The edifice itself was plain and simple, fashioned of stone, situated upon an awkward parcel of land. He had not bought it for its monetary value, a relative pittance in comparison to the vast holdings of the Strathmore duchy. He had bought it, and paid handsomely for a caretaker to keep it clean and well-stocked with essentials at all times, for two reasons. First, it had special meaning to him, the sort which could not be derived from financial worth. Second, Griffin was a man who enjoyed hiding. Not only did he enjoy it, but he often found himself in a position in which he needed to hide.
Like today, for instance.
“Thank you.” Though the foodstuffs left behind by Pearson, the man he paid to maintain the property, were nothing impressive, he was certain he would be able to pull together a decent three-course meal.
He felt her gaze upon him like a caress.
“What are you making?”
There was something about cooking for Lady Violet, and doing so within this house in particular, that felt right in a way that cut straight to his marrow. He did not choose to question it or look deep inside himself for the source of that feeling. He simply accepted it. Basked in its warmth, which rivaled the heat of the fire he had built to prepare their dinner.
“Egg and onion soup to begin. This is a recipe of my mother’s,” he said casually, giving the onions he was frying in butter a stir.
He was admittedly no trained French chef, but his mother, who had been his father’s cook before he had married her in the scandal of his generation, had taught Griffin everything he knew. Even after she had become duchess, cooking had pleased her, relaxed her.
His father had not cared if the servants gossiped. He had been in love with Griffin’s mother, and he had allowed her to have the run of the kitchens. As a result, Griffin had spent many a happy day in his youth watching Mama prepare soups and salads and joints. Or working her magic with cherry tartlets.
All these years later, his parents both nothing more than cherished memories, he still found comfort in preparing food. There was something about creating something from nothing, from crafting sustenance with his own hands, that appealed to him in a way he could not explain.
“Your mother’s?” Lady Violet asked, surprise mingling with curiosity in her dulcet voice.
“Yes.” He slanted a glance in her direction, noting she had taken off her shoes and the tips of her stocking-clad toes were visible beneath the hem of her purple gown. Toes—covered toes, blast it—should not send a rush of need straight through him, but somehow, they did. “My mother worked in my father’s kitchens before he married her.”
He waited for her shocked exclamation, perhaps even disgust. Griffin was well-accustomed to the prejudices of his world. To many, a duchess who had once been a servant, would forever be a servant who had reached above herself, masquerading as one of her betters.
But Lady Violet’s expression was contemplative. She considered him with a regard that almost made him uncomfortable, as if she were seeing him for the first time. Or perhaps seeing straight to the heart of him, the part he kept buried.
“Did she teach you how to cook?” she asked, sounding genuinely interested.
“She did.” A rush of bittersweet fondness hit him as he recalled his mother. She had been lovely, with a beauty that shone from within, and the kindest heart of anyone he had ever met. She had died when he was imprisoned in Paris, and he would never forget returning home, scarred and broken, learning the pillar of his life had been taken from him forever.
He cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable by the stinging in his eyes. He was the Duke of Strathmore, by God, and he had been through the fiery pits of hell on earth without breaking down. He did not weep. Had not even done so when he had finally stood over his mother’s grave, wishing he could have told her one last time how much he loved her.
“You must miss her very much,” Lady Violet observed.
“Every day.” And it was true.
Lady Violet stared at him with that brilliant gaze of hers. Her regard did strange things to him. Things he did not understand. All he knew was he must not act upon the vicious instincts roiling through him now and stalk across the kitchen, hauling her into his arms.
Had he not learned anything from his father? His father had fallen hopelessly in love with his mother, despite their disparate worlds, and when he had lost her, he had been so despondent, he had taken to his chamber for a full month. Indeed, it may well have been the beginning of his madness.
Griffin had always promised himself he would not follow in his sire’s footsteps. He did not want to be ruled by his heart, to become so caught up with a woman, he could not bear to live without her. He had to cease this madness.
