Desperate Duchesses

by Eloisa James

  He chuckled, and the low sound of it made her feel breathless. “I own a great deal of property.”

  She nodded, trying to fix her mind on property. Of course he did. It was like her father’s eleven peach trees: Damon would have some peach trees of his own. After all, he was an earl. The thought slipped away from her mind and was replaced by a memory of the night before, a memory of how smooth and hot he felt in her hand.

  “You see,” he said, “I never could make myself care about chess pieces, but I do like to play with money.”

  “Hmm,” she said, and peeked at him.

  A slow smile curved one side of his mouth. “Why do I think that you are uninterested in my financial pastimes?”

  “I am interested,” she said hastily. But she could feel pink spreading down her bodice. Down to the drawstring that awkwardly separated her bodice from her skirts.

  “If you look at me like that,” he said, “I’ll kiss you.”

  She couldn’t not look. His green eyes fascinated her. A mere glance from him caused a tender warmth between her legs to blossom. She wanted to giggle—and gasp.

  “Damn,” he said, and the back of his hand touched her cheek for a moment. Then he stretched, his arms suddenly flashing up into the air. But the footman behind them was balanced on the small platform at the back of the boat, wielding the great pole.

  Before Roberta could blink there was a flash of crimson livery and a splash. Cool water dashed the boat, hit the muslin roof, sprinkled her dress. She yelped, but Damon was already standing, leaning over the side.

  “I can’t pull you in or we’ll go over,” he was shouting to the footman, who was treading water and pushing sodden hair from his forehead. “Best make your way to shore and go back to the house.”

  The footman gurgled something that sounded like an assent, and managed to maneuver the pole into Damon’s hands. He leaped onto the small platform and pushed the boat forward again.

  “I didn’t know you knew how to do that,” Roberta said, changing places so that she was facing Damon, sitting with her back to the current. He was poling the boat forward with long smooth strokes.

  “Push footmen in the river, or punt?”

  She was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. The two other boats, now far ahead of them, turned around a corner of the river and vanished altogether. “Did we arrange a spot to meet them?” she enquired.

  “No, we didn’t.”

  She watched his smooth, powerful movements as he poled the boat.

  “Damon, who is Teddy’s mother?” she asked suddenly. “I know why you took him in…but who was the grandmother who brought him to you? Is he the child of your mistress?”

  “I don’t have a mistress,” he said, shaking back a lock of hair that had fallen over his head. “I haven’t had one for the past five years.”

  “And Teddy is just five, so—”

  “No, Teddy is six. I pensioned my mistress after Teddy came to my house, and no, she wasn’t his mother.”

  She looked at him.

  “I can’t tell you who his mother is,” he said finally. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh,” Roberta said, disappointed. “I am very good at keeping secrets.”

  He pulled the pole from the water and an arch of water drops flew like shining diamonds back to the water. “I’ll tell my wife, of course,” he said conversationally.

  “Oh,” Roberta said again. But the word sounded different in her mouth this time.

  There was a bump and she squealed. “You’ve gone aground,” she cried, adding hastily, “not that I mean it as a criticism.” They had scooted right under the vast sheltering branches of a willow tree hanging over the edge of the bank and trailing its boughs in the water. Dappled light slid through the boughs, covering the boat with the shadows of the willow’s slender spear-leaves.

  Damon drove the pole deeply into the bottom of the river, and then he slung a rope over it.

  Roberta didn’t say a word. In fact, the whole lazy river seemed to hold its breath. She couldn’t hear a sound other than the dull and smothered voice of the water, and somewhere, a lark singing.

  “Our boat,” Damon said, with a glance so suggestive that she felt herself grow even pinker, “has run aground.”

  “I see that.”

  “What a shame. I may have to undress in order to save us from sinking.”

  “Really?”

  He pulled off his coat.

  Roberta could feel giggles rising inside her, faster than the bubbles rising from the bottom of the river. “What do you think you’re doing?” she enquired.

  “Undressing.”

  His eyes sang to her in some language that she had just learned, but seemed to know instinctively.

