Chapter Five
Genie lay on her side, her cheek pillowed against Adam’s belly. Her braid had come undone—not merely unpinned from its coronet—and a hairpin poked him in the ribs.
He was too well pleasured to care. Withdrawing had been a near thing, but he wasn’t about to take unnecessary chances with the lady’s future. His mind was like Caliban, munching on this grassy patch, then wandering to a clump of clover—all was lovely and delectable, in no particular order.
Genie’s thighs were wonderfully muscular. She must enjoy frequent vigorous walks and good long gallops.
Her scent up close was like the jasmine of her bedroom. Subtle and spicy. Adam took a whiff of a lock of her hair and brushed it across his lips.
He wanted to taste her intimately, and she’d probably let him.
She patted his cock, then held his balls in a loose grip, which sent a buzz of anticipation in all directions.
“If you start that conversation,” Adam said, “we’ll be here until dawn.” And what a night that would be.
“My friends would worry.”
Being a fundamentally considerate woman, she would not give her friends cause to worry.
“And your reputation might suffer.” Adam’s too, though among the titled set, he had only the merest beginnings of good standing, and then mostly among the younger men whom Seymouth did not know well.
Genie let go of him and sat up. “My friends should be having adventures of their own. Moonlight does you credit, Mr. Morecambe.”
An arc of shadowy gold had just crested the Downs to the east. Adam drew Genie into his lap, and together, they watched the moonrise.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said, though he hadn’t planned on saying anything. Genie’s hair tickled his chin. Her weight on his lap tickled his desire.
“Watched the moon come up?”
That either. “Not with a lover.” Certainly not with a duchess. “Navigating the way back to town will be easy with all that moonshine.”
Leaving their blankets would be difficult. Adam’s peace was perfect—the grazing horse, the whisper of water over stones, and the lovely sense of having stumbled upon a lady in whom intimate trust could be safely reposed.
Genie kissed him, as if she sensed his thoughts, and then she climbed off his lap. She made dressing a cooperative undertaking, doing up Adam’s sleeve buttons and allowing him to lace her jumps. She saw to her own buttons, and Adam tended to his, but she allowed him to assist her with her boots.
He did not trust himself to put her hair to rights, so he instead fetched the horse while Genie managed a swift braid and a tidy bun. They folded the blankets together—an excuse to share a few kisses—and then they were back on the road.
As Caliban trotted toward Brighton, the silence went from comfortable, to thoughtful, to… strained.
“You offered an invitation to tour the Pavilion,” Adam said. “Were you merely being polite?”
“I’m through with merely being polite. I’d like to see the Pavilion with you, for you doubtless will notice what others miss.”
Her tone was brusque rather than complimentary. “Are you cold?”
“I am quite comfortable.”
Genie was also back to being the duchess. The proper, polite, unremarkable woman easily overlooked when among others of her rank. Adam missed his companion, missed the demanding lover.
The lights of Brighton glimmered on the horizon, and the air changed subtly, growing more humid and cooler with a tang of the sea.
“I won’t soon forget this day, Genie.”
She tied her bonnet down with a silk scarf, and thus her face was obscured by her hat brim. Adam had envisioned putting that scarf to other purposes, though perhaps his ambitions in that regard weren’t shared by the lady.
“Petworth is impressive,” she said.
What in the name of every marble saint was amiss with her? “Were we at Petworth? I must have missed it, so much did I enjoy our picnic.”
She fussed with her skirts. “Truly, you did? You don’t think me forward?”
Adam mentally whacked himself with a carpenter’s mallet. He’d not given her the words, the flirtation, the reassurances, more fool he.
“Genie, I find you lovely, passionate, brave, and infernally distracting when I’m trying to think only decent thoughts and comport myself as a gentleman. How to be both lover and proper escort is a new challenge, though one I relish.”
She edged closer on the bench, adding a hint of jasmine to the soft summer night. “Precisely. A new challenge. How to be a duchess and daring. I must think on this.”
Adam was a builder, little more than an ambitious mason in good tailoring. Genie was a duchess. Of course, she’d regard him as only a partner for a dalliance, and he ought to be flattered to have that much of her consideration.
