The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne

by Kasey Michaels

  “Your aunt? Why, Bramwell, I really don’t have the faintest idea what you’re—oh, I surrender,” she said, her gloriously perfect shoulders collapsing in a defeated slump that was almost laughable. “I admit it. I found the brooch in with Aunt Gwendolyn’s jewelry. She means no—oh, I’ve already said that, haven’t I? Very well then, neither of them means any harm.”

  “No, I’m sure they don’t. And I’m pleased you didn’t give the poor old dear away. However, Miss Waverley already knows about my aunt’s, er, proclivity for picking up the stray item or two. The brooch, unfortunately, is not the first of her possessions I’ve discovered here in Portland Square over the past months and had to return to her. In fact, she’s already mentioned the potential for embarrassment if Aunt Gwendolyn should be found out, and has suggested she be sent away.”

  “Sent away? Locked up?” Sophie asked, looking immediately incensed, and ready to do battle.

  “No, Sophie,” he answered, a part of his brain wondering why it always smelled like spring whenever she was close by. It was odd. Even now, while in the midst of a fairly uncomfortable conversation, Sophie’s mere presence made him feel lighter, younger, more aware of himself as a man, of her as a woman. She was constantly soothing to him, yet constantly exciting. In short, he supposed he simply felt alive whenever she was near. It was very strange, for he’d thought he’d been alive all along. Had he only recently begun to live?

  He took a steadying breath, then went on: “Miss Waverley merely suggested Aunt Gwendolyn be sent back to the country, to Selbourne Hall, where she couldn’t end up being branded a thief or, worse, a woman who has misplaced her mind. Miss Waverley meant it only for the best, I’m sure, to protect my aunt from herself.”

  Sophie nodded, considering his words. “I see. That’s all right then. Of course Miss Waverley would think she was doing Aunt Gwendolyn a kindness, although it would never occur to her to just go on as you’ve been doing—simply returning whatever Aunt Gwendolyn has admired. Miss Waverley would have chosen the safest way, the most proper way, to solve the problem. Well,” she ended, smiling, “I’m certainly glad she didn’t want you to have Aunt Gwendolyn locked up. Because otherwise I would have had to put my mind to hurting her, yes?”

  Bramwell laughed out loud. “And you would, wouldn’t you? For a young woman who vows to remain heart whole, you show a great interest in protecting those around you. But, before you protest, I understand now, Sophie, really I do. My aunt is a totally lovable, harmless creature and would never think to hurt you, so you gave your own heart willingly in return. It’s only the male of the species you hide from, are afraid of, see as heartless predators wanting more from you than you feel it safe to give.”

  She gazed up at him for a long time, time during which he once again realized how alone they were, how closely they were standing to each other, how loudly the clock on the mantel behind him ticked off the time.

  “I—I... yes,” she said at last, both sounding and looking confused, unsure of herself, as if something she once felt to be clear in her mind was now becoming muzzy, more difficult to understand. “Men are cruel... the uncles... even Uncle Cesse. I’ll love, yes, but I’ll never fall in love. Not me. I won’t... won’t allow it. Besides, it doesn’t really exist. Not in the way Maman believed in it. The word love is so pretty, filling the gullible with silly dreams. Unlike my maman, I will live my life heart free, and on my own terms.”

  Bramwell had to stop her. Stop her from saying what she believed, what he had often believed himself, but did no longer. He stepped even closer to her, their faces now only inches apart. “Isadora has postponed the wedding until the fall, saying her father is too unwell for the ceremony to go forward now,” he said before he could measure his words. “In truth, I believe she’s simply trying to distance herself from me slowly, one small, proper step at a time. I doubt we’ll ever marry.”

  Sophie tilted her head to one side, looking at him quizzically. “Oh, poor Bramwell. It’s all the old gossip coming back, isn’t it? Because I’ve come to London. Miss Waverley isn’t accustomed to having her good name being spoken of in whispers. You must be suffering horribly, and it’s all my fault.”

  When he didn’t respond, she prompted him again. “You are unhappy, yes?”

