Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03]

by Duke Most Wanted

  “Oh.” Graham stood, brushed off his knees and walked six quick strides to the door of the place. “Sophie?”

  Sophie looked up from spooning something into the mouth of a woman who lay in a poorly made bed in the cottage’s only room. “Oh, hullo, Gray. What do you want?”

  Want? Well, to begin with, he wanted to run to her, drag her into his arms and kiss her blind. Then he wanted to shake her within an inch of her life for frightening him so. Then perhaps some more kissing. Yes, definitely more kissing. But there might be another bout of shaking later, as well.

  “You worried me,” he said in low voice. “I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

  “I’m on my way to London,” she said absently, now dabbing at the woman’s fevered face with a cloth. “I only stopped to help Moira here. Her husband’s in the city working in a factory. She’s all alone here with the children. They tried to take care of her when she became ill, but they’re so small . . .”

  There were, he saw now, several more grimy blond children in the room. It looked like dozens, but was surely more like five. Bloody hell, if he was their mother left alone with them, he’d have taken to his bed, too!

  “Is Moira very ill?” He kept his voice soft, for the poor woman did look very ill indeed.

  Sophie looked up with a quick smile. “She’s mostly exhausted, I think. There hasn’t been much food lately and I think she’s been giving hers to the children.”

  “Sophie made food,” someone said.

  Graham looked down to see that his roadside nemesis had entered behind him. She pushed back his cap on her head to gaze up at him critically. “You’re milord, aren’t you? The one that Papa curses when he thinks we can’t hear.”

  He returned the look. “Given up on your vow of silence so soon? What a pity.”

  “Graham, I’m so sorry,” Sophie said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know it was so bad here. I . . . I understand now, about Lilah, I mean.”

  Graham met her gaze to see that, like a miracle, the shine of belief and trust had returned to her beautiful gray eyes. She hadn’t looked at him that way since he’d told her about gaining the title. Actually, she’d never looked at him in quite that way. Now it was as if her belief in him was not only restored but magnified by a thousand.

  He had to swallow hard to send his heart back down from where it lodged in his throat. “Yes, well . . . er, what’s for dinner, then?”

  She smiled. “I made a nourishing soup from the ham you left me and some dried peas.”

  “And she found some carrots and bitter greens in the garden,” the little girl piped up. “We thought we’d ate them all!”

  Sophie shrugged at that, looking slightly embarrassed. “I just happened to spot them under the fallen timbers,” she said. She gave the pot another stir. “There’s enough for another day, but I wish I had more ham. The children need meat.”

  “Ah.” Graham backed toward the door. “I’ll be back in a pip and jiggle,” he told the little girl. “You start counting and don’t stop until you see me again.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’d best hurry then, for I can only count a little. One, two, three, four . . . one . . .”

  Somers’s Horse, as Graham had begun to call him, slanted Graham a disbelieving look when he tried to stir it to a canter. Then with a long-suffering sigh, the beast broke into a weary lope that still ate up the miles to the house.

  Graham tied the horse back in its patch and climbed back through the window rather than bother with the key. In a few moments, he’d filled a cookpot with the last of the ham, all the jars of preserves and all the tea. He cast about for something more valuable to give them that they might sell for more food, but he feared that anything too precious might only bring suspicion down on them.

  Then the shimmer of his own waistcoat buttons caught his gaze as he passed a mirror in the hall. Gold, of course. Only the best for the sons of Edencourt. He pulled them off one by one with a yank and a twist and tossed them into the cookpot. They could be sold off slowly and no one would think much of it.

  Then he carried it all right back out through the window. “Handy, that.”

  The horse stared at him in frank dismay when he returned.

  “Sorry, S.H., but we’re on an errand of mercy.” Graham grinned, feeling lighter than he had in a long while. “Besides, that little girl is counting to four again and again. We must get back before she drives Sophie round the bend.”

  When he arrived with his ridiculous pot balanced on the pommel before him, one would have thought he’d brought Sophie diamonds and furs. Her eyes shone with delight when she saw the tea. “Oh, perfect! I’ll make some for Moira right away.”

