The Gypsy Duchess

by Nadine Miller

  “Well, as you can see, we have.”

  “And what, may I ask, makes you think you are any safer from the viscount here than you are in London?”

  She raised her chin defiantly. “I have connections in Cornwall and have sent for some trustworthy men to act as Charles’s bodyguards. They should arrive tomorrow. Until then, my entire staff is on the alert.”

  She frowned impatiently. “Now, let us see what you’ve done to yourself.” Before Devon could think to forestall her, she whipped the robe off his legs. “Dear God.” She gasped at the sight of his blood-soaked trousers. “Of all the foolish, harebrained, irresponsible”—she raised eyes luminous with moisture—”unspeakably gallant thing to do.”

  She brushed away a tear trailing down her cheek. “Forgive me, my lord, I have misjudged you. When you didn’t answer my request, I thought you were letting your hatred for me color your thinking. I see now you are a man of honor who cares enough about Charles’s welfare to risk your life to see him safe.”

  Devon stared at her, dumbfounded. The woman must be mad. Both his abortive attempts to protect his young ward had ended in disaster, rendering him helpless and humiliated. Any right-thinking man would be quick to point out that as a guardian he was a total failure; she was weeping with gratitude because he “cared.” How could any man deal rationally with such an illogical creature?

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the beads of cold sweat from his brow. “I must ask you to step down from my carriage, madam. Now that I see you have the situation in hand, I am anxious to leave for Langley Hall before darkness overtakes us.” He looked for support from the marquess who still sat in the corner of the carriage seat where he had moved to accommodate the duchess.

  Stamden raised an eyebrow. “If you’re asking my advice, I think you would be foolish in the extreme to travel any father with that leg of yours in such lamentable condition.”

  “My thought exactly,” the duchess said. She beckoned to two-burly-looking fellows who immediately stepped forward carrying a litter. “Lift the earl carefully,” she commanded, “and take him directly to the chamber prepared for him so we can staunch the flow of blood before he gets any weaker.”

  “We?” Devon gasped. “What do you mean we can staunch the flow of blood? My wound, madam, is not in a part of my anatomy suitable for viewing by feminine eyes.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the duchess said and departed from the carriage to busy herself directing his removal. Seconds later, Devon found himself stretched out on the litter and covered to his chin with a blanket. “Ned!” Stamden! Do something!” he shouted as he was borne up the stairs.

  “Not to worry, Captain,” Ned said, trotting along beside him. “For certain, I’d never let a woman tend you. Though I will say the duchess knows a bit more than most about nursing the sick—and she never batted an eye about the moldy bread. Said the Spanish gypsies has been using mold to cure infection for as long as anyone can remember.”

  “Spanish gypsies! Good God! Where would a woman like the duchess come up with that bit of information?”

  “Asked her that very question myself, Captain, but I got no answer. Likely she didn’t hear me, what with ordering the staff to ready your chamber and all.”

  He gave Devon’s arm a comforting pat. “Now stop your fretting, Captain. I’ll not let a soul see to your wound save myself, and that’s a promise.”

  With a weary sigh, Devon gave in to the inevitable. Sinking back onto the litter, he closed his eyes and trusted himself to his loyal batman’s care.

  Moira wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulder and settled in a chair in a corner of the earl’s bedchamber. It was past midnight and she had just convinced an exhausted Ned Bridges to catch a few hours’ sleep in the next chamber, with the promise she would call him immediately if the earl grew restless.

  Luckily the earl was sound asleep and likely to stay so until well into the morning. For despite his protests, Ned had poured enough of the laudanum she’d provided into him to insure a good night’s rest.

  Moira smiled to herself, thinking how he would hate it if he knew she was keeping vigil over him. He obviously resented owing her anything—even a night’s lodging and a dose of laudanum. She could imagine how he’d feel if he knew she was his nurse as well as his hostess. She would simply have to make sure Ned kept his word and remained mum; then the arrogant earl would never be the wiser.

