by Suzi Love
From behind her, Georgie and Lucy gave twin gasps of horror as they descended with the assistance of another servant. Worst of all, her butler rushed down their front steps, or as close to rushing as an old man with rickety legs could manage while using the wooden railing as a hand-over-hand crutch.
“Oh, my lady, good gracious,” he said, one hand clutching the rail and one at his chest. He was unable to move out to aid her, and the color of his face resembled a newly scrubbed sheet and his willowy frame rocked back and forth on spindly legs. “Are you harmed, my lady?”
Carina murmured her thanks to the footman who’d saved her, before wrapping both hands around her butler’s arm. The poor man wore only a nightshirt half-covered by a loosely-tied dressing gown, and the bones of his forearm had shrunk so much that the woolen sleeve drooped, two sizes too big.
“I’m quite intact, but let’s get you inside and out of this damp air. Your joints will pain tomorrow if we don’t warm them.”
He nodded his balding head once before turning back to the railing and gripping it two-handed, obviously more exhausted than his stiff pride would allow him to admit. It was past time he retired to her country estate to live out his days in comfort, away from the London damp, but he wouldn’t be convinced. Straightening, she righted her clothing and moved closer to her butler so she could assist him up the steps, which from down here and with a shaking old man on her arm, seemed further than the peak of the highest mountain in England. Before she could force her own shaking legs to step up, Max moved around her and firmly grasped her butler’s arm.
“Take his other side, Freddie,” he said, and then waited until his footman slipped into position. With barely any exertion on their part, they encouraged the older man up each step and to the door Georgie held open, while Lucy dodged past and yelled orders to other staff members arriving on the scene.
“Betsy, take him to the kitchen fire. Get Cook to fix him one of her hot toddies and then make certain he goes straight to bed. And be sure to put a heated brick at his feet.”
Carina stood, one hand gripping the rail beside the top step, and chuckled at Lucy’s sharp orders. Thank goodness her younger sister was no shrinking violet and coped with dramatic situations with the flare of a sergeant major in charge of a platoon. Despite Lucy’s excess of energy, she remained a firm favourite with the servants because she was prepared to roll up her sleeves and work beside them if necessary. Georgie peered out the front door at Carina with her brows raised in silent question and her teeth worrying her bottom lip.
“Do you need help, Carrot, because you look done in?”
Carina groaned aloud. “Do not call me that name.”
Georgie covered her mouth but couldn’t control the giggle that escaped. “Oops! Sorry. I forgot that you think it’s childish.”
“It’s not that, it’s...”
“Yes, I remember. Papa called you that. Carrot-top was his special name for you.”
Georgie’s sigh held so much longing and regret that Carina felt guilty for chastising her sister, especially after hearing that girlish giggle, a noise she’d waited weeks to hear. She let the footman pass her and then wrapped her arm around her sister’s waist. They walked side by side through the door and directly into Max’s path, and into the solid wall of his chest.
“Ouch!” The sisters made identical noises of hurt and rubbed their noses.
“So sorry, ladies.” Max stretched out a hand to each sister to steady them. “Ah, Carina, you do seem to be creating chaos wherever you go this evening.”
The Duke looked at her solemnly before giving them a wide grin, a remarkable contrast to his normal stern and forbidding expression.
Georgie and Carina stared in amazed awe until Georgie managed to recover.
“Oh, no, Your Grace,” she said with a shake of her head, “it was my fault entirely.”
“Then I shall bid you goodnight, Georgie, if I may be so bold as to address you so informally.”
Georgie went weak-kneed with admiration when Max took her hand and grinned again, and Carina had no inkling as to why Max had been able to create such a miraculous change in her sister’s attitude towards men. A short time ago, Carina had irritated the Duke either into, or out of, a sulk but now, for God-alone knew what reason, he presented them with smiles, dazzling smiles that could make a woman fall at his feet. Radiant, sultry, sexy and seducing grins, the type that practiced rakes used to seduce women into throwing away long-held values and sliding naked between silk sheets.
