“I will ensure any outstanding credits in his name will be paid in full by the end of the week.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. “But – but I haven’t told you the amount yet,” she said faintly.
“The amount is of no consequence. I only ask that he show some financial restraint in the future.” Wycliffe’s eyes bored into hers. “I am an extremely wealthy man, Miss Fairchild, but I abhor frivolous spending.”
At least we have one thing in common, Hannah thought silently.
“It’s getting late, and you are no doubt weary from your travels.” Favoring his right leg ever-so-slightly, Wycliffe stood up. “I will have a maid show you to one of the guest bedrooms.”
“One without mice, I hope,” she quipped.
The duke’s mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “The mice are the least of your concerns, Miss Fairchild.”
And on that ominous note, he limped out of the parlor.
Chapter Four
Evan woke at dawn the next morning after a night spent tossing and turning and regretting his decision to accept Miss Hannah Fairchild’s outrageous proposal. Unfortunately, there was no going back now. He may have been a bastard, but he was a bastard who stood by his word. Which meant for better or worse – in this case, almost certainly worse – he was soon to be a married man. To a woman he knew absolutely nothing about.
That’s not completely true, he mused as he rolled out of bed and immediately sank into the hot bath he had his valet draw for him at the start of each day. As the chamomile-infused water lapped over his aching muscles he rested his head on the edge of the porcelain tub and stared up at the ceiling.
He knew the color of Hannah’s eyes. Soft gray, like the fur of a rabbit.
He knew the shape of her smile, although he would have liked to see it without the brackets of tension framing the corners of her mouth.
He knew the curves of her body. Shapely and plump, like a golden pear ripe for the picking.
And he knew she was brave, as only a brave woman – or an incredibly stupid one – would dare ask a duke to marry her. But what was courage, he reflected as he stood up and walked naked across his bedchamber, if not stupidity in the face of the impossible?
“Breeches or trousers today, Your Grace?” Entering the room after a courteous knock, Evan’s valet, a forty-something year old man of medium height and build, went to the large armoire in the corner of the room and held up one of each. After a moment’s consideration, Evan nodded at the pair of tan trousers.
“I will not be riding this morning, Peterson. I have other matters to attend to.”
“Would these matters having anything to do with our two guests sleeping in the west wing?” Peterson waited until Evan had put on the clothes he’d selected and sat down in a chair facing the window before he approached him with a straight razor. His movements well practiced and precise, he shaved his employer’s chin and jaw with quick flicks of his wrist while Evan stared straight ahead.
“The guests to whom you are referring are Miss Hannah Fairchild and her maid.” When he’d woken the sky had been dark and gray, the clouds heavy and saturated with rain. After a light drizzle they’d begun to disperse, revealing a clear blue sky and the promise of a cool, crisp autumn day. “They will be staying with us.”
Peterson paused with the razor angled along the side of Evan’s throat. “Might I inquire as to how long?”
“Indefinitely, I suppose. Miss Fairchild and I are engaged.”
For the first time in all the years Peterson had been serving Evan, first as a livery boy and then as a footman and finally as his own personal valet, his hand slipped and Evan hissed out a breath when he felt the sharp edge of the blade slice into his flesh. Gingerly touching his jaw, he regarded Peterson with a lifted brow when his fingertips came away covered in blood.
“I think I’ve quite enough scars, don’t you?”
"I - I'm terribly sorry, Your Grace," the valet stuttered, his entire face turning as red as the apples weighing down the trees in the back orchards. "It was an accident. I – I don’t know what happened. Please forgive me.”
Evan brushed off the apology. He had more pressing matters to attend to than scolding his valet for one small mistake. "My waistcoat, if you would. I need to go speak with my bride-to-be."
Hannah looked up when she saw a flicker of movement at the top of the stairs. Coming to a halt in the middle of the foyer, she watched without moving as the Duke of Wycliffe – and her future husband, although she’d yet to fully believe it – made his way down the steps.
