The Perfect Duchess

by Jen YatesNZ

  Then he was pumping again, harder, faster than before, until his whole body went rigid with the force of his release and he gasped her name, over and over.

  As he began to relax again he rolled to the side and pulled her tight against his chest, wrapping his arms and legs around her.

  ‘Is it—always like that?’ she managed to ask.

  ‘Lord no! You—we—are incredible. You’re incendiary! You make me feel like I’m twenty again!’

  There was a hint of laughter in his voice, but he didn’t loosen his hold, his arms encircling her as if she were more precious than any treasure. Did that mean—could he perhaps—come to—

  She didn’t dare follow that thought to its conclusion. If he loved her, how could she continue to conceal herself from him?

  How long had she wished for his love? And how desperately now did she hope he didn’t, that she never had to bare herself to him, explain why she’d never told him? Please God, their marriage could continue how it had started, incendiary to the point of transcendence—under cover of darkness.

  For if he loved her—?

  To cover the sob of pure emotion compounded of an incandescent orgasm, a desperate hunger for Dom’s love and the deep need to share her own, and all the fears inherent in that, she twisted in his arms and nestled her backside hard against his groin. His soft groan made her smile even through the tears burning the backs of her eyes.

  She wasn’t sure she could control the ever deepening desire to tell him of her love; but knew for certain she wasn’t yet ready to face all he’d demand of her with such an admission; wouldn’t risk the condemnation she’d see in his eyes when he looked on her imperfection.

  …

  He’d slept! God knows how, when his body was so stimulated by Sheri’s delightfully uninhibited responses; not to mention the confliction of thoughts, beliefs, understandings, all blown apart by the reality of this woman who was now his wife.

  He’d slept, his perfect Duchess nestled warmly in his arms. He’d never stayed all night in any woman’s bed, not even his mistress’s, and there’d been a few over the years. He’d never wanted to wake, needing her to be there in his arms to confirm the glory of all they’d shared through the night. Never shared anything close to the ecstasy he’d known with Sheri last night.

  He wanted, quite desperately, to tell her he loved her, that there was, could be, no other. Even more did he want to look upon her naked body that felt so amazing under his hands; the long slim torso, rounded hips, and firm, luscious breasts. With her hair loose on his pillow and her long limbs spread in passionate abandon, he could imagine she’d steal the breath from his body.

  Thinking about it made him want it more than anything he’d ever desired, made him want her again. Now.

  But he’d promised. Under cover of darkness. If he took her again it would likely be more painful than pleasurable for her.

  A hint of dawn brightened the edges of the drapes she’d so carefully drawn last night. She felt so precious in his arms. He pressed his lips to the soft skin between neck and shoulder and she shifted as if surfacing into consciousness.

  ‘I love you, Sher.’

  Had he learnt nothing in all his years since Veronica? Then he smiled into the darkness. He was no longer the vulnerable, inexperienced youth he’d been then. Now, he knew love was given freely, making no demands in return. He loved this woman. She had a right to know that, to do with that knowledge what she would.

  He waited in the darkness to see if she’d respond, was indeed awake as he’d thought. But apart from a restless movement of her legs that could’ve been from shock, or disbelief, or just a spasm of nerves in her sleep, there was nothing more.

  Relaxing with the thought she’d not actually heard him and yet he’d had the comfort of voicing his feelings, he held her until her body relaxed into deep sleep again, then carefully disengaged and slid from the bed, gathered up his robe and quietly returned to his own rooms.

  …

  Restless, wanting nothing more than to sink back into the miracle that was his wife, Dom strode about his rooms for a moment, reminding himself yet again why he wasn’t doing that.

  A quick wash in chilly water cleared his mind and donning his riding clothes, he hurried through the castle and out to the stables. It was a balmy July morning, with the sun hovering on the horizon, sprinkling diamonds through the mist shimmering on the surface of the sea.

