No Dukes Allowed

by Grace Burrowes, Kelly Bowen, Anna Harrington

  Diana swallowed a horrified gasp, wondering if her jealousy was that transparent. Dear Lord, she was a terrible friend. “Don’t be ridiculous. You are that woman. You always have been.”

  “Have I?”

  This conversation was starting to slide into places Diana had no intention of going. She was always so careful, especially around Hannah. She had never, ever spoken to anyone about how she truly felt about Oliver Graham. Nor did she intend to. Doing so would be pointless. The die was cast long ago.

  “You have,” Diana said loudly. Too loudly.

  “Will he still want to marry me, do you think? After all this time?”

  Diana stared at her. “Of course he will—” She stopped abruptly as understanding dawned. “You don’t want to marry Oliver.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “It’s complicated.” That wasn’t really an answer.

  “Complicated?”

  “I thought I’d have more time,” Hannah whispered.

  At least, that was what Diana thought she heard her say. Because another voice from somewhere in the house intruded.

  “Dee? Where are you?”

  Hannah’s eyes went as wide as saucers, and her face went even chalkier. “Mother of God. Oliver’s here? Why is he here?”

  Diana stood behind the desk. “Because I asked him here.” A completely inappropriate thrill of anticipation shot through her, making her pulse kick and her breath quicken. “Whatever it is that is going on with you concerns him too. Even if you don’t want to tell me, you need to talk to him,” she said firmly, as if that would rectify her response. “This is as good a time as any.”

  “I can’t. Not yet.” Hannah looked around wildly.

  “Well, you’re not hiding behind the plants or the curtains this time to avoid him.” Diana put her hands on her hips. “We’re in here,” she called.

  Hannah blanched.

  “Perhaps he can—Hannah?” Diana felt her jaw slacken. “What are you doing?”

  “Promise me you won’t tell him I was here.” Hannah had shoved the window all the way up and was levering herself out the opening. “I just need one more day.”

  “What?”

  “Promise me,” Hannah hissed as her legs swung over the sill. She stuffed her yellow skirts in front of her with frantic movements.

  “You can’t do this.” Diana hurried to the window, but Hannah had already dropped out of sight into the rose garden below.

  She landed in a thorny maze of bushes with a loud curse and clambered awkwardly to her feet. The redhead crouched and pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head, but not before she was forced to untangle hair that had become snagged on an errant branch. She scrambled through the greenery before disappearing over a manicured hedge in a flurry of petticoats and more curses.

  “I think the butler forgot about me in the hall. I got tired of waiting. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Diana spun just as Oliver appeared in the door. He was dressed simply, in dusty boots and a well-worn coat and snug breeches that only emphasized the impressive lines of his body. Her heart skipped a beat. He had never looked so touchable. So real.

  And so concerned.

  He glanced around the empty room. “Who were you talking to?”

  “There was a… bird. There was a bird.”

  “Well.” He raised a dark brow. “I suppose that’s a step up from ferns.”

  Diana shoved the window closed, knowing there wasn’t anything she could say that would make her sound less daft.

  “There is an entire conservatory of flowers in the hall,” he continued, his forehead creasing. “The butler tells me you’ve exhausted their supply of vases. It seems you have a lot of suitors.” He didn’t sound pleased.

  “Competitors,” she muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Competitors, not suitors.” All vying for her bed or her fortune or both.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.” She should not have mentioned it. “Here,” she said, returning to the desk and picking up the pile of letters to distract him. “These are from Madelene. I’ve spent the morning rereading them. I want you to have them now.”

  Oliver lunged forward before catching himself and took them carefully from her hand. “You kept them.”

  Her face heated. “Of course I did. They were important.” She gestured at her battered mahogany writing box that sat open on the desk. Which was the wrong thing to do, because now he was staring at the box and the bundle of correspondence resting inside, tied with a sky-blue ribbon.

  “You kept my letters.”

  Diana moved to close the box as casually as she could manage. “Of course,” she said again. But she wouldn’t tell him just how valuable each and every one of his letters was. She wouldn’t tell him how often she read them, imagining him in the far-away world he described. Just imagining… him. “You were gone a long time.”

  “Yet, you were with me every step of the way. Your letters, Dee—it was like you were there with me. I should have written you more.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You were busy. And you wrote plenty. It wasn’t as good as having you here, in person, but it was better—”

  “I missed you terribly.”

  The air in the room seemed to thicken, and breathing became a chore. She should say something light. Something flippant and funny that would diffuse whatever this was that was happening between them.

  “I missed you too,” was what she said.

  “Diana—”

  She cleared her throat. She couldn’t do this, whatever this was. “Madelene sent me one letter a year. Usually around Christmastide. They’re not terribly long, but they let me know that she is doing all right.”

  He looked down at the letters in his hand. “She should have told me,” he said eventually, and when he looked up again, frustration and unhappiness etched lines across his features.

  “She told me,” Diana said. “Came to me for help. Knowing, I think, that I would make sure that when you returned, these would be passed on to you if…”

  “If I forgave her.”

  “Yes.”

