The Duke's Suspicion (Rogues and Rebels)

by Susanna Craig

  “Stand up,” he ordered long moments later, rising himself and shoving his breeches to his knees.

  She was trembling, weak with desire, but with his help she got to her feet, and once more her trust was a gift unlike any other he had ever known. With gentle pressure, he turned her to face the bench and bent her over it, placing her hands to support her weight. Dragging her skirts upward, he bared her backside to his gaze, welcome curves of creamy flesh over which he swept his eyes and hands before stepping closer. With one quick thrust, he was inside her.

  Her head came up with such force her hair came free of its pins in a flash of silken fire; he heard them skitter across the flagstone floor. Three slick strokes would finish him, he had no doubt, but it was time enough to slip his hand around her hip, to flick one fingertip across her swollen bud. She shattered with a scream that rang from the walls, and his seed sprang from him, filling her.

  Sometime later, when they were collapsed together on the bench and he’d tidied their clothes as best he could, he let a wry laugh escape. “Wild, did Sturgess say?”

  She snuggled closer. “Don’t forget dirty.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t.” With one hand, he smoothed her tumbled hair. A hum of pleasure vibrated through her. “He was wrong about one important thing, though.”

  “What was that?” she asked absently, distracted by his touch.

  “I love it here.” At Hawesdale. In the conservatory. With Erica.

  Like a cat, she tipped her head into his soothing stroke. “And I love you.”

  Chapter 20

  Three days later, after bidding adieu to the Lydgates and Newsomes, Erica found herself standing in the high-ceilinged entry hall, arm in arm with the Duchess of Raynham, the sole remaining guest at Hawesdale Chase.

  “Though a guest,” the duchess reminded her, patting her hand, “you will not be much longer. We shall switch places, you and I.”

  “You mustn’t say such things, Your Grace,” Erica insisted. Despite her general state of elation at discovering herself loved and in love, she’d also experienced a corresponding increase in anxiety. At times, she still wondered whether she had made a mistake by agreeing to this rapid and radical change of circumstances. Because all Tristan’s reassurances did not change the essential truth of the matter: once she’d spoken her vows and signed the register, she would be the Duchess of Raynham. “Surely your stepson has warned you, and you have seen with your own eyes, how ill-prepared I am to fill your shoes?”

  The duchess tipped her head, studying Erica as she considered her words. “Then don’t,” she said at last with a shrug. “You must make the title, and the role, your own. Who could fail to be charmed by your delightfully easy manner?”

  “Delightfully easy manner?” Erica couldn’t prevent the chortle that rose to her lips. “You needn’t persist in claiming my faults are virtues, Your Grace. We all know I haven’t the first notion how to act like a duchess.”

  Her lips curved in a knowing smile. “But you have every notion how to make Tristan happy. I’ve seen more smiles on his face in the last week than I have in the last ten years. His happiness—and yours—matter far more than anyone else’s stuff-and-nonsense idea of what a duchess must be.” At Erica’s skeptical expression, the duchess’ face settled into more serious lines. “I will not pretend that everyone shares my philosophy of the matter. I wish, however, that you would consider adopting it all the same. Hold your head up—I’ve seen you do it—and you will have mastered the essentials, my dear. After all, if a duchess is not permitted her eccentricities, who is?”

  “But Hawesdale is so vast, and…” Erica could feel the familiar panic rising in her chest.

  “I will help and advise you as long as you wish it, in the management of the household and whatever other assistance you believe you require. If,” she added, fixing Erica with a firm look, “you will promise me two things.”

  “Yes?”

  “You must do me this courtesy: treat me as a friend and tell me honestly when you are ready to stand on your own—and you will be one day,” she added pointedly when Erica opened her mouth to protest, “so you may say your breath.”

  Erica managed a wobbly nod of agreement. “And the second?”

