Let me show you, he’d tell her then, his fingers sliding down the center seam of her bodice. His nail scraping over the near-invisible heads of the pins keeping it closed. Let me show you what they did here.
But it wasn’t until the betrothal ball, as he watched Gilbert slouch onto the dance floor with Eleanor, as he watched Gilbert touch her, hold her, brush against her skirts, that he realized his desire was not the vague thirst of a man too long parched. This was not ordinary lust, tempted into existence by very ordinary circumstances.
This was instinct; this was indelible need. This was a craving that was scouring him raw.
And it was an absurdity on every level. He’d been the one to arrange the marriage. He’d been the one to select Eleanor for Gilbert. He was the one who was twice Eleanor’s age, and too old, too bitter, too depraved to be allowed near anyone so innocent and pure. He could not have her, and she would never want him.
And why would she? Gilbert was a monster, but at least he had his youth. Jarrell had already spent his.
Still. Whenever Gilbert touched Eleanor, displeasure gouged Jarrell somewhere deep in his chest. Whenever she smiled or laughed or turned her head over her shoulder so that the button of her nose and the point of her chin were silhouetted with light, something much more pleasant spiked his blood. And when she danced, when her neck arched, when she leaned forward and her pert breasts pressed against the low neckline of her gown, his fingers curled into fists and his entire being vibrated with a hunger so fierce that it threatened to tear him and the world around him to shreds.
Had he still been young—had Eleanor been born twenty years earlier and they met when he was still himself, unravaged by time and grief and despair—
But no. He had to meet her now. When he was forty to her twenty, when she was promised to another. When his desperate misery had become such a knotted tangle around his being that pulling a single thread loose would spell disaster.
Disaster.
Because if he snapped even a lone cord of his restraint, he would do what his Saxon ancestors had done when they’d finally breached the wilds of Dumnonia: he would ransack, despoil, and plunder. He would hoist the Lady Eleanor Vane with her fashionable taffeta round gown over his shoulder and carry her off to be his wife, and there’d be no further angst over the matter. He saw; he wanted; he’d take.
He’d give her the chance to know what his skin felt like against her teeth—
No.
Goddammit, no.
He wouldn’t.
Chapter Four
The last thing Jarrell had to admit to himself was he’d made a mistake.
Not because he’d changed his mind about leaving the dukedom behind—and not because he found Eleanor intelligent, capable, compelling.
But because he saw now how presumptuous, how careless the whole business of arranging marriages was.
Before last week, both Gilbert and Eleanor had been nothing more than sketches to him. How could they have been more? His days were spent with ghosts, or in trying to outrun those ghosts through whatever lonely pursuit he’d found that day: stalking through the hills, or drinking too much whiskey, or galloping down the narrow, winding roads fast as his horse would go. Until there was nothing of Dartham lands around him, nothing at all, and everything was a silver-brown blur of gorse and fog.
His parents would have been ashamed of his decision to marry Gilbert off to a girl he didn’t know. Even before Jarrell came of age and was inducted into the Second Kingdom, his parents had impressed upon him the exigency of choice, of assent and acquiescence. Those weren’t only the virtues that guided the Kingdom. They also guided their family, and his parents made sure he and his brother had grown up surrounded by all the Enlightenment ideals that they held so dear.
Then, when it came time for him and Alexander to step into the world the Darthams had guarded for centuries, his parents made sure he and his brother both understood there could be no pleasure without philosophy—no indulgence without rules.
But then they died a year after Ajax joined the kingdom. And then his brother died, and Jarrell’s new bride two years after that, and it seemed like there was nothing left to indulge in, nothing left to guard. He’d retreated from the Kingdom and Far Hope itself and dreamed of an exile that would take him out of the reach of his memories forever.
A place where he could forget without also betraying the memory of the woman he’d loved before her death.
