“The Duchess of Trent?” He raised a supercilious brow. “That woman is one of your familiars? You do realize that her father was supporting the Fenians, do you not?”
“Of course I do.” Now he meant to insult Georgiana’s only true friend? Her eyes narrowed. “You will not dare to say a single, unkind word about Daisy. She is a wonderful woman, and she had nothing to do with her father’s awful plotting. Do not dare to paint them with the same brush.”
“Americans,” he said as though the word left a bitter taste in his mouth. “I suppose you must flock together. Birds of a feather, and all that trite nonsense.”
The jackanapes. She stifled the urge to punch him in his arrogant nose. Again, he was wounded, and it hardly seemed fair. “Daisy is a hero for the way she unraveled one of the Fenian plots right here in London. The papers call her The Daring Duchess.”
He sneered. “The papers are often better suited to wiping one’s arse than reporting the truth. I ought not to be surprised to learn that you are bosom bows with such a troublesome woman, but I cannot pretend to be pleased. My wife is cuckolding me with the bloody butler, keeping company with traitors, and attending balls dressed as a man. And, lest we forget, this very same wife has also ruined my home by filling it with disgusting creatures.”
Her irritation surged. He was so wrong-headed, so condescending, so…insufferably rude that she had begun to rethink the entire punching him in the nose scenario. She kept her calm with great effort. “Did you hobble all this way to insult me, Your Grace?”
“Insult you?” Two dark brows winged upward this time, as though he could not believe her audacity.
As if she were below insulting.
“Yes.” Before she could think better of it, her index finger pointed at him, prodding him in the chest. The insufferably hard, hot chest. “You have questioned my fashion choice, my friends, my sanity, and mistaken these innocent, beautiful kittens for vermin.”
“Felines are vermin,” he countered, his expression never shifting. “It was hardly a mistake. Has no one ever informed you that pointing is despicably vulgar? No, I daresay they did not.”
She ignored the last question, as it was an ignoble personal attack, and undeserving of her response, and he had answered it for himself anyway.
“Kittens look nothing like rats, Leeds.” She glared at him. “And felines are wonderful, affectionate, intelligent beings. They are not worthy of your scorn. Just look at them. How can you see such sweet, soft innocence and not want to make them yours?”
He made a strangled sound in his throat, but he wasn’t looking at the contented bundles of purring fur. Instead, his gaze dipped once more to her mouth. “You will put an end to your affaire with the butler.”
His words broke the spell of his nearness and beauty. Georgiana shook her head. “I beg your pardon?”
“The bloody butler,” he rasped, his gaze bright and intent upon hers. “You have been welcoming him to your bed in my absence. I’m not a fool. You will end it. Today.”
Here it was yet again, the specter of his accusations. What was it he had said moments ago? Ah, yes. My wife is cuckolding me with the bloody butler. She had been so incensed by the aspersions he’d cast upon Daisy’s character that the words had not properly settled in her mind.
But they did now, like leaden weights.
Her husband believed that she had been carrying on an affair with Ludlow when they had never even rendered their union. How little he knew of her, if he believed her capable of such disloyalty. She may have been abandoned and left behind, made to feel both unworthy and unwanted, but she had taken vows before God and man. And she had every intention of keeping them.
Even if her husband mistook beautiful, innocent kittens for rats, of all things.
Yes, she would forgive him that error, though she reserved the right to judge him for it. His continued and thoroughly incorrect belief that she had been having inappropriate relations with Ludlow, however, she could not so easily absolve.
Righteous anger speared her at the notion. How dare he suggest she had been unfaithful? To insinuate she had broken their marriage vows? She poked him again for good measure, with enough force that she hoped would sting. “I will end nothing, which is precisely what has been happening. As I told you previously Ludlow is the butler, and that is all.” True, he had also become her friend, but she needn’t admit that just now as she warmed to her task of berating the man she’d married. “How dare you suggest anything untoward has occurred in your absence?”