  Was that relief he’d heard in her voice, coloring her sympathetic words with hopes of her own. Or had he simply heard what he’d wanted to hear, needed to hear? “I don’t know...” he said, hearing his own voice trailing away into nothingness. He lowered his head another fraction, until his lips were only a whisper, a heartbeat from hers. “In truth, Sophie, I don’t know...”

  “Bram, I don’t think this is—”

  “Don’t think, Sophie,” he said, nearly begged.

  He watched her eyelids flutter closed as he tentatively touched his lips to hers. Her warm lips, soft, and tasting of wine. And the sweetness…the nearly unbearable sweetness of her.

  This was her first real kiss. He wouldn’t consider the other time, his foolish, impulsive action that night in his study. Because this, for them both, was the first time. He felt that same innocence, that same awakening inside himself that she must be feeling. It was as if he’d never kissed before, never lived before.

  Bram was feeling a sudden urge to dance across rooftops. He longed to make long, leisurely love to Sophie in an open meadow planted in wildflowers, to ride wildly through the streets with this maddening, laughing beauty at his side—to do all the wonderfully silly things he could think of, that his father had ever thought of, and more.

  No woman had ever been more alluring, more physically perfect—compelling in her beauty, irresistible. She was every sin he’d ever imagined, every gift he’d ever dreamed, everything man had been damned to want since the dawn of time. Desire flared in him. He wanted her. He had to have her.

  He loved her?

  And so he withdrew from her, from the sweetest temptation he’d ever known. The pain of that withdrawal began killing him with each step he took, the sudden loss of a wild abandon only dreamt of and never realized cutting at him, ripping at him, leaving him bereft. Old, tired. Sober.

  “Now you think I’m just like the uncles, don’t you?” he asked, seeing tears welling in her eyes.

  “You’re betrothed to another woman, Bram, even as I would not be surprised if your next words will be to confess your love for me. I think that may make you worse than the uncles.”

  “Sophie—” he began, pacing as he tried desperately to assemble something resembling coherent speech in his mind. “To love a woman is to desire her, to want to kiss her, hold her. Yes, to make love to her. You can’t separate the two, it’s impossible. You’ve just got to learn to trust yourself, trust your heart. Trust the person you love to love you in return. Believe me, please believe me.”

  “Believe you? Believe you? Betrothed to one, and kissing another, calling it love?” She whirled about, spying a candy dish on the table, lifting it, aiming it straight at his head. He didn’t take evasive action, deciding he’d merited any punishment, even if he were to be knocked unconscious by the heavy dish. Hell, he deserved it—that, and a lot more. A second later the dish shattered against the wall, having missed him by a good three feet.

  “Stand still!” she cried out, picking up the teapot that had been brought into the room earlier, throwing that at him as well, missing him yet again.

  She’d picked up the sugar server before he reached her, grabbed hold of her forearm, forced her to hand the server over to him, then pulled her close against his chest. “Tell me, Sophie,” he whispered against her ear even as she struggled to be free. “Tell me what you felt when we kissed. Desire? Love? Could you separate the feelings? Did you even want to? Or is it impossible to separate them? Are they all part and parcel of each other? Is the answer to disbelieve everything—or to learn to trust not in your Maman, not in Desiree, but in your own mind, your own heart?”

  “Stop it. Don’t try to confuse me!” He felt the tip of her slipp
er make sharp contact with his shin, and released her in reaction.

  He’d probably limp for a week. Bramwell summoned a smile from deep inside the hell he’d dropped into, knowing the pain in his shin was nothing compared to that in his heart. “Oh, heavens no. Don’t confuse the girl,” he said bitterly. “Raise her to drive a man wild, let her know—good grief, teach her—how to inflame a man past all sanity, then tell her all a man can feel is some temporary desire. Tell her that’s all we’re capable of, raw, uncivilized bastards that we are. Don’t give a man a drop of credit, don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. And, most of all, don’t believe in your own feelings, Sophie. Just lump yourself and your wants, your needs, in with those of the men you’ve been taught to despise. Or are you going to tell me you don’t want my kisses as much as I want yours?”

  She looked at him, gave a small anguished cry, turned, and ran to the doors, only to find them locked. “Let me out of here. Let me out of here at once!”

  Bramwell removed the key from his pocket, seeing the obstinate child, the hurt orphan, the desirable woman—all the many parts of Sophie Winstead come together before his eyes for the first time. Less than perfect, altogether human.