And yet, he was disappointed too. She was happy to build a folly with him, while he’d been dreaming of a permanent structure, complete with furniture, carvings, and clever vents—also a fine big bed in the master apartment. His disappointment grew when, instead of offering him a peck on the cheek at her door, Genie was content to let him bow over her hand before she slipped into the house.
What had he expected? She was gracious and lovely and all that other, but she was still, above all, a duchess.
* * *
Genie went about her days with two objectives in mind: First, to avoid the Marquess of Dunstable, and second, to cross paths with Mr. Morecambe. In all the hours she’d spent with Adam on the outing to Petworth, she had failed to get his direction.
And he had not offered it to her.
Brighton boasted rooming houses and hotels by the score, and even Mr. Morecambe doubtless had friends with whom he could bide. Subtle questions to Genie’s callers yielded no word of a large, taciturn architect down from Town. Diana and Belinda both made inquiries, but Mr. Morecambe had little use for the idle and titled, and his whereabouts weren’t likely to interest them either.
“So much for embarking on a life of daring adventure,” Genie muttered to the cat.
Rather than pause in his ablutions, he adopted a pose unbefitting of a lady’s feline.
“I will keep to my plans nonetheless,” Genie said, “for adventure won’t find me if all I do is sit about and read Mr. Scott’s works of fiction.” Or stare at them without turning a single page.
She put on her bonnet and cloak, found a parasol, and waved off the footman who typically escorted the ladies of the house on their shopping expeditions. A proper widow could walk the streets of Brighton in broad daylight by herself.
Not that Genie ever had.
She nonetheless found her solicitor’s office—her Brighton solicitor, not to be confused with her London solicitors (plural), or her Derby solicitor (only the one, but he was prodigiously long-winded), or her Paris solicitor (an outrageous old flirt).
Her request took some time to explain, while Mr. Vernon scribbled copious notes and promised to look into the matter straightaway. Genie took her leave without answering the question Mr. Vernon was too polite to ask: The Dowager Duchess of Tindale couldn’t possibly be strolling a distance of three streets without a retinue, could she?
In fact, she was, and Genie was equal parts pleased with herself and anxious that she might run into Dunstable.
Derbyshire is looking better and better.
Though she had no lover in Derbyshire. Perhaps she had no lover in Brighton. What sort of man made passionate love and stirring declarations beneath the rising moon, then sent no word for days?
A wall of well-dressed male muscle interrupted her musing. “I do beg your—Your Grace.”
“Mr. Morecambe. A pleasure.” Mostly. To some extent.
Genie was blushing and trying not to smile. She offered her hand as he tipped his hat, then dropped her hand when he reached for her fingers.
“I was on my way to pay a call on you,” Mr. Morecambe said, taking her hand in his. “Shall I walk you to your door?”
His grip was firm and steadying, as was the look in his eyes. He wasn’t smiling, but his gaze said he was pleased to see her.
“An escort would be appreciated. I wondered if you’d returned to London.”
He tucked her fingers around his arm, placing himself on the street side of the walkway. “I did, in fact. My master mason and builder got into a spat, and nothing would serve but I must mediate between them. I’ve missed you.”
When had anybody ever missed Genie? Oh, her brothers occasionally dashed off a line or two at the bottom of a note sent by their wives.Hope you’re keeping well! Or, Come home when next you can—the children want spoiling!
Those sentiments were casual gestures of affection from people whose lives had separated from Genie’s years ago.
“Did I speak too boldly, Your Grace? Should I not have admitted to missing you?”
“You honor me with your honesty. I’ve missed you too.”
They paused at a corner. “I’d thought to write,” he said, “to send a note informing you of my travel, but does a widowed duchess receive correspondence from a single gentleman? Does this widowed duchess? Dithering is foreign to my nature, so I chose to pay a call upon my return.”
“You’ve only just returned?” How lovely that he had come directly to see her—and told her he’d done so.
“I want that visit to the Pavilion,” he said, leaning closer. “You did promise.”
Was he teasing her? “I keep my word, Mr. Morecambe, but tell me, where are you biding on your visit to Brighton?”
“With friends who won’t mind my coming and going at all hours. This time of year, many properties are to let, and others are under renovation.”
“But you’re looking to purchase, aren’t you?”
