The Worst Duke in the World

by Lisa Berne

  “You have hair on your chest,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I wondered if you did.”

  Anthony stared down at her in amazement. “You—you did?”

  “Oh yes. And I wondered whether it would be dark, like your eyelashes and eyebrows, or lighter, like your hair.”

  Anthony swallowed again. “Well, now you know.” A little learning is a dangerous thing . . .

  “Yes, now I know that it’s dark. Not as dark as your eyelashes and eyebrows. Soft. Wonderful.” Jane leaned forward and kissed him on his chest, right between the vee of his shirt, and Anthony had to suppress the urge to startle like a horse, so exciting, even shocking, was the sensation of her mouth there. It was also exciting, and shocking, to learn that Jane had spent any time at all thinking about his chest and wondering about it. She kissed him there again, lingeringly, and all at once Anthony remembered something.

  “I say, Jane.”

  She lifted her head. “Yes?”

  “It’s—it’s possible that I smell rather bad. I—I was sweating, you know, when Wakefield was having his extraction. And—and also I’ve been sweating here in the ballroom, with all the—the kissing, you know, and whatnot.”

  Jane put the side of her face against his chest, shocking him again, and breathed in deeply. “You smell delightful.”

  “I—I do?”

  “Oh yes. Earthy and masculine and delightful.”

  Anthony listened hard for any traces of sarcasm or irony in Jane’s voice. But there was none, or at least he, in his uneasiness, couldn’t detect any. “Really?”

  “Yes. Very. Can you lean down just a little, so I can reach your neck?”

  He did, wondering if she was going to lick his neck as he had done to hers, or kiss it as she had kissed his chest. Either would be fine. Or both would. Repeatedly. But she surprised him—again—by immediately nipping at the tender skin along the side, sending through him another electrifying surge of pleasure heightened by the little tantalizing shimmer of pain. Anthony caught his breath.

  “Jane.”

  “Yes?”

  “That was marvelous.”

  “I’m so glad you liked it.”

  “I certainly did. By the way, have my eyes darkened?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “And you really like it when they do?”

  “Oh yes. Very much.”

  “Well, that’s splendid. Thank you. Would you do it again?”

  “Bite you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Of course.”

  And she did, and now he felt like humming.

  Actually, he felt like doing more than humming. That earlier wish came back, more forcefully than ever: the wish, the longing, the powerful urge to lie down with Jane, to strip away all their clothes, to do more than kiss and lick and nip.

  So much more . . .

  But then, unfortunately, practical considerations snaked their way into his fevered mind.

  Forced their way in, the sneaky little bastards.

  Practical consideration the first: they couldn’t do it here in the ballroom.

  For one thing, they might easily be discovered. Also, where would they? The hard, polished, gleaming floor was their only option. Of course, out of courtesy and concern for her comfort he would offer to be on the bottom, although he was a little unsure of the actual logistics of such a position.

  No, wait—there were chairs.

  A chair could work. Couldn’t it? He’d never tried it himself, but it seemed like a real possibility. He could sit on one, and Jane could, well, sit on him.

  Would she like that?

  Even if she did, he remembered to his sorrow, they could still be found out. Practical consideration the second.

  Thoughts whipped through his brain, lightning-fast.

  They could, if she agreed to it, slip upstairs to his bedchamber, where he had a large, even vast, and very comfortable bed.

  They would have privacy there.

  The walls were thick as anything and impressively noise-muffling. Once Wakefield, trying to reach a book on the top shelf of his bookcase, had climbed up onto the lower shelves and toppled over the bookcase with (as he later described it) a tremendous thump, sending books crashing and scattering everywhere, and he, fortunately, leaping out of harm’s way. Anthony, in his room across the hall, hadn’t heard a thing.

  But—speaking of upstairs, and practical consideration the third—they’d been here in the ballroom for a long time. Bunch had therefore been with Wakefield for the same amount of time. Wouldn’t it be selfish to go sneaking away to his bedchamber?

