“You’re awake!” Constance said. “How is your ankle? I’ve been fretting over you all morning, but Archer forbade me from interrupting your sleep.”
“I’m much recovered, thank you. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Nonsense, you must meet my friends.” Beckoning Poppy toward their midst, Constance introduced her around the circle, drawing her first to a pretty brunette in a bright blue gown. “This is Miss Bastian, of the Philadelphia Bastians. Her parents sent her to England to acquire our refined ways, so imagine what they would say if they knew she’d been adopted by the likes of moi.”
“Quelle horreur,” the shorter of the gentlemen—a pear-shaped fellow in a primrose-colored frock coat embroidered with fanciful turquoise birds—said with an exaggerated shudder.
“And might I present Mr. Desmond Flannery,” Constance said, tapping him fondly with her fan. “Editor of the London Peculiar, the most scandalous gazette in London and the only one worth reading.”
“Charmed,” the man said. “Constance tells us that you are creating a ballroom forest out of nothing but tinsel and a few strands of moss. My readers will be aground.”
“And this,” Constance said, moving her along to a woman with shimmering pale hair identical to her own, “is my dear cousin Lady Rosecroft.” Her tone lost its warmth as she turned to the final guest, a strikingly golden young man who was nearly as pretty as Constance herself. “And Lady Rosecroft’s cousin by marriage. The Earl of Apthorp.”
The earl inclined his head gracefully and looked upon Poppy with smiling, amber eyes. “Lady Constance has spoken of your talents with nothing short of reverence, Miss Cavendish. It’s a privilege.”
Constance rolled her eyes. “Oh, Apthorp. Do stop trying to be devastating.”
“What in heaven’s name have I done to deserve this assemblage?” Archer asked, stepping into the room from the terrace doors.
Even on this gray day, looking so drawn and subdued about the eyes, he was handsome. His coat was damp from his walking outside in the drizzle, his lustrous hair still shiny with raindrops.
Amidst the sudden commotion of pleasantries, Poppy felt his gaze land only on her. It was just a moment, a mere flicker of an eye, but it filled her with a jolt of certainty: he had been in her bed last night. He had held her until she drifted back to sleep.
Her spine went rigid.
It was unthinkable.
Entering ladies’ bedchambers unbidden was exactly the kind of liberty for which his late father had been infamous. She should by all rights be affronted.
Terrified of him.
She should not trust that his intentions had been kind or merciful.
And yet.
She was oddly touched.
He greeted each of the guests, lingering for a moment, she noticed, over Constance’s introduction to Miss Bastian. When the conversation drifted back to the topic of the ball, he asked in a low voice: “How are we today, Miss Cavendish?”
We, he said. How are we?
The question was so harmless that anyone overhearing it would naturally assume he was inquiring on the state of her ankle, or her disposition, or her progress in the ballroom. Yet unspoken in his tone was every intimate thing that had passed between them the night before.
“Much improved, Your Grace,” she answered softly. It was just a whisper of a bland response. But she hoped he understood that it meant I remember.
He didn’t respond, and when she glanced at him, his eyes were no longer on her, and he had lost all color. She followed the line of his gaze to the corridor, where a little boy with a shock of white hair was toddling toward the adults inside, his shaky steps trailed by a nurse.
The boy staggered into the room with a joyous gurgle. Poppy could not but laugh at the sight of him. He was perhaps the most adorable creature she had ever seen.
Constance jumped to her feet, delighted. “Georgie!” she cried. “Look who is walking on his own two clever feet! Come here, you sly fellow!” She crouched down to hug the child, who smiled shyly and darted away to bury his face in Lady Rosecroft’s dress.
“Don’t hide from Lady Constance, darling,” his mother said. “She isn’t entirely wicked.”
The boy peeked out, weighing the likelihood of the threat. His eyes fell on Poppy. She gave him a little wave. He beamed up at her before hiding his face once again in his mother’s skirts.
Constance shot an adoring glance at her brother, as if to say, Isn’t he wonderful? But Westmead had stood and turned to leave the room.
Constance crossed her arms. “Are you withdrawing so soon, Your Grace?”
“Excuse me,” he said blandly. “I am late to meet with my solicitor.”
His sister fixed him in an uncharacteristically icy gaze. “Surely your solicitor can spare you for an hour while you become reacquainted with your godson. ’Tis been a year since you last saw him.” She brightened her voice and turned to Georgie. “Perhaps an adventure to the attic is in order. There’s nothing like a romp through the attic on a rainy day.”
The boy peered up at his godfather, hopeful.
“Not today, I’m afraid,” Westmead muttered, already halfway out the door.
Lady Hilary and Constance exchanged a weighted look.
“Well, I should like to play with Georgie Boy,” Constance pronounced, standing and taking the boy’s hand. “Lead the way, good soldier.”
The group dispersed, with Lady Hilary following Constance and the men retiring to dress before dinner. Only Miss Bastian lingered.
“Wasn’t that an odd exchange?” she murmured.
“It was, rather,” Poppy agreed—relieved that the discomfort in the air had not been her imagination.
