Forbidden Pleasures

by Bertrice Small

  She finished up her work for the day, went downstairs, and had the supper that Essie had left for her. She took a bath, smiling at the lilac fragrance that perfumed the room. Then, sliding into a sleep shirt, she climbed into bed. When the clock in the hall struck nine p.m. Emily picked up the channel changer, pressed the on button, and then programmed in the Channel. Almost at once the duke’s library came into view. She hit enter, and there he was waiting for her.

  “Caro, my love!” he said, coming forward to take her into his embrace. Then he stopped. “What on earth are you wearing?”

  “No, Trahern,” she said firmly. “No Caro tonight, damn it! Emily tonight. It’s a sleep shirt. I need a friend, and you are elected.”

  The Duke of Malincourt looked somewhat horrified by her words. “A friend? My dear girl, men are not friends with women,” he told her.

  “Maybe not in your century, but in mine it happens all the time. My mother and father were best friends. You know what almost ruined that friendship? Sex. Me. But Mama went on to become a gonzo lawyer who married a man who became a senator, and together they produced two children. As for dear old Dad, he became a pediatrician with a nice Irish wife and three kids. I was raised by my grandmothers.”

  “Dear girl, I don’t understand half of what you are saying to me, but I can see you are wretchedly unhappy. How can I help you?” He motioned her to a chair by the blazing fire, sat down, and drew her onto his lap.

  “It’s your doppelganger,” Emily said with a sigh.

  “My what?”

  “The guy in my reality who looks just like you, Trahern,” she explained.

  “What is his name?” the duke wanted to know.

  “Michael Devlin,” Emily answered him.

  “Irish. The Irish are always trouble, dear girl. Dispense with whatever services he provides for you. ’Tis the best advice I can offer you.”

  “I’m in love with him, Trahern! I want to get married!” Emily wailed.

  “Ahhh,” the duke said as understanding dawned in his green eyes. “Has he said that he loves you, dear girl?”

  “Not in so many words. Sometimes I think he’s going to say it, and then he can’t seem to get it out,” Emily said. “What the hell is the matter with him? Everyone says he loves me. And I sure as hell love him!”

  “Have you told him so, dear girl?” the duke asked her.

  “Of course not,” Emily replied. “Women don’t tell men that they love them until men tell women that they love them.”

  “Well,” the duke said wryly with a small smile, “at least that much hasn’t changed in the centuries separating our worlds. What does he do, this Michael Devlin?”

  “He’s my editor,” Emily replied. “And he’s a really good one.”

  “So you have something in common,” the duke noted.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “And he is your lover?” the duke inquired.

  “Yes,” Emily said softly.

  “Is he as good in bed with you as I am, or have you endowed me with his qualities?” the duke wanted to know.

  “Trahern! This is not just about sex. It’s more for both of us, but I just can’t seem to bring him up to scratch,” Emily complained.

  “Well, oddly I’m not particularly surprised by that,” the duke remarked.

  “You aren’t?” This was interesting. “Why not?”

  “You’re too independent a woman, dear girl,” the duke told her candidly. “Other than making love to you, is there anything else this man can do for you?”

  “I don’t understand,” Emily said, puzzled.

  “You earn your own keep, do you not? You own your own house. You manage your own funds, I would assume, as you are close to neither your father nor your stepfather, and you are certainly of a legal age to do it. What is there that Michael Devlin can do for you that you do not do for yourself? Men do not always think only with their cocks, dear girl, and a man has his pride, y’know.”

  “If it were this century I would agree with you, Trahern, but in the twenty-first century women in my country, even here in England, take care of themselves. We don’t need to be cosseted and wrapped in cotton wool,” Emily told the duke.

  “More’s the pity, dear girl,” the duke murmured softly. “Perhaps if you were not so formidable a young lady, your Mr. Devlin would act upon his instincts and sweep you off to the parson. Even in your century the men surely want to be needed.”

  “In my century men sell their seed for pocket money at universities,” she told him.

  The duke actually paled at her words. “Tell me no more,” he said.

