The Brooding Duke 0f Danforth (HQR Historical)

by Christine Merrill

  He climbed into the bed. ‘We will discuss it later.’ He stroked her calves, then her thighs, slowly spreading her legs until he could kneel between them.

  She stared down at his manhood, erect and ready for her, and felt an answering pull from her own body. He was bending her knees now, grasping her hips and tipping them to leave her exposed, open to his touch. He was staring down, as he played with the places that were still exquisitely sensitive and wet from his kisses. Then he leaned forward to touch the tip of himself to the opening of her body.

  As it had been before, the feeling took her and she clutched him to her, trying to steady herself against the reaction. But this time, he would not let her come back to earth. Instead, he touched her again, taking her to even greater heights. ‘Do you trust me?’ he murmured the words against her skin.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered.

  His fingers were inside her, spreading her. ‘Then remember that I love you. More than I have ever loved. More than I ever will love. I am yours. I have been so since the first moment I saw you. And now I mean to make you mine.’

  His hand withdrew and he leaned forward, and with his advance came pain.

  She sucked her breath in through her teeth, fisting her hands in the sheets, repeating his words in her head. I love you. I love you.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he groaned. ‘It will pass.’

  How could he possibly know that? The pain was still there. She wanted to argue with him, to tell him that this could not possibly work.

  Then he was fully inside her, his weight resting on his hands, which were placed near her shoulders on the mattress. He waited there, unmoving as she caught her breath. And slowly, she grew sure that he was exactly where he was supposed to be, joined with her, body and soul.

  She shifted her hips, trying to get more comfortable.

  Now it was he who groaned. He was too still. She wanted him to move, but he was waiting for her permission to act.

  She released her grip on the bedclothes and reached up to touch him, running her hands down the bare skin of his sides, feeling the ribs beneath the skin.

  In response, his hips gave an involuntary buck, and, to her surprise, the movement felt good. Then he stilled again with a contented sigh as if it was enough just to be with her.

  But it was not enough for her. She gripped him tighter, tracing his ribs with her nails. He gave one, sudden thrust that made her back arch, then eased out of her until only the tip of him remained. This was followed by another slow slide and retreat.

  He smiled down at her and leaned in to steal a kiss, pausing just before he touched her lips, forcing her to rise and meet him. The movement brought its own sort of pleasure for both of them and he rewarded her with another thrust that left her hungry for more.

  Though the distance between them was only inches, it felt like miles. She put her hands on his face and pulled him down on top of her and into a deep kiss, taking his tongue into her mouth and holding it, just as she sheathed his body.

  He kissed her back, eagerly, his hands cupping her breasts, teasing her nipples as his hips moved against hers. But better than that, she felt the hair of his chest against hers, the muscles of his abdomen against her belly, the delicious feel of his strong thighs between hers.

  She raked his back with her nails, then stroked his flanks, digging her fingers into the rounded flesh of his hips. He was a marvel, just as she had suspected from the first moment she’d met him. She lifted her hips, timed them to his thrusts, trying to find the rhythm as her nerves tingled and her muscles tightened.

  He groaned as he had in the conservatory and she felt the change in his body as he neared his release. She imagined what she had seen happening deep inside her body and tightened her muscles, ready to trap the rush of his seed. That small effort was all it took to push her over the edge, her body caressing his with wave after wave of ecstasy.

  He felt it as well and gave himself up to her, her name on his lips. Then she felt the full weight of his body for the first time. What she had thought would be uncomfortably heavy was like a final embrace, warm and encompassing as the last of the passion trembled out of the pair of them. He whispered, ‘Did you enjoy that?’

  ‘No one told me that sin was so pleasant,’ she said, staring over his shoulder and smiling up at the canopy of the bed.

  His head dipped to nuzzle her neck. ‘It is not sinning when you lie with your husband.’

  ‘But you are not my husband,’ she said, sighing as his teeth grazed her throat.

  ‘When the storm clears, we will go straight back to London,’ he said, giving her a quick kiss on the lips.

  ‘A few moments ago, you promised you would swim for a vicar,’ she reminded him. ‘And there is a perfectly charming chapel, just downstairs.’

  He rolled, pulling her with him until she was on top, draped across his body. ‘You must learn not to listen to the words of a man who is staring at a naked goddess and minutes from paradise. We do not think clearly.’

  She scrambled off him, sitting up. ‘What you said was a lie?’

  ‘Not a lie,’ he assured her in a voice that was annoyingly rational. ‘I will try to get to the village at dawn, if that is truly what you want.’ But he said it in a way that said, if she was smart, she would not want such a foolish thing at all.

  ‘Why would we wait?’ she asked.

  ‘What will we tell the others?’ he asked, holding his arms out to welcome her back. ‘If I rush to marry you tomorrow morning, they will guess the reason for it.’

  ‘I had not thought of that,’ she said, feeling the familiar unease in her head and body edging out the pleasure she’d felt.

  ‘And Lenore has requested a few more days, before we make any such announcement,’ he added.

  She felt the last of her optimism deflate. ‘I am sorry that what we have just shared is inconvenient for her. Perhaps I should have asked a few more questions before I let you take me to bed. When, precisely, will my needs take priority over hers?’

