Panting, she laid her head on his shoulder while his rough breathing slowed.
A sharp rap sounded on the door.
With a shocked gasp, they both looked at the door as if it had suddenly become a window and people could see them.
“Who is it?” Dev loudly demanded while Thea hastily moved away.
She smoothed down her wrinkled dress and pushed a few errant locks back into place, fearing it would be obvious they’d been making passionate love on a chair in the morning room.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Develin,” Jackson said from beyond the door. “The Duke of Scane has sent a messenger asking you to go to him at once. It’s very important, the lad said.”
Dev, who had returned his own clothes to a more normal state, although his cravat showed signs of hasty tying, darted a puzzled glance at Thea, then said, “I had best go at once.”
Thea nodded. After all, there was no reason he should not.
So he did, leaving his wife to hope the long nights of anxious waiting were finally over.
* * *
As Develin galloped toward the duke’s seat, his thoughts were less about the duke’s summons than his wife. His pretty, passionate wife. His pretty, passionate, irresistible wife. Making love with her, whether in bed or elsewhere, was like nothing he’d experienced before. No other woman aroused him as she did. No other woman rendered him so eager to please her, or so satisfied when he realized he’d brought her to a climax.
But it wasn’t only physical intimacy that he wanted with Thea. He wanted to simply spend time with her, to hear about her life and her experiences—and not just to report them back to Roger, either, although he had dutifully done so. She was an interesting, entertaining storyteller, and a woman of kindness and compassion, too, as her growing friendship with Gladys proved.
But what if she wasn’t Theodora Markham? What if she had tricked him into marriage?
And what would Roger make of her talk of wills? It had certainly disconcerted him.
These thoughts and others, his joy and his suspicious dread, battled within Dev as he rode through the portal leading to the inner yard of the duke’s manor. It was a huge edifice surrounding a cobbled yard and had once been an abbey. After dismounting and tossing his reins to one of the grooms, he went to the house where he was immediately shown to the duke’s library.
The walls and shelves of that chamber were of age-darkened oak, the Aubusson carpet comfortably worn like the wing chairs and the scent of cheroots lingered in the air. Paul had once told him his father had bought all the books that lined the walls in one fell swoop and had yet to read any of them.
“Good day, young fella, good day!” the Duke of Scane cried, hoisting himself from his chair when he saw Dev. “Excellent day for a ride, eh? Thought of going out myself, but...well, I’ll get to that later. In the meantime, I’ve been imagining what the young Apollo! will make of the news about your marriage when he gets my latest letter. Might even spur him to take a wife, eh? Not that he’s lived like a monk, I’m sure. Such a handsome fellow’s bound to have liaisons. But I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”
Dev kept any hint that he didn’t consider the thin, lanky, long-nosed Paul a handsome fellow from his features. “I’m sure he’s very popular.”
“Still, I’d rather he married an Englishwoman. I never could get the hang of any foreign lingo. Pity me if he comes home with a French viscountess or German baroness.”
Dev decided he’d best get right to business before the duke started to discuss the possibility of grandchildren. “I was told you wanted to see me about a matter of some importance, Your Grace.”
“Ah yes, I did. I do,” the nobleman amended. He went to a table in an alcove and produced a large white, heavily embossed envelope. “This is for you and your charming wife.” He grinned and before Dev could open it, said, “It’s an invitation to the dinner I told you about. A formal invitation.”
“I must confess I’m rather surprised,” Dev said in a miracle of understatement. He’d been sure they would be excluded. He’d even been pleased and relieved about that until he’d seen the hurt and dismay in Thea’s shining eyes.
Now he was relieved that they were being asked to attend and in spite of whatever bad impression Thea had made on the duchess.
Or perhaps the invitation had come despite that bad impression. “Is this your doing, Your Grace?” Dev asked, hoping Thea hadn’t inadvertently caused the duke any trouble.
“Mine? Lord love you, no! Wish I could say it was, but dinner parties and anything like that are my wife’s bailiwick and I don’t interfere.”
“I asked because my wife told me she met the duchess in the village,” Dev explained, “and I gather the introduction did not go well.”
The duke’s usually cheery visage darkened. “Yes, well, m’boy, there’s no denying the duchess was in a bit of a state when she got back. She was shocked to find out you were married. But I told her I’d met your wife and found her a charming girl. Bit bold perhaps, but charming.”
Yes, Thea was bold. And brazen and proud and exciting and altogether desirable.
“So was the duchess in her day,” the duke continued, handing Dev the envelope. “Came right out and proposed...” The duke flushed. “Yes, well, she was bold. No doubt my wife’s decided to let bygones be bygones, eh?”
Dev wondered if he should believe that.
The duke’s smile broadened. “That must be it, considering what we plan to announce.” His visage grew sheepish. “Wasn’t supposed to say anything about that. But never mind. You’ll keep the secret, I’m sure.” He straightened and couldn’t have looked more thrilled if he’d been named heir to the throne. “The young Apollo! is coming home at last!”
Dev tried to appear as pleased as his host, but he’d heard this sort of declaration before, and Paul had yet to return. “That’s wonderful. When?”
