“Fair play? Hmmph. Only children believe in such things.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, during a discussion of parliamentary decorum.
Her scent was driving him mad. As was her sighing.
“Perhaps you would be more comfortable in the library,” he gritted.
Lounging on the sofa no more than six feet from him, she glanced up from her book and gave him a radiant smile. “Oh, but your study has the loveliest light.” She waved behind her at the large windows looking out on a small rose garden. “Are you finished with your correspondence?”
Her question was phrased innocently enough. But he knew better. She was a siren. A bloody temptress in a blue dress and spectacles.
He grunted. “I have much to do.” It was true, and it was a problem. In the past five days, he had rarely left her bedchamber. When he had, it was to make love to her in the old library. Or the new library. Or the music room, bent over the pianoforte. He had even taken her on the sofa where she currently lolled, waiting for him to finish his work.
This was one of many reasons he had resisted her in the first place. Aside from the indecency of ravishing one’s wife in ways and to degrees one would scarcely consider with a mistress, Jane was the ultimate distraction from his responsibilities as the Duke of Blackmore. He had told her as much, to which she had replied, “Is my pleasure not your greatest duty, husband?”
He hadn’t argued, as it was a fair point. And, of course, she had been straddling his lap at the time, so his thoughts had not been precisely clear. Even now, with her doing nothing more than breathing in the same room, he felt the tide of heat and urgency rising inside his body. How was he to concentrate on polite missives from the Prime Minister or agricultural reports from the steward at his western estate? In truth, he could not.
“Mmmm,” Jane groaned throatily, her arms stretching above her head, her lush breasts pushing against her bodice. “I cannot seem to concentrate this afternoon. Perhaps another book would hold my attention.”
As she moved toward the bookcase behind him, her fingers brushed playfully across his shoulder, whispering against his neck. She did that often, touching him in small ways, seeming to crave the contact. At first, he had not known how to react. Most people avoided touching him casually out of respect for his position. But Jane had no such reservations. Ever since their picnic at Blackmore Castle, she readily did so, frequently taking his hand in hers, stroking his face, brushing gentle kisses along his jaw, which was all she could reach when they both were standing. Her little habit both soothed and aroused him, even as he struggled with the foreignness of it.
She made a show of selecting a new book, which he tried mightily to ignore. The scent of her—ripe, sweet apples on a golden September day—hardened him to steel beneath his trousers. The letter between his fingers shook. He set it carefully on the desk.
“Oh, I have not read this one in ages! Harrison, have you read it? You must have done. Look, it is ragged and stained.”
When he saw what she held, his breath halted for just a moment. Ice crystallized over his skin, the cold flush rising from deep inside the core of his body. His arousal disappeared between one breath and the next.
“It was well loved.” She ran her fingers over the cover. “The signs are unmistakable.”
He dropped his gaze to his desk. “Yes. I have read it.” His voice sounded hollow to his own ears.
“Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver. I attempted to read this to Eugenia once. She complained bitterly that Gulliver’s reactions were unrealistic, and that he should have simply squashed the Lilliputians like the pompous vermin they were.” Jane chuckled. “Genie does not mince words when she is displeased.”
Carefully, he took up a letter from his stack and pretended to read.
“Where is the second volume? I don’t see it here.”
For a moment, he could not answer her. But this was an old pain, one he had battled and beaten long ago. Why it should reemerge today, he did not know. “It was lost. When Victoria was still a babe.”
“Lost? What happened?”
“It was burned.”
Her gasp was both audible and appalled. “No. What a dreadful accident. Whoever loved this book must have been devastated.”
Stiffening, he did not respond. He did not look at her. He couldn’t.
In the silence that followed, he heard the whisper of her gown as she moved toward him, smelled her sweet skin when she stood behind him. Closed his eyes when she wrapped her arms across his collarbone, drawing him back into the cradle of her breasts. “Harrison,” she murmured softly against his ear. “How did it get burned?”
He straightened before replying, “It has been decades, Jane. Why should it matter? It is only a book.”
“I am curious. Tell me.” Her hands slid back to rest on his shoulders, her breath tickling the skin of his nape.
“Leave it be.”
Though he could not see her, he felt her flinch at his frigid snap. Her hands slid away from his shoulders, her warmth receding from his neck. Keeping his eyes locked on the paper before him, he waited for her impudent retort. It did not come. Instead, he heard the quiet click of his study door opening and closing.
Damn and blast.
She was vexed with him. He had spoken too harshly.
He attempted to read the report from the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, about the successful thwarting of an uprising in Derbyshire, but his eyes repeatedly drifted to the study doors.
Where had she gone? The old library, perhaps. It had become her refuge.