  Especially since he would want to spend all night with Jane.

  Or, perhaps, they could share a quick interlude together?

  No, that would somehow be worse.

  Inconsiderate, possibly.

  As if he merely wanted to use Jane for his own pleasure.

  When what he really wanted was hours and hours and hours together . . . for their mutual pleasure.

  Which was, he was coming to see, unlikely.

  Even impossible.

  Practical considerations abounded. Multiplying like unwanted rabbits.

  Besides, he hated the idea of sneaking around. As if they were doing something not only illicit, but wrong.

  And wasn’t it wrong?

  They weren’t married, and of course they never would be, as naturally he would never, ever allow himself to be dragged (quite possibly literally kicking and screaming) into the marital trap again. Once burned, twice shy and all that. Plus, he would never, ever want to take advantage of Jane.

  Kissing her like this hadn’t been taking advantage of her, had it?

  A draft of cool air had come slithering down the back of his neck, chilling him all over, and Anthony was at the same time realizing that if someone did happen to come in, a footman or a maidservant, or even Margaret, prowling about like a cat, he or she or they would see him standing here with Jane without his neckcloth on and that would not be in the least bit a good thing.

  He or she or they, seeing him and Jane like this, might jump to all kinds of conclusions.

  The very idea of which made him, Anthony, feel all exposed and chilly and guilty and uneasy and selfish and miserable and, even worse, as if he had been unceremoniously dropped into the Arctic Sea. Lust and longing and desire were quenched as if they had not been—minutes ago—roaring through him like the triumphantly freed waters of a broken dam.

  So Anthony took a step back. He reached down to pick up his neckcloth. As he wrapped it around his neck and began to tie it he said, “Well, I—I daresay we should be going back upstairs.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “It must be getting quite late.”

  “Yes.”

  He made himself look at Jane.

  The rosy flush in her cheeks had faded away, as had the bright glowing shine in her eyes. But she met him look for look, steadily, and her voice was even and pleasant. Anthony forced himself to not lower his gaze, to the bodice of her pink gown, to the place where, concealed, was the mark of his teeth upon her breast.

  He finished tying his neckcloth. The good thing about the way he usually tied it, he supposed, was that when he did it hastily and without a mirror and also filled with remorse and guilt and ambivalence and even an odd sort of relief, it would probably look about the same and no one could possibly suspect that he had allowed Jane to take it off and leave the sweet mark of her teeth beneath it.

  “Shall we?” he said, gesturing awkwardly toward the doorway.

  “Yes.”

  And so they left the ballroom and went upstairs, where they found Wakefield sound asleep, with Snuffles right next to him, the sole source of illumination in the room the three-branched candelabra on the bedside table, and Bunch still sitting in the same chair, only he had set aside the book of fairy tales and was deep into Tales from Shakespeare.

  Before Jane settled in for the night, the Duke showed her wher
e his bedroom was—just across the hall from Wakefield’s—and Bunch asked her to ring at any point should she need him. Jane thanked them both, then went back into Wakefield’s room where, behind the screen Bunch had thoughtfully instructed a footman to bring in for her, she changed into her borrowed nightgown and braided her hair into a plait.

  Once she had checked on Wakefield again, gotten into the trundle bed, and pulled the covers up around her shoulders, she lay awake thinking about the day, and especially about strolling around the ballroom with the Duke and what had happened in there.

  Things had started off nicely, continued on to glorious, then shifted into awkwardness as the Duke’s mood abruptly changed.

  Jane remembered how, on the day of the tea here with the Merifields, she had observed this same shift in him. He’d reminded her, forbiddingly, of the Bastille. Aloof and inaccessible.

  But now she was thinking more of a concertina, that curious musical instrument with the bellows which expanded and contracted. Once, back in Nantwich, she had seen a German musician playing one on the high street, and she had joined the little crowd around him to watch. How interesting to see the concertina stretch in and out in the musician’s deft hands.

  The Duke seemed rather like this.

  Expanding and contracting.

  Opening himself up and then backing away.