  Her nighttime vigil was not the only subject she wished to avoid discussing with the earl. There was that business with the knife and the careless slip she’d made about the Spanish gypsies. Of all the foolish things to say! It was as if, she’d turned into a mindless, babbling idiot, at the first mention of Devon St. Gwyre injured and in need of care. What was there about the man that he could affect her so?

  She studied his face, illumined by the bedside candle. It was a handsome face with clean, strong lines, but she’d looked upon other faces just as handsome and her pulse hadn’t raced the way it was racing now. Nor had her body ached for any other man’s touch, nor her fingers itched to bury themselves in another man’s unruly, golden hair.

  She desired Devon St. Gwyre. It was as simple as that.

  She would never admit it to another living soul—nor even to herself except alone in the blackest hours of the night. She had desired him when first she’d seen him four years before—an arrogant, insensitive gaujo who had insulted her in the most demeaning of ways. She desired him now—and the desire was as senseless as a woodland fox yearning after the hound that led the hunt.

  As a small girl at her grandmother’s knee, she had listened in horror to the ancient gypsy legend of the golden warrior who drove young lovesick gypsy girls to seek their own destruction. “How could a practical gypsy maiden be so foolish as to give her heart to such a creature?” she had asked her grandmother. Now, inexplicably, desire for a cold-eyed Englishman burned like a fire in her passionate gypsy blood—and if any mortal man was ever an embodiment of that legendary warrior, Devon St. Gwyre was surely that man.

  As she watched, the figure on the bed moved restlessly, tossing his head from side to side and moaning a single, strangled word that sounded strangely like, “Moira.”

  She sat perfectly still. Listening. There it was again. “Moira.” But now it was more a plea than a moan. She slipped from her chair, dropped her shawl, and padded barefoot across the thick Turkish rug to stand beside the bed.

  His eyes were open but glazed with sleep and laudanum. “Moira,” he called, holding out his arms. “Come to me, my lovely siren.”

  Moira held her breath. The Earl of Langley was dreaming…of her. She gazed down at the man who had dominated her own fantasies for the past four years, and her heart fluttered wildly in her chest to think he dreamed of her as well.

  Dare she acquiesce to his demand?

  A wicked imp whispered in her ear. “Whyever not? He is too deeply drugged to remember tomorrow what he asked or how you answered. Steal the kiss you have longed for. You may never have another chance—and what poor kind of gypsy are you that you cannot even steal your heart’s desire?”

  “Devon, my love,” she whispered, bending over him and burying her fingers in the mass of fair hair fanned out across his pillow. She felt his strong arms enclose her, saw his lips part in hungry invitation, begging her own to supply the feast they craved. She could no more resist that invitation than she could forgo breathing. With a sigh, she covered his mouth with her own.

  He responded instantly with the masterful, well-practiced technique of a man who had obviously known many women. Yet, unlike his punishing embrace of four years earlier, the touch of his lips this time was as exquisitely tender as the first, shy kiss of a young Abelard worshipping his Héloise.

  He kissed her again, growling low in his throat—the rich, earthy sound of the aroused male animal that found an answering echo in the core of her femininity. Drawing her closer, he deepened the kiss into an act of intimacy far beyond the m
ere touching of lips that Moira had heretofore experienced.

  One hand slid from around her back to cup her breast, and she gasped when the heat of his fingers burned through the thin fabric of her gown. “Take it off, sweet siren,” he whispered. “How can we make love with all this between us?”

  “Hush my lord—my wicked, rakish gaujo lord,” Moira whispered back, feathering gentle kisses across his eyelids, which had drifted closed even as he spoke. “A man with a wound such as yours cannot think of making love.” She laughed softly. “And a good thing too, else we might both live to regret the temptations this night offers.”

  “Then kiss me again, sweet siren,” he murmured. “Heal me with your tender passion.” He smiled seductively, but his hand fell slack against her breast and his breathing deepened until his chest rose and fell with the same long, slow rhythm as the waves washing against the base of the Cornish cliff on which White Oaks stood.