  He loved mornings at Wolverton, a horse beneath him, the land undulating away towards the coast and the endless ocean beyond. The sea in all its moods sang to him. Today he was glad of the calm. It settled his impatience for all he now sensed he could have with Sheri. A love, a marriage like his parents had enjoyed. He’d thought that kind of relationship so rare he’d be a fool to expect it for himself. Had certainly not seen much evidence of it among the haut ton.

  Riding the big grey, because he had some fanciful notion they’d blend into the morning mists, he rode up onto Watch Point, a small outcropping of rock family legend said had been the spot from which a distant ancestress had held daily vigil, awaiting the return of her lord from the Wars of the Roses in the late 15th century. It was the perfect spot from which to watch the east-facing windows of the Castle light up like pure gold, as the sun crested the horizon.

  It was early yet. Allowing the horse to amble, he breathed in the air off the ocean, watched the seabirds circling, and a lone falcon soaring lazily above the wooded valley north of the Castle.

  Like the falcon, he was king of all he surveyed. It was still wrong. He was never meant to be the Duke of Wolverton, nor ever wanted to be.

  That had been St. Rock’s destiny—poor, bedeviled St. Rock, a woman trapped in a man’s body. The secret shame of the Beresfords. As far as Dom could tell, the only happiness his oldest brother had ever known was in the arms of his valet. He tried not to think about St. Rock and the horror that must have been his life. He’d been critically unfit for the title he’d inherited—and all it entailed.

  Pathologically unable to touch a woman, in a sexual sense, let alone create a child with her, he’d taken his comfort in a hermit-like retreat at Wolverton, his valet, and alcohol. When he’d died of pneumonia, Arthur had inherited. He’d died in the bloody Battle of Toulouse, never knowing. Arthur was much better suited than either himself or St. Rock; a Major-General in Wellington’s army, a man of deep honor, high morals, and intense self-discipline.

  As the son least likely to inherit, Dom had been left to make his own way, choose his own path. Arthur shouldn’t have been involved in heavy fighting, but hadn’t believed in sending his men where he wouldn’t go himself.

  As a staff officer attached to the Quartermaster-General’s Department, Dom, renowned for daring to infiltrate where others wouldn’t, had frequently been in critical situations. His survival was probably due to his youthful skill at evading his tutors to slip away and join the village lads in their rough games and friendly mills. Those boyhood war games had been more realistic than he liked to think about now, and it was there he’d had his first love affair with deception and evasion. His ‘army’ nearly always won through his natural skill at scouting and merging into the landscape.

  Eton too had honed his self-preservation skills. Skinny, and of little consequence as a third son, he’d been a prime target for the bigger and older bully boys. He, Windermere and Philip Carlisle, Jassie’s older brother, had become a team as effective as any gang of village lads.

  On the Peninsula, for King and country, he’d flirted with death. He’d been nonchalant, arrogant, caring only about winning, about getting information that would save other British lives.

  He’d been sent on a reconnoitering mission after General Soult and the entire French army had slipped out of Toulouse, returning several days later, in need of a bath and clean clothes, when his batman, had informed him he was urgently required at the Quarter-Master General’s headquarters.

  It had been a defining moment, standing before the Genera
l, his body unbathed and in clothes that would have done a guttersnipe proud, to be informed St. Rock Beresford, His Grace the 9th Duke of Wolverton, had died of an illness, the nature unspecified, in late March. Arthur, His Grace the 10th Duke of Wolverton, had been killed by a stray sniper’s bullet a week ago and the message of his inheritance had never reached him.

  ‘Therefore I have to inform you, Your Grace, that as the last surviving son you are now the Duke of Wolverton. You are dismissed forthwith from His Majesty’s army—directly after you’ve made your report to your Commander, of course.’

  Then the General, a man he greatly respected, made a deep bow, spoke his condolences, and offered him the packet of letters addressed to Major-General Arthur Beresford, Duke of Wolverton. The sense of both his brothers’ presence, passing the sacred trust of Wolverton directly to him, the least qualified to handle it, had deeply unsettled him.