He turned his attention back to the task at hand, far safer, and gave the onions a stir. Satisfied they had been browned enough, he added water to the pot and stoked up the fire to get the water boiling.
“I lost my mother when I was ten,” she said into the companionable silence that had fallen between them. “She walked into the North Sea one day and never returned.”
It had not been what he had expected her to say, and the revelation left him shaken. He tried to envision a ten-year-old Lady Violet—a scrap of a girl, he was certain, with her dark hair in ringlets and big green eyes—losing her mother to suicide. His heart ached for the girl, for the woman she had become. For the first time since before his own mother had died, he longed to embrace a woman with compassion, rather than amorous intent.
He glanced back to her, studying her expression. There was no anger on her lovely face, only melancholy. “I am sorry, Lady Violet. I had no idea.”
“No one does.” She gave him a small, sad smile. “Not a soul, beyond the family, knows the truth of what happened that day, that my mother died by her own hand. I know Lucien has been harsh with you, but beneath his hard exterior, lies the heart of the boy who dragged his mother’s body from the ocean. What he saw and did that day—losing our mother in such shocking fashion—it changed him forever. It hardened him. Our father died a few years later, leaving the two of us alone, and Lucien with a mountain of responsibilities. The weight of the world is upon his shoulders, and it makes him unyielding and cold sometimes.”
“Christ.” He did not want to soften toward Arden, for the man was his enemy, hell-bent upon casting him into Newgate and letting him rot. “It must have been terribly sad and shocking for the both of you. While I admit I harbor no love for your brother, I would not wish such a thing upon my greatest enemy.”
“I do not tell you this so you pity Lucien, but rather, so you know he is not all bad.” Her expression was earnest, open.
She took his breath, this beautiful, vibrant creature. Each time he looked at her, he could scarcely believe she had trusted him, that she believed in him. It was humbling, but it also made him feel ten bloody feet tall. But then, inevitably, every emotion was blotted out by the sure and true knowledge he did not deserve her trust. That he was planning to destroy it. That there would be a chance Violet would not forgive him for bringing Arden down.
But he could not linger upon the murky possibilities of the future now. He had to instead keep his sight firmly upon the horizon and what needed to be achieved: clearing his name, sending the true villain to prison, and ruining the Duke of Arden.
“He cannot be entirely irredeemable,” he forced himself to say in as light a tone as he could muster through the dark thoughts churning within him, the need for vengeance. “He has you for a sister, after all.”
She sent him a soft smile. “He will see reason when we can prove your innocence. I know it.”
Griffin was not as certain that the Duke of Arden could be induced to reason. It was why he had absconded with Lady Violet, intent upon making her his bride. It was also why he intended to do everything in his power to bring Arden down as the leader of the League. But he said nothing of his true intentions aloud to the lovely woman he was using as a pawn in his game of chess.
“I wish I po
ssessed your confidence, my lady, but then, you know your brother better than I do.”
Guilt pricked at him as he added approximate measures of milk and flour to the boiling onions, shaking in some salt and pepper afterward. He must not lose sight of his purpose. Nor could he allow this false intimacy between them, this brief respite in their journey and travails, to affect him.
He had to remain immovable.
Just then, the scent of roses, delicate and floral and delicious and so thoroughly Lady Violet, permeated the smell of his boiling soup. She had come nearer, drifting from her chair in her stockinged feet. Within touching distance.
And he was instantly anything but immovable.
Rather, he was hard. His cock went as rigid as marble, rising full and heavy and thick to press against the placket of his trousers.
Her skirts came into sight then, dark-purple silk, great bunches of it wrinkled from the time they had spent within the confines of the carriage that had brought them here. Nearer she came, hem swaying in dangerous proximity to the fire he had so recently stoked.
“I want to help you, Strathmore,” she said, laying a hand upon his forearm as he stirred the soup. “What shall I do? Only tell me, and it is done. I do not prefer to sit idly by while others do my work for me.”
