Ophelia could feel herself turning pink. “That was very kind of them, given that Betsy informed me that there are no free beds in the nursery.”
“I have been informed that the nursery thinks a white rat would make a perfect wedding gift,” Lady Knowe said.
“I would be very grateful if you would consider making your home with us,” Ophelia said to her, ignoring the prospect of a pet rodent. She hadn’t yet accepted the duke’s proposal, but here she was, making domestic arrangements. “I have no wish to manage a castle by myself or, truly, to manage a castle at all.”
Lady Knowe’s eyes searched her face.
“Far more importantly, as I see it, you are the children’s mother,” Ophelia said. “To rip you away from them would be terrible. I cannot imagine moving away from my daughter, Viola. Nor would she be happy without me.”
“I will admit that I find the idea of leaving them painful.”
“You were never planning to leave,” Maddie said. “You just told Lady Woolhastings as much to frighten her off.”
“No,” Lady Knowe said. “If I felt that my brother’s happiness was hanging in the balance, I would leave. They are not my children, after all.”
“Ah, but they are your children,” Ophelia said, reaching out and touching her knee. “I would as soon come between a mother and her children as—” Her mind boggled.
“Right,” Lady Knowe said, her eyes looking suspiciously bright. “Our hostess seems to have gone missing. Shall we have some champagne to celebrate my brother’s extraordinarily good luck?”
She looked toward the door, nodded, and a footman sprang into action. A few minutes later they were holding glasses of champagne.
“Normally I do not hold with a future mother imbibing of the grape,” Lady Knowe said to Maddie. “But I feel sure it would not be harmful to your child.”
“No, indeed,” Maddie said, taking her champagne. “We’ve sent Ophelia’s former nanny over there to make sure that my husband’s mistress—one of my husband’s several mistresses—doesn’t engage in unhealthy habits.”
“Excellent forethought,” Lady Knowe said, accepting without a flicker of an eyelash the truth about Maddie’s child.
“If male, that child will be Lord Penshallow’s heir,” Ophelia said, just to make sure that Lady Knowe knew the consequences of mentioning the child’s parentage to anyone. But she had the same feeling that Maddie obviously had: One could trust Lady Knowe with one’s greatest secret.
Ophelia didn’t often drink wine, other than to sip it now and then. But at the moment, more than a sip was called for. She had an exhilarating feeling that her life was changing.
Surely that called for a toast.
Chapter Sixteen
When the Duke of Lindow finally returned from escorting his former almost-betrothed to her house—having been told in no uncertain terms that the lady in question declined any further consideration of matrimony—he found the entire house party quite tipsy.
A small supper had been served, after which the ladies had retired to a sitting room and continued to imbibe champagne.
“Three bottles,” Lady Fernby said cheerfully. “One each.”
His future wife looked at Hugo with huge brown eyes and said, “Maddie went home in my carriage, but I waited for you. I’m inclined to marry you.”
“I’m very happy to hear that,” he said.
He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. First, Lady Woolhastings had declared that he was to marry her, and now Ophelia was doing the same. Women seemed to be taking marital matters into their own hands these days.
“We’ve been celebrating your . . . your fourth duchess, isn’t it?” Lady Fernby asked, her words slurring into each other.
“Third, and last,” he corrected.
“My last duchess,” Ophelia said dreamily. “It sounds like a poem. I’m happy to be your last duchess, and in return, you will be my first and last duke.”
Hugo’s heart was thumping hard. His sister—darling, wonderful Louisa—had rid him of Lady Woolhastings. And then, it seemed, she had offered toasts until she succumbed, because when he looked about for her, he found Louisa reclining serenely on a sofa, looking as prim as if she were napping in her own bedchamber.
“She was up most of the night with Alexander, who was feverish,” Ophelia said. Her tone was defensive.
Hugo dropped a kiss on her head because . . . she was defending his family. To him.
“I’m afraid that Alexander caught a chill at the fair,” he said. “How is Viola?”
“Very well,” Ophelia said. “We’re lucky, as she’s never been ill.”
“That will change,” Hugo said cheerfully. “When one child gets sick in the nursery, they all follow suit. All of them will likely come down with fevers tonight. Was my sister drinking champagne from that tankard?” he asked, nodding toward an empty cup on the table. “No wonder she went to sleep.”
“She said that champagne tastes better from a pedestrian vessel,” Ophelia said. “That’s a quote. Your sister has a fascinating way of expressing herself.”
“Ah.”
Hugo turned to say goodbye to Lady Fernby, only to discover that she too was now peacefully slumbering.
After that, he gave the butler a guinea to ensure that Louisa got home safely. “I shall escort Lady Astley to her house,” he said.
“I will send the lady home in Lady Fernby’s best carriage,” the man promised. “Accompanied by a groom, it hardly needs to be said.”
“Best send two,” Hugo advised. “My sister is as tall as I am, and unless she is completely alert, one groom will find it difficult to steer her into the house.”
“Excellent,” Ophelia cried, jumping from her chair. “I don’t know why everyone is asleep. I don’t feel tired in the least.”