“I see the way he looks at you.” Leeds glowered.
“And how is that?” she demanded. “As if I am a woman? At least someone has looked upon me in such a fashion, because my own husband most assuredly hasn’t. He’s been too preoccupied with hunting.”
Ruddiness flared to life on the duke’s high cheekbones, in stark contrast to the rest of his ashen skin. His knuckles gripped his cane, still protruding white and angry from his otherwise large, elegant hands. “He has no right to look at you with anything other than polite disinterest, damn it.”
Not for the first time, it occurred to her then that it was possible that her husband’s suspicions could stem from his own guilty conscience. After all, he had not answered her previous query. Their wedding day had seemed a lifetime ago, but in truth it was only half a year past. In that time, he had been in another country, separated from her by a vast ocean. He was an unusually handsome, well-muscled specimen of a man. She had taken note of the way ladies’ eyes followed him in ballrooms and drawing rooms, both before and during their brief betrothal. She had heard the feminine whispers of appreciation.
And so it was easy to imagine that women had thrown themselves into his bed. Why, it could have been dozens or even hundreds by the time he’d been wounded. The Duke of Leeds was more beautifully formed than any mere mortal had a right to be, as if his entire face and body had been crafted by the hands of a Renaissance master.
The mere thought of nameless, faceless women warming his bed, kissing his stern mouth, and welcoming his hands on their bodies made her ill. “Perhaps you’re feeling guilty, Duke. Perhaps you know you have been untrue, and believing me faithless would help to assuage the shame.”
Something flashed in his eyes, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “I have not had the time to bed anyone, Duchess, even if I had been so inclined.”
Relief pierced the burning jealousy that had risen within her. Ridiculous jealousy, for she didn’t like him. She had no wish to turn their cold-blooded marriage of convenience into something real.
Of course she didn’t. The man was, in a word, awful. Full stop. Why, his fidelity or lack thereof meant nothing at all to her. She would change the subject at once. Ask after his injury.
But when she opened her mouth, a torrent of words flowed from her tongue. None of them planned.
“You remained faithful to your vows because you hadn’t the time to bed anyone,” she repeated, hearing the sharp edge in her voice.
Lady P. stood just then, offering a loud meow of protest. Her kittens mewled, searching for the warmth of her body and their sustenance both. The sudden movement stole Georgiana’s interest for a moment.
“Tut, tut, Duchess. You are disturbing the rats.”
The underlying humor in his starchy, aristocratic voice had her turning back to him to find a smile playing with the corners of his lips. Why, he was enjoying this, the blighter. And unless she was mistaken, something in his demeanor had shifted. Softened. He had become—dare she think it—teasing.
Most unlike the devil. She frowned at him, wondering if it was her fanciful imagination or if it was real. “They are not rats, you vagabond, as you well know.”
Lady P. sauntered past Georgiana, reclaiming her attention. Georgiana bent to offer her favorite feline a reassuring back scratch and met with air when the long-haired white cat flounced right past her to rub against the duke’s trousers, purring with such delight that it split the silence of the chamber. So much fo
r her earlier hisses.
“The thing is rubbing itself against me,” Leeds said, sounding only slightly less horrified than he likely would have if Lady P. had been an actual rat. “Is it going to bite me?”
No one would deserve it more.
Blue eyes swung to hers, holding her captive. “Beg pardon, madam?”
Oh dear. Had she said that aloud? She blinked and looked away. “Lady Philomena is clearly suffering from a lapse of discernment. But no, she will not bite you.”
Though I rather wish she would.
“I heard that as well,” he growled.
Georgiana slanted a narrow-eyed glare in his direction, certain she could not have lost control of her tongue on two occasions in a row in his unsettling presence. Then again, perhaps that was the crux of her problems. When had the Duke of Leeds become a presence that disturbed her? Though she’d been attracted to his fine looks and form, she had not experienced the same calamitous, frenzied rush she felt within her heart and body now.