  Moira kissed him one last time—softly, lingeringly on his firm lips, and a single, sorrowful tear trailed its lonely path down her cheek to splash against the corner of his mouth.

  Smiling in his sleep, the Earl of Langley licked the salty morsel from his lips and swallowed it as he might swallow a drop of fine French brandy.

  Devon woke to bright sunshine streaming through the open window near his bed. Apparently some careless servant had opened it to air the sickroom and forgotten to close it again—a dereliction of duty his mother would never have suffered, but he had a feeling the duchess took a much more casual attitude toward running a household than his persnickety parent.

  Still he couldn’t complain. He had slept out in the open too often on the Peninsula to hold the usual fear of night air, and his head felt miraculously clear compared to how it usually felt after a laudanum-induced sleep. Even the pain in his leg had subsided to no more than a dull throb.

  Also—he smiled to himself—the passionate dream he’d had this past night had ended far more satisfactorily than its frustrating predecessors, and that alone lifted his spirits.

  He turned his head and met the stoic gaze of Ned Bridges, who sat in a chair a few feet from the bed. “Devil take it, Ned, are you still here? When do you ever sleep?”

  “Slept like a log, as a matter of act, between midnight and near five this morning,” Ned said, with a cheerful grin. “And feel top o’ the trees for it.” He bustled around, laying out Devon’s razor and shaving soap, and looking, inexplicably, like the cat that had swallowed the cream. With a flourish, he swept the cover from a bowl of steaming hot water which sat on the bedside commode.

  “It’s well past noon. Her grace will be coming soon to check on you no doubt and you’ll want to be looking your best,” he said, stropping the razor against the sturdy strip of Yorkshire leather he kept on hand for just that purpose. “Fine woman, that, for all her queer ideas—like opening the window so’s you’d wake with less of a headache from the laudanum. Swears she sleeps with her own window wide open summer or winter—and who ever heard such a claim as that from any but an old army campaigner?”

  “Who indeed?” Devon studied his batman’s face. “Just when was it the duchess opened the window? I don’t recall her doing so when she visited yesterday afternoon.”

  A dark flush spread across Ned’s rugged features. “Now that I think about it, she did pop in once while you was sleeping.”

  “How long did she stay?”

  “How long?” Ned applied himself diligently to working the soap into a foamy lather with the shaving brush. “Can’t say as how I looked at a clock, Captain.”

  Devon pushed himself upright on his pillow and raised his chin so Ned could lather it. “Mayhap between midnight and five this morning, would you say?”

  Ned gave a derisive grunt. “Is there nothing you can’t ferret out of me, Captain?”

  “I hope not,” Devon said half in earnest.

  Ned’s face bore a look of patient resignation. “It was like this. Her grace insisted I get some sleep. Said I looked like I’d been run down by a coach and four—and to tell the truth, I felt like it. But I’d never have left you without her promise she’d call me if you so much as turned over in bed.”

  “I know that, Ned. I wasn’t questioning your loyalty,” Devon said absentmindedly. “In fact, I’m relieved someone spelled you for a few hours.” But did that someone have to be the duchess?”

  His mind awhirl, he tried to recall the details of the dream he’d found so enjoyable, for he was certain he must have dreamed it during the time she’d sat with him. Could that be why, for the first time, he’d gotten a good look at the siren’s face? In truth, even now he recalled every detail of every feature down to the tiny, provocative mole at the corner of her sensuous mouth. But then how could he not when in his dream he had kissed her so passionately?

  There was no doubt about it. The siren of his dreams was the beautiful Moira, and, come to think of it, he hadn’t stopped at merely kissing her. His hands had cupped her exquisite breasts…shortly before he had demanded she remove her gown so he could make love to her.

  Hell and damnation! He just hoped he hadn’t talked in his sleep, as Stamden claimed he was prone to do. The last thing he needed was for the beautiful little minx to realize he lusted after her the same as every other man who came within sight of her.