  “You’re a man, Trahern. Surely men haven’t changed that much in the past three centuries. Tell me what I can do so that Devlin will tell me he loves me. After that I can handle it just fine,” Emily said.

  “I have not a doubt that you can, dear girl. I honestly don’t know what to tell you except to tell him how you feel and that you need him. A man who avoids declaring himself to the woman he loves is often as skittish as a colt in a pasture. He needs to be reassured, for one of the two things a man fears most is rejection by the woman he loves,” the duke explained.

  “What’s the other thing?” she asked him mischievously.

  The duke chuckled. “I believe you already know the answer to that, you minx, although it has certainly never happened to me.”

  “Perhaps I should make it so,” she teased him.

  “Dear girl!” he exclaimed shocked.

  Emily slipped out of his lap. “I feel better now,” she said. “I’m going back.”

  “You don’t want to remain?” he asked her softly.

  “Not really, Trahern. I don’t honestly feel like stepping into the duchess’s slippers tonight. I need to think.”

  “Don’t think too much, dear girl,” he said to her, rising to take her hand in his and kiss it. “Too much thinking could lead to disaster.”

  “Good night, Trahern,” Emily said to him, and suddenly she was in her bed again, staring into the duke’s library, which was still visible on her television.

  “Good night, Emily, my sweet,” he called to her from the other side of the television screen, and Emily clicked the off button, watching as the glass darkened.

  In the days that followed Emily worked as she had never worked before. Although the book was not due in until year’s end, she had promised Devlin it would be there right after Thanksgiving. While Aaron Fischer had worked out the terms of her new contract with Stratford, J. P. Woods wanted to read The Defiant Duchess herself before she signed off on the money involved, which was almost double what Emily had been getting. Carol Stacy, the publisher of Romantic Times BOOKclub Magazine, had been pressing Emily on those terms and the advance to be paid in the new agreement, but Emily never discussed such things, even with friends like Savannah.

  Thanksgiving was coming, and Emily always had a dinner party as her grandmother Emily O had had before her. There were a few more pages and an epilogue to write, but Emily put her work aside to prepare for the holiday. She went out to the local farm with Essie, and together they picked several pumpkins for pies, a half bushel of McIntosh apples, another of mixed pears, both white and sweet potatoes, broccoli, two stalks of Brussels sprouts, carrots, beets, parsnips, a large bag of onions, and a couple of heads of cauliflower. Emily had a small root cellar where she would store the cold crops over the winter. She liked her veggies fresh, even if she did appear to be like Bree on Desperate Housewives sometimes.

  Together she and Essie prepared the pumpkin filling for the pies. They cut up the apples for the apple pie. Emily made her Irish grandmother’s poultry stuffing, using homemade bread crumbs, Bell’s poultry seasoning, and onions and celery sautéed in butter. The turkey, all twenty-two pounds of it, was fresh from another local farm. Emily made the sweet-potato casserole with lots of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and maple syrup. She cut the broccoli into individual florets, and sliced the parsnips into small rounds. While she put the pie
s together Essie made up two guest rooms: one for Devlin and the other for Rachel Wainwright, who was coming from Connecticut. Rachel had come for Thanksgiving for over ten years now.

  Devlin called, but not as often as she had hoped. She thought he sounded tired, and even distant. When he called two days before Thanksgiving to announce he would be in London for the next few days, Emily felt the tears coming. She hadn’t seen him in several weeks, and it was not just the incredible sex she missed; it was Michael Devlin.

  “Why not? What happened?” she asked, her voice choking.

  “The woman who’s been renting my house had a fire in the kitchen. It was Harrington’s day off, and instead of using the electric kettle for her tea she turned on the gas. Then she got a phone call, forgot the kettle, the water boiled off, and the kitchen caught fire, the damned stupid cow!” He sighed. “Jaysus, I miss you, angel face! What’s for dinner besides the traditional Yankee turkey?”

  “Parsnips.” Emily sniffed. “I was making you parsnips.”