  “Hadn’t you better follow suit?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  “I?” Roberta said. “I? Undress in a public river, in a flat-bottomed boat?”

  “Be grateful it’s not another kind of boat,” Damon said, sitting down on the little platform and pulling off his boots.

  “You can’t really mean it,” Roberta said, feeling very sure that he did mean it. “Anyone might happen by.”

  “Nonsense! Almost no one travels this river, since it goes nowhere. We’re tied up to yet another cow pasture. This one has actual cows, and one must assume, fresher cowpats. It is, therefore, unlikely to host picnickers as well.”

  “Impeccable logic,” she murmured. He pulled off his shirt. He was all sleek muscle, dappled by leaves, dusted golden by the sun, strong…

  She reached out without even realizing and then froze again. “I can’t do this,” she cried. “What if someone saw us!”

  “No one will,” he said and his voice was as potent as brandy. He was beside her now, throwing cushions onto the floor of the boat. But he took his time unlacing her gown, and after a time she fell into the sweetness of the shaded little room they had found under the willow.

  “I suppose,” she whispered, “if we sit on the floor no one could see below our waists.”

  “If we lie down, they can’t see anything at all. Don’t you think it’s done all the time?” He waited for her answer, eyebrow raised.

  “No!” she said, with half a gasp because her dress was gone and he didn’t seem to be bothering to remove her stays, his hands were running up her legs seeking that sweet spot, and she was arching toward him.

  He lay down in the boat and pulled her toward him. She gave up the battle—what battle?—and fell on him with a little cry as her softness came onto his hardness, his muscles, his demands. He was unlacing her stays while he kissed her, deep and hard, and she couldn’t help squirming against him, gasping against his lips.

  One of his hands was between her legs, playing a rhythm that matched the sound of the water. She didn’t even feel out of doors. It was as if her small cries and the deep sounds he made when she touched him were swallowed into the vast stillness of the watery afternoon, leaving their small boat as enclosed and private as a walled room. Just the lark broke its invisible walls as he kept singing, spiraling higher and higher into the sky.

  “Touch me,” he commanded, his mouth finding her waiting, taut nipple.

  She cried out and her hands flew blindly about his body, touching him here and there, the smooth curve of a shoulder, the rippled muscles on his back. She couldn’t concentrate though, not when he was doing that, so she simply let her body twist against his, begging.

  “Now touch me,” he said later, his voice thick.

  He said it twice, and the meaning of it crept through her smoky brain, made her open her eyes and look down at him. “You want me to—”

  “Touch me. I love it when you touch me, Roberta. No one has ever felt as you do.” His eyes were so dark that they weren’t even green any longer; they looked black in the dappled light.

  Roberta reared back, back onto her knees and looked down at him. He lay before her, like a great feast. The wood of the boat was dark brown, rubbed smooth by years.
Damon lay there like a figure carved from marble, warm and golden: long powerful thighs, a flat stomach, a chest that swelled into muscles. She started there, with a fingertip, just touching.

  She knelt over him, careful, her hands slipping from one set of muscles to another. He shivered when she stroked his chest, groaned aloud when she touched him with her tongue. She sat back, looking down—

  “No, you don’t,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t survive that, not in a boat.”

  She giggled, all the laughter inside her spilling out. She was kneeling in a boat, wearing a chemise that was made of fine lawn.

  “Now touch yourself,” he said, following her glance down to her chest.

  She colored. “What are you talking about?”

  His grin was the grin of a sweet devil. “Where you’d like me to touch you.” And when she hesitated, “Please.”

  Chapter 35

  The two boats carrying Jemma and Villiers and the marquess and Mrs. Grope poled their way along the drowsy stream. Jemma and Villiers paid no attention to the water whatsoever. Lord Wharton was composing a simple little ditty, along these lines:

  All along the River Fleet,

  Through the rushes green,

  Swans are a-dabbling,

  Up tails all!

