OF ALL THE things Edie might have expected to feel should Stuart ever discover the truth, relief had never been one of them. If she’d ever paused to contemplate the awful prospect that he’d uncover her secret, she would have predicted the result to be a deepening of the emotions that already haunted her. But to feel relief that he knew? No, Edie never would have predicted that.
And yet, in the wake of his discovery, she felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and it was only then that she appreciated what a burden a secret could be when one carried it all alone.
But that didn’t make anything easier. Despite a sense of relief, Edie felt even more vulnerable and exposed than before, and for her, dinner was awkward and embarrassing.
Joanna, however, saved the day by asking him about Africa, and throughout the meal, they were regaled with descriptions of that continent’s breathtaking scenery and exotic animals, and tales of life in the bush. Joanna and Mrs. Simmons listened with rapt attention, and, though another time, Edie might have been equally fascinated, tonight she was too preoccupied to care much about stories of rhinos and elephants.
That he still wanted to continue astonished her. He knew the truth now. Didn’t he see that what he wanted was hopeless?
And yet, even as she asked herself that question, she felt restive, uncertain. Was it hopeless?
She glanced up from her dessert to study him across the dining table. The dining room was the only one in the house still lit by candles, and in their mellow glow, glimmers of the African sun could be seen in his dark brown hair and bronzed skin. Laugh lines creased the edges of his eyes and mouth as he told Joanna some tale about taking a dandified Italian count on safari. He looked splendidly handsome in his dinner jacket, but then, he was a handsome man. She’d always known that.
If I’d been five feet tall with bad teeth and a potbelly, I don’t think the proposition you made to me would ever have occurred to you. I think you were at least a little bit attracted to me the moment you first saw me. I know damned sure I was attracted to you.
His words in her room at the Savoy came echoing back to her, and for the first time, Edie wondered if there might be some truth in them. Would she have thought up the idea of marrying him if he hadn’t been so terribly attractive?
As if he sensed her watching him, he looked across the table, and when she looked into those beautiful gray eyes, she felt the same strange, shivery feeling she’d felt the first time he’d ever looked at her.
She’d been desperate to find a way to avoid going back home, but until Stuart, she hadn’t seen a way. And then he’d looked at her, with that quizzical frown on his brow and slight smile on his lips, and she’d felt his attraction like the pull of a magnet. Preoccupied with all the other emotions swirling around in her that night, she hadn’t admitted it, or even realized it was there, and she’d always believed it was serendipity and nothing more. But now, looking at him across the dining table, she realized he was right. Amid her fear and panic, there had been attraction too, lurking beneath, suppressed and unacknowledged.
And like the girl in the garden at Hanford House had done, she looked at him now and wondered what her life might have been like if she’d met him first, before Saratoga, when she’d been innocent, unsullied, whole.
The room suddenly felt suffocating. Edie looked away and set down her fork. “Forgive me,” she said, and stood up, bringing conversation to a halt and Stuart to his feet. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to my room. I’ve a bit of a headache.”
“Would you like a Beechum’s Powder sent up?” he asked. “I have some.”
“No, that’s quite all right. I just want to go to bed. Good night, everyone.”
She escaped the dining room and went upstairs, but even her bedroom wasn’t much of a sanctuary. Not now, not since he’d been there. Edie leaned back against her closed bedroom door and stared at the floor where he’d touched her face and told her she was beautiful when she smiled, where he’d learned her secret and her shame.
Nothing has changed, Edie, not for me.
How could that be? How could he want her now? But he did. He wanted her because he thought she could be a normal woman, with a normal woman’s desires.
She lifted her hand, her fingers touching her face as Stuart had touched her, and she wondered for a moment if it was possible. But then, she thought of what would come after he touched her face and called her beautiful, of the invasion of his body into hers, and hope vanished like a candle blown out.
Saratoga had happened. There was no going back.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, they met with Mr. Robson as planned. From Stuart’s point of view, it was a wholly unnecessary meeting, for his steward had been forwarding quarterly reports for all the ducal properties to his club in Nairobi during his entire absence. But he didn’t tell Edie that, for after the tumult of yesterday, she probably needed someone to be a buffer, and the dry, businesslike Scotsman was as good a buffer as any.
When she asked Robson to inform him of the current condition of the various estates, Stuart ignored the steward’s slightly puzzled expression and gave the other man an encouraging nod. As Robson enumerated the various renovations made to the various ducal properties, he listened to everything he already knew with full attention.
It wasn’t until the two hours were up that she ended the meeting. She then mumbled something about luncheon with the other members of the Sales-of-Work committee and a pressing need to pay calls on ladies of the county, and dashed off.
He appreciated that she felt the need to put some distance between them. And truth be told, he needed it, too.
He’d known from the first that Edie wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever met. In coming home, he’d known she would not welcome the idea of a real marriage between them. And in making that wager, he’d known winning a kiss from her wouldn’t be easy. He’d also thought he knew the reasons behind all that, but now he appreciated that he hadn’t had a clue.
