Georgiana cast a wary glance back at him as she prepared to sail from the chamber alongside her cat. She caught her lip between her teeth and he knew a stab of envy. He longed to bite that lip, damn it. But then she dashed the thought by hurrying back toward the bed, scooping something up, and spinning around.
It was his cane. Mortification burned through him, replacing the thwarted lust. He had been slavering over her like a mongrel in heat, waxing poetic over the way he felt for her as if he were a lovesick swain, and meanwhile, she had been thinking of his bloody injury.
Pathetic does not begin to describe you. Unbidden, the long-ago words of his father returned to him, more fitting now than they had been then, when he’d been but a lad.
“Here you are, Leeds.” She extended the walking stick to him, her voice soft. “You ought not to be moving about without it.”
He snatched it from her with more force than necessary, feeling violent. He bloody well hated being an invalid, he bloody well hated the specter of his father, and he bloody well did not want to have feelings for anyone, let alone his sainted wife. “You needn’t have troubled yourself.”
If his words were bitter, it could not be helped. Kit searched her gaze for a sign of pity but found none, only compassion, and it made him want to roar.
“I do not wish you to reinjure yourself,” she explained, frowning. “You must take care not to do too much too soon. Dr. Gage warned against it.”
“Dr. Gage can sod off.” The callous words left him before he could think better of it.
The not-butler chose that instant to knock at the door and insert himself back into the situation again. “Your Grace? Is anything amiss? May I be of service?”
“You can sod off as well,” Kit called.
The not-butler was silent, and Kit was willing to wager the entire marriage portion he’d received upon his nuptials to Georgiana that it required every shred of control the bastard possessed to keep from grinding out a retort.
Georgiana tilted her head at him, giving him a look designed to chastise that was rendered less severe by her continued fluster. “Do try to be civil, Leeds. Lady’s babies have all opened their eyes now, and I do not think you will mistake them for rats any longer. Won’t you get dressed so that you can come down and have a look? Afterwards, you can meet the Lilliputians and compare, if you would like.”
A smile toyed with the corners of her lips, and the urge to kiss her again rose, sudden and strong. He tamped it down. “Madam, I draw the line at mice.”
Her grin broke forth then, wide and unabashed. “But you have never met my mice, Kit.”
Before he could offer further protest, she was gone, taking the furred, white thing with her. As a general practice, he loathed all rodents. But the woman had called him by his name, had spent so gloriously in his arms, and damn it, he could not refuse her. First, however, he would need to do something about the raging erection tenting his dressing gown.
eorgiana awaited her husband in the morning salon, and though she had donned a dress that morning on account of Dr. Gage’s visit and her wish to at least attempt to appear respectable even if she wasn’t, she was seated on the floor. The better to allow six adorable, mewling kittens to crawl all over her with their sticky claws and their seeking little noses. And crawl all over her they did, getting caught in her silk and satin, batting at the fringe and silk roses adorning her skirts.
Lady slid against her waist, and Georgiana smoothed a palm over her soft fur, not wishing for the mama cat to feel ignored. Lady. Yes, she was willing to use the abridged, Leeds-approved name for her willful feline.
The thought of him sent heat soaring through her and a corresponding tingle of awareness between her thighs. The flesh he had so skillfully pleasured throbbed now with a depraved reminder of the sensation of his fingers working over her, the wet heat of his mouth on her nipples, his tongue in her mouth. What he had done to her…
It had been sweet agony. She had never known her body was capable of such vivid, delicious sensation. But Kit had forever unlocked that door, and now she longed to go through it with him again and again.
Heavens, she was about to burst into flame. What was she thinking, allowing herself to get so carried away? Succumbing to the potent lure of her husband was foolish and inadvisable. And yet, she could not seem to quell the longing rising within her even now.
With a muffled sound of frustration, she focused her attentions on a more worthy distraction: her animals. At that moment, a particularly determined orange kitten began climbing her bodice as though she were a mountain he could conquer.
