You May Kiss the Duke

by Charis Michaels

  He turned his head slowly, an old man in pain, and studied her. With the beard gone, she could see the gauntness of his face. His lips were thin. His shoulders were hunched.

  “Your footman, Harley,” he said simply.

  “You’ve paid Harley to serve as valet?”

  Stoker shifted in the chair and winced. “I made it worth his while to run errands to my rooms in Regent Street and do something about my madman’s hair and beard.”

  “And to install you in my private study?”

  He made a scoffing noise and winced again. “Install is a very apt description of how I arrived here—but yes, he was good enough to help me. I’ve rather urgent letters I need to get out—the small matter of my missing brig and crew, the fact that I was left for dead, et cetera. And the desk in the bedroom had no ink.”

  His words were matter-of-fact, but she could hear the underlying struggle. He was winded and hoarse.

  Even so, she felt compelled to repeat: “This is my private study.”

  “I was endeavoring to make today’s post.”

  “Four days ago you were as good as dead, and today you are endeavoring to make the post?”

  “Yes, in fact. Making the post is one of many steps I intend to reclaim my life. I will also do things such as venture beyond my sickroom and wear breeches if I can help it.”

  “Are you suggesting that you’ve been restricted under my care?”

  “No,” he said with forced patience, “I’ve been undyingly grateful for your care. But now that I’m up—or at least now that I’m not quite so low down—I am running mad with all the things that I would have done.”

  Sabine understood his madness, truly she did, but her own anxiety overshadowed it. She was unnerved by the sight of the large form in her chair. Her desk was hardly tidy, but she could see he’d moved books, flipped pages on her calendar. Heaps of fresh parchment were scattered about in the room in wads. But how long had he been here?

  “I understand your urgency,” said Sabine, taking a step inside, “but I really must impose a restriction on roaming the apartments when I’m not at home. I can provide writing materials for the bedroom desk. I can provide whatever you require. You need only have the patience to wait for my return and to ask.” She stooped to pick up a wad of parchment.

  “I am not a patient man.”

  “And I am not the proprietress of a coaching inn.” She took another step. “These rooms are not yours to inhabit as you wish.”

  “In the very near future, I hope to be removed from these rooms entirely.”

  And now she was angry. Not only was he intrusive, he was also so very ungrateful. She picked up another wad of paper. “At present, I would prefer that you removed yourself from this room. I’m not accustomed to sharing my private office, and I’ve work to do.” She set down the lantern with a clunk and tossed the parchment into the bin.

  Stoker opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. He looked away.

  “Stoker?” she prompted sharply.

  “I’ll go,” he said simply, but he didn’t move.

  She narrowed her eyes. Yes, she thought, you bloody will. She said, “You may take the ink. Take any writing materials you require. Whatever else you need, I can—”

  She reached for the ink pot on the desk in the same moment Stoker made a grunting noise and shoved from the chair. The motion caught Sabine off guard and she skittered back.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” he said lowly, falling back into the chair with an oof.

  Sabine frowned down at him. “Stoker?” she asked cautiously.

  He shook his head. He sat stiffly in her chair with his eyes squeezed shut. His entire face was squeezed, every feature creased, the expression of extreme pain.

  “Are you—?” she ventured.

  He made a little growling noise and shoved again, this time while sucking in breath. She held out a hand, but he ignored it. When he was up, he paused, one arm out as if balance eluded him. After listing there for a long moment, he took one cautious step.

  “You’re in pain,” she realized. “You cannot move for the pain.”

  “I can move,” he gritted out. He took two shaky steps, staggered, tipped, and began to crumble.

  Sabine shrieked and lunged, ducking beneath his arm just in time to catch him. She looped his arm around her neck and shouldered his weight.

  “No,” he said, but his body came down on hers, heavy and burning hot. Sabine widened her stance and braced, struggling to hold them up.

  “Are you fainting?” she gasped.

  He shook his head.