  “Turkey and parsnips, huh? Is that strictly traditional?” he teased her. Oh, God, she was crying. Why was she crying?

  “Turkey, stuffing, sweet-potato casserole, broccoli with Hollandaise, parsnips, apple and pumpkin pies,” she recited. “Oh. Gravy, cranberry, rolls, butter.”

  “I wish I were going to be there,” he said, genuine regret in his voice.

  “Will you be home for Christmas, Devlin?” She was struggling not to sound weepy, but she did.

  “I promise you that whatever happens, I will be home for Christmas, angel face,” he told her. “And we will spend it together.”

  “Will I see you before then?” Why did she sound so needy? Men didn’t like needy women. Well, Trahern thought they did, but not in this time and place they didn’t, she was sure. “When will you be back, Devlin?” There, her voice was stronger.

  “Probably not until just before Christmas,” he said. “Martin wants the London office reorganized, and he’s decided that since I ran it for five years, and I was here, now was as good a time as any. He’s going to announce his semiretirement before the year’s end.”

  “Will you get his position?” she wondered aloud.

  “I don’t want it, and I’ve told him that in no uncertain terms. I’m an editor first and foremost, angel face. I like working with writers. Martin will still hover in the background enough to keep J.P. in line, but the truth is, she really deserves the post, and I’ve told her so. Haven’t you noticed lately that her attitude toward me—toward you—has changed?”

  “I haven’t talked to J.P. in a couple of years,” Emily said. “I hide behind Aaron.”

  He chuckled. “I’m going to go, Emily. It’s past midnight here, and I’m exhausted. I just got into London yesterday. I apologize again for missing Thanksgiving.”

  “It’s your loss, Devlin,” she told him. “Night.”

  “Good night, angel face,” he said.

  She cried after he hung up. Damn! Damn!Damn! Well, it wasn’t as though she weren’t going to have a tableful on Thanksgiving Day. And Rachel was arriving tomorrow. It would be fun seeing her old editor and catching up. Emily suddenly realized she hadn’t spoken with Rachel since April, until two weeks ago, when she had called her and reminded her she was expected for Thanksgiving as usual.

  Essie came Thanksgiving morning to help Emily get everything started. They had set the table together the day before. Now the turkey went into one oven, the apple and pumpkin pies into the other. The sweet-potato casserole came out of the freezer to defrost. By afternoon it would be ready to be heated. The broccoli was in the steamer waiting to be cooked, the parsnips in their pot.

  “I’ll be going now,” Essie said. “Have a good day, Miss Emily.”

  “You too, Essie. Happy Thanksgiving. I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “You don’t need me tomorrow?” Essie asked.

  “Go shopping like all the other crazy people,” Emily said with a smile.

  The door closed behind Essie, and hearing Rachel Wainwright coming down the stairs, Emily pulled a pan of her sweet rolls from the warming oven. “Morning, Rachel,” she said. “I’ve got your sweet rolls and coffee.”

  The two women sat down at the kitchen table and gossiped. Rachel’s main concern was whether Emily was working well with Michael Devlin. She assured her former editor that she was. At four o’clock that afternoon Emily’s other guests arrived: Rina and Dr. Sam, Aaron Fischer, and Kirkland Browne. They came in from the cold late afternoon sniffing appreciatively, greeting their hostess and Rachel Wainwright.

  “Where’s Mick?” Aaron immediately asked as Emily settled them in the living room before the roaring fire.

  “Stuck in London,” Emily explained, and then told them of the conversation she had had with Devlin two nights ago.

  “He always did enjoy London,” Rachel said. “I doubt he’s lonely. I have friends in the London office, and the stories they told me ... !” She laughed. “He’s probably looked up a few of his birds, as he always called them. And no doubt they’re happy to see him.”

  Emily looked slightly stricken, but then, recovering, she said, “Savannah told me a story of some girl who thought she had him roped and tied, and then he showed up at her birthday party with some model. There was a fight, and someone got shoved into the birthday cake.”

