by Hawke, Jessa
“Do you like it, dear?” asked Mrs. Huxting kindly.
“Oh yes!” cried Olivia, hardly daring to believe her eyes. “But whatever prompted such a transformation?”
The older woman looked at her as if she had gone slightly mad. “Why you, dear.”
Olivia scrunched her forehead. “What do you mean?”
Mrs. Huxting had a smile playing over her lips, a rare occurrence for the formidable lady. “You have brought so much joy into this house over the past year, Lady Olivia, so they just wanted to show you how much they appreciate you. You have one final surprise awaiting you in your bedchamber.”
Olivia felt her heart beat fast as she approached the closed door of the room that had once seemed so lonely and was now more familiar than home. She knew it could have been none other than the duke who had effected all of these changes, and she had to wonder at the fast pacing of her heart as she imagined what lay in wait for her behind that door.
She opened it to find that her room was now done in light green silks and satins, and that a wonderful new bed beckoned her to sleep. She walked all around it, skimming the four posters and striped canopy with the tips of her fingers, smiling to herself.
“Do you like it, Lady Olivia?”
Olivia turned to find little Elizabeth, her hands clasped together, standing at her door. She rushed over to the child, wrapped her in her arms, and cried out, “Oh, dear heart, I love it! Was it all your idea?”
“Father's,” snuffed the little girl against her neck.
It was then that Olivia became aware of another pair of eyes on her, and when she lifted her head up, she made direct eye contact with the duke. She caught him, unexpectedly, in a moment of rare vulnerability.
The way he looked at her knocked the breath clean out of her body. There was a heat in his eyes mixed in with a tenderness she had always known was in him, but had never dared to dream could be hers, even for a moment. She knew it must have been something about the combination of not seeing her for several weeks and the image of her holding his youngest daughter in her arms, but what caught her most off guard was that something inside of her was responding to the sight of him in a most unexpected way.
For in that moment, she wanted to drop everything and run to him. To cradle his dark head in her arms and comfort him the way she had comforted his children. To kiss that full bottom lip and run her hands over his hollowed-out cheeks. To trace the lines of his face with her fingers and call him her own.
Lady Olivia Knightbridge realized, with a sudden start, that she was quite in love with her employer, the Duke of Worchester Abbey.
And there he was, holding out a hand to help her to rise to her feet.
“I am glad you like it, Lady Olivia,” he told her, his voice just slightly hoarse. She could tell he was suppressing a deep emotion of some kind. “We have all missed you so.”
She felt the jolt of electricity enter her skin as surely as she knew the sun rose in the morning. And that is when she went tumbling, head over heels over body and soul, for the man who wanted nothing more than to do her a kindness.
It was a long time before all the children were put safely to bed. After Elizabeth had finally curled up her toes, Olivia considered her reflection in the mirror. The clear green eyes and waves of hair that framed her face so perfectly. She had never considered herself lovely, but now she was seeing herself as the duke might have seen her, and she considered what she had never considered before. How tired she looked, how easily ravished. She had given her heart and soul to the Worchesters, and now, it seemed, she was truly giving her heart to the paterfamilias, as well. She reached out and touched one fingertip to her reflection, imagining it was him. She could see the image of him behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing his face into her neck. She felt at once powerful and completely desolate, for it was the juncture between what she wanted and what could never be. A man easily ten years her senior, a man who she suspected felt the same things for her as she did for him, but recalling the pain she had felt with Ben, who she had also thought this way about, she was terrified to risk anything. And there were more people involved this time; should there be pain, it would no longer be only her own. Elizabeth, Katherine, and Buxley all stood to lose something, and she would not do that to them. Would she?
It was then that there was a gentle rap at her door and Mrs. Huxting came in to announce that the duke was requesting her presence in his study. Olivia's heart nearly did a somersault straight out of her chest. It seemed there was no end to the surprises this night.
She entered his study like a ghost, a spectral being that just appeared. “You wanted to see me,” she stated. She felt like she was drifting, rootless from the source of everything that could have possibly held her down in the mortal world. He looked up from his writing, his eyes dark and intense.
“Olivia,” he said, and then stopped to clear his throat. “Lady Knightbridge, please, sit.” He gestured towards one of the overstuffed armchairs by the fire that his valet had stoked. It crackled high, and Olivia stared deep into its flames until spots swam in front of her eyes. Her chest rose and fell as the duke paced before her; uncertain of herself, she did as he suggested and sank into the folds of the chair that threatened to swallow her whole. “You have much been missed by the children these past weeks,” he began, then stopped short again, as if he wanted to say something, but could not bring himself to.
It was Olivia who found boldness in the warm embrace of the chair in the dark room. “Just the children, duke?” There was no mistaking her implication, and she found courage in her daring words. The duke himself looked sharply up and just as sharply, settled himself into the chair across from her. She imagine his pulse beating just as wildly as her own, could feel that they were on the cusp of something from which there was no return. She looked at him, and a hunger filled her, a hunger which may not have been becoming on a gently bred young lady, but made perfect sense to her. His eyes, his face, the wild curls of his hair—she wanted to touch it all.
He raised his eyes and looked at her. “Not just the children.”
“Who then?” It was almost a whisper. But it rang louder in the duke's dark study than if she had shouted it.
“Me.” His voice was hoarse, and they both were stunned.
It was a most sensual moment. When the duke's dark eyes settled on her face, she felt herself come alive under his touch. It was almost palpable, the way he traced the line of her jaw, the curvature of her lips. Her body felt lighter, more voluptuous somehow, as if by the touch of his eyes, she blossomed from a jilted girl into a woman. There was nothing in his look to suggest anything but an appreciation for the way she looked. She licked her lips instinctively, and ever so slightly arched her back, wondering if she could have the same effect on him that he had on her. At the barely audible intake of breath, so light she may have imagined it, Olivia was filled with the secret thrill of success. It was sensual because she felt the full weight of her womanly power in the secret depths of her belly, and knew that she had the prerogative to wield it.
