Daring Lords and Ladies

by Emily Murdoch

  Voil cleared his throat and snapped his fingers in front of Endymion’s face. “How the mighty have fallen,” he said softly. “Don’t muck this up.” He swung up onto his horse. “You wound me, Your Grace,” he called to Rhiannon. “Your husband and I do not plot. Does anything we do appear to be planned?”

  “Idiot,” Endymion muttered beneath his breath.

  “Point taken, Lord Voil,” Rhiannon said with a heart-stopping smile. “Where are you off to this morning?”

  “I go to do my master’s bidding,” Voil quipped. “Enjoy your picnic, Your Grace.”

  “Ah, yes,” Rhiannon replied as Endymion helped her into the phaeton. “The picnic you and my husband so carefully did not plan.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Voil assured her. “I merely suggested it.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to go?” Endymion climbed up and sat on the bench next to Rhiannon. She smelled of honeysuckle and heather.

  “I might have suggested the menu,” Voil continued as he rode out ahead of them.

  “Voil,” Endymion warned.

  “And told His Grace the perfect spot for a midday repast,” the interfering fool called over his shoulder as he started up the drive.

  “Do you have your Manton handy?” Endymion asked the laughing lady at his side.

  “Josiah has informed me there is no clause in English law that allows for the shooting of a duke, even if he deserves it. I daresay the same applies for a marquess.”

  “On second thought, let us forget the Manton, shall we?”

  “Are you afraid of me, Your Grace?” She adjusted her skirts and folded her hands daintily in her lap. The hoyden from his childhood had become a lady. For some unknown reason, he hoped the hoyden was still there, waiting for the right moment to appear.

  “Always.” He took up the reins. “Where shall we start?”

  Endymion was afraid of her. Everything he’d ever believed about undertaking the business of the dukedom, she dismissed with her ebullient behavior and her completely unregimented day. They drove from tenant farm to tenant farm in no particular order. At some, she stayed mere moments, asked a few questions, and then moved on to the next. At others, she left the phaeton to inspect every nook and cranny of the farm and spent time listening to every complaint, great and small, whilst drinking some of the worst tea ever to leave China.

  He walked beside her, acknowledging curtsies and bows, murmuring inanities, and coming to terms with all the things he’d lost by leaving her at Pendeen all these years. He was the duke, but she was their liege. Crops thrived. The home farm more than supplied the estate. The tenant farms were successful with no semblance of organization or direction he could discern.

  She made him dizzy with her bouncing from one part of the estate to another. His uncle had told him Pendeen’s decreasing returns were due to the duchess’s mismanagement. Uncle Richard had declared her a flighty, scatterbrained woman with no head for business. He was right about one thing. Endymion was discovering Rhiannon did not have a head for business, but she had a heart for it. A heart for knowing her people, their strengths and weaknesses. A heart for Pendeen. Her love for the estate showed in the brightness of her eyes and the flush of her cheeks. She spoke of Pendeen as if it were a child and she its proud mother.

  A child.

  The one he’d never given her because it was not on his schedule.

  “Do you intend to drive across the entire estate before luncheon, Dymi?”

  She’d caught him ruminating. Endymion switched the reins to one hand and pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket. His grandfather’s pocket watch, which Rhiannon promptly snatched from his hand and removed from his person completely, fobs and all.

  Endymion pulled the phaeton to a stop. “You took my watch, madam.”

  “Nothing escapes you, does it?” She dropped the watch inside the front of her dress. “You have checked this damned thing throughout the morning. I am not an item in your schedule book, Dymi. Nor are any of the people and places we have visited today.”

  “I am aware of that, Rhee.” He turned the carriage down the narrow lane that led to the lake Voil had suggested as the perfect spot for a romantic picnic. Romantic. Endymion considered himself an educated man, but he knew not the first thing about romance. “Is there anything Voil has not discussed with you?”

