“I will put my mind to finding a way to humble myself. It is a little peculiar that you chose this work for that purpose. I can think of a hundred other ways to be reminded you are human,” she said. “Most will not make you so dirty.”
He beckoned her with a crooked finger. She went over and he handed her a soaped rag. “It is too late for a bath, so I will need to wash thoroughly this way. Since you scared off my valet, you can do my back.”
“I can? What fun.” She pushed up her dressing gown’s sleeves, stood behind him, and scrubbed away, reaching high to attend to all of him.
“I first worked a field when I was ten,” he said while she kept at it, only now with long, soapy caresses. “A cousin and I had cruelly teased the son of one of my father’s tenants. When my father heard of it, he ordered me to work for that farmer for a week. I was angry the first day, indignant the second, sorry for myself the third, and accepting the fourth. By the seventh day I discovered there were things about it that I did not mind and even enjoyed. When that field was harvested months later, I watched, knowing my labor had helped grow that crop.” He turned and took the rag from her and handed her one for rinsing. “So I go back and do it sometimes, when I need to think or to escape being a duke for a few hours.”
She finished with his back, and wondered why today he had wanted to forget he was a duke.
He sat down and pulled off his boots, then stood and began on the buttons on his breeches. He paused and looked at her. “You may want to go now. I still have washing to do.”
She sat in a chair and tucked her legs under her. “I’ll cover my eyes so you are not embarrassed.” She smiled brightly to hide how the notion of going away and being alone again with all those sad and confusing thoughts dismayed her.
He saw it anyway. He set down the cloth and came over to her. Wet hand under her chin, he raised her face and looked in her eyes. “You are sad about something. Was my aunt unkind to you?”
“I am not really sad. I am just tired of trying to sort through some things that I need to think about. They do not signify to anyone else except me and I cannot see through them clearly tonight.”
He did not appear convinced, but he released her. “If you are seeking distraction, perhaps this will help.” With that he turned his back on her and dropped his lower garments.
That distracted her very nicely. She admired his bum and decided it was the nicest of all she had seen. What a treat to be able to study it up close like this too. He washed the other side of him while she experienced a profound aesthetic experience. His long, lean legs in particular occupied her attention. She had not realized before how handsome they were. Nicely shaped and just perfect with the rest of him.
He bent to wash them, his muscles stretching and his body angling. Then that soapy rag came around his hip to wash that alluring bum. On impulse, she went over and took it. “I can do this too.”
He turned his head just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye. She laid the cloth over her palm for better purchase, but discovered it meant little fabric interfered with the feel of him. The sensation captivated her. Women were soft here, but his rounded swells felt hard and tense, even when she pressed her fingertips to check for certain.
“You probably could use this now.” He handed the other cloth over his shoulder.
She took her time, making sure every bit of soap was removed. He turned before she had finished to her liking, caught her waist, and pulled her tight against him.
“I do not think I have been so clean since I was a baby, Lydia.”
“I like to be thorough.”
He held her firmly. His gaze, serious and dark beneath his mussed, damp hair, scrutinized her. “But it was only a momentary distraction, I think.”
Had she become so transparent to him, so quickly?
He stroked her cheek with his fingertips. “Something troubles you. It is in your eyes. What is it?”
I discovered today that the only extraordinary thing in my whole life had in fact been so ordinary, so predictable, that I am ashamed of my failure to see it for what it was. She wished she could say it. Standing like this, seeing the honest care in his eyes, she almost believed he would find a way to convince her that the conclusions forcing themselves on her were in error.
“Just thoughts that need sorting. I tire of how they plague me tonight, however. Hence my delight in the momentary distraction.” She reached around and gave his bum a little tap.
He caught her hand back there. “I cannot stop the thoughts forever, but I know how to for a while. As for your past and ongoing interest in male anatomy—” He brought her hand around and placed it on his erect, enlarged shaft.
That shocked the tiresome thoughts right out of her head. Too curious to pretend she was not, she rested her brow against his chest and inhaled the scent of soap and flesh while she looked down and tentatively stroked. It did not feel at all as she expected. She almost giggled when it swelled more at her touch. She tapped the tip and it moved. He let her play, pressing a never-ending kiss to her crown.
“How interesting. What a very fine momentary distraction. I am understanding why some people give them names, like Harry or John.”
“But we will not.”
“No?”
“No.”
She closed her hand around it and looked up at him. “You are sure?”
“Damnation, Lydia.”
The next thing she knew the floor and walls were sliding past. Her legs flailed against air, and her head was very close to that handsome bum. He bundled her under his arm like a carpet, and sped through the dressing room and into his chamber.
With a thump she landed on his bed and he was above her, knee high between her legs, braced up on his arms. He looked down so intensely that she thought she could be absorbed by his eyes. She quickly worked the buttons and ribbons on her undressing gown, so she could open the front and push aside the fabric. His head lowered and his mouth closed at once on her breast, still covered in her thin cotton nightdress.
