His face remained bereft of expression. “I do not give a goddamn what our guests think, madam. My ship awaits.”
Without another word, her husband of three whole hours left her standing alone, watching him abandon her. He didn’t deserve the lobster salad, she decided after the door had slammed closed behind him.
Nor did he deserve her.
London, June, 1881
ix months after he’d left London, brimming with the thrill of a new mission, Kit Hargrove, the Duke of Leeds, returned in ignominy. He didn’t return to legions of admirers or effusive headlines in The Times or the gratitude of Her Majesty. He didn’t return a hero; quite the opposite, as his arrival on England’s shores had been shrouded in secrecy. And he certainly didn’t return to the loving arms of his abandoned wife, who likely never gave a damn if she ever saw him again.
He returned alone save for the company of the servants he’d employed for the dubious task of assisting him on his journey. He returned, uncertain if he would ever be able to regain the proper use of his left leg again. Unable to walk himself to the front door of his palatial London townhome without assistance.
He returned and knocked on the bloody door of his own home as if he were a visitor.
And a behemoth bearing an ominous glare and an ugly scar on his cheek opened the portal. “Her Grace is not at home,” he announced grimly, and then slammed the door closed.
Devil take it.
Kit gritted his teeth. He was weak, he was weary, and he was currently at the last place he wished to be, undertaking the most demeaning task his mind could fathom. He leaned on his cane, exhaling as a fresh onslaught of pain speared him. Of all days that he could be denied entry to his own home, this was not the goddamn day he would’ve chosen.
He rapped on the door again.
The rude, mountain of a man masquerading as a butler reappeared, scowling. “Told you. Her Grace isn’t at home. Sod off.”
Kit was prepared this time. He caught the door’s slam with his opened palm even though it almost cost him his balance and what remained of his pride. He steadied himself and glared at the bastard barring him entrance.
“Do you know who I am?” he demanded.
“Do I care?” the insolent bastard returned. “No.”
“You’ll care when I sack you,” he growled. “I’m the Duke of Leeds. Your employer. Now grant me entrance at once.”
The mountain’s eyes narrowed. “We aren’t expecting the duke. He’s abroad.”
“Behold. He has returned,” Kit made a sarcastic flourish.
The blighter remained unconvinced. “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”
“Shall I summon the bloody queen?”
“Ludlow,” came a lilting alto voice with an accent that wasn’t quite proper. “I need your assistance with Lady Philomena Whiskers. I think she’s about to give birth to a litter of kittens.”
Surely that sweet voice didn’t belong to her. And she was talking to the varmint who blocked the doorway to his home as if he were a lord.
From behind the mountain, Kit caught the swirl of navy silk, a glimpse of chestnut braid, a smooth brow, one wide, green eye. Oh, bloody hell. It was her, alright. He may not recognize her voice, but he would never forget those eyes. Green and gold with flecks of cinnamon, and fringed with decadent lashes.
“Your Grace?” came her hesitant voice.
It would seem that she, on the other hand, didn’t quite recognize him.
How lowering.
“Madam,” he bit out. “I’ve traveled an ocean. I’m injured and tired and severely lacking in the sort of patience and understanding one would require in a circumstance such as this.”
“Do step aside, Ludlow,” she ordered the mountain.
The servant complied with great reluctance and another scowl. And there she stood in his place. She was lovelier than he remembered, imbued with an air of sophistication she had not possessed when last he’d seen her. Her hair was plaited in a basket weave and worn high atop her head. Her gown was navy silk with bottle-green underskirts, lace and ribbon adorning a bodice that couldn’t help but draw attention to her narrow waist and generous bosom. Even in his weakened state, he felt an unexpected, odd flare of awareness as he took her in.
“Your Grace,” she said at last, her too-wide pink lips pressed into a severe frown. “You look ill.”
Well, hell. He’d been standing about, thinking how remarkably fine she looked while she’d been taking in his gaunt frame, pale skin, and cane. He was a wreck and he knew it. He leaned heavily on the walking stick. “I’ve been injured. Will you grant me entrance, or am I to stand in the street like a bloody tradesman?”
She blinked, color blooming in her cheeks. “Did you suffer a hunting injury, Your Grace?”
Clever minx. He gave her his haughtiest stare. “Yes.”
His wife took a step back, allowing the door to open fully. “Come in, then. I suppose I cannot deny you entrance.”
With the aid of his servants, he stepped over the threshold. But the effort of walking to the door, combined with the length of time he’d been forced to wait and the crippling pain searing him, had made him even weaker. He swayed, losing his balance, humiliation stinging him.
How had he ended up here, in this moment, standing before the wife he’d never wanted like a bloody invalid, a strange butler presiding over his disgrace?
Her gaze raked the length of him, going wider still. “Oh dear heavens. His Grace is bleeding. Ludlow, have my chambers prepared for him, if you please.”
He glanced down to see that his wound had indeed begun to weep once more, soaking through his trousers. Damn it. “Prepare my chambers,” he commanded the insolent mountain, gainsaying her.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” his duchess said without a hint of remorse.
What the bloody hell?