He expounded on the benefits of owning over renting, and Genie realized he might be making a subtle point about the difference between a courtship and a dalliance.
“One has the security of a commitment,” he said. “The building is wholly entrusted to the owner, the owner knows he’d best treasure the asset in his keeping. Renters break leases, landlords neglect maintenance. The more permanent arrangement seems the better bargain, if one can make the initial investment.”
They crossed the street arm in arm. “True, if one chooses wisely and is a responsible property owner. If the choice was unfortunate, the owner is stuck with an ongoing liability, or the building with a negligent caretaker.” And Genie did not care for any analogy that cast her in the role of property.
A permanent arrangement, however, was all too appealing.
The closer they journeyed to Genie’s doorstep, the quieter the neighborhood became.
“Was your duke so awful as all that, Genie? Did he put you off speaking vows ever again?”
That Mr. Morecambe would admit to missing her, that he’d come straight to see her, warmed her heart. That he’d think to ask this question earned her respect.
“Ladies are to desire the married state above all things,” she said. “Marriage to a duke is the best married state there is, supposedly, but I was lonely and often bored, despite being run off my feet with obligations. I’m only now realizing my late husband was likely in the same situation—lonely, bored, run off his feet with obligations. He was expected to marry profitably, and he accepted that duty, but failed to get all the consideration promised in the bargain.”
To have some sympathy for Charles was a great and welcome relief.
“One doesn’t think of dukes as merely mortal,” Mr. Morecambe said. “But they are, I suppose. You’ve dodged my question.”
His question about marriage. Well. “I am considering my answer and pleased that you’d put such a conundrum to me. How does your search for a property come along?”
“Slowly. Brighton is a busy market, in terms of properties changing hands, but merely because I have coin and know well how to care for a building doesn’t mean I’m a suitable buyer in the eyes of many.”
His London club was nicknamed the Blackball Club for a reason, apparently. “Use an intermediary,” Genie said. She was about to offer her solicitor’s services—hadn’t she come from asking Mr. Vernon to look for a suitable property in Derbyshire?—but remained silent as Mr. Morecambe touched his hat to a pair of beldames daundering toward them.
“What day would suit for a visit to the Pavilion?” she asked, when she was sure she could not be overheard.
“Friday. I haven’t any other appointments then, and you’ll give me something to look forward to.”
He was flirting. He was definitely, subtly, wonderfully flirting, and they were nearly to the gate. How on earth was she to flirt back?
“Could I tempt you into a cup of tea, Mr. Morecambe?”
“Yes.”
“Splendid.”
“I’ve also been plagued by a few questions regarding the wallpaper in your sitting room. I cannot recall the exact pattern, but think something like it would go well in the cardroom at the club. Perhaps you’d be good enough to allow me another peek?”
He held the garden gate for her, and Genie preceded him up the walk. “You may have more than a peek, Mr. Morecambe.”
The housekeeper took Genie’s cloak and bonnet, and Mr. Morecambe’s hat and walking stick. Genie led him to the steps, and they got as far as her sitting room before she pinned her guest against the closed parlor door and kissed him witless.
* * *
Adam had had a revelation on his London trip.
Journeying to Brighton previously, he’d resented the need to leave the London work site. The ring of hammers was music to him. A load of gravel or stone crashing onto the walkway was akin to the tolling of a steeple bell, summoning the faithful for the opening hymn. He loved being in the middle of a building in progress, loved the sweat and cursing, the gradual blossoming of a stately edifice where all had been disorder and noise.
Now, he loved Genie, Duchess of Tindale, and that was a problem.
In the normal course, he would have allowed his master mason and his builder to argue and discuss, and sit down over several pints to debate the need to switch plasterers. This time, he had given them fifteen minutes each to state a case and then chosen the plasterer who was available soonest. That his choice was more expensive than the alternative should have given Adam nightmares.
Instead, his dreams had been filled with images of Genie, curled on a blanket, moonlight gilding her smile. Genie, waiting patiently for him to finish sketching some pile of Mr. Gibbons’s carved musical instruments. Genie, licking her fingers after finishing an apple, the core of which she’d fed to the lowly piebald mare.
And now, here he was, all but asking permission to court the woman.
