How to Find a Duke in Ten Days

by Grace Burrowes

  She carried the cat with her to stand beside Ramsdale as he took a volume bound in red leather down from the shelves.

  “You are in want of flowers,” he said. “This is an herbal of sorts, published by Professor Axel Belmont. The illustrations are exquisite because the professor’s discourse is on the medicinal use of common ornamentals.”

  Miss Peebles set the cat on Ramsdale’s desk and took the book. “He dedicated it to his wife. How lovely.” She leafed through the pages, and lovely became a woman standing in Ramsdale’s office, her bodice adorned with gray cat hairs, a pencil sticking out of her chignon.

  “If the book appeals to you, I want you to have it.” I want you to have me.

  That thought was like the solution to a chess riddle. Ramsdale had spent the past few days pondering, considering, cogitating—and lusting—when he ought to have been attending to Miss Peebles’s translations of various codicils.

  He desired her. That sentiment—those sensations—had been easily categorized. He wanted to join his body to hers and bring her pleasure as no ancient poem or elegant translation could. He wanted to make her burn and laugh and forget every word of every language she’d ever learned save pure physical expression.

  He’d desired other women. She’d probably desired other men. Nothing profound there, though the attraction he felt for Miss Peebles bordered on the ungovernable.

  Desire, however, wasn’t the entire definition of Ramsdale’s feelings where Miss Peebles was concerned, and thus he’d devoted his attention to that riddle while she’d devoted her attention to Uncle’s will.

  What, exactly, did he feel for her?

  She looked up from the book. “You are giving me this herbal? The illustrations belong in an art collection.”

  “Nobody gives you flowers,” Ramsdale said. “These are flowers that will never fade, with descriptions that include the Latin names as well as the practical uses of each blossom. The book suits you.”

  She clutched it to her chest. “Because I am practical?”

  He took the herbal from her and set it on the desk. “Because you have an attractiveness that will not fade, a luminous spirit that’s as much passion as intellect, as much of the soul as the body, and I must kiss you in the next instant, or I will descend into bad verse and maudlin quotations.”

  He did not kiss her, but rather, waited for her verdict.

  Desire could be as impersonal as it was intimate. A randy fellow sought a willing wench, a lusty wench sought a willing fellow. Beyond a few details of physical preference, the particular party on the other side of the bed in such an encounter didn’t matter. Fondness might play a role, but attachment need not.

  Ramsdale wanted Philomena Peebles to desire him—not the earl, not a willing, randy fellow—but Seton Avery, a man better than some, by no means a saint, who very specifically valued her. He wanted her respect, not simply her desire. He wanted her to enjoy his company, of all the daft notions, to look forward to being with him as he looked forward to being with her.

  In some language or other, these inclinations of the heart likely had a name, probably among the incurable ailments and afflictions.

  “You look so serious,” she said, smoothing an ink-stained finger between his brows. “And so kissable.”

  She pressed her lips to his, gently, as if he needed coaxing, and yet, she was right. This kiss was different—premeditated, prefaced with what amounted to a declaration, for him—and a headlong descent into passion wasn’t all that he needed from her.

  Ramsdale took Philomena in his arms and rejoiced.

  And then he kissed her back.

  Chapter Six

  ‡

  “Where are you off to?” Jane asked.

  “Knightsbridge,” the professor replied. “I don’t suppose you’d like to come with me?” He posed the question casually, without much hope of an affirmative response. Jane was a pragmatic soul, and toddling about London hardly amounted to a productive use of her time.

  Jane straightened the folds of his cravat, which were forever getting wrinkled into the creases of his jacket and waistcoat.

  She took down a bonnet from the hooks beside the porter’s nook. “Hold still.”

  Next, she extracted a nacre hatpin from the bonnet, repositioned the trailing ends of Phineas’s cravat—he could never tie the damned things correctly—and used her hatpin to put his linen in order.

  “Thank you.”

  She remained where she was, a woman no longer young for all she was still handsome and had a fine figure. Phineas wasn’t young either, and he hoped Jane regarded that as a point in his favor.

