Regarding the Duke

by Grace Callaway

  He saw his hands on the pale quivering mounds of her arse, parting them to expose her delicate sex, the piquant red nest and silky pinkness. He knew she would be hot and wet and ready for him; she always was. An accommodating wife through and through.

  But he wouldn’t take her here. Or in any place other than their proper marital bed.

  And only at the regularly scheduled time.

  He wouldn’t repeat his past mistakes. Jessabelle had delighted in inciting his carnal, animalistic side. His passion for her had clouded his judgement and led to her death. No way would he risk anything happening to Gabriella.

  From the outset, he’d taken pains to safeguard his marriage, swaddling it in layers of routine, propriety, and restraint. He would protect his innocent lady from the darkness of his world and within himself. With Gabriella, he would never lose control, never let sentiment prevent him from thinking clearly and acting in her best interests.

  He dispelled the fantasy of taking his wife on his desk. He’d had plenty of practice reining in his arousal over the last eight years. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary.

  He released her hand. “Did you want something, my dear?”

  Her curly lashes swept up against her curving auburn brows. He hid a smile at the shy, honest desire shining in her rounded blue eyes. His spouse possessed not an ounce of coyness, another quality he liked. She couldn’t hide her feelings any more than she could fly. He always knew where he stood with her…which was a refreshing change from the scheming and machinations he was accustomed to in every other aspect of his life.

  Not that he minded scheming and machinations. They were his specialties.

  “I, um, wanted to see if Mr. Murray would care to stay for luncheon,” Gabriella said. “Chef Pierre is preparing your favorite duck confit, as well as the usual courses. The soup is asparagus, I believe, and for dessert there’s trifle, the one with the chocolate and brandied cherries you showed a preference for last week and a selection of cakes—”

  “Murray will not be staying, my dear.” Adam cut her off before she recited the entire menu. The rush of words betrayed her anxiety, and although he knew the cause of it, he wouldn’t discuss the matter with her in front of company. That would wait until they had privacy. “He has preparations to make for this eve.”

  Taking the hint, Murray said ruefully, “As tempting as your invitation sounds, Mrs. Garrity, I fear I must be on my way.”

  As Murray’s tawny head bent over her hand, Adam felt his molars grinding again. He didn’t know why the younger man’s gallantry bothered him; perhaps it was that Murray was close to Gabriella in age, and there’d always been an ineffable bond between them. Adam couldn’t forget that, all those years ago, Gabriella had pleaded on Murray’s behalf, asking Adam to let the fellow work off his debt.

  The pair murmured some private good-byes, and jealousy twisted Adam’s gut. Which was ridiculous. He told himself that his reaction was simply proprietary: he didn’t share. What was his was his. And Gabriella was his wife, the mother of his children. She belonged to him.

  If she needed reminding, however, he’d be happy to oblige her. Surely, he thought broodingly, it was his husbandly duty to stake his claim…even if it meant altering the schedule. A small deviation from routine wouldn’t hurt.

  Indeed, it would be quite pleasurable.

  After Murray finally departed, Gabby turned to Adam. “When will you be ready to dine, sir?” She tilted her head in question, a flame-red curl sliding into her eye.

  Before she could brush it aside, he did it for her. He trailed his fingertips over her silky, rounded cheek, feeling the rising warmth of her blush. Her eyes were wide and slightly glazed, like that of a doe confronted by danger. Only his little spouse didn’t want to flee. Her ripe breasts rose and fell with an enticing jiggle that no modest, high-necked bodice could conceal, and he’d wager his empire that, beneath all those layers of fabric, her cherry-red nipples were already hard and budded.

  Anticipation simmered in his blood.

  Hiding a private smile, he offered her his arm. “I’m ready when you are, my dear.”

  4

  Later that afternoon, Gabby was seated at the rosewood table in her sitting room with the housekeeper, Mrs. Page. It was their weekly meeting to review the household accounts. Typically, Gabby enjoyed her chats with the silver-haired lady, but at the moment her mind was elsewhere. Specifically, it was on her husband and the dangerous mission he would be embarking upon tonight. The mission that she had convinced him to take on.