Absently, he rubbed his chest, trying to ease the sudden ache there, along with constriction in his lungs. It felt like panic. He glanced again at the doors.
Perhaps he should find her.
Yes, he decided. He should speak with her, explain that he preferred not to dredge up the past, as nothing good could come of it. And then, once she better understood the proper limitations upon their conversation, she would resume her customary good humor.
He headed immediately for the old library. Which he found empty.
Blast.
The new library was the obvious next choice, but there, he found only Beardsley, instructing a footman on the repositioning of furnishings.
“No, your grace, I’m afraid I have not seen the duchess. Perhaps she is taking a turn about the gardens,” the butler said in answer to Harrison’s query.
The tightness in his chest increased as he exited the room. Where had she gone? If she was more distraught than he’d supposed, would she have retreated to her bedchamber? Or, worse, could she have taken it into her head to wander the grounds alone, perhaps even saddle a mount for a lengthy ride far from the house? Far from him?
He did not like the thought. She was his wife. She belonged here. Nearby. Where he could bloody well find her when he wished to speak with her. Or hear her dusky, seductive laugh. Or smell her intoxicating scent.
Striding the corridor toward the staircase, he contemplated imposing rules upon her to prevent future incidents of this sort. He should have access to her at all times. Barring that—as it seemed a trifle unreasonable to demand she remain within arm’s reach for the duration—she should at least inform him of her whereabouts.
His thoughts were interrupted by faint music. The pianoforte. Steps accelerating, heart keeping pace, he headed for the music room. Of course. Why did I not think to search there? She adores the music room.
The door was ajar. Pushing it open, he approached slowly, not wishing to disturb her. She played a simple tune, dark and evocative, slow and melancholy. Her fingers stroked the keys with a lingering touch, and as she finished the final somber note, she sighed.
“It was not my intention that you should leave,” he said quietly.
Shoulders stiffening, she refused to look at him, instead adjusting her spectacles and growing enthralled by the fine keys before her. “Contrary to what you may believe, your grace, I do not gauge my every movement according to your preferences.”
Blast. She is your-gracing me again. Dire indeed. There is nothing else for it. I must apologize.
“Yes. A most vexing trait, that,” he said. Bloody hell. Why did I say that?
The only benefit to his unusually unruly mouth was that she finally met his eyes. Hers were round and flashing. Then, her lips tightened. And trembled. And she burst out laughing. “For you, I am certain of it.”
He breathed it in, the muscles in his neck relaxing for the first time since she had walked out the study door. “I am sorry, Jane,” he said quietly as her laughter trailed off.
Her eyes softened, and she took his hand. As their fingers brushed and held, he felt his world right itself. When had her little touches become necessary to him? “I accept your apology,” she said. “It was not my intention to resurrect difficult memories.”
Dropping his eyes to where their hands clung to each other, he gave her the only explanation he could. “The book was dear to me as a boy. But that was a very long time ago.”
She stood and kissed his jaw, slipping past him to head toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
Halting for a moment to give him a mischievous look over her shoulder, Jane grinned. “To retrieve a book. And to arrange a picnic. I am simply famished of a sudden.”
As he watched her full, lush hips sway on her departure, he could not prevent a silent groan. Bloody hell. Now I will never finish this day’s work.
*~*~*
The strawberries were his downfall. She could see the break in his control coming. Delicately licking one of the sweet, ripe fruits, she held it poised on her lower lip for a breath. Then she engulfed it in her mouth, biting down with slow tenderness.
A fat bee buzzed near her nose. She swatted it away.
“Perhaps he wishes to share with you, Jane,” came her husband’s husky, amused voice. “I understand his sentiment.”
She swallowed. “All you must do is read to me. Is that asking too much?”
He sighed, leaning back on his hands, his legs stretched out before him. They sat on a blanket beneath a tree on a grassy bank of the river that cut through Blackmore’s vast parkland. “I don’t know which is more alarming—your infernal persistence or your fondness for extortion.”
She sniffed. “Extortion implies you will not enjoy the price to be paid. You liked reading once.”
“I will enjoy the reward more.”
“Harrison.”
Moving to brace his back against the trunk of the tree, he picked up the book she had laid near his hand. “My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire,” he began reading. “I was the third of five sons.”
At first, his voice was stiff, resentful. But the more he read, the more she rewarded him, scooting closer on the blanket, trailing her fingers along his shoulder and neck. Eventually, she laid her head on his thigh, looking up at his beautiful jaw. Surprisingly, while he absently took her hand in his and kissed it, he kept reading about Gulliver and the presumptuous little Lilliputians. The muscles in his face relaxed, his deep voice growing more nimble over the words. Soon, even she closed her eyes, picturing Gulliver’s exasperation at being tied and poked by people no larger than his finger.