  From that moment he’d been forced to abandon his arrogant dance with danger, come home and take on the responsibilities of a role he’d never looked for, not been groomed for, and had been patently unready to accept. Still stunned by the terrible stroke of fate that had robbed him of two brothers at once, he’d arrived back in England in a state of bitter resentment and grief; not only for his brothers but for the life their deaths had ripped from him.

  He’d continued to crave the pump of adrenaline that came with pitting his wits against impossibly stacked odds, the solitary missions where he’d had no one to rely on but himself, and the deeply satisfying exhilaration of winning through. The nearer run the thing, the better.

  Fingers of sea mist had crept up the shallow gullies from the shoreline and across the open fields to the height of a horse’s belly while he’d sat ruminating; while he finally sat still long enough to accept what fate had decreed was to be his future.

  For three years he’d fought against that fate, refused to buckle to the demands and expectations of his role. His responsibilities had been made clear from the start—marry and beget an heir. It was ironic now to consider had he agreed to Veronica’s indecent proposition when she chose the position of Duchess with a husband who would never bed her over marriage to a third son, that he might indeed have sired the next heir and cut himself out of the succession. That he now wore the onerous ducal coronet and all it stood for was his own fault.

  He’d fought buckling to the pomp and circumstance, although he’d eventually acceded to the need to secure the line for future generations. Even then he’d believed himself acting out of duty.

  Swirls of mist engulfed him, then dispersed. Turning towards the Castle, he watched the windows of the east wing turn to gold, windows behind which slept the woman he’d come to recognize as the true treasure he’d almost overlooked.

  He was no longer the man who chose not to cuckold his brother however tempting the young Duchess had been. Nor was he the man who refused to compromise his honor by showing a desperate young cousin the kind of loving she was never going to experience in the iniquitous marriage brokered for her by her uncle. Nor yet was he the young man who’d come to regret that choice.

  He was no longer the man, older but no wiser, who’d bucked against society’s demands of his new position by accepting Knight’s outrageous challenge to accept the role of Master of Virgins. Though he did understand he’d needed a rebellious outlet that allowed him to secretly tilt his nose at society while convincing himself every virgin he helped to cheat her fate in some small way, eased a little of the guilt he carried over his denial of Samantha, all those years ago.

  Most important of all, he was no longer the man who’d hidden behind unrequited love for one woman in order to divert the attentions of the numerous would-be duchesses, not one of which he’d had any interest in acquiring.

  As he watched the golden reflection in the distant Castle windows flare and fade, the mantle of Wolverton settled more easily about his shoulders. For the first time it felt comfortable, even acceptable.

  That he could now see himself as the Duke, a husband, and hopefully a father in the not too distant future, was because of the woman lying beyond those windows now glowing softly in the morning light.

  He wished he’d woken her, asked her to ride with him; wanted more than anything to take breakfast with her, at their own table, with the guests who’d come to wish them well in their marriage.

  Dammit! He’d become a man longing to wallow in domesticity—and love.

  About to return to Sheri, he was arrested by the thunder of galloping hooves as a figure on horseback loomed out of the mist, which now covered almost all the land from coast to Castle. In another hour it would probably have dissipated and the fields would lie baking in the warm summer sun.

  ‘Morning, Your Grace,’ Bax offered, as soon as he was close enough, his tongue rolling the title with a teasing insolence that was all Bax. ‘Didn’t expect to find you out here this morning.’

  For a moment Dom let his gaze roam from the sun, now hanging above the horizon and losing its first fiery brilliance, to the Castle, seeming to float above the mist, and back to Bax, sitting his horse with arrogant ease.

  Dom smiled. All the animosity he’d harbored towards his cousin over the last few weeks had vanished.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve left your new wife in a cold bed while you ride out here to beat your breast because she’s not the one you want!’ Bax growled.

  Dom’s smile broadened. A week ago they’d have been at daggers drawn by now. In keeping with all the other insights of the morning, he saw he’d been an easy mark for Bax’s clever brand of incitement. So busy defending himself, and then Sheri, he’d not really taken time to observe his cousin. He’d learned long ago Bax’s indolent and satirical arrogance hid a deep and complex intelligence. Lacking anything more taxing than his estates on which to vent it, it was often visited on his friends. His cousins, in particular.