  Her fingers knotted in her lap. Have I sent Adam into mortal danger?

  “I have your approval for the new bed linens, Mrs. Garrity?”

  Gabby nodded absently. “Mr. Garrity prefers silk sheets, from that mill in France.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As Mrs. Page continued to go down the list, worry churned in Gabby. She looked longingly at the tray of refreshments. The housekeeper had brought along a plate of iced cakes, which looked ever so tempting, but Gabby was determined to reduce (part of her never-ending self-improvement plan). In point of fact, she’d started a slimming regimen just this afternoon.

  She resigned herself to sipping plain black tea from her Sèvres cup. It wasn’t nearly as comforting as that lemon sponge layered with jam and whipped cream would be. Or that marzipan-covered genoise. She stifled a sigh. How she wished she had delicious flavors to concentrate on, something to distract her from the dark swell of her thoughts.

  It had started yesterday, when Tessa Kent had stopped by. Gabby had become friends with Tessa because her husband Harry Kent was the brother of Gabby’s dearest friends, the former Kent sisters (the ladies were now all married to aristocratic husbands who adored them). Tessa’s visit had not been social in nature. She’d come to tell Gabby about a terrible plight: Glory, an eight-year-old girl, had been kidnapped. The villain, a man named Sweeney, had threatened to kill the girl if her father, the Duke of Ranelagh and Somerville, didn’t pay the ransom. Tessa had grimly shared her belief that Sweeney intended to murder his young hostage either way.

  Gabby had been horrified. Her first thought had been of her own children, Fiona and Maximillian, her heart squeezing with a mother’s panic. She’d asked Tessa if there was anything she could do to help.

  Tapping her finger against her chin, Tessa had said, “There is something. Talk to Mr. Garrity. Convince him to join our rescue mission.”

  Gabby had gone directly to Adam and hadn’t been surprised when he’d agreed to help. He was a good man and the most accommodating of husbands. At dawn, the two of them had gone to Tessa’s house to plan Glory’s rescue. Gabby had been glad to assist…until Adam had said that he would personally participate in the dangerous battle.

  She’d frozen in panic.

  On one level, it was stupid of her. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know what her husband did for a living. As a business, moneylending did not come without risks; it wasn’t for naught that Adam had a coterie of guards that regularly accompanied him and the family on outings. Nonetheless, when Adam went off to work, her mental picture was of him in his lavish offices near the Bank of England and the Exchange. Running his empire from behind his very large and elegant desk.

  In truth, she’d blocked from her mind the dangers of his trade. When he’d stated that he and his team would surround the dock and prevent any possibility of Sweeney escaping with Glory, reality had struck her with a terrifying blow. She’d expected Adam to be a general, planning and directing the rescue from the safety of an encampment, not some foot solider leading the charge on the battlefield. What if he got hurt, shot…or something worse happened?

  He was her world. The center of her universe. She loved him with all of her heart and couldn’t bear for anything to happen to him.

  Of course, she couldn’t disclose her worries during the strategy session. To do so would undermine Adam in front of their friends, and she knew how much his pride meant to him. She’d bided her time, anxi
ously devouring a plate of cakes in Tessa’s drawing room (hence the newly instituted reducing plan). By some miracle, she’d managed to hold back her concerns until the carriage ride home, when they’d burst from her. She couldn’t remember how far she’d gotten—perhaps to their poor, grieving, fatherless children—when Adam had tipped her chin up.

  “Don’t worry your head about it, my dear,” he’d said.

  “Not worry? How can I not worry? You’re my husband—”

  “Precisely. As your husband, you will trust me in this. All will be well.”

  In the face of his implacable control, her arguments had withered like unready grapes on a vine. Yet her worry had continued to grow after they arrived home and he disappeared into the study with Mr. Murray. To distract herself, she’d gone to check on the children. Fiona and Max were preparing for the play that they, along with their young friends, would be performing this evening for their respective families. Given the circumstances, Gabby had wanted to call off the event, but Adam had said there was no reason to disappoint the children, and it was best to carry on as usual.

