by Claudia Dain
“A woman who shares a bed with a man she is not married to will face that problem,” he said, his mood lighten-ing noticeably.
“Oh, that’s the least of it,” she said, smiling. “It’s your being a duke that would ruin me. How could I live it down?
New Yorkers are very sensitive about such breaches, I assure you.”
“I rest assured,” he said, studying her face. She turned from him and stared at the canopy again. It was easier to breathe that way.
What was she doing? Lying in bed next to a man, and in the middle of her cousin’s wedding party? Having an adventure was one thing, but this was madness. She’d been reared with more care than that.
“Well,” she said, scooting to the edge of the bed and sitting up, “I can’t think how I got here, but—”
“You were thrown,” Edenham said mildly, his weight resting upon one elbow as he looked at her. “I take full responsibility.”
“As well you should,” she said, looking back at him.
He made quite a picture, his hair tumbled over his forehead, his eyes gleaming quite seductively. Did he do it on purpose, or was that his natural look when in bed with a woman?
Mercy, he was not in bed with her! Not in that way.
“But, as I was saying,” she said, reaching her toes for the floor; it was quite a high bed. Hugh stopped her words by touching her hand. She couldn’t, from that instant on, remember what she’d been trying to say.
“Stay, Liberty,” he breathed. “Stay just a moment more . . . ‘When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary . . .’ ”
And, with the first line of the Declaration of Independence still warm on his lips, he kissed her gently on the mouth. He lifted his lips from hers almost immediately and whispered, “It does become necessary. Very necessary.”
Her head fell back upon the bed, his mouth following her down, kissing her tenderly, an entreaty to stay, to lose herself, to fall into him and lose herself forever. She could feel it, feel the call of him, feel the pure male pull of him, and it shattered her.
Shattered her will.
Shattered her memory.
Shattered her identity.
No, not that. She was Jane Liberty Elliot. She was not going to lose herself in any man, and never this one.
She pulled back, turning her head, and quoted in a breathless voice, “ ‘. . . requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.’ The separation,” she repeated, pushing against his chest.
He let her go and simply stared into her eyes for a long moment.
“Declare your causes, Libby, and I shall declare mine.
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ All men, Libby, even dukes.”
“You’d quote the Declaration to me?” she said. “How do you dare?”
“ ’Tis a document well known throughout the world. Of course I know it.”
“But do you believe it?” she said, her heart pounding against her ribs.
“ ‘. . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,’ ” he said. “Am I not to be granted Liberty simply because I am a duke?”
“Hugh, I—” And then he kissed her, his hands holding her face up to his, his mouth, his silent mouth, more convincing than any words.
She felt lost, foundering, awash in swelling passion and foggy confusion. One hand left her face and moved down her throat, caressing her, touching her with gentle fire. He cupped her breast, his thumb kneading her nipple. She groaned into his mouth while her breast lifted itself into his hand, urgently seeking more of his touch, more of everything he offered.
Without knowing how it had happened, he was over her, pinning her to the lush fabric of the bed coverings, his leg between hers. His hands were on her breasts and her back arched into his hands, her nipples throbbing and demanding. His thigh pressed into the heat spiraling out of her, welcome friction, doubly welcome weight pressing her down, down, taking her far out of herself.
His hips ground against her, a slow swirling motion, and she answered in kind. A violent thrust upward, meeting his weight, supporting him. They ground together, her breath frantic and erratic, her breasts hot and heavy under his hands.
There wasn’t enough. Not enough. Everything that was happening to her, it was more than anything she’d ever dreamed of, but it still wasn’t enough.
Hugh, inexplicably, stopped. Her hands were around his shoulders, pressing him to her, gasping for breath, demanding more, demanding that he not stop, that he never stop until it was enough. Silently, all without words, but she knew he understood what she wanted.
He lifted his head and turned away from her, removing her hands and gathering them to her chest. She panted, a ragged sound, and moaned a weak sound of distress.
What was wrong with her? She’d never made a sound like that before in her life.
Gradually, her breathing slowing, Jane looked at Hugh, and then followed his gaze. On the far wall of the bedchamber there was a door, a very unimpressive door, but in this open doorway stood Sophia Dalby. Sophia was leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed, and her smile quite clearly grim.
Jane, as was to be expected, swallowed heavily and closed her eyes in pure mortification. Hugh slithered off of her, straightened his coat, and offered his hand to her. She took it and slid off the bed, her hands going instantly to her hair. It was a complete disaster, and indeed, it could have been nothing else.
Edenham, not behaving at all as embarrassed as he should have been and as she certainly was, said to Sophia,
“ ‘Give me Liberty or give me death’?”
“Darling,” Sophia said blandly, “I do think it entirely possible.”
Tewnty
“The thing is,” Sophia continued, coming into the room, “I do not believe you shall be given a choice. I assume one is as good as the other?”
“Now, Sophia,” Edenham said, “you know you’re overstating it.”
“Jane? Am I overstating it?” Sophia asked.
“No, not really,” Jane said a bit breathlessly.