  Then she turned to Graham and pressed her palm lightly onto his loose-hanging waistcoat. “Your buttons?”

  He shrugged and glanced away. “I can always find brass ones. It’s going to be a long winter.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, her head tilted to one side. “You absolutely devastate me, do you know that, Graham Cavendish, Duke of Edencourt?”

  Because he’d given up some buttons? He shook his head, not understanding, but she only smiled mysteriously. “Let me fix Moira and the children up with some tea and preserves. Then I think we’d better return to the manor.”

  He blinked at her. “But we must get you back to London! You’ll be missed!”

  She shook her head and pointed behind him. “That thing isn’t going to get us to London today.”

  Graham turned to see that S.H. had abandoned him and was nearly out of sight, trotting stubbornly back to its patch of weeds, reins trailing in the dust of the road.

  He turned back to her. “I can catch him.” Although he wasn’t at all sure he could.

  She shook her head again. “You might persuade him to do it all again so soon, but I fear you’re going to have a much harder time convincing me.”

  With that, she turned and strode briskly back into the cottage. The place on his chest where her hand had rested felt cold without her.

  WOLFE SNARLED FROM his hiding place in the darkness of the furthermost shack.

  Foiled again. He almost had the gangling bitch—but he had no stomach for children, greasy little beasts. Besides, he probably couldn’t have convinced her to come away before someone raised an alarm. Watching from the shadows as the two nauseating do-gooders fed the moldy masses, he snarled.

  He wanted to kill them both, preferably with something white-hot and painful. Unfortunately, killing her was far too obvious. Stickley would be the first to point a finger.

  Something niggled at the back of his thoughts. It had been so long since his head had been clear of liquor for several days in a row that it took a bit of work to bring the actual memory to the surface. He was clearly out of practice.

  Then he had it. Sir Hamish’s will!

  “Should three generations of Pickering girls fail, I wash me hands of the lot of you. The entire fifteen thousand pounds will go to pay the fines and hardships of those who defy the excise man to export that fine Scots whisky which has been my only solace in this family of dolts.”

  The effort made his head pound, but Wolfe persisted. There was something there . . .

  This was the third generation. One girl had already failed. One had married well, but her husband wasn’t a duke yet. It was entirely possible that he wouldn’t be by the time the Season ended. The last girl could still be stopped . . .

  Then he had it.

  “The entire fifteen thousand pounds will go to—”

  Fifteen thousand pounds. Not thirty thousand. Stickley had doubled the trust, by gum—and after all the girls failed, the will only required that fifteen thousand pounds go to the smugglers!

  The rest would be theirs, his and Stickley’s!

  All he had to do was to kill the Duke of Edencourt.

  Stickley wouldn’t like it—but then, once a man had killed a duke, what was to stop him from swatting an insect like Stickley?

  Chapter T
wenty-four

  There was no point in hurrying, so Graham and Sophie enjoyed the long walk back to Edencourt. The time was later than he’d realized. He must have spent hours riding up and down these roads. Even now the day was fading, mingling long blue shadows with slanting golden light.

  Sophie’s hair fell unbound down her back, catching the light as the breeze played with the length of it. She walked with loose, open strides like the country girl she was, but her spine was straight and poised and her chin was high, like the elegant, polished “Sofia.”

  “This is my favorite time of day,” she shared with him. “When the work is done and world starts to quiet.”

  “Not in London,” he pointed out. “I know some people who are only now rising from their beds.”

  They looked at other with matching grins. “Tessa!” they said together.

  Sophie’s smile became rueful. “How am I ever going to return to Primrose Street?”

  The very thought of this new, shimmeringly confident Sophie returning to be imprisoned beneath Tessa’s heavy thumb sickened Graham. “Don’t,” he urged. “Stay with Deirdre. She’d love it, I know she would. She’s very fond of you, you know.”

  Sophie frowned slightly. “She is?” Then she shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t live as someone’s permanent, useless guest for the rest of my life.”