They no sooner entered the carriage than Ophelia launched herself at him and kissed him, more clumsily than expertly, but with more than enough passion to make up for it. The feeling when her tongue met his made Hugo start shaking all over.
Perhaps it was age, he thought dimly.
Perhaps he felt things more fiercely, because time had a different meaning for him now. He knew that loved ones could die. He knew that time was finite. Perhaps that was what made a simple kiss feel like a conflagration, like no kiss he’d ever shared before.
Even with Marie.
For her part, Ophelia wrapped her arms more and more tightly around his neck, pausing only to murmur husky words that he couldn’t quite make out. His body was tight, blood thumping through his loins, head fogged by the scent and the taste of her.
By the time the carriage shuddered to a halt, his breath had become a harsh noise in his ears, his heart pounding in his chest. He had his hands inside her cloak now, running over her breasts.
“I will marry you,” Ophelia said to him, as Hugo pulled his shaking hands from her cloak and tried to straighten her hair. It was hopelessly disordered, hairpins scattered all over the carriage floor.
“Thank you,” he said, shocked to hear how guttural his voice had become.
He could not take her inside and seduce her, in the drawing room, in the corridor, in the butler’s pantry: anywhere with a roof.
It wouldn’t be gentlemanly. Not right.
She’d had too much champagne. A whole bottle, if Lady Fernby was correct.
“You are not going to feel well tomorrow,” he said, running a finger down her perfectly trim little nose. “God, we’re going to have beautiful children. If you want children,” he added hastily.
“Do you want more children?”
He shook his head. “Not in the general way, but with you? Hell, Ophelia, I would love to have a child with you. As long as your first birth wasn’t difficult?”
“Extremely easy,” she said, dimpling at him. “Well, Duke, I suggest we go to my bedchamber and try to make a baby. Your sister assured me that I would be carrying within the week, so that means a special license.”
Hugo’s eyes
widened. “You discussed children—having children with me—with Louisa?”
“She brought up the subject and I thought it was a good idea.” She blinked at him. “Not a good idea?”
He shook his head. And then nodded. “You can discuss whatever you wish with Louisa.”
“Louisa,” Ophelia said. “I like her name. She has promised to stay with us. Yvette’s children are really hers, you know.”
“I do know,” he said. “Marie’s are shared with her as well. Marie would never have wanted to leave them, but I am certain she approves of how Louisa has mothered them.”
“I suspect my Viola will be won over immediately,” Ophelia said. “By you as well. She’s never had a man in her life, although she’s fond of our butler. So, will you please come into the house with me, Your Grace?” A sensual little smile played around her mouth.
“I can’t.”
Her brows drew together. “Because of Lady Woolhastings? I was hoping . . .”
“Did you think that I was gone for two hours because she was clarifying her disinclination to marry me? She cleared that matter up in the first five minutes. After that we shared a carriage in silence for forty-five minutes, as there was a traffic snarl around Shepherd Market. It took me equally as long to return.”
“I’m sorry,” Ophelia said, not looking in the least sorry. “But truly, Hugo, you would have been very unhappy with her. She was not interested in being a mother.”
“I thought she would be helpful with the girls’ debuts,” Hugo said, and shook his head. “I was wrong, precisely the kind of mistake I made when I chose Yvette.”
Ophelia leaned forward and brushed her mouth over his. “Come inside.”
“I can’t, because you’ve had too much champagne,” he said. Or at least he said most of that before they started kissing again and he lost track of words.
“Champagne?” she said sometime later.
Dimly, Hugo knew that a groom had opened the carriage door and closed it immediately.
“I haven’t had too much champagne!” She cupped her hands around his face and grinned at him. “I’m not used to drinking wine.”
“That’s precisely why I cannot take advantage of you,” he said apologetically. “Because it would be taking advantage of you, Phee, and I won’t do it.”
She gave him a wicked grin, leaned forward, and ran her tongue along the seam of his mouth. “I had a glass of champagne before supper.”
“Yes, well—”
“And a glass of champagne with berry tart. But to be completely frank, Your Grace, your sister imbibed the better part of two bottles, and Lady Fernby polished off the third.”
Hugo searched her eyes and wondered why he hadn’t seen it immediately. Of course she wasn’t tipsy. Her clear eyes were sparkling with laughter and desire.
“Thank God,” he breathed. He pulled her into his arms and slammed his mouth down on hers.
She opened her mouth with a silent laugh that went straight from her chest to his.
After that, it was a matter of lifting Phee from the carriage and greeting the butler, Fiddle, at which point Ophelia told him that the duke would spend the night since it was late to return to his townhouse and he hadn’t a carriage.
She added matter-of-factly that she’d accepted His Grace’s proposal of marriage, and Hugo found the words so moving that he waited until her butler turned away and caught her in a sudden kiss. “I love you,” he said fiercely, in a low voice meant for her ears only.
But when he followed the butler up the stairs, he thought that Fiddle’s smile indicated that he’d overheard.
Hugo didn’t mind.
“Ophelia will wish to bring her household with her,” he told the butler, on being shown into the same elegant bedchamber as last time.
