My Last Duchess

by James, Eloisa

  “Um,” Ophelia said, suddenly incredibly aware of the fact that her legs were bound around him as if she—

  She unwound herself and put her feet back on the bed. “I’m not usually . . .”

  “Oh, God, Phee.” There was a rasp in his voice that she liked. “Please don’t take offense. I’m an idiot.”

  He had stopped moving, and she had stopped moving, so now they lay together awkwardly, and Ophelia, for one, felt frozen.

  She cleared her throat. “I apologize for the profanity.”

  “Fuck that,” he said, breaking the obscene still life they’d created by thrusting again.

  Desperate herself, Ophelia responded with a squeak and a swallowed word.

  “Give me your hands.”

  Bemused, she brought her arms down to the bed and bent her elbows so that their fingers could entwine. Then Hugo started kissing her so deeply that even if she had thought of words, there was no air to speak them. His body took on a rhythm that made passion quake down her legs and press tighter against him.

  “Here,” he said, when she’d almost lost control of herself, but not quite. He uncurled his right hand, reached back, and pulled her knee up. Her pelvis tilted and she helplessly let out a broken sound.

  “Put your legs around me,” he growled into her mouth.

  She did, and it changed the angle so that she was breathless, suddenly mad, shaking all over. She managed to keep her mouth shut, though, until he suddenly stopped and put his lips on hers.

  “Please, Phee.”

  “Please, what?”

  Their hands had fallen apart and she was clinging to him again.

  “Talk to me,” he growled. “Please talk to me.”

  She was sweaty and shaking. She wanted to come more than she had . . . well, forever. Instead of talking she kissed him and let her hips talk, but then he began moving faster, and her head fell back.

  Tension was building and building and she wasn’t sure when she started talking again, but she registered the joyous glint in his eyes. Then they were both gasping for air, trembling violently, and she was pushing against him with all the strength in her body.

  And then the world exploded around them with a fiery intensity that she, for one, had never experienced.

  “Bloody hell,” she whispered a while later.

  “There’s my duchess,” he whispered back. “My last, wonderful, beloved, profane duchess.”

  “Duchesses probably don’t curse.”

  “Mine does.” He licked her cheekbone. “Sweats too. I’m so lucky, so damned lucky.”

  Ophelia believed him, because the look in Hugo’s eyes wasn’t one she’d seen before, but her soul instantly welcomed it. “I’ve never felt . . . said anything like that before,” she said, stumbling into an explanation that she suspected he didn’t need.

  “Lucky me,” he whispered. “I suspect you know this, but I’m in love with you, Phee. And I’ve never used that sentence before either. Dukes don’t swear.”

  “In love?” she said, wonderingly. “I didn’t . . .”

  “I am.”

  “Me too,” she offered. “I love you too. I’m in love with you too. I will, I do.”

  “I do, I will.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  At five in the morning, Lady Astley’s snug little house was silent. Hugo had the idea that he woke up simply due to the lack of noise. His townhouse was rarely silent; it was too full of children for that.

  The castle was too old: It groaned and talked to itself; wind scoured across Lindow Moss, the bog that lay to the east of the castle, and then whistled through its turrets.

  A moment later he realized that it wasn’t silence that had woken him but the patter of small feet. The door silently pushed open and a small creature dressed in a white nightie ran directly to the bedside.

  He glanced over at Ophelia. Thankfully, after the third time they made love, he had donned the nightshirt provided by the butler, and Ophelia had pulled her nightgown back on, after which they had made the short journey from the guest bedchamber to Ophelia’s bedchamber next door.

  For good reason, it seemed.

  Viola stopped at the side of the bed and looked up at him. Soft brown curls made a halo for a sweet face, with hazel eyes and luxurious eyelashes.

  You, his soul said.

  You too.

  It was the same feeling he had had after each newborn child was presented to him: the moment in which the world adjusted so that his heart could recognize one of his tribe. One of his beloveds.