  “Be true to yourself. Do not judge yourself against some imagined, and imaginary, paragon. It is you Tristan loves, not—forgive me—that rather dull person you’ve set up in your mind for an ideal.”

  It was, she recalled with a blush, not unlike the promise Tristan had extracted. If he had learned to love her for who she was, then surely she could learn to love herself. “Yes, Your Gr—Guin,” she agreed, forcing herself to shape the name by which she’d been invited to address her future mother-in-law. “I can be forgetful, sometimes, but I do try to keep my promises.”

  “I’ll attest to that,” Tristan said with a wink as he reentered the hall.

  “Are the Lydgates and the Newsomes safely away?”

  Erica had expected Lady Lydgate to be mournful today. Lord Beresford had departed early the day before, without ceremony, and also without settling his debts of honor to the other gentlemen. But in the earl’s absence, the baronet himself seemed once more to have claimed his wife’s affection. The two had left arm in arm, smiling at one another. Sir Thomas had even forgone any mention of prolonging their visit for another day’s shooting, although the weather continued fine.

  “Happily away, I’d say, as I overheard Mrs. Newsome tell her husband more than once how glad she was to be leaving ‘this den of iniquity.’ But I cannot vouch for their continued safety. I greatly fear she may yet climb upon the coachman’s box and insist on taking up the reins herself.”

  It was, all in all, a considerably merrier leave-taking than the day before, when Miss Pilkington and her mother, both pale and silent, had set off in one direction, while Captain Whitby and Lord Easton, accompanied by the magistrate and several members of the Endmoor militia, headed in another. But the captain had announced his intention to be with Caroline again in a fortnight, Lady Easton had given her heartfelt blessing to the match, and Erica had hope that the promise of future joy would overcome their present misery.

  At that moment, Lady Viviane burst through the door that had only moments before been closed behind her brother. Since the night on which all had been revealed, she had been alternating in her moods between disconsolate and jubilant—in the way of all girls who are almost thirteen, perhaps. Disconsolate when she remembered the danger into which she had unwittingly put her brother and so many others, jubilant when she learned that Tristan would be home until spring and that she would have a sister at last, “and one whose bonnet is not stuffed with straw,” as she was fond of saying.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the schoolroom, Viv?” Tristan asked with a mock frown.

  Viviane tossed her head. “You dismissed my governess, Tris—if I turn out ignorant and ill-mannered, you’ll have only yourself to blame.”

  “I declare, Viviane, you are sadly near it already,” said her mother. “Come along and I’ll hear your geography lesson.”

  “But there’s a carriage on the drive…”

  “Of course there is, Viv,” Tristan teased. “Despite Mrs. Newsome’s dearest wish, the Lydgates’s carriage cannot actually fly.”

  “Another coach,” she insisted with an exasperated sigh as her mother led her away. “A crested one. Headed toward the house, not away.”

  “A crested coach.” Erica swallowed around the knot that had formed in her throat. “Do you suppose…?”

  Tristan motioned to the footmen to open the doors again. “Only one way I know of to find out.”

  She preceded him down the steps and onto the drive; there was no portico. With agitated, erratic steps, she paced a few strides in the direction of the distant coach, then back again. The third time she approached Tristan, he held out his arm, and with a ragged sigh, she let her hand
rest on his sleeve.

  “If you’re nervous, love,” he said, covering her hand with his own, “may I suggest ringing for Remington to join us in welcoming Lord and Lady Ashborough? He might provide a worthy distraction.”

  With a questioning glance, she tilted her face toward his.

  “He asked me yesterday evening whether I thought I would have any need of a personal secretary, an aide of sorts, on our voyage,” Tristan explained, his own gaze still on the approaching conveyance. “I said yes.”

  She pursed her lips to keep from laughing. “You’re stealing Lord Ashborough’s manservant?”

  His broad shoulders lifted and fell. “It would seem that a man who has grown accustomed to London and a life of activity takes exception to the idea of spending his remaining years holed up in Shropshire with what I believe must be some sort of…dog? I’ll admit, his description of the beast left me a little unsure.”