“I have no doubt,” Fiddle said, bowing.
“No servants will be dismissed,” Hugo said, holding out his hand.
The butler shook it. “Thank you, Your Grace. I appreciate that, and so will the household.”
“You’ve taken care of her at a time when others might have taken advantage. I can never thank any of you enough.”
“We are all very fond of Lady Astley.”
“As am I,” Hugo said frankly.
The butler smiled.
Chapter Seventeen
Hugo might have thought Ophelia was tipsy, but in fact she knew exactly what she was doing, and the rightness of it hummed through her veins as she bathed and allowed her maid to put her in a nightgown.
A chaste white nightgown, because that’s all she had, but the very next day she meant to sally forth and order something marvelous made of silk and lace for her wedding night, whenever that occurred.
First things first.
The deep-down connection she shared with Hugo? The way she no sooner glanced at him than she felt a flutter of desire?
That trumped everything.
When she walked into his room, it was lit just enough to create a cozy nest. Perhaps an eagle’s nest, because propped on piles of snowy white pillows was a man with piercing eyes and a powerful body who—
Wanted her.
Loved her, according to his sister.
Was in love with her.
Was Peter ever in love with her?
The answer was obvious. They had never walked toward each other, knowing that their hearts were beating as fast as physically possible. Knowing that desire was a thrum in the blood and the legs and the head.
Of course, Hugo had climbed from the bed to greet her, his manners bred in the bone from generations of noblemen and their nannies. She paused and let him come to her. Ophelia had never felt more than pretty: Usually she thought of her face as comely, an old-fashioned word that seemed appropriate.
But under his gaze, she felt beautiful.
Hugo reached out and wound his arms around her, pulled her close, and put his cheek against the top of her head.
“I’m short,” she said, breathing the words into his chest. He smelled like the soap she bought for guests. It made her happy, as if she owned a small part of him. As if she had changed him.
“Just the right size,” he replied. She could tell by the roughness in his voice that he meant it.
She ended up smiling against his skin like an idiot, and then because there it was—smooth and warm, roughened with hair—she started to kiss his chest, brushing her lips across ridges of muscle, kissing his flat nipple and then kissing it again, harder, when she felt the effect ripple through his body.
Like the wind in a wheat field, she thought dimly, and lost track of the thought because he had scooped her up in his arms and was carrying her to the bed.
He put her down gently on her back and lowered himself on her tentatively, but Ophelia had always been the sort of person who made up her mind and then threw herself into life with abandon. She wrapped her legs around his waist in an instinctive movement that would have likely given Peter a heart attack. Hugo groaned aloud, and the sound went down her spine.
After that, she promised herself not to let Peter have even a corner of her mind, at least not when she was in bed with Hugo.
“Phee,” Hugo said, lowering his head to hers. He licked into her mouth with an impatient ownership that made her shiver even more. His kiss was possessive, as possessive as the gesture of winding her legs around his hips.
“You’re mine,” she told him later, when her lips were plump and tingling from an endless kiss that broke only for gasps of air that sounded like groans.
“Always,” Hugo said. He moved to her side and cupped her face in his large hands. “I am always yours, Phee. To death and beyond.”
They had that together: that knowledge that life is meant to be savored, and that time is limited.
“We have a choice in every moment of life,” he said, his voice brushing her body. “I choose to spend every possible one of them with you, Phee.”
“Are we never leaving this bed, then?”
He kissed her again, so f
iercely that her legs felt boneless. “No,” he said later, enough later that her nightgown had been tossed to the floor. He raised his head from her breast to say it.
“Please don’t stop,” she begged.
He glinted at her and then put his mouth over her nipple. “This?”
She arched toward him. “More.”
He pursed his lips. “More?”
Words were coming from Ophelia’s mouth, but they didn’t answer the question. It was as if her lips refused to be silent, but her brain couldn’t spare the time to shape an opinion. One of Hugo’s hands made its way down her belly and slipped between her legs.
“God, you’re so wet,” he whispered, his voice cracking.
She wound her hands into his hair and did the one thing that Ophelia Astley had never done in her life: She commanded.
“Now, Hugo,” she said. “Now, damn it.”
The duke who never took direction from anyone—and that had included his young wife Marie—cracked a smile and braced himself over her. “Sure?”
“Yes.” Ophelia drew her knees up and made herself vulnerable in a way that she never could have imagined: body and soul. Hugo’s kisses ravished a small, unnourished part of her soul that she had never suspected existed.
And yet there it was.
Making itself known with trembling intensity and a stream of inarticulate words, some of them profane.
Hugo braced himself and thrust forward, and her body melted in a confusion of grateful pleasure that rushed through her like rivers of fire. She closed her eyes and let her hands run down his muscled back all the way to his arse, loving the way that he trembled under her fingers.
She didn’t even realize that she was babbling until Hugo laughed and said, “I never would have imagined you were so vocal. And so obscene.”
She blinked at him, hurt burning down her spine as fiercely as desire had, and so she saw the moment that he realized what he’d just said and added, “No. Oh, shite, no. I didn’t mean it that way.”
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