The Captive Duke, page 23
“What do you take me for, Mercia? Get up, and we’ll have a rational argument, which you will lose.”
He rose, careful not to let his bewilderment show, though referring to him as Mercia was a discouraging sign. “At least have a seat while we argue.”
She sat upon the carved chest with all the dignity of the aging queen, and swished the skirts of her night rail closed over her knees.
“You think to keep me safe by offering marriage. That is entirely unnecessary, though gallant of you.” Her weapon of choice was logic, which boded ill in a woman just come from her new lover’s bed.
“I can keep you safe more easily if we’re married. That isn’t why I offered.” A disconcerting realization, that.
“Guilty conscience then, or grief, or male urges. Thank you, but no. Marriage to me on that basis will not do.”
“Will not do for me?” He sought refuge by rummaging in the wardrobe, though he had an entire dressing room in which he might have hidden—except he didn’t want to give her a chance to bolt.
“Of course not. I was married to Greendale for eight years, Your Grace, and I could not bear him a child. You need heirs, and I cannot provide them, though I am sorry to have to bring up such a tender subject.”
This was a feint, a not quite convincing one. Christian discarded a pair of silk stockings necessary for court attire, searching instead for the wool variety he’d been happy to own in quantity in Spain.
“I’ve done some nosing about,” he said, when he’d laid hands on a clean pair of stockings. “Greendale had had four countesses, each of them coming to the marriage in the blush of young womanhood, and none of them conceived. I have no doubt where the blame lies for a lack of direct descendants.”
He knelt before her and brushed her night robe aside to reveal her bare, elegant feet.
“The present Lord Greendale is my heir,” Christian said. “And some second or third cousins in Dorset or Hampshire after that, jolly squires grown fat off their sheep. We correspond twice a year. I need not marry a broodmare out of duty.”
“But you ought,” she wailed softly. “You are Mercia, and the next duke should be raised by you. Where did you learn to do this?”
“Argue with you? Natural talent, I suppose.”
Her lips quirked up before compressing into a severe line. “Where did you learn to put stockings on a lady’s feet?”
“Early in the marriage, I used to put my stockings on Helene’s feet, lest she catch her death. She had perpetually cold hands and feet.” Also a cold nose, of all things. The recollection pleased him, for only a noticing husband would have perceived it.
“I cannot marry you now. I’m still in mourning.”
This approached clutching at straws, and included the gratifying qualification that she could not marry Christian now. “You loathed the old besom.”
“I owe my own reputation proper decorum, nonetheless.”
“So marry me this time next year,” he said. “We’ll get a start on the intimacies betimes, and we’re already perfecting our ability to disagree civilly.” He tucked the other sock onto her second foot and remained kneeling before her, lest she go haring off clear to Greendale.
She twitched the collar of his dressing gown then smoothed it flat. “What we did in this bed was ill-advised, though I cannot regret it.”
“Ill-advised?” He did not like that term. He very much liked her lack of regret.
“Imprudent. Below stairs, there will be talk.”
“I was ill,” he said. “Were you to allow me to die or to suffer mortal agonies when you are the logical source of care for me?”
“Why me?”
“You are a widow, and you nursed your ailing husband for weeks before he succumbed. You were here when Evan fell ill. Who else would know as much as you about caring for an invalid?”
She closed her eyes, as if seeking patience. “I must return to my room.”
Retreat, which suggested he’d routed her, albeit temporarily. “In a moment.”
He kissed her, tasting surprise, curiosity, and capitulation in her return fire. Time to put his guns down, or at least pause to reload.
“I have surprised you with my proposal,” he said, his forehead leaning on hers. He’d surprised her with his ardor, and she’d more than surprised him. “I’m sorry you feel ambushed. Badly done of me. I want to marry you, Gilly, but you have a point: we’ve some matters to sort out that rather take precedence over setting a date.”
“I have not said—”
He kissed her again, but she was on to his tricks and merely endured the visit of his mouth upon hers.
“You needn’t say. Greendale was an awful old curmudgeon, I understand that. So you take your time, look me over thoroughly. Count my teeth, put me through my paces.”
Her hand smoothed his hair back. “You’re not a horse.”
“I’m a horse’s arse. You were harried into marriage once before, and that ended badly. Am I right?”
She shifted so her forehead rested on his shoulder, and Christian scooted in closer, as if he’d protect her from her own past.
“Yes. Too right. One day I was memorizing my fifth declension nouns, and the next, my mama was taking me shopping for a trousseau. When I met Greendale, I had to excuse myself with a megrim so I could sit in the carriage and cry all the way home. He was on his best, most jovial behavior when courting me. He did not improve with time.”
“I will. I’ll bring you more puppies, I’ll read poetry to you, even that stupid Blake, and I’ll—”
She lifted away, but the fight had gone out of her. “Groveling becomes you ill, Mercia.”