  After Mr. Murray left, she and Adam had sat down for lunch. She’d tried again to bring up her fears, yet the presence of the servants had precluded her from making inroads. As had her husband’s obvious disinclination to discuss the matter. And by obvious, this was what he’d said: “Let’s not discuss the matter now, my dear.”

  Not wanting to annoy him, she’d dropped the subject.

  “I’m afraid we have a staffing concern.”

  The housekeeper’s somber tone returned Gabby to the moment. “Yes, Mrs. Page?”

  “It’s about Nell. We’ll be needing a replacement for her soon.”

  Nell was Gabby’s lady’s maid of three years, a chatty, friendly blonde with a true talent for dressing hair. Nell had a follower named Tom, a cabinetmaker’s apprentice who’d been saving up for years to marry her. Tired of waiting, Tom had recently hit upon the idea of investing his meager earnings in a railway venture founded by the wealthy industrialist Anthony De Villier.

  Gabby knew of De Villier and not just because his success was the talk of the town. Her father’s business, Billings Bank, counted the industrialist amongst its most important and illustrious clients. Papa had been an early supporter of De Villier and took great pride in the other’s achievements.

  Thinking of her papa caused a band to tighten around Gabby’s chest. Her formerly indomitable parent had taken ill, and his physician had recently diagnosed him with a wasting disease that was likely to progress. Even so, he refused to rest, still going off to the bank every morning despite her pleas and the doctor’s advice to the contrary.

  Her father had always been a driven man, with exacting standards for himself and everyone else. His mind, once made up, was nigh impossible to change. Nonetheless, when he attended the children’s play this eve, perhaps she could convince him to cut back his work hours…

  Realizing that Mrs. Page was awaiting a response, she tucked away her concerns with a skill borne of practice. She’d been plagued by worries all her life, another one of her oddities. Perhaps it was because she’d never known a mama’s soothing love (her mother had died giving birth to her). Or because she hadn’t had any siblings or childhood friends with whom to air out these feelings. Or because she’d endured years of social ostracism, her peers at finishing school gleefully pointing out all her faults.

  Whatever the cause, her head was a repository of anxious thoughts.

  Since her marriage, she’d worked on improving herself, on becoming a wife worthy of Adam. What man wanted to be married to a woman who was constantly fretting? She was proud of the progress she’d made in managing her worries. When she couldn’t block them out, she’d learned to organize them so they wouldn’t feel as overwhelming. It was akin to sorting frippery into boxes to prevent the mess from spilling everywhere and into everything. How could one function with the chaos otherwise?

  She’d created different categories for the thoughts she stored away. Worries About My Looks, Concerns About the Children, and Scary Thoughts in Social Situations, to name a few. Her favorite was the Bin of Blissful Ignorance, to which she’d consign all her troublesome thoughts if she could. She dumped her worry about her father, along with her concerns for Adam’s safety, into the When Men Refuse to Listen to Reason box—one that was frequently overflowing—and shut the lid.

  She forced a smile. “Is Tom ready to make an honest woman out of our Nell?”

  “He’s proposed, although the engagement may be a long one. Tom is using his profits to purchase more shares, you see. Young people these days.” Mrs. Page shook her head, her neat silver twist gleaming. “In my day, we didn’t wager our hard-earned savings on a fortune-making scheme.”

  “I’m happy for Nell. What do you think she would like for a wedding gift?” Gabby mused.

  “Isn’t that like you, ma’am, to always be thinking of others?” Mrs. Page gave her a fond look. “But lest you forget, you will need to start looking for a new lady’s maid, and the sooner the better.”

  Gabby wrinkled her nose. Prior to Nell, she hadn’t had good luck with lady’s maids. Transforming herself into a fashionable wife had been a second area of self-improvement, one with significant challenges. Nonetheless, she’d remembered the advice given to her by a schoolmistress: “If you cannot improve upon the defect, then you must do your best to hide it.”

