Why?”
He flipped her onto her back, making her squeal. “We have all night.” He caressed her snarling hair. “Why rush?”
Sophie shut her eyes. Her head swam, though she lay quite still. She felt like she were floating, at sea, following her ghost letters down the river. She took a deep breath, exhaled.
“You’re lying to me.”
“And you’re drunk,” Julian replied bluntly. “Sophie, I want you to remember this. Maybe it’s selfish of me. I want you to remember. I want to be remembered.”
“I always forget.” Sophie kept her eyes closed. She sensed the injustice of her response, but couldn’t hold her tongue.
“Humor me.” His lips closed over her nipple, and then the wet heat of his mouth as he sucked. “There’s plenty to occupy us for an hour or two. The sun hasn’t even set.”
“I don’t want to be managed.” Sophie snapped her eyes open. Julian hovered next to her. He was trying so hard. She smacked him in the arm, with as much force as she possessed. “I don’t want to be placated.”
“Shh.” Julian caught her raised arm and used it to lever her into a spooning position, her back to his front. He combed his hand through her hair. “Shh.”
Sophie quieted. She felt warm and comfortable, held, cared for. And tired. She woke early; she slept early. Habit and alcohol combined to hang irresistible weights from her eyelids. She let them fall, but held onto consciousness for a while, listening to the quiet murmur of Julian’s voice, enjoying the steady stroke of his hands over her body.
She felt loved.
And she fell asleep.
Chapter 19
Julian woke with the world’s most glorious erection. Glorious because his cock was so goddamned hard. Christ. Some days really were better than others. But also because there was nothing more splendid than an erection with a purpose. A goal. A job to do. Simple creatures, cockstands: they just wanted a bit of honest work to be happy.
Julian spread his arms wide, searching for the sweet nudity of his new wife, the long legs he hadn’t spread, the full breasts that made his hands feel so empty, but he reached only rumpled sheets. He raised himself up on one arm, wondering if she’d scooted off toward the edge, but no. The bed contained only one occupant.
Careless of his nakedness, Julian shoved off the mattress and padded, bare feet slapping against the wooden floorboards, to the door that connected his bedroom suite with Sophie’s. He hadn’t shown her to her bedroom, but he supposed she knew High Bend’s layout well enough to claim it on her own.
He’d hoped that she’d sleep with him most nights. Of course, he’d also hoped to rekindle her enthusiasm for bedroom play, and he’d gotten an avid carnal appetite straight from a bottle—which should teach him to be careful what he wished for.
He opened the connecting door to find Sophie’s suite vacant. No signs of recent occupation—the coals in the grate had not been lit. He returned to his own rooms, and rang for his valet. While he bathed and dressed, he asked, “Where is my wife? Has she gone down to breakfast?”
“She left for her shop on Halftail Road hours ago, Your Grace,” replied the valet. “Called for a carriage as the sun was rising.”
Several replies hovered on the tip of his tongue: At her shop? he might have said, mockingly.Off to her thrice-damned place of business at dawn on the day after her wedding, after falling into a drunken snore before the night had well and truly started? But he had no intention of trading intimacies with his valet, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
Julian consulted his pocket watch, the Iron & Wine label still glued to the interior of the lid. Just past nine o’clock. A perfectly civilized time to be up. What was she thinking, out and about as the sun rose? He proceeded down to breakfast, thence to his study to tackle the work of the day. Luckily, by now he’d ascertained that at least one of the various properties, businesses, or accounts he’d inherited would always be in a state of crisis, requiring his immediate attention.
When he called for Vasari Jones, the man showed up dressed entirely in orange—highlighting, apparently on purpose, the obnoxious color of his hair—and looking a little smug.
“You’re about to tell me what I can do for you,” Julian guessed sourly.
“I had no such plans.” Jones set Julian’s schedule book and task list on the table, unhurried. “But, yes, Your Grace, I have given some thought to how you might return the favor I was honored to do for you.”
“Now’s the time, Mr. Jones. Don’t be shy.”
“I had wondered, Your Grace, if you had political ambitions?”
“You wondered that?”
“It is my understanding that you left a post in the Foreign Office when you inherited your title.”
“That’s right,” Julian agreed. “I did.”
“It would only be natural if you carried forward your interests, the knowledge you’ve acquired while working behind the scenes, as it were, onto a larger stage.”
Julian fiddled with the lump of iron ore on the desk, considering his reply. “I have no wish to make a name for myself in politics.”
“Perhaps you exert your influence subtly—in the notoriously secretive fashion of the Duke of Hastings?”
Julian raised an eyebrow at Jones. The second a man’s influence on the government became “notorious,” it could no longer be called “secretive.” If rural functionaries in Derbyshire knew Hastings’s name, they ought to recognize him for what he was: not the impassioned éminence grise they imagined but, rather, a selfish bastard unwilling to dedicate himself to public service.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re hoping to achieve?” Julian asked.
“What I’m interested in,” said Jones, lacing his fingers together on the desk and leaning forward, “is a lateral move. I feel that I’m an able secretary. I’d like the opportunity to prove it on a more challenging field of play.
Serving as the right-hand man to one of the great men of the day—that is my dream.”
“You want a recommendation?” Julian leaned back in his chair, somewhat impressed.
“A strong and personal recommendation,” emphasized Jones. “I do not expect to find myself scribing notes for the Prime Minister. Not yet. But a man who might become Prime Minister? A man of some ambition, starting an upward trajectory?”
“Do you care about your new employer’s political leanings?” Julian asked. “Are there any issues you feel passionately about—Ireland, soldiers, the poor, India?”
“At the moment,” replied Jones, “my passion is—like my talents—for sale.”
“I could recommend you to an MP.” Julian reeled off half a dozen names. “Some of them will go far. But if you’ve got your heart set on the Duke of Hastings, I could approach him. You might not thank me for it, once you know him—he’s not a likable man.”
“You believe Hastings would respond to your request?”
“If I ask, I am certain he will find a place for you.”
“I—” Vasari Jones took a deep breath. “Please, Your Grace.”
Julian thought about repeating his warning, then reached for a blank sheet of paper instead. Hastings was a stone-cold monster, but some lessons had to be learned the hard way.
He spared a stray thought for his lonely morning, suppressed a croak of laughter, and began to write.
Luncheon and a meeting about his mine shares filled the afternoon. As the endless daylight stretched on and on, Julian finished his work and made his way to the library, thinking he’d busy himself with the most recent London papers.
When he arrived, he found the Dowager Duchess and Lord Kingston entwined by the window. The Dowager spied him through a half-slitted eye and the pair disengaged. Kingston, in a rare moment of gentlemanly delicacy, kept his back to Julian while she put her clothing to rights.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Kingston asked, when he finally turned around.
The barb stung. So, in a different way, did Kingston’s dishevelment—hair tousled, neckcloth loose, jacket unbuttoned.
