by Mary Balogh
She regretted her decision. Her feelings for him had not died over the years as his had for her. Perhaps she had not made the effort to kill them that he had made. Poor Henrietta—losing the child must have seemed unusually cruel. And now she wanted him back even though she must know that they could not marry. The law was clear on that point.
He had killed his feelings for her. They were dead. Why, then, did he dread going back to Bowden Abbey? Why did he dread seeing her again?
But he was going to have to go home, Luke thought, drumming his fingers slowly on the desktop. Sometime. Sometime soon. He had made that inevitable when he married. There was no possibility now of returning to Paris and his life there. And he could not live in London indefinitely with a new duchess. He had taken only a three-month lease on this house. Once he had Anna with child, she would need to be in the country.
Yes, it was something that would have to be faced sometime soon.
But not too soon. He wanted to enjoy the pleasures of London with Anna for a while yet. And they were to be enjoyed. He had expected yesterday after his talk with her and after the manner of her leaving him that she would stay alone in her rooms for the rest of the day. He had assumed that they would have to cancel plans to attend Mrs. Burnsides’s rout in the evening, that it would be a long time before he saw her smile again.
But she had appeared at dinner, gorgeously clad in a deep pink satin sack dress he had not seen before, her hair tightly curled and powdered, her cap all frivolous lace and ribbons, its lappets reaching halfway to her waist. She was obviously ready for the rout. And she had glowed, her cheeks flushed becomingly—he was glad she wore no cosmetics—her lips smiling beguilingly and eagerly, her eyes sparkling with what he had always interpreted as happiness.
And perhaps it was happiness too, he had thought, watching her appreciatively and listening to her witty and quite frivolous chatter as they dined. Perhaps she had thought over their talk and had concluded that they had worked everything out very satisfactorily. Perhaps it was a relief to her, as it was to him, to have had plain speaking between them.
She had continued to sparkle at the rout and had appeared to revel in the fact that she was the main focus of attention there, since it was her first appearance in public as his duchess. His mother, at her regal best, had taken Anna about, presenting her to people who were strangers even to Luke. He had found himself watching his wife quite as closely as he had during the week before their marriage, enchanted by her beauty and vivacity again.
Mainly duty by day, he had told her, and mainly pleasure by night. Luke absently set Henrietta’s letter to one side, on top of a small pile of other letters and cards of invitation, and sat back in his chair again, his arms on the rests, his fingers steepled before him.
She had been waiting for him, naked, in bed. And she had given him a night of vigorous pleasure. There had been very little sleep. He had even woken late for his ride in the rain this morning. She did not possess many skills—or she had not at the start of the night, anyway. Luke had wondered briefly about her lover, but he had suppressed the thought. He had to forget about the lover. But what she had lacked in skill she had made up for in an eagerness to please and in a willingness to allow him any liberty he chose to take; he had taken a few but had decided to be patient, leaving for another night some of the delights that might shock her most deeply. And she had displayed, too, a willingness to be pleased and to show her pleasure.
It was a night he had thoroughly enjoyed, a night he looked forward to repeating, though before too many more nights had passed they were going to have to think of getting enough sleep to carry them through the following day. He was not accustomed to sacrificing sleep for sexual gratification.
Of course—he tapped his forefingers against his chin—there was nothing to stop him from taking his wife to bed during the afternoons, was there? He laughed softly. Yes, this morning he was feeling well pleased with his marriage.
But his larger family was clamoring for attention, and they were the reason for his return to England, the reason for his taking a wife. His butler announced Lord Ashley Kendrick. Ashley had been sent for and came striding into the room, looking a curious mixture of confidence and wariness. Luke ruefully remembered certain interviews with his father, the man always seated behind a large desk and he immediately became conscious of where he himself now sat. It was still difficult to adjust his mind to the fact that he was now the figure of authority in his family. He got to his feet, came around the desk, and extended his hand.
“One remembers England as a country of green grass, leaf-laden trees, and colorful flower gardens,” he said, shaking his brother’s hand and motioning him to a chair. “One forgets the infernal rain that makes it all possible.”
“Good old England.” Ashley flashed his boyish grin and sat down.
He was nervous, Luke noticed, turning back to the desk and picking up the paper that lay beneath Henrietta’s letter. He might as well dispense with the small talk, which they would both know was just that. A man might be invited to make an afternoon call. He was summoned to make a morning call. This was morning and Ashley had been summoned.
“You will doubtless have an explanation for this,” he said, handing the paper to Ashley. “It came yesterday after the others had all been paid. Perhaps it came late? As you will see it is the bill for a rather extravagant sum in payment of a . . . ah, emerald bracelet. A gift, perhaps, for our mother?” He seated himself and crossed one leg over the other.
Ashley laughed. “For Mama, as I live,” he said. “That is a good one, Luke. ’Twas for a lady who likes baubles. For a lady I like to please.”
“A lady?” Luke raised his eyebrows. “The same one for whom you have rented a house and hired servants? The same one you clothe in the finest silks and satins?”