Miss Bastian leaned in and dropped her voice. “I’m told Westmead acts very strangely around the boy—the whole family is disturbed by it. Mr. Flannery believes it’s because he is in love with Lady Rosecroft and can’t bear the idea that he lost her to another man.” She giggled into her hand.
Poppy felt an instant stabbing of dislike, and not just because the idea of Westmead in love made her irritable.
“One finds there is often little truth to gossip,” she said.
Miss Bastian gave her a coy smile.
“You can always count on Mr. Flannery to concoct the most scandalous explanation to any mystery—it is, after all, his profession. But every so often he is right about something.”
Archer was drenched, bone-chilled, and exhausted.
When the rain stopped, he had ridden out with the land agent to tour improvements on the estate. Wiltshire not being known for the constancy of its weather, they had promptly been caught in a storm. When it passed, he’d lingered on the misty downs until he was certain he’d miss supper, and the excruciating task of making idle conversation with his sister and cousin while their eyes silently reproached him for the scene that had passed in the library.
He knew that Hilary could perceive his aversion to her son. His own godson. But by God, he had not yet seen the boy when he agreed to stand at his christening.
When he did, his hands had shaken through the baptism. It had taken him days to recover.
It was the hair. That otherworldly de Galascon hair—a relic from his mother’s ancient Viking forebears that still graced each generation, the way other families were prone to myopia, or twins. Hair as startling as freshly poured cream in childhood that faded to a silvery blond with age. Given the chance.
The valet—a man employed at the insistence of his sister and who mostly served to annoy him—was hovering in his bedchamber, fussing with a pile of cravats.
“Would you like a tray sent up from the kitchen, Your Grace?” the man asked.
“No, thank you, Winston.” He had no appetite.
“Shall I help you out of your wet—”
“No. I have no need of anything further. Good night.” The man bowed and withdrew.
Archer waited until he heard the door shut before he peeled off his icy clothes. He did not keep a valet in London
. He did not allow servants to see his naked flesh. The marks along his back and shoulders were not easily explained, and he had no wish to make himself the subject of gossip.
Gossip had been the province of his father.
He inspected himself in the looking glass. His otherwise hale body still bore the marks of the years when he had spent most nights on Charlotte Street. He rubbed one silver trail of raised skin along his shoulder. He had been so careless at the start, forbidding Elena to stop until he bled. There had been little pleasure in it then—only pain he craved like opium, for it pushed the sickly fog back down into his gut.
Exorcised the memory of how he’d failed them.
Allowed him to bloody well get on with the endless miserable business of being still, interminably, alive.
The joy, the rapture—that had come later. The more he shaped himself into a man who would not fail again, the more vital the release became. He no longer craved the pain itself so much as the abandonment, the feeling of her power over him, the floor beneath his fingers. What had begun as penance had become a sacrament. He was grateful for it. It had saved him. It had taught him who he was.
But he still regretted the scars.
Outside the haven of Charlotte Street, where tastes such as his were understood, the scars marked him as the sordid son of a sordid father. The latest depraved Westmead in the long and brutish line of them, their taste for violence passed down with the seed.
That he did not hurt anyone would not excuse his tastes in the eyes of those who would judge him. It would only make him doubly damned: weak, in addition to debased.
He tried to imagine Miss Bastian taking in the sight of him on her wedding night. She’d run out screaming, no doubt. Well, easy enough to perform the act clothed. And no need to repeat it once he was sure of conception.
Assuming, of course, that he was still able to muster the enthusiasm to perform the act at all. He’d sealed off that part of himself so many years ago that, until he’d found himself kissing Poppy Cavendish, he’d forgotten what it felt like to even want it.
How he had studied making love from books and relished mapping what he’d learned onto the woman who met him in the woods. It had not taken long to abandon the theories in favor of instinct, pleasure. He had loved the primal feeling of being the one to guide her, to leave her shaking and well cared for. It had meant something fierce to him.
This morning, seeing Georgie had been all the reminder he needed that he didn’t want to feel anything that fiercely ever again.
He did not want it.
It was the house. It made him behave like the fool he’d been when he had still lived within these walls.
Like he did not know that pleasure was but half of a continuum on which the other end was pain.
Like he did not know what it was to lose what was most precious.
He returned the key to its place around his neck.
He dressed and crept down the hall to his study.
He’d received a fat sheaf of documents from the counting-house in London, full of reports to read and decisions to be made. With any luck it would occupy him until he fell asleep.
A light burned beneath the door.
Poppy was in hiding.
It was absurd, but necessary.
The alternative was entrapment by a diminutive girl and her maniacal obsession with amusement.
Poppy had lost nearly an entire day dodging the demands of Constance’s house party, limping from room to room with her sketchbook, evading increasingly pointed invitations to join the group in whist and singing and theatricals.
Out of desperation she had begged off supper, pleading soreness in her ankle, and tiptoed down the hall to the duke’s deserted study, hoping he would not mind her using his spare table in the service of finishing her work in the only part of the house to which the guests and the servants seemed too afraid to venture.