The truth, when it came, had shocked and enraged him. The initial shock had now passed, and his rage had been pushed down to a rolling simmer deep in his guts, but now he had to deal with something far more difficult, something all his vast but shallow experience with women had never taught him.
He would need to evoke pleasure in a woman whose only experience with lovemaking was brutality. He would need to bring her desire to life after another man had tried to kill it. As he pondered the question of how to go about it, he felt hopelessly at sea. It was probably the first time in his entire adult life that he was with a woman he had no clue how to seduce.
It scared the hell out of him.
And what if he failed? What if no matter what he did or tried to do, it wasn’t enough? Every woman deserved the pleasures of lovemaking—not only the physical release, but also the tenderness, the intimacy, and the sheer fun of it, and it was a man’s office to see that she received them. If he failed, Edie might never know those things.
Everything in him rebelled against that notion. She was his wife. She deserved those pleasures, by God, and it was up to him that she had them. But how?
All he had to do was win a kiss, but he knew if he pushed too hard or too fast, she’d flee, their wager be damned. And if he succeeded in winning their bet, there was no guarantee she’d keep to the terms afterward. Could he blame her if she didn’t? Even if she stayed, could he make her happy? The horrific thing that had happened to her was like a wall between them. What if he couldn’t breach it? What if she decided one day she couldn’t stick it, and she left him?
Stuart forced his mind away from hypothetical scenarios and back to reality. He had to win a kiss. That was his only goal. As for the rest, he’d have to worry about that when he got there.
Chapter 13
IF EDIE THOUGHT leaving Highclyffe for the afternoon would enable her to escape from Stuart, she was sadly mistaken.
> Ladies of the county expressed great delight at the duke’s return, commented about how happy she must be, and assured her that she need have no further worry about fulfilling her duty, for now that the duke had come home, there was sure to be a son and heir in the nursery before long.
Edie, feeling hemmed in on all sides, finally gave up making calls and returned to the house, where she found it vitally important to forgo tea and sort through the storage rooms in the attics with Mrs. Gates instead.
But she could not avoid being alone with him forever. At five o’clock, one of the housemaids came up and informed her that His Grace had finished his tea and was waiting for her on the terrace so that they might take their evening walk together.
She went down to join him with a feeling of dread, but much to her relief, he did not refer to the mortifying events of the day before. As they took Snuffles for a stroll through the gardens, she kept their conversation on safe, neutral ground: the fine, hot weather, the news in the village, and the condition of the herbaceous borders, and he seemed content with these mundane topics.
Afterward, she went to her room and changed into the same sort of loose-fitting tea gown she’d worn the day before, and just as she had the day before, she kept her corset on. Stuart might be right that it would be easier for her to assist him if she didn’t wear one, but to her mind, the more barriers between them, the better.
Not that it seemed to make much difference, for by the time he tapped on her door a few minutes later, she was as jumpy as a cat on hot bricks.
When she opened the door, the sight of him in his smoking jacket was a forcible reminder of the intimacy the day before and the painful revelations that had followed. When he closed the door behind him, the turn of the key in the lock drove her to the other side of the room. When he slid off his shoes and shrugged out of his smoking jacket, she busied herself with straightening the bottles on her dressing table, but that only made things worse, for the green glass bottle of liniment was among them, and she could not for the life of her imagine ever being at ease enough in his company to apply it.
When he asked if she was ready to begin, she rose from the dressing table and crossed to where he stood, but she couldn’t quite meet his gaze.
He noticed it at once. “Edie, you don’t need to be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” she denied, and the moment she said it, she grimaced at how horribly unconvincing she sounded. “All right, yes,” she admitted. “I am.”
“So am I, if that makes you feel better.” He laid down, rolled onto his back, and stretched his leg toward the ceiling. “After all,” he added as she wrapped her arm around his thigh, “you have all the power here.”
Since she never would have chosen to be in this position, with his leg pressed against her body and heat spreading through her own, she didn’t feel like she had any power at all. “How so?”
He spread his arms wide. “I’m at your mercy. If I misbehave, you can make me pay for it.”
She didn’t see how, since they both knew he could easily overpower her anytime he wished, but she didn’t explore the point, and they completed all the stretches without any further conversation. The intimacy of assisting him was even more acute than the day before, however, and she was quite relieved when they were finished.
“Is it starting to help?” she asked as she stood up and moved a bit farther away. “The walking and the stretching?”
“I think it is.” He wriggled his leg experimentally, then stood up, testing his weight on it a bit. “Yes, I really think it is,” he said after a moment. “It’s a bit sore, but I expect that liniment Cahill gave me will help. Where did you put it?”
She froze, and all her mortification of the day before came roaring back tenfold. “I can’t, Stuart,” she blurted out, rubbing her hands down the sides of her gown. “I can’t do that part.”
He didn’t seem surprised. He nodded. “You don’t have to, Edie, if you don’t want to.”
