Jacinda controlled her features with great care. In truth, the notion of the duke sleeping for a whole day sounded quite promising. But his dead weight was beginning to become a problem, as was his heated breath, which permeated her dress and undergarments, landing right between her breasts. “Call for the footmen, if you please, my ladies,” she said in a strangled voice. “I fear I alone cannot support His Grace’s weight for long.”
Two strapping footmen appeared before the girls could raise the alarm, and Jacinda was grateful indeed to the butler, who seemed a long-suffering sort. The footmen’s expressions were blank canvases. This was not the first time they had dragged their sleeping master to bed. As they hauled him from her, his head lolled, eyes closed, lips moving.
He murmured something.
Jacinda stepped nearer and lowered her ear, which proved yet another mistake on her part.
“The most delicious bubbies in all Christendom,” he mumbled.
If her face had been red before, it was fairly on fire now. She retreated from the dozing blackguard, hoping no one had heard him.
“I do think Crispin likes you, Tornbud,” Lady Honora said brightly. “Do you not think so, Con?”
Lady Constance beamed. “Oh yes, Nora, I agree. Tornrow, Crispin especially likes your—”
“Lady Constance,” Jacinda interrupted coolly, cutting off whatever her charge had been about to say. “That will be enough, thank you. Furthermore, my name is Turnbow. Please do endeavor to remember it, as it seems we shall be spending a great deal of time in each other’s company in the future. His Grace has enlisted me to be your new governess, beginning today. Since His Grace is… otherwise occupied, perhaps we can begin with you showing me your schoolroom and explaining where your previous governess left off your studies.”
It took all the control Jacinda possessed to refrain from grimacing as she said the last. She had thought she could handle what she must do with aplomb, but how wrong she’d been. Deception was not something that came easily to her. The knowledge she was lying to the duke and his sisters—regardless of the man’s innocence or guilt—was a knife of unease lodged in her belly.
Lady Constance and Lady Honora exchanged a glance that gleamed with wicked amusement.
“How lovely,” announced Lady Honora. “You shall be a great improvement upon old Miss Humphrey. She only lasted four days, and she smelled of spirits.”
“How could we have known she was terrified of spiders when we caught one and hid it beneath her bedclothes?” Lady Constance added.
Jacinda coaxed a feigned smile to her lips. “Fortunately, I have no such fear of arachnids.”
The sooner she could accomplish her abhorrent task, the better, she vowed inwardly. There was no earthly means by which she could survive an entire month at Whitley House. She would search the duke’s correspondence at her first opportunity.
*
He walked through a field of bodies. A fortress loomed over him. Cannon thundered. Acrid gun smoke burned his lungs. In the distance, guns rang out. Above the tumult rose the moans of the dying, the cries of agony, and the screams of pain.
The sounds of war. The smells of war. The sights of war.
The bodies strewn over the earth were plentiful. He could not see dirt or the crops once grown there, planted by a hopeful farmer who never could have imagined the horrors to be visited upon his verdant fields. There was nowhere for him to walk but upon them.
The coppery scent of blood muddled with gun smoke, mingled with the unmistakable scent of death.
He walked over them. His own men. Enemy men. Faceless men. He could not even offer apology, for this was battle. He needed to find Morgan. Where the hell was he?
A hand caught his ankle in a manacle grip. He looked down to find the hand had been stripped of its flesh. White bones clenched him and no matter how hard he tried, he could not free himself.
Desperation rose in his chest. The hand jerked, bringing him facedown atop the bodies. Blood splashed on his hands and face. One of the dead men’s eyes opened. And it was Morgan, his best friend and comrade, blood blossoming scarlet and horrible over his chest.
“Damn you, Crispin,” the corpse growled. “You killed me.”
“Morgan!” he called out. “No!”