Jarrell pushed away from the crowd, scraping a hand over his face while he searched for a servant with a drink. Or better yet, an entire bottle. He was choked by his need, choked equally by the reasonable and civilized barriers to that need. Strangled by the tailored silk he’d donned for the ball and stifled by the ball itself—the largest crush of people he’d been in since Helena’s funeral.
And stifled also by memories. For when he saw all these people thronged and dancing in the star-ceilinged chamber, he could so vividly remember the time before. Before his wedding, before everyone died, when Far Hope was a convergence of primal urges and wicked wanderings. And he missed it, he realized with shock. He thirsted for it. For so long, the man he’d been had been buried under a cairn of grief, and now it was as if all the rocks had tumbled free, as if he’d somehow been alive all this time.
He wasn’t sure if he liked it.
Yes, a drink of something was called for in these circumstances. He needed to consider what to do next, and he always considered best with a drink in his hand. Plus it would smother the urge to sling his future niece-in-law over his shoulder and carry her off to be his wife instead of his nephew’s, which he couldn’t do for a thousand reasons, starting with his lack of knowledge about her wishes, and ending with this disastrous marriage he’d arranged.
Ending with the fact that you don’t want to betray Helena’s memory by marrying again.
He found a servant circulating with champagne and requested a glass of something stiff and amber-colored, and within a few minutes, his throat was burning but his head was clearer.
And with that clear head, he thought of Eleanor on the roof of the tower two days ago, of her low voice and her springtime eyes. The longing stamped on her face as she stared into the mist and the subtle way her hands curled into her skirts, as if she had to hold onto herself to keep herself in place.
A dock with many ships.
A hallway with many doors.
It wasn’t too late. Yes, the guests were here; yes, there was to be a wedding in two days’ time, but it wasn’t too late to undo what he’d so carelessly and negligently done. He’d been appalled to discover his nephew was selfish—but really, how much more selfish had Jarrell himself been? For years, he’d been consumed with leaving by any means possible, and he hadn’t considered that those means could be the engine of unhappiness for someone else.
But never mind. He would fix it. What good was being a duke if he couldn’t fix things?
Unfortunately, since he was technically the host, he found himself much in demand as he began looking anew for Eleanor. Which meant he had to force his way through tedious pleasantries, barely veiled inquiries into his absence from society, and several pointed remarks about Gilbert’s infamous Grand Tour, all while trying to decide the best way to approach Eleanor and ask if she wanted to stop this farce and leave Far Hope with her future intact.
He endured a dance with Eleanor’s mother—who was feeling perfectly hale and hearty tonight, although she’d been abed all day with nerves—and then with the Countess of Kellow, Arabella Foscourt, whom he’d once known intimately as a younger man.
“Can we expect Far Hope to host more fêtes such as this?” the matron asked him as they touched hands and turned. Though she neared her sixth decade, she was still lovely, with a full mouth and sparkling eyes. Her alabaster skin was mostly unlined, save for a few fine creases around her eyes, a testament to how often she smiled. “More gatherings?”
“As I’ve only the one nephew and my brother is deceased, I
doubt there will be another betrothal ball soon,” Jarrell responded. It was a question he was used to dodging, especially from Arabella, who wrote him once or twice a year on the subject.
She shot him a look as they circled each other. “You know very well what I mean. And I’m not getting any younger, Ajax. I’d like to be here again before I die.”
“Far Hope is not the only meeting place for people like us.”
“No, but it is the oldest. And the safest because of its location.” She peered up at him as they came together and touched hands again. “What happened to you, Ajax?”
A young wife had happened to him. Helena had happened. A duke’s daughter, so tall and strapping that she seemed like a force of nature on her own. She rode, hunted, drank, swore, and laughed at every joke she’d ever heard—she’d been the most vital, alive person he’d ever met.
And then she’d died. Here in this very place.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he evaded with some relief, hearing the end of the music. “I should make sure Gilbert hasn’t caused a scene yet.”
