That was a horrid lie, of course. How could anyone fail to notice a man of his stature, so tall and lean and brooding and handsome? The Duke of Bainbridge didn’t grace a room with his presence. He owned it with his dark, smoldering elegance. She could not look upon him without wanting to throw her arms around his neck and yank his sinfully knowing mouth down upon hers.
No. That was her addled mind playing tricks upon her. For there was no earthly way she was so drawn to the Duke of Disdain after three days, a few kisses, and a disproportionate quantity of insults.
“Of course not.” Her sister’s placating tone was not lost upon her. Cleo gave her a knowing look as she released Bo’s hands after one final, tender squeeze. “I am so grateful you didn’t break your foolish neck on that horse this morning. Promise me you will not be so reckless in the future, if for no other reason than that I cannot bear to face our family if anything ill befalls you whilst you’re in my charge.”
It was Bo’s turn to raise a brow. “Anything worse than being trapped into marrying the Duke of Bainbridge, do you mean?”
“Surely there are worse fates.” Cleo studied her in that searching way she had, seeing far more than Bo wanted her to see, no doubt, as sisters did. “For all that he is a cold man with a troubled past, he remains a duke, from one of the finest families. And while he did compromise you, his every action since has been one of honor. He offered for you immediately, and following your fall this morning he brought you to the chamber that would provide you greatest comfort.”
Bo rolled her eyes heavenward. “A virtual paragon. I’m sure Lady Lydia Trollop continued to slaver all over him at dinner tonight, in spite of the betrothal announcement. I would also wager that he did not discourage her. He has been inordinately kind to her, smiling and listening to her nonsensical chatter. Everyone knows she hasn’t the brain God gave a chicken, but to hear Bainbridge, you would suppose her the next Socrates.”
Cleo frowned. “Oh dear, did I not tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Bo’s mind whirled. If that insipid chit had thrown herself at Bainbridge, she would hunt her down this hour and let her know the lay of the land. Like it or not, want it or not, the Duke of Disdain was hers. No one else’s. And in the words she’d learned in one of the bawdy books she’d pilfered from her brother, Lady Lydia could sod off.
“Lady Lydia is gone, Bo,” her sister said, dispersing Bo’s unkind thoughts. “Bainbridge sent everyone home today. He was determined that you would get the rest the doctor said you require for your recovery.”
Cleo’s words sank into her mind slowly, almost as if they had been spoken in a language she didn’t know. “He sent everyone home? On my account?”
“Yes.” Her sister paused, seemingly weighing what she wanted to say next before sighing. “I know you are not pleased at this match, Bo, but Bainbridge seemed concerned for your welfare this morning. He quite put the dowager in her place, and that was no easy feat. He has even moved from his ducal apartments to another wing of the house to preserve your reputation.”
He had given up his bed.
For her.
Comprehension stole into her mind then. She had taken his prized broodmare without his consent, ridden her hell for leather across his lands, putting the mount at risk of injury or worse. Yet when Bo had been thrown thanks to her own foolishness, he had gathered her up in his arms and carried her as if she were fashioned of the most precious Sèvres. He had taken her back to Boswell Manor, called for his doctor, brought her to the best chamber in the entire edifice. He had inquired after her welfare, had been alarmingly unlike her impression of himself—concerned and almost warm. And he had dispersed his house party and taken new rooms, all on her account.
But he had also called her princess, and he had bowed when he’d left, and his face had been wrought from the same impassible lines as always. Had he made these moves for the sake of propriety, in an effort to salvage his already tottering respectability? Or did he actually…care?
She didn’t know. What she did know about anything, anyway? Precious little, it seemed.
“I cannot remain in this chamber, Cleo,” she announced then. And she meant it, wholeheartedly. “I cannot abide by it. I refuse to spend the night here.”
Cleo made a sound of exasperation. “It is the best-appointed chamber in all Boswell Manor. I should consider myself fortunate to stay here.”