Georgie giggled again and Carina groaned, hoping the other two would guess her feelings and her opinion of such unusual behavior. The idea of Max unbending to seduce women was ludicrous, because he’d always seduced by waving a wad of banknotes under women’s noses. Max dropped a kiss onto the back of Georgie’s gloved hand, and her level-headed and man-shy sister treated her seducer—damn! Treated her hand kisser to a long, languishing sigh of delight before slowly drawing back her fingers in an exaggerated movement that made Carina want to snatch Georgie’s hand away herself.
“Georgie,” she snapped, “take this.” She thrust her handkerchief into Georgie’s hand, “Wipe your chin and then go and check on Lucy.” At Georgie’s stunned look, Carina added a lack-luster, “Please.”
Max’s smile deepened and, showing hellish injustice considering Carina’s expanding vexation with him, two dimples appeared. The left dipped into a crease a smidgen deeper than the right. Cherub-like, and ones she’d never seen before, they softened his face and made him appear more relaxed than any duke had a right to be, considering she was as far from relaxed as a hungry baby was content. She wanted to sigh aloud like Georgie and even drool like her sister was doing. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t stare at the enraptured pair any longer but, from beside her, she heard her smitten sister give another long and loud moan.
“Lady Georgiana, or rather, Georgie, I think your sister is offering you her ‘kerchief in an act of subtle irony. I assume the handkerchief indicates her belief that you might swoon, simply because I showed good manners.”
“For goodness sake,” Carina said, glaring at him. “I wanted Georgie to realize that she was in danger of drooling down your evening clothes, but only because you’re the first man in a long time to kiss her hand. Twinkling those gorgeous dimples doesn’t mean that I, or my sisters, will fall at your feet any time soon.”
Georgie made a snuffling noise that could have been laughter before she covered her mouth, muttered goodnight, and scuttled inside. When she pulled the door closed behind her, Carina was shocked and then annoyed. Her sisters had effectively abandoned her with a bachelor on her doorstep—this unknown Max, the side of him she’d sensed that he kept locked away, having long ago tossed aside the key. This playful, amorous and mind-bogglingly attractive side that was far, far more dangerous to her well-being, and three years of planning, than the ton’s bitter and jaded duke that her men had reported.
His lips twitched over some inner humor and he placed a cupped hand to his ear. “Pardon, my lady, but did I hear you mention dimples? I think gorgeous was the word used to describe the aforesaid dimples.”
“Ooh!”
She had a childish desire to grind her heel onto the top of his perfectly-shined evening shoes and it took all her willpower to not surrender to that whim. When she opened her tightly clenched eyes, she discovered that his twitching lips had widened into another of those incredible smiles.
“Unfair,” she muttered with a groan. “Dimples on a grown man.” When she threw her hands up, he chuckled. “Unfair. And excessive.”
Using the index finger of each hand, he pointed towards his cheeks.
“Even gorgeous dimples?”
Max’s teasing manner was so out of character, so disconcerting, that her mind whirled, incapable of adapting to the abrupt change in the individual standing before her. Legs astride, hands on his hips, he bent from the waist to almost touch her nose to nose. When his eyes, forever shielded, dark and predatory
, began to shine and twinkle with open good humor, all rational judgment and good sense deserted her. This time impulse proved stronger than willpower.
“Damn you, Max, don’t you dare be nice to me now.”
Her left foot shot out from under her skirt and stomped down hard. Fortunately for Max, lightening fast reflexes plus a stride’s distance from her foot saved him from injury. Unfortunately for Carina, jarring her already sore foot on the parquetry flooring didn’t save her from hurt.
“Oooh,” she groaned, hopping on one foot. Max reached for her and supported her weight as she reached down and rubbed at her painful ankle, but continued to mutter, “Damn, damn, damn.” When the twinges subsided, she eased her foot to the floor and balanced without his aid. Darting a wry glance up at Max, she shrugged her shoulders. “I apologize for my childishness. I suppose you may call it retribution.”
