Put Up Your Duke

by Megan Frampton

  Nicholas’s hands stilled. “The duke is one of my best friends, and his wife is a warm, generous woman.” He didn’t mean to speak brusquely, but it was clear he had, since her shoulders hunched as though he’d delivered a blow.

  “I did not mean to offend you, Your Grace,” she said, her voice hesitant.

  “Nicholas. It seems ridiculous for you to call me Your Grace, since you are also Your Grace, and it could become confusing.”

  She met his gaze in the mirror. “Nicholas. And I am—”

  “Isabella. I know.” He laid the brush down on the dressing table and held his hand out, palm up. “Shall we to bed, Isabella?”

  Her head dipped in a brief nod, and she stood, placing her fingers in his hand. He drew her toward the bed, his cock painfully hard as he smelled her scent, felt her warmth, glimpsed the shape of her through her nightgown, the fabric of which was somewhat sheer, but opaque enough for him to long for more details of what she looked like.

  Her fingers were trembling.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Fine, Your— Nicholas, I am fine.” Her voice trembled as well.

  They reached the bed, and she looked at him. There was no mistaking the terror in her dark eyes.

  He felt that fear hit low in his gut. “You are not all right, Isabella.” He assisted her so she was sitting on the bed facing him. The bed was so high, her feet dangled off it, not reaching the ground.

  She didn’t look at him, but kept her gaze focused down. He doubted she was admiring the carpet, beautiful though it was.

  He knelt down in front of her and took her hand in his. “You can tell me, you know.”

  At that, she did look at him, her eyes wide with—fear? Guilt? Worry? “Tell you what?”

  “That you’re nervous about this. About all this.” He hesitated, hoping he could find the right words. He’d never had to before. This was new to him as well, only the new situation was one where a woman was reluctant to have sex with him. He decided not to share that with her. Instead, he tried his best to comfort her. “I’ve never—that is, I don’t want to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”

  She looked down again. Perhaps she really was admiring the carpet. He’d chosen it himself; it was pink and covered in roses.

  “I am yours to do with what you will, Your— Nicholas.”

  He felt something harsh and mean unfurl in his chest. “I have never forced a woman, Isabella, and I am not going to start with my wife.”

  “This is my duty,” she replied, her tone deadened.

  So much for his erection; that had already diminished as soon as he’d realized she was most definitely not looking forward to any of this, and now it was nonexistent. It only remained to salvage something from his wedding night.

  He released her hand and stood, glancing around the room. He knew full well everything that was in it, having overseen it himself. “Excuse me a moment, will you?” he said, leaving her still staring at the floor.

  He stepped out into the hallway and into his room—he didn’t want to remind her that their rooms connected, then she’d probably fall onto the carpet to inspect it more minutely.

  “Your Grace,” his valet said, jumping up from the chair he’d been dozing in.

  “No need to get up, thank you, Miller,” Nicholas replied, waving him back down. He’d acquired Miller along with the title, since his previous valet had decided to return to the country instead of staying with Nicholas and his new responsibilities. “I am just in here to get— Oh, here it is,” he said, picking up the newspaper from the bedside table.

  “I can iron that, if you like, Your Grace.”

  “There is no need, I’ll just take this, if I might.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.” Miller sounded shocked that Nicholas would even ask. Judging by what he knew about the former occupant of the title, he would have to guess that there were few requests, only commands.

  His blood ran cold at the thought of that man having a wedding night with Isabella. Then hot with a savage fury as he thought about how the previous duke insisted that she was his.

  “Over my dead body,” he muttered, leaving the room. He paused for a moment outside her door, trying to put an expression on his face that was gentle, soothing, and friendly.

  He had never worn such an expression in his entire life, so he hoped he didn’t look like an idiot.

  He entered the room and saw her, still sitting in that frozen position on the bed, still staring down.

  “Isabella? I brought something for us tonight.” Then winced as he realized that she might misunderstand his meaning. “That is, something for us to do together.” Damn it, still not right. “Uh—just go sit in that chair, if you don’t mind.” He gestured to a chair, one of a pair, that was set in the corner of the room near one of the windows.

  Isabella stood, as he’d asked, and walked to the chair he’d indicated. This was not going as her mother had suggested it might.

  First of all, she was no longer on the bed, which was the only place she knew of for such activity to happen. Second, he didn’t appear to be an animalistic beast who would then fall asleep shortly thereafter.

  In fact, she’d have to admit that he was being altogether kind. Not at all what she’d thought he’d be, given how he’d been staring at her, and how he’d brushed her hair, as though intent on seduction.

  And if she hadn’t been so nervous about it all, about not knowing him, and worrying about how she’d behaved during the ceremony and the breakfast, and how her parents would treat Margaret now that she was out of the house—never mind that she was out of the house, when she’d never spent a night apart from her family—she would have been seduced.

  Because honestly the way he’d touched her—not as though she were something to be worshipped, but as just another human, a human deserving of attention and care—made her want to learn more about him. His appearance just got better the closer one looked; the faint golden stubble on his strong jaw, the variations of blue in his eyes, changing with his mood; his bare throat, its strong Adam’s apple reminding her, as though she needed reminding, that he was very definitely male.