“You are staying in a lovely, sunlit bedroom that overlooks the beautiful gardens, with the man you love at your side,” Bo pointed out. “Forgive me if I think that trumps being assigned to the chamber of a dead woman, with said chamber being rife with the stylings of a lady who was born before our queen took the throne. A lady, who I might add, holds me in contempt and wishes she had never allowed my unwanted presence to grace the hallowed halls of her home.”
“Thornton’s mother continues to disapprove of me on a daily basis.” Her sister’s smile commiserated. “Neither time, nor love, nor heirs have seemed to disabuse her of the notion that I did not deserve to marry her darling son. Sometimes, the mothers of the men we marry are beasts, and sometimes they are angels.”
How fortunate for Bo’s sake that the dowager Duchess of Bainbridge fell into the former category rather than the latter. “It stands to reason that only a beast could have spawned the beast I am about to marry.”
“He did not seem so beastly today,” Cleo chided.
“That is because you are madly in love with Thornton and it has addled your mind,” Bo grumbled. “As your sister, I insist you must take up the cudgel for me. You are not, under any circumstances, to consider the Duke of Disdain anything less than Beelzebub himself.”
“Pray keep your heart open, sister darling.” Cleo’s gaze probed hers. “I know that this match is not what you hoped for—”
“I did not hope for a match at all,” she interrupted, indignant. “Do not dare to condescend to me, Cleopatra, or you may leave. Don’t let the door hit you in the bum on your way out.”
“Always so prickly, little sister. Why, one wonders?” A clever smile curved Cleo’s mouth upward. “What was it Shakespeare said? ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’.”
Such a wit, the Marchioness of Thornton.
Bo pinned Cleo with her frostiest look. “You are wrong. It was Queen Gertrude who said it, not Shakespeare himself. And if you insist on bedeviling me, you may proceed to your own chamber and leave me to my misery.”
“Very well.” Cleo leaned forward and bussed her cheeks with airy kisses, and her perfume, as ethereal as the rest of her, enveloped Bo in a cloud. “I daresay I am relieved that you are once more back to your prickly self. You were so pale and listless when Bainbridge first brought you back. I took one look at you, all limp and white in his arms, and swore for a moment that you were dead. If you ever indulge in such recklessness again, I shall be forced to box your ears.”
Her sister was not jesting about such a threat. Bo took one look at Cleo’s hardened jaw and knew that she’d meant every word. It would not be the first time one of her sisters had boxed her ears. Once, she had slathered treacle beneath her sister Tia’s pillow. When Tia had rushed from her chamber, she’d been met with a cup of ice water over the head that Bo had carefully rigged to drop at just the right moment.
She grinned at the memory. “My ears have already been soundly boxed on numerous occasions. You do not alarm me with such coercions.”
Cleo sighed and straightened. Even in her irritation, she was lovely, in the manner of all Harrington girls except Bo herself. Bo wished that she could hold a candle to her sisters, but she did not dare fool herself. Next to them, she had always felt as if she were an old sack being compared to a Worth evening gown.
Her sisters were light or dark, golden or raven-haired, and only Bo had been cursed with her full mane of curly auburn hair that never wanted to be coaxed into the proper styles. Not to mention her freckles. And her height was another matter.
“I want you to be happy, Boadice
a,” Cleo said then, interrupting her grim musings. “You deserve to be so, and now that you have chosen your course, you must give the duke a chance. The man I glimpsed today is not as cold or as insufferable as you think.”
She did not want to hear her sister’s words, which the rational portion of her brain acknowledged could be true. For she did not like to think of the Duke of Disdain as a man who was kind or compassionate or concerned for her wellbeing. She preferred to think of him as an icy, pompous statue of a man. She didn’t like to think of the glimpses she’d seen of a man in torment, struggling with a dark past he couldn’t reconcile with his present.
No.