  He frowned then himself. “You aren’t her guest. You’re her family.”

  She looked away, her gaze resting on the low stone wall alongside the road. “Hmm.”

  They walked in silence for a time. Then Graham’s stomach rumbled, loudly. “We won’t have any supper,” he pointed out mournfully. “I gutted the larder thoroughly.”

  Sophie laughed. “That was man-thoroughness. I imagine there will be different results from woman-thoroughness.”

  He scratched behind his ear. “Could be. I’d never actually been in the kitchen before. I didn’t even know that larder was there.”

  She gazed at him, her brow furrowed. “Graham, you do realize that a house that size has several kitchens, don’t you? And each kitchen probably has more than one larder?”

  He cheered immediately. “Really? Because you ate my breakfast.”

  She clapped a hand over her mouth, then ruined her guilty dismay by laughing out loud. “So that was why you gave me an extraordinary amount of ham! I assumed it was some sort of verdict on my unfeminine appetite.”

  He smiled sideways at her. “Sophie, no one in their right mind would ever dream of calling you unfeminine.”

  She turned to him with a sudden, devastating smile. “Why thank you, kind sir!”

  Graham, when he could breathe again and the dazzle had faded from his vision, couldn’t for the life of him remember what they’d been speaking of.

  No matter. Perhaps it was enough that for now, at this moment, he was strolling along a country lane with the only woman in the world he would ever love: his valiant, clever Miss Sophie Blake.

  Sophie’s mind was not so serene. She was forming a plan—a wonderful, terrible, frightening plan.

  What if she took her charade to its farthest possible extreme?

  What if she did more than steal two hundred pounds of dress allowance and travel money and pose as a poor but genteel long-lost cousin for a brief moment of freedom and change?

  What if she continued the lie forever—for all the rest of her life!—and never, ever confessed to anyone that she was not, in fact, Miss Sophie Blake, great-granddaughter to Sir Hamish Pickering? What if she never went back to being who she truly was, a mere servant girl, a lady’s companion to the fretful, demanding Mrs. Blake—who was, in fact, mother of poor, sickly, long-dead little Sophie?

  What if she married Graham and won the Pickering fortune for him and all his desolate, neglected people?

  There was no time to hesitate, to mull over her choices. Just as before, when she’d opened the post as usual and found the money sent from Lady Tessa for Sophie’s debut, the moment called for immediate action.

  Deirdre was about to become the Duchess of Brookmoor. It might already have happened, which thought brought new panic to Sophie’s chest. No, she had to believe that she’d been brought here to see this place, this need, for a reason.

  Deirdre didn’t truly need the money. Calder was a wealthy and generous man.

  You can diminish it all you like, but there’s no avoiding the fact that you’ll be stealing from someone who trusts you. You’ll be robbing one of the few people on this earth who has ever cared about you at all.

  Moira’s thin face appeared in her mind, gray with fatigue and wear, though the woman had confessed that she was actually younger than she herself was!

  No, it was necessary, all of it. If she didn’t force Graham to wed her before the elderly Duke of Brookmoor died and made Calder duke in his stead, she wouldn’t be able to help any of them.

  Not even herself.

  BY THE TIME they reached the manor the day was gone. All that was visible was the long white drive in the moonlight and the dark lump that was the sleeping horse in the green sward. Graham laughingly helped Sophie back through the open window, but when the walls rose hushed and vast around them he became silent.

  His helping hand slid from hers slowly, as if he were being pulled away. Sophie didn’t cling, though she felt colder without him next to her. There was time enough, she hoped. Together they walked up the graciously curving stair in the darkness. Graham walked her to “her” door, then stopped.

  She couldn’t see him but she could feel his tension as if he were tied to her. When he spoke, his voice was low and full of regret.

  “This isn’t right, Sophie. Tomorrow we must return to London. Perhaps we can persuade the Brook House staff to believe you’ve been at Primrose Street all along.”