His quiet acceptance of her refusal impelled her to reiterate her point. “I want to help you,” she said, and crossed to the dressing table to retrieve the bottle. “I do. But after . . . after yesterday, you must see that there are some things I can’t bear. Here,” she added, shoving the bottle at him.
He took the bottle from her outstretched hand. “Edie—”
“I know you want me to do it,” she said, her cheeks growing hot, “and of course, I know why. I mean, I’m not some young, green girl.”
For some strange reason, that made him smile.
“But it’s a step too far, Stuart. It’s too . . . too . . .” She looked away, working to force the last word out. “Intimate.”
“Edie, stop.” He put the bottle in his pocket and took a step closer, putting his hands on her arms. “You don’t have to justify anything to me.” He ducked his head, so he could look into her averted face, and he said, “You know, I think this finally gives me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.”
“Opportunity?” she echoed, and the word sounded faint to her ears.
“Yes. There’s something I feel I need to say, but I haven’t known quite how to bring it up, and this only underscores the fact that I must. Before I leave you to change for dinner, might we sit and talk for a moment?”
She would have preferred to bring this interlude to an end, but she gave a reluctant nod. She gestured to the two plum velvet chairs flanking the fireplace, but when she took one, he did not take the other. Instead, he crossed to her dressing table and pulled out the cushioned stool tucked beneath it. Carrying it by one of its wooden legs, he brought it across to where she sat and placed it directly before her.
His knee brushed hers as he sat down in front of her, but it would be silly to object since they had been in much closer proximity only a few minutes earlier.
With that thought, the room seemed even warmer than before, and she wished that the open windows offered some sort of breeze. She shifted a bit sideways and folded her hands primly in her lap. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”
“Anytime there are confidences between people, it’s always awkward afterward.” He stretched out his right leg beside her chair, set aside his stick, and leaned forward, crossing his forearms over his left knee. “Please believe that I don’t want to make things harder for you, or cause you any further embarrassment or pain, but there is one thing about what was revealed yesterday that I need to address.”
She glanced past him to the door, feeling a bit desperate. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I’m sure. And I wouldn’t if I didn’t feel it was absolutely necessary. It’s damned difficult though . . .” He fell silent, pressing a fist to his mouth, and he looked away for a long moment. She waited, hands clenching more tightly in her lap with each moment, wishing he would just say it, whatever it was.
At last, he stirred, lowered his hand, and looked at her again. “Edie, I have the feeling that you were wholly innocent when this happened to you, that you had no experience at all. Am I right?”
Oh, God. Edie’s hands came apart to grip the arms of her chair. “Why are you asking me this?” she whispered harshly, turning her face aside.
“Because if that’s so, then there’s something you may not know, something you need to know. Among all animals, humans included, there are rules. Whether it’s a pride of lions or a colony of monkeys or a man and a woman alone together, one of the most basic rules of any society is that the female always has the right to refuse the male’s advances.”
Edie wriggled in her chair, so uncomfortable that she could hardly breathe. “I really don’t want to talk about this, please.”
“I know you don’t, and I’m sorry to cause you distress, but it’s important we get this quite clear. Edie, please look at me.”
She forced herself to comply. His face was grave, and when she looked in his eyes, the tenderness she saw there
was almost her undoing. But as difficult as it was to hold his gaze, she did.
“I daresay you don’t believe that that particular rule exists,” he went on. “Some men break it, obviously.” He grimaced at that, and he paused long enough to draw a deep breath. “But I want you to know that between us, Edie, it is inviolable.”
“That’s an easy thing for a man to say, Stuart,” she choked.
“I realize that,” he said gently. “But we both know my intent is to seduce you, and despite what I learned yesterday, that hasn’t changed. It’s only fair to warn you that I will make advances. I might pick up your hand, for instance.”
He leaned forward, reaching for her hand—slowly, giving her plenty of time to snatch it back if she chose. Edie didn’t move.
He lifted her hand in his, holding her fingertips in a loose grip. “You can pull away if you want to.” The pad of his thumb brushed back and forth across her knuckles. “Do you want to?”
The caress was featherlight, and yet it made her tingle—with apprehension and something more. “You’re only holding my hand,” she said, trying to sound indifferent. “It seems harmless enough.”
“True, but I might turn it over.” Slowly, he did so, and his thumb brushed her palm. It tickled, and she gave a start of surprise. He stopped, and she knew he was waiting for her to make a choice. She didn’t move.
“I might . . .” He paused. Cradling her hand in his, he lifted it. His eyes met hers as he pressed her hand to his cheek. “I might kiss it.”
He turned his head, still holding her gaze, and pressed a kiss into her palm.
She felt it through her entire body, a sensation that was not fear at all. She gave a gasp of surprise and jerked her hand away, but even after she had pulled away, she could still feel the warmth of his lips against her palm.
Resisting the impulse to tuck her hands behind her, she forced herself to say something. “I don’t suppose . . .” She paused, striving to put an acerbic note into her voice, “I don’t suppose you could just resist the temptation to make these advances?”
How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days Page 18