“By All Saints’ Day and maybe sooner.”
Putting the invitation in his jacket pocket, Dev silently decided Christmas would be more likely, if at all that year. “I look forward to seeing him again. It’s been a long time.”
“Hasn’t it? I’m sure his friends over there protest when he mentions coming home and so he stays to accommodate them.”
“No doubt.”
The duke pulled a cheroot from a carved wooden box on a nearby mahogany table and proceeded to light it with a straw put to the glowing embers of the fire in the hearth. “Have you heard about the new litter of puppies my best bitch has had? Daisy’s outdone herself this time—twelve pups and all healthy.”
The man beamed as if he’d been given the keys to the kingdom.
Dev smiled in return, then said, “If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace, I should go home at once and show my wife your invitation.”
“Of course, of course! The ladies do get excited over a party, eh?” the duke said with a knowing wink as they walked toward the door. “And you won’t let on I told you about the return of the young Apollo?”
“Not a word.”
“Excellent!”
After Dev bade the duke farewell and headed toward the stables for his horse, he began to wonder if the duchess had a motive that was not kind or neighborly when she extended the invitation to her dinner party. He could more easily believe the mean-spirited, vindictive woman wanted to look for reasons to find fault with Thea, then spread word far and wide that Sir Develin Drake had married a terrible woman.
Perhaps it would be better—safer, less fraught—if they didn’t go. Why risk more potential social disaster? Why take the chance?
Another reason not to attend came to him as he approached the groom holding the bridle of his horse that tossed its head and impatiently refooted. If he intended to have his marriage annulled—and he did, didn’t he?—he shouldn’t want Thea to meet any more
people in the vicinity. Doing so would only increase the gossip when the annulment occurred.
If he hadn’t made that more difficult by loving her again.
“Sir? Are you quite all right, sir?”
The groom’s anxious query pulled Dev from his thoughts. “Yes, I am,” he replied, mounting his spirited horse and turning it toward the portal.
He made his decision. They would not go to the duchess’s dinner party. He wouldn’t even show Thea the invitation. He would wait a day or two, then send their regrets.
* * *
In spite of what had happened earlier that day, Dev didn’t come to Thea’s bedroom at night. Once again she waited, tossing and turning, wondering why not, although she no longer feared he didn’t want her. That morning he had shown her that he did. No, something else was disturbing him, probably something to do with the duke or the duke’s family, and unfortunately something that Dev obviously didn’t want to tell her about.
After he’d gone to visit the duke, she didn’t see him again until dinner. He’d said very little until she resorted to asking what the duke wished to see him about. Dev had replied that it was nothing of consequence after all, then lapsed into silence once more. She hadn’t questioned him further, not wanting to risk ruining the intimacy they’d shared earlier that day.
Maybe all husbands were like that, she told herself, talkative and friendly one day, grimly silent the next. Passionate one moment, cool and aloof later. What, after all, did she really know about men and their desires?
She might simply have to accept things as they were, difficult though that might be.
At least she could take comfort in her opulent surroundings, fine clothes and good food, and enjoy the times her husband was friendly and attentive, or passionate and loving, whenever that might be.
Or so Thea reasoned before she finally fell into a fitful sleep.
* * *
The nightmare began as it always did. Clutching her father’s hand, chased by men whose faces she couldn’t quite see, Thea ran down a filthy, foggy alley. Other evil, twisted faces loomed out of the dark on either side and long-fingered, bloody hands reached for her.
Panting, terrified, she kept urging her father to run faster, faster! He kept trying to hold her back, crying “One more hand and I’ll win! One more hand and they’ll go away!”
Tonight, there was a new face among the monstrosities coming closer and closer. Her face twisted into a horrible, scornful grimace, her long fingers like talons, the Duchess of Scane grabbed Thea’s shoulder. Thea screamed and tried to break free from the woman’s awful grasp, but she couldn’t. She was being dragged back into the darkness and there was no one to help her.
“Thea! Thea! Wake up!”
With a gasp, she did—and found herself in her husband’s arms. Illuminated by a candle on the bedside table, Dev sat beside her on the bed and cradled her against his chest. “It’s all right,” he crooned in a low whisper, stroking her hair and brushing it back from her sweat-slicked face. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”
Wrapping her arms around her husband’s neck, she held him tight while her breathing slowed to normal. “I had a bad dream,” she whispered.
“A terrible dream, by the sounds of it,” he said softly.
“I’ve had it before. My father and I are being chased, but he slows down because he wants to keep gambling. This time, the duchess was there, too.” She shivered as she recalled the woman’s horrible grimace and talonlike fingers. “She grabbed my shoulder. I couldn’t get away.”
“I don’t doubt the duchess is the stuff of nightmares,” he said, his tone light and reassuring, too, “but she need not trouble you. We don’t have to have anything to do with her.”
Thea drew back and regarded him gravely. “That would be the easiest thing to do,” she agreed, “but not the wisest. Gladys told me she rules society here, and if that’s so, we mustn’t ignore her or antagonize her more than I already have. We’ve been snubbed once because of my insolence. I can only hope that’s the last repercussion we’ll suffer.”
