No Dukes Allowed

by Grace Burrowes, Kelly Bowen, Anna Harrington

  “Do not dare to try to put me in my place by telling me that I don’t know what army life is like. The War Office will be breaking their promise to those men.” He could feel her breath grow short as her frustration mounted, and not with the War Office but with him. “I know what it means to place your trust in someone, only to have it destroyed.”

  He halted as the words slammed into him, grabbing her elbow and pulling her to a stop. “You are letting the past cloud your judgment.”

  “Cloud my judgment?” With a bitter laugh of disbelief, she tried to yank her arm away, but he held tight, refusing to let her go. All of her pulsed with anger as she accused, “You used me!” She drew her hands into fists. “I loved you, and you used me just to advance your career.”

  Fury flared inside him. Enough.

  He pulled her into an open storage room and kicked the door closed behind them. In the dim light cast by a small window high up in the wall, his gaze bore down into hers as he stepped her back against the stone wall. No surrender, no quarter—

  This fight was ten years in coming, and he’d be damned if he’d retreat now.

  “I didn’t use you,” he bit out. Every ounce of his will fought for restraint against the anger and pain he’d kept locked inside him all these years. “And I sure as hell didn’t break my promise to you.”

  “You told me you loved me, that you wanted to marry me—”

  “I did want that.” Christ! He’d wanted that more than he’d wanted anything in his life, save for wanting the best possible life for her.

  She pushed at his shoulders to make him step back, but he refused to budge. “You let me believe it just so my father would arrange for a better post for you. One that gave you a better chance at promotion. When you didn’t need me anymore, you abandoned me.”

  “I never abandoned you.” Her accusations ripped fresh wounds into him.

  “You refused to return to England when I needed you, and it nearly destroyed me.” Even in the dim light, pain shone in her eyes. “Why, Maxwell?” Ten years of confusion choked her as she forced out, “For God’s sake—why?”

  That single word was the one question he’d never wanted to answer, preferring to take the truth to his grave. But he should have known that Belinda would make him walk through the fires of hell.

  “I made a choice.” The right choice. He was as certain of that now as he’d been ten years ago. “I did what was best for you.”

  “For me?” Disdain darkened her face. “The best thing for me would have been for you to return to England and marry me.”

  The very worst thing. He bit back a curse that she refused to let this go. “You would have resented me.”

  “Never. I loved you. I wanted to marry you and—”

  “For God’s sake, Belinda! Don’t you understand?” Furious that she refused to let this go, he grabbed her shoulders and humiliatingly confessed, “I wasn’t good enough for you!”

  She stared at him, shocked speechless.

  “I wasn’t good enough for you,” he repeated, the guilt over hurting her so brutal that he shuddered with it. “I couldn’t give you the help you needed, but I could give you a better life. A life without me.”

  He released her shoulders with a jerk and stepped away so that he couldn’t see any more of her pain. It would absolutely undo him.

  “I loved you enough to let you hate me for it. That’s why I asked you to forget me.” The powerlessness he’d felt then rushed back over him now with full force. A cruel reminder of the man he’d once been, of how far he’d come since then. Without her. He forced out around the tightening knot in his throat, “And it killed me, Belinda. I had no money, no rank of consequence, mounting debts—” Now that he’d made his confession, the words poured out of him in a wave, carrying with them all the guilt and anguish he’d kept inside him since the night he wrote that letter beneath the monsoon’s rains. “You deserved better than being married to some junior officer stationed halfway around the world, with no prospects back in England and no other way to provide a living.”

  “You’re a brigadier.” She touched a shaking hand to his arm. “We would have married and—”

  He yanked his shoulder away, out of her reach, and wheeled on her. “I was nothing then!”

  When a tear slipped down her cheek at his outburst, he raked his fingers through his hair to resist the urge to reach for her, to brush it away and stop the trembling of her lips with his own.