  “One doesn’t want to presume on Dora’s memory,” she said. “But I can’t have you going out in public looking half dressed.”

  “Mrs. Peebles left me to dress myself,” Phineas said. His late wife had left him very much to his own devices, particularly after Philomena had arrived. Theirs had been a mésalliance, an act of rebellion on Dora’s part, a fit of lunacy on his.

  He’d not been able to keep her in the style she deserved, and she’d not been able to hide her disappointment.

  “What is your errand in Knightsbridge?” Jane asked.

  “I was not satisfied with my interrogation of the Eagan brothers. They professed to have no knowledge of the Liber Ducis de Scientia. I had occasion to press Mr. Handley for details regarding his confreres, the Eagans, and he reiterated his tale of old manuscripts and secret potions.”

  Jane passed Phineas his hat, which he’d been known to leave the house without. “You think a pair of scheming shopkeepers have found a manuscript that has eluded your lifelong search?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Why would they come up with this notion now, Jane? Why, when my retirement is imminent, should anybody profess to have found even a single page of the document?”

  Jane tied her bonnet ribbons in a soft bow. “My cloak, if you please.”

  Phineas obliged by draping her cloak over her shoulders, though he would not have assumed such familiarity was welcome. Jane was a grown woman, capable of asking for assistance when she needed same. She turned and raised her chin, as if Phineas was to…

  He fastened the frogs of her cloak and, for a moment was distracted trying to recall a Latin word for the color of Jane’s eyes. Periwinkle-ish with a hint of gentian was as close as he could come in English.

  “Your gloves,” Jane said, passing Phineas a clean pair. “We can cut through the park and enjoy some greenery while we’re out, but when we get there, you let me talk to these shopkeepers, Phineas. You’ll lecture them straight into the arms of Morpheus.”

  Jane took Phineas by the arm and led him into the bright midday sunshine. He’d not invited her to walk out with him in all the years they’d shared a household, which was remiss of him.

  The birds sang more sweetly, the breeze blew more benevolently, and the city was more cheerful with Jane by his side. Why was it he never appreciated the women in his life until it was too late?

  *

  Philomena had spent too many hours—too many days—shut up in the confines of Hephaestus’s will. Her mind buzzed with secondary meanings and literary allusions, while her head ached.

  But her heart… her heart was caught up in the possibility of actually finding the Duke or at least a portion of that great manuscript. Reading through the will’s cramped, complicated writing, she had a sense of negotiating a briar patch. If only she were careful, if only she paid relentless attention to every detail, she’d find the ripe fruit of a clue, a hint, a solution to the mystery the Duke had posed for ages.

  And every morning, when she arrived to Ramsdale’s library, another sort of fruit awaited her—a bright gold sovereign, reverse side up on the desk blotter, so that even her remuneration included a few words of translation.

  Honi soit qui mal y pense. Shame upon him who sees wrong in it…

  Philomena saw no wrong in parting Ramsdale from his coin, just the opposite. She gloried in knowing that he
r years of study were worth bright, shiny coins, that her skills were not only admirable but valuable.

  She loved the idea that she need not entirely rely on her aging father for security. The possibilities were heady, a whole new dictionary’s worth of meanings and opportunity.

  Why shouldn’t a woman’s mind merit the same respect as a man’s?

  Why shouldn’t a woman find the Duke?

  Why shouldn’t a woman kiss whom she pleased to kiss, rather than waiting for the fellow to take the notion to kiss her?

  So in the privacy of Ramsdale’s office, she kissed him the way she’d longed to, slowly, savoringly. As she had rendered Hephaestus’s ramblings into coherent English, Ramsdale’s steady regard had been working a similar transformation of her, from bluestocking spinster daughter to a woman of highly trained abilities, a lady both admirable and desirable.

  And she desired him.

  Ramsdale was sentimental about a cat. His mind was drawn to beautiful landscapes, the movements of the heavenly bodies, and Latin poetry.