  He didn’t pretend that it was a great work of literature. But it had a pretty rhythm and he knew a certain mermaid who might think it was interesting. He sang it to himself, and sang it to Mrs. Grope, and sang it again, and then set to work on another verse.

  It wasn’t until the poem had grown to some six stanzas, and included ducks, drakes, minnows and swifts, that he realized that his daughter was missing. Moreover…she was missing with that charming brother of the duchess. The earl who had quoted back a line of his poetry, and had a clear look about his eye.

  That brother.

  He hadn’t said anything at the fair yesterday, but he wasn’t blind. He saw exactly how the duchess’s brother looked at his daughter.

  The marquess may be mad (at least to unrefined minds) but no one could accuse him of being stupid. It was the work of a moment to stand up and roar so loudly that the boat just ahead of them, and indeed, everyone on the bank as well, paid instant attention.

  “My daughter!” he roared. “She’s been abducted!”

  Now you may think that there was nothing but cows to hear the marquess’s howl of parental distress, but in fact, he was lucky. The boats had gone so far along the river that one of those pleasure gardens stretching to the very bank belonged to a Mrs. Trimmer, sometimes known as Selina, now known as the prince’s delicious tidbit (when she wasn’t playing lead roles at Drury Lane).

  Selina leapt to her feet the moment she heard that familiar bellow. She and the Prince of Wales were lying on the grass, recovering after a bounteous luncheon al fresco. The prince had had three bottles of champagne, and Selina was considering, rather sadly, that he was probably no longer fit for an afternoon dance in the sheets, and yet she was due at the theater in less than two hours.

  “Marcus!” she cried, running down to the water.

  Behind her, the prince stumbled to his feet like a water buffalo emerging from a pleasant mud bath. “What! Ho!” he said, waving his arms. Three footmen chased each other down the lawn toward him and steadied him on his feet.

  Meanwhile, Selina ran straight out onto the dock to which was tied her pretty little craft, the Selina. It had been given to her by an adoring theatergoer who hoped that a large gift would make inroads in her affection. But Selina had been loved by the best, and she no longer considered economics when choosing her bed partners. Lord Wharton had taught her that.

  “Marcus!” she shrieked, dancing up and down at the end of the wharf. “It is you! Oh, what are you doing in London and on the water?”

  “Looking for my daughter!” the marquess roared back. “Selina, my love!” He waved his arms at her.

  Selina was still hopping up and down as Prince George appeared, accompanied by a whole throng of footmen. “What, ho!” he shouted.

  “Your Majesty,” Lord Wharton shouted back.

  “In the boat!” Selina screamed. “Some villain has abducted Lord Wharton’s daughter. We must go immediately.”

  The prince scrambled into Selina’s boat followed by a flock of footmen. “Pole it lively!” he shouted at them. “Some of you swim over to those other two boats and make them move at a fine clip.”

  Without a second’s hesitation four footmen plunged into the water and swam over to the boats. There was a bit of unruly rocking as they clambered aboard Lord Wharton’s boat, especially when one of them had to swim back to Selina’s boat to get some paddles, but finally all three boats were going downstream at a fine clip.

  “We’ll find her for you!” Selina screamed. “Little Roberta!”

  “Do you know the marquess well?” the prince enquired, a note of disapproval in his voice.

  “I was the nursemaid to his delightful child, Roberta,” Selina said. “Ah, the sweet days of my innocent youth!”

  “You are as youthful as a rose now,” Prince George said gallantly. He was looking a wee bit green in the face from the unfortunate rocking of the boat. But he was holding up well, under the circumstances. Selina tucked herself next to his considerable bulk and smiled up at him.

  “What would we do without our monarch to save us?”

  “Nonsense!” he roared.

  Jolted out of a lively discussion of the worst blunders they’d ever made in a game, Jemma nor Villiers said a word as their boat was efficiently turned about by dripping footmen and sent whipping down the river.

  Finally Villiers said, “I believe that this is what they call an Act of God.”

  Jemma looked over and saw he was smiling. “You don’t think that anything happened to Roberta and Damon, do you? Or to little Teddy?”