  ‘They do already,’ he said, sitting up to lean against the headboard and face her.

  ‘Then you can prove it to me by making a public break with her, tomorrow,’ she said.

  He frowned. ‘You expect me to end my friendship with her?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she replied. ‘But for my sake, you will have to end this pretend affair you have been having.’

  His frown changed to the polite, faintly mocking smile he wore so often when she saw him in public. ‘You will have to explain to me just how I end something that has never existed.’

  ‘Make up a story,’ she said. ‘Tell the men here that you are casting her off.’

  ‘You want me to lie?’ And with that, her Benedict disappeared, leaving her alone in bed with the inaccessible Duke of Danforth.

  ‘I want you to do something that will ensure the rest of the world understands that you mean to take our marriage seriously,’ she said.

  ‘I have been endeavouring to prove to you that I am serious,’ he replied. ‘What other people think does not matter to me.’

  ‘It matters to me,’ she blurted.

  ‘After we are married, you will learn to put it behind you,’ he said.

  ‘How?’ she said, the last traces of the bliss she’d felt disappearing beneath a familiar, rising panic.

  ‘When you are a duchess, you will find that people talk, whether they have anything to say or not. If we do not give them a scandal, they will make their own. To this end, it does not pay to be overly conscious of the tittle-tattle of nobodies.’

  ‘I understand more than enough about gossip,’ she snapped. ‘All of London talks behind their hand about my mother and father. Until I met you, I was of tertiary interest to them.’

  ‘And you handle yourself well,’ he said, with an approving nod. ‘I watched you in Almack’s.’

 
‘And saw what you wanted to see,’ she replied. ‘I was not in control, that night, I was terrified.’

  ‘You did not look it,’ he said.

  ‘And you do not look like a man in love,’ she said. ‘My father’s rages push me to megrims and nausea. It has only become worse, now that people stare at me wherever I go. And that is because of you and your friend Lenore.’

  ‘I had no idea.’ He was studying her, as if he expected that the solution to her problem would be written on her face.

  ‘That night in Almack’s, I feared that I would faint on the dance floor. I warned him of it and he left me alone. He knows how I get.’

  ‘And I did not.’ Was that regret, she heard? Had he finally realised the mistake he’d made?

  ‘Then you must see that it will be impossible for me to manage if you do not explain that there is nothing between you and Lenore.’

  ‘There is nothing to explain,’ he said. ‘I will spend less time with her. And if you are not travelling with me and I should chance to see her at a house party, we will make sure that our rooms are on opposite sides of the house.’

  ‘When I am not with you?’ she said.

  ‘We will not be with each other every minute of the day,’ he said. ‘You will have to trust me.’

  ‘It is not about my trust for you,’ she said, feeling her head begin to ache. ‘You are right that I cannot spend each moment with you. But every time we are apart, the rumours will begin again.’

  ‘You will grow used to the nonsense in time,’ he assured her.

  ‘I do not want to grow used to it,’ she said, trying not to panic. ‘I cannot live like that, now, any more than I could when you first asked me to marry you.’ She scrambled out of the bed and grabbed for her nightgown. ‘The day of the wedding, I was too sick at the thought of marrying you to leave my room.’

  ‘If the prospect of marriage to me made you sick, it would have been wise to tell me before we lay together and not after.’ He was right. But she had tricked herself into thinking that there would be only Benedict to love and care for her. She had forgotten that he was also the Duke, who would not talk with her, would not change for her and was now staring at her as if she was the biggest fool in England.

  ‘I thought you had changed,’ she said at last.

  ‘And I thought you were something that you are not,’ he replied. It might have hurt less if he’d sounded disappointed by the discovery. Instead, as he had in London, their conversation seemed to have no effect on him at all.

  ‘But apparently, we are both just the same as we were,’ she said. As the truth became clear, the terror in her passed and her head cleared, just as it had on their wedding day. ‘We did not suit then and we do not suit now.’

  She turned away from him and walked to the door, her head held high. And then, she left him. If she had been hoping for an apology, or even a plea that would delay the end, she was sorely disappointed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Gibbs!’

  Benedict took a deep breath to regain his composure as the valet hustled out of the dressing room attached to the Tudor bedroom in a panic at this unusual display of temper. The current Duke of Danforth did not shout at his servants, or at anyone else, for that matter. Nor was he in the habit of swearing aloud at the weather, since only a fool vented his anger at a natural phenomenon that could not hear, or care, or change because of one man’s opinion.

  But then, he was quite sure he’d never had his heart broken before. Today was a day of firsts.

  Though he dared not show it, when Gibbs caught sight of his clothing, that man had reason to be angry as well. ‘What on earth has happened, Your Grace?’

  ‘I went for a walk.’ His tone still sounded rude, so he paused to breathe again. It was not fair of him to shout at a loyal servant for his own stupid mistake, especially when it had created so much extra work for the fellow. ‘I felt the need of some air.’