  “Are you . . .” she began but stopped because she was losing her grip. She cast around for his hand on her shoulder and grabbed it for leverage. She searched his face, his legs, the spot on his side where the stab wound—

  Sabine let out a little shriek. “Stoker, you’re bleeding! Your stitches—have you ripped them? Why didn’t you mention this?”

  There was so much blood. His left hand covered his bandaged ribs, and blood had soaked through his dressing gown between his fingers.

  Stoker said nothing and clung to her, his eyes shut tight, his body a strange combination of tautness and dead weight. He shook his head once, a sharp jerk to the left.

  “Stop,” she demanded. “Open your eyes. Martyrdom will get you as far in this house as trespassing. Can you walk?”

  He nodded and made the smallest possible step; one foot dragged in front of the other. “You haven’t the strength to hold me up,” he said.

  “There’s only one person here lacking in strength,” she said, “and it’s not me. Can you take another step?”

  “I’m hurting you,” he ground out, his words barely audible. “Too heavy.”

  He was exceedingly heavy, and the giant mass of him hung unevenly on her right side. One of his hands clenched his wound and the other held hers in a vise grip. Each step was a slow, careful slide.

  Sabine felt around beneath his arm, searching for a handhold that would not further damage his wound. She widened her stance, stooped to readjust the arm on her shoulders, and then pushed up, evening out the weight.

  Bridget had begun a low growl, circling them in nervous rings. Sabine jerked her head, dismissing the dog, but she would not leave them.

  “Stoker, what happened?” Sabine asked. They continued to the door in small, sidewinding steps.

  “I’ve been stabbed,” he growled, “or so you’ve told me.”

  “Hilarious. Did the footman know you were in such pitiful shape?”

  “Must we . . . use the . . . word . . . pitiful?” he breathed.

  They passed the drafting table and he reached out, trying to brace himself. The table tipped under his weight, and Sabine gasped, staggering to correct them. He reached out again, finding the correct balance, and leaned over the table.

  “Harley was ultimately called away by Mrs. Boyd,” Stoker panted. “He was meant to come back. He said he would come back.”

  Sabine shook her head. “His first duty is to his actual employer. I’ve only borrowed him for small tasks when he was on break.” She took three deep breaths. She disentangled her free hand from his fingers and wiped her brow. “I hope Mary hasn’t missed him today. How many errands did he run on your behalf?”

  “A handful. I will wait for him. Leave me here, and I will wait.”

  “Wait on my drafting table? No.”

  “I am not helpless,” he said.

  “You are entirely helpless,” she countered. “The longer you remain upright with the wound unchecked, the more blood you will lose. The doctor was very explicit about your remaining in a constant prone position. You must return to the bed immediately.”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “Yes,” she countered. “Is your vanity so inflated that you cannot allow an irritated woman, and that defines my mood very mildly, to drag you to a more comfortable position?”

  “It’s not vanity.”

  “Whatever it is, I haven�
�t the patience, Stoker, honestly. Take a deep breath, and let’s carry on.”

  “You are the devil,” he gritted out, but she felt him coil his strength, and he shoved up.

  “That remains to be seen,” she breathed, “but I am also all you’ve got.”

  Chapter Seven

  Oh my God, the pain, Stoker raged in his head, limping like a ninety-year-old man, using every fiber of strength to hold his considerable weight off his staggering wife.

  He drew in a long, slow breath, trying to balance the gnawing pain in his side with their peg-leg wobble down the corridor.

  Sabine kept on a steady stream of encouragements and scolds, and Stoker left off trying to contradict her. She was correct to scold him. His protestations were ridiculous, bordering on belligerent.

  They wobbled around a particularly harrowing corner, Sabine murmuring, “Nicely done,” and, “There you are,” and Stoker heard himself actually growl in frustration. He paused, stricken by the thought that she’d felt threatened, and he blurted out, “I nearly died when I was a boy.”

  “Oh,” she said, pausing to wipe her brow with the back of her sleeve.