  He sucked in a ragged breath to gain back his control. “It took years to be promoted—years in which you would have been forced to live in near poverty on whatever few pounds I was able to send home from my pay. You deserved so much more, and Winchester gave it to you.” Even now the thought of her in that man’s arms sparked fury and anger inside him. “I knew you’d hate me for what I did, and I was willing to pay that price. For you.”

  “You had no right—no right—to make that decision for me!”

  “I had every right,” he replied quietly, closing the distance between them. “Because I loved you.”

  “Because you thought I wouldn’t be—”

  “Because I loved you.” Another step.

  She fiercely shook her head. “No! How could you have done—”

  “Because I loved you,” he repeated firmly. That was the answer to all her protests. The only answer.

  One more step, and she was in his arms, shaking violently and sobbing openly in both anger and anguish. Raw pain seeped from her, and he held her close, taking on her pain for himself.

  “I loved you, Belinda,” he murmured into her hair, “with every ounce of my being.”

  She shoved at him to push herself free of his embrace, but he tightened his arms around her. He was not letting her go. Not this time.

  “I couldn’t help you.” He squeezed his eyes closed against the cost to his pride that this admission forced him to pay. He’d never felt less like a man than the moment ten years ago when he realized the truth of that. “In order to help you, I had to let you go.”

  “But we loved each other!” A sob gripped her. “We could have… We could have…”

  When words failed her, a great shudder pierced her. She finally understood the same truth that he’d realized all those years ago. That they could have done nothing.

  She buried her face in his chest and cried, harder than he’d ever seen a woman cry in his life. Every sob was an agonizing slice into his heart.

  Not letting her go, he lowered them both slowly onto a large grain sack resting on the floor and held her in his arms as she cried out all the torment fate had thrust upon them. She clung to him, and he’d never seen her more fragile than at that moment, when she cried as if she might break. He hadn’t been there to see the pain he’d caused her when she received his letter, but he was living it now. A brutal torment.

  “Don’t cry, love,” he whispered, his lips at her temple. “No more tears, please.” God, he couldn’t bear it!

  But he might as well have been begging the tide not to rise or the sun not to set. And truly, the only way forward was through the hellfire of the past. So he let her cry and provided whatever comfort he could. The only words were soft whispers to soothe her, the only movement the consoling caress of his hand against her back.

  When her cries lessened into soft sobs, then finally subsided into nothing more than little gasps for air, he shifted her in his arms to rest her cheek against his shoulder and stroke her back. Eventually, her breath came gentle and even, but he didn’t release her. Neither did she shift away, remaining vulnerable in his arms.

  Yet the difference in her now was palpable. Pain still lingered inside her; he could feel it with every delicate beat of her heart against his chest, pulsing inside him until he couldn’t tell where her heartbeat ended and his began. But it was no longer the harsh anguish she’d held inside her all these years or the confusion over why he’d abandoned her. Now there was at least understanding, if not yet acceptance.

  He placed
a soft kiss to her hair.

  Then he whispered what had tormented him since that night in India. “I regret every day that I couldn’t be the man you needed, but I have never once regretted giving you the life you deserved.” He sucked in a deep breath to steel himself. “Was he a good husband to you?”

  “Yes,” she breathed out, so softly that it was barely audible. But his heart heard, and the emotions that crashed over him were a mix of love and fierce protectiveness. Two emotions that he suspected she would always stir inside him. “He was kind and generous. He never spoke a word in anger, never threatened… denied me nothing. We were as happy as could be expected.”

  The swift stab of jealousy tore through him, and he couldn’t find the power to speak. To tell her how glad he was for her. How thrilled he was that she’d lived the wonderful life he’d always wanted for her.

  “But I never loved him,” she finished. As if compelled, she added, “Not the way I loved you.”

  That soft confession revealed fully to him all he’d lost by letting her go, and instant mourning for that life nearly brought him to his knees. But he needed to ask the question whose answer he feared most—“Do you hate me?”