  It was not exactly an untruth. He had hoped that the fresh air in the very brief lull between interminable storms would help him recover some equilibrium after the previous night. Though the jilting at the church had been painful, it had been like a gnat bite compared to what he was feeling now. In London, it had been possible to take comfort in the sympathy of others. But today, he did not dare complain that the love of his life had refused his offer after giving him the ultimate prize. The most logical response of others would be to treat him as a seducer of innocents and her as the injured party who was refusing to marry a man who dishonoured her.

  And poor Gibbs was still staring at him, waiting for some logical explanation as to why he had walked bareheaded into a storm. Benedict stared back at him, daring him to find anything unusual about it. ‘I thought, perhaps, it might be possible to make my way to the village.’ A part of him had wanted to retrieve the damned parson he had promised her. But the rest of him had wanted to walk until his mood improved and to keep walking all the way to London, if necessary, to avoid having to see Abby Prescott ever again.

  But his prodigious anger had been no match for the destruction left by the recent storms and he had barely made it to the end of the drive. ‘I fear I have ruined my boots. And the breeches as well.’

  The valet sniffed in disapproval, but said, ‘It is only mud.’

  ‘But rather a lot of it, I am afraid.’ Benedict looked down at the sad state of his clothing, which was wet through even though he had taken the time to grab an oilcloth duster to protect it. He had left that with a footman at the front door when he had returned to the house. But he suspected, had he bothered to look behind him as he’d returned to his room, he’d have seen a team of servants mopping the trail of muddy footprints and rain water that he had tracked from the entrance hall to his bedchamber. ‘I thought perhaps the rain had stopped long enough for the roads to begin to dry.’ He had hoped to find a coach at the nearest inn. Perhaps it was cowardly to want to run away. But for the first time in his life, he was not sure he could trust his temper to withstand another confrontation with Abby.

  ‘It was only a temporary respite,’ his valet remarked, glancing out the window at the sheets of water that were again running down the panes.

  ‘The roads were nothing but mud.’ Gibbs only had to look at the marks on his breeches to estimate the depth that Benedict discovered when sinking into a rut by the stable. ‘A groom had to pull me free. I very nearly left a Hessian in a puddle.’

  Gibbs stripped him of his coat and shirt and pushed him down into a chair so he could remove the offending boots. ‘A few hours drying by the fire and a good brushing and they will be almost as good as new.’

  Almost. That proved how dire his damage had been, for his valet did not usually admit to even a possibility that his work would not be perfect. Perhaps it was time to accept that some things might be wonderful for a time, but once broken, they could never be fixed. ‘Do your best,’ he said, staring down at the second thing he had ruined this week.

  ‘We are all frustrated by the need to remain indoors for so long uninterrupted,’ Gibbs said. ‘But I recommend, Your Grace, that you be patient until we are sure that the weather has turned.’

  This was very near to a lecture on his foolish behaviour and he was having none of that. ‘I am quite capable of making my own decisions on such matters,’ he said. ‘And if I choose to stand in a thunderstorm and have God strike me dead, I will need nothing more from you than to polish the boots on my corpse. Do I make myself clear, Gibbs?’

  ‘Your Grace!’ The exclamation was one part apology for overstepping himself and two parts shock that his normally reasonable master had treated him in such a way.

  But now that he had started being unreasonable, Benedict was in no mood to stop. ‘Now get me out of these wet clothes,’ he said, not bothering to hide his impatience. ‘If I am trapped in this damned house with these damned people, you had damned well better see
that I look my best when I go downstairs.’

  * * *

  In less than an hour, Gibbs had helped him into fresh linen and a pressed coat and he’d been shaved, perfumed, curried and combed like someone’s prized mare. Despite the fact that it was exactly what he’d asked for, Benedict had had to resist the urge to bat away the normally soothing hands of his valet and demand he be left in peace and looking like the wreck he felt. Though the service was in no way different than what had been done to him for decades, today the fussing made him feel he was as incapable of caring for himself as he was in managing his own romantic life.

  How could he have not realised that the only woman he had ever loved was unable to navigate the future he’d planned for her.

  It was even more annoying to come downstairs and see Abby Prescott seeming so well now that she was rid of him. He paused in the doorway of the salon, pretending to survey the room, but his attention was only for her. Though she’d been up half the night with him, she looked rested and, worse yet, content. He had thought she’d have had the decency to be distraught by the end of their second engagement. If she had truly cared at all for him, she should be languishing for his loss.

  Instead, she looked even lovelier than before. Could it be that their lovemaking had evoked a change in her appearance? She seemed almost luminous in the late morning light. Or was it simply that knowing he could never have her again made her more beautiful to his eyes? Her maid had dressed her hair in a casual style, leaving a single curl dangling against the left side of her face. It made him long to brush it back, to see if it would raise a blush on her cheek.

  ‘Your Grace!’ Her mother waved to him and smiled, eager to be the first one he spoke to. Perhaps she was remembering how happy he had looked as he’d danced with her daughter only the night before and hoping to see they were about to announce the end of their difficulties.

  ‘Mrs Prescott,’ he said, bowing in acknowledgment. ‘Miss Prescott.’ He was sure his smile looked more like a grimace, but he was no longer capable of treating her with his best society manners.