The Duke's Disaster

by Grace Burrowes

  Now what? Noah took a wild shot. “I missed you.”

  “You don’t need to do this.” Thea sat back again, a line of dampness across her chest.

  “What don’t I need to do?”

  She waved a hand. “Turn up sweet. Put on airs and graces, as if we’re enthralled with each other. I know my duty.”

  “Your duty?” The situation was growing more complicated, not less, which was a road to marital disaster. “Lock the door, Thea, and start undressing. We might as well clarify this dreadful duty of yours sooner rather than later.”

  Noah had considered this option while he’d had solitude on the balcony, and saw now that it would be the kinder choice for them both.

  Thea rose, for once doing as he bid.

  Noah made short work of the rest of his bath, kneeling up so Thea could rinse his hair, then rising from the tub and accepting a towel from her. He didn’t bother with the dressing gown, but stood behind her, naked and damp, and saw to the hooks of her dress. The cut was high-waisted, a summery fabric that wafted around her gracefully but did little to hint at her curves.

  Thea took the dress off over her head, and passed it to him, then stood still while he unlaced her stays. She let out a great sigh when she stepped free of the corset, then rubbed at her waist.

  “Why do you wear it so bloody tight?” Noah asked. Thea’s belly would bear the imprint of the chemise’s wrinkles.

  “The intent of the corset is to preserve modesty.”

  A true duchess could lecture on propriety when wearing only her chemise.

  “Modesty, bah. Torment, by another name.” Noah studied the abundance of Thea’s unbound breasts beneath her chemise, the sweet, soft taper of her unconfined waist. “If I forbid you to wear that corset, would you abide by my guidance?”

  Thea nodded, once, watching him the way a mouse would watch a visiting hawk. “At least at home, I would. That corset is hot, and…constricting of the lungs.”

  “Get rid of it.”

  When Thea started untying the bows of her summer-length chemise, Noah stepped closer and stilled her hands with his own.

  “I meant the corset, Wife. You can wear country stays or jumps, or three chemises instead. We will discuss this other business.” Noah gestured at her chemise, the plainest piece of sacking ever to conceal a man’s dearest fantasies.

  Without benefit of his clothing, he led Thea by the wrist up to the bed. A breeze came in from the balcony, the house and grounds had the profound quiet of a lazy summer afternoon, and the room was redolent of the lavender scenting the tub.

  Such ordinary domestic circumstances, and such an extraordinary moment in their marriage.

  Noah sat with Thea on the bed. “You are willing, Wife?”

  “You are kind to ask,” she said, her gaze brushing over him. “I am willing.”

  “So am I, were you inclined to inquire. How would you like to proceed?”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

  Clearly, she did not. Thea’s shoulders were hunched as if to ward off blows or blushes; Noah knew not which. That she should be so unknowing pleased him, that she worried, made conversation rather challenging.

  “I’m asking how to pleasure you,” he said, which was masterfully delicate of him, if he did say so himself. “I’m asking what you like, and what you don’t like.”

  “I like it when you kiss me.”

  Noah delighted in her kisses too. “Fortunate for me I used the tooth powder then. What else?”

  “Your hands…” Thea looked away, as if her words had gone leaping over the balcony in pursuit of a dip in the lake.

  “These.” Noah held up the requisite appendages, one of which was wrapped in one of hers. “What about them?”

  “When you touch me, you’re not in a hurry.”

  Noah was barely in his right mind half the time he touched her. “Interesting. Where do I touch you when I’m dawdling so reprehensibly?”

  Thea closed her eyes and shook her head. “It isn’t reprehensible, when you take your time with me.”

  Her neck betrayed a tension, and the corners of her mouth and eyes did too. This interrogation would have to end soon if she wasn’t to expire of mortification.

  “Not reprehensible?” Noah mused. “Tell me what it is, then, when I’m lazy and indulgent, touching you wherever I please, however I please? A fellow can grow confused, dealing with women.”