And here she was, all but unbuttoning his shirt.
“The door…” he muttered against her mouth. “I’ll not have your reputation put at risk—”
She smiled. “Diana and Belinda are away from home. Look to your own reputation, Mr. Morecambe.”
He picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, and she kept her arms around his neck when he settled her on the bed, drawing him over her.
The rest was a blur of loosened clothing, soft laughter, and pleasure every bit as intoxicating as he’d recalled. Genie lay on the bed, her legs over the side, her skirts frothed about her waist. Adam remained standing, and the fit was perfect. He wanted to linger and admire—he wanted to use his mouth on her—but she got her legs around his waist, and her urgency overcame his restraint.
Almost. He withdrew and spent into a handkerchief, while Genie lay panting with repletion beneath him.
He crouched over her, confounded by what had passed between them. He was an architect, a man of plans and diagrams, schedules and budgets. A boring fellow, but accomplished in his humble way. How much more pleasurable to be the lover of a duchess who all but dragged him into her boudoir and had her lovely way with him.
“I’m falling asleep,” she murmured, fingers trailing through his hair. “You will think very ill of me, indeed.”
“I think you serve a luscious cup of tea.”
She laughed, her belly bouncing beneath him, and Adam smiled against her neck.
“Will you believe me if I tell you I honestly did want to see the wallpaper?”
Not until he’d been following her up the steps, her derriere at his eye level, had his wayward thoughts crested into the beginning of arousal. Until then, he’d merely been daydreaming.
“Will you believe me,” she countered, “if I tell you that you’re the first man I’ve kissed since my husband died?”
Adam straightened, took one last admiring look at the duchess in dishabille, then twitched her skirts over her knees and assisted her to sit up.
“Why would I have cause to doubt you?” Though a part of him did. She was attractive, widowed, had means, and moved much in high society. Aristocratic men were accustomed to having who and what they wanted. As a widow, Genie should have been having who and what she wanted too.
“Because polite society isn’t always so polite,” she said, hands in her lap. “The London newspapers would expire for lack of tattle if that wasn’t the case.”
He sat beside her, and the glow of the encounter faded. “I’ll not be tattling, Genie. I’d rather be proposing.”
She tucked her hands under her arms as if cold. “You hardly know me.”
Lately, Adam hardly knew himself. “Every couple becomes better acquainted after the vows are spoken. I realize I am presuming to raise such a topic, but I cannot countenance sneaking about alleys or hiring some cottage in Kent for clandestine trysts. My intentions are honorable.”
Are yours?
Adam had worked too hard to rebuild his father’s business for anybody to cast his good name away on the basis of rumor—or fact. The other consideration was that he had fallen in love, and if his sentiments were unrequited, then he’d given a duchess the power to break his heart—a heart he would have said had been quarried of good English granite. Bad enough a duke had brought Papa’s standing so low. A duchess dallying with Adam then tossing him aside wasn’t to be contemplated.
“I had not taken you for an impetuous man,” she said. “I like your boldness, but you must understand that I have never been impetuous.”
She rose from the bed and stood by the window. Her hair remained tidily pinned, but for one lock curling over her neck. Adam sat on the bed while she repinned that errant curl in exactly the place it belonged.
“Never been impetuous?” he asked softly.
The smile she aimed over her shoulder was chagrined. “Before I met you. The common perception is that titled women produce heirs and then set about taking lovers. I never produced the heirs, I never saw a man who took my fancy, and I’d promised Charles both loyalty and fidelity. Then too, given my experiences as a married woman, why on earth would I—?”
A blush crept up her neck. She untied the curtain cord and retied it to exactly match its twin on the other curtain. Then she squeezed the sachets hanging from the cords, sending a hint of jasmine into the air.
Poor Charles had been an idiot. “Shall I speak to the present duke, Genie?”
“What has Augustus to do with this?”
“He’s the head of your family.” Also a complete stranger to Adam, who’d likely not spare an upstart architect so much as a nod in the churchyard. “If I seek to court you, then I should at least make his acquaintance.” Distasteful though the prospect was.
“I leave Augustus and his new wife as much in peace as I can. A dowager duchess trying to hoard consequence she no longer has by hovering about the ducal successor is pathetic.”
