Darling Duke

by Scarlett Scott

  “You do not want children?” she asked into the false tranquility, staring at the ceiling.

  “No,” came his clipped response.

  She felt his answer like a blow to her midsection, and she did not know why. She had never given thought to having children. Indeed, she had never imagined she would marry. Had not wanted to, would not have married anyone had she not felt it was the best thing for her beloved family. For her sister and Thornton. And to help improve the consequence of her Lady’s Suffrage Society.

  Why, then, did his revelation that he did not want to beget an heir—that he did not want to raise a brood of stubborn, dark-haired lads and spirited red-haired bluestockings—affect her so? It should not, she knew. She had not wished for this life with him. A lack of children would mean more time spent pursuing the causes she found most important. Indeed, she finally had her independence.

  She was a married lady. A duchess. Free to enjoy the pleasures she had only read about. Free to pursue her dreams and goals. Free to be who and what she wanted. To make her life hers. It was everything she had always wanted, there for the taking.

  Why, then, did she feel so hollow inside?

  She rolled away from Spencer, to her side, and waited for sleep to claim her once again.

  This time, it never did.

  Spencer could not stop staring at his wife.

  A buffet of rich breakfast foods scented the air. His full plate beckoned: eggs and bacon, jambon de Bayonne, muffins, sauces, jams, plump sausages. So much food he could consume it all and have no need to eat for the remainder of the day. Servants hovered, eager to please the duke and his duchess on the first morning of their honeymoon.

  He wished they had gone to Paris.

  He wished they had never left his chamber this morning.

  More than anything, he wished he had rolled her over on her back after waking for the second time that morning, kissed away the pinch of worry knotting her brow. He should have taken her slowly and deeply, licking and kissing every bit of her glorious skin, fucked her until she forgot about whatever caused the shadows in her eyes, the firmness of her mouth.

  But they had not gone to Paris, and she had slipped from his chamber in silence, thinking him still asleep, and he had watched her go without saying a word. But he had felt the change between them. She had withdrawn, ever so subtly. Now that she had finally joined him at the breakfast table, some of the brightness was gone from her gaze, and the brief smile she flashed him had lost its luster.

  Of course, she was beautiful as ever, turned out in a gown of indigo silk with a nipped waist and a tulle underskirt, trimmed with lace and bows. The necklace was gone from her throat, and though he knew it was far too sumptuous to be appropriate for this time of day, he rather wished she had chosen to wear it anyway. He waited until she was served a plate before dismissing the servants so that they had some privacy.

  He stared at her, willing her to look back at him, when the last footman had gone. But she kept her gaze trained upon her plate, her fork in hand, prodding her ouefs en cocotte without actually consuming a bite. It would seem that he needed to make the first move in this impasse.

  He cleared his throat. “Good morning, wife.”

  Her eyes flew to his at last, delicate brows lifting as though she was surprised he had addressed her. “Good morning, husband.”

  Stubborn as ever, it would seem. He had hoped she might offer him something more. While neither love nor children would ever emerge from their union, now that he had unleashed the flood of his desires once more, he had no wish for a passionless marriage. They were tied to each other for the rest of their lives, and he had meant what he said about remaining true to his vows.

  “How did you sleep?” he prodded, knowing what the question implied. They had not spared much time for slumber.

  A becoming flush colored her cheeks. God, she was lovely. It required every bit of willpower he possessed to remain seated and not rise from his chair, close the distance between them, and lift her to the table where he could have the true feast he wanted for breakfast. The thought had him shifting in his chair, attempting to ease the discomfort caused by his tailored trousers.

  “I slept well, thank you,” she said with cool, quiet poise, her eyes dropping once more to her plate.

  Devil take it, where had the passionate warrior queen gone? The woman who had set him on fire with her body and her unabashed desire? He did not know what to make of this. Did not understand the cause of her distance. Was she embarrassed, perhaps, by the raw passion they had shared? He did not think she could be, for she was the selfsame lady who had stood naked and fierce before him a month ago.

  “Excellent.” He kept his tone light, took a sip of his coffee, watching her still. He thought he could look upon her all day long, every day, for the rest of his life and never tire of seeing her. It wasn’t her beauty alone that drew him to her—though to be sure, she possessed a rare vibrancy that was undeniably breathtaking—it was something else, something unique. Something that was simply Boadicea. He had not been able to resist her from the first moment he had been alone with her, and his reaction to her had only intensified with the intervening time and their marriage rather than lessening.

  He would do well to hold it in check, lest it get out of hand. He could not allow her to think that he would ever be able to give her more than the slaking of their mutual desires.

  “Tonight I do think it may be best if I sleep in my own chamber, however,” she said calmly, using her knife to cut a bite of sausage on her plate.

  Her words, so casual, shook him. The primitive part of him roared to life, and he said the first thing that rose to his already addled mind. “No.”

  She paused, her gaze flicking back to his. “I beg your pardon, husband?”