  “It’s…” Thea dashed the back of her free hand against her cheeks, suggesting to Noah she was near tears, if not crying. “Irresistible. You leave me no dignity, Husband. None. When your hands are on me, I don’t want you to stop, and I can’t imagine who this shameless woman is, to want a man so badly who can hardly want her.”

  What on God’s earth was Noah to say to that? Entire realms of mystery, confusion, and female unfathomables lay in those few sentences, and Noah was but a man who couldn’t bear to see his duchess cry on this of all occasions.

  He kissed her gently, in answer to the insecurities Thea had only alluded to. That she wasn’t attractive, that she wasn’t attractive to him, that she could not be of interest to her own husband. Noah’s tongue went on to reassure the soft, damp bounty of her mouth, to trace her lips.

  He brought his free hand up to cradle Thea’s jaw, then slipped it back to bury his fingers in her hair.

  “This has to come down,” he muttered against her mouth. “Your hair, down.”

  Thea rested her forehead against his. “If you like.”

  Noah sat back enough to tug the pins from her braid, piling them indiscriminately on the nightstand. Her hair ribbons came off next, and then he was combing his fingers through the dark silky river of her unbound hair.

  Noah brought a strand to his nose. “More lavender. It’s so long.” Long enough that he could wrap her hair several times around his wrist, long enough that he could pull Thea in for another kiss and anchor both hands in her hair while he did.

  Slowly, she warmed to this kiss, not merely waiting for Noah to explore and taste and suggest, but making shy forays into his mouth on her own initiative.

  Thea tasted sweet, like mint tea and cool morning breezes, and her hair was long enough to pool in Noah’s lap, the silk and scent of it driving lazy arousal to blazing desire.

  “I want you,” Noah whispered as his mouth opened over the soft spot beneath Thea’s ear. He moved her hand to his arousal. “This is proof of wanting.”

  Thea tried to jerk her hand away, but Noah had closed his fingers around hers, and held her grip snugly about him.

  “Thea, I want you to touch me.” He kept his voice low, kept the longing and lust threatening to swamp him from his words—mostly. “In time, you’ll find that if you’re patient and willing to try—”

  His duchess wasn’t listening to him; she was frankly eyeing his arousal, her hair pooling softly around the base. She used her free hand to brush her hair away.

  “Take your time,” Noah managed. “The broad light of day has many advantages for a woman bent on appeasing her curiosity.”

  Thea was curious; Noah saw that in her eyes, in her furrowed brow. Felt her curiosity as she ran her fingers all over him, then traced the vein running the length of his shaft. His most intimate parts were terra incognita for her.

  What in the hell had her previous affair consisted of? Hasty couplings in broom closets? A literal roll in the hay?

  Thea deserved better, for God’s sake. Whoever took her virginity should at least have shown her pleasure and given her some confidence.

  She had none. None. Her touch could not have been more tentative, or more curious.

  “Araminthea.” Noah brushed her long hair over her shoulder as she regarded him gravely. “I won’t gobble you whole, or castigate you, or heaven knows what, not in bed.”

  A delicate circling with her finger sent lightning straight up Noah’s spine.

  “And out of bed, Noah?”

  “If I thought you were taking chances with the gir
ls’ safety, or abusing the help, then perhaps we’d argue. For God’s sake, we won’t fight.”

  “What does that mean?” Thea sat back, her chemise gaping, and Noah had to concentrate mightily to decipher her question when he could see her breasts, unfettered and gently moving under the material.

  He shifted to rest against the headboard, for he needed the distance if he was to speak in coherent sentences.

  “When we have a difference of opinion,” he said, “we’ll discuss it, hopefully in private if strong feelings are to be aired. I won’t beat you, for Christ’s sake, and when we’re in bed…”

  “When we’re in bed?”

  They were in bed, and Noah was naked, aroused, and lecturing his wife.

  “Come here.” He closed his hands around Thea’s arms and lifted her to straddle him. She curled down to his chest, which was obliging of her, when Noah wasn’t entirely sure what they were discussing. Nonetheless, this was the most personal conversation he’d ever had, and cradling Thea against his naked length provided him an odd increment of privacy.

