The Wicked Duke

by Madeline Hunter

  Her awe detached her from everything else, even her awareness of him. Even as he came over her and pressed into her, even as she filled her arms with his strength, she dwelled in astonishment as waves of perfection eddied through her.

  She hardly recovered, but slowly the world intruded. He was in her totally, looking down at her.

  “What was that?” She blinked hard as reality reasserted itself.

  “The scientific word is orgasm. Perhaps that is what is meant by marital bliss, however.”

  “Bliss is a good word. I don’t think that is what women mean when they say that, however.”

  “Probably not, since many wives never experience it.” He reached down and bent her knees. He hooked one over his hip. She knew to do the same with the other.

  The rest was not like the last time either. He was not as restrained. She had not totally recovered, but she did not mind the sensation of his thrusts. Her body accommodated them in its own way. Her excitement revived. The feel of him teased at her, intimating she might know that bliss again if he kept at it very long.

  His finish came hard, in her and in him. Not so kind. Not so considerate. She felt the break in his tension and sensed his own release crash through him.

  She did nothing to interfere with how he lost himself. Even after he rolled off her, she did not speak, but drifted in the rare intimacy she felt with him. Finally he stirred, and kissed her.

  “I do not know why you said I should wait until morning before saying you were good,” she murmured. “You did nothing to shock me, except in the best way.”

  She felt his smile against her cheek. “It is not morning yet.”

  * * *

  It was a wonder he had not taken her right there on the table.

  Dinner had been two hours of hunger that the food could not satisfy. It was all he could do to pay attention to their conversation. It had been months since he wanted a woman so much. Years.

  Now he lay with Marianne in his arms. He enjoyed that more than was normal too. Perhaps this ill-advised marriage would actually be pleasant, at least for a while. One could never be sure from the first weeks and months. New pleasure had a way of obscuring the truth about a match, as his father’s experience had proven.

  Right now, contentment reigned. With her, and with himself. At least he had showed her how pleasurable pleasure could be. He had not left her incomplete again.

  “How did you learn how to do that?” Marianne, ever curious, asked.

  He did not mind, but her curiosity had the potential for being a problem at some point. It was not the normal sort. She had an unfortunate talent for seeing matters too clearly and from all angles. Her questions could be incisive to a fault, and inconvenient.

  “My father sent me to a very polite brothel in my youth. The older women there had a tendency to school green boys in certain things. I believe they thought it their duty to our future wives to explain that bliss should go both ways. Or perhaps they wanted payment in more than coin.”

  “Had he not sent you there, would you have never known?”

  He shrugged. “Men do not discuss much about whether their women know contentment in bed. The talk is much cruder than that.”

  “I imagine so.”

  He doubted she could come close to imagining it. Just as well.

  He rose up on his arm and looked down at her. She had not covered herself much, and her smooth body looked lovely in the glow from the two lamps left by the maid. He smoothed his hand down her softness. Her skin felt cool and silky.

  She looked up at him with an impish light in her eyes. “What are your intentions, sir?”

  He responded by putting his hand to her mound, and stroking deeper into her cleft. She startled at the immediate intensity. Her lids lowered and lips parted.

  He brought her along slowly, luring her back to the unguarded passion she had displayed. He watched her flex to the throes as they claimed her, until she abandoned any pretense of controlling what he did to her. She would probably permit him anything now, but he would not be too bad.

  She caressed him, too, and sought to give him pleasure. That charmed him. He restrained his impulses and allowed it, even if he was already inside her in his mind.

  “Someday I will do this with my mouth, Marianne.” He slid his finger around her lips, then tantalized her with short penetrations.

  She blinked several times and looked at him. Confused. Curious. He teased at her until thought left her again.

  He could wait no longer. Nor did he want to. He pulled over a pillow and flipped her, so she hugged the mattress and her bottom rose. She showed more confusion, until he kneeled behind her and put his hand to her again. She lay one cheek on the mattress and watched him out of the corner of her other eye.

  Her erotic position pushed him to the edge of his control. He caressed her bottom. Round. Soft. Waiting. Her lower back dipped even more as she offered herself. He waited until she moaned, and the pleasure overwhelmed her.

  He entered her slowly, holding his passion back while he enjoyed the feel of her. Erotic fury built fast, however, and soon it howled in him. He took her hard then, until pleasure exploded and cast him into a place of pure sensation.

  * * *

  He collapsed beside her, his arm thrust possessively over her back. Their heavy breaths matched each other’s, meeting in the space between their heads on the pillow. Slowly he calmed, and appeared to be drifting to sleep. Only instead that arm moved, and a caress traced down her back and up the hill of her bottom, and to where her hidden flesh still pulsed.

  One touch sent her back to the height of her passion. She clutched the sheet under her hands. She closed her eyes and let it happen.

  She almost wept before it ended. She screamed when it finally did. Even then he did not stop, but sent echoes of the ecstasy shuddering through her.

  He did sleep then. She wondered if he intended to stay in this bed. Perhaps he thought to do this yet again, a different way. She did not mind his presence beside her. She thought it cozy and intimate.

