The Duke's Suspicion

by Susanna Craig

  And with one last, shuddering nudge of his hips into hers, she burst into bloom again.

  Chapter 16

  Submissive was the last word he’d ever use to describe Erica. And though he wielded a great deal of power over those around him in almost every aspect of his life, he didn’t generally expect to do so in bed. But in the army, he’d often seen a longing for support and security in the face of turmoil, the relief in another’s eyes when authority was properly exerted. In her journal Erica had recorded her quest for that elusive moment when she could set aside her uncertainties and be herself, and he’d wanted—needed—to give such a moment to her.

  He twisted one coppery lock around his first finger while she dozed curled against his side. She’d given him control and then, gloriously, had taken it back again with the brush of her fingers, the surer clutch of her sex. Life would never be boring with her in his bed. In his life. Perhaps next time they’d—

  Next time?

  The spiral of hair unwound and slipped away. She had no desire to marry him. And beneath this very roof was another woman whose family, at least, anticipated his offer. How could he look forward to any future with the woman beside him now? In addition to being a wealthy aristocrat, he was an officer in an elite corps responsible for protecting British liberties, a hero in many people’s minds. He knew ladies generally found his looks satisfactory. But he wasn’t vain enough to imagine that one night in his arms had changed Erica’s mind.

  He needed more time. Time to trace his fingers along the scattered path of her freckles, which hid in the most delightful spots. Time to tempt her with the beauty of Hawesdale’s gardens on a sun-dappled afternoon. Time to thank her for the energy and vibrancy and passion she’d brought into his life. He had known them only in other guises: disorder and disarray and loss of self-control. He had not known he needed them. Until now.

  But time was not on his side. The storm was weakening. Even at this moment, the silence pressed upon him—no wind battered the eaves, no spit of rain dashed against the windows. In a few days at most, she would leave.

  As if his churning thoughts had somehow communicated themselves to her, Erica stirred, made a sleepy murmur, and snuggled closer. Then, on a jerk, her eyes popped open and her body grew rigid. “What if—?” One hand pushed ineffectually at her disheveled hair. “Captain Whitby was wrong about me, but what if he was right in essentials? Could there still be a spy at Hawesdale Chase?”

  “I—he—” His thoughts snapped like the lash of a whip. While it was hardly unheard of for an agent to discuss such matters in bed—sometimes, after all, such discussions were the primary object of taking a woman to bed—it was not the conversation he had hoped to have with Erica now. What did it mean that her first thoughts upon waking were of something other than the extraordinary experience they’d just shared? “Perhaps.”

  With one hand, she scooted herself more upright, while the other tugged the bed linens higher, hiding her rose-tipped breasts from his view. “Doesn’t that mean you’re in danger?”

  “Not immediate danger.”

  He had known the answer would offer meager reassurance, but he was unprepared for the way it made her curl more tightly within herself. Beneath the sheets, she brought her knees to her chest and wrapped herself into a ball.

  “If someone wants something from me, he’s unlikely to do anything rash until he has it,” he hurried to explain, plucking absently at a wrinkle in the coverlet. “As far as I’m concerned, the greater risk is having my identity as an agent compromised. If it is, I may be unable to return to the field.” Speaking those words aloud, facing their reality, was more difficult than he had expected.

  She had been watching the movement of his hand as he spoke, but now she lifted her gaze to his face. “You mean to go back? To continue as…mere Major Laurens?”

  “Not ‘mere,’” he said sharply. “Not to me. It’s essential work, though if it’s done well, most people will never know it’s been done at all.”

  “But what about…?”

  He had not realized he was holding onto a spark of hope until her hesitation breathed life into it and coaxed it into a glowing ember. Was it possible she too had been considering the possibility of a future together?

  Then she concluded, “What about your sister?”

  The flicker of hope in his chest sputtered. “Vivi will be all right. She has her mother, her—” governess, he had been about to say before remembering that he intended to dismiss Miss Chatham. “The familiar faces who’ve surrounded her since her infancy. She’s grown accustomed to my absences, I’m sure.”

  Doubt crystallized in Erica’s amber eyes. “And your other responsibilities here?”

  “I never imagined they would be mine,” he said after a moment. “I never wanted them.”

  “But still they’re yours.”

  She was right, of course. He thought of Davies, Guin, and the rest. The neat columns of figures in the account books, not quite as reassuring as he’d hoped. How long did he mean to go on using his father’s apathetic management of the estate as an excuse for avoiding his own fears?

  “Either way,” Erica continued, “I’d say the possibility of a spy at Hawesdale demands your undivided attention.”

  “Yet it does not have it.” He paused before saying anything more. But he could not go on pretending as if nothing had happened between them. “I confess myself distracted by…other things.”

  But what should he say now that the subject had been introduced? She would not thank him for making her another offer. And he did not know how else to put his own wishes into words. He’d shown her she could trust him with her body, but would she ever trust him with more? Never had he felt so strongly the distinction between the dictates of propriety and the dictates of his heart.