  He glanced at her, grateful she had taken this admission in stride. He continued, “It’s no excuse for my . . . lack of graciousness, but you might as well know.”

  “Is graciousness what this situation lacks?” she teased. And then, “What was your boyhood brush with death?”

  “Typhus,” he said. “I was living on the streets at the time. The winter I was eleven or twelve. A miserly woman saw me through. She was truly terrible. She actually mocked my recovery, but I was too ill to refuse her. The experience left me with a lifelong aversion to relying on other people. I . . . I vowed never to be helpless again. I am not trying to be difficult.”

  “Rarely does anyone try to be difficult,” she said. “God knows I do not.”

  For this Stoker had no answer. He’d never thought her difficult, merely—strong willed. Her strength was thrilling to him. It meant, he hoped, she would not shatter from his coarseness.

  “I’m sorry to learn you didn’t have proper care when you were so ill,” she continued. “My friend Willow nearly died from an infection when she was a girl. Of course, she had every advantage and comfort. I cannot imagine enduring a childhood illness alone, at the mercy of the world.”

  Nor should you, he thought. It was one of the reasons he’d kept mostly away these four years. He drifted through life on a raft of terrible memories that tended to surface and haunt him at the worst possible times. She’d had a proper childhood with loving parents, a grand house, fine manners, safety, and security. Until her uncle’s season of abuse, she’d not known a moment’s ugliness. He would no sooner expose her to his wretched past than haul her to Covent Garden and expose her to the bawdy disarray inside a brothel.

  She lived on, unsullied and undisturbed by the darkness inside him, while he surreptitiously borrowed the lightness of their rare visits to distract from the dark memories when they came. From the afternoon of their first meeting, Stoker found himself basking in his memories of her, taking comfort, distracting himself. No other woman had ever captivated him in this way. Even with a bloody lip and a swollen eye, she had been pure and perfect but also strong and defiant.

  After they married he was afforded a handful of fresh memories of her, but the occasional letter, and eventually her travel guides. He pieced these together like a sort of refuge in his mind, a safe place he could go if the phantasm of the past howled too loudly. If this imaginary refuge alarmed him, if he was obsessive or strung along with schoolboy devotion, he told himself it was his own secret. A way to enjoy her in his life with no burden to her.

  In person the effect would not be the same, he knew. Her memories distracted him, but her living, breathing person would drive him mad with want. Stoker already wrestled with the lifelong curse of a lustful nature, a shameful mix of what he’d seen as a child and what he desired as a man. He only needed her lush beauty and high spirit to push him over the edge into lunacy.

  On the rare occasions when they met face-to-face, he allowed himself to endeavor nothing more than a glance, a stolen look. One moment to memorize her. He liked to look at her because she looked like a survivor, and Stoker prized survivors above all others. But he also liked to look at her because it was the next best thing to touching her, and he longed to touch her like a drowning man longed for one more breath. He alternated between lust, which spun her face and body into every torrid fantasy his depraved brain could concoct, and iron-willed control. The control was preferred, obviously. He placed her securely on an untouchable pedestal, a protected saint, chaste and revered.

  Now they were near the end of the corridor, and his eye was on the bedroom door. Before he could reach out, Sabine’s dog, previously trailing behind or marching ahead, began to leap and bark, jumping onto their legs.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Stoker groaned. Pain shot through his side with every impossibly high collision of paws on his hip.

  “Bridget is a girl,” Sabine reminded him over the barking.

  “She’s a petulance,” Stoker said.

  “She thinks we might go out. She loves a ramble above all else.”

  “Can you call her off? Her bark is deafening and if she knocks you over, we both go down.”

  The barking increased, and Sabine said, “Now you’ve done it. You’ve said her favorite word.”

  “Deafening?”

  Sabine laughed. “No, it’s go.”

  Stoker exhaled painfully and ground out, “Make. The vermin. Stop.”

  Sabine laughed again, a happy musical sound, a sound Stoker would remember and call up in his brain for years to come.