He descended the master staircase with the rigidity of someone who had to consider each individual footfall. There was not a limp in his gait per say, but there was certainly a stiffness. She assumed the injury had come from his accident as a young child and she yearned to ask him what had happened. Not out of morbid curiosity, but to try to better understand the man who would soon be her husband. One glance at his furrowed brow, however, and she knew any questions about his past would have to wait.
“Good morning!” she said, her voice filled with a sunny optimism she didn’t quite feel. How could she? Wycliffe may have agreed to her proposal, but at the end of the day she was still marrying a complete stranger. One who scowled more than he smiled and didn’t seem at all keen to marry her, even though he’d agreed – for reasons that remained a mystery – to do precisely that.
“Walk with me,” he said curtly.
“Walk – walk with you where?” Bewildered by the odd request, she nonetheless fell into step beside him as he marched out the front door and across the overgrown lawn. Weeds, still damp with morning dew, slapped against Hannah’s skirts as she struggled to keep up. For a man with a physical impairment, the duke certainly kept a brisk pace.
“Where are we going?” Huffing a bit – it was no secret she preferred eating to exercise – Hannah failed to notice Wycliffe had suddenly stopped until it was too late. With a gasp and a soft cry she slammed into his back, the force of her momentum sending them both tumbling down a short embankment to land in a thicket of late blooming goldenrod.
The duke twisted as he fell, his strong arms wrapping around Hannah’s smaller body in a vicelike grip that held her anchored against his chest even after their reckless descent had reached its conclusion. For a few precious seconds neither one of them moved and the only sounds came from the thunderous crash of the duke’s heart beating against her breast and the quiet rustling of the goldenrod as it swayed in the wind.
“Are you injured?” Wycliffe asked. Keeping one arm secured around her waist he used the other to prop himself up on his elbow so he could look down at her, his gaze every bit as formidable as it had been in the parlor save the tiniest, tiniest glimmer of concern.
Or perhaps it was just a fleck of goldenrod.
“Just my pride.” Her attempted smile emerging as more of a grimace, Hannah struggled to push herself into a sitting position. A rather difficult maneuver, given that she was still pinned against the duke’s chest. The duke’s very hard, very muscular chest.
From everything Cadence had told her about him she’d imagined a weak invalid who rarely ventured outside the library, but it was clear – in more ways than one – that Wycliffe was neither weak nor an invalid. No, her husband-to-be was very much a man. A powerful, attractive–
“Good. Maybe next time you’ll pay better attention.”
–infuriating man.
“I shall strive to do my best,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Wycliffe frowned down at her suspiciously, no doubt wondering if she was being sincere or mocking him. Hannah wondered the same thing herself. “Would you mind allowing me to get up?” Uncomfortably aware of just how intimate their current position was, she tried once again to free herself from Wycliffe’s embrace, but like a wire snare the arm around her waist only tightened.
“I don’t like clumsy women,” he growled.
“And I don’t like rude, overbearing dukes,” she retorted.
They glared at each other as they’d done in the doorway except this time neither one showed any signs of backing down. Hannah couldn’t say how long they laid there in the goldenrod, but it was long enough for her to notice the shallow cut on the side of his neck. Long enough for her to realize his eyes weren’t black, as she’d initially thought, but a deep, deep midnight blue. Long enough for her to wonder what his mouth would taste like.
Those blue eyes abruptly darkened as he followed the direction of her gaze, her only warning before his hand curled possessively around the nape of her neck and he claimed her lips in a drugging kiss that was nothing like she’d expected…and everything she’d secretly yearned for.
Unlike the heroines in some of her favorite books, Hannah had never been kissed in the moonlight or in a gazebo. She’d never been pinned up against a brick wall or pushed into a lilac bush (the latter of which sounded rather painful, but who was she to judge?). As the seasons ticked by one after another she began to wonder if she would ever be kissed…and by whom. Thankfully she did not have to wonder any longer.
Wycliffe’s kiss was as contradictory as the man himself. At turns soft and hard, then demanding and coaxing, he stole the breath from her lungs and the heart from her chest in long shallow sips that left her yearning for more.