  “There is nothing to forgive. Save, of course, for her lack of faith in me.”

  Diana stepped closer to him, unable to help herself. “They’re postmarked in Brighton,” she said, resisting the longing to smooth the lines of worry from his face. “All of them except this one.” She reached for one of the letters in his hand. “This one only has a mileage mark. Which means she sent it from a smaller village somewhere around Brighton, because in it, she still speaks of the sea and the construction of the Pavilion.”

  “She sent it from where she lives.” He sounded hopeful.

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Does she mention anything else in any of her letters that would give us a clue where that might be?”

  “She mentioned a church once. An old one, with a crenellated tower. She said her son pretended he was riding to besiege the castle when they went to church.”

  He smiled, and his eyes went soft. “What else?”

  “A river. She talks of fishing in a river.”

  “We need a map of Brighton and the surrounding parishes.” He glanced around as though one might suddenly appear in this elegant morning room.

  “The Dowager Countess of Ainsworth keeps a lovely home here, but I’m afraid that local maps are not one of the things that she collects. Glass goats, on the other hand…” Diana eyed their caprine audience.

  “I thought those were donkeys,” Oliver said. “Or maybe llamas.”

  “Llamas? Really?”

  “Doesn’t matter. There is a bookseller on Church Street who has maps. He’ll have one of Brighton.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I sold him a map yesterday that I brought back from India. Besides books, he has hundreds of maps. From all over.” The hope in his expression was unmistakable. “Let’s go.” He
tucked the small bundle of letters inside his coat.

  “Now?”

  “You have other plans for the day?”

  “Um.” Her only other plans for the day had included avoiding anywhere the Duke of Riddington might be so that she wouldn’t be tempted to kick him. Now, she was wondering if her other plans should include avoiding anywhere Oliver Graham might be so that she wouldn’t be tempted to kiss him.

  “Dee, I need you,” he said, catching her hand in his like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  The echoes of those words lodged deep in her belly, sending waves of want through every nerve ending.

  “Um.” She needed to gather her wits and drag her mind from the indecent depths to which it had sunk. He needed her help. This was simply another adventure that they were undertaking. Though they were older now, and the stakes were much more real than hunting an imaginary dragon to its imaginary lair deep in the dales. “Of course.” She couldn’t refuse him this, help with finding his sister.

  “Thank you.” He squeezed her hand, pulling her closer. “Thank you for doing this for me. For doing what you did for Madelene.”

  Diana might have nodded, but time seemed to have slowed, the sounds of the house around them strangely muffled. He had gone utterly still, her hand caught tightly in his and pressed against his chest. He was looking down at her, his brows drawn together, his eyes intense as they held hers. And then they dropped to her mouth, and on his face, she saw a reflection of the desire that was coiling through her with exquisitely excruciating force.

  Oliver brought his free hand up and touched a loose curl that had escaped its pins. He tucked it back over her ear, the backs of his fingers brushing the side of her neck. He let them drift lower, coming to rest at the edge of her bodice.

  Surely he would feel the way her heart was thundering in her chest. Surely he would feel the shudder that coursed through her, evidence of the want and longing that rendered her immobile and unable to breathe. She wanted his lips on hers, his hands on her skin, his body where she needed it the most. She wanted all of him. In this moment, right now.

  Oliver remained right where he was, within kissing distance. His hand drifted from the edge of her bodice, along the side of her breast, to her waist. His mouth was only inches from hers. All she had to do was push herself to her toes and take everything that she had wanted since forever.

  But she would not. For the same reasons that had existed since forever.

  “We should go,” she managed, a little surprised that her voice still worked, though it was hoarse and uneven. She pulled her hand from his, because if she kept touching him, she was not going to have enough willpower left to do the right thing.

  Oliver steadied himself against the side of the desk, and it didn’t escape Diana’s notice that his breathing was fast and shallow, his forehead creased, his color high. She wasn’t sure if she should be happy or horrified.

  She needed to stop this. She was walking a very dangerous line, one that could have no happy endings and could cost her friendships.

  “The dowager has allowed me the use of her carriage if I need it,” she continued, doing her best to pretend that the last minute never happened. Because it couldn’t happen. “I think we should take it in the event we need to travel further afield.”

  She was babbling now, but she needed to put some normalcy back between them. Right the ship, as it were.

  Oliver nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Diana clasped her hands together. “I’ll see to the arrangements.”

  “Yes.”

  Diana fled.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  I almost kissed Diana Thompson.

  Oliver leaned against the bookseller’s counter and jabbed his fingers through his hair before resting his forehead in his palms. For the hundredth time, he wondered what the hell he had been thinking. Nothing, he realized. He hadn’t been thinking at all. He had just been… feeling. Feeling the way Diana fit in his arms and feeling how right that was. Feeling the softness of her hair and her skin. Feeling the arousal that ignited as she looked up at him, sending sparks and electricity arcing over his skin and down his spine.