It was mostly a lie—he actually wanted to stop thinking about Helena and he also needed to find Eleanor—but it was a plausible enough excuse.
His nephew would be a perpetual hazard to him all night, and potentially for much longer.
And he’d planned on making Gilbert Eleanor’s hazard instead.
Guilt flickered through his blood. What had he been thinking?
He needed to see her. Talk to her, ask her what she wanted, he needed to make sure—
But where was she?
She wasn’t in the center of the ballroom dancing, and she wasn’t along the edges. Jarrell circulated twice, feeling increasingly stormy as he couldn’t locate her, a storminess that had no real target except himself. For placing all of them into this mess to begin with. For desiring her.
But his anger at himself didn’t slow his steps. He finally asked Eleanor’s mother if she’d seen her, but Lady Vane was too tipsy at that point to be much help. No one in the ballroom was any help. Even though she was ostensibly the reason for the ball itself, no one had noted her departure, nor had anyone noticed her absence.
Jarrell didn’t bother asking Gilbert.
He left the ballroom in search of her rooms, turmoil muddying his thoughts. Perhaps she wasn’t feeling well. But to leave without telling anyone? To slip away from the ballroom as if she didn’t want her absence to be noticed at all?
It all became clear once he got to her rooms and the anxious maid immediately—and tearfully—confessed everything without him having to ask a single question.
Eleanor had left.
Not only had she run away from her family and her betrothed, but she’d done it in the most stupidly reckless way possible. To run into the moors at night? In the rain? Alone? It would be dangerous for someone who knew the moors and combes. It would be dangerous even for a sturdy man who’d grown up here. . .
The unease had slid away, and in its place was something he didn’t even recognize at first—because it was fear.
Fear cold and viscous; fear chilled and oily in his veins.
He was suddenly terrified. And furious.
He managed to bark orders at someone, he didn’t notice whom, and within minutes the tailored silk jacket and gleaming dress pumps of his ball outfit were exchanged for a greatcoat and Hessian boots. A few minutes later and he was in the stables, mounting his horse.
And with directions for Eleanor’s parents to be informed and for a formal search party to be organized, he tore off into the night, hoping to Christ and all the forgotten gods of the West Country that he’d find her.
And that he wouldn’t be too late.
Chapter Five
She couldn’t remember when she’d sat down, or why it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
She could only remember the rain, the harrying wind, the chilled ache in her feet and hands. She’d worn her wool cardinal—she wasn’t so brainless that she’d escape into the Devonshire wilderness without some kind of outer covering—but what had been sufficiently warm for the short walk to the Pennard parish church was not nearly warm enough for a wet October night. The wide split in the front of the cloak allowed the wind to ruffle under her petticoats and nip at her ankles and feet, and the hood—sewn deliberately large so it could easily fit over curls and caps without crushing them—only served to allow the cold in around her neck and ears. When she’d sat, she’d tried to draw the garment more securely around her, but it was a losing fight against the wind, even sheltering as she was against a huddle of lonely rocks by the road.
At least, she thought she was still by the road. She’d been following it mostly by instinct and by feel in the pitch-dark night, and she wasn’t sure if she’d managed to stay on its path or not.
If only she’d run away sooner. A day ago. A week ago. If only she’d run before she left Pennard Hall; if only she’d left Pennard Hall the day her father told her she would marry Sloreley.
But how could she have known that she would fall in love with the duke? How could she have known that there would have been a way to rewrite her future after all?
And how could she have known that it would storm like this tonight? And how could she have known how lightless this night would be? How desolate? How utterly indifferent to her and her existence?
She thought of the dock with many ships, of the hallway with many doors. Her future, which—when she had been warm and dry—had seemed so close she could reach out and touch it. She would go to Plymouth, then to her godsister in Edinburgh to plan her new future. Everyone knew half a dozen spinsters, it seemed. It could not be that hard to figure out how to become one. Or where to live as one.
