There. She huffed with satisfaction. While she did not ordinarily resort to the childish sport of name-calling, she could think of no better—or more fulfilling—means of cracking the duke’s thick, stubborn shell and forcing him to see reason.
Lady P. chose that moment to land upon the bed, announcing herself with a satisfied mewl. She rubbed her face enthusiastically against the duke’s bedclothes-enshrouded feet.
A strangled sound emerged from him. “What the devil is the thing doing in my bed? I must insist you remove it at once.”
“She likes you,” Georgiana countered just as she had to his previous blustering where Lady P. was concerned. She turned her attention to the antiseptic solution she needed to apply to his healing wound. “Though one cannot fathom why.”
“You said that aloud, madam.”
She began applying the solution, glancing up at him for only a beat before returning her gaze to the task before her. “I am aware.”
Just as she was aware of how very much of him was exposed to her. Now that Dr. Gage had gone from the chamber, seeing half of the lower portion of her husband’s anatomy on full display could not fail but to have an effect upon her. If her hands trembled as she finished with the antiseptic and took up the clean linen she’d need to bind the wound, it couldn’t be helped.
For all his growling, abysmal temperament, and thorough lack of manners, he was still the most handsome man she had ever seen. He was still her husband. And he had still kissed her with such gentle seduction all those days ago (thirteen, her traitorous body reminded her) that every part of her yet throbbed with the want of more.
Lady P. crept her way up the bed, running her face along first the duke’s ankle, then his knee. Georgiana held her tongue, finding amusement in the fact that the feline had fallen in love with a man who abhorred not only cats but seemingly all animals in general.
Or did he? She thought back to how he had almost seemed to enjoy petting Lady P. that day in the morning room. Though his attentions had initially been reluctant—awkward, tentative patting motions on the cat’s back—he had relented, allowing his guard to fall. He had stroked Lady P., looking down upon her with an almost tender expression upon his face. Or at least as close to tender as a man like the Duke of Leeds could comfortably get.
But he called animals “things” and “creatures.” He loudly protested their presence, looked down his aristocratic nose at her for not being able to resist taking in every stray she could find.
“Well, madam? If you insist upon playing nursemaid, the least you could do is make haste.”
His caustic voice shook her from her reveries, and with a jolt, she realized she had been standing there like a fool, holding the clean bandage in her hands, staring at the floor. When she looked up, her cheeks flushed with a combination of embarrassment and pique at his abominable temperament.
Wresting her gaze from the floor would not have been a problem under ordinary circumstances. Circumstances, that was, which did not involve bedclothes that had been drawn askew by the movement of Lady P., who by now had shimmied her way to the duke’s chest. Circumstances that did not involve the baring of two fine, sturdy masculine calves stippled with dark hair in addition to the bared lone thigh. Circumstances that did not involve the Duke of Leeds, half-naked in her bed, a fluffy white cat curled against him.
The sight was breathtaking and adorable all at once. She stared, unable to say a word, unable to meet his gaze, for she was ogling his form and surely he knew it. Her heart beat a staccato, her palms went damp, and a strong, aching pulse started between her thighs and reverberated outward, claiming her entire body with a luscious sense of possibility.
A wild thought occurred to her just then. What if the duke did not dislike animals at all? What if he was made uncomfortable by the adoration of a cat or dog for other reasons entirely? What if no one had ever shown him kindness, and he hid himself behind a false wall of arrogant detachment?
No. Do not make excuses for his boorishness. You will only lose your heart along the way, and he will crush it beneath his boot heel without a second thought.
Ruthlessly, she clenched her fists, digging her nails into her tender palms to distract herself. Such thoughts about Leeds simply would not do. He was her husband, but he was also a man she knew little of, who had led a secret life, who had lied to her, abandoned her, and returned a cold and angry stranger who needed her help but would never ask for it.
“Madam, the day goes to waste whilst we tarry here,” he gritted. “If you are too squeamish to bandage the wound, hand me the linens and I shall do it myself as I have wished all along.”
She stepped forward, jerking her gaze upward once more to find that his hand had curled around Lady P., and he was delivering stroke after absentminded stroke to her back, much to the cat’s delight. Traitor. “Of course I am not too squeamish.”
“I will bear a large, hideous scar for the rest of my life, and I may never walk unaided again. The wound is difficult to look upon, I know.” Something changed in his tone then. It didn’t exactly soften, but it lowered somehow. The customary harshness and bite was missing, replaced instead by bitterness, and unless she was mistaken, a trace of disillusionment as well.
Her heart, ever her weakness, gave in then, and she fell into his eyes, which were a blue unto their own. Vivid and bright yet pale and arresting, not gray and yet not a true dark blue, they were a shade that was altogether spellbinding.
His wound shamed him, his limp as well.
The knowledge settled in her heart like a physical ache. Whatever secret government mission he’d been about, she had to believe it was for the good of all people. And that the injury he’d suffered during his service would forever embarrass him seemed the greatest travesty of all, when he should have worn it with pride.
“Leeds, your scar will be a badge of courage upon your skin, a reminder of your tenacity and ability to overcome all and survive. Wear it with pride. Do not be ashamed of your survival. Not ever.”