  With that, her laugh could no longer be contained, and once it was set free, a bit of her nervousness flew with it. “Poor Elf. She’s very fond of Remy—or at least his shoes.”

  The carriage wheels rattled over the quaint stone bridge that crossed the stream in front of the house, no longer a raging river. The sound once more jarred her pulse into a frantic rhythm. In another hundred yards, she would be able to see into the coach, catch her first glimpse of Cami’s disapproving frown.

  Tristan tightened his grip on her hand. “You’re worried about what your sister will say about this, about us. But I think she may be more understanding than you expect. From what you’ve told me, there were more than a few irregularities in Ashborough’s courtship of her,” he reminded her, returning his eyes to her face.

  She recalled the day Cami and Lord Ashborough had arrived in Dublin, totally unchaperoned. Cami’s last letter had painted a less than flattering portrait of the man, but even Erica, who was sometimes oblivious to what others might be thinking, could see something had happened to alter Cami’s opinion. Now, she had some idea what it might have been. “I’m not sure it could properly be called a courtship at all, in fact. Like you, he was intended for marriage with another. But at least”—she arced her brow in a playful scold—“he did not suspect my sister of being a spy, then use every means at his disposal to get his hands on her journal to prove it.”

  Tristan’s expression remained perfectly serious. “What matters is whether he captured her heart.”

  She turned to give him a swift kiss before the coach was near enough to see them. “As you have mine?”

  His other hand came up to curve against the side of her head, his eyes brighter than she had ever seen them. Her thoughts flickered in a dozen directions. A proper lady would be wearing a bonnet on this sunny day. A proper lady wouldn’t dream of his touch every night. Then the gentle pressure of his fingertips against her scalp, the security she would always feel in his embrace, pushed everything else out of her mind.

  “Likewise,” he whispered near her ear.

  Now the carriage wheels crunched on the crushed stone of the drive. Cami’s profile appeared in the frame of the coach window, the edge of her bonnet, her raven black hair, the rims of her silver spectacles.

  Erica dug her ungloved fingers into Tristan’s arm. “My sister is a marchioness.”

  “I—er, yes?” His brow creased in a baffled frown.

  “Still unaccustomed to non sequitur in my conversation, Your Grace?” She smiled. “My sister is a marchioness, and I…I’m going to be a duchess.”

  He laughed softly. “That you are.”

  “I’ll outrank her.” She made no attempt to disguise the glee she felt, childish though it might be.

  Another laugh. And another kiss, swift and sure and true. His eyes sparkled. “I knew you’d come to see the value of that lofty title, love.”

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  In the Georgian era, charades were rhyming riddles; each line of the poem referred to a syllable of a word or the name of a famous person (the more familiar acting game known as charades comes along a little later). All but one of the charades in Chapter 11 of The Duke’s Suspicion came from Amusing Recreations; or a Collection of Charades and Riddles on Political Characters and Various Subjects by Mrs. Pilkington (a happy coincidence, and no relation to Caroline, I assume), published in 1798 (the year in which the events of the story take place).

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at

  THE LADY’S DECEPTION

  The next book in the

  Rogues & Rebels series

  And don’t miss the first book in the series

  THE COMPANION’S SECRET

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  The Lady’s Deception

  If it was blasphemous to swear at the knelling of church bells, Paris Burke was surely doomed.

  He paused to shake the sound from his head. The call to Evensong at Christchurch? Surely not. The waters of the Liffey must be making the bells echo, doubling their peals. It could not possibly be as late as…

  He pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket, tilted its face toward the fading sunlight, and swore again.

  During the years of his life when he might have offered ample excuses for running late—the combined and sometimes competing demands of the law and his hopes for Ireland’s liberation—only once had he failed to keep an assignation. The disastrous effects of that mistake would haunt him for the rest of his days. Fortunately, the consequences of missing an appointment with Mrs. Fitzhugh were not so dire. Nonetheless, he regretted what it said about the kind of man he’d become.