The hand pulled him deeper into the pile of bodies, until he was drowning in a sea of death. He scrabbled and fought, but he could not free himself, and the darkness beckoned, ready to claim him…
With a jolt, Crispin woke, shooting into a sitting position, gasping for breath. Darkness surrounded him, and for a brief moment, he thought he was still trapped in the confines of the same nightmare that had been plaguing him ever since the day Morgan had gone missing. Awareness descended upon him in stages.
The ticking of a clock. The familiar scent of his room. The softness of the bedclothes, the comfort of the bed. His eyes adjusted, and he could see the outlines of the furniture in his chamber.
He pressed a hand to his heart, willing it to cease its rapid thumping, forcing his breath to slow and calm. His head ached and his stomach threatened to revolt. A fine sheen of sweat coated his skin. Crispin knew the signs all too well. He needed a damned whisky, and he needed one now, but the stores in his chamber needed replenishing.
Fortunately, he had an ample supply of panacea in his study.
Rising from his bed, he scrambled for his dressing gown, left precisely where he preferred by his valet. Curse it, he was getting worse. Self-loathing washed over him as he donned the robe and knotted the belt at his waist. This was what his life had become—an endless cycle of drinking, swiving, and sleeping until the nightmares roused him enough to begin again.
He didn’t know how many hours had passed since the moment he had fallen into his stupor and now. The last time, he had been unconscious for a day and a half. Judging by the darkness, it was the blackest hour of night. But he preferred it to the cursed light of day, when he could see his bleak reflection in the looking glass and hate himself all the more for being alive.
He should be dead. Every dream, every bitter, sober moment reminded him of the day he had woken in that damned Spanish farmhouse. When he had seen Morgan’s spilled blood, his severed hand, all that remained of him. When Crispin had been as helpless and as stupid as he was now, shuffling down the hall of his townhouse in search of the only thing that would numb him.
But the whisky wasn’t working as well as it once had.
He didn’t need a taper to find his way to his study. That was how accustomed he’d grown to remaining in the dark. But as he crossed the threshold, he knew at once he was not alone.
At first, he sensed the presence, his old instincts flaring to life. Gooseflesh pebbled his skin. Then, a hint of jasmine reached his nose. Taking care to move as silently as possible, he stalked toward the vicinity of the interloper. A soft exhalation reached him, almost a gasp. Closer he went, determined in his pursuit, until he could discern a shadowy figure near his desk.
With a growl, he launched himself at the intruder, his hands meeting with the unmistakable curves of soft, womanly flesh. Whoever she was, she was trespassing where she was most unwelcome, but that didn’t stop his cock from asserting a twitch of approval as he gripped the lush curve of her waist and hauled her against him so her bountiful breasts crushed into his chest.
His opponent began trying with all her might to remove herself from his grasp. She twisted, pulled, stomped on his instep, and clawed at him. He remained immovable. Whoever she was, she did not know the part of him that knew the capacity to feel pain had died a long bloody time ago.
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my study?” he demanded, fury surging through him.
How dare anyone have the gall to invade his territory? To so trespass against him?
If it was a chamber maid, he would see her dismissed. If it was a whore, he would never tup her again. She did not belong in the last place where he could find some semblance of peace. He wanted to know why she was the
re, and then he wanted her gone, damn it.
But all she gave him was her silence and her desperate fight. Whoever she was, she was a bloody hellcat. When her hand escaped his grasp and her nails raked his cheek, the last thread of his patience snapped.
“Cease, damn you.” He caught her wrist in a punishing grip. She refused to heed him, continuing her struggle.
His head pounded, reminding him of his need for that whisky. Reminding him this banshee was keeping him from the only thing that kept him sane. And he had endured quite enough. He wanted an answer, and he wanted it now.
When she refused to concede defeat, the beast within him roared to life. The lines between the man he had once been and the man he was now, between reality and nightmare, life and death, all blurred into one indistinct mass. He forgot any reason why he ought to treat his opponent with care. He forgot she was female. That he was a duke and ought to behave with at least a modicum of caution and reason.