  While he was still debating with himself about where to begin, she wrapped the fingers of one hand around her wrist where it lay in her lap, as if she could still feel the snug silk bonds he’d tied. “How did you know?”

  A few less-than-honest answers presented themselves, the impulse to feign ignorance of her meaning, but he brushed them aside and reached out to cover her hands lightly with his. “I know you.”

  “Because of what you read in my journal, you mean.” A flush of color crept above the edge of the coverlet where she had pinned it against her chest with her arms.

  He shook his head. “You’re so much more than what you’ve written between the covers of that book.”

  “Am I?” Her hands slipped out from beneath his. “I think perhaps I should go back to my own room.”

  He could not argue, though he wanted to. He rose instead, wrapping a sheet around himself as best he could, and helped her to dress despite her protests. “You can’t very well lace up your own corset,” he said.

  Though the words were true, he regretted them as soon as they’d passed his lips, for of course then it was incumbent upon him to stand behind her and perform the task himself. The zing of the silk cord through the eyelets was a bittersweet melody now, as the garment once more imposed its rigid order on her delectably soft form.

  Last of all, she bent and retrieved her journal from the floor. It hung from her fingers like dead weight, and he had a sudden mental image of her casting it onto the flaming hearth. He walked with her to the door to make sure the coast was clear, grateful suddenly never to have remembered to order Armitage to post a footman there. On the threshold, he reached up to brush a wayward lock from her cheek, then left a soft kiss in its place. The only things he could think to say were so utterly inadequate, he opted in the end to say nothing at all.

  As she disappeared into the shadows of the corridor he caught himself wishing that she were a spy, just to give him an excuse to keep her close.

  * * * *

  Erica bit her lip, hard. Hard enough that for the second time that day, she recoiled at the taste of
her own blood. But she couldn’t relent. She refused to allow her mind to think of anything but the route back to her room. Refused to allow her stockinged feet to depart from the shortest, straightest path there. Most would say she had wandered far enough astray already.

  The corridor was dark. The sconces that had been burning when she was hurrying in the opposite direction had long since been extinguished. In her room, all was dark too. A maid had turned the bedcovers down. With a resigned sigh, Erica laid down on the bed, shifted her hips, tossed her head against the pillow. Tired of answering questions about her frequent sleepless nights, she’d long since learned how to make it appear as if her bed had been slept in.

  But she didn’t stay there. She extracted herself from the now-tangled linens and went to the windows. All was dark, though the faintest suggestion of dawn separated the sky from the rugged hills and the hulking shadow of the house. Within the hour, servants would be up and at work. She’d made it just in time.

  So why did a part of her wish she’d been caught in the duke’s bed? There would have been no question then of what their futures would hold. He would have offered, because it was the honorable thing to do and he was, as the duchess had said, an honorable man. And she would not have had the strength to refuse a second time.

  Because of all the foolish, careless things to have done…she’d fallen in love with Major Tristan Laurens, the Duke of Raynham.

  All along, she had been thinking of him as a rule-maker. And she was the consummate rule-breaker. But after tonight, she understood that he was governed not by mere propriety, but by something much deeper than that.

  What other man of her acquaintance, given the choice between a life of ease and a life fraught with danger, would have chosen the latter? Even now, his heart was divided between his obligations at home and his duties elsewhere—and leaning strongly toward the latter. For all his love of order, his determination to maintain control, he was an unconventional duke.

  But it did not therefore follow that he would want an unconventional duchess.

  If he married her, then this—her eyes scanned the shadowy wings of the monstrous house, from the kitchens to the ballroom, from the schoolroom to the ducal suite—would be hers to manage. On her shoulders would rest some portion of the happiness of scores of servants, of Lady Viviane, of Tristan. And she would collapse under its weight and bring everything tumbling down with her.

  In the face of those facts, what could it possibly matter what her body wanted? Or her heart?

  The fingers of her left hand encircled her right wrist and chafed at the sensitive skin there, feeling again the welcome bite of the bonds he’d tied. She hadn’t any word for that…peculiarity, the discovery that pleasure prowled on the very edge of pain. Ought she to add immodest and immoral to the long list of her sins?

  But no. She had promised him she hadn’t gone to his bed to punish herself, and she wouldn’t do so now. In his dark eyes, she’d glimpsed no judgment. Just the opposite, in fact. Love, he’d called her, and while even she wasn’t naïve enough to imagine he fancied himself in love with her, she had no doubt he too had taken pleasure in her surrender.

  She’d had nearly four and twenty years on this earth to come to grips with who and what she was, to learn what could be changed about herself and what couldn’t. And what she’d done with Tristan could not be undone. Self-recrimination would doubtless come creeping along on the nighttime shadows, but now it was nearly dawn, and she refused to waste time on it. The start of a new day was a time to look ahead.

  So, what sort of future did she imagine for herself? Quite possibly a lonely one. She would leave here with her reputation in tatters, after all. Even her family might disown her.

  But she would also leave with a journal full of sketches of plants she had only dreamed of seeing. She would leave with newfound knowledge about herself. And she would leave with the memory of one night in Tristan’s arms.