An architect proposing to a duchess might be as well, and yet, Genie’s regard for him seemed genuine.
“I have been precipitous,” he said, rising. “I apologize.”
“You have been honest. I treasure your honesty, but you’ve also surprised me. For five years, I’ve been all but invisible, except to my friends. I encourage the nervous debutantes, intervene when I see a bad match in the making, and dance with the shyest of the bachelors. The old Genie, the one who sits smiling among the potted palms night after night, is not a confident creature.”
A glimmer of understanding pierced Adam’s disappointment. “You would like to be wooed?”
He could do that. More outings to bucolic locations, more strolls about town—more picnics.
“Charles and I never courted. His papa’s solicitors met with my papa’s solicitors. Charles and I were permitted to dawdle about the lime park on several occasions while at least three aunts all but followed us with spyglasses. Some wooing would be lovely, but you must tell me: How do I woo you?”
He did not dare join her at the window, for there was no telling who might glance up from the alley or garden and see a man side by side with the duchess in her very bedroom. Instead, he held the door for her.
“Wooing doesn’t work like that. The gentleman does the escorting and paying calls and reading to his lady in the garden.” Of that much, Adam was confident.
“We’re discussing my wooing,” Genie said, as they gained the corridor, “and I’m done sitting in the parlor with a book, waiting for the gentleman to run matters to his exclusive satisfaction.”
He paused with her at the top of the steps, glanced about, then stole a kiss to her cheek. “I hope the lady was satisfied with our inspection of the wallpaper?”
“You are awful. I was not satisfied for more than two minutes. I want you naked in my bed, and I want to do wanton things with you.”
“What manner of wanton things?”
She started down the steps, and she was blushing again. “I don’t know. I’ve never done them before, and Charles declared certain shelves in the library unfit for a lady’s delicate sensibilities. I do believe there are places a gentleman likes to be kissed other than on his lips.”
“This gentleman does.” As best Adam could recall when his mind was a muddled hash of desire, amusement, and hope.
Genie paused on the landing and turned a serious gaze on him. “You are concerned for your reputation, and I respect that. I have no wish to see my personal business bruited about, and you are every bit as private as I am. But I ask myself: What would make your situation right?”
The afternoon sunshine beamed through the window, bringing out her freckles. He wanted to kiss them—them too.
“My situation is enviable,” he said, “in the eyes of many. I have means, an education, a thriving business, and a favorite duchess.”
She fluffed the lace of his cravat. “Enviable, yes, and likely to grow more so, but you are also discontent—over that business with your father. What would lay that matter to rest for you?”
Adam offered his arm and accompanied her down to the family parlor, which looked out over the garden. All the while, he considered her question.
“You aren’t asking about revenge.”
She tugged a bell-pull and took a seat in a reading chair. “I might be. That’s for you to say. I’m asking about how to untangle yourself from the harm done to you and your family. Putting an old enemy in his place might be part of that.”
Her question seemed to have significance beyond the obvious. “I cannot call out a duke, Genie. For one thing, the scoundrel did his damage almost fifteen years ago. For another, he’s an old man, and he could ruin me with a curl of his lip.”
“So the damage he did echoes to this day.”
It did. Adam was having trouble even making appointments to see certain properties. Though the various agents and solicitors were polite, they were also subtly unwilling to do business with him. Perhaps they were unwilling to do business with any commoner. He had no way of knowing.
“To answer your question, what I’d seek in an ideal world is vindication—for the truth to be known. My father would never cheat a client, and the duke lied when he claimed otherwise.”
Adam hadn’t put that together for himself, that what he wanted was simply for the truth to be known—not such a radical outcome.
“The truth can be problematic,” Genie said. “I agree in principle: Better to be judged honestly than pilloried by rumor and gossip.”
As Adam swilled tea and inhaled sandwiches, he wondered idly if some aspect of the past still bothered the duchess. She seemed to have made her peace regarding her late husband, but she’d also spoken honestly: Adam did not know her well, not yet, and everybody had regrets.
Perhaps he’d learn some of hers when they spent an afternoon exploring the Pavilion, and perhaps he’d kiss her someplace other than on her lovely lips.