Edenham smiled indulgently. Women were so apt to make too much of a thing, getting entirely too emotionally charged about what was a simple and straightforward situation. Of course, he’d never known Sophia to behave in anything approaching an emotional manner, and even Jane, as young and unsophisticated as she was, was more determined and forthright than emotional.
Bother it, now things were getting complicated, needlessly so, he was certain. Or nearly certain.
“The girl’s ruined, fully and completely,” Edenham said bluntly. Upon hearing Jane’s gasp, he did consider that he could have phrased it more delicately. But blast it, certainly the girl knew she was ruined! Even in America, she’d be ruined. “And entirely pleasantly, I hope,” he said by way of a salve. Jane didn’t look salved. She looked murderous.
Blast and bother all women! He was just trying to marry the girl! Couldn’t he get any help, or at least praise, at all for it? He was doing the best he could with the weapons at his disposal with an entirely unreasonable, one might even say illogical family. “I only mean that now, certainly, they will consent to our marriage.”
“You complete and utter ass!” Jane hissed, snatching her hand from his and hitting him quite forcefully on the shoulder. “You utter . . . duke! ’Tis I who won’t consent.
’Tis I whom you must convince! And you have not. And you shall not. Thank you,” she said, unpinning her hair so that it fell in a long tumble down her back, long dark waves of glossy hair. He felt himself harden again just looking at her. With her pins in her mouth, she ran her hands through her hair a few hurried times, swept it up with a twist or two of her hands, and jabbed pins into the entire mess. Except that it wasn’t a mess. It looked lovely. He’d never seen a woman manage her hair that quickly, and certainly never by h
erself. All she used for a mirror was the dim reflection of herself in the window glass. Most spectacular feat, he was forced to admit. “Thank you for a lovely adventure.
I shall remember it always. Now leave me alone!” And with those words, she walked out the door into the passageway to the stair hall without a backward glance.
Not at all what he had expected, to put it mildly.
“Shall it be by the sword or a simple hanging, your grace? I do think the Americans are rather fond of hang-ings,” Sophia said, checking her own hair in the window.
There wasn’t a thing wrong with her hair.
“I begin to think it possible that I’ve mishandled this from the start,” Edenham said.
“How clever of you, darling,” Sophia said, turning to face him, her hands clasped together around her closed fan.
She was not smiling at him. Sophia always smiled at him.
They had a most cordial relationship and found many of the same things, and by things he meant people and the situations they found themselves in, amusing. “Now, shall I tell you how to get what you want, assuming you still want the lovely Miss Elliot?”
“I do,” he said, trying not to sound like an abashed schoolboy facing a stern master. He did not succeed in the slightest degree.
“Darling, I’ve known you for many years and I find you to be an exceedingly pleasant and charming man, but I must know, Edenham, what is it about this girl that compels you so? She is a beautiful woman, but beauty alone is not enough.”
Beauty alone not enough? But how absurd. Of course it was enough. It was always enough. His wives had all been lovely women, each in her particular way, as well as being from the right family and having enjoyed a proper upbringing. What else was there to it? Oh, naturally, some warmth of feeling, that special connection that one did not achieve with just anyone, but one could achieve it very regularly with the right sort of woman. Jane Elliot, American, was Hyde’s niece. She was a beauty of the first water. She was, clearly, the right sort of woman. That she was American and not English was, most obviously, a hurdle to his desires, but it was surmountable, surely.
Although he had been more sure of that two hours ago.
Things had not gone a bit well, not even close to plan. Cranleigh had tried to tell him something, something about Jane and her beauty and that being an American complicated the thing more than he wanted to admit . . . fine then, true, but there was an attraction between them, that had been more than adequately proved, even to the stubborn Miss Elliot, and she had been ruined, which was always enough to see the deed done, and there was an end to it.
Except that there wasn’t an end to it, not yet.
What a confounded lot of trouble just to get a wife!
“Since when has beauty been not enough?” he said stiffly, straightening his shirt underneath his waistcoat.
“Since you first saw Jane Elliot,” Sophia said, coming over to stand near him. She fussed with his cravat a bit, patted it, and put a hand to his cheek. “Darling Edenham, you don’t know a thing about Americans, do you?”
“I am so weary of everyone telling me that!” he snapped, turning away from her touch to cross the room and then recross it, his strides long and frustrated.
“Then kindly take heed and it need not be repeated,”
she said, watching him pace.
“You’re an American and you’re no different than I!” he said, turning sharply to face her.
“I? An American?” Sophia said, her black brows raised in mild astonishment. “I am no more American than you are, darling. That lovely American document you were quoting so recently, did you not also commit to memory this line? ‘He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.’ No, Edenham, I am not an American. Jane knows this if you do not, which is another proof, if you require more, that she sees the world very differently from you. As I said, beauty is not enough.”
Edenham felt himself deflate, the spark of hope and determination extinguished by a flood of words. Words.
Why should words stop his heart? Why should he not have this woman, as he had had each of his wives, simply because he wanted her and she was flattered by his interest?