But not even the distraction of the tiny, furry adventurer was enough to keep her mind from returning inevitably to Kit and what had happened in his chamber. Despite her rational mind, despite his arrogance, his bluster, and the fact that she did not dare trust him when he still kept the truth from her, she enjoyed his kisses, his knowing touch and wicked caresses. She wanted more.
In her weakest moments, with his mouth eating hers in such potent, carnal claiming, his fingers wringing a pleasure from her body so intense she almost wept with it, she wanted everything. She longed for a true marriage. For the weight of his body on hers, the heat of his skin singeing like a brand, his hardness against her softness. But then came the moments when she was removed from his devastating magnetism, moments such as now, when she could expunge the cloud of lust from her body and focus on facts.
The kitten climbing her bodice made his way to her neckline, sinking his sharp claws into her bare skin. That too was a well-timed reminder that she could not allow herself to fall prey to Kit. A beautiful face could hide a wealth of sins. He was cold. Angry. He had made her no promises.
And yet, he was also the man who allowed Lady to curl on his chest. Who worshipped her body without a care for his own need for release. Who called her a goddess.
There is nothing base or rudimentary about what I feel for you.
Which Leeds was the real Leeds? The snarling, glacial beast seated on his ducal throne? Or the passionate lover who had held her in his arms and said everything she longed to hear?
When the door to the salon opened and the object of her troubled musings limped into the chamber, cane clenched in one hand to help him balance, her confusion only heightened. He had come to see the kittens after all, and it made her heart go all warm and queer and jittery. The unyielding, callous Duke of Leeds had ventured to the morning room because she had asked it of him.
Bewildering.
Their gazes locked, his burning bright-blue. His jaw was rigid, cheekbones high slashes, his brows perfect, his shoulders broad. Every part of him was masculine flawlessness. But it wasn’t his looks that drew her to him, that made her pulse pound. It was the fact that he was here. He had dressed and come to her, and she had no pretense or coyness or even defensiveness that could withstand the impact of his presence on her heart.
“Kit,” she greeted, offering him a genuine smile. “Come and see the kittens now that their eyes have opened, won’t you? The difference will astonish, I promise.”
He raised a slash of a brow, settling a withering look upon her. “They still resemble rats from here, wife.”
Wife. She forced herself to break his gaze as the lone word sent a trill of something foreign and delicious down her spine. She liked hearing it in his deep voice and clipped aristocratic accent—which had almost completely been restored following his time in America—far too much. The way he said it was intimate. A caress.
This would not do. You do not like him, she reminded herself sternly. Think of how rude he was earlier to Dr. Gage. Think of how he sneered at your origins. Above all, do not recall his hand inside your drawers.
She preoccupied herself by petting a white kitten with patches of black stripes on his head and body. “Perhaps your eyesight was affected by your injury,” she suggested, keeping her tone tart in an effort to hide the unwanted feelings he sent coursing through her in spite of herself. Not an hour before, those long
, elegant hands of his had stroked her to climax, and it was difficult indeed to pretend it had not occurred. “Come closer and see for yourself if they still look like rodents in proximity.”
He closed the door at his back, and she continued to refuse to look at him, locking her eyes on the kitten instead. Though Kit didn’t say a word, she was more aware than she would have preferred of his every step across the room. Until at last, his shoes approached her outspread skirts, stopping just short of the ribbon and box-pleat bedecked hem.
“Are you certain that mountain of a man who attempted to kill me has not replaced the actual kittens with rodents?”
Pressing her lips together, she reluctantly glanced up to find him looming over her, rakishly handsome and looking dapper and refreshed in his trousers, waistcoat, and crisp white shirt. He did not wear a jacket, and she had to admit that the rather intimate air he exuded appealed to her. For a moment, she could forget their inauspicious beginnings, forget his time away from her and his deceptions, and imagine what their life together could have been like.