  He slid his hands to his eyes, making spots dance behind his lids. But the pressure didn’t erase the vision of Diana’s lush mouth as she smiled. Or the graceful curve of her neck, or the way her bodice strained over the swell of her breasts. He had never experienced desire of that intensity before. It sent his thoughts to dark, libidinous places, as he imagined all the things that he would like to do for her. All the ways he would have her gasping with pleasure, arching mindlessly under his touch.

  Oliver cursed softly. He needed to stop feeling and start thinking again. And he would. Start thinking, that was. Just as soon as his blood returned to his brain from areas south.

  He would stop this. Now. Because no good could ever come of the lust-fueled imaginings that had followed him from that morning room all the way here. He was a man of honor. Or he had been, at least.

  “I’ve found it.” The bespectacled man emerged from a room behind the counter, and Oliver straightened abruptly, glad the man’s attention was on the scroll he held in his hand and not on Oliver. “Not so many people looking for local maps,” he said as he placed the long paper on the counter. “Since they built that Pavilion, everyone wants something more exotic. Unusual. Like what you brought me yesterday. Sold it already, you know. Just this morning.”

  “Glad to hear,” Oliver said, not really caring. The map had been one of his old ones, and the fantastical illustrations around the edges had not made up for the lack of detail of the Indian terrain. He was interested in the Sussex terrain now. Oliver fixed his attention on the lines and illustrations unfurling before him, delineating the southern coast and countryside. He glanced back to see Diana approaching from where she had been browsing the bookseller’s shelves. And keeping her distance.

  Just like she had kept a polite, careful distance in the carriage on the way here, not in space, of course, but in words, and he hated himself for that. He had, no doubt, made her horribly uncomfortable.

  The bookseller set paperweights at the four corners of the map as Diana came to the counter next to Oliver. She didn’t look at him, and he didn’t really blame her.

  “How accurate are these distances?” she asked the proprietor as she leaned over to view the map in more detail.

  The gray-haired bookseller shrugged. “Can’t say for certain.” He gazed up at Oliver for a moment. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  “Somewhere,” Oliver corrected him. “We’ll buy the map.”

  The bookseller shrugged again. “I don’t mind you just looking,” he said with a crooked smile. “You made me quite a bit of profit this morning with your map. Makes me feel a bit like I’m taking advantage.”

  “Don’t apologize for good business,” Oliver said.

  “Hmph. Well, maybe I can help?” the elderly man asked. “I’ve lived in this area all my life.”

  Oliver pulled out Madelene’s letter with the mileage marker. “We’re looking for a place near Brighton. A place that has a church that looks like a castle and a river nearby.”

  “Ah. That’s easy. You’re looking for Beddingham,” he said.

  Diana’s head came up, and Oliver straightened.

  “I expected to see knights on top of that old church when I was a boy,” the bookseller continued with a chuckle. “I was always a little disappointed to arrive and find that there were no great destriers tied up in front.” His gnarled finger traced a winding river from the sea inland. “That’s the River Ouse. Beddingham is just here.” His finger stopped to the northeast of Brighton, on a village that couldn’t be more than eight miles from where they stood.

  Oliver met Diana’s eyes, the well of excitement overcoming whatever awkwardness lay between them. It seemed too easy, this. Or perhaps he had just been afraid to hope.

  “Thank you,” Oliver said, trying
to caution himself that this offered no guarantees. Madelene might not be there. They might have the location wrong, or she might have moved.

  Behind them, the door opened, a gusting draft sending a handful of papers fluttering off the surface and behind the counter. The bookseller bent to collect them.

  “I need to go to Beddingham,” Oliver said to Diana in a low voice. “Right now.”

  Diana put a hand on his arm. He kept his own hands where they were, remembering what had happened last time he touched her.

  “It’ll be nearly dark by the time you get there.”

  “So? I’ll wake everyone up if I have to. Knock on every door. Someone will know where she is.”

  “That will go over well, I’m sure,” Diana said wryly. “People are usually very forthcoming when they bolt from their beds, certain their homes are being broken into by strange men. Besides, you don’t even know if Madelene lives in town. She might live in the surrounding area.”

  If she even lived there at all, Oliver added in silent frustration. He chafed at the delay, but Diana was right.

  “We can leave first thing on the morrow,” she said. “We’ll start at the church. Because she’s described it in such detail, it’s likely that she’s attended. Someone in the clergy might know her.”

  “You’ll come with me?”

  “I’m far less threatening than a strange man stomping about town demanding answers to the whereabouts of a young woman,” she teased. “Of course I’ll go with you.”

  “Going somewhere, Mrs. Thompson?” a familiar voice inquired from behind them.

  Oliver froze. Not again.

  Diana’s face instantly shuttered, and he turned to find the Duke of Riddington standing between the counter and the door, smoothing the front of his embroidered waistcoat with a gloved hand. A slighter man, dressed in dark, nondescript clothes, was standing behind him with what looked like a journal tucked under his arm.

  “Riddington,” Oliver said.

  “Mr. Graham,” the duke replied with a curl to his lip. “And darling Mrs. Thompson. I thought it was you I saw through the window. I couldn’t pass by without offering my salutations and complimenting you on your appearance. You look positively fetching today.”