She would have said more, for her heart longed to assuage his fears, but she stilled her tongue. A strange, almost predatory look had settled upon his features. She couldn’t be certain if he wished to devour her or castigate her, or something infinitely worse that her puerile mind could not even fathom.
“Have you finished your soliloquy, Duchess?” His deep, dark voice was mocking. Cutting. “If so, perhaps you ought to carry on with bandaging the wound so that I can proceed with my day. I have business to attend to, and the visit from your animal quack coupled with your inability to perform the task at hand is quite cutting into the day.”
The sharp edges had returned to his voice. She suppressed a jolt at his innate cruelty. Had she imagined his weakness? Was it merely that she wished to find the good in him, that she wished to save him? Perhaps, as he had suggested, she did see him as one of her strays. As someone to be rescued.
But he clearly did not wish for redemption.
She stiffened her spine, firming her mouth into a frown of her own. But she noted that he had not stopped stroking Lady P., and the feline had nestled herself into a purring, delighted mass of white fur atop his chest. Like her beloved mastiff Alice, perhaps Leeds looked and sounded more vicious than he was.
Regardless, there was no more time for dawdling or further rumination. She did have a task to perform, linen binding in her hands, and she could and would do this. She would show him that she was not bothered, not disgusted, and certainly not cowed by him in any fashion.
She could resist her unfortunate, wicked urges where he was concerned. All she needed to do was conjure up an image of his scowl. “Your Grace, are you able to raise the limb slightly so that the bandage may pass beneath?”
“A bit.” His leg raised, bending at the knee, as he exhaled on a gust of air that bespoke the pain he experienced.
“Excellent.” She adopted a neutral tone, hoping that she could take a lesson from Dr. Gage and remain impervious to the vicious bear that was the
Duke of Leeds. Gently, attempting to copy what the doctor had told her to the letter, she wrapped the bandage around the duke’s thigh.
His very large, delightfully well-muscled thigh. Good heavens. Her cheeks went from pink to scarlet, she was certain of it. They felt as if the flames of a thousand fires had come to lodge within them, burning her before Leeds’ watchful gaze. Georgiana had never before imagined that a man’s upper limb could be so very enticing, but she had no question of it now. It required all the self-restraint she had to refrain from skimming her fingers along his skin just to test the texture and absorb the heat of him.
How would it feel to glide her palm over that warm, male flesh? To follow the well-delineated line of his muscle all the way to the portion of him that remained enshrouded in bedclothes and his dressing robe? What would it be like to allow her hand to find the length of him? Having grown up on a farm, she was not ignorant of such matters, and a steadfast, pulsing ache took up residence deep within her as she contemplated Leeds as a man.
Not just any man. As her husband.
You must not! Danger and destruction shall follow so reckless a path, her conscience warned. And rightly so. What could she be thinking to entertain such disastrous, shocking thoughts about the Duke of Leeds? He was the man who had left without eating a bite of their wedding breakfast, and just as he had not deserved her then, neither did he deserve her now.
She wound the linen once, twice, and on to the third trek round his thigh. She was careful, as Dr. Gage had cautioned, not to leave the bandage either too loose or too tight. As she worked she caught her lower lip between her teeth, concentrating on the twin desires to avoid causing him pain and to avoid touching him.
Difficult indeed, for she could smell him, a heady combination of soap and musk, and nothing and no man had ever smelled as divine as he did to her in that moment. As she devoted herself to bandaging his wound, she was aware that he watched her with the same calm, predatory precision of the hawk that had lived on her father’s farm where she’d grown up. Stalking, waiting, judging, determining its prey’s weakness so that it knew the proper moment to strike. On more than one occasion, she had seen that hawk carry off a baby rabbit in its beak.
She could only hope that she would not become the same sacrifice for the duke.
“You have cat fur all over you, madam,” he informed her with an inimitable, august sound of disgust, once again disrupting her thoughts and shaking her concentration.
She stilled in the act of looping the bandage around his thigh the final time and glanced up, certain she had misheard him. As she turned her attention to him, her fingers grazed hot, hard male flesh. Georgiana’s gaze collided with vivid blue at the same moment the breath escaped her in a shocked exhalation.
Leeds hissed, grinding his jaw. “Fucking hell, woman.”
Perhaps, in her discomfit at being in such close quarters with him, tending to him intimately without another’s presence, she had inadvertently disturbed his wound. Although she had been at his bedside for much of his time at Leeds House, those occasions had not been cause for distraction. He had been ill, unconscious, burning with fever. And she had been terrified, worried for him, determined to see him through it all. There had been no time or place for admiring his body and its well-delineated muscles, no room for attraction. No space or place for anything but attempting to see him through his illness and recovery.
But this, this was different. In every sense.
“Oh dear.” She had never felt more gauche or inept in her life than she did now, with his eyes burning into hers, her fingers yet smoldering with the imprint of his skin. “Have I hurt you?”
His eyes snapped closed. “Covered in bloody cat fur,” he muttered again, almost as if in reminder to himself. “No. You have not hurt me. You could not possibly do so, madam. Just carry on, if you please.”