  Her heartbeat’s hesitation nearly broke him.

  Then she gave a soft shake of her head against his shoulder. “How can I hate you when you loved me so much?”

  His eyes stung, and he squeezed them shut. Her voice lacked conviction, but she’d said the words, and he’d desperately needed to hear them. Hope stirred inside his hollow chest that he’d be able to eventually persuade her to forgive him. No matter how long it took.

  “Maxwell.” His name was a plea for compassion, an entreaty to give her guidance as to what to believe about him.

  He cupped her face in his palm and rasped out, “I never stopped loving you, Belinda, even after you forgot about me. You need to know that.”

  Her hands twisted his uniform in her fists, and her heart pounded against his chest as she pressed into him. “I never forgot you, you damnable fool,” she chastised in a gentle whisper. “Not one day.”

  Both seeking absolution and giving solace, he touched his lips to hers.

  She inhaled sharply at the tender contact but didn’t pull back. Instead, she softly returned the kiss, her trembling lips moving tentatively beneath his.

  In that kiss he tasted the forgiveness he sought. More, that kiss held a second chance at the future they’d been denied, with Belinda back in his arms. Where she’d always belonged.

  * * *

  “Give me a second chance,” he whispered entreatingly against her lips.

  A second chance? Belinda pulled away and stared at him. His quiet declaration simply stunned her.

  Taking her surprised reaction as an invitation, he reached up to trace his thumb over her chin and back along her jaw. That small touch of affection sped through her, blazing a trail of warmth and need in its wake.

  “Seeing you again and holding you in my arms makes me realize how much I still want a life with you. The one we’d planned.” His deep murmur seeped into her, filling her with the happiness she remembered. “Say that you’ll forgive me and give me that chance.”

  She pressed her fist to her chest to physically calm her racing heart. A second chance with Maxwell… All of her yearned to have just that—the life with him that they’d been denied. She was still drawn to him as strongly as ever. Perhaps even more now that she knew the truth about why he’d broken off with her, now that she knew how much he’d loved her. At that moment, with Maxwell holding her in his arms, she could almost believe the past ten years and all the grief had never happened. As if anything could be possible again.

  And yet…

  “If you’re saying all this only to gain my support for the academy, it won’t work,” she warned, putting voice to her worst fears that all this was only a lie. That the second chance he wanted was simply another opportunity to break her heart.

  “Then how about to gain your love?”

  Did he really mean… love? She was too stunned to answer as he brought his lips to hers again and kissed away her surprise.

  Despite her reservations, she sighed as his mouth moved gently against hers. At first, the kiss was tender and hesitant, then growing more bold with each passing heartbeat in which she didn’t stop him from claiming more. How could she, when this was exactly what she’d always wanted, what she’d longed for years to experience just once more? His lips on hers, the masculine taste of his kiss, his strong arms slipping around her to draw her against him…

  She surrendered with a whisper. “Maxwell.”

  All those kisses he’d given her in the past had been nothing like this. For heaven’s sake, she could taste the difference in him. The maturity that the years had brought to him, the tempering of experience, even an underlying patience that certainly hadn’t been there before—it all worked together to sweep her away, until there was only the strength of him beneath her fingertips as she splayed her hands over his shoulders, only his presence filling her senses until she shivered.

  When she melted against him, boneless in his arms, a groan sounded from the back of his throat, and his tongue plunged between her lips to capture all of her kiss. She reveled in his need for her and enjoyed her own answering passion. A passion that now had her stroking her tongue over the length of his and encouraging him to claim even more.

  “Belinda,” he rasped out. Awe laced through his voice, as if he couldn’t quite believe that she was real.

  “Yes,” she whispered. I’m real. I’m here with you. The way I always wanted to be.

  He kissed down her neck to her collarbone. He tongued the pulse pounding wildly in the little hollow at the base of her throat before trailing his mouth lower to the scooped neckline of her dress.