  His body was poetry. His arms stole about her, and Philomena relaxed into an embrace both secure and cherishing. She could shelter in his strength and glory in her own. Ramsdale was far above her touch, he was not above her passion.

  Philomena pressed nearer and realized that Ramsdale was growing aroused.

  “We should stop,” he whispered, the words tickling her neck.

  She put her lips to his ear. “We should lock the door.”

  Ramsdale drew back to rest his forehead against Philomena’s. “If we lock that door, what follows will have consequences, Philomena. Serious consequences, and I do not take that step lightly.”

  He was so wrong, so innocent of Philomena’s reality. If Professor Peebles’s plain spinster daughter stole an interlude with a wealthy earl, nobody would know, nobody would care. Philomena was not like her cousin, one of polite society’s pampered darlings, raised in a gilded cage of manners, gossip, and pretty frocks.

  And Philomena would never again be simply a plain spinster daughter.

  “I would take that step with you.” Philomena had never been tempted by passion before, never had more than an idle curiosity about erotic intimacy. She would trade everything—trade even the Duke—for this chance to become Ramsdale’s lover.

  Ramsdale looped his arms around her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “So be it.”

  He remained entwined with her for a lovely moment, then he put the cat out and locked the door. The cat’s expression had been indignant, while Ramsdale’s smile was lovely—intimate and naughty, a lover’s smile.

  And Philomena smiled right back.

  *

  So be it.

  Ramsdale had plighted his troth, and like everything else about his relationship with Philomena Peebles—soon to be Lady Ramsdale—the proposal had been unconventional and the acceptance more unconventional still.

  Perhaps he was his uncle’s nephew more than his father’s son—or he was both.

  “We have options,” he said, surveying his office with new eyes. “My desk, for one, upon which I will likely spend the next fifty years tending to correspondence. A memory made with you there would shine through that entire half century.”

  Philomena looked at him as if he’d spoken in the lost Etruscan tongue.

  Not the desk, then. “Perhaps the reading chair,” he said, “which—given your literary interests—has a certain appropriateness.”

  “The chair seats only one, my lord.”

  My lord was not good, though Ramsdale would soon show her how that chair could accommodate two very agreeably.

  “The sofa is a bit worn, but I’ve dreamed many a dream there nonetheless.” Perhaps they’d conceive their firstborn on that sofa, in which case, the battered old thing would become an heirloom.

  “I bow to your choice in this,” Philomena said, “and I would like to bow to it soon.”

  Her gaze drifted over his face, his shoulders, down, down, down, and then back up. He thought she might have lingered particularly on his hands, which were at his sides, or possibly…

  “We’ll improvise,” he said, the notion striking him as appropriate for the couple they were about to become. He was not the typical earl, and she’d be a magnificently different countess.

  He spread the afghan from the reading chair over the rug before the hearth and followed with the pair of quilts from the sofa. Next, he sent several pillows sailing to the makeshift nest on the carpet, while Philomena’s expression became bemused.

  “The floor?” she said.

  “I’m told the chair seats only one. On the floor, we’ll be comfortable with room to spread out. The carpets in this house are kept spotless, and I promise I’ll do all the work.”

  “If there’s work involved, we’ll share it. Does one undress?”

  She was adorable. “Two do, unless you’d rather not.”

  Philomena advanced on him as if he’d threatened to steal her favorite Latin dictionary. “If we’re to be lovers, then I want to be lovers, Ramsdale. Deal with me as you would any other woman to whom you’ve taken a fancy. I’m not a schoolgirl, and I intend to be very demanding.”

  Which, of course, made her blush, stare at her hands, and settle herself on the hassock more regally than a queen.

  Ramsdale wanted to assure her that this was no mere fancy. Instead, he stowed the pretty words and knelt at her feet.

  “Boots off,” he said, gesturing toward her hems.

  Philomena inched her hems up to just above her ankle. “They’re worn. Practical. Not elegant.”