She looked down to find that yes, indeed, the silk of her cornflower blue bodice featured a plethora of long, white Lady P. insignias. But she was so often covered in any number of furs on a daily basis that she had ceased to notice. It had rather become a part of her daily wardrobe. And she had never before found cause to feel ashamed of it. She loved her strays.
Judging from the way that Lady P. lolled in transfixed delight upon the duke’s chest, Georgiana was not the only one at Leeds House saturated in feline fur. She quirked a brow, pursing her lips. “And you are not, Your Grace? It seems to me that Lady Philomena Whiskers has made herself more than at home upon you. I daresay the same amount of fur that was sacrificed upon my person shall also be left on yours.”
“Touché.” His tone matched his expression. Glum. Grim. Searching. “This thing of yours seems to suffer from the same affliction as you, madam.”
“You do know that Lady Philomena Whiskers is not a thing, do you not?” she could not help but to ask him, having grown weary of his casual insistence upon treating her strays as though they were inconsequential and irritating.
Because each one mattered. If not to anyone else, they mattered to her.
They were hers, and she loved them.
“I refuse to refer to it by the ridiculous appellation you’ve selected.” His voice was still cold, but it had taken on a raspy quality.
“Hmm.” She turned her attention back to his bandage, winding it the final time and securing it at last. As she flipped the bedcovering over him so that she would no longer be tempted to touch him, the rest of his words returned to her. “Lady Philomena and I suffer from the same affliction, Leeds?”
“Yes.” He stroked the purring Lady P., frowning at her. “Both you and the thing are kind to me when you ought not to be.”
it didn’t know why in the bloody hell he’d said that. He wished that he hadn’t, as it implied he knew he was a horse’s arse. Which of course he did. His duchess, however, had no need to be aware of that. If he was surly and rude and arrogant, it was because he had every reason to be.
He was in pain. He didn’t know who had betrayed him or whom he could trust. His wife had filled his home with animals, including the one that was kneading his chest through his dressing gown and purring like one of Satan’s minions. His butler was an assassin who was in love with his wife.
Even the damn animal doctor was suspect. The way the bastard had looked at Georgiana had not been lost upon Kit, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like her taking up the cudgels for Gage or extolling his virtues. He was not certain which had enraged him more, the fact that she had allowed a quack who specialized in creatures to cut into his skin or that she’d looked upon the man with a gaze that sparkled with luminous admiration.
At the sight, he had known such a violent stab of jealousy he’d nearly doubled over with it.
He wanted to be the recipient of that gaze, but he’d also be damned if he ever confessed to it. He’d said far more than he’d ever wished. But he could do nothing now. His words were alive, hovering in the heavy air between them, and he could not call them back.
“Everyone deserves kindness,” she said at last, breaking the silence that had fallen. “Even you, Leeds.”
Even you.
As though he were somehow deficient or unworthy, someone deserving of her pity and charity. As if he were a beggar child she had tossed a penny.
His lip curled, and he could not keep the ice from his voice. “Thank you for your benevolence in extending your care to a creature such as myself.”
“That is not what I meant to say.” She turned from him, busying herself with washing her hands once more so that he could only see her profile.
Even from the side, her beauty sucked the breath from his lungs. He studied her, petting the creature that seemed so enthralled by him, taking care to avoid the belly with its alarming teats. Damn it all if the thing wasn’t actually growing on him. He wouldn’t quite say that he was fond of it, but its undying devotion to him was beginning to wear down his opposition.
“What did you mean to say?” he pressed his duchess, unsure why.
He had no wish to entangle himself with her. Day by day, he was healing, and with that came the inevitable need to discover who had double-crossed him. To find out who had wanted him dead. To determine who the bastard was that had orchestrated his removal from the League.
Retribution would be his, but it would not be found within a pair of glittering emerald eyes or between a lush pair of thighs. It wouldn’t even be found in a sweet, soft mouth that was the pink of an English rose on an American beauty.
There was no reason for him to continue to clash verbal swords with her. In fact, he had every reason to keep her at a distance, give his wound the requisite time to heal, and return to America so that he could restore his reputation and exact his revenge. They could continue living their separate lives on different continents, as was the civilized thing to do. He’d never wanted the burden of a wife, after all.
And yet there was something about her.
Something he could not let go.
“I meant to say that you do not seem to hold yourself in high regard,” she said, turned back to him as she dried her hands once more. “Your actions and words have not been those of a happy man. But even a man who is more wounded on the inside than he is on the outside is deserving of kindness and concern.”
“I’m not one of your creatures,” he grumbled, and it was not the first time he’d made such a protestation.
“Of course you’re not.” Her gaze was forthright, sizzling into his. “If you were, I would have had you eating out of my hand by now.”
For some inexplicable reason, the notion of eating out of her hand sent a new arrow of pure, molten heat straight to his groin. His cock twitched at a mental image of Georgiana’s delicate hand outstretched, his tongue running along the soft indentations of her palm. The urge to taste her everywhere overwhelmed.
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 13