“She is worth it, Luke,” his brother said. “Word has it that you always had the loveliest women in Paris. And you have taken one of the loveliest women in London to wife. ’Tis merely that I am keeping up the family tradition, you see. And I have never had a better woman on the mount.”
“I feel constrained to inform you that she is too expensive, my dear,” Luke said.
“Zounds!” Ashley exclaimed, his face paling, his jaw setting into a hard line. “But you are no different from Papa and George, Luke. I am two-and-twenty. Am I to live like a monk? And don’t call me ‘my dear.’ You sound like a damned . . .”
“I assume,” Luke said after waiting politely for a moment to allow his brother to complete the sentence if he wished, “that there are reputable whorehouses in London as there are in Paris, where one may be assured of finding satisfaction for one’s needs with girls who are both clean and skilled and who are not encouraged to wheedle silks and jewels out of the more naive of their customers.”
“Pox on it,” Ashley said, “I do not want a whore, Luke. I want a mistress. I am brother and heir to the Duke of Harndon, deuce take it, and have your reputation to live up to.”
“Ah,” Luke said softly, “you are very young, my dear. Pardon me. I forget that I am in England where men must be men and live in terror of suggesting femininity by word or deed. But to continue. One has nothing to live up to except one’s own expectations. Especially when one is free of responsibilities. Are you bored? Do you have any other plans for your life apart from living up to my reputation? And that might not be quite what you think it is—I have never employed a mistress and I have touched alcohol only rarely since my twenty-first year.”
“You do not need to keep mistresses,” Ashley said with bitter sullenness. “’Tis said that ladies of highest quality rush to your bed if you but look at them and raise an eyebrow. ’Tis said that the Marquise d’Étienne came to London to—”
“Have a care,” Luke said quietly. “The lady moves in the highest court circles. She goes where she wills. What are your plans?”
“Not the army,” Ashl
ey said firmly. “That was Papa’s plan for me. George for the title, you for the church, me for the army. I am no coward, Luke, but I have no fancy to be fodder for enemy cannon whenever statesmen take it into their heads to quarrel. And not the church, either, though George and Mama were keen on the idea after you disappointed them. I go to church when I have to, and I give alms whenever anyone appeals to me in a good cause, and I have not stolen or murdered as far as I can recall, but I don’t fancy being a clergyman, even with the prospect of being a bishop one day through the ducal influence. So do not try to force either of those on me, Luke, there’s a good fellow.”
“And yet,” Luke said, “you seem to be a man of energy and one who chafes against restraints, Ashley. You have an independence, but you live beyond it. Will you enjoy having to come, cap in hand, to me or to my steward for the rest of your life?”
“As I live, no,” Ashley said, surging to his feet. “You are the worst of the lot, Luke. At least they would rant and rave. You sit there, striking an elegant pose, your eyes as cold as ice, calling me your dear as if I was a girl. Sometimes I believe that you must have killed my brother Luke ten years ago and taken his place. Sometimes you do not even look like him. The Luke I knew was warm and generous.”
“You may leave that bill on the desk,” Luke said, getting to his feet too. “I will settle it. But pay heed, Ashley. It will be the last of such bills I will pay. If you must satisfy your sexual appetites with an expensive mistress, you must do so within the bounds of your allowance. ’Twill not be easy even with the increase I will implement next quarter. ’Twould be much better to let her go and follow my advice. Indeed, I will amend what I just said. You may wish to make some settlement on the woman. You may bring me the bill for that settlement.”
“Zounds, but this is insufferable humiliation,” Ashley said, clearly not hearing the library door opening behind him. “Cold eyes and cold, cold heart. I wish you had stayed where you were, Luke. No, I wish more. I wish you had taken yourself to the devil instead of coming here.”
“Good morning, my dear,” Luke said over his brother’s shoulder to his wife, who was standing, startled and embarrassed, in the doorway.
Ashley spun around and strode toward her. “Madam,” he said, making her a hasty bow and taking her offered hand to raise to his lips, “your servant. From the bottom of my heart I pity you.” He hurried from the room without looking back.
“Come inside, my dear,” Luke said.
Anna looked after Ashley before hesitantly obeying. “I am sorry,” she said. “I did not know there was someone with you. I should have had myself announced or found out that you had company and gone back to my rooms.”
He crossed the room to close the door behind her. He set his hands on her shoulders and kissed her continental fashion, first on one cheek and then on the other.
“This is your home, madam,” he said. “You may go wherever you will in it, without asking anyone’s permission, my own included. Did you sleep well?”
“I slept far too late,” she said. “The morning is all but gone.”
“If you had not slept late,” he said, “you would not have slept at all.” He enjoyed watching her blush. The other women with whom he had been intimate had been far too blasé about life ever to blush. “Thank you, my dear, for a night of great pleasure.”
“Lord Ashley was upset?” she asked.
“Family matters,” he said. “I have been taking him to task about certain bills that are beyond his own means to pay. He has been accusing me of heartlessness—a familiar accusation.”
“You will not pay the bills?” she asked. “You will let him come to ruin? Perhaps even end up in debtors’ prison? You are very wealthy, are you not?”