  “When we’re in bed, you must trust me,” he said.

  “Trust you?” Thea tried to draw back, to meet his gaze—now, she tried to meet his gaze—but Noah held her gently in place.

  “Trust me.” He stroked his hands down the waterfall of her hair, slowly, gathering his thoughts as he gathered her hair. “The men in my family are profligate rakes. I know this, but you are my wife.”

  “I am.”

  Thea was hinting at a question Noah wasn’t sure how to answer: How did being his wife make her different?

  “I am a gentleman, Thea. I will not betray your bodily trust. In our bed, you are safe, from hurt, from humiliation, from violations of privacy even.”

  Said the naked duke to his shy duchess? Lust had made Noah daft, but this much he grasped: a certain degree of trust was necessary if they were to go on with the next part of their marriage. Nothing profound, just the practical respect of two people responsible for a ducal succession.

  “My privacy is safe in this bed?” Thea asked.

  If she made Noah wait until that evening to conclude their business, when the candles could be blown out, he’d find a way to accommodate her.

  “I have given my word, madam. Your privacy is utterly safe here.”

  “Then may I keep my chemise on?”

  * * *

  James Heckendorn, Baron Deardorff, had lost his best friend when Noah Winters had assumed the title Duke of Anselm. At the age of seventeen, Noah had gone from being a serious-minded friend with a hidden hint of devilment, to obsessed with his responsibilities. Each of the Winters siblings had coped with the death of the former duke differently, while James had struggled for the rest of his university years to tempt Noah back to the land of the fun-loving and carefree.

  Patience had been the one to point out to James what he was about, and to inform him that his objective was futile. Noah had become the duke, and James’s best prayer of remaining his friend was to become the baron.

  He’d dismissed her insight, in his youthful arrogance, and yet she’d caught his attention in a way other young ladies had not. He got around to offering for her, thinking that fondness and familiarity were an adequate foundation for an aristocratic marriage.

  Patience had sent him packing with a flea in his young, baronial ear.

  Eventually, James had sorted himself out and made a better job of the wooing, but in hindsight, he could see that as a new husband, he’d had much to learn.

  “You’re brooding,” Patience said, tugging his glasses from his nose. “Evening approaches, and Lady Antoinette cannot be subjected to your brown study at supper.”

  James drew his wife down into his lap, for they were in the small sitting room adjoining their bedroom and James had taken the precaution of locking the door.

  “You had a good nap?” Breeding women were given to napping, something else James had had to learn.

  Patience tucked her feet up over the arm of James’s reading chair. He couldn’t feel the baby, but he could feel a difference. Patience had a secret, inward glow, a quiet good cheer that drew James like a candle in the window on a long chilly night. Heath had mentioned the same thing about Penelope.

  “I have the oddest dreams these days,” Patience said. “I see Noah riding a pony, for example, or you in my best Sunday bonnet. The images are very vivid. This afternoon, I dreamed I saw Lady Antoinette jousting with a parasol.”

  Patience was very fond of bonnets, also shoes, gloves, and parasols.

  “A parasol is hardly an adequate weapon for a lady’s defense,” James observed. “What did Lady Nonie get up to today, anyway?”

  Having a young lady underfoot was interesting. Patience had mustered maternal inclinations in the blink of an eye, while James had been daunted. Nonie was lovely, but she noticed everything, asked the damnedest questions, and was frightfully well read. On a whole new level, he realized he was about to become a father, possibly of a daughter.

  “Penny took Nonie off to Hatchard’s,” Patience said, “and I’m sure a stop at Gunter’s was planned as well. Nonie frets less if she gets out.”

  James smoothed a hand over Patience’s hair, for it tickled his jaw when she moved about.

  “What has Lady Nonie to fret over? You look after her every need, she loves to read, and she hasn’t yet made her come-out.”

  Noah would see that all in the girl’s path was rose petals and doting swains, just as he had for his own sisters. How a taciturn and overworked duke arranged rose petals, James did not know, but if he and Patience had daughters, he’d acquire the knack himself.