Heat pooled low in her belly as he deepened the kiss, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips before sweeping boldly inside. The hand at her nape moved down, fingers tracing the delicate bumps of her vertebrae through the thin fabric of her dress until his palm cupped her hip. He squeezed and she squirmed, instinctively – albeit tentatively – rubbing herself against the hardest part of his body.
His savage growl stopped her short. Fearing she’d done something wrong, she peered up at him through her lashes, gray eyes wide and uncertain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Have I hurt–”
“Do it again,” he rasped, and so she did. Again and again as he continued to kiss her until the fire between them was raging so hot and so high it was a small miracle the meadow did not spontaneously ignite.
He touched her breasts, the rough pad of his thumb scraping over her nipples until she was panting from the pleasure of it. They rolled across the grass, flattening sprigs of goldenrod beneath them as their kiss deepened into something far more wicked than the innocent brush of lips upon lips.
Wycliffe blazed a scorching trail up her leg as he slipped his hand beneath her skirts and explored the creamy plumpness of her thigh. Hannah stiffened when she felt the gentle weight of his palm pressing against her curls, then softened like honey melting into a warm cup of tea when he began to use his fingers in a most extraordinary way.
“Oh,” she whispered dazedly. “That’s…that’s quite nice.”
He growled something indecipherable before he captured her mouth with his, drawing her bottom lip between his teeth and biting down with just enough pressure to elicit a gasp. He soothed the small bite with a flick of his tongue at the same time his finger slipped inside of her and Hannah was lost.
Head flung back, eyes heavy with passion, body drunk with desire, she opened herself to pleasure she’d never dreamed possible. Like the most skilled of musicians, Wycliffe strummed her core as if she were a finely tuned instrument until every inch of her was quivering in anticipation. Anticipation of what, precisely, she couldn’t be certain…until all of a sudden everything tightened and held and then with a single stroke of his finger it came crashing down in wave after wave of mind-numbing bliss.
When the last wave had finally ebbed, Hannah opened her eyes and sat up on her elbows to discover her betrothed sitting a few feet away with his back facing her, shoulders rigid beneath the sharp line of his jacket. She bit her swollen lip, wanting to say something…anything, really, to break the awkward silence that had fallen between them. But just what did one say to a man who had been a stranger two days ago, a fiancé yesterday, and today – well, she didn’t know what he was today.
“I apologize,” Wycliffe said without looking at her. “That should not have happened.”
“It’s all right,” Hannah said, for surely something that had felt so wonderful couldn’t possibly be wrong. Mayhap in the eyes of God since they were not yet technically husband and wife, but given they were engaged He couldn’t be that displeased with her. Lust may have been one of the seven deadly sins, but surely it paled in comparison to gluttony, greed, and wrath. Unfortunately, Wycliffe did not seem to be on the same mindset.
“No,” he said flatly, “it’s not. And it will not happen again.”
A flicker of panic unfurled in Hannah’s chest when he stood up. Pushing down her skirts, she hastened to do the same. “What do you mean? Are we – that is to say, have you…”
“Called off the wedding?” Dark gaze unreadable, he turned to face her. “No. As I said, Miss Fairchild, I am a man of my word.”
Her lips curved in a hesitant smile. “Given what just happened, I – I think we can use our Christian names. Don’t you?”
“I do not. You may refer to me as Your Grace or Wycliffe, I have no preference. And I shall continue to call you Miss Fairchild.”
“Even after we’re married?” she asked, her brow furrowing.
“Especially after we are married.”
A loose coil of hair tumbled into Hannah’s eyes as she shook her head in bewilderment. “I am afraid I do not understand.”
“It’s quite simple, really.” His gaze flicked to the flattened section of goldenrod before returning to her face. For an instant his countenance seemed to soften…and then his jaw clenched and his emotions were once again hidden behind an impenetrable wall of ice and stone. “This marriage is not a love match, Miss Fairchild. It is a means of convenience. A business transaction, if you will, in which both parties benefit equally. There is no reason to bring love into it, or intimacy for that matter. If the time comes that I desire an heir, I shall make the necessary arrangements. Until then, you need not fear I will come knocking at your door in the middle of the night.”