  He put a finger to his lips. “Mama is sleeping,” he whispered.

  Her bottom lip quivered. “Mama?”

  “She’s right here.”

  Viola nodded. “Go, snow, cake.” She held up her arms.

  Hugo wasn’t certain of the etiquette of inviting small females to one’s bed, albeit future family members. He turned and dropped a kiss on Ophelia’s cheek.

  “No,” she murmured. “Later, Viola.”

  “Viola is here now,” he observed. “I don’t think she wants to wait until later.” Indeed, by the time he turned back, Viola had dragged a small set of steps from under the bed, climbed up, and was crawling across the coverlet toward her mother.

  “Mama!” she cried joyously.

  Ophelia turned over and pushed herself up on her pillow, shoving back a curtain of tangled silken strands of hair. “Sweetie,” she said sleepily.

  Viola crawled onto Ophelia’s lap and leaned back, examining Hugo. “Snow,” she said. She turned to her side and nestled against her mother, her thumb in her mouth.

  “She recognizes you,” Ophelia said, beaming at him. “Yes, sweetie, he’s the gentleman whom we met the other day in the snow.”

  “I should go,” Hugo said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Return to my bedchamber.”

  “The household doesn’t rise for another half hour,” Ophelia said. Viola appeared to have fallen back asleep.

  “I didn’t expect this,” Hugo said, trying to find the words to explain what he meant.

  “Viola?” Ophelia wrinkled her nose to him. “When she has a nursery with siblings, I suspect she’ll wake them up instead of me.”

  “Joan is an early riser as well,” Hugo said. He looked at Viola to make certain she was truly asleep. “I had forgotten what making love was like. I had imagined it with you—hell, the image of you in bed was present in my mind within a moment of entering your carriage.”

  Ophelia gave him a lopsided smile. “I was not far behind you.”

  “But the reality of it is so much more. You’re the best lover I’ve ever had. Marie was sweet, but she was a girl. With you, it’s all different . . . Making love to a woman is—”

  “Not just any woman,” Ophelia said, grinning at him.

  “You are gorgeous,” Hugo said instantly. Her lips, for instance, were perfectly shaped, and but for the presence of a small child—which acted as an instinctive dampener—he’d be rolling on top of her this moment, tucking her warm body beneath his, and nipping that generous bottom lip.

  “I appreciate it, given that I must look like one of Shakespeare’s witches. My hair is long past rumpled.”

  “A beautiful witch,” Hugo said, his breath catching at the look in Ophelia’s eyes. How could a woman so gorgeous have even a hint of insecurity? And yet his Ophelia wasn’t certain she was beautiful.

  He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, making love to you isn’t so good just because you are extraordinarily beautiful. It’s because you’re you, and in case you’re wondering, I know that makes me sound like a complete git.”

  “Git?”

  “Idiot.”

  “You’re no idiot.” Bright eyes held his.

  “Could we perhaps return your sleeping child to the nursery?” he asked, his voice low and rough.

  She shook her head. “If I move, she’ll wake up, and then she’ll be fussy by eleven in the morning. Her nursemaid will come along in a half hour or so and
take her away for a bath.”

  He groaned soundlessly.

  Ophelia’s eyes had a mischievous gleam. “I realized last night that I announced our marriage without giving you the chance to propose.”

  “You wish me to propose now?”

  She nodded. “Why not?”

  Hugo could think of many reasons, most of which had to do with thirsty kisses that couldn’t be shared over the body of a sleeping child. But he nodded, swung his legs soundlessly over the bed, and padded over to his breeches.

  When he came back, he paused for a moment, just to make certain that he wasn’t in a dream. Tangled silky red hair spread around Ophelia’s pillow and spilled over her shoulder. Her pretty mouth was curved in a wicked smile, one that acknowledged the fact that he was lusting for her.

  “I suppose that with you as a mother, the children will never be confined to a nursery, will they?”