What he could have been like as a true husband.
But that was all a moot point, was it not, when the man before her, regardless of how handsome he was, and in spite of how her heart had begun to warm to him, had no intention of being a true husband? She had begun to sense a change in him. A cagey restlessness that was different from the bitter anger she had come to expect.
He was preparing to leave her again.
Georgiana was not a fool. All the time she spent in the company of animals had made it rather easy to read the hearts, minds, and motivations of humans. After all, humans were not as different from animals as most would have preferred to believe.
“Georgiana?” he prompted softly.
She realized belatedly that she had been staring at him. Mortified heat flew to her cheeks, even as she acknowledged that there had been a different, underlying quality to his voice. Almost a tenderness. But she didn’t dare believe that.
Not for a moment.
“Have a seat, won’t you?” She forced a bright smile she little felt to her lips. It would be far too easy to forget all the impediments between them, the unpleasant truth of their union. But she could not. This man was bound to disappoint her. To leave her again.
He was not hers, even if he knew how to make her body sing.
But he did as she bid, leaving her speechless once more, making his way to the divan and lowering his long, lean frame into it. He rested his cane against his knee and turned his large hands palm up, as if in supplication. “Here you have me. I have dutifully appeared to witness the transformation of your rats.” He frowned, the smooth skin between his brows veeing into a furrow she longed, for a ridiculous moment, to kiss. “Do you always loll about on the floor, allowing them to climb you like a bloody tree?”
His disgust was palpable. Sometimes, Georgiana’s heart ached to think of the childhood the Duke of Leeds had experienced. Her own father had certainly never been loving toward her, as she supposed she had reminded him too much of her mother and all that he had lost. But in the animals of the farm, she had found the love her father had denied.
Who had loved Leeds? Certainly not his father.
That was why he insisted on being so aloof, why he was a man unto his own, why he could not bear kindness without questioning it. It was possible that no one before her had ever shown him it, and that realization made her heart break for him. Just a little.
She forced her mind from such thoughts, lest she allow herself to entertain any more fanciful notions about the Duke of Leeds.
“I begin to question your comprehension of the English language.” She pursed her lips, considering him. “You seem to be confused by the definition of first rodents and now lolling. I am merely sitting here, as you can see.”
“On the floor.” His lip curled.
She supposed he could not help himself. “Being at their level brings me joy. I do not wish to perch myself on a settee and watch them from afar. I want to love them.”
He stared at her, his jaw going hard, his eyes intense. Searching. “Is it not safer to watch from afar?”
Georgiana gave him a small smile of understanding. They were so very different, she and he. It was impossible that their marriage could ever have a hope of becoming something more, even should he abandon his covert governmental work and remain in London. “Safer does not mean better, Kit. Sometimes, you must lower yourself, allow yourself to feel, to experience the joy of newborn kittens, to get covered in fur, soak in the unabashed love of a dog or the trusting nuzzle of a mouse. Sometimes, you must crush your silk and sit on the floor, and allow half a dozen kittens to climb you like a bloody tree. Because it’s worth it. Their love is worth it.”
His gaze sharpened, silence blossoming in the wake of her impromptu speech. Heat rose to her cheeks as he continued to study her, she feeling like a butterfly that had been starved of air in a jar only to have its carcass pinned to an observation board. Why, oh why, did the Duke of Leeds possess the power to affect her so, to cut her down with one deadly look? To kill her with his quiet?
“My dear, naïve American duchess, do you not realize that love does not exist?” he asked at last, the corners of his sensual mouth quirking as though he found her amusing. “None of these creatures love you. They require food, a warm place to sleep, and they enjoy being petted. Not so very different from men, actually.”
Her embarrassment burned into anger, beginning deep within her and radiating outward in violent ripples so that she longed to go to him and slap his haughty, perfect cheek. “Your view of the world is appalling,” she said instead.