  Tucking the watch away, he glanced over his shoulder in the direction of King’s Inns—not with longing, precisely. Oh, the dinner in the commons had been good enough, and the wine had flowed freely. Time was, the company alone would have been enough to call him back. The brotherhood of jurisprudence. The discussions, the debates.

  Tonight, though, he had felt certain absences too strongly. The faces that could no longer join them. The voices that would never be heard again. No matter how many times he had signaled for his cup to be filled, their ghostly shadows had refused to be dispelled.

  For the first time, he was not sorry he’d given up his lodgings closer to the courts. The walk across the city would afford him ample time to clear his head. And to concoct some explanation for his lateness, though whatever he produced would do little to blunt the disappointment with which he was bound to be greeted.

  He took another half-dozen strides, rounding the corner of Church Street to pass in front of the Four Courts. The last of the daylight cast a jagged chiaroscuro across the ground, the building itself too new for its shadows to have grown familiar to his eyes. From the gloom, something slipped into his path. What sort of claret had they been pouring, that it continued to conjure these spectral apparitions, this one with pale hair and paler skin? He swore a third time.

  “You ought to mind your tongue in the presence of a lady,” the wraith said primly, resolving itself into the perfectly ordinary figure of a blonde woman wearing a pelisse the color of Portland stone.

  No, not perfectly ordinary. Perfectly ordinary women did not materialize on the King’s Inns Quay. They did not have hair the color of summer butter, spilling from beneath a ridiculous frippery of a hat that looked a little worse for wear. Nor did they have eyes the color of—well, no sea he had ever had the pleasure to know. With another shake of his head, he stepped closer, finding himself in need of the support of hewn granite.

  “I’m looking for someone,” she said, watching his every move. Her brows knitted themselves into a tight frown. “A lawyer. You see, I’m a governess and this morning I—”

  “You’re English.” Part observation, part accusation. She wasn’t the first beautiful woman his fancy had invented, but never before had hi
s imagination betrayed his politics so thoroughly.

  “I’m Miss Gorse,” she replied, as if that decided the matter.

  Oddly enough, it did. Because only a real woman could have such a prickly name. And such a prickly voice. Which, heaven help him, was still speaking.

  “…in my previous post, I had charge of the two children of Lord—”

  Two children. Damn it all. His sisters. He’d promised them, when the last interview had turned up no likely candidate, that Mrs. Fitzhugh would surely know of someone suitable. And now he’d have to confess that he’d—

  A tongue of wind licked along the river, rippling the water before gusting up the imposing edifice in whose shelter they stood. The wind stirred Miss Gorse’s skirts, too, revealing something at her feet. A valise? The sort of women who strolled the streets of Dublin at twilight did not usually, in his experience, tote luggage.

  He pushed himself up a little straighter, bolstered as much by the cool breeze as by the cornerstone’s sharp edge where it fitted neatly along the groove of his spine.

  “A governess, did you say?”

  Her mouth was already forming other words. It hung open a moment before shaping the one he hoped to hear. “Yes.”

  Was it possible? He’d understood the meeting with Mrs. Fitzhugh to be preliminary, but perhaps she’d not needed to speak with him before deciding on the perfect person for the job.

  “And you’re looking for a lawyer?”

  “A solicitor, yes. I thought—”

  “She told you that you’d find Mr. Burke at King’s Inns, I gather.”

  “Er—”

  “My father is the solicitor, though. Rowan Burke. I’m a barrister, in point of fact. But Mrs. Fitzhugh is right in thinking that you’ll really be in my father’s employ. A man without children isn’t likely to need a governess, now is he?” His wry laugh ricocheted off the stone walls, startling a flock of drowsy rooks who cawed their disapproval.