  And yet—and yet he wasn’t demanding his male husbandly rights. He was, in fact, sitting down in the chair opposite her, unfolding a newspaper.

  Should she have brought reading material to her wedding night?

  “I haven’t shared this with anyone,” he said in what would have been a shy tone in any other man, “but I enjoy reading the serialized works in the paper, particularly the ones written by A Lady of Mystery. I was thinking that I could read one of the serials to you?”

  Well. That was unexpected. “Of course, Your— Nicholas.” Isabella placed her hands on her lap and kept her gaze on his face. He returned the look with a quick smile, and she felt—for just a moment—that she’d like to see what he was like as an animalistic beast.

  “I don’t have the first parts of the story, but basically, there’s this lady who has been promised by her father to a prince, and she has no recourse but to agree to it.” At that, he looked uncomfortable, as though realizing what he’d said.

  And she had stiffened, too. It was altogether too close to her real situation, as he’d clearly noticed as well, and she had no idea what he thought about their marriage. It wasn’t as though she could ask him, either; even if he said he hadn’t wanted it, the fact remained that they were married. And would stay married until one of them died.

  Wasn’t that a cheery thought?

  Not to mention she wouldn’t even dare to ask such a thing of anybody. She couldn’t even tell her mother her preference for one color or another, she wasn’t about to question him as to his feelings about her, and how they came to be together, alone, in this room.

  “Never mind that,” he said, folding the newspaper up again. “I think there are cards in one of those drawers over there, perhaps we could play a game?”

  He got up in a swift, elegant movement. She’d for
gotten just how tall he was. His dressing gown was tied, but loosely, and underneath he only wore a nightshirt, one that came to mid-shin.

  Goodness, even his lower legs were attractive.

  “Here,” he said, returning to sit in the chair and pulling a side table so it was between them. “I’ll shuffle, and you can deal.”

  “What are we playing?” Besides the game of What Is the Strangest Way to Spend Your Wedding Night Ever?

  He flipped through the cards until he found the one he wanted and withdrew it from the pack, showing it out to her. “The queen of clubs. That’s our old maid.” He handed her the rest of the pack, placing the queen underneath his chair. “Now deal.”

  “We’re playing . . . Old Maid?” Her mother had not mentioned anything about there being card games during one’s wedding night. The animalistic beast, the sleeping, the discomfort—all of that, but no card games.

  Interesting. It seemed that her mother might have prepared her to be a duchess, but not to be the duchess to this particular duke.

  Perhaps marriage would be more intriguing than she’d imagined. She dealt the cards, watching his elegant fingers as he arranged his hand, then allowed herself to look a bit farther down, to where the neck of his nightshirt was open. She saw a sprinkling of chest hair, and that sight made her breath catch, as though she might be the animalistic beast.

  Her throat felt tight, and there was something else, too. Something that wanted . . . something, but she had no idea what it was.

  But she was fairly certain it had everything to do with him.

  She tried to push those thoughts away and concentrate on her wedding night. One that included card games.

  “I can’t be the old maid, I’ve just gotten married today,” Isabella said with a smile as she held her last card. Nicholas had beaten her the previous five times they’d played, and she had gotten surprisingly engrossed in the game, which she hadn’t played since she was probably six years old.

  “It’s not very sporting for me to constantly win, is it?” Nicholas said with a smirk that seemed to indicate he didn’t care at all for not being sporting. “But I suppose that now that I am a duke, I should get accustomed to winning all the time, shouldn’t I?” He spoke in a wry tone, but it pierced Isabella in a way he likely didn’t intend.

  “It is fine, Your— It is fine,” Isabella said in a quiet voice. While they’d been playing she’d nearly forgotten who she was supposed to be, who he was, and what her future looked like now.

  It had been a glorious moment of forgetting, but now she couldn’t stop thinking about how odd all of this was, how her mother would be appalled.

  Perhaps she wouldn’t speak of it.

  Nicholas frowned at her reply, then stood and held his hand out to her as he had when he first came into the room. Was now when they were going . . . ?

  She kept her gaze focused just beyond his shoulder, not looking at him so that she wouldn’t be able to see his intentions on his face. Because if she didn’t see it, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Don’t freeze up on me, princess,” he said in a low tone.

  Her eyes snapped to his face, and what she saw there was not lustful, or greedy, or wanting.

  He had a gentle, almost kind, expression on his face, and that, more than anything, nearly made her weep.

  “Let’s get you into bed. You must be tired,” he said.

  He led her to the bed, where he drew down the cover and gestured for her to slip in, pulling the covers up to her chin. She lay blinking up at him, wondering just who this man was whom she’d married.

  He got around to the other side and removed his dressing gown. Isabella saw one long leg slide under the covers, then he was beside her. He turned on his side and propped his head on his hand.

  The candlelight made the planes of his face stand out even more sharply, and he was dangerously, seductively beautiful. She could see that, but she was, as he’d said, frozen inside, and couldn’t feel anything. Except for the worry that she wouldn’t be good enough at this.