  Dom had made the classic mistake of not stopping long enough to analyze why his cousin should suddenly be showing a marked—and purely scurrilous—interest in Lady Sherida Dearing, when he’d never before treated her as anything other than a family friend.

  ‘Sheri is the woman I want. That’s why I’m out here.’

  Bax’s dark brows snapped together, then just as suddenly the frown cleared as he considered what Dom had said—and what he hadn’t.

  ‘She is?’

  ‘She is!’

  ‘I don’t have to knock you off your horse and pound sense into you to make you see what should have been obvious all along?’

  ‘And what would that be?’ Dom asked, aware his grin had grown to fatuous proportions.

  ‘That Sherida Dearing is the perfect duchess for you!’

  ‘You want a declaration from me? You’re not deep in your cups this morning, nor do I have the element of surprise, so I’d risk coming off second best in any kind of brawl you’re offering. Therefore, I declare, through no great skill or perspicacity on my part, I’ve acquired the perfect duchess. I also freely admit I might have to thank you for it. What I don’t understand is what made you decide to play devil’s advocate or set up as a damned matchmaker?’

  ‘Goddammit! I was sick of your Friday Face, and watching Rogue watching you watching Jassie. Thunder an’ turf, Wolf, you were a disgrace to the Beresford breed! And damned boring to boot! Fixated on one woman!’ Pure disgust rang in Bax’s voice now. ‘In that case she should be your wife—and Lady Windermere was never going to be your wife!’

  ‘I think—now,’ Dom mused, surprised at how unruffled he was at Bax’s harangue, ‘I used her as a shield. I’d made brief forays into society on my trips home on leave. Yet I was not prepared for the tedious—and devious—behavior of women looking for a title and wealth—and their godawful Mamas! It worked too—except on Aunt Gussy.’

  ‘Didn’t work on me either,’ Bax chortled. ‘You were a right royal pain in the proverbial.’

  ‘Everything was a pain in the proverbial,’ Dom admitted, feeling a heaviness he’d not re
alized he’d been carrying fall away as the thoughts began flowing. ‘St. Rock and Arthur were gone and all their responsibilities landed on me. I was hustled out of Spain with a speed that was—almost insulting. I should’ve been at Waterloo—and wasn’t because I’d become a bloody Duke!’

  Bax cocked a so what eyebrow at him.

  ‘I wanted action, excitement, down and dirty challenges I could spit at and walk away from, laughing. I did not want to be pissing around town like a bloody Pink of the Ton, with nothing but fashion and women on my mind, while men who were my friends gave their bloody lives! I came home to a life of luxury—and fawning, devious—hideous—Mamas and their puling offspring! Simpering, brainless twits so wet behind the ears they should still have been in swaddling clothes! They’d have run screaming to their Mamas if I’d even looked like giving them a decent fuck—and that would be after I’d married them!’

  ‘And Sheri won’t?’ Bax asked in a spuriously off-handed tone.

  ‘That’s none—!’

  Dom stopped, sucked in air then slowly exhaled again.

  As often happened, Bax had got him all riled up—and was now gently laughing at his long overdue eruption.

  Damn the man for knowing him so well.

  Relaxing into a slow smile, he said softly, ‘Ice Queen my wife is not. And behold a man in love for the first time in his life. Finally I understand and I thank you for bringing me to my senses. I’ll have Zeus sent back to your stables forthwith, a gift of gratitude, on the understanding he’s available to Sheri as required.—You should also know I’ll come after you with a blunt instrument if you ever offer my wife anything but courtly, polite, cousinly attentions in the future.—Now I’m in need of breakfast!’

  Bax’s shout of laughter rang on the air and with silly grins on their faces they urged their horses towards the Castle.

  …

  Sheri woke to find the pillow beside her empty and the sheets cold. Heat flooded her body as she realized she was naked and if Dom had still been beside her a mere flick of the wrist would have exposed her.