Her arousal came like an assault. She clutched at his shoulders and pressed against his knee and tasted his skin wherever her mouth could reach. “Yes,” she whispered. “Make it a very long distraction. Take me where I do not think about anything except pleasure.”
• • •
She was wild in her passion. He responded in kind and ignored the sure knowledge that something drove her besides desire.
His mind clouded as a rare fever claimed them both. With grasping holds and biting kisses they pushed each other further. Her breasts, always so sensitive, stretched the thin fabric dampened by his mouth. Neither of them wanted to waste the time to drag the nightdress off.
Her hand closed on him again. Still tentative and careful, but Lydia was nothing if not bold. She quickly discovered what pleasured him, then turned ruthless.
He contained the ferocious drive that kept building while her caress created luxurious sensations. When he doubted he could control himself further, he knelt back, away from her, between her legs.
The undressing gown, with its ribbons and lace, framed her lithe body. He decided to keep it, and the nightdress that she still wore. He pushed up its hem, uncovering her legs. She watched, her eyes now filmed with desire, no longer so haunted as when he first saw her tonight. She breathed heavily, a series of gasps, each with a high, feminine note whenever she liked his touch.
He lifted the hem higher yet, pushing the dress up to her waist, exposing her mound and thighs. He slid his finger along the soft cleft, being as ruthless as she had been. She closed her eyes and moved into his touch. Pleasure softened her face to a beautiful, ethereal expression. He watched abandon claim her and branded his mind with her glorious joy.
He bent down and kissed her inner thigh. When he rose, she was staring at him, her eyes wary beneath those thick lashes.
“I am going to use my mouth now, Lydia.”
She pushed herself up on her arms. She tried to bring her legs together.
>
“You will like it. If you do not, I will stop.”
“It sounds wicked.”
“Many think it is.”
She still looked shocked and skeptical. “Is it something most wives do?”
“No.”
“But you want me to.”
“Yes.”
She fell back on the mattress. “Wicked and unusual. Perhaps this will not be such a terrible day after all.”
What a Lydia thing to say.
He settled between her legs. He brought her along slowly, using his hand until her cries filled the chamber. He teased with his tongue until she overcame the first shocks. Even when she began moaning he restrained himself, even though her scent and taste sent him to a dark, uncivilized place.
Her release broke abruptly in a long series of quakes that flexed her whole body. He moved up and took her scream into himself with a kiss, then entered her and took her hard until he found his own furious finish.
• • •
He felt her moving, gathering herself to leave.
“Stay,” he said. “Perhaps it will provide further distraction.”
She reclined again. “Perhaps.”
“I thought you were with Emma and Cassandra today. Did they quiz you too closely about us?”
She shook her head. “Each said something, however, that changed many things and confused some others.” The night pulsed with silence. Then she spoke again. “Did you know that Lakewood was the man who compromised Cassandra years ago. The one she refused to marry?”
After talking to Greenly today, he had spent hours at the farm getting Lakewood out of his head. If what troubled Lydia touched on the man, he could swallow his distaste for the subject, he supposed. “Yes. We were friends then. His reputation was tainted by it, as surely as hers was. We were unkind to her as a result. Ambury presumably has been absolved, but not the rest of us. Not completely.”
“I always admired her for not being bullied into it. I thought she was very brave.”
Lydia had not been so brave. Was that what she mulled over so intently? Regrets that she had not been as bold as her friend?
“Did you know that the gentlemen thought your duel with Lakewood was fought over her?”
Hell. “Had they been talking to me, I would have explained they were wrong.”
“Emma says they thought this because Lakewood kept insisting he loved her and would love no one else.”
“I always assumed he claimed that to garner sympathy that might spare him the worst assumptions of the gossip regarding that compromise.”
“The others believed him, however. Do you suppose they also believed you had an affair with Cassandra, and that was why Lakewood called you out?” She turned and looked at him in the dark. “It is like one of your plots, isn’t it? It fits all the publicly known facts.”
It did indeed. They probably had believed that. It explained a lot of things. “I never had any affair with her, or even a mild flirtation.”
“Yet the duel was over a woman, you said.”
“Not a lover.” At least he did not think so. “We were not rivals over a woman, is what I mean.”
Did he imagine that she lightened suddenly? A dark cloud might have just blown away.
She resettled on her pillow. “Cassandra did not speak well of him today. She implied he would do anything for money.”
Even Cassandra did not know the half of it. If he told Lydia that, would she believe him? He could do without that ghost in his life, and even in this bed. “I do not know what she referred to. I do know that he had a talent for using people.”
She gazed over at him. A few glints of resentment flashed at the criticism, but he saw much more in her eyes. Sadness, such as he had seen in the dressing room. Disappointment too.
He suddenly realized what all of this had been about. This conversation, and her need for distraction tonight, and even her fury over that duel.