  And the ability to summon nightingales.

  “Nonie frets over her sister and brother,” Patience said. “Grantley’s predicament is obvious, but for Lady Thea, Nonie’s concerns are more subtle.”

  James had no secrets from his wife, but where Noah was concerned, Patience often didn’t ask, and thus James wasn’t called upon to dance between competing loyalties.

  “No marriage that starts with less than a week of courtship will have an easy time of it,” he said. “Perhaps we should hold a ball to welcome Thea to the family.”

  Noah might thank him or kill him for that suggestion.

  “I thought we should repair to Haverland for the rest of the summer,” Patience said, “and have a house party when Town empties out, but Nonie didn’t like that idea at all.”

  James roused himself from increasing fascination with the curve of Patience’s shoulder, and the shadowy treasure half-hidden beneath the lacy décolletage of her chemise. Pregnancy had made her breasts intriguingly sensitive, or maybe James’s hands had become intriguingly skilled.

  James kissed his wife’s ear. “Nonie was chattering nineteen to the dozen at breakfast about the invitations you received to Darnley’s gathering later this summer. Now you tell me she won’t enjoy a house party we host at our own very pretty country house. Women are fickle.”

  Patience bit his earlobe, gently of course. He was the father of her child, after all.

  “Nonie isn’t keen on house parties, but Thea apparently loathes them. There’s something there, James. We ought to ask Meech if he’s heard any gossip concerning Thea and unfortunate incidents at house parties.”

  Meech would know, and what he didn’t know, he and Pemmie could casually unearth from their wide circle of acquaintances, former paramours, and servant-familiars.

  “I’ll suggest Noah have a word with Meech,” James said, “because it’s none of our business, Patience. We should be focused on choosing names, decorating the nursery, and cosseting you.”

  “I like the cosseting part,” she said, squirming around to straddle his lap. “I think the cosseting ought to go both ways. I should cosset you too.”

  James should have argued. They had a houseguest, and they’d been late for breakfast that morning as a result of cosseting each other.

  “Nonie’s with Penelope,” Patience whispered, �
�and I’ve moved dinner back an hour.”

  James had been warned by other fellows. When the baby came, the cosseting bit was set aside for months, another daunting thought.

  Patience worked the straps of her chemise down, and James’s hands ached.

  “We have months to come up with names,” he whispered. “For now, let the cosseting begin.”

  Sixteen

  “Then may I keep my chemise on?”

  Late-afternoon light slanted across Thea’s features, revealing doubt, wariness, and genuine bewilderment. She apparently didn’t know if a chemise was expected, permitted, tolerated, or bad form entirely.

  Noah ran his finger along the lace of her collar.

  “Of course you can keep your…” He stopped as inspiration struck. “I want you to keep your chemise on, if that’s how you’ll be more comfortable. What goes on here is not about appeasing my lust and shooing me out of your hair. Not only about that.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “For God’s sake…” He touched his lips to Thea’s again, whisper light, at variance with the exasperation that made him want to shout: “Kiss me.”

  Amid the lavender-scented sheets, Noah waited, flat on his back, stark naked, his wife straddling him and his rampant arousal. Fortunately for his sanity, Thea deliberated for only a progression of heartbeats before she leaned forward—not far enough to give Noah the sensation of her breasts brushing his chest, but far enough—and touched her lips to his.

  She withdrew after the merest pressure, then her lips returned, a shade less hesitant.

  “Delicious,” Noah whispered. “More, please, or I will beg, and you don’t want a begging duke on your conscience, Thea.”

  Neither did Noah. A begging duchess, however, became his sole objective.

  Thea covered his mouth with hers, probably to shut him up.

  Noah was happy with the result. Thea braced herself on her hands, and put herself at that height most conducive to his mouth plundering hers. By careful degrees, Noah transformed a kiss of the lips, mouths, and tongues, to a shared bodily caress.

  The better to signal his intentions, he framed Thea’s face with his palms, her golden earrings dangling against his knuckles.