  She looked at him, puzzled for a moment. “The schedule book? He didn’t have to tell me. Babcock lives and dies by it, and he fully intends you do the same. One of the maids moved it from one side of your desk to the other when she was dusting, and Mrs. Davis feared we would have to bury Babcock, he had such a fit.”

  Endymion forced himself to smile. Why was it so hard? At night when they were alone, she made it easy to smile. He’d played duke all day and dukes did not smile. Ever. He stopped the carriage beneath some trees at the lake’s edge, tied off the brake, and jumped down to help Rhiannon. She placed her hands on his shoulders and allowed him to lift her to the ground. They stood, unmoving. His hands on her waist and hers on his shoulders.

  “People and places are life, Dymi. You cannot capture them in little spaces on the pages of a book and expect them to do as you wish.” She raised one hand and brushed her fingers across his jaw. “Life is a river, not a lake. Life flows in ways you never expect.”

  “Swimming in a river is far more dangerous than swimming in a lake.” He touched his forehead to hers. “The things I cannot remember have been running over me like a river since I’ve returned to Cornwall. I need to keep some sense of order or I’ll drown.”

  “Oh, Dymi,” she said and pressed her fingers to his lips. “What did they do to you?”

  Her dark eyes threatened to send him to his knees. No one had ever asked. No one dared. And he could not dare. He was the Duke of Pendeen. He was her husband and he did not want her to know what it had taken to make him who he was. The beatings. Days spent locked in a windowless attic room with neither food nor water. Threats, so very many threats unbearable to a fifteen-year-old boy. He straightened and took a step back.

  “I hope you are famished, Your Grace.” He offered her his arm. “If we do not do justice to Cook’s feast, we shall never live it down.” They retrieved the blanket from beneath the phaeton seat and wandered to a grassy elevated bank next to the lake. They opened the blanket and spread it in silence.

  He was aware of her eyes on him as he went back to the phaeton to fetch the basket of food. He’d nearly given in to her questions. He didn’t know a great deal about romance, but maudlin stories about his early years in London surely would not be conducive to wooing. He lifted the basket and carried it to the blanket. Once he set it down, Rhiannon opened it and began to arrange the various items between them. An uncomfortable silence joined them.

  “Don’t muck this up.”

  Damn!

  “I don’t really remember our wedding, Rhee,” he blurted. “What was it like?”

  Rhiannon dropped the pasty she’d fished out of the basket onto the blanket, missing completely the pewter plate in her hand. Their wedding? He wanted to know about their wedding?

  She devoted her entire attention to retrieving the pasty and putting it on the plate. Of all the things to ask. Endymion sat down stiffly across from her. At least, his posture was stiff. She did not want to meet his gaze until she had a somewhat reasonable answer to his question. An answer she might give him without the guilt she’d carried for seventeen years being written all over her face.

  “Is that plate for me or do you intend to simply hold it for the duration of our picnic?”

  His question set her in motion. She offered him the plate and then pulled it back. He sat on the blanket as if seated in a London dining room. Legs out, perfectly aligned and back straight as if one of Chippendale’s finest chairs supported him.

  “Good Lord, Dymi,” she said as she came up on her knees and placed the plate beside her. “Have you forgotten how to sit on a blanket?”

  He scowled and
reached for his plate. “I beg your pardon. Oww! What was that for?”

  She’d slapped his hand. “For being a stick. Take off your coat.”

  “My coat?”

  She grabbed the lapel and flipped it back and forth. “This coat.”

  “Why?”

  “Oooh!” She huffed and reached for his buttons. The coat of black superfine had been tailored to fit his form like a second skin. With a great deal of effort and entirely too much contact with his body, she wrestled him out of it and tossed it behind him. Next, she started on the buttons of his waistcoat, black with gold embroidery. At this point, he merely stared at her with an idiotic grin playing about his lips. For a man who hardly smiled, he’d perfected the art of the rakish grin.

  “I don’t know why I am surprised,” she said as she removed his waistcoat and untied his neckcloth. “I daresay, you have not sat on the ground, let alone attended a picnic, since you left Cornwall. Now, that is much better.” She handed him his plate.