“I’ve amused you. Your smile is worth the affront to my dignity.” What little dignity he still had. Christian traced her hair back from her face. “You won’t run off? Somebody means you harm, my dear. I would much rather you stay here and castigate me for my impetuous ardor. If you leave…”
He’d come after her and fetch her home. He didn’t say that, because it smacked of taking her captive, which he could not do.
“I care for you,” she said, the words a grudging admission. “I did not choose my first husband well, and in that you’re right. I will not be rushed into marriage again.”
He waited, because she wasn’t finished, and because talking like this was something he and Helene had never learned to do, a realization that in itself gave him regret and…hope.
“I’m sorry. I did not mean to rush you.” He’d meant to marry her, though, and still did.
“I also…” She gathered her dressing gown at the throat and glanced over at the window, where another lovely summer day was gaining its wings. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Of me? I’m a duke, I’m wealthy, I’m twenty-seventh in line for the damned throne, I’m—”
She put soft, rose-scented fingers to his lips, the ghost of a smile playing around her mouth.
“So modest, Mercia.” The smile faded, and her hand cradled his jaw. “You are grieving so much, healing from so much, and your instinct to protect overwhelms your sense. I will remain at Severn, and we will talk later of marriage.”
She urged him against her so he could pillow his cheek on the silk covering her thigh. Yes, his protective instincts had overwhelmed his sense, and so they would continue to do until he’d identified her malefactor.
As her hands settled in his hair, another insight struck: Gilly’s protective instincts had overwhelmed her too, and when Christian had those instincts of hers settled down, he’d make the lady his next duchess.
Gilly had spent the night in Christian’s bed and slept wonderfully, despite the events of the previous day, and now she was…
She ran her hands over the soft abundance of his unbound hair.
Now she was so befuddled, by passion, by fatigue, by fear, by him. Christian nestled against her, knelt at her feet like a tired child, and he was no doubt fatigued, but he was also canny as hell.
“Perhaps you should send me away.”
He raised his head up, his hair in disarray from her attentions. “Perhaps I should take you away.”
“Where would we go?” She should not have asked that question. If she went away with him, she’d have no choice but to marry him.
“I have property in a dozen counties. You choose.” He rose and took her hand to assist her to her feet, then stood frowning down at her in the gathering morning light. “After our first night of loving, I don’t want to part from you.”
Their first, because he was confident they’d share others, and so—may heaven help her—was Gilly.
“I’m traveling clear across the hallway, Your Grace.”
He smiled crookedly at her form of address and put one of his hands on each of her shoulders.
“For last night, thank you, my lady. I wasn’t…” He tucked her closer, and Gilly allowed it because some things need not be said staring a woman directly in the eye.
And he’d already delivered her a lengthy lecture about the poison, and not eating or drinking anything unless he was with her.
“You doubted yourself,” Gilly said. “Doubted your manhood over that business with the French and their perishing knives, may they rot in hell.”
Along with Greendale. Gilly hadn’t thought she could be any more enraged at her late spouse, but the morning brought that revelation too.
“I doubted myself, yes.” Christian brought her fingers to his lips. “I have doubted myself for months, but a man doesn’t sort out such things easily on his own.”
“You’re sorted out now,” she said, smiling up at him, because this, too, was a scar they shared. “I am a bit sorted out as well.”
Not entirely, of course. She might never be entirely sorted out. She’d been married to Greendale for 3,147 nights—she’d done the math the day he’d died—and each one had been awful.
No wonder she was hesitant to accept Christian’s proposal, even though every single particle of her heart, mind, soul, and strength craved to become his wife.
In the days that followed, Gilly felt as if her true grieving were getting underway. Christian came to her room each night, scooped her up, and bore her away to his bed. At first, he was careful with her, his attentions always tender and sweet and limited to one coupling per night. By degrees, he became bolder.
Gilly had the sense it wasn’t his confidence that was increasing, it was hers.
And therein lay some of the grief. As Greendale’s wife, she’d quickly grasped that her marriage was a sad caricature of what a marriage should be. With Christian’s example to compare it to, though, she realized her marriage hadn’t been merely sad.
Her union with Greendale had been tragic, a murder of a marriage. Thank God that Christian was a man who understood the futility of violence in any form.
May-December pairings were common enough, particularly among titled men who had the wealth and position to take their pick of the debutantes on the market each year. Gilly had known some of those couples among Greendale’s cronies, and even their marriages could be characterized by affection and respect.
She’d never been more relieved than when Theo Martin had told her Greendale was unlikely to recover. Her husband had taught her how to hate, how to loathe and abhor another human being. How to endure a nightmare with a fixed smile.
With Christian, she was learning how to cherish and esteem, and no matter how she chided him for his presumption or made noises each morning about him overstepping, each night, she clung to him and gave him her body and another piece of her heart.
“You’re quiet,” Christian said. How long he’d been standing in the doorway to her sitting room, she did not know. “You’ve made this place your own nest. I like it.”
He liked her, and Christian Severn’s liking was a precious rarity.
Gilly had appropriated pillowcases and slipcovers from her trousseau, such that embroidered flowers and designs from her wildest imagination were creeping over the couches and chairs.