  Villiers’s lower lip drooped for a moment. “Forgot the child.” Then he brightened. “They must have dropped him off somewhere.”

  “Damon did say that Teddy was learning to swim.”

  Villiers’s smile was that of a man with a new belief in deities.

  Somewhat farther down the river, and thankfully still around the curve and out of sight, Damon pulled Roberta’s gown over her head and laced her up in the front. “I feel boneless,” she sighed. “That was lovely.” A second later, she slid her feet into her slippers, and pinned her hair back, though without the aid of a mirror, it undoubtedly looked a fright. “What shall we do now? I wonder where my father is?”

  At that very moment three boats careened around the far corner, tearing toward them. But they were still far away, and the graceful branches of the willow tree blunted sound, so Damon pulled on his breeches and his boots in happy ignorance.

  “What is that noise?” Roberta asked.

  Damon swung around, causing the boat to rock violently. But they had both gained a certain adroitness in handling unsteady craft in the last hour, and neither fell into the water. “Bloody hell,” he said, and snatched up his shirt.

  But he barely had it billowing over his head before Lord Wharton’s boat was upon them.

  “Why are you laughing?” Roberta gasped. “That’s my father and Villiers—who’s following in that boat?”

  From his standing position, Damon had a better view than did Roberta. A man naturally feels cheerful when royalty and fate step in to take care of fussy little problems, such as Villiers. He pulled the pole from the mud and gave their boat a great heave.

  “Oh no,” Roberta moaned, as the prow swept through the long green branches and the third boat came squarely into view. “Who is—”

  “The Prince of Wales,” Damon said, laughing like a man possessed.

  The marquess was standing in the front of his boat like a rather plump figurehead, his arms crossed and a terrible scowl on his face. “Unhand my daughter, you villain!” he shouted.

  Roberta moaned again.

  Damon saw immediately that his future father-in-law was enjoying
himself hugely. “Displaying his considerable skills in melodrama,” he muttered to Roberta, “the enraged peer advances, blood in his eye.”

  “Blood in his eye?” Roberta cried. And then: “Selina!”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Gryffyn,” His Majesty said, standing up. Two footmen quickly moved into a position to catch him should he topple toward the river.

  “Your Majesty,” Damon said, “I was overcome by her beauty.”

  Roberta buried her face in her hands. She was overcome by humiliation.

  “You shall pay for your impetuous folly,” the marquess said with magnificent emphasis. “You shall marry her!”

  “I want nothing less,” Damon said, looking down at Roberta.

  Villiers decided that was his cue. “I relinquish my claim to Lady Roberta’s hand,” he announced. “She is free to wed whomever she pleases.”

  There was a slight diversion when Mrs. Grope realized who was in the boat next to her. She too rose to her feet, wobbling with the excitement of the moment and managed a deep curtsy, panniers and all. “Your Majesty,” she cried. “’Tis I!”

  “Bless me,” Prince George said, peering at her. “Don’t tell me that’s pretty little Rose?”

  “Indeed!”

  “A more charming Desdemona you never saw,” he told Selina, who appeared to have divined the reason why Mrs. Grope was in the marquess’s boat, and wasn’t looking too happy about it. “You must all come back to the house and celebrate the nuptial couple!”

  Villiers stood up and bowed, effortlessly holding his balance in his boat. “I fear my dismay would dampen the festivities,” he said. “With your permission, Your Majesty, I shall return to my house.”

  The prince appeared to notice he was there for the first time. “Dismay?” he said. “Dampen? What are you talking about, Villiers?”

  “The duke thought to marry my daughter,” Lord Wharton said, unable to stop smiling now the engagement was safely over.

  “You did, eh, Villiers? I didn’t think you were in the marital line,” His Majesty said. “Never mind. Better to stay a bachelor. Look how much fun I’m having!” He roared with laughter, and then sobered. “I’ve been meaning to challenge you to a game of chess one of these days. I’ve got the hook of the sport now and I win almost every match. I’m ready to take you on.”