  Belinda wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung to him, rolling back her head with sheer delight.

  “Dear God, how good you feel.” He nuzzled his face against her shoulder. “I’d forgotten how soft you are, how tempting… how much I missed you.”

  As if to prove his words, his hands caressed up her body to her breasts to strum his thumbs against her hardening nipples through the dress. He’d touched her like this before when they’d been courting, but his hands hadn’t been as expert then. His attentions had never been on her as intently as they were now to gauge every reaction he drew from her, no matter how small.

  Belinda shamelessly arched herself against him, wishing her clothes weren’t between them. Wishing her body was bare to his eyes, his hands, his mouth… wishing he was working to quench the burning ache throbbing between her thighs now instead of so devilishly stoking it with each touch and kiss. She was a widow and knew what intimate pleasures a man could bring to a woman. But only Maxwell could make her heart ache just as fiercely with love as he made her body burn with desire.

  “I—I missed you, too,” she forced out the admission between increasingly harder breaths that were quickly becoming pants.

  Lifting her onto his lap, he buried his face against her cleavage with chuckle. “Only missed, hmm?”

  He licked into the valley between her breasts in a brazen allusion to what he would do if he could strip her dress off her right there in the supply room. If he could lie her back on the flour bags and feast on her as if she were one of the exotic dishes he’d presented to her at the picnic. She couldn’t fight off a soft moan as that deliciously wicked image filled her mind. For one desperate moment, she wanted him to do exactly that.

  Then he audaciously tugged down her neckline, and she gasped. The tight stays and chemise beneath made it impossible for him to set free her entire breast, but her nipple was visible to his hungry eyes, then to his greedy lips as he captured it in his mouth and suckled her.

  “Perhaps—” She forced out the admission chokingly between alternating gasps of surprise and whimpers of need as he tortured her with sucks, licks, and soft bites. “Perhaps it was… a bit more… than simply missing.”


  He smiled against her flesh, and the devilish expression curled liquid flame through her, so hot that her thighs clenched. She watched without a trace of shame as his mouth worshipped at her breast, as he rolled her nipple between his teeth and then placed a delicate kiss to the sensitive point.

  “Good,” he purred as his mouth captured hers in a languid yet sultry kiss that held the promise of all the wanton things he wanted to do to her. “Because I sure as hell longed for you.” His words were an enticing torment. “So many sleepless nights when you were all I could think about, when I wanted nothing more in the world than to spend just one night making love to you.”

  She closed her eyes against the pleasure he gave her and against the soft confession poised on the tip of her tongue that she’d wanted the same.

  “Give me a second chance.” He nipped at her neck in an erotic cajoling that pulled straight through her, down to the ache building between her thighs. “Let me prove to you the man I’ve become.”

  “Yes,” she whispered breathlessly.

  A deep sigh swept through him as his shoulders sagged and his forehead rested against hers. He placed another tender kiss to her lips. Then he pulled away, climbing quickly to his feet.

  She fluttered her eyes open, confused. A surge of cold loss passed through her with a shudder. He was… leaving? After giving her the most thrilling kisses of her life?

  As if reading her mind, he leaned over to touch his lips to hers. Then he murmured in a husky voice that was more promise than explanation, “If we don’t leave now, I’ll have no choice but to make love to you right here.”

  His audacity sparked a low heat inside her, and she nearly begged him to do just that.

  “You’ll not have to worry about dinner with Pomperly then if anyone should happen along and find us.” His lips quirked into a lazy grin. “The scandal of it would drum me right out of the army and keep you from ever being invited to a royal affair again.”

  A bubble of laughter spilled from her, and she didn’t fight his help in rising to her feet, straightening her dress, and leading her from the supply room. Or how he wrapped her arm around his to escort her back toward the gate, walking so closely to her that he could whisper in her ear simply by lowering his head… whispers of love and desire that stirred such happiness and longing through her that her insides melted.