  “I’ll have you know, I have attended any number of picnics in London.” He bit into the pasty and closed his eyes. A reaction common to anyone who tried one of Cook’s meat pasties.

  “Dining al fresco involves tables and chairs and a battalion of servants. That is not a picnic,” she said and went back to emptying the basket. Pasties, sandwiches, a jug of lemonade and one of ale, pickled eggs, strawberry tarts, and more. Cook fully intended His Grace not go hungry.

  “And arranging our feast is not answering my question,” he said, his green eyes studying her face as if it were a particularly difficult passage of Greek.

  “Just as you did not answer mine,” she replied and bit into a strawberry tart.

  He did smile then, an honest endearment of a smile.

  “What?” Rhiannon made use of the serviette Cook had packed. She wiped her mouth and nose, but saw no sign of strawberry stains.

  “You always did eat your pudding first. Tell me about our wedding, Rhee. I truly want to know.” He finished off the pasty and stretched full length on his side, his head propped on his elbow.

  He’d remembered. A silly, small thing—her habit of eating dessert first. But he’d remembered, and it caught her off her guard. Enough not to push him to answer questions about what his grandfather and uncle had done to make him the sort of man who would make an appointment to beget an heir.

  “We were married at Gorffwys Ddraig in your grandfather’s study in the middle of the night. There isn’t much else to tell.” She took a delicate bite of the pasty on her own plate.

  “Come now. All women dream of their wedding, or, at least, so I’ve been told. What did you wear?” He looked so ill at ease, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Even in the casual pose he’d chosen he looked awkward, and his grasping for questions made him appear even more so. Perhaps this was how it was to be between them. Flashes of their childhood friendship amidst long hours of the realization they’d lost each other along the way.

  “I wore a blue walking dress. It had black stripes and black buttons.” She broke off little pieces of the pasty and ate them between thoughts. “Vaughn gave me a posey of white roses from the conservatory and heather from the moors.”

  “Vaughn. What would we do without him?” Her husband selected a strawberry tart and took a bite. He chewed slowly and gazed at her from beneath hooded eyes. His lashes, long, dark lashes to make a woman weep with envy, swept down to lend a greater air of mystery to his expression “I am inordinately fond of the color blue.”

  “I know.” She winced. The blue dress had been an intentional choice by her fourteen-year-old self. One of the few decisions she’d made that night for no other reason than to please him.

  “And what did I wear?” he prodded. He eschewed the cups Cook had provided and drank some ale from the jug.

  “A pair of your father’s silk knee breeches, buckle shoes, frock coat, and shirt covered in lace. The entire ensemble smelled of lavender and the attics, fitted you ill, and itched you unmercifully. You scratched through the entire wedding.” She refused to tell him of the remarks his grandfather’s housekeeper made.

  “Fleas, but what do you expect with that mother no better than she should be.”

  “Did we have a wedding breakfast, with some of these strawberry tarts perhaps?” He polished off the first one and reached for a second.

  “Dymi, we were married by special license in the middle of the night the day after you lost your entire family. My father sent Josiah Thomas to drag the rector of St. Bart’s from his bed to officiate. There was a horrible storm. The thunder shook the house. We were locked into the duchess’s chambers for our wedding night, and by morning you, your grandfather, and nearly the entire household were gone. I woke up a marchioness and that horrid housekeeper told me if I wanted breakfast I needed to go downstairs and prepare it myself.”

  She wanted to kick herself. Her secrets were safe, the worst ones, at least. But in the space of a few sentences she’d revealed her hurt, her disappointment, and even her shame over their hasty wedding and its aftermath. He continued to eat his tart, which did not help, at all. The boy she married had worn his every emotion on his face and in his eyes. The man revealed little to nothing.

  Suddenly, they both found the blanket fascinating. The breeze stirred the leaves in the oak tree overhead and sent little waves lapping against the shore of the lake. Ducks squabbled in the reeds along the far shore.