He remembered that her father had been deep in debt, that he had perhaps been a compulsive gambler. It must be a subject on which she was more than usually sensitive.
“The bills have been paid or will be paid,” he said. “And certain commands have been given. I am head of this family, madam, and have recently taken the reins into my own hands. It is only fair that all those dependent upon me be told where certain lines are to be drawn and what the consequences of stepping beyond those lines will be.”
“Yes,” she said. “But it is love that binds families.” She looked down at her hands and her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “But you do not believe in love.” She looked up into his eyes again, but did not raise her voice. “What is wrong in your family? Why do you not live in Harndon House? Why have you been estranged from your family for so long and never intended coming home or seeing any of them again? Forgive me, but do not say ’tis none of my concern. It is. Your family is mine now. And you said we must always speak frankly to each other.” She frowned suddenly and flushed deeply. She looked away from his eyes.
“I was a wild young man,” he said. He had begun with an untruth. He had been anything but wild. “Sweet” and “even-tempered” had been the descriptions of himself he had heard most often. He had been exuberant too, but never in any destructive way. And he had been utterly, incredibly naive. He had been in love—with his calling to the church and with his boyhood sweetheart. “I fought a duel with my older brother over some unremembered offense”—over Henrietta, whom George had ravished and impregnated and then offered for—“and came literally within an inch of killing him. He was in a high fever for a few weeks, I heard. I did not see it. I was gone. Banished. My brother was judged to be the one in the right, of course, since he was the one near death. He was noble enough to delope—his bullet was lost in the air above our heads. Is that frank enough for you, my dear?”
She was staring at him, pale faced. “Was he in the right?” she asked.
She was deeply shocked he could see. He withdrew from her emotionally, something that was quite unconscious, something he had become quite expert at over the years. “As I said,” he told her, “’twas over some quarrel I cannot remember. Doubtless at the time I believed I had the right of it. But he was more noble than I.” Only because Luke had not even heard the word “delope” until after the duel. And only because at that time he was such a lamentably poor shot that the bullet had hit six feet from its intended target—a willow tree well to one side of his brother.
“You see, my dear,” he said, quite unaware of the slight edge of bitterness to his voice, “what you overheard my brother say a few minutes ago is quite true. I am without a heart. It is as well that you and I decided yesterday to settle for pleasure, is it not?”
“Your mother wishes me to accompany her and Lady Doris this afternoon when they pay some calls,” she said. “She sent a note. May I go, your grace? Do you have other plans?”
Only to take her to bed to satiate himself again.
“You must send an acceptance,” he said. “You must become well acquainted with them, Anna. As you just observed, they are your family too now.”
“Thank you.” She looked uncertainly at him for a moment and then turned to leave.
But he reached for her hands and held them. He had found himself wanting to—to defend himself? To tell that story as it had really happened? To tell her about Henrietta? But he had long ago developed a confidence in himself that demanded no self-defense. He did not care what people believed of him or said of him. They would believe what they wanted, even if what they believed was not the truth. Only a weak man—a man to whom the regard of others mattered—worried about his reputation.
“Enjoy your visits,” he said, bowing over her hands. “I shall see you at dinner. The hours between now and then will seem endless.”
The conventional gallantries, spoken without conscious thought. And yet nevertheless true, he thought ruefully after she had left the room. He wanted her. Even after two nearly sleepless nights of energetic lovemaking, he wanted her.
For a moment the yearning was so great that it seemed to him it was more than just physical. But only
for a moment. He knew better today than to walk into the trap that those thoughts could lead to.
• • •
“Do tell me,” Lady Doris Kendrick said, taking Anna’s arm and leaning her head close. They were at Lady Riever’s, taking tea, their third call of the afternoon, and several other ladies had arrived after them. Lady Doris had contrived to take Anna a little apart to sit side by side on a small sofa. “Is marriage quite, quite wonderful? I will wager it is. Luke is very splendid, is he not? I enjoy watching the way all the ladies look at him at balls. Marriage to someone like Luke must be very wonderful. There are always whispers among women when they are talking about marriage and believe one is not listening about that which has to be endured at night as the price of position and respectability, but I will not believe that it is so very dreadful. I long for it, I make so bold as to say. Do tell. Is it exciting?”
Anna had quite alarmingly inappropriate memories of long, sensitive male fingers stroking her where it should have been too embarrassing to think of fingers being at all and of the raw sensation they aroused there. “It is pleasant,” she said.
“Oh, fie, pleasant!” Doris stifled a giggle and looked consciously at her mother, who was not observing her. “How refined you are, Anna. Are you deep in love? ’Tis said that half the ladies of Paris were hot in pursuit of Luke when he was merely Lord Lucas Kendrick and that three-quarters of them were after he became duke. Are you in love with him?”
Yes. Oh yes, she feared she was very much infatuated with a man about whom she was having more and graver doubts. But it was too late to doubt. He was her husband. And perhaps he was right about one thing. Perhaps the pleasure he gave her in bed was worth it all. Perhaps it was better than love. Love of her family had caused all the impossible tangles in her life. Perhaps it was as well that he did not love his own family, herself included. She wondered if he would love their children.