They fell to the carpet as one, she on her back and he atop her. His thighs straddled hers, trapping her against the floor as he gripped her wrists and pinned them above her head.
He leaned forward so his weight kept her immobile. “Say something.”
She writhed beneath him, continuing her ridiculous attempts at escape. But her actions only served to brush her breasts over his chest and to grind her pelvis into his. With only the thin barrier of his dressing gown and the accommodating bit of muslin she wore separating his cock from the undeniable heat of her mound, he went rigid.
“Christ Jesus.”
She felt bloody good. Bloody right.
“Please, Your Grace. You are hurting me.”
The voice, hushed yet familiar, sliced through the fog of rage and lust clouding his mind. He knew that mellifluous tone, the sweet huskiness. Knew the lush temptation of the breasts swelling beneath his chest.
For he had fallen into them headfirst before the darkness had claimed him.
Memories returned. He recalled conducting an interview with a flame-haired siren while soused. His cock remembered as well, for if possible, it went even harder than it already was, his ballocks tightening as lustful reveries assailed him. All too vividly, he could imagine her riding his cock, her heavy breasts begging to be sucked…
But he could not tup the new governess on the floor of his study in the depths of night. Nor could he tup her at all, curse it. She was not his to defile, no matter how much he longed to debauch her. And oh, how he longed with her beneath him, her sweet, womanly body curved into his. Temptation had ever been his weakness.
No. He must not.
He banished the unwanted thoughts from his mind, willed his cock to wilt, and asked the looming question.
“Tumblebow,” he growled. “What in the devil are you doing in my study?”
Chapter Four
The Duke of Whitley was atop her. And scantily clad. And—good, sweet heavens—aroused. Though she had not long been a wife before being made a widow by war, she was certainly not ignorant about the male anatomy.
One thing was certain, she was even less prepared for the magnitude of Kilross’s request than she had supposed. For nothing could have primed her for this moment in the dark with an irate duke settled between her thighs as if it was where he belonged.
What a miserable thief she made. She had been caught before she had even left the chamber with the documents she’d pilfered from his desk.
Think, Jacinda. How can you extract yourself from this predicament?
Moreover, how could she quell the disturbing reaction his large, lean body pressing into hers caused? The Duke of Whitley was a reprobate and a drunkard, and according to Kilross, a despicable coward who had betrayed his best friend and caused his death. If he had no qualms about orchestrating the death of the Marquess of Searle, what would he do to her should he discover the reason for her presence in his study?
She forced the chill of a frigid winter’s day into her voice as she spoke, taking care to hold herself very still lest further movement incite him. Rumors of his dalliances and bedchamber prowess were abundant. He did not strike her as the sort who enjoyed ravishment, but one could never exercise too much caution.
“My surname is Turnbow, Your Grace,” she informed him. “And as for your query, I was under the impression that I was in the library.” With great effort, she kept the breathlessness from her voice.
To her dismay, he neither removed his person from her nor released her wrists, which remained pinned to the Aubusson above her head, thrusting her breasts into his chest in a most disconcerting fashion. How she wished she were more prepared to do battle. She had nothing save her wits with which to defend herself.
“This is not the library, Miss Governess,” he hissed. “Why the hell are you wandering about in the dark?”
“Forgive me for the intrusion, Your Grace.” She paused, attempting to gather her wits. “Would you be so kind as to release me so that I may return to the sanctity of my chamber? This is most improper.”
“Improper is you wandering about my study in the dead of night dressed in nothing more than a diaphanous bit of muslin,” he growled, his face so near to hers, his hot breath fell over her mouth like a kiss. “Was it your intention for me to find you here?”
“I can assure you it was not my intention to be dragged to the floor and pinned down by a man.” She tried to free her hands from his grip, exasperation and desperation mingling with a fierce, molten want. “I demand you release me at once.”
“You demand, do you?” He chuckled without mirth.
A trill of fear at being discovered unfurled within her, but it was fear mingled with desire, and somehow the combination was a heady, forceful pressure that washed over her body like a warm, shameful caress.