It was peaceful in this room—darkly paneled and orderly and redolent of woodsmoke and the faint spice of dried tobacco. The walls were lined with books. She spread her scrolls and chalks out on the table and set to work on her diagrams, growing calmer with each hour that passed free from interruption. She looked up only when she noticed it had grown too dim to see, and ducked into the hall to find a candle with which to light the lamps.
Once the room was adequately lit, she lingered by the bookshelves, stretching out her back. She ran her fingers over the titles, most in Latin. The leather-bound books were free from dust and well cared for but had the distinct, musty smell of volumes long unread. Classics no doubt left over from Westmead’s days at university. She spotted a few books of poetry in English and tomes on geometry and physics. She stopped upon an old edition of Systema Naturae—Mr. Linnaeus’s book, which she had read at least half a dozen times. Could the duke be harboring a secret interest in botany? An interest in classification would suit him, judging by the intricate piles he was wont to leave so carefully sorted on his desk. She reached to pull the book from the shelf, and a slim, clothbound volume tucked beside it slid out instead. The embossing on the cover was in French. Curious, she opened it and saw an inscription on the blank first page.
Archer—
I hope you will enjoy this as much as I have. I cannot look at plates X and XXII without imagining your return. I hope when you turn these pages, you think of me, as I lie awake and think of you.
Always,
B
She flushed at the intimacy of the words.
They had to have been written by a lover.
She really should not read any further. It was rude enough to invade Westmead’s private study without his permission, ruder still to touch his books, to read what had clearly been meant only for his eyes.
She darted a glance over her shoulder to ensure she was alone before reading the inscription again.
She ran her finger along the script. There was no date. The ink was fading.
God forgive her, but she simply had to know what was on plates X and XXII.
Slowly she turned the brittle, yellowed pages. It was a book of illustrations.
The first page sent a rush through her whole body. A woman lay on a blanket in a field, half-undressed, as a man stood, fully clothed, observing her. The woman’s breasts were freed from her gown and her fingers clutched one nipple as her other hand disappeared beneath the hemline of her skirts, which were rucked up around her thighs. She was gazing at the man who watched her, her expression one of pleasure.
Oh.
She was not wholly unfamiliar with the activity the woman undertook, nor the pleasures of exploring one’s own anatomy. But she had never heard of such activities acknowledged in the open, no less pictured in a book. Certainly she had not imagined the act might be performed for a gentleman’s enjoyment. For, if her understanding of anatomy was correct, the pronounced bulge in the gentleman’s breeches indicated he was as excited by the lady’s explorations as she was.
She flushed deeper at the thought of it.
At the thought of it, and at the thought of Westmead being aware of such a thing.
Could it be that the stern duke, the man who had kissed her with such a guilty mix of longing and reluctance, had once been a younger man who enjoyed this licentious, private gift from a lover? She found it difficult to imagine him that way.
Lovely, rather. But so unlikely.
She quickly turned the pages to find the plates in the inscription. The images grew stranger as she went, depicting positions and assemblages she had not read about in novels and never thought to contemplate when pondering the mysteries of copulation. Plate X showed a woman with her wrists bound behind her as a man pressed his lips to her exposed breasts and his knee between her open legs. Plate XXII showed a woman kneeling before her lover, her lips locked around his very large, excitable male appendage as his hands tugged at her hair.
Oh my.
She quickly paged through to the end of the book, not wanting to be discovered spying on this so very personal r
elic that she definitely should not be reading and certainly should not be reading while imagining him reading it, yet not able to deprive herself of any additional revelations it might offer. She thought back to the first plate, the dreamy woman with her hand between her legs, and felt a pang of longing so sharp it startled her.
What is becoming of you? Thoughts such as these might be entertained discreetly in a lady’s bedchamber late at night when no one was the wiser, but not in the study of said lady’s host, on whom she was blatantly, unforgivably spying. She must really put this book away.
She flipped to the end, but the last page stopped her. Two plates, side by side, showed the man from the earlier pages without his haughty posture.
In the first he was on his hands and knees, his back to the lady, completely nude. Behind him the woman held her hand aloft, as though she meant to strike him. His buttocks were marked with the imprints of her hand, and his arousal made clear the assault was one he welcomed.
The second showed him with his wrists bound to the posts of a bed, his eyes masked by a blindfold. The woman, wearing stays and hose, was riding him, her powerful plump thighs holding him in place, her head thrown back in relish.
Poppy shut the book, more violently than she ought as it was fraying at the seam, then carefully returned it to its hiding place. She walked stiff-legged back to the table and the hard-backed wooden chair and her innocent sketches of flowers and stared directly into space.
What were those final images?
Was that done, truly?
The tableau was so different from any clue gleaned in her meager and unpleasant experience with courtship. Her years of evading unwanted leers in the market, ducking away from Tom’s advances, fearing men who were capable of violence, had left her predisposed to think that men held all the power when it came to amorous matters. She’d never thought to contemplate that the roles might be reversed. That a lady might be the one to make demands. That a man might want it so.
Might delight in it.
How intriguing. Her stomach thrummed with a restless, churning feeling at the thought. She was half-inclined to quickly sketch those last two plates and tuck them in her ledger so that she could revisit them privately, at length. Along, perhaps, with plates X and XXII.
The Duke I Tempted Page 8