There was no other woman like this one, and he knew it. A lady who thought nothing of throwing her reputation upon a funeral pyre for his sake. Who chose to help him, despite her love for her brother, and when she ought not to trust him in the slightest. Who offered to help him cook dinner and did not so much as blink when he told her his mother had been a servant, that his blood was not as pure and true and aristocratic as every other duke’s in England.
He kept his gaze averted from her, lest he do something foolish, and thank Christ he did, for when her skirts swayed once more, they nearly swayed straight into the hearth. He stopped stirring, caught her waist in his hands, and spun her away from danger.
“Take care, my lady.” His grip on her tightened when he fell into her eyes and noted the obsidian orbs in their centers dilating wide. “You ventured too close to the fire and nearly set yourself aflame.”
Her hands had fluttered to his shoulders as she sought purchase during his abrupt shifting of her. Fingertips tightened, digging into his shoulders. Far from pain, he was instead lanced by a hazy, almost euphoric pleasure, the sort he had only previously felt before when he had poured too many spirits down his worthless gullet in an effort to drown his past.
“I believe I have already stepped into the fire, Your Grace,” she whispered, those thick-lash-studded eyes searching his, finding him when he did not want her to, bringing him, vulnerable and bleeding, to the surface for her inspection. “And I am currently aflame.”
Damnation.
She certainly felt as if she were aflame. Her heat radiated through the layers of undergarments and silk keeping his fingers from creamy bare skin. Keeping his body from claiming hers. Keeping him from doing what he so desperately wanted to do to her.
All the women in the world he could have found to bed, in an England rife with beauties of all shapes and sizes, yet somehow, he only wanted this one. What a perverse bastard he was.
“Is this the decorum you spoke of?” he asked, reminding her as much as he reminded himself.
She was temptation, and he was greedy and sinful and guileless, and he would take everything she offered and more. But first he wanted her to make the decision to become his duchess. He wanted her to stand before him and speak vows, so that later, afterward, she could not claim he had misled her. Somehow, this was important to him. More important than the aching in his ballocks and the state of his cock.
Her cheeks went predictably pink. She swallowed, and he watched, fascinated by the subtle movement of her pale throat. God, how he wanted to set his lips there. To feed upon her as if he required her to survive.
“No,” she said at last. “Forgive me, Strathmore. Aunt Hortense would be quite appalled by my behavior.”
Aunt Horrible could go hang for all he cared. But something else was bothering him. Something he needed to rectify at once.
“Griffin, spitfire,” he said gently, setting her away from him and releasing her waist with the greatest of difficulty. “I have heard you refer to Flowerpot as his given name at least two dozen times by now. If we are to wed, it stands to reason you may call me by my Christian name as well.”
He did not miss the flare of some deeper emotion in her eyes, the darkening of her irises. But she passed her palms over her skirts in an elegant show of smoothing them.
“Must you insist upon referring to Charles as Flowerpot?”
He growled. Yes, he did. He could not help the sound that emerged from him, primitive and wild, born of the deep-rooted sense of possession he felt toward this woman. “Let us establish a deal, if you like, my lady. I will cease calling the arsehole in question Flowerpot, and you will stop calling him Charles. The only man’s name I want on your lips from this moment forward is mine, preferably being screamed in ecstasy. Are we in accord?”
Her luscious lower lip dropped.
He supposed he could have been more subtle, but Lady Violet West inspired all manner of feelings within him, and not a single goddamn one of them could be classified as subtle.
“Violet?” he prodded when she did not answer, taking this liberty for himself.
Now they had put sufficient time and distance between themselves and Lark House, what was about to unfold seemed real for the first time. She was going to be his in every way. He would know how she felt beneath him, how her body clenched around his cock, the way she tasted, the sounds she made when she spent. Everything. All of it, all of her, would be his. And he too would be hers.