And disappointing. Perhaps she had imagined his softening. Perhaps he enjoyed toying with her, and he was merely biding his time, recovering from his wound, waiting to disappear into the ether once more. How sad that she had allowed herself to be bound to a man who did not even believe in the sweet, unadulterated love of an innocent animal.
He raised a brow, unsmiling. “My view of the world is realistic, Georgiana. I imagine I’ve simply had more time to acquaint myself with the way of things than you have.”
“If you think I have never known hardship or betrayal, you are wrong. I lived a life you cannot even fathom, being born as you were to privilege and power. I daresay I’ve had every bit as much time to acquaint myself with the way of things as you. I, however, choose to see the good in life for the blessing that it is. Not everyone is a humorless thundercloud with the arrogance of a Greek god, you see.” Determination mingled with the anger, and she carefully removed each kitten from her dress save the white kitten with the striped patches.
He was her favorite, with his signature daring and his loud meows that seemed to suggest he wished to hold a conversation. Whenever he was lost in the room—hiding beneath a settee, wandering beneath a chair—she had but to listen for his meows, and Georgiana could find him each time without fail. Stalking to the forbidding man seated across the room, she extended the kitten to him as if in offering. The duke’s expression shifted from his customary hauteur to alarm.
He held up a splayed hand, as if to ward off a plague. “I don’t want it.”
“It is a he.” She held the squirming kitten, waiting for her husband to relent and accept the adorable bundle of fur.
“It is a rat.” He frowned. “Kindly keep the thing to yourself, madam.”
Ah, so they had returned to formality again, had they? She bit her lower lip to quell her mounting vexation. “He is a kitten. His name is Sherman,” she bit out as if she were speaking to someone who spoke a different language. And then, she deposited the kitten on Kit’s chest so that he had no choice but to lift his hands to hold the feline in place, lest Sherman’s claws ruin his shirt and waistcoat.
The sight of his large, masculine hands cupping the tiny kitten with such tenderness, in spite of all his bluster, made a lump form in Georgiana’s throat. Indeed, Leeds cradling the kitten caused strange things to happen to her insides.
She felt faint and feverish. And for a brief, mad moment, she wondered what it would look like to see him holding their babe in his arms.
All the angels in heaven, where had that horrid, awful, ludicrous flight of fancy emerged from? More importantly, why did it linger now, taunting her, making her realize how much she wanted to see that some day?
This unfeeling monster would make a horrible father, she reminded herself. You do not even like him. Nearly half of his conversation consists of blasphemy and epithets. He does not like kittens, and he thinks love is a fiction.
That was all true, of course. The Duke of Leeds was as handsome as he was horrible. He had almost nothing to recommend him, save his life-altering kisses, his tantalizing caresses beneath her skirts, and his handsome face.
Why, then, did her stomach feel as if it had fallen straight to her feet? And from where did this unwanted sense of warmth blanketing her now emerge?
The oddest thing of all happened then. Instead of removing the clinging kitten from his chest or demanding that she take it back, the duke stroked a large hand over Sherman’s back, soothing him. The kitten nuzzled against that touch, and Leeds did it again.
Oh heavens, why did she have to find the sight of him cuddling a kitten to his fiendishly broad chest so appealing? Why was it causing her heart palpitations?
“An odd choice of name,” he remarked suddenly as he continued to stroke the kitten’s fur, soothing him even more.
She bristled, seizing upon an excuse to distract herself from the disturbing nonsense invading her body. “His namesake, General William Tecumseh Sherman, would not agree with you, sir.”
Leeds continued to pet the kitten, but his gaze, fierce and scrutinizing, was fastened upon her once more. “General Sherman?”
Georgiana resisted the urge to squirm beneath his perusal, forcing her mind to the subject at hand. He did not know who General Sherman was? “Only a brave and celebrated general during the great war.” She didn’t know what to do with her hands, flustered as she was by his regard and flummoxed as she was by his gentle treatment of the kitten.
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 16