“There’s no longer a bed in your chamber,” she explained. “It’s the main dog chamber now. Even if there were still a bed, I doubt you’d wish to convalesce there.”
“The dog chamber,” he repeated, wondering if he’d lost his mind along with the blood that had seeped from his body.
“Yes. It will have to be my chamber, unfortunately, or nothing at all.” She turned to give the butler a look that was far too intimate for his liking. “There’s no helping it. You’ll have to move Lady Philomena Whiskers somewhere else to await the birthing.”
Dogs and cats and a mountain of a butler who was too familiar with his wife. And he no longer had a bed. Of course, this was precisely the homecoming he should have expected.
Ludlow looked as if she’d just asked him to clean up after her mouse brood, lip curled in undisguised disgust. Then again, she supposed she could not blame him, either for his dislike of the Liliputians—they did make a frightful mess, the little miscreants—or his loathing of the duke.
Georgiana wondered if her expression matched her menacing butler’s as she took in the sight of her missing husband: gaunt, pale, bleeding.
Still handsome as ever, the louse.
She suspected no one was less impressed by the sudden, unexpected arrival of the Duke of Leeds than she. Their marriage thus far had been marked by his absence and his deceptions, which she suspected had everything to do with the bloody wound on his thigh. I am due to attend a hunting expedition in America, he had told her on their wedding day before he had disappeared into a carriage with a packed valise. Her last sight of him had been his broad back disappearing into the conveyance as she watched from a window.
A hunting expedition, my big toe.
She would wager her entire collection of stray creatures that her husband was on an expedition of a different sort entirely. One that involved Fenian dynamite plots, spying, and from the looks of things, guns. The coded letters she’d come across in his library had not only been easily deciphered but quite informative as well. While she was somewhat mollified to learn he was not as useless as she had once supposed, time and distance had
done nothing to improve the depth of rancor she felt for him.
“Where would you have me move Lady Philomena Whiskers, Your Grace?” Ludlow asked, interrupting her whirling thoughts.
Which was for the best, lest she become too tempted to kick His Grace’s cane out from under him for the sheer joy of watching him fall to his rump on the polished parquet.
She focused on her butler, a gentle surge of appreciation coursing through her. He looked like such a beast, with his towering form and his intimidating scar. But a gentle nature hid beneath his gruff exterior. “She cannot abide by Kitty Quixote, so it won’t do to put them together.”
“Perhaps in the morning room?” Ludlow helpfully supplied. “She does enjoy sunning herself, and the eastward facing windows lend it rather an air of cheer.”
“Hmm.” Georgiana turned that over in her mind. Though all the chambers save hers had been converted into makeshift homes for the stray animals she’d begun taking in, she had been reluctant to commandeer the main living and entertaining chambers as well. “It could work temporarily.”
“Forgive me for interrupting your scintillating discussion of where you’re going to put some stupid creature,” drawled her forgotten husband in a voice composed of icebergs, “but I should like to take some rest before I expire on the fucking floor.”
Good God.
Georgiana’s gaze swung back to the duke in shock at his vulgar language. He had gone paler, she noted, his skin a shade lighter than the ivory stripes on the wallpaper behind him. Still, she was not inclined to feel sympathy for this man.
She did not like him.
“Perhaps you lost your manners along with all that blood, Your Grace.” She smiled, the stretch of her lips feeling pained. Above all, she would not allow him to see how much he affected her, how much his complete disregard for her person, wellbeing, and feelings had hurt her. How much effort it now required not to box his ears.
“I never claimed to have them,” he gritted, his expression remarkably impassive for a man who appeared on the verge of keeling over in a dead swoon. “Kindly have your behemoth see to my belongings and servants, madam, since it seems he has no notion of what a proper butler does.”
She winced. Ludlow, for all that he was a darling, also possessed a short temper. Not to mention a protective urge as long as the River Thames.
He scowled at the duke. “Who are you to be ordering Her Grace about?”
“Her bloody husband,” Leeds seethed. “Your bloody employer until I find your replacement, which will occur with great bloody haste.”
“That was an awful lot of bloodies,” Georgiana muttered beneath her breath.
Her husband’s gaze swung to her, and even in his weakened, wounded state, he possessed a commanding air that could not be denied. “I beg your pardon?”
Well. What could she do? Although it would serve him right to pass out on the floor, her inner resolve weakened. “Ludlow, please do see to His Grace’s servants and trunks. I shall escort him upstairs myself.”
Ludlow’s brows raised, but he did as she asked, for he was loyal.
“Come,” she addressed her husband, moving toward him to take his arm as she would an invalid. That was how she must think of him if she was to maintain her composure. Above all, she would not think about how well-muscled his arm was beneath his coat. How he radiated heat.
Far too much heat.
She frowned and laid a hand upon his forehead. “Leeds, you are feverish.”
“I am not feverish.” He shrugged free of her touch and tottered, almost losing his balance in the process. “Nor do I require assistance from you.”
Georgiana flinched at the vehemence in his tone, the singular resonance of distaste, as if she were beneath him and her touch would somehow adulterate his impeccable ducal aura. She should have kicked out his cane from under him when the inclination had first struck her.