Until she could no longer bear the sight of him.
But that was later, and this was now, and there was soup simmering over a fire and he had two more courses to make.
“I agree to your deal, Griffin,” she said at last, and this—Violet relenting—felt like a gift.
One he would wholeheartedly accept. “Thank you. Now then, if you are insistent upon offering me aid, perhaps you might peel these carrots.”
Grinning, he handed a bunch of root vegetables, their leafy tops neatly trimmed to preserve them, out to her. She took them from him, offering him a small, shy smile in return. “I have never before peeled a carrot, Griffin, but I am more than willing to try.”
Of course she had not. As the daughter of a duke, and then the sister to one, she would never have been required to learn such a thing. And as a duke himself, it was highly irregular that he had, he reminded himself. But he had been raised with his mother’s ideals; that there was no harm in hard work, but rather great pride in it.
One of his first happy memories was peeling potatoes for his mother as a lad so she could make her famous scalloped potatoes. It was a great shame Pearson had not thought to stock the house with potatoes, for Griffin would have loved serving Violet his mother’s decadent recipe.
Another day, perhaps.
“I will show you, spitfire,” he promised softly, enjoying the way the firelight and twin oil lamps in the room glinted off her lustrous hair and eyes. “But first, I need to stir my soup.”
Violet could not eat another morsel of food. Everything Strathmore had prepared had been perfectly delectable, some of the best food she had ever eaten. Not Strathmore, she reminded herself then, but Griffin.
They sat terribly near, but still opposite each other, at a small scarred wooden table in the kitchen where he had prepared the meal. The fire in the hearth was cooling to embers, the oil lamps were turned low, and the comforting scent of food blended with his potently male scent of musk and pine.
The Duke of Strathmore was a proficient chef. She still could not quite fathom it as she forced the last bite of custard tartlet into her mouth, swallowing it down. His soup had been rich and divine, followed by ham smothered in velouté, and mashed carrots, and finally the tartlet.
&n
bsp; He had apologized for the lack of fresh fruit before she had begun to devour it. Cherry would have been delightful, but raspberry or peach would have done every bit as well. But Violet had never tasted anything better, and she would happily forego fruit for the rest of her life if it meant she could sit across from the beautiful duke she was going to marry and eat one of his confections.
“I regret the house did not have a larder stocked with more options,” he said into the companionable silence that had descended as they completed their meal.
Violet found enjoying a meal without the hovering presence of servants, particularly one so intimate, freeing and thrilling all at once. “I cannot imagine what you would have produced from a well-stocked larder. This alone was so delicious, I fear I may forever view all dishes served me inferior.”
He laughed, his blue eyes dancing, and he seemed more carefree in that moment than she had ever seen him. It suited him well, she thought, the role of devil-may-care agent. But there was far more to him than the surface suggested. He was also a man who was proud of his mother, a former servant who had risen above her station to become a duchess. He had loved that woman enough to learn her trade and employ it himself.
What a conundrum he was, the Duke of Strathmore. Just when she had supposed she had figured him out, he changed again, revealing new layers and depths.
“It was passable,” he argued without heat. “Enough to fill our bellies for the journey ahead of us tomorrow.”
Tomorrow brought with it a fresh barrage of emotions for Violet. It was a reminder they were en medias res of their journey. A reminder too that she was betraying her beloved brother to prove the innocence of a man she scarcely knew. A reminder she knew precious little about their plans from this moment onward.
And it was well past time for her to ask.
“Where are we going tomorrow?” she queried, setting aside her fork and napkin and raising the glass of wine he had filled to her lips.
It was half drained, her second of the evening, and everything was awash with a warm, delicious glow of possibility. Probably a poor idea to consume more, but she was rather enjoying her first taste of freedom, truth be told. Like the duke’s cooking, and like Strathmore himself, freedom was mouthwatering, and she wanted more.
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