“When the workmen found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound me, whereupon I rose up with as melancholy a disposition as ever I had in my life. But the noise and astonishment of the people, at seeing me rise and walk, are not to be expressed.”
She giggled. “Can you imagine, Harrison? I fear I would not be nearly so patient as he.”
When he looked down, a strange and powerful surge broke through her. His eyes glowed with blue light, sparkled with the pure joy of adventure and discovery and something else—connection, perhaps. For the first time, she felt she was seeing him. Not the duke. Not the man everyone else knew.
He was glorious. He stole her breath.
She reached up to stroke his face. He moved their linked hands so his knuckle could feather over her lips. In the voluptuous golden light, with the river sighing through the silence and leaves rippling above, her heart was seized by him. Spellbound. In thrall.
He was hers. Her Harrison.
A harder breeze blew past, and he dropped his gaze to the book in his hand. He set it carefully on the blanket. “My father burned it. The second half of the book.”
His words chilled her, sent a shiver over her skin.
“I came to the river many times,” he said, staring out at the lazy water. “For the fish. But also to lose myself in other worlds for a while. It was a comfort to me.” A terribly sad smile pulled at his mouth. “He did not approve.”
Swallowing hard against a growing ache, she slowly sat up, remaining close, stroking his hand with her thumb. “He was angry?”
He shook his head. “His grace would never be so crass. Anger is for those who lack discipline. No, he was disappointed. I was his heir. My time should not be squandered in unserious pursuits. He could not allow such fantasies to continue.”
She felt a crass amount of undisciplined anger rising like a nest of furious bees. “So, he burned your book?”
He huffed a mirthless laugh, eyes still following the water. “Books. Plural. I had numerous favorites at the time. And, no.”
Oh, thank goodness. For a moment, she had thought—
“He made me burn them. Every single one.”
The hair on her neck lifted. Inside, she writhed with the need to scream, to stomp in outrage, to claw at his dead father. But she forced herself to remain still and silent.
Finally, he looked at her, giving her a tiny smile that sent her heart twisting inside her chest. “Except this one.” He held up the book she had coaxed him to read to her. “This one I managed to save. I buried it inside a sealed box. Near the castle.”
For a moment, she could not speak. Then, she did, because she wanted to understand. “How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“You were ten.”
“Old enough to know better, he said.”
“Better than what? To read stories that any normal boy would cherish?”
His smile grew and warmed as it traveled her face. “So says the woman who stashes books in every nook of the house when she has two perfectly good libraries.”
Unable to bear it a moment longer, she pulled herself onto his lap, fought her skirts until she straddled his thighs, cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him with all the tenderness inside her. Her lips moved ever-so-softly against his, sliding and pressing in small, nibbling motions. His caressed hers in return, but he seemed content to stroke her back and let her touch him as she pleased.
She pulled back, lightly resting her forehead against his. “It was wrong, Harrison. It was wrong.” Her voice broke on the last word.
Beneath her, he tensed. “Your pity is unnecessary,” he said, the duke returning to form. “It was a long time ago.”
Rising up on her knees, she fisted his shirt and gave him a small shake. “Pity is the last thing I feel for you, your great, insufferable grace.”
He relaxed slightly, even running his hand up to tickle her nape. “Duly noted,” he said dryly.
She glanced to where he had set the book. “When did you retrieve it? The book, I mean.”
“Four years ago.”
His answer brought her head up. “After he …”
“Died. Yes.”
“You waited all that time?”
In his eyes was weary acceptance and wry pain. “Had you known my father better, you would have no need to ask that question.”
She hated his father. Hated him. The coldhearted bastard was fortunate he was already dead. But she thought it best not to say so. Harrison might take offense.
Distantly, she heard a horse whinny. A frown appeared between Harrison’s brows. They both turned in the direction of the sound, but the rise of the land did not allow them to see who was approaching. Harrison gently, effortlessly lifted her from his lap—the man really was shockingly strong—and slid from beneath her to stand. He then absently offered his hand to help her to her feet.
After shaking her skirts to resettle them, she stood on her toes, trying to see over the rise, where a few more ash trees rustled and swayed in the increasing wind. Feeling a stark change come over her husband before the other man came into view, she shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun, and asked, “Who is it?”
He had gone cold. Rigid, hard, and ice-cold. “The prodigal,” he answered.
Her eyes flew to the ridge, where she could just see the man’s hat bobbing higher and higher above the grass. She squinted, trying to see his face. But she didn’t have to, for her husband identified him first.
“It seems my brother has returned to Blackmore.”
*~*~*