  It was hard to know where she stood with him.

  Jane thought again about his late wife Lady Selina. Had the Duke loved her so much that it was impossible for him to develop a new attachment?

  Just tonight he had said about the costume ball: As I managed to escape being wrangled into issuing a proposal, I’d call it an unabashed success.

  It was a puzzle, Jane thought.

  But how to solve it?

  She could hardly sidle up to the Duke and say, Lovely weather we’re having, and by the way, are you in love with a dead woman?

  Such things were not unknown. Great-grandmother Kent, for example, had mourned the loss of her husband, that rapscallion pamphleteer, to the very end of her days. She had had, Jane recalled, a couple of suitors while in Nantwich, all of whom she had roundly spurned, saying that her heart was buried deep in the grave.

  To further complicate the questions swirling in Jane’s mind, she couldn’t quite picture herself saying to the Duke: Also, while we’re on the subject of your possibly still being in love with your late wife, I was wondering why you seem to run rather hot and cold in your relations with me.

  Actually, when she thought about it for a while, she could picture herself asking about the hot-and-cold concertina issue.

  What might hold her back, she realized, was that maybe she didn’t want to know the answer.

  In a situation like this, a person might, perhaps, be justified in guarding her own heart rather carefully. Being wary. No matter how much that person liked another person, or how much that person (the one guarding her heart) enjoyed kissing that other person (the one to be guarded against) and would have very much liked to kiss that other person for a lot longer and engage in further intimacies, because that other person was marvelously attractive and intelligent and sensitive and generous and with such an engaging sense of humor and also had the most delicious mouth as well as gorgeous collar-bones and an amazingly strong, hard-planed chest with wonderful springy hair on it, along with (as he had tonight, though not always) a heady scent of sweat and stables and a faint tang of chocolate about him, all of which basically made that person (herself, of course) feel drunk with desire.

  Jane sighed, then turned from her side onto her back.

  She lay there for a while, thinking and puzzling, occasionally imagining herself in a lovely cozy bed with the Duke and firmly suppressing these enticing images, after which she tried to corral herself into counting pretend sheep jumping over a stile, but somehow the sheep kept turning into pigs, enormous pink hairy pigs, and Johns the pigman with his big red round face came stumping up to wave a stick in her face and tell her to go away, and Great-grandmother Henrietta was tugging at her arm and telling her it was time to leave, and Lady Margaret was tugging at her other arm and agreeing with Great-grandmother, and Grandfather Titus suddenly appeared, a mischievous smile sparkling in his gray eyes, laughing impudently at Great-grandmother and Lady Margaret and Johns, then looking at Jane and telling her that duchesses ought to eat more blancmange, which was how Jane dimly realized that she was dreaming, and made herself wake up so that she could sit up in her trundle bed, let her eyes adjust to the darkness, and ensure that Wakefield was still sleeping peacefully.

  He was, and she drifted back into sleep, but sat up several times in the night to check on him. As dawn approached, Wakefield became restless, muttering as he tossed and turned, and when Jane got up and went around to the side of his bed, she could see that he was flushed again.

  Gently she put a hand on his forehead. The heat from yesterday had returned, and rather more strongly than it had been before.

  “Jane?”

  “I’m here, dear Wakefield.”

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “I think you’re a little feverish again. Can I give you something to drink?”

  “Is there lemonade?”

  “Yes. It’s still nice and cool.”

  “Yes, please.”

  Jane helped Wakefield sit up, and gave him some lemonade which thirstily he drank. Then he lay back against his pillows, his face pinched again with discomfort. He said:

  “The hole in my mouth hurts.”

  “A little, or a lot?”

  “A lot.”

  Jane stroked a lock of fine brown hair off his forehead. “You may need some more laudanum, and something for your fever. I’m going to get your father. I’ll be right back.”

  She put on the flannel wrapper the housekeeper had given her and went to knock on the Duke’s door across the hall.