  “At night, they will,” she said. “But otherwise, no. Why have children if you don’t want to spend time with them?” She looked down at Viola, peacefully sleeping, and stroked a finger down her plump cheek. “I want more children, Hugo.”

  “After last night, you may well have at least one,” he said ruefully. “I’ll send my secretary around to Doctors’ Commons for a special license as soon as I get home.” He put a knee on the bed as carefully as he could so that he didn’t wake Viola.

  “Will you marry me, Ophelia? I can promise a large amount of the world’s goods, but you have no use for those. I have a title, and you don’t want that either. I have too many children, and by the way, they are planning to give you a pet rat as a wedding present.”

  “I don’t know,” Ophelia said teasingly. “The pet rat might sway the balance the other way . . . unless there’s something else you can offer?”

  “My love,” he said, meaning it. “I will love you my entire life and to my last breath. I hope I can give you the children you want; certainly, I’d love to share those that I already have. But most of all, I hope that we can have years together. I’d like to grow and change and learn from you. My life next to you will be entirely different from a life without you.” He hesitated. “I don’t mean to sound as if the decision is just mine. I will try to give you everything you want, Ophelia.”

  She smiled at him. “That would be you, Hugo.” The words settled into a silence broken only by a child’s peaceful breathing. “If I have you, and the children we already have, I’ll be one of the happiest women on earth. So yes, yes, I will marry you.”

  He had to swallow hard and then he opened his hand. “My family has a tradition of giving this ring from one duchess to another,” he said. “In different circumstances, my mother would have given it to you. She would have loved you so much.”

  The ring was made of emeralds and pearls; it was exquisite and it fit perfectly on Ophelia’s finger.

  “My last duchess,” Hugo said. He leaned over and kissed her.

  “My first and last duke,” Ophelia whispered back.

  Epilogue

  “I don’t care what name you give her as long as it isn’t as awful as mine,” Betsy said. She was lying on her stomach on the huge bed that graced the matrimonial bedchamber at Lindow Castle.

  “Your name isn’t awful,” Ophelia said. “Boadicea was an amazing woman, who nearly conquered the Roman legions.”

  “Dead men piled up at her feet like logs,” Alexander said in a bloodthirsty tone.

  “My name is Betsy,” his sister said, turning another page in her book.

  “There aren’t so many warriors’ names left,” Hugo said. He was lying on his back, propped up against the headboard. Leonidas was tucked next to him, looking at a book.

  Under Ophelia’s reign, the castle had become an extension of the nursery. Where the older Wildes were, the younger Wildes likely were not far away.

  The boys started coming home from Eton even when they hadn’t been sent down; Horatius made trips from Oxford merely to say hello. The five younger children—which now included the inseparable pair of Viola and Joan—divided their time between the stables and their parents, whether that meant sitting under the duke’s desk as he paid the accounts, or trooping after Ophelia as she conferred with the housekeeper.

  Horatius looked up from the other side of the room. Although he was far too proper to join the family on the bed, he had consented to join them in the bedchamber; he and Alaric were playing chess at a game table against the wall. “We don’t have an Erik in the family,” he said. “Erik the Red was an excellent pirate.”

  “Viking,” Alaric said. “Not the same thing.”

  “Pirates! Let’s play pirates again,” Alexander cried.

  “Erik for a boy,” Hugo said, meeting his wife’s eyes. “All right with you, darling?”

  “Artemisia if she’s a girl,” Ophelia said, patting her very round belly. “She was a very fine warrior, who challenged the Greeks.”

  “We’d have to call her Artie,” Betsy declared.

  “You can do that,” her father replied reaching down to tickle her.

  Then he edged over so he could kiss his wife.

  “All right?” he asked.

  Ophelia smiled at him with a steady love in her eyes. “More than all right.”