But he had been cool and polite, and their interactions had been chaperoned, often within a ballroom, and he had bowed and danced and smiled with polite disinterest, scarcely engaging with her. She too had been beset by distraction—the need to escape her father’s sovereignty.
Leeds looked upon her now, his countenance expectant. Had he said something? Oh, yes. He claimed to have overheard her private wish that Lady P. would sink her sharp little teeth into his Achilles. Which the lovable, if temperamental, feline would not do.
She sighed. “I’m sure you heard nothing, as I did not speak, Your Grace.”
Lady P. continued to work herself into a frenzy all over the duke’s trousers, oblivious to his stiffened horror. She purred her delight, scrubbing her face against his ankle bone.
“Good God.” He sounded truly disgusted. “Can you not get the thing away from me? It’s leaving a great deal of fur in its wake, and Christ knows what other manner of pestilence.”
“Lady Philomena is not an ‘it’.” Georgiana embraced the outrage coursing through her on behalf of her darlings. “She is a cat, Your Grace.”
He grimaced, refusing to look down at the feline that somehow continued to completely adore his arrogant, curmudgeonly self. “Does the creature have fleas? Sweet Christ, please say no.”
“No, Leeds.” Her patience snapped. “She is not a creature. She is a cat. A feline. She does not have fleas any longer as I have treated her, the same as all the other animals who find their way to me.”
There went those brows again, climbing up his high, ducal forehead. How could a man’s forehead be a thing of beauty? She didn’t know, but it was. It was in spite of his awful beastliness and his abhorrence of animals. It was as if when the Lord had fashioned him, He had expended all His energy upon crafting the duke’s sharp masculine countenance and there had been nothing left to offer the rest of His creation. Certainly not charm. The man possessed none.
“You’ve treated them?”
She nodded. “I’ve developed an herbal shampoo that repels fleas. Even the mice get scrubbed down with it on a weekly basis.”
He looked as if he’d swallowed a worm. “Mice? Bloody hell, woman, tell me that you aren’t housing mice here?”
Well of course she was. A nest had been discovered in the kitchens, and Georgiana had not been able to allow the domestics to dispose of it. The babies had been so sweet and small and innocent.
“The Lilliputians?” She shrugged as if she had not a care, hoping it would irk him. “They are small in numbers—only eight—and they hardly eat anything at all.”
“You named them.”
“Yes.” Georgiana flashed him her brightest smile. “I did. What have you to say about it, Your Grace? I do believe you were otherwise occupied at the time of the discovery of the small, adorable mouse family. You were in America. Hunting.”
It wasn’t as if she expected him to confirm her suspicions, but she did enjoy flaunting them to him on every possible occasion.
His defection and continued deception stung.
It should not have, for they had never shared tender words or promises to one another beyond their marriage vows. They had certainly never claimed to love each other. But she had not imagined she would be left with such haste. No, she had never supposed she would have traded one man who did not appreciate or love her for another.
“Mice are vermin, madam,” Leeds said then, splitting through her musings. “They are not adorable. One does not save them, feed them, or give them a proper home. One does not name them, for Chrissakes.”
Her cheeks went warm. Georgiana was more than aware that she was not a proper duchess. Indeed, she was not even a proper wife, let alone a woman comfortable with the expectations London society placed upon her. She’d spent most of her life on a farm, only to be swept into the glittering world of the New York nouveau riche after her uncle’s death, and from there on to the old-world bastion of London.
But she had changed in the time since her arrival on England’s shores and in the months since her wedding day both.
Once, she would have been hesitant. She would have been ashamed of her love for the animals she’d taken in. Animals that would have starved or been killed or suffered the sort of abuse she would not allow her mind to entertain. But becoming the Duchess of Leeds—in words if not in deed—had changed her. For the first time in her life, she possessed consequence. She possessed the power to affect change.
And she liked it.