  She could not sleep at once, so she lay there as he held her. Her thoughts traveled drowsily over the day’s events. Eva’s revelation came to her, that Aylesbury now looked into his brother’s death. After all this time . . . right when he chose to wed . . . After all this time . . . right when the government showed renewed interest . . . After all this time . . . even as he finally took a wife. An inappropriate wife with no fortune or rank, whom he did not love . . . After all this time . . .

  She must have slept because suddenly she jolted awake. She found Aylesbury sitting upright in bed, wiping his eyes. In the distance a pounding sounded and a voice yelled. Then that stopped, but soon after the pounding resumed, right on her door.

  Aylesbury rose and, naked still, opened the door. Marianne grabbed at the sheet and covered herself.

  His valet stood there, his back to the threshold so he would not see in. “Milord, there is a man below, a messenger from Windsor.” He thrust his hand behind his back. A banyan dangled from it.

  Aylesbury pulled on the banyan and walked out while he buttoned it. The servant managed to close the door without turning his head.

  Ten minutes later, Aylesbury returned, appearing subdued.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A private courtesy message, sent from Windsor because of my station. The king died tonight at half an hour past eight o’clock.”

  Soon after he finished speaking, the big bell of St. Paul’s Cathedral began tolling.

  CHAPTER 18

  “We will stay here in town until the king’s funeral.” Aylesbury explained the plans to Marianne over dinner two days later. “He will lie in state on the fifteenth, and be interred the next day. You will need to press your dressmaker for appropriate garments. As my duchess, you will have very high precedence in the procession.”

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nbsp; Marianne appeared much subdued. Far more than he expected after the night they had just shared. He might be itemizing their duties for her, but half of his mind saw her wild and naked, rising above him while she rode him in her frenzy. That image of her had not left him all day.

  He was enjoying their time in town, and was not sorry that they had to stay. Still, he kept waiting for news from Gloucestershire. In particular he expected a letter from Sir Horace, informing him that the coroner had finally issued a verdict of death by natural causes for Percy. If one did not arrive by tomorrow, he would write to Sir Horace and inquire about the delay.

  Marianne no longer ate. She just looked at her plate and wineglass, distracted.

  “What is wrong?” he asked.

  “Putting myself in an appropriate garment will hardly make me pass muster. I have no idea at all what I am supposed to do. You speak of a procession, but I have not even seen one. And how am I to know what an appropriate garment even is?”

  “I will arrange for someone to explain it all, as I promised, and to help you with the dress. You will also wear traditional state garments at the coronation that is coming. I will have those shown to you, so you become accustomed to them.” He reached for her hand. “Do not look so glum, pretty flower. It is not the ideal way to first meet your equals, but it cannot be avoided and you will dazzle them all.”

  How easily those flatteries dribbled out. He was not a man given to such things, so he impressed himself. He realized it mattered to him that she not be so worried. He truly wanted to reassure her.

  A spark of humor entered her eyes. “I doubt I will dazzle. I do not think anyone’s eyes will be on me. Have you learned anything else about the ceremony?”

  “Only what the papers report.” He returned to his meal.

  That had been a lie. He knew all the details. In particular he knew which dukes would be pallbearers. His own name was not on the list.

  There were many explanations for that. He was newly invested in the title. The king had not been his friend, or even of similar age.

  However, he did not miss that as the royal servants and government officials made their arrangements, the Duke of Aylesbury had been given no role. Since there were not many dukes, and even fewer nonroyal ones, the slight appeared deliberate.

  It might all have to do with that revelation Carlsworth had shared with him. It most likely did. He really did not give a damn if he had a place in a ceremony. He very much cared if the notion of trying him had gained any supporters.

  “Now you are the one looking worried,” Marianne said. “I daresay it is more than garments and protocol that concern you.”

  “Perhaps that is all it is. It will be my first ceremony as a duke, after all.”

  She laughed, and squeezed his hand. “I hope I can judge character enough to know that such things do not make you frown. You will do it like you have already done it a hundred times. Something else troubles you, I think. I will not pry, however.”

  He wished he could tell her. Odd that he wanted to, but there it was. Only if he did, she might realize she had her answer to her big why? about his proposal. He never wanted her to know about that bargain with her uncle. She would not, either, if he had any say in it.

  Their meal had not ended, but he stood and drew her up by her hand. “The days weigh heavily with talk of the king and his funeral and his past. Wherever one goes, that is all one hears. I am not immune to the melancholy abroad in the realm. The nights, however—they are about life and pleasure and the present. Come to bed with me now. You will see no frowns there.”

  “Nor will you, if you use your best skills.”

  He embraced her with one arm and guided her from the dining room. “Which are my best skills?”

  “Don’t you know? Can’t you tell?”

  “As it happens, you have not yet experienced what I consider my best skills, so I am confused.”