  “Rhee?”

  She sighed and, after a steeling moment, lifted her head.

  “You were only fourteen years old,” he said softly.

  “It is ungentlemanly of you to mention a lady’s age, Your Grace.” She suspected where his thoughts had led him. “And you were a mere fifteen, Endymion de Waryn, though you considered yourself eons older and wiser than me.”

  “Did we… I mean, did I…” He cleared his throat. “Did we consummate the marriage?”

  “Do you truly think your grandfather or even your uncle would have countenanced anything less? I know my father would not.”

  “I don’t know which is worse, that it happened or that I cannot remember it.”

  “Don’t you dare feel guilty. It wasn’t awful, and it hardly took any time at all. Nothing to remember, truly.” She’d never seen a man’s face change colors so swiftly or so many times in such a short time.

  He rolled onto his back and flung his arm across his eyes. “How can you even bear to look at me?”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Dymi. I suspect you were already ill with the fever that nearly killed you when they dragged you off to London the next morning.”

  “You are not helping.”

  Now she understood. Yes, he carried a great degree of guilt, but his male pride had also been injured.

  “You were so ill you cast up your accounts immediately after we…you know.”

  He groaned and shook his head. “Have mercy, Rhiannon. Tell me I did not cast up my accounts in our wedding bed.”

  “Of course not,” she replied, trying not to laugh. “You did so on my wedding dress on the floor.”

  He threw his hands into the air with a shout and then covered his eyes. The noise flushed a covey of grouse from some underbrush a distance away. The carriage horses threw up their heads and set their harnesses to jingling.

  Rhiannon scooted over and sat on her knees next to his prone form. She tugged his hands away from his face. She ran her thumb across his bottom lip. His expression, a mixture of chagrin and apology, tugged at her heart. Damn him! For a man who supposedly had no idea how to court a woman, he was doing an excellent job of it.

  “No wonder you did not accept my invitation to come to London,” he said.

  “I did not accept your invitation because it was rude, arrogant, pompous, and presumptuous.”

  “So Voil informed me. All the way from London.”

  “Perhaps I should marry Voil,” she teased.

  He lurched up from the blanket and rolled her beneath him so swiftly he
took her breath away. His eyes shone emerald bright in the August sun. Beneath his fine lawn shirt, his muscles tightened. His body radiated heat of a sort she’d never experienced. Her blood flowed as languid lightning in her veins. She stood no chance to move, and to be honest, she had no desire to be anywhere save here, in his arms, for the next hundred years or so.

  “I may not have done a good job of it, Duchess, but you are my wife, and I’ll not share you with any man.” Fierce and more primitive than she’d ever seen him—boy or man—he frightened her in every way she’d ever wanted to be frightened in all her most heated dreams.

  “Why, Dymi? Why after all these years?”

  “I have a great deal to make up to you, Rhiannon Harvey de Waryn. And I want to. God only knows why, but I want to.”

  He cradled her head in his hands and kissed her.

  Chapter Ten

  What was it about her? Endymion had craved kissing her since that first night in the portrait gallery at Gorffwys Ddraig. Every time he vowed to go gently. To woo her with soft, beckoning kisses. One touch of his lips to hers and every good intention fled. Her lips were so full and warm. He sank into their warmth and never wanted to leave.

  She smiled against his mouth, the siren. She knew she held him trapped, helpless. The sweet moans she made as she met him kiss-for-kiss sent shivers down his chest and around his groin. Her hands brushed across his chest, brushing his nipples with erotic intention. She explored his upper arms and shoulders until she curled her arms around his back and sank her fingers into his hair, tugging the overlong strands down his neck, then massaging the base of his skull.

  Endymion caught her bottom lip between his teeth and sucked slowly before sealing her mouth with his once more. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. She opened to him and teased the roof of his mouth before sucking him inside and slowly dancing around his tongue with hers. A force unlike any he’d ever known spilled from her into him and shook him to his core.