Did being a duke mean nothing anymore?
And that was when he knew.
His being a duke meant nothing, less than nothing to Jane.
Edenham looked at Sophia and said quietly, “She is beautiful, and no matter what you or she may wish, beauty is important to a man. My heart lifts when I look at her.”
“And other parts as well, I should think,” Sophia said, the smallest trace of a smile touching one corner of her mouth.
“Yes, I’d be a fool to deny that,” he said. “Yet my soul lifts when I’m with her. She is not afraid of me, Sophia.
Neither is she in awe. And she, unlike every one of my wives, does not hunger to be a duchess. Has there ever been a woman like that? Not in my life. Except,” he added, smiling, “she is, in many ways, very like you, which surely must have something to do with the continent which birthed you both. Small wonder that I want to marry her. That I still intend to marry her.”
Sophia smiled fully and let her gaze drift to the thick carpet between them. “If she’ll have you.”
“Will she? Do you know a way, Sophia?”
He stood with his heart, with his future in his hands. He had asked her help before and, not waiting, had proceeded without it. Pride had walked with him all his life, rooted in his very name. Edenham. The Duke of Edenham. Jane did not want Edenham, but she might be tempted to say yes to Hugh Austen.
“I may,” Sophia said. And then she smiled.
Jane smiled as she made her way from the stair hall back into the blue reception room. The guests were highly agitated, and she didn’t think it was because her dress was wrinkled. No, it was near on seven and the wedding breakfast, due to be served at one, was still in the kitchens. Hunger did very predictable things to people, none of them pleasant.
“I trust you are well, Miss Elliot?” Mr. George Prest-wick said after his very brief bow. He’d nearly bumped into her after what looked to have been almost hopping across the room to greet her. She didn’t know Mr. Prestwick well at all, having met him only once, but he hadn’t struck her as the jumpy sort. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Jane resisted the urge to check the condition of her hair, and instead smiled the brighter. “I am most well, though I confess to being curious about the state of our meal. You don’t think the kitchen caught fire, do you?”
It was perfectly obvious it hadn’t and it wasn’t at all the thing to comment on the tardiness of the meal, but they were family, highly extended, and she would say anything to draw attention away from the strange arrangement of wrinkles on her muslin dress. No dress looked as hers did from sitting in a well-constructed chair, or even an over-flowing hay wagon on a sultry September evening.
She’d lain in bed with a man!
The words rang in her mind like a bell, and not a sweet-sounding bell either. A huge, gonging, awful bell. How could she have done it! What was wrong with her that she should do such a thing, with a stranger, no less!
No, that was absurd. It would have been just as bad if she’d done it with Ezekiel or Reliance, though they certainly would never have been so bold as to ask. As to that, Edenham hadn’t asked, had he? No, he’d simply dragged her into a bedchamber and thrown her upon a bed!
It was without precedent. In her life, anyway. He likely did it on a weekly basis, just a bit of fun, tossing girls on beds, kissing them into delirium, pressing his hips against theirs . . . his leg moving and rubbing against the most delicate and demanding spot on her body . . .
“Are you certain you are well?” Mr. Prestwick asked quite seriously. “Perhaps you would like something to drink?”
/> Jane jerked out of her . . . no, no, no. Not reverie. Her catalogue of outrage. Her list, ha, of offenses against her person. Her most private and untouched person. Untouched until now. Until today. Until Hugh.
“Yes, that would be lovely,” she said as pleasantly as possible, considering. She did sound the slightest bit sharp to her own ears, but George Prestwick did not react adversely in any way. Stout fellow. Quite a nice man, really.
Jane would bet hard currency that George Prestwick didn’t throw nice girls into bed.
George did something with his head and a footman appeared with a tray of Madeira. Jane took a glass, raised it to George convivially, and then swallowed it down in four gulps.
George, dear George, brother of the bride, blanched as white as fresh linen.
“You’ve just come from Edenham, then?” George asked.
Was it that obvious? Of course it was. Wrinkles were wrinkles, and who else had picked her up and kissed her in the middle of a crowded room? No one but Edenham.
Certainly it took no great intellect to determine who could drive a girl to slug down a glass of wine like a sailor chug-ging grog.
“I have, as a matter of fact,” she said cordially, looking about for a place to put her empty glass. George did something with his head again, how did he do that?, and another footman appeared with another tray of Madeira. She put down her empty glass and hoisted a full one. “Why do you ask?” Without waiting for his answer, because truly she didn’t care what he said, she resolved to sip her Madeira.
She, very calmly and very smoothly, swallowed it down without taking a breath. Better, wasn’t it?
“It is only that I was concerned about you, Miss Elliot,”
George said, his dark brown eyes looking at her earnestly.
Quite a good-looking man, was George Prestwick. He had black hair and eyes so brown as to be nearly black, finely drawn features, and a lithe form that reminded her a bit of a panther. Of course, he didn’t have any bruises on his face, but that was easily remedied, wasn’t it?
“Ha,” she said softly, shaking her head, looking again for a place to put her empty glass.