He shrugged, a careless imitation of Carina’s gesture, however he offered no more smiles. No more dimples. Already, she missed those dips and creases that shifted his features from austere to striking. Silly to crave them when she’d been shown so few.
“Retribution, indeed. Although, why my being nice to you would scare you so much, I cannot comprehend.”
When she barked out a laugh, he glanced away for a moment and then back, but in that instant she could swear she’d glimpsed hurt and pain flash in his expression.
He swallowed once, and again, before saying, “I’m not a complete monster, you know.”
She nodded. “I do know, because I’ve witnessed your kindness. But that was many years ago, Max, and you and I aren’t the same people anymore. It’s impossible to go back.”
He sighed, a sound of regret that softened Carina’s resolve. “You’re no doubt correct. But on our way forward, we can at least forge a truce, a temporary peace. Would that be acceptable even if my attempts at levity have failed?”
Again she felt a stab of displeasure, though for the main part she was disappointed with herself. She’d handled her short interludes with this unusual man very badly and she regretted her contrariness. However larger goals were her current focus and she couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by a few moments of stolen pleasure on a doorstep.
“A truce would be more than acceptable, Max. Thank you for a delightful evening. You made my sisters exceedingly happy.”
“Only your sisters? Perhaps tomorrow I’ll succeed in making you happy also, my lady.”
She gave a small laugh and shook her head. “You’re doing it again: being nice to me and making me laugh.”
“Ah, yes,” he grinned and held her gloved hand. “Because in the morning, I’ll be wearing my stern face again and no one will ever know that you referred to the hollows in my cheeks as...gorgeous dimples.”
As he turned and strode down the steps, taking them two at a time with his long stride, she muttered, “Incorrigible as well.”
“I heard that and be warned: I don’t lie abed all morning, so I shall arrive at precisely nine o’clock. We should decide how to search my grandfather’s boxes and share what we each expect to find, otherwise we’ll be spend months in the attics and get nowhere. Until then, goodnight Carrot-top.”
“Carrot-top,” she spluttered. “You heard! Hells bells, I shall throttle my sister.”
As she pushed the heavy door closed, she heard off-tune whistling on the street. Peering out, the only person she sighted was the Duke of Stirkton, a non-whistling type of man if ever she’d seen one.
She trudged up to her bedchamber and tried to squash the image of a playful, dimpled duke, one who whistled, and instead picture Max as she knew him best: a man who scowled more than he smiled, a man who was stern and bitter, and unfortunately for her, a man who had the most gorgeous dimples.
Chapter Six
At precisely nine in the morning, the Duke of Stirkton dodged through the steady stream of horses and carriages to traverse Lawnton Place and mount the scrubbed steps to Woods House once more. The difference between today’s arrival here and the one last night was that now a keen sense of anticipation put a spring in his step and stripped the scowl from his face.
All night long, he’d alternately puzzled over the inconsistencies in the sisters’ stories and construed a dozen ways he might push and prod at Lady Dorchester the way she did him, in the hope that she might inadvertently disclose the names of those mystery men. After jogging up the last steps, he raised his hand to knock at the same moment that Lucy pulled open the door.
He turned to the bustling street and sucked in a deep breath of smog-ridden London air. “Isn’t it a beautiful day, Lucy?”
“Good grief, Max. When Carina told us at breakfast that you were acting strangely when you departed last evening, I didn’t believe her. But she was telling the truth.”
Max threw both hands in the air as he stepped inside the house. “Isn’t a man entitled to smile occasionally without the world assuming he should be locked away in Bedlam?”
Lucy’s laughter sounded child-like, free and quite delightful. Max was struck with another of those abnormal urges to abandon his ingrained reserve and chortle with her. She leant both hands on her knees and continued laughing in great loud gulps, until he worried that she was now laughing at his silliness rather than with him.
“Of course you may smile,” Lucy said as she straightened. “It’s only that...” She went into another peal of laughter. “The thought of you, the Duke of Stirkton, calling Carina Carrot-top is ...”