  “May I tell you a story?” he asked.

  This wedding night was nothing like she’d expected, nothing at all.

  “If you like,” she replied. At least she knew she was very good at listening—her mother had trained her above all other things for that.

  Epigraph

  From the unedited version of A Lady of Mystery’s serial:

  “Where are your parents?”

  They had been cheered, and walked at the head of what seemed to be a never-ending parade, and Jane’s arms had been filled three times over with flowers, the exotic flowers that were like nothing she had ever beheld before.

  And now they were alone, and she might finally get to speak to him, to unravel the mystery of her new husband.

  The prince’s face froze, and Jane—Princess Jane now—held her breath as she waited for his reply.

  At long last, he spoke. But he did not say anything, not anything that was at all close to answering the question. “They are . . . not here.”

  “Oh.”

  “You will not inquire about them again,” he continued in an icy tone of voice.

  “Oh,” she repeated, this time in a much quieter tone.

  That there was a mystery about her new husband and his family she had no doubt; she just hoped the mystery could be solved without causing pain.

  She somehow doubted it would.

  —THE PRINCESS AND THE SCOUNDREL

  Chapter 8

  “And then the whatchamacallit.”

  “The knight,” she corrected in her soft voice.

  He stifled a grin. “Of course, you’re absolutely correct. The knight, well, he and his friends, including King Art, decided that they would go off and do all sorts of wonderful deeds and gather favors from wellborn ladies in tournaments and jousts and that type of thing.”

  He cleared his throat. “The end.”

  She still lay on the bed next to him, her hands folded on her stomach. She hadn’t moved.

  Either to get closer to him or to leave entirely. So perhaps it was a draw?

  “I do not think,” she said after a moment, “that that is the actual story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.” She made a little noise that might have been a chuckle, he wasn’t certain. He definitely had not heard her laugh yet. “For one thing, their purpose was not to gather favors as though it were a contest. And King Arthur did not, as you said, just put a little bit of effort into pulling Excalibur—not named Swordie, as you said—out from the rock. It was magic, he was supposed to be the king.”

  He couldn’t help but grin then. She sounded so affronted, but more importantly, she no longer sounded scared. He’d hoped to at least put her more at ease, and he surmised that if he couldn’t charm or seduce her—and he knew very well that was out of the question, at least for this night—then he’d take her mind off what was supposed to be happening and instead put her mind onto something far less frightening.

  For her, at least. His brain was entirely engrossed with the fact that he was in bed with his new wife and she was wearing just a thin night garment of some sort, and he hadn’t had relations with any woman for over two weeks, and that might be a new record, and she was still so lovely, and she was his wife, goddamn it.

  Or that last part might have been his more . . . male parts speaking, since his brain would never swear in frustration. Would it?

  But he had reminded himself, only about every minute or so, that trying to lure her into something now would likely cause irreparable damage in the future. Their future together, since now they were man and wife. Nicholas and Isabella. Duke and duchess.

  Storyteller and story corrector.

  “Fine, then. Tomorrow you can tell the story.” He held his breath waiting for her reply. Knowing, somehow, that it was crucial that they make it through this night, just a few scant hours, for their marriage to even have a possibility of success.

  “You should continue. Perhaps you w
ill improve with practice,” she replied, and he felt his chest expand as he took a deep inhale.

  “And I will bid you good night,” he said, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. “Rest well, Isabella.”

  “Th-Thank you, Nicholas.”

  He got up from the bed, allowed himself one last look at her—yes, still unbelievably beautiful, still lying in a bed, of all things, all soft, and warm, and as close to naked as a proper aristocratic virgin would be—and here he was taking himself off to his own bed, entirely alone, entirely sexually frustrated, and—

  And entirely fine with that, if it meant he could still hold out hope for the future.

  She didn’t expect to feel lonely when he left.

  She also hadn’t expected to feel anything but used as the object of her new husband’s animalistic passions.

  But instead he’d played cards with her, told her a ridiculous story, and left her with only the type of good-night kiss a parent might give a child.

  She curled onto her side, the side where he’d been, and touched her hand to the cover. It was warm from his body.

  She swallowed, then leaned forward and sniffed the pillow. It had a distinct smell. His smell. Not that she knew what he smelled like, but this odor was not, as far as she could tell, on anything else in the room.

  Although to prove that, she might have to go around sniffing every object, and that would be odd.

  She would have to take it on faith that this was his smell. And she liked it; warm, and clean-smelling, but also somewhat spicy.

  Like a plum pudding.

  She heard a sound, and realized it was she. Laughing. She had hardly expected to be laughing on her wedding night—she had expected pain, and tears, and awkwardness.

  She definitely hadn’t expected to be on her own.

  Marriage, thus far, was an entirely unexpected experience.

  “Good morning, Your Grace.”

  Isabella blinked, staring up at the swirls of rose-colored satin on the ceiling. This was not home. This was— “Oh,” she said, raising herself up on her elbows. “Good morning, um—” She tilted her head at the woman who stood at the foot of the bed, her hands loosely clasped in front of her, her expression entirely pleasant. Not as though Isabella had just forgotten her name.