He frowned. “We don’t need the duchess’s approval, or her dinner parties.”
“Then we might as well go into exile.”
“You exaggerate.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be shunned by society,” she said quietly. “I do, and I don’t want that to be the price you pay for marrying me.” She thought of another reason he might not want to attend social functions, and her gaze faltered for the briefest of moments. “Unless you have another reason for not wanting to be seen with me?”
Perhaps she was too course, too ugly, too ungraceful or too bold. She had already embarrassed him by quarreling with the duchess and perhaps he feared a repetition of that grave social error.
“No, I don’t, and if you’re willing to put up with the duchess, you’ll have every opportunity to do so. We’re still invited to the dinner party Gladys mentioned. That’s why the duke wanted to see me today—to give me the invitation.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried, relieved and yet still dreading she had cause for concern. “I’ll try to control my temper and not do anything else that might embarrass you. Thankfully my new clothes will be ready, so you don’t have to be worried about my attire.”
He tilted his head to study her and a slow, seductive smile raised the corners of his lips. She was wearing one of her new nightgowns, a thin silken sheath that felt like gossamer against her skin.
“I like your new attire,” he said, his voice low and seductive.
For the first time since she’d awakened from her nightmare, she noticed his clothes. His shirt was untucked and open at the neck, and his only other article of clothing were his trousers. He must have dressed in haste when he heard her cry out.
It would be easy for him to undress.
It was be easy for her, too.
Regarding her steadily, his eyes dark with desire, he grazed her right shoulder with his fingertips. “Is this where the duchess grabbed you in your dream?”
Her heartbeat quickening, her skin flushing with warmth, she nodded.
“Did she hurt you in your dream?”
“A little.”
He bent his head to brush his lips where he had touched her. “You have beautiful shoulders.”
She closed her eyes and shivered again, this time for a different reason.
Inching closer, he dragged his lips toward the curve of her neck. She leaned her head back and gripped his arms to steady herself.
“I should go,” he suddenly announced, letting go of her, but not getting off the bed.
She didn’t let go of him and didn’t intend to. “Why? We’re husband and wife. You do want me, don’t you?”
He slowly nodded.
“Then have me, husband,” she whispered.
For a moment Thea feared he was going to leave, until he tugged her into his arms and his mouth captured hers with fevered desire.
After a long and passionate embrace, Dev got off the bed, but only to remove his clothes. Eagerly Thea watched him strip off his shirt and trousers, reveling in the sight of his naked body. In the dim illumination of the candle, he did indeed look like a young god, his skin bronze in the flickering flame.
Even more exciting was the blatant look of need and longing in his dark eyes.
He quickly joined her in the bed and began to caress her body through the thin silk of her nightgown. She had believed nothing could rival the sensation of his hands on her skin, only to discover the film of silk added to the thrill of his touch, sending more waves of pleasure coursing through her.
Nevertheless, she didn’t regret it when he nuzzled the loose neckline of her garment lower and brought his mouth to her breasts. She arched to meet him and parted her legs in a silent invitation, one he did
n’t hesitate to accept.
He was inside her in an instant and began to thrust, the powerful motion increasing her arousal. She gasped and moaned and whispered words of encouragement, letting him know how much she wanted him. Needed him. Loved—
She had no more coherent thoughts before he reached the climax and so did she, the moment powerful and potent, a release and a delight. They were one, husband and wife, lovers, mates, joined by law and nature.
Panting, he lay down beside her, stroking her hair while she nestled against him and toyed with a lock of his dark, wavy hair. “Dev,” she whispered, “do you want many children?”
He raised himself on his elbow to regard her quizzically. “I want as many as God may give us, as long as you’re safe.”
She felt as if the sun had suddenly come out. He wanted children and he must truly care for her if he was concerned about her safety in childbirth.
He lay down again. “Why do you ask?”
“Gladys told me you once said you didn’t want children, perhaps because of your parents’ unfortunate union and your less-than-blissful upbringing,” she admitted. “I feared you meant it after I spoke of wills and you looked so upset.”
“I wasn’t upset.”
Having seen his face when wills were mentioned, she didn’t quite believe him. However, many people didn’t enjoy discussing wills, so she decided not to pursue that course of conversation.
“What did Gladys tell you?” he asked, his voice sounding loud in the darkness.
“That your father was a cruel man, unkind to your mother, and that you stayed away from here for years.”
To her dismay, he got out of bed and pulled his shirt over his head, then tugged on his trousers and began to button them. “No, I didn’t have a particularly loving father,” he grimly agreed. “As for my parents’ marriage, it wasn’t any worse than many marriages among their peers. My father got what he wanted and so did my mother, although she found out too late she had wanted the wrong thing. The wrong man.”
She sat up. “I’m sorry, Dev.”
“She’s at peace now. I only regret I wasn’t able to make her happier and protect her while she was alive, as you did with your father.” He looked away when he added, “She died when I was at school.”
A Marriage of Rogues Page 10