  There was no way in hell that she wasn’t sleeping in his bed. He was aware of the sleeping arrangements that most married couples had. His marriage to Millicent had been no different—they never spent the night in the same bed. In fact, he had never spent the night sleeping in the same bed as any woman before Boadicea. But the moment he had laid her on his bed, it had felt inherently right. He would not allow her to put this wedge between them on the first day of their marriage. He had enough wedges for the both of them.

  “No, wife,” he repeated. “You will sleep with me, where you belong.”

  She pursed her lips. “I am sure that is a most unusual arrangement, Bainbridge. It is ordinary, in fact, expected, for a husband and wife to maintain separate quarters.”

  Boadicea was determined, but he was equally so, and she would find that in a battle of intractability, he would always emerge the victor. “Do I snore?”

  Her flush deepened. “No.”

  Damn it, he wanted her so much he ached with it, and he couldn’t be certain if it was because of her obstinacy, because he wanted to prove to her that she was his, or because she was so bloody beautiful. Perhaps all three. But it didn’t signify. All that did was that he wished to get what he wanted, and what he wanted was his wife in his bed. Beneath him. Astride him. Any way he could have her.

  “Do you find fault with the bed?” he asked, relentless.

  “Of course not.” She sighed, looking quite vexed with him now. “It is fine.”

  “Were you too cold?”

  “Bainbridge.” Her tone and use of his title told him he had irked her.

  “Too warm, perhaps?” he persisted.

  Her full, kissable lips flattened into a grim line of irritation. “Bainbridge.”

  “I am using rationalizing and logic.” He shrugged. “There must be a reason you do not wish to share my bed. I want to know what it is.”

  “You do not want children,” she blurted.

  Ah, perhaps he had finally found the root of the problem. “And what has that to do with sharing my bed?”

  For truthfully, one had no bearing upon the other. He was definite in his decision. Nothing she could say or do would sway him. What he had lived thro
ugh with his former wife had been sheer hell, and he could not run the risk of enduring it a second time. Harry was his heir, and while Spencer had never supposed he would marry again, circumstances had demanded that he do so. But neither circumstances nor his new duchess could force him to once more make himself vulnerable to madness and death.

  “You should have told me,” she said quietly, her eyes searching his, and he could not shake the feeling that she saw far more than he would have preferred. “Did you not think I had a right to know such a thing before we married?”

  Her words gave him pause, for he had not considered the ramifications of his wishes. In the years following Millicent’s death, he had remained celibate, with no intention of marrying again. Then, Boadicea had appeared in his library with her vibrant beauty, her bawdy book, and her rampant boldness, and he had lost his head. He had ruined her, himself. Christ, he had ruined the both of them. It had all been so sudden and unexpected that he had not given thought to much aside from his desire for her and his duty to wed her.

  “Our courtship was rather extraordinary,” he reminded her, his voice wry. “I did not wish to marry again.”

  She stiffened. “Then why did you?”

  “Because I had no choice.” The words were torn from him, and he said them before he could think better of it.

  Once they were spoken, there was no rescinding them.

  It was true that he had married her because his hand had been forced—after being caught compromising her by his mother and the Duchess of Cartwright, what option had he left? But having married her, he could not deny that he was pleased by the physical connection they shared. More than pleased.

  She had come from seemingly nowhere, appearing in his life and in his library, then in his arms, and now he could not fathom his life without her in it. He wanted her. Hell, who was he trying to fool? He needed her.

  But he was not accustomed to emotions, having spent the better part of the last six years attempting to drown them out however he could so that he was able to survive. And so he did not tell Boadicea any of the things she likely would have wanted to hear.

  He did not tell her that kissing her brought parts of him he had thought long dead back to life. He did not say that she could undo him with a mere look. He did not divulge that her scent made him weak, or that her curvy thighs and the sweet pink skin between them made him want to spend all day discovering her. He didn’t share that she was the best, the most wondrous gift life had ever bestowed upon him. No, he said none of those things. He did not warm her with his soft words, with whispered seduction, with cajoling or kisses or seduction.

  Because he could not.

  Instead, he watched her.

  If he had thought her pale before, he had been wrong. Every bit of color leached from her countenance. She went white as the fine china on the table, standing with such abrupt force that her chair toppled backwards to the carpet with a dull thud.

  “I am no longer hungry, Your Grace,” she hissed. “If you will excuse me?”

  He leapt to his feet as well, stalking toward her, catching her when she would have retreated. His hands landed on her waist as if finding their natural home. This was not how he had envisioned their breakfast unfolding, and he did not like being the cause of her distress.

  He studied her, noting that she refused to meet his eye. It was all he could do not to drag her against him, bury his face in the fiery luster of her hair. Drop to his knees and worship her the way she deserved. “Do not go.” It was the closest he would come to begging.

  She gripped his wrists, attempting to remove his touch, her lips compressed in the same frown she had been wearing ever since entering the room. “Release me.”

  “Boadicea, look at me,” he demanded, ignoring her request. “I will not let you go until you do.”

  Her eyes snapped to his at last, glittering with anger and something else he could not define. “Here you are, Duke. Are you satisfied now? The wife you did not want is gazing upon your regal countenance.”