Instead, she gripped his arm again. Though he was far taller than she, his form honed with lean, muscled grace, she had the advantage of not being grievously wounded and with fever. He could not escape her. “Listen here, you pigheaded oaf, it is plain that you do require assistance. Furthermore, you are burning up. Your skin is clammy, your eyes are bright, and I would be willing to hazard a guess that your wound is infected. You will accept my help, or I will leave you here to rot in the entryway as you deserve.”
He stared at her, swaying on his feet, silent.
For a moment, she thought she had gone too far in her vehemence.
But then he sneered. “Having been a farm-dwelling American dowd until your papa came into his railroad inheritance, I fail to see what qualifies you to make the assessments of a physician. Call for my personal doctor, if you please. I wish him to attend the stitches that did not hold during the course of my journey here.”
A farm-dwelling American dowd.
Oh, how her foot itched. She stared down at the cane for a brief moment, considering. He was such a supercilious churl. How had she ever been awed by his masculine beauty? A pragmatist such as she ought to know better than anyone that a lovely exterior could cloak an untold depth of ugliness awaiting beneath.
But then she realized that during the course of their dialogue, the bloodstain marring his trousers had tripled in size. “Dear heavens, Leeds, you are bleeding to beat a butchered hog.”
Suddenly, he pitched forward into her arms.
She caught him, staggering back under the force of his weight but managing to stand firm. Because she was a farm girl as he had so dismissively accused her of being. And because she knew how to withstand anything. She always had, and she always would. The Duke of Leeds could abandon, insult, and disdain her all he pleased, but he could not take that away from her.
it was on fire.
Something was grumbling.
Something infernally heavy lay atop his chest, pricking his skin with half a dozen needles or more all at once. Digging in, then retracting, digging in, then retracting in the same torture upon his flesh.
Perhaps he had at last found himself in the bowels of hell where he belonged.
Murmurings pierced his delirium. The soft tones of a woman, the contrasting deep rumble of a man. He attempted to thrash his head from side to side, to clear the cotton from his brain, to listen in on the conversation. But moving seemed impossible. His head was too bloody heavy. He was too bloody weak. Had he a head? Mayhap that was the obstacle.
Yes, he was dead. The wound which he had begun to fear was festering during his passage back to England had claimed him. The bastard who had betrayed him and the bullet of the unseen Fenian menace had done him in with exacting, prolonged punishment. Precisely how they would have wanted it.
And now, he burned within the eternal flames of his damnation while attempting to eavesdrop on a dialogue betwixt two unknown forces. Who was it? The devil versus an angel? The two warring factions within him dueling over his immortal soul?
Had he a soul? He had ceased to believe it a long time ago.
But it would seem he did. For how would the fire engulfing him and the growling, hissing creature inflicting its rigorous torment upon his chest exist if he hadn’t one? If he was not now, in fact, in Hades. Precisely where he belonged.
We must move her… A semblance of words settled into his awareness. Hold him still. Soft, feminine. So pretty. Must restrain him. He found the strength to move his face toward that sound, seeking it as he would the sun, but he could not open his eyes.
Mellifluous, peaceful. It reminded him of someone.
Of her. His green-eyed wife.
Her face swept through his mind, pale and lovely, her dark hair emphasizing her beauty. She had not been pleased to see him, just as he had not been happy to see her. Seeing her meant he had lost. He was a failure. He was broken and weak and wounded.
Pathetic, really.
It was just as well he had stuck his spoon in the wall.
He wondered for a mad moment whether or not she would even mourn him in his de
ath. Likely not.
Georgiana.
He attempted to mutter her name. A name he did not prefer to think or say, for it filled his insides with the unwanted rot of guilt.
I am here.
That beautiful voice, near his ear. Speaking into his mind.
Hush, I am here.
He fell into that voice, soaked it in, and thought that perhaps he wasn’t dead after all. Or if he was, he had miraculously been spared and lifted to heaven, where an angel was surrounding him in the peaceful glow of her calm. Her voice was so sweet it made him ache.
But then the shivers came, wracking his body, and he knew for certain he had descended into hell. Where he had thought he was too weak to move, he was not too weak to convulse in uncontrolled spasms. His teeth chattered. The hisses resumed, so too the growls, along with the pain of what now seemed to have multiplied into a hundred tiny knives biting into his sensitized flesh.
The low rumble returned. The male voice.
You must leave this chamber. Allow someone else to tend…
No. Kit tried to form the word, to lift his worthless arms, and grasp for this figment of his imagination. Light swirled before his eyes. He tried prying them open, to see her. His angel? His wife? How were they the same?
More hushed conversation.
I shall move her, Your Grace.
No, I must be the one… He is a beast, but I do not wish him to die…
The light faded. In its place came a deep and abiding darkness. He was so bloody tired, too tired to move or fight. Too tired to make the pain stop. He succumbed, letting its cold blankness envelop his mind.
One last strain of conversation reached him before he fell into the abyss.
Death is an ugly thing, Your Grace.
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 2