  “Bridget, stop,” Sabine commanded through her laughter, and miraculously the dog dropped to her four paws and fell silent. She told Stoker, “It’s not her fault you’re out of bed. My dog is not the problem, as you well know.”

  “Your dog exacerbates the problem.”

  “Poor Bridget,” cooed Sabine, “maligned by her new best friend.”

  He chuckled and she said, “No laughing.” Stoker bit his lip and carried on, sparing a glance at her face. Her expression was determined as if she saw a finish line at the end of the corridor. She held herself slightly away, despite the burden of his weight. She looked like a woman caring cautiously for a wounded animal. It unnerved her to be so very close to him—he knew this. At the altar when they’d married, she’d stood three feet away. She never accepted his help on or off a horse. There were no handshakes or, God forbid, a proffered hand when they said hello. They had been friendly enough these past four years, but her evasiveness was ever present, an unseen sentry that stood between them. He did not question it. He had, in fact, encouraged it. Evading him was one of her best instincts.

  But she could not evade him now. Now she bloody carried him.

  “Have you heard lately from the duke?” she asked lightly.

  “You are trying to distract me,” he grunted.

  “Perhaps, but I also would not mind knowing. I got rather caught up in researching the illustrious Duke of Wrest, I must say. It prepared me to investigate Sir Dryden. How proficient I’ve become at watching old men stagger from their clubs or rendezvous with their mistresses. Trailing His Grace was good fun while it lasted, but then your letters stopped.”

  Stoker missed a step and groaned. It allowed him to postpone his reply, and he took a deep, pained breath.

  The letters.

  She was referring to their one sustained exchange over these past four years. He’d sent her a series of letters asking if she might undertake an errand now and again to check up on an aging aristocrat—the impoverished Duke of Wrest—who, through a solicitor, had mounted a campaign to claim Stoker as his long-lost son.

  This old man, of whom Stoker had previously never known, insisted he had been one of his mother’s customers long ago. Not merely a customer, a great favorite who had actually sired Stoker some thirty-si
x years ago. Certainly, Stoker’s mother, Marie, had entertained many men, but Stoker was quite certain that none among them was a duke. Now the old man apparently lived in a crumbling mansionette in Chelsea, just blocks from Belgravia.

  Stoker, away from England for months at the time, imposed on his estranged wife’s proximity and cleverness to play the role of spy. It was the only time he allowed the never-ending scandal of his childhood to brush up against the bright tidiness of Sabine’s own life.

  The man didn’t really know Stoker, and certainly they were not related. The grasping nobleman had read about Stoker’s success in the papers, and when he’d learned a few basic facts, he’d embarked on a scheme to cousin up. Research into Stoker’s humble beginnings had been the only backstory he’d required to cast himself as long-lost papa.

  When Stoker wrote to Sabine and asked if she, living so very close to the duke’s home, might quietly discover anything about the old man, her response had been immediate: It would be my pleasure to snoop on an opportunistic old duke.

  And so began their chain of spirited correspondence. That is, her letters were spirited, clever, and wry. Stoker’s replies were cynical and to the point. It was the one and only time in his life when he awaited the post with bated anticipation.

  But then Wrest’s overtures to Stoker turned from imploring and sentimental to demanding and downright threatening, and Stoker felt that Sabine’s involvement, even her confidential involvement, put her at risk. He would not have her harassed or menaced by a desperate old man who, by all accounts, was out of money and saw opportunity in an invented bastard son (who was also a newly minted millionaire). Despite the pleasure of corresponding with Sabine, Stoker put her investigation to an end.

  “I did not like the tone of the letters I was receiving from the duke’s solicitor,” he said now. “It’s one thing to pretend to be my long-lost papa, and quite another to suggest that he is owed some recompense from me. He was a curiosity for a time, and then he was a nuisance. He is not worth the bother.”

  “It was no bother to me,” she said. “I rather liked spying on the man.”