Because if she thought of the way he had kissed her with enough fiery passion to turn her body into flame, or the way he had taken her into his arms so effortlessly that morning, or even the stark pain in his expression when he’d spoken of his wife’s death, her guarded heart would weaken for him. If she imagined his woodsy scent, thought about him leaving his bed and sending a hundred merrymakers home so that she could rest, if she recalled the way he had touched her, running his long fingers over her collarbone in worship, she would melt.
Princess.
The mere recollection of his deep, velvety voice calling her what should have been an insult but what somehow, in retrospect, seemed to almost be a term of endearment, derailed her. She should have been insulted. Should have corrected him, reprimanded him for his cheek. It mattered not that he was a duke. He was high-handed and supercilious, and so handsome that whenever she looked upon him, an ache blossomed deep within her, radiating through her body like a lover’s caress.
You will remain here, where you belong, he had ordered her. And she had remained, as if obeying him. What had she been thinking? Why were the walls of the chamber so dratted yellow? Her head began to pound once more beneath the pressure of her whirling contemplations.
Dear heavens, the fall had rattled her mind. Cleo’s nonsensical belief in tender emotions—a symptom of her fierce love match with Thornton—was infecting her, making her weak.
“I will be happy when I am allowed the vote,” she announced, cutting through the fog of nonsense invading her brain. Yet another sin to cast upon the Duke of Disdain. Her distraction was his fault. Indeed, he was also likely the reason she’d lost her mount and currently felt as if the devil’s own blacksmith had hammered upon her spine. “I do not seek happiness in a forced marriage brought about by one regretful instant of lost inhibition. I know that you love Thornton, but do not fool yourself that the union between myself and Bainbridge will be anything like yours. I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me.”
Cleo pursed her lips. “You liked each other well enough.”
Bo’s cheeks went hot. Curse her pale skin and fiery hair. She could not fend off a blush to save her life. “He excels at kissing. I won’t lie. And he is so handsome it irks me. But by and large, when he opens his mouth, I long to close it again by force.”
By force of her lips upon his.
Oh dear. From where had that errant thought emerged? Never mind—she dispelled it as if it were a troublesome fly. Shoo. Be gone. No more thoughts of kissing the Duke of Disdain. Even if she did suddenly remember how hard and hot and large he had been, beneath his trousers, against her palm. Bo’s mouth went dry.
Sweet God.
“Hmm.” Her sister seemed unconvinced. “We shall see. For the nonce, I recommend you get yourself back to bed. The doctor was firm on his orders, and you took a great fall. You cannot afford to be stubborn about the bed in which you find yourself. For one reason or another, you are here. Make the best of it.”
Bo’s brow furrowed. She had the distinct impression her elder sister was not just speaking of the duchess’s chamber or even the bed. But about something larger, and far more important. Something she did not wish to contemplate.
She flashed Cleo a brief smile. “Yes, some rest will do me in good stead, I think. You as well. Thank you for checking in on me, Cleo.”
“Of course.” Her sister leaned down, pressing a kiss to the crown of Bo’s head. “I love you, you know. Even if you are a rapscallion in skirts.”
Bo shot up in her seat. “Who called me that?”
Cleo bit her lip. “Oh dear. I do believe it may have been our sister, Helen. Good night, my love.”
And then she was gone.
Chapter 12
Of course, he couldn’t bloody well sleep.
Spencer paced down the hall of the east wing, skulking through the dark without benefit of light. He didn’t require illumination. He knew where he was and where he was going, but the quiet calm of the darkness mollified him, if only slightly. He liked being alone. Preferred it actually. It was the only time he could be himself.
Ironically, it was also the only time he could forget who and what he was.
Well, that and whenever he had Lady Boadicea Harrington’s lips crushed beneath his. But he did not wish to think of her now, in this moment of blissful solitude. And so he drove all meditations on fiery curls, freckles, beauty marks, feisty ladies who didn’t listen to reason, and the scent of jasmine and lily of the valley from his mind.