  Hell. He was perverse, and that was why her defiance made his cock twitch. It was the beast, the uncontrollable part of him that he had worked so hard to cage, breaking free. He slid one of his hands up the curve of her back, skimming over the laces of her corset, the silk covering them, feeling her heat. He knew how soft she was there, over her spine, between the blades of her shoulders, and he longed for the barriers to be gone. Hated the fabric and boning that kept his skin from hers.

  His fingers trailed over her nape, sinking into her coiffure, gripping with a gentle tug designed to master rather than hurt. “I have always wanted you. From the moment I first saw you in my library wearing that red dress covered in roses, you were all that I could think of. The need to touch you, kiss you.” His eyes fastened on hers, he lowered his head, pressing a kiss to the beauty mark that drove him mad. “To make you mine. That is all I have wanted.” He kissed her cheek, her ear, nuzzled her hair and felt her shiver. “You.”

  And it was true. All of it. He had wanted her—wanted her still—with a ferocity that stripped him bare and left him raw and aching. He had not wanted a wife, no. But there was nothing and no one he had ever wanted more than Boadicea Harrington, and that was a bloody fact.

  “You speak of desire,” she said.

  He kissed down her throat, finding her racing pulse that belied her calm tone. “Yes.” Another kiss, a drag of his teeth. He wanted to mark her, to see the evidence of his mouth on her creamy neck. His need for her was almost vicious, pounding inside him, beating like a heart.

  “I want your respect as well as your lust, Spencer.” She caught his face in her hands then, and he allowed her to urge his head back so that they stared at each other once more. “We may not have wished it, but we are husband and wife now. Treat me as your equal. Do not make decisions for me.”

  She was a peculiar creature, the woman he had wed, and though she clearly did not think it, he had never met a woman he respected more. But that did not mean he would unbend from his position on children. There would be none.

  “I will treat you as my equal in all matters,” he said solemnly, “as you are. But I remain firm on one matter. There will be no issue from this union. I am sorry I did not make my wishes in this regard clear prior to our vows, but I will not waver.”

  For some reason, the notion of planting his seed in her filled him with a brief sense of awe. Worse, it made him more desperate to be inside her than he already was. But that was instinct. He would not be ruled by his base nature. The depths to which he had sunk at Millicent’s side was ample reason to keep him from ever making such a grievous error again. He would sooner hold a pistol to his own head and pull the trigger.

  The thought made him cold, sent ice through his veins, chased away the fire licking through him. He released Boadicea abruptly, stepping back, something seizing in his chest, like a band closing around him, a vise. His ears hummed.

  Suddenly, he was back in his study on that long-ago day, Millicent’s wild eyes and tear-stained face confronting him. She pointed the pistol at him, and he recalled looking down its dark barrel, thinking it would be the end of him. In that odd space of time, the eerie silence, the awful prescience of knowing he was about to die, he had taken in every detail, the sound of birds singing outside, the color of her gown, the ribbon trim on her hem, the way her brown hair had been greasy and flat, running down her back unbound.

  She had once been beautiful, but the further she had slipped into madness, the more the disease had stolen her. Or perhaps that had been the asylum. He remembered thinking that it was the best place for her, that she would be healed and return to her former self, and they could live again. But instead she had emerged gaunt and bruised, talking to herself, preoccupied with angels and demons. His mother had warned him that she saw Millicent screaming into the rosebushes, raving about the devil and redemption, and he had not wanted to believe it. He had wanted, with a desperation born of his own futility, for his wife to be whole once more
.

  But then she stood before him, about to commit murder.

  “Say it,” she had demanded. “You killed our baby.”

  He had not been able to say the words, for they weren’t the truth, and it hadn’t mattered if it was the last thing she wanted to hear him say before sending him to oblivion. “No,” he had said slowly. “No one killed our baby, Millicent. He was stillborn.”

  But she had raged, insisting that he confess. That he was the devil. Until finally, he had given in, thinking that he could somehow save himself, dissuade her from her path. He had gone closer, had told her what she wanted to hear.

  And before he could reach her, take the gun from her hands, she had screamed, pressed the pistol to her own head, and pulled the trigger.

  The report echoed in his brain, and now he was somewhere lost between the past and the present, a sheen of sweat over his skin, a sickness in his gut, and he could scarcely breathe.

  Until Boadicea stood before him, dragging him from the depths of his mind with her calming touch on his shoulders. With her sweet scent drifting over him and a concerned frown turning down her lips.

  “Spencer,” she whispered, drawing him into her embrace. “I am here.”

  She was, and even though it had been a long time since he had suffered an episode like this before anyone else, he was somehow unashamed to have lost control before her. He clutched her to him, drawing a sense of peace and comfort from her, the tension seeping from him.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured into the silken cloud of her hair. It was all he could say, and he wished he could elaborate, tell her he was sorry that he could not ever again be whole, that he could not be the man she undoubtedly deserved. That he could neither love her nor give her children as he ought. That she was left with the shell of a man, that part of him had died that day with Millicent, and he could never get it back.