  “Well, hasn’t this been enlightening, if somewhat expensive—that was a very good teapot, you know, and it’s probably now dented beyond repair. But look what we’ve learned. You’re not perfect, Sophie. You’d like to be, you’ve been raised to be, trained to be—but you’re not. And you know what else I’ve learned? I like you better imperfect. I like you willful, even throwing things. And I still want you. I’m not sure, but yes, I may actually love you. But you don’t believe me, do you? You can’t, not yet. You still don’t understand a word I’m trying to say.”

  “I don’t understand?” she spat back at him. “No, Bramwell—it’s you who doesn’t understand. You say you like me better imperfect. Well, of course you do. But you like me best for who I am, the Widow Winstead’s daughter. How comforting it must be for you to desire me, knowing that no one in Society would even blink if you were to take the Widow Winstead’s daughter as your mistress.

  Suddenly, Bram was angry. He’d done wrong, he knew that, but he wasn’t the only one to say or do something stupid.

  “Not just a child, but an ignorant child. Is that all our kiss meant to you—all you think it meant to me? Base desire? The impulse of the moment?” Bramwell replaced the key in his pocket, grabbing on to Sophie’s arm and dragging her back toward the couch, all but pushing her down onto the cushions. “Now sit here, young lady, and shut up. Listen to me. You’re a person in your own right, much as you refuse to see yourself as more than a reflection of your mother, as Desiree’s perfect little creation. And it’s blessed well time you began to value yourself.”

  “Oh, would you just look who’s giving out advice? Are you going to be presenting me with clay tablets soon, brought down from your personal mountaintop?” she spat, hopping to her feet once more, glaring at him. “And who are you, Bramwell Seaton? Do you know? Can you tell me? Do you value who you are? Making yourself into the opposite of your father in every way you can doesn’t make you anything less of a creation, any more real.”

  Bramwell looked at her for a long moment, saw her stripped of all her studiously crafted artifice, all the charm she’d learned, the lessons she’d absorbed. And he saw the hurt there, the tears, the fears she usually hid behind a smile but now tried to disguise with her temper, with harsh words, unpalatable truths. Hiding, always hiding. But not from him. Not anymore. “You’ve got quite a way with a sharp knife, don’t you, Sophie?” he asked gently. “And much better aim than you have with crockery.”

  Her eyes clouded for a moment, then flashed with new fire. “It—was meant to, Bramwell,” she declared, lifting her chin.

  “Why? So that you can protect yourself?” he asked, cupping that defiant chin in his fingers. “Are you that afraid of me? That afraid of what you feel for me, what I feel for you?”

  “I—I feel nothing for you. And I have to go now. Please,” she said, her voice breaking as she let the fullness of her pain show at last, that pain slicing his own heart to ribbons.

  He watched as she fled the room, ran up the staircase, one hand pressed to her mouth.

  Bramwell closed the doors once more and leaned against them. “Ah, Sophie,” he said as he then walked aimlessly about the room, picking up bits and pieces of the evidence of Sophie’s explosive temper, the “flaw” she tried so desperately to hide, the flaw he adored, that made her real to him at last. “She feels nothing? Ah, Sophie, Sophie, if I believed that I’d be quite the fool indeed.’

  “Sophie loves you!” Ignatius screeched in a very good imitation of his mistress’s voice. “Squawk! Squawk! Sophie loves you!”

  Bramwell picked up the cushion lying closest to him on the couch, meaning to toss it at the mocking, laughing bird, then sat down, the pillow still in his hand, and smiled. “Why thank you, Ignatius. Man to bird, I hope you’re right. Unfortunately, I think she’s a long way from believing that.”

  If there were dreams to sell,

  What would you buy?

  — Thomas Lovell Beddoes

  Chapter Eleven

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you? Tell you what, chérie?” Desiree asked idly as she took a freshly pressed night rail from a drawer. She straightened, one hand to the small of her aching back, for she had fallen asleep in a chair, waiting for her charge to come to bed. “Ah,” she said after a moment, nodding her head. “He has kissed you, oui? The so sober duke has unbent his starchy self, and he has kissed you. And don’t bother to lie, ma petite. I am Desiree, and I know. I have a sense about these things. The tear stains on your cheeks, the confusion, that glow from within that shines from your eyes. I have seen your maman looking thus, alas, too many times to count.”