For the first time in years, he had taken a chamber other than the duke’s apartments at Boswell Manor. The chamber wasn’t at fault for his restlessness. The bed was firm, bedclothes laundered and soft. The room itself—known as the emerald bedchamber—was done in shades of green, which he did not find quite as offensive as the salon. Though perhaps Lady Boadicea did have a point about his mother’s penchant for ostentatious color. It seemed at odds with her ordered, repressive personality.
He had never thought his mother’s stylings at Boswell Manor garish or de trop. But now, he did. Lady Boadicea could change wall and window coverings as she pleased when she became the Duchess of Bainbridge, and he wouldn’t mind.
The notion of her as his duchess seemed at once foreign and not as alarming as it should be. An odd sensation skittered through him, as though the warmth of the sun blazed into his skin. He felt alive and rejuvenated and yet also…peaceful.
This would not do.
The woman was invading his mind, ruining his pleasant seclusion, making him feel things he had no longer believed himself capable of feeling. Unless—yes, that had to be it. Lust was the true cause of it all, not Lady Boadicea herself. Clearly, he had been wrong in his belief that he could abstain from congress with a woman and not suffer for it. The use of his hand alone was not sufficient to make him impervious to temptation. Or to losing his bloody mind.
Naturally, he silenced the stubborn voice that rose in his head to remind him that no other lady before or since Millicent had ever had such a profound effect on him. Quite. He told it to go straight to the devil and never come back.
The alluring scent of jasmine hit him three seconds before she ran smack into his chest. He caught her to him, absorbing the impact of the collision without even taking a step back.
“Please tell me that isn’t you, Duke.” The husky voice that never failed to settle as an ache in his groin interrupted the stillness.
His hands spanned her waist, feeling for the first time nothing but soft, rounded woman beneath his touch rather than the staid line of a corset. The ache grew in size and magnitude until his cock twitched. Damn. He lowered his head before he could stop himself and ran his cheek over the silken cascade of her hair.
Lady Boadicea Harrington was sleek, yielding, and warm. Everywhere. He took a discreet inhalation, savoring that sweet, floral musk once more. He would never again, for as long as he lived a day on God’s earth, be able to smell lilies of the valley without getting a cockstand.
One of her filthy little words had invaded his brain.
What was it she had said? Do you mean to see me thrown into the nearest dank prison cell for daring to read the word “cockstand”? Such smut. The woman was a menace. She had trespassed in his library, kissed him, defied him at every turn, stolen his horse and almost broken her foolish neck, and now she was
sulking about in darkened hallways in search of Christ knew what.
“What the devil are you doing about at this time of night?” he demanded, irritated by her lack of common sense yet again. It rather seemed to be an ongoing affair.
Did she not have a care for herself? She had taken a bad fall, and the doctor had prescribed rest. Sitting still. Slumber. Remaining abed. Spencer had given her the best goddamn chamber in the manor, and yet here she was, clad in only a robe de chambre with nothing more substantial than a nightdress beneath, smelling so sweet that he wanted to lick her from that saucy beauty mark down to her dainty toes.
“I could not sleep.” Her hands, which had fluttered to his chest in their crash, moved slowly, as if she put a great deal of effort into studying the firmness of his flesh, the delineation of each honed muscle. She stilled as he took another deep breath of her scent. “Are you sniffing me, Duke?”
He winced at her incredulity and straightened to his superior height. Thank God for the darkness. His cheekbones went hot. “Of course not, Lady Boadicea. Why would I do such a ridiculous thing?”
Her caresses resumed, leisurely. Torturous. He wanted to push her out of reach and send her back to her chamber, yet he never wanted her to stop touching him.
“I pondered the selfsame question.” Her physical inquisition continued, traveling down his abdomen, her clever fingers undoing him. “And yet you inhaled, just as one might if a particularly aromatic dish had been laid before him. The sort of dish one could not wait to consume.”
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