  “Oh, yes, I recall that story. The model was Lady Soledad Gordon Brumell. She goes just by her first name. You’ve seen her. She’s the model for Helèna Cosmetics. Tall. Fair. Black hair and very blue eyes. And the disdainful look. Attitude, they call it today. In my day it was just plain sulkiness. They all seem to have that look nowadays.”

  “Emily’s new novel is going to be very big, Rachel,” Aaron Fischer said in an attempt to change the subject. “They’re going to release it simultaneously in England and the United States. And such promotion they’ve arranged for it. I haven’t seen promotion like this since the early days of romance literature.”

  “Like what?” Rachel wanted to know. She seemed pleased for Emily.

  “Posters of the cover as giveaways. Floor and counter dumps with headers. Emily will be at BookExpo in New York in June for a big signing. They’ve got radio and television interviews scheduled. And Stratford is holding a raffle in all the big chains. Ten winners get flown to New York during BookExpo, all expenses paid, to have lunch with Emily at her favorite restaurant. And the grand-prize winner gets ten days in England, all expenses, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. No one’s done anything like that for a romance author in years. Oy! I’m forgetting. She’s going to do breakfast with several distributors, at least those who are left, in February. Valentine’s Day, I think.”

  “My goodness,” Rachel exclaimed. “Do I get an ARC to read soon?”

  “I just have a few pages to go,” Emily said. “It will be in to New York next week.” She stood up. “I’ve got to go and check on the turkey. It should be almost done. Rina, come and give me a hand, will you, please?”

  When the two women had left the room, Aaron Fischer looked to Rachel Wainwright and said, “Rachel, I think there is something you ought to know.”

  And Rachel’s eyes grew wide with a mixture of shock and surprise as Emily’s agent explained what was happening between Mick Devlin and Emily.

  “But he’s a ladies’ man,” Rachel said when he had finished. “Mick never struck me as a man who was going to marry and settle down. But then, I never saw a man in Emily’s life either. She’s too much of a writer.”

  Dr. Sam chuckled at this observation. “She can’t be a writer and a wife too?” he asked quietly. “She’s in love.”

  “But what about Mick?” Rachel asked.

  “According to my Rina, he’s in love with Emily,” Dr. Sam replied.

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Aaron Fischer said. “I wouldn’t admit this in Rina’s hearing, because I would never hear the end of it, but she does have an instinct for these things. The problem is, he’s been a bachelor for forty
years. Can he find the chutzpah to propose?”

  “Christmas is coming,” Dr. Sam said. “Hanukkah’s coming. It’s a season of miracles, my friends.”

  “It’s going to take a miracle,” Rachel Wainwright said. “But why not?”

  And the three men in the room nodded in agreement.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was the first week in December, and The Defiant Duchess was finished at last. Caro and her duke had been reunited and would live happily ever after. The duchess had gained her revenge by finally trusting in her husband to aid her. It was a good story with fully developed and likable characters both major and minor. The villains were deliciously evil and got their proper comeuppance, because good must always triumph over evil. And, most important, there was lots of steamy sex. Emily was surprised at how easily a more sensual story line had been incorporated into her novel. It really hadn’t spoiled a thing, once she had learned from delicious experience what real love, both emotional and physical, was all about.

  She had gone over the chapters in her computer, making small corrections: adding a line here, deleting one there. Finally satisfied, she burned two CDs and printed out five paper copies of the five-hundred-page manuscript. Normally she would have printed out only four. Putting two large rubber bands about the first copy, she taped a small Post-it note to it that read, Dear J.P., I know how patiently you have waited for the final manuscript of The Defiant Duchess, so here is an early Christmas present. As ever, Emilie Shann. Then, placing the manuscript in a box, she wrapped it in Christmas paper decorated with fat dancing Santas, and tied it with a large red silk ribbon. She kept a paper copy for herself, sent one to Aaron, and directed the last two along with a CD to Devlin’s assistant, Sally. She had been e-mailing Michael Devlin at Stratford’s London offices the final pages as she completed them. The entire finished manuscript would be awaiting him upon his return to the States.