  Acknowledgments

  My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my deep gratitude to my village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and my personal team: Franzeca Drouin, Leslie Ferdinand, Sharlene Martin Moore, and Ashley Payne. My husband and daughter Anna debated many a plot point with me, and I’m fervently grateful to them. In addition, people in many departments of HarperCollins, from Art to Marketing to PR, have done a wonderful job of getting this book into readers’ hands: my heartfelt thanks goes to each of you.

  An Excerpt from Wilde in Love

  Keep reading for a look at the first book in the Wildes of Lindow Castle series

  Wilde in Love

  by Eloisa James

  Available now from Avon Books

  Chapter One

  June 25, 1778

  London

  There wasn’t a person in all England who’d have believed the boy who grew up to be Lord Alaric Wilde would become famous.

  Infamous? That was a possibility.

  His own father had given him that label after Alaric was sent down from Eton at the age of eleven for regaling his classmates with stories of pirates.

  Piracy wasn’t the problem—the problem was the uncanny way young Alaric had depicted his small-minded Etonian instructors in the guise of drunken sailors. These days he avoided portraying self-righteous Englishmen, but the impulse to observe had never left him. He watched and summarized, whether he was in China or an African jungle.

  He had always written down what he saw. His Lord Wilde books were a consequence of that impulse to record his observations, a drive that appeared as soon as he learned to write his first sentences.

  Like everyone else, it had never occurred to him that those books could make him famous. And he didn’t think any differently when he rolled out of his berth on the Royal George. All he knew in that moment was that he was finally ready to see his family, all eight siblings, not to mention the duke and duchess.

  He’d stayed away for years, as if not seeing his eldest brother Horatius’s grave would make his death not true.

  But it was time to go home.

  He wanted a cup of tea. A steaming hot bath in a real bathtub. A lungful of smoky London air.

  Hell, he even missed the peaty smell that hung over Lindow Moss, the bog that stretched for miles to the east of his father’s castle.

  He was drawing back the curtain over the porthole when the ship’s boy knocked and entered. “There’s a mighty fog, milord, but we’re well up the Thames, and the captain reckons we’ll be at Billingsgate Wharf any minute.” His eyes shone with excitement.

  Up on deck, Alaric found Captai
n Barsley standing in the prow of the Royal George, hands on his hips. Alaric started toward him and stopped, astonished. Through the fog, the dock glimmered like a child’s toy: a blurry mass of pink, purple, and bright blue that separated into parts as the ship neared the pier.

  Women.

  The dock was crowded with women—or, more precisely, ladies, considering all the high plumes and parasols waving in the air. A grin tugged at the corners of Alaric’s mouth as he joined the captain.

  “What in the devil is going on?”

  “I expect they’re waiting for a prince or some such foolishness. Those passenger lists they print in the Morning Chronicle are utter rubbish. They’re going to be bloody disappointed when they realize the Royal George hasn’t a drop of royal blood aboard,” the captain grumbled.

  Alaric, who was related to the crown through his grandfather, gave a shout of laughter. “You have a noble nose, Barsley. Perhaps they’ve discovered a relation you never heard of.”

  Barsley just grunted. They were close enough now to discern that ladies were crowded as far back as the fish market. They appeared to be bobbing up and down like colored buoys, as they strained to see through the fog. Faint screams suggested excitement, if not hysteria.

  “This is Bedlam,” Barsley said with disgust. “How are we supposed to disembark in the midst of that?”

  “Since we’ve come from Moscow, perhaps they think the Russian ambassador is onboard,” Alaric said, watching a rowboat set out toward them, manned by a dockworker.

  “Why in the devil’s name would a flock of women come looking for a Russian?”

  “Kochubey is a good-looking fellow,” Alaric said, as the boat struck the side of the ship with a thump. “He complained of English ladies besieging him, calling him Adonis, and sneaking into his bedchamber at night.”

  But the captain wasn’t listening. “What the devil are those women doing on the wharf?” Captain Barsley roared, as the dockworker clambered over the side from the rowboat. “Make way for my gangplank, or I won’t be responsible for the fish having a fine meal!”