  There was naught Gabby could do about her hair or freckles (fading solutions only irritated her sensitive skin and didn’t remove the offending specks). She had, however, given her wardrobe a complete refurbishment. Eschewing close-fitting silhouettes, she opted for garments with concealing necklines, roomy bodices, and full skirts. She requested extra ruffles, flounces, and trimmings to hide her excessive curviness (let’s face it, two pregnancies hadn’t helped matters in that regard). The end result might not be precisely de rigueur, but the extra layers of armor made her feel more secure.

  She didn’t know if her efforts pleased Adam; he seldom made comments of an intimate nature. Oh, he complimented her wifely accomplishments, such as her decorating skills and the menus she planned, her patience with the children. And, she thought with a rush of heat, he never shirked from his conjugal duties.

  At the same time, he was also private and reserved, and she told herself that some distance in a marriage was a good thing. Indeed, it might make the heart grow fonder. The last thing she needed was for him to look too closely at her flaws and wish that he’d married someone better.

  Her thoughts were proving draining. Her gaze wandered to the plate of cakes, the perfect pick-me-up. The fluffy golden sponge beckoned, its layers of snowy whipped cream and ruby jam mesmerizing.

  I’ll make you feel better, it called to her. Fill you with sweetness and delight…

  Her fingers trembled, her hand reaching out…

  The imperious knock made her jerk, her hand dropping into her lap.

  Adam? she thought in surprise. What is he doing here?

  “Come in,” she said quickly.

  Her husband entered, and all thoughts of cake vanished from her head. He was far more delicious. His larger-than-life presence dwarfed her spacious sitting room, his masculinity pronounced against the primrose silk walls. Whenever he was around, he absorbed her senses as black absorbs all light. Every fiber of her was attuned to him.

  At their first meeting, he’d reminded her of Schahriar, the sultan from Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (minus the wife-killing tendencies) and that fanciful image of him had deepened over time. She pictured him wearing flowing robes, strolling through his palace the way he was strolling toward her now. With the casual confidence of a man who knows he is master of all he surveys.

  The hairs on her skin tingled as she took in the subtle flexing of sinew beneath his clothes…not exotic robes, of course, but English tailoring, somber and precise. Restrained power infused his every movement, his very being. His utter control and self-discipline awed her:
she would never understand in a million years why a man like him had chosen her to be his wife.

  “May I have a word with you, Mrs. Garrity?” he asked.

  Dear heavens. Even after eight years of marriage and two children together, his silky baritone made her feel like a bride on her wedding night.

  “Of course,” she said breathlessly.

  Mrs. Page discreetly departed.

  Adam took the housekeeper’s vacated seat. His gaze settled on Gabby, and she shivered at the intensity of his regard. His irises were so dark that they melded with his pupils, giving the impression of fathomless darkness. His eyes could be as cold as a winter’s night or hotter than an iron brand left in the fire.

  Others might be intimidated by her husband’s keen scrutiny, but strangely she wasn’t. Perhaps it was because he’d always been honest with her and seen her for who she was. He’d married her because he’d wanted a virtuous wife, a devoted mother to his children, and a gracious hostess to his friends and associates. And, Gabby thought with trembling pride, he’d made the right choice because she was all of those things. Being Mrs. Adam Garrity was the only thing she’d ever been good at, an honor she tried her utmost to live up to every day.

  “Did I forget that we had a meeting on the schedule?” she asked.

  Adam smiled…and, oh, how she loved that faint curving of his hard, sensual mouth. Instead of softening him, it made him look even more virile. More deliciously sinful.

  “This wasn’t on the schedule, my dear,” he said.

  She was relieved that she hadn’t forgotten something on the daily calendar. Years ago, Adam had come across her in a state of distress. It had been soon after the birth of their son Maximillian, and she’d been beset by inexplicable doldrums. Up until then, she’d taken pride in her ability to create a comfortable domestic sphere for her family but, in a blink, everything had changed.