  Sophie closed her eyes to better feel his mood. Was it regret that they must return, or regret that they were there in the first place? It didn’t matter. Soon enough they might both have something to regret. She only hoped he would forgive her when she won the inheritance.

  “Goodnight, Graham.”

  He hesitated, then she felt his palm, warm and large, cup her cheek. It was a kiss, of sorts. Her hopes rose. Perhaps he might forgive her sooner than later?

  Then he was gone, a mere shadow in darkness. She heard the next door open, then shut behind him. Only then did she put her hand on her own latch and let herself into the duchess’s bedchamber. Once inside, she could see very well, for the moon poured through the window much the way the sunlight had this morning. In that light, she rinsed her face in the cold bathwater and used a bristle brush she found in the vanity to tame her tangled hair. She ought to have been cold without a fire, but her plan heated her through every time she contemplated it.

  At last she deemed enough time had passed. Stripping herself of all but Graham’s shirt, which fell nearly to her knees, she shook out her hair and straightened. She didn’t have Lementeur’s magic to dazzle him with, or Patricia’s skill to hide her flaws, but the darkness would hide most of that. She would have what she truly needed.

  Loving Graham had come so easily to her that she wasn’t sure precisely when it had transformed from a longing to a fantasy to a need so powerful that she would toss her already shabby ethics into the chamber pot in order to have him. She could lie to the world, but she was done lying to herself. Her heroic mission to save his people was a dim flame next to the inferno of her own selfish desires.

  So be it.

  At the last moment, she stopped to kneel next to her hearth. After a search with the poker, she found a live coal among the ashes. She scooped it out with the ash shovel and dropped it into the half-filled scuttle Graham had left there earlier. She may not have been feeling the cold but Graham might.

  Then she eyed the adjoining door set into the elegant paneling of the wall, the one a duke might use to visit his duchess. Taking a deep breath, she put her hand on the latch and pushed.

  GRAHAM HAD GONE to bed cold and hungry and
desperately conflicted. The combination was enough to give him the strangest dream.

  First and foremost, he was warm. Delicious heat shimmered on his skin, making him stretch languorously. Then there was a delightful soft weight upon him, stretched along one side of his body. Soft against his hardness—and by God he was hard!—a touch stroked over his pectorals, teasing the hair there, then traveled slowly and tantalizingly down . . . down . . .

  It slowed, then stopped short. He writhed upward, pressing into it, impatient for those long, teasing fingers to wrap themselves around his throbbing cock.

  This was one of his favorite dreams ever.

  The hand spread warm and gentle over his belly, but didn’t truly retreat. Yes, anticipation was better. Make me wait. Make me ache.

  Then the lips came to his. He moaned then, the sound echoing strangely through the dream. What?

  A soft wet mouth opened over his and he forgot his uneasiness instantly. So teasing, so giving and wet—damn, he loved Sophie’s mouth!

  In that instant he realized that he’d had this dream before. In the past months he’d dreamed it again and again, but it had never been so real, so hot and damp and breathless until the sound of their mingled panting echoed from the high walls of the duke’s bedchamber—

  What?

  Wait. No, don’t wake up. Don’t be an idiot. Keep dreaming.

  Too late.

  Awareness came crashing in like a cold ocean breaker. He was at Edencourt with Sophie. Worse yet, he was in bed with Sophie.

  No, it got worse. He was tied up in bed—trussed by both wrists to the bedposts, by God!—with Sophie spread onto him like jam on toast, her hands roving shyly but hungrily over him while her mouth teased his.

  He drew back from her lips, his expression aghast. “Sophie?”

  The horror in Graham’s eyes could not be mistaken. Sophie’s insides turned to ice.

  A plain stick like you—who’d want you?

  No man wants a giraffe.

  No, of course he wouldn’t. Her skin crawling at the revulsion he must be feeling, she slid from the bed, pulling the coverlet off to wrap about her. She wanted to blurt apologies, she wanted to cry, she wanted very much to not be standing in his room in the middle of the night with the silk cold against her bare, repulsive skin.