How clinical he made it all sound. Frowning, Hannah tucked her hair behind her ear. Maybe she should have been grateful that Wycliffe was all but insisting their marriage be in name only. And a tiny part of her was. But a much bigger part – the part that had just been rolling about in wanton abandon – wanted more. “What if we come to care for one another in time?”
“We won’t.”
“But if we did,” she persisted, “what would be the harm?”
“The harm?” he repeated, looking down at her as if she’d just suggested the earth was flat or the sun was green. “The harm is that love is for fools, Miss Fairchild. And while I may be many things, a fool is not one of them.”
But as the duke walked away, Hannah couldn’t help but think that someone who did not believe in love was the biggest fool of them all.
Chapter Five
They were married two weeks later on a rainy autumn day with only the priest, Elsbeth, and Peterson in attendance. Hannah had written to her family to tell them of her engagement, and while they were thrilled for her – Cadence in particular – they’d been unable to make the long journey due to the Season having just begun.
While she did wish her parents could have been there to see her married, Hannah was equally glad they had remained in London as the entire ceremony lasted less than ten minutes. There had been the reading of the vows, a few readings from the bible, one chaste kiss on her cheek, and then it was over. In the blink of an eye – or so it seemed – she was the new Duchess of Wycliffe. Although truth be told she neither felt like a bride or a duchess.
After the wedding, which had taken place in a small church on the outskirts of the nearest village, she and Wycliffe returned to the estate where he promptly disembarked from their carriage and retreated into his study.
For the next several days the only time Hannah saw her husband was when they dined together in the evenings. Even then there was little conversation as it was rat
her difficult to converse with someone when separated by a fifteen foot table, although she did try. Unfortunately, all of her efforts were rebuked and after it became clear that the duke was more interested in his soup than his duchess, she stopped trying.
After dinner Wycliffe usually went on a walk and Hannah went to her bedchamber where she pretended everything was going to be all right.
Every marriage started off a bit rocky at first, she told herself as she worked on her embroidery or tried to read a book. Particularly ones where the bride and groom were veritable strangers. Wycliffe would come around eventually. Their marriage might not have started off as a love match, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t become one with a little time and understanding…no matter what her husband had said to the contrary.
Where there was passion, Hannah reasoned, there could be love. And there had been plenty of passion to be found in their kiss. Wycliffe’s words may have said one thing, but his body – and the dark desire in his eyes as he’d pinned her to the ground – had said quite another.
He wanted her. She was sure of it. He just didn’t want to want her.
And therein laid the problem.
Hannah would be the first to admit that when she first set off for Wycliffe Manor love was the furthest thing from her mind. She wanted first and foremost to save her family. Everything else was secondary. Then she’d met the duke…and then he’d kissed her…and suddenly love hadn’t felt secondary at all.
But what to do? Better yet, how to do it? That, Hannah decided as she wandered aimlessly around the manor on a self-guided tour of her new home, was the question.
Rain pattered against the windows as she walked through the library, a parlor with all of the furniture covered beneath large white sheets, and a drawing room without any furniture at all. Everything was buried underneath a thick layer of dust and there were heavy drapes on all of the windows. The drapes, combined with the flickering candlelight and pitter patter of rain on the glass, gave the manor a dark, grim tone that lifted the tiny hairs on the back of her neck as she walked from one room to the next. Yet the manor wasn’t completely hopeless. Beneath the dirt and behind the shadows was a house with good bones just waiting to be brought back to life. Removing those awful drapes, polishing the woodwork with a bit of beeswax (all right, a lot of beeswax), and putting fresh paper-hangings on the walls would go a long way towards making the old house shine like new again.
The Autumn Duchess (A Duchess for All Seasons Book 4) Page 4