But you don’t really want spinsterhood. Not like that.
No, she didn’t. She wanted room to make her own choices, that was all. She wanted away from her family and the never-ending demands on her time. But she didn’t want to live an untouched life either, not at all. She wanted to be touched—often, and preferably by the Duke of Jarrell—but there wasn’t a future in which she could see that happening. The afternoon with him on the roof made her realize she only had two choices.
Stay and hunger for the duke…or leave and hunger for the duke.
At least this was the option that didn’t require marriage to Sloreley.
But she hadn’t expected this part to be so difficult. Walking? Down a road? It should have been the easiest part of the whole business, yet here she was, sitting on the hard ground, trying in vain to keep herself warm. It wasn’t long before even the brushed wool of her cloak was soaked through, along with her dress and her hair and her stockings and—
Everything was wet. Everything was cold.
She knew, in a vague sort of way, that it was probably better to keep moving. That staying still would make her colder yet, that moving might warm her. But the thought of standing, of taking a step after, of placing her feet on the slick, uneven road . . .
Perhaps she could wait a bit longer. Surely the storm must abate any minute now, surely no storm could last all night. And surely dawn wasn’t so far off . . .
If she waited for the light or even for the rain to ease, it would be better. She knew it would be better. She rested against the rock and closed her eyes. She thought about Far Hope, and about the ball. She wished she’d taken another look before she left, a final look at the grim and glorious place where anything had seemed possible.
Well, anything except for her own happiness.
She also wished she’d been brave enough to approach the Countess of Kellow at the ball for something more than the usual polite greetings. She wished she could have told Arabella Foscourt how what she’d seen two years ago had fired her imagination like nothing else. Asked how one found other people who liked those kinds of things, how one could be a sort-of spinster, but also get occasional kisses between the thighs…
The memory of the Foscourt party sent sparks of warmth everywhere, and she nestl
ed into herself, as if she could coax those sparks into a little fire, into a cheery conflagration to keep her warm until dawn.
How had it all started again?
Oh, right. Her cousin had laid down for a nap after their meal, but Eleanor hadn’t been tired. She’d decided to enjoy her rare chance at solitude instead and take a walk around the lake on the far end of the Foscourt estate. There’d been a footman guarding the path, so she’d decided to detour through the stand of trees instead, coming to the folly from the other direction.
There’d been no footman there, no boundary or warning to alert her. She’d simply been walking, pleasantly lost in thought, and then the next moment she’d been greeted with a scene like something out of ancient Rome. Twenty or thirty people in various states of undress, music drifting through the air, liberal amounts of wine and food piled all over.
Instinct had forced Eleanor’s eyes shut; instinct then forced them open again. It was shocking—wrong—almost certainly immoral—and yet—
Well, no one had ever been hurt by simply looking, surely? Bacon and Descartes both agreed that observation was key to knowledge, after all, and who was she to disagree with them?
And there was so much to, ah, observe. Her cousins had talked to her of kissing, and a childhood in the country meant she was familiar with the mechanics of copulation, but she had never imagined anything like this. Anything so sultry, so languorous. When animals tupped, it was quick and cursory—often with the female of the species still chewing whatever they’d been eating before being mounted, then wandering off to eat some more afterward, as if nothing interesting had happened.
But the guests in the folly weren’t doing anything quickly, as if the end goal of procreation weren’t the point at all. It was all slow kisses, slow touches. Where there was mating, even the mating seemed leisurely, as if the lovers could do it all day. And there were more than just pairs of people—there were trios and quartets. A group of seven, all tangled silk and entwined limbs. And something else she hadn’t considered—but once she had, it seemed rather obvious—the pleasure wasn’t restricted only to men and women together. There were men with men, and women with women. The Countess herself was being idly stroked by a woman near her age, while she kissed a man next to her. And that man was being cradled by her husband from behind, who was—oh.
Duke I’d Like to F… Page 4