  At the stairs, she extricated herself from his hold. “Allow me to go and prepare, but come to me soon.” She started up the stairs, then paused and looked back. “I know great pleasure from all your skills, Aylesbury. But I think no matter what else happens, it will always be the best for me when you allow me to hold you close in the peace afterward. I am old-fashioned, I suppose.”

  She continued walking upward, leaving him astonished and unexpectedly moved.

  * * *

  The king was dead. The proclamation of the next king was delayed one day, because January 30 was the anniversary of the execution of Charles II.

  The day after that, Lance received a letter from Merrywood’s steward. He read it, put it in his pocket, and left the house for a morning ride in the park with Ives and Gareth.

  “The town is filling,” Ives reported. “Even in the High Season we do not see such a collection of peers. The Strand is jammed with coaches.”

  “Two weeks hence, they will all jam the road to Windsor,” Lance said. “I assume our new king is distraught at his father’s demise?”

  “So it is reported,” Ives said. “He has taken ill. A malady of the lungs. He is very ill, I have heard. So ill that some fear there may be a double funeral.”

  Since Ives had a friendship with the new king, he probably heard right when he heard about Prinny.

  They continued walking their mounts at a sedate pace. Everyone in the park who was astride did the same. Galloping would appear too joyful in light of current events. It would be insulting to the Crown to publicly enjoy oneself right now.

  “He is a robust man, even if more corpulent than is healthy,” Gareth said of the new king. “He will pull through.”

  Lance did not know if his brothers offered prayers in the silence that followed. His own mind calculated. Two weeks until the funeral. No one would think of anything else during that time. Then another fortnight at least while the practicalities of the transition occurred. He had a month more or less to have his problem settled so no one bothered with it when life began getting back to normal.

  “Is your bride overwhelmed while she prepares herself for her first public court ceremony? It must be a daunting notion for her,” Gareth said.

  “She is at the dressmaker today, with Lady Kniveton as her advisor. The viscountess has agreed to shepherd her through the preparations, and explain where she must go and what she must do.”

  Gareth glanced over, surprised. Ives grinned.

  “An odd choice of advisor,” Ives said.

  “She was very happy to do it. Delighted. She has taken to the task with enthusiasm.”

  Ives laughed aloud. That drew a few scowls from others in the park. Including Gareth.

  “Did you limit your list of possible advisors to Gareth’s old lovers, or were there others considered?” Ives asked.

  “She was not really my lover,” Gareth muttered. “It was a very brief fascination.”

  “On your part.”

  “I did not limit my choices to our brother’s conquests, for lack of a more accurate word,” Lance said. “I merely realized one of them would be most likely to agree in these most busy and trying times.”

  Gareth did not like it at all. “If you so much as intimated to her that I might attend on Lady Kniveton while she advised, I am going to thrash you.”

  “I intimated nothing.” Lance smiled. “I cannot be held responsible for any hopes the lady may have, however.”

  “If she expects a little attention, you can surely give it,” Ives said. “For Lance. For his duchess. For the family. For England, by Zeus!”

  “The hell I will.”

  “You speak like it takes great effort on your part to charm ladies,” Lance said. “It comes to you as naturally as breathing. No one will expect you to compromise yourself or your love of Eva. However, if Lady Kniveton gets peevish, it might help if you smile once or twice when in her company. Flatter a tad. Et cetera, et cetera . . .”<
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  “I keep telling you there will be no ‘et cetera.’ Nor will I ever be in her company.”

  “He gets very piqued when we mention his past, doesn’t he?” Lance asked Ives. “Oh, how the mighty fall when vanquished by a woman.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you, Lance, lest marital delight cause you to abandon good sense. If a man is not careful, a woman will make him sentimental and doting,” Ives lectured.

  “I should follow your example instead, you mean. Remain in command of both my woman and myself.”

  “Exactly.”

  They plodded along the path. Lance looked over at Ives, just in time to see Gareth doing the same. Gareth smiled slowly, and shook his head in amazement.

  Ives gazed straight ahead, confident in his illusion that marriage had not changed him in the slightest.

  * * *

  Lance soon peeled away from his brothers, and aimed his horse southwest through Middlesex. Once he had left London’s environs behind, he stopped and took out the letter the steward had sent him. It contained an address and a few directions.

  A half hour later he walked his horse up a country lane to a cottage surrounded by a garden. A young woman and a girl sat beneath a tree beyond the house, amid shrubbery. The girl saw him, spoke to the woman, and ran into the house.

  By the time Lance reached the door, it had opened. A short man, bald and bespectacled, stood there pulling on his coat. “Your Grace! When my grandniece said a gentleman approached, I never imagined it would be you.”

  “Mr. Payne. It is good to see you so well.”

  Payne looked behind himself, then smiled weakly. “Would you like to come in?”

  Lance did not want to impose the way a duke’s visit inevitably would. “The day is fair. If you can spare a few minutes, we can chat out here.”

  “Time is what I’ve plenty of these days.” He closed the door. Together they paced back up the lane.

  “I was neglectful in not seeing you before you left Merrywood,” Lance said. “I should have done so, to thank you for your long service to the family.”