“Lucy, please stop.” Gertie walked into view with her hands demurely clasped at the waist of her yellow sprigged muslin gown and simple pearls swinging at her ears. Max wasn’t fooled. Gertie looked ready to burst into giggles as well. “I apologize for Lucy’s merriment at your expense. She meant no harm. She cannot reconcile her image of a duke relaxing his guard enough to tease and to call her sister by a pet name.”
Max studied Gertie. “And you can conceive of such a thing? For this high-born duke in particular?”
Gertie didn’t meet his gaze but he was certain she was smiling. “Most definitely. You can display both sides of a high ranking peer. The haughty, hard-working, supreme ruler of his lands.”
“Humph! Most of my acquaintances believe that sums up my entire character.”
“Yes, but we know better. There is that other side to you, the one few are allowed to see. Your mother was forced to hide a lot of her softer side as well, so you have that in common and something else to remember her by.”
“Why do you imagine that I want to remember her for anything?”
Gertie placed a hand on his arm and drew him to a halt in the hallway. The elderly butler was making his way towards them, his gait uneven, as if he suffered pain in his joints as Carina had said.
“Your Grace─”
“Please call me Max as the others are doing. Strangely, I’ve quickly become accustomed to it and I might even come to enjoy it. Most people avoid such familiarity with me, for fear that the taint left by my upbringing might touch them and corrupt their morals.”
“That’s blatantly untrue. The shield you’ve erected around yourself in order to survive and succeed makes people wary of you, though I suspect your defenses would crumble easily if the right pressure was applied. Then others would see you as you really are, accomplished yet modest, strong yet compliant.”
Max was so stunned by Gertie’s assessment that it took him several seconds to realize she had walked away, leaving him standing alone and bemused in the center of the fashionable entryway. At their first meeting, he’d formed the opinion that Carina was a strong and resourceful lady who’d turned cold and uncaring, due to the pain and indignities life had subjected her to. An innocent pushed into becoming a knowing adventuress through no fault of her own, but through the evil experiences thrust upon her.
Nevertheless, the distinct possibility remained that she was also a murderess. The late Earl had deserved to die and few would mourn him, yet the doubt lingered that Carina, in desperation,
might have hastened his death. As the highest title in the county of Stirkton and surrounds, Max performed the duties of magistrate and he now wondered why he’d not been informed, nor called upon to write the report, at the Earl’s demise.
God knew, Carina had suffered more than she should have in her short life and the bleak misery she’d endured should have hardened her beyond repair, and yet, when her sister had recoiled from his touch in fright, Carina hadn’t been frightened. She’d been filled with compassion and love, with no sign of terror.
Despite suffering anguish guaranteed to turn most women’s minds, Carina showed fortitude, courage, deep caring, and the sort of strength Max most admired, despite him being in no position to admire her. They were two people who’d been wronged seeking a resolution to their problems, and nothing more.
For him, the resolution was connecting with her and having her in his bed once more. For him, the resolution was also finding out, at long last, if his actions had ruined her life. Until then, he’d find no peace in his marriage.
No, that wasn’t a direction he’d allow his mind to wander in, nor his body. There’d be time enough for his body to respond when they were secluded at his cottage, because in public, he’d keep a tight leash on all his reactions to Lady Dorchester, physical and mental.
His pledge lasted three minutes, or the time it took for the butler to announce him in Carina’s study. Other tonnish women seated themselves before pretty writing tables where invitations were inscribed and answered and correspondence was attended to, but not Carina. As in everything he’d observed about her, the Countess was different.
She was seated before a desk that took up most of the room, and her green damask skirts were spread over the edge of an equally large chair. On the other side of the desk, and facing her, lounged a gentleman.
Max erected his external barricades and prepared for battle, though he couldn’t explain, even to himself, what stirred this out-of-character reaction. Apart, of course, from the presence of a man in the close and intimate confines of Carina’s study, and the sight of that man leaning forward in earnest conversation with the woman he’d decided would share his bed. It took all his self-imposed control to appear calm as he strode towards her desk, as if he had every right to invade this woman’s private domain.