  Her self-consciousness might have a little to do with her boots, which were indeed far from new, but Ramsdale knew what she wasn’t saying.

  He’d trysted with any number of perfumed and proper ladies who would allow him to roger them witless for the space of a quadrille, but who’d be horrified at the thought of him seeing them in a pair of old boots. In unlit parlors, such a lady would lift her skirts and pant in his ear like a winded hound, but heaven forbid that a cat hair should touch her bodice.

  Ramsdale pitied those women, and he spared a bit of pity for himself, rutting and panting right along with them, then stuffing himself back into his satin knee breeches in time for the supper waltz.

  What an ass he’d been. “My field boots are the most comfortable footwear I own,” he said, undoing Philomena’s shoelaces. “I’d wear them everywhere, except that would cause a scandal.”

  She brushed his hair back from his brow, and he knew why Genesis purred.

  Ramsdale drew off her boots and set them aside, then reached under her skirts to untie her garters.

  Philomena surprised him by drawing her skirts up to her knees—but then, he suspected she’d frequently surprise him. Still, he denied himself more than a glance. The feel of her ankles and calves clad in nothing but silk…

  “Are you always so…?” She fell silent as Ramsdale undid the left garter.

  “Behold, my lady is already at a loss for words. My confidence swells apace.” His confidence—among other noteworthy articles.

  He drew off her stockings and tossed them in the direction of her boots. To unhook her dress and unlace her stays, he moved to the reading chair.

  The pencil protruded from her chignon, and Ramsdale knew himself to be a man in love. He silently slid the pencil free and tossed it to the desk—a memento to be treasured in years to come.

  Philomena’s nape required some kisses, as did the soft flesh where her neck and shoulder joined. Ramsdale rose from the chair, the better to indulge himself, and she turned, pressing her cheek to his thigh.

  “I’m in a hurry,” she said.

  Ramsdale stroked her hair, which he’d soon free from its pins. “Afraid you’ll lose your nerve? You’ll have nothing but pleasure from me, Philomena, as much pleasure as I can give you.”

  She peered up at him, as inscrutable as the cat. “And if you lose your nerve?”

  His falls were about to lose their
buttons. Ramsdale pushed aside that pleasant urgency to consider her question, because Philomena’s queries mattered.

  They would always matter.

  He knelt before her, so they were face-to-face. “If you shout erotic Latin poetry when at your pleasures, I will answer in Middle French. When you publish your first treatise on alternative translations of the Magna Carta, I will buy a hundred copies to donate to universities the world over. Your brilliance doesn’t intimidate me, your sense of focus sparks only my admiration. If your father’s colleagues or students feel threatened by your capabilities, that’s a reflection on their petty conceits, not on you. I can’t wait to play chess with you.”

  He’d given her plain truths, and he’d upset her, for Philomena—who could glower at the same curmudgeonly document for hours—wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “I like chess,” she said.

  Ramsdale enfolded her gently, cursing Peebles for a dunderhead, cursing all the learned men whose cowardice and bigotry had tried to crush a bright spirit. The lot of them were purely frightened of her, and someday, she’d see that.

  “If you get me out of these clothes,” he said, “we can play chess naked.”

  Philomena started on his cravat, and even that—a mundane, almost impersonal assistance—fueled his arousal. His sleeve buttons and watch went next, and from there, matters accelerated, until Philomena stood in her shift and Ramsdale in his breeches, their clothing strewn over the sofa in a merry heap.

  “Now what?” She ran a hand over his bare shoulder. “You are quite fit.”

  He captured her hand in his own. “To the blankets.”

  She sat and drew her knees up, and Ramsdale came down beside her. He’d locked the door perhaps ten minutes ago, but they’d been a long and self-disciplined ten minutes. In fifteen seconds flat, he had Philomena on her back amid the blankets and himself arranged over her.

  When they had their clothes back on, and he could again form a coherent sentence, he’d offer her a proper proposal—bended knee, pretty words, the promise of a ring.

  Now, the time had come to make love with his intended.