  Moira debated long and hard before visiting the earl’s sickroom the afternoon after their nocturnal interlude. Ned Bridges had warned her, his employer had pried the truth out of him about her sitting with him during the night, and the dreadful thought occurred to her that the unscrupulous rake may not have been asleep after all when they’d shred those moments of passion. The thought was too disquieting to contemplate.

  Still, she dared not neglect her duty as hostess, for if Devon St. Gwyre was as astute as both Ned and Elizabeth claimed, he would surely grow suspicious if she acted peculiar in any way. Better to proceed as if nothing untoward had transpired.

  “You look much improved, my lord,” she said as she entered his room at teatime, followed by a maid carrying a heavily laden tea tray.

  Did she just imagine it, or was that a speculative look in his eyes?

  He was sitting up in bed reading, but he instantly put his book aside and favored her with a strained smile. “Ah, tea. How pleasant, your grace.”

  If there was anything he hated more than tea, it was a woman with a smug expression on her face when she offered it. Hell’s fire, from the look of her, he must have babbled his brains out while she sat there all night and listened.

  “Charles has been asking after you, my lord. Would it tire you too much if he visited you for a few moments? He has come through his frightening ordeal with amazing fortitude for one so young. The boy has pluck. Still, I cannot help but feel he would take comfort in your presence,” Moira said, pouring tea with hands whose trembling she could not seem to control.

  She was no green girl fresh from the schoolroom, but neither was she a jaded sophisticate capable of carrying on a polite conversation with man who just a few hours earlier had had his hand on her breast and his tongue in her mouth. Devon St. Gwyre was turning her safe little world upside down. If she had to carry one end of the litter herself, she was packing him off to Langley Hall before the week was out. Maybe then she would get her wits in order.

  “Seeing the boy will not tire me in the least; I have much to discuss with him, including this companion I understand you have procured for him,” Devon replied. “Send him to me if you will, tomorrow morning.”

  Devil take it, she did have a tiny mole at the corner of her mouth, just as he’d dreamed. Now how could he have known that? And what would she think if she knew that his dream about her had been so lurid, that his mouth still tingled from the kiss they’d shared. The effect this woman had on him was too disturbing by half. If he had to be transported on a litter, he was leaving for Langley Hall before the week was out. It was either that or lose his mind entirely.

  He pulled himself together. “I hav
e much to discuss with you also before I leave White Oaks, madam,” he said severely. “We cannot go on in this willy-nilly fashion. Certain rules need to be established at the onset regarding the young duke’s guardianship. Rules which I shall expect you to adhere to without question.

  Chapter Six

  Willy-nilly! The Earl of Langley thought she was raising Charles in a “willy-nilly fashion,” did he? First he’d decreed she’d had no business leaving London without his permission, despite the danger to Charles in that sinkhole of crime and corruption; now he intended to establish rules to which she must “adhere without question.” She blushed to think she could ever have been so lost to reason as to have imagined she found such a pompous individual desirable.

  Moira paced the length and breadth of the first-floor salon to which she had repaired after stalking out of his bedchamber, too angry to trust herself to address his accusations in a rational manner. How she regretted her emotional declaration when he’d first arrived that she had sadly misjudged him. It was obvious the only error she had made in judging the sorry fellow was not to allow that he was an even greater fool than he appeared.

  But what could she hope to gain by arguing with him? She was at his mercy, as women were always at the mercy of men in the English social structure. Not that life with the Rom was any different. Her grandfather ruled his little band of gypsies with an iron hand and within each gypsy family, the man’s word was law, despite the fact that the woman who must obey that law was often far more intelligent than he.

  Life was not fair! She gave a vicious kick to the nearest object at hand—a sturdy ottoman—too late remembering she was, as usual, barefoot. She was still hobbling about holding her bruised toe when she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves on the drive fronting the manor house.

  She limped to the window, hoping to catch a first glimpse of the men she had summoned to guard Charles. But instead of the three men she expected to see, there were four—and the fourth was all too familiar. She groaned. Of all the people in the world she did not want to see right now, her ne’er-do-well father headed the list.