In that moment, fear and desire were not so far removed from one another.
What if he suspected her? What if he knew she had been rummaging through the papers in his study, searching for evidence of his correspondence with France?
The bitter reminder of the gravity of her position and what she was meant to do cut into her with the sharp precision of a blade. She shivered, and it was not because she longed for him to do more than lay atop her—which she was ashamed to realize she did—but because she was at this man’s mercy. Nothing lay between her life and his ability to deal her a death blow. Nothing but her ability to avoid detection. Nothing but her fluency for deception.
“Please,” she said. “Your Grace.”
“I will release you when you answer my bloody question, Miss Governess. What in the name of all that is holy were you doing in my study?”
His guttural demand was perhaps what she should have expected. “Forgive me for my ignorance, Your Grace, but in the darkness, I thought I had entered the library.”
His face lowered, his beard-roughened cheek abrading hers. His nose and mouth pressed against her throat. “I do not care for your excuses, Governess.”
Frustration boiled to the surface within her. “Respectfully, the truth is not an excuse, Your Grace.”
His body stiffened. “You dare to gainsay me, Miss Turnbellow?”
Why could no one in his cursed family seem to be capable of recalling her surname? She ground her teeth. “Turnbow, Your Grace.”
“What of a bow, now, Miss Governess?” He dragged his nose over the cord of her throat, inhaling deeply.
Jacinda swallowed. Something about this beast-of-a-man, so jaded and wounded, so thoroughly depraved he was not above tackling his new governess and taking liberties with her in the dark, this beautiful man—he affected her in a way she could not like. In a way she could not allow.
She gritted her teeth and writhed against him. “Miss. Turnbow.”
“Miss Turnbow?” he asked, his voice thick, low, and intimate as her movements achieved the opposite of her intended effect. His body settled more firmly atop hers, her thighs opening wider to cradle him through the thin muslin of her gown. Her breasts brushed against his chest with each mo
vement, eliciting a spark of sensation.
His lips grazed her neck, banishing all thoughts. She could not suppress her shiver. Being beneath him thus, at his mercy, did not concern her as much as it ought. Rather, it intrigued her. Brought her to life in a most sinful and unwanted fashion. No fear coursed through her. Only reckless, heady need, the likes of which she had not felt in years.
Wanting him was wrong, Jacinda reminded herself. Impossible.
“Miss Turnbow is my name, Your Grace. I was merely reminding you,” she said softly, hating the breathlessness that had leaked into her voice.
“Ah, how helpful of you, Governess.” His mouth found a particularly vulnerable swath of skin. His lips opened, his tongue darting against her for a brief, mesmerizing moment. “Thank you.”
He dragged his lips lower, to the space where her neck and shoulder met.
Despite herself, she arched her back, thrust her head into the carpet, and opened herself for his feasting. What was wrong with her? He was a reprobate. A rake. More than likely—for she had no way of knowing whether or not the Earl of Kilross’s evidence against him was accurate—a traitor.
She should be protesting, demanding her release. She lodged her knee between his strong, horseman’s thighs so that he could no longer press the hard prod of his staff into her. Above all, she should not be enjoying the forbidden sensation of him against her center.
“You are most welcome, Your Grace,” she forced herself to say with as little emotion as possible. “Now, if you please, would you be so kind as to allow me to stand so I may return to my chamber?”
He made a humming sound in his throat, and whether it was enjoyment or contemplation, she could not say. But his lips did not leave her flesh except for a beat. “No.”
Here was where fright should begin. Where duty to Father and protecting his position at all costs ought to take over.
He found the curve of her breast above her modest décolletage. He sucked her skin. Open-mouthed, hot, and wet. It was unlike anything she had ever known. It was also the weight that tipped her internal scale. If she allowed herself to remain beneath him, if she encouraged one more liberty, her foray into his study to extract information would instead end in her thorough debauchment.
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