“You’ll be after my curtains next,” he said. “And you’ve started Lucy on this habit of decorating every fabric in sight.”
“Greendale allowed it,” she said. “He thought a woman with her head bowed over her hoop was a pleasing sight.” To take what her late husband had permitted and make it an excess had been a form of revenge.
Sharing herself with Christian was more of that same revenge, at least in part, and Gilly hated herself for that.
Christian crossed his arms.
She rose and drew him forward by the wrist. “Whatever it is, say it.”
“I’d prefer you were bowed over my sated and prostrate form.” He pulled the door shut behind him and let her tug him into the room.
“We shall not be indiscreet here in the broad light of day,” she said, but she’d left a question in the words when she’d intended a stern admonition.
He smiled down at her. “Someday, Gillian, I will have you writhing and moaning in the broad light of day. Outdoors even.”
“You’d get leaves in my hair.” She could afford the humor, because he was behaving.
“Among other places, but then I’d help you remove them.”
“You are so naughty.”
“Do you mind?” He kissed her ear and rested his chin on her crown.
“You cannot spend your entire day seeing to my safety. I ought to leave,” she said, genuinely sorry to bring this up again when his mood was so winsome.
“Not without me. We’ve had no word of the girl who prepared your lunch basket with the poisoned tea, and inquiries at the Lion and Cock yield only the information that she began to work there last winter and hailed from the West Riding.”
“If she could get to my food, anybody can.” Or they could get to his.
“No, they can’t.” His eyes were very sober, his hands on her shoulders steady. “I’ve sent everybody from the house staff whom I can’t vouch for personally off to visit family, which is common enough between haying and harvest. Your footmen or I attend you wherever you go, and the entire staff has been warned to watch for strangers.”
“They’ve been…protective,” Gilly said. “Discreet, but protective.”
“You’re surprised?”
“I left my slippers in your bedroom that first night.”
“So?”
The great lout was genuinely perplexed. “Below stairs, they know.”
“That we share a bed? If you say so.”
“I don’t like that they know.” She hated that they knew, hated that they might think her guilty of every weak, wanton behavior Greendale had accused her of.
Christian’s gaze narrowed, more closely approximating the ducal sphinx Gilly had barged in on weeks ago in London. “Will you pretend you don’t like what we do?”
She would have moved out from under his hands, but he only let her turn, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “The question is sincere, my lady. I would not for the world impose on you.”
The wretch, saying such things out loud.
“I like what we do.”
“Then is it me? Perhaps you’d rather disport with a different partner?”
And behind the arrogance of the question, Gilly heard a hint, a well-hidden, ducally disregarded hint of vulnerability. She turned in his arms and pressed her face against his chest. She had licked, kissed, and nuzzled her way over most of this chest and had found it delicious.
“I will never disport thus with another. I promise myself every morning I will not disport thus with you again, at least not until matters are settled between us.”
His hold on her loosened. “I do not understand your dilemma. I have determined you need time to sort it out yourself, and this sits ill with me, but as a measure of my regard for you, I do not force the matter.”
“Oh, no, you do not force the argument, you merely—”
“Yes?” He slipped his hands down and cupped her bottom, which meant she took notice of his male flesh growing hard between them.
“Even arguing arouses you.”
“Everything about you arouses me.” And oh, he sounded so smug, so pleased. “Though sometimes to protectiveness or humor or admiration in addition to desire.”
“Lust, simple lust from too many months soldiering.”
“You are an intelligent woman,” he said, the smugness turning to perplexity. “Frightfully so, in fact. Why do you delude yourself with such patent tripe?”
“Stop.” He was about to launch into his I-care-for-you/Greendale-is-holding-your-future-hostage speech, one he’d come up with by their second night together. “None of your campaigning. It’s entirely possible I have brought danger to your household, and marrying me is the last thing you should do.”
He enfolded her in his arms, using his most devastating tactic, meeting her protestations and common sense with this endless, boundless, silent affection. He was affectionate in and out of bed, as if all those months in France he’d been storing up a need to touch, to tease, to be tender, and now it poured out of him at the sight of her. His affection dizzied her and broke her heart and made untangling her wants from his best interests so much harder.
“You are not safe on your own,” he said. “Lucy needs you, and I need you. Recite your reasons and arguments, Gilly, but please don’t go. Before I’ll let you leave me, I will take myself off, though I will despise doing it. In my absence, the staff will watch your every move and taste everything you eat or drink before you touch it.”
“I am not banishing the Duke of Mercia from his own family seat.”
“Not yet,” he said, though his tone suggested he was willing to be banished if it would please her. “Now let us put aside this bickering you insist on. The morning is advanced, and Lucy will be wroth if we neglect her.”
Gilly conceded the point, because she did bicker, and the contention reassured her of her position for form’s sake, but it did nothing to put her resolve into action.
Each night, she grew closer to Christian; each night he asked for and won more of her trust until Gilly herself had to admit that her reservations were crumbling and her fate becoming inevitable—provided she had the courage to seize it.