  Perhaps he had been sleeping lightly too, for he promptly opened the door wearing only buckskins and a loose white shirt, his hair all tousled and the shadow of new dark beard on his face.

  She said, “Wakefield slept well last night, but he’s a little worse this morning,” and he flashed her a look of such concern intermingled with gratitude that she had to sternly remind herself to be careful, no matter how delightful he looked in just trousers and a shirt (which showed a fair amount of his chest) and with marvelously untidy hair and so on. It was a good thing, she thought, that Nantwich girls could not only be tough, they could also be wary when necessary. And now, she reminded herself even more sternly, was the perfect time to be extremely tough and wary.

  Together she and the Duke went into Wakefield’s room, and a minute or two later he was ringing for Bunch who shortly appeared as calm and precise and immaculate as ever, and at the Duke’s instructions went away to send for Dr. Fotherham again.

  Not long after that Mrs. Niddy, as if she had been keeping her eye on the hallway traffic, came trotting in, her apron bulging with what looked to be a variety of bottles and medicaments (and Jane would not have been in the least surprised if among these items was a well-worn copy of Four Hundred Practical Aspects of Vinegar As Used to Reduce Corpulence, Purify the Humours, Improve the Complexion, and Attract a Most Desirable Spouse, or some other of Great-grandfather Kent’s diverse array of pamphlets, though to the best of her knowledge he had never written anything about castor oil). Wakefield, hot and flushed and miserable, shrieked at the sight of Nurse, and the Duke—colder and sterner than Jane had ever seen him before—told her to leave the room at once.

  “But Master Anthony,” Nurse began to protest, “I’m sure I’m only here to help,” and the Duke merely repeated:

  “At once, if you please.”

  In his voice was such implacable authority that Nurse dipped a deep, cowed curtsy and trotted off through the doorway, whatever she had stowed in her apron clinking and clanking in a rather agitated manner. Before these mysterious, even ominous sounds had faded away Wakefield said:

  �
��Oh, Father, that was ripping.”

  The Duke was frowning at the doorway and didn’t answer.

  “Father.”

  After a moment the Duke turned to look at his son. “Yes?”

  “I was just saying how ripping that was.”

  “Routing Nurse?”

  “Yes. It was awfully dukish of you, Father.”

  The Duke only shrugged, as if skeptical, and poured out more lemonade to offer to Wakefield. When Bunch returned to inquire about breakfast, the Duke said:

  “It’s time for a change, I think, Bunch. Nurse is to be reassigned to other duties within the house—light ones, of course, given her age—or, if she prefers, she may wish to finally accept her pension and go to her family in Riverton. I’ll tell her myself as soon as possible. Have you anyone on the staff who might be a suitable replacement?”

  Wakefield issued a cheer, albeit a rather weak one, and Bunch said, after a moment of reflection:

  “Martha Lawley, Your Grace, who is at present an under-housemaid, might—”

  “I like Martha!” interrupted Wakefield eagerly. “She’s always got a treat for Snuffles in her pocket. She’s nice.”

  Bunch gave a courteous little bow. “I entirely agree, My Lord. She’s also the eldest of six children, and thus has considerable experience overseeing the care of young people. However, Your Grace, it would be a significant elevation in status, representing a major disruption in the traditional hierarchical order, and I would be remiss if I failed to mention it.”

  The Duke replied, “You mean, Bunch, that my sister won’t like it. Well, that’s too bad. Can you instruct Martha as to her new duties, and hire a new under-housemaid? Also, can you have fresh lemonade and barley-water brought up? Wake, do you want a jelly, or some porridge?”

  “No. The hole in my mouth hurts too much.”

  “I’m sorry, old chap. We’ll have you right as a trivet as soon as we can. Coffee for me, Bunch, please. Jane, what would you like?”

  “Coffee also, please.”

  “Would you like anything else?”

  “No, thank you.” Jane was hungry, but would wait until she could eat without poor pinched Wakefield being forced to watch. She had gone to sit at the end of Wakefield’s bed, and she looked curiously up at the Duke.