Damnation. He should have guessed. He should have at least wondered. Yet why would he? Lydia may show deep emotion about Lakewood, but Lakewood had never once spoken of Lydia with interest or admiration. Not once.
“I know you think badly of him,” she said. “You have to, don’t you? There could be no justification for what happened otherwise.”
It was the wrong thing for her to say, today of all days. Anger over the day’s revelations combined with resentment at how she kept this flame alive for a scoundrel. “I like to think that I am fair to him, and see the good and the bad. I also think I knew him better than you did, and I will tell you that he was not a friend to me, or to anyone else, if it suited his own purposes.”
She sat up. “That is not true. I knew him very well, better than you or anyone else knows. He was a friend to me. For years, a good friend. His death undid me. I grieved such as I have never grieved. You men would have never noticed how he dealt with me, how he was kind to the child and drew out the girl. He made me laugh and we shared confidences. I have never had as good a friend, and probably never will.”
It poured out in a furious rush, as if the words had been dammed for years. The chamber became unnaturally silent when she finished.
“It sounds as if he was more than a friend, Lydia. Was he?”
Her face flushed. She started to leave the bed, but he caught her arm and held her in place.
“Was he? Both your loyalty and your emotion suggest it. If you are going to throw your anger and resentment at me, if that ghost is going to always interfere, you can damned well admit the reason.”
She tried to retreat behind the sphinx mask, but the tears in her eyes would not allow it. “He was the great love of my life,” she said. “So now you know why you are the last man I wanted protecting me, or obligated to marry me.”
“Yes, now I know. But here we both are anyway.”
She tried to leave again. He held firm.
“You will stay here tonight, Lydia. Lakewood might be the great love of your life, but you are mine now. I’ll be damned if you will go back to your bed and spend the night burnishing his memory.”
She said nothing. After a few minutes she turned on her other side, her back to him, and pretended to sleep.
She looked fragile there, her legs drawn up and the undressing gown still bunched around her form. Eventually her breaths lengthened and he knew she really slept. He wrapped his arms around her, tucked her against his body, and fell asleep himself.
Chapter 17
A week later, Lydia made quick work of her morning mail after finishing her breakfast. Rosalyn sat nearby, her sharp eyes missing nothing.
Several of the letters were invitations. Rosalyn knew the senders after merely glancing at the paper and handwriting from across the table, and offered recommendations on which to accept without prompting. Lydia hoped she would make at least one error, but she never did.
A few other letters contained petitions from charitable causes. She read the latter. Most were from large, notable charities taking a chance that a new duchess might want to patronize them along with so many of her peers. One, however, came from a charity that she had contributed to already.
That charity had never written to her before, and the letter broke her heart. It read like a parting letter. The women who ran it thanked her for her past patronage, and wished her well in her new life. They seemed to assume that she would find more fashionable recipients of her largesse in the future.
Perhaps she would, but not quite yet. Lydia Alfreton would make at least one more contribution, she decided. Soon too. With winter coming, the money would be needed.
She thumbed through the rest of the mail, halting at one. She recognized the hand. Sick with foreboding, she unsealed it.
The letter was not signed. Of course not. She wanted to curse when she read it.
Your Grace,
I am delighted to learn of your good fortune! Well done. Under the circumstances, it might be best if our business is concluded faster than you proposed, since a duke might find your p
rose even more problematic than an earl. I await your reply.
The despicable scoundrel. The lying cheat. They had an agreement. He already had almost three thousand. She should not even have to think about him for a year.
“Did you receive bad news, Lydia?” Rosalyn peered at the letter while her teeth pierced one of the cakes.
“Not bad news. Just unexpected.”
“Then you will not disfavor my plans for the day. I would like you to accompany me on some calls, so you can spend time with some of your equals. There is much you can learn from them.”
“I am sorry, but I have plans of my own. There is the appointment with the solicitor this morning, then I need to call on my aunts. I have neglected them.”
“I will join you instead, then. I have not seen Amelia in some time. Let us go there first, then you can visit your aunt Hortense later, on your own.”
There was no way out of it without being rude. She excused herself and went up to her apartment so she could stomp and yell and curse Mr. Trilby in private.
By the time she read the letter again, however, she had grown too disheartened for histrionics. Of course he would not honor their agreement. He had no honor. He was a blackmailer.
Sarah noticed her mood, and stopped sorting through the winter wardrobe. “Is something amiss?”
She handed over the letter. “I thought all was settled. Now, he sends this. It is as if he does not know his own mind. He agrees to one thing, then a week later changes what he wants and expects. How am I supposed to buy off a blackmailer if he will not stay bought?”
“He is a bold one, that is sure.” She handed back the letter. “He believes he has you well cornered now, with your marriage, I suppose. The price of scandal has gone up.”
It certainly had. It had gone up by the price of a duke. The cost to Penthurst of such a scandal had increasingly preyed on her mind.
Two months ago, she might have taken a wicked pleasure in seeing him humbled. She might have considered it delayed justice. Now, however . . .
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