She would not allow the unexpected return of her husband to ruin it. Even if he was disagreeable and downright cantankerous. Not to mention sitting in alarming proximity. Why was her heart thudding? Surely from irritation.
“One names mice if one chooses,” she corrected him coolly. “They are sweet and quite intelligent. Meet them and you shall see.”
“Georgiana.”
Her name in his dark, deliciously deep voice dismissed any other thoughts. Even her sweet animals slid into the recesses of her mind, replaced by…
Him.
Her gaze snapped to his, trapped. “Yes?”
“You are the most ridiculous, nonsensical, vexing woman and…”
Of course he found her to be so. No surprise there. He was overbearing, arrogant, cool, and aloof, so she supposed that made them an opposite pair. “And,” she prompted when he allowed his string of insults to trail off.
“And I want to kiss you, damn it.” His frank announcement shocked her.
Against her will, pleased her.
She stared back at him, without even so much as a blink. Longing surged inside her. A frisson of something decidedly wicked trilled down her spine. She ought to say something. Anything. Deny him. Shoot to her feet and fly across the morning room, far from his tempting reach.
But Georgiana did not move. Did not say a word. Did not do anything except wait until, at long last, the man she called husband laid his lips to hers for the first time.
eorgiana’s soft mouth clung to Kit’s, her hands going to his chest. The flattened palms, searing him through his shirt, seemed intended to repel him. But instead, she offered no pressure, no resistance. Rather, her fingers curled into his flesh, her nails scoring him with enough painful pleasure to make his cock twitch.
He had not intended to kiss her. Indeed, as he’d listened to her preposterous chatter about mice and herbal shampoos, he’d begun to fear he’d married a mad woman. Perhaps it was her insistence that she had not betrayed their vows with the not-butler. Perhaps it was merely her intoxicating beauty, which rivaled her lunacy.
He could not recall ever meeting a creature so odd.
But seated near her, his thigh almost pressing against hers in those infernal and ridiculously scandalous trousers, he had not been able to look away from the berry-red fullness of her lips or the bewitching vibrancy of her green eyes.
He found himself wondering what she would look like beneath him, how she would feel as he entered her, wondering if her nipples would be the same col
or as her lips or if they would be lighter. Once he began thinking about kissing her, every part of her body seemed to cry out for his attentions first. Even her throat—creamy and elegant—beckoned, calling for his lips, tongue, and teeth.
But then she’d said the most ridiculous thing of all.
She’d named a family of mice the Lilliputians.
And suddenly, trading barbs and wits with her no longer appealed. All that did was her mouth. Those luscious lips. He cradled her jaw, reveling in the satiny smoothness of her skin, and licked the seam of her lips. On a delicious sound of feminine surrender, she opened, and his tongue slipped into her hot, velvety depths.
Merciful God.
She tasted of strawberries and bergamot. And sweet, like sugar. Nothing had ever tasted better, or more perfect and delicious, than she did. A primitive surge of lust coursed through him with such violence that he almost ripped his mouth away. Almost, but he was incapable of stopping now that he’d begun.
Not even his aching leg or his weakness could diminish the strength of the desire ravaging him. His entire being was aware of hers, from the way her upper body melted into his, to the increased pressure of her nails on his chest, to the breathy sound of want she made, to the desperate way she sucked his tongue deeper, her lips molding to his.
Everything he’d thought he’d known about himself, about her, about their particular situation when he’d stepped foot inside the morning salon was now vanquished by their mutual passion. By the silken skeins of her hair as his fingers speared the lush strands at her nape, by her hungry kiss, by the thundering of his heart, the cockstand in his trousers. In his bloody invalid trousers, of all things.
The thought served as a bitter reminder that he was in no form to make love to her. But he could no more wrest his mouth from hers than cease to breathe. This kiss, this woman, they defied logic and reason. They were everything he had never expected, and everything he’d never known he wanted.
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 10