  Almost automatically, her chin tilted upward. She had a world to see, didn’t she? She curled her journal against her breast, thinking of the carefully drawn map within its pages. She couldn’t bear it if all she had for the rest of her life were the rugged landscape of Westmorland and the conservatory at Hawesdale Chase.

  Could she?

  The tears filling her eyes and coursing down her cheeks she at first mistook for rain. But the day had dawned fair at last. While she had been ruminating, the sun had risen enough to lend its color to the red bricks of the house. The windows of the west wing, including the glasshouse, blazed with reflected light, and already the puddles on the flagstone terrace had shrunk.

  With a determined nod, she turned away from the window, swiped away her tears, and laid her journal on her dressing table. After a quarter hour’s largely failed effort at taming her tangled hair and her tangled thoughts, she rose again, this time leaving her journal where it lay.

  She found Mr. Remington seated at the table in the servants’ dining hall, alone. “Do you suppose this change in the weather will alter my sister’s travel plans?” she asked.

  In the rooms and corridors all around them bustled footmen and maids readying the house for another day. Occasionally she heard the sharper notes of Mrs. Dean’s voice above the fray. “Well, Miss Erica,” he said after he had contemplated both the question and his cup of coffee. “A sunny day will do wonders for the roads, it’s true. But I don’t believe Lord Ashborough will be in any hurry to set out until he’s certain they’re safe. He’s got Lady Ashborough’s health to consider too.”

  Erica’s jerk of alarm rattled the dishes on the table and nearly upset his cup. Drops of dark liquid leaped into the air; three landed in the saucer, but the fourth settled on the tablecloth and began to spread. “Is my sister ill?”

  With calm, deliberate motions, he reached for his cup and used his napkin to blot the stain before taking a sip. She was almost willing to swear his mouth had curved into a grin around the rim. “Mostly just in the mornings,” he said as he returned his cup carefully to its saucer.

  “I don’t understand. What sort of illness would—?”

  He cocked one grizzled brow.

  “Oh. You mean…you mean she’s…”

  “In a delicate condition is the phrase you’re seeking, I believe.” Definitely a grin.

  Feeling her cheeks pink, she busied herself with squaring the handle of her own coffee cup, the one Remington had insisted upon filling, though she had not yet taken a drink. When she’d told Tristan she would have nieces and nephews on which to dote, she had not anticipated any arriving quite so soon. Truth be told, she’d never even been sure Cami liked children—certainly not the messes and noise they tended to make. Always firm with herself, Cami had expected her younger siblings—her sisters especially—to exercise a similar degree of self-restraint. And Erica, at least, had been disappointing her all her life.

  Still, it was clear Cami liked her husband a great deal and…well, they who dance must pay the music, as the saying went. So—

  Beneath the table, her fingers curled in her napkin. Oh, dear. Only just this moment had it occurred to her that after last night, she too might be…

  Her mind shied from even the polite euphemism. No. Impossible. Well, not impossible. But unlikely, surely?

  “I shouldn’t worry if I were you, Miss Erica. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

  Erica jumped up from the table before realizing that of course he spoke of her sister’s condition, not her own. To cover her reaction, she wandered to the window and discovered it too high in the wall for her to see out. Her heart was racing. A child. Tristan’s child.

  Was she really fool enough to hope?

  “Are you all right, Miss Erica?”

  She nodded, a shade too quickly, and her eyes darted toward the door. “Never better,” she insisted, before remembering that she’d spoken those same words to him as he’d… Oh, dea
r. At what point did the heat in her cheeks put her at risk for going up in flames?

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the rumors I heard yesterday, would it? About you and the Duke of Raynham?”

  With anyone else, she might have demurred. But thanks to his notorious employer, Remy had seen a deal too much of the world to be put off. “Yes and no,” she explained, dropping her voice and returning to her place at the table. “Captain Whitby, another of the guests, believes there’s a spy at Hawesdale Chase. The fact that I am a stranger here, combined with my…family connections”—Remington gave a knowing nod—“rendered me an object of suspicion at first. The duke, however, was persuaded that the contents of my journal would prove my innocence. Believing—rightly—I would be reluctant to show it to him, he came to my room the night before last looking for it.”

  “Ah.” His voice held the merest hint of skepticism. “And did you give him what he wanted?”

  “Mr. Remington!” she gasped. But her affront did not budge the questioning look from his face. With trembling fingers, she picked up his discarded napkin and began to pleat it. “Yes.”

  If he suspected the weight of meaning behind that simple word, his face did not immediately show it. He drained his cup and rose to pour another from an urn on the otherwise empty sideboard. The servants would eat later. “I understand he offered you marriage. And you refused.”

  “If you’re going to tell me that I ought to have accepted him—”

  “It wouldn’t be my place. Though as a general principle, I see no harm in changing your mind.”

  He wasn’t probing. He hadn’t even asked a question. And yet there was something about his calm demeanor, his ability to understand what she couldn’t say, that made her want to tell him everything.

  But she didn’t. “Me, a duchess?” She laughed, a shade too brightly. “In any case, he holds out some hope of returning to—”