  Sophie remained in the middle of the bed, sitting cross-legged atop the satin coverlet, still fully dressed, her skirts billowing around her. She’d been sitting thus for a full ten minutes, composing herself, watching Desiree sleep, listening to the woman snore before finally waking her. Now she grabbed her bent knees, rocking back and forth, refusing to give in to impulse and run to the nearest mirror, to see if she really looked different, if Bramwell’s kiss, his words, had actually changed her outside as he had melted her insides.

  “He kissed me, yes,” Sophie answered. “Once. Just the once. But it was... it wasn’t at all like I’d thought. It was beautiful, Desiree, outstripping anything I’d ever imagined, even as I wanted to hate what he was doing. It was sweet, yet mysterious, exciting. It was—”

  “It was a mistake,” Desiree ended for her firmly as she came to sit down on the edge of the bed, the nightrail becoming wrinkled as she clutched it tightly with both hands. “His mistake, chérie, and one he doubtless does not plan to repeat. Until the next time, and the next, and the next. Until he is drunk with desire for you, mad with wanting you. Then, chérie, he will ask you to become his mistress, his true love, the one true love of his life. He will make promises he has no intention of keeping. He will ask you to love him, to trust him, and to stand back, watching, as he weds that stick of a Waverley and sires his heirs on her. And then, after you have given him your heart, your love, your youth? Ah, then, chérie, he will leave.”

  Sophie had heard all of this before, all through her childhood years, had it all explained to her by Desiree each time she had sat in her bed in Wimbledon, listening to her maman sobbing in the beautiful gold-and-white satin chamber down the hallway. Her maman would weep as if her heart were breaking, because it was. Her silly, trusting heart. Broken again and again, trampled on by men who had promised so much, taken so much, and then gone away.

  Even Uncle Cesse would have disappeared, Desiree had warned Sophie, for she had caught out her good friend Constance with red-rimmed eyes only a week before Sophie’s maman had run off to meet with her beloved Cesse, to die with her beloved Cesse. Constance had not said that
the duke was throwing her over. In fact, she had flatly denied it, said she was crying because she was happy, because she had a wonderful secret she couldn’t yet share, even with her very dearest friend. As if Desiree had believed that pack of nonsense! No, Constance had been on the verge, the very brink, of having her heart broken yet again.

  And so Desiree had informed Sophie.

  But this was different. Sophie was sure of it. She was not her maman, and Bramwell wasn’t his father, or one of the uncles. He wasn’t Caesar, turning away from his wife and to the charms of a doomed Cleopatra. He wasn’t Napoléon, giving Josephine her congé. He wasn’t Henry VIII, willy-nilly lopping off heads to leave him free to bed yet another woman he lusted after. He wasn’t any of the hundreds, thousands of men who made vows, made promises to wives, to young maids, to lovers—never meaning to keep either the vows or the women. He wasn’t!

  “You’re wrong, Desiree,” Sophie said earnestly. “Bramwell isn’t like Maman’s gentlemen. He told me he and Miss Waverley will probably never marry.”

  “He said that? Oh, chérie, now I should kill him,” Desiree ground out from between clenched teeth. “I should sneak into his chamber this very night, and I should kill him. You believed this drivel, this canard? They all live between their legs, even dukes! Sophie? Think, my dear, befuddled darling. Think! When did the duke kiss you? Before he told you he and Miss Waverley would probably not marry? Or after?”

  “It was, it was after.” Sophie pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, considering the scene, replaying all the words and actions in her head. She took what she knew, combined it with everything Desiree had taught her, and felt an icy coldness invade her every blood cell.

  “What a fool I am!” she exclaimed, taking hold of Desiree’s outstretched hands. “He made me feel sorry for him, gave me reason to believe that I was the cause of everything—and yet not an unhappy cause. He warned me not to think, and I didn’t! I let him kiss me, confuse me, make a fool of me, make me want to believe—ah, Desiree. Thank God I had the good sense to run away, yes?”