She rose from the deep seat of the overstuffed chair and heard the rustle of her skirt as it fell to the floor. As she crossed the room to the tumbler of water that stood on the mahogany table on the duke's left, she felt his eyes follow her. The smallest movement, a dip of the hip, a rise in her bosom as she breathed, seemed to electrify the moment. She turned her back to him to pour herself a crystal glass of water and did not see him move. So it was quite a shock to her system when she suddenly felt the warmth of his hand, so much larger than hers, close over hers.
"I do not mean to take liberties with you, Lady Knightbridge," he told her, but the touch of his hand on the small of her back said otherwise.
A part of her knew that he was as anxious as she, and she admired his boldness for the effort it cost him to break through his most polite self. Silently, she put the glass down on the table and slowly, she turned her body towards him until her face was parallel
to his. He was tall and dark, and there was a vulnerability in his eyes that endeared him to her more than anything she had seen before. Hardly knowing she was doing so, she lifted one slim, pale hand to his face and watched as he closed his eyes against the tenderness of the touch.
It was almost unbearable, this feeling between them, and yet they held back, unwilling to ease over the final hurdle. It was she who pulled the trigger, she who began to trace, with the tip of her finger, the lines of his face. The folding of his upper eyelid, sensitive and shiny, the dip in the center of his bottom lip; he licked it after she moved her finger as if trying to seal in the memory of her touch.
“Olivia,” he said hoarsely, eyes fluttering open and closed, and she stopped thinking, willed herself to halt her hesitations, and reached up to brush her lips against his.
She almost did not notice it at first, the way her heart began to pound against her chest. She almost did not notice the way the hand that was so lightly pressing against her back had now drawn her in close, until her breasts strained against the bodice of her dress, crushed against the surprisingly broad expanse of the duke's chest. Her hands, having a will of their own, slipped into his hair and got entangled in his coarsely soft black curls and waves. He was almost inhumanly male, so far a cry from her former paramour that now she knew heat for the first time. Now something inside of her was calling out, and as if in answer, the duke growled softly against her mouth and hooked one of her legs around his hip. Her pulse was doing dangerous things, and she was forced to grab his shoulders to remain upright, although she felt he would not by any chance let her fall.
He set her down and skimmed her hips with his hands. She had never experienced her own voluptuousness, never understood what it was about her that could make men look twice until this moment. Her breath hitched in her throat and she felt almost like she was going to faint; drawing her head back and gasping at the rush of air, she caught sight of the duke's eyes, the pupils wide and alert. He looked hungry, like a beast, and she knew she wanted him to catch her. She would run, wild and free and chased, and when he finally gained on her, she would succumb without struggle. Instincts both maternal and savage melded in her until she wanted to at once bite on his lower lip and stroke his hair until the beast was soothed.
He was intoxicated by the look in her eyes. The maleness in him responded to her, hands working the buttons of her dress almost of their own accord, and she could feel something of his pressing at her insistently through the folds of her gown, something she had heard about, but never seen. “Why duke,” she breathed incredulously, and he let loose a low laugh, honey to her ears.
With the dip in her cleavage now visible, she might have expected the duke to ravage her as all the rumors had made her expect. But just then, the duke dipped his head and planted one very light kiss on the tops of each of her breasts. It tantalized her skin, just that simple touch alone, and she curled her hand in his hair to pull his face into the valley of her breasts. He groaned low and began to kiss his way back up her collarbone and throat until his lips touched the tender lobes of her ears. She gasped at the slight sting as he nipped there, nuzzled her until all the fine hairs on that part of her body rose and tingled underneath his ministrations. So this is what it was to experience sensuality under an experienced man, thought Olivia, and tilted her neck further and further back, desperate to expose more of herself to the duke, to feel him on her, in her, surely and forever.
She wanted the touch of his hands on her breasts, to feel them scooped and squeezed and anything more he wanted to do to them, so she planted her hands behind her on the table to brace herself. This had the rather provocative effect of thrusting her breasts forward, and the duke buried himself there deeper, taking more buttons down with him as he went until all Olivia wore on the top half of her body was her corset and chemise, the former thrusting her breasts up against the thin fabric of the latter so that the creamy mounds acquired the satiny sheen of the garment.
Deeply knelt the duke. Before Olivia knew what he was doing, he had hiked up the many skirts of her gown to her thighs. She was shocked and immensely excited; she followed the rise and fall of her own bosom, her excitement building with each breath. “Duke...?” she questioned, for his head did not appear back in her field of vision. And then she felt it.
Slowly and firmly, the duke was trailing a path of kisses up the insides of her ankles, calves, and thighs. Olivia could not believe the liquid heat building up inside of her, centered at the core between her legs. Here was the duke pulling down her undergarments so she was newly and gloriously revealed the gaze of a man for the first time. Scandalized, she bent down to pull her garments back up, but was arrested by the look on the duke's face. It was just a moment, but Olivia knew she would never forget how the duke gazed on the center of her womanhood with tenderness and appreciation. If Olivia had any doubts before that moment as to whether or not she would give herself to him, they were erased in an instant.
He lowered his lips onto her. Olivia gasped at the sensation of sensitive flesh on sensitive flesh. She had heard of this from several servant girls who lived with her aunt, but was always under the impression that it was the sort of thing upper class ladies never got to experience. It seemed that all that was in store for that particular section of society was the ravaging of their husbands after they ruined whatever delicate toilet ladies put together for their bridal trousseau. As the duke's tongue began to probe her most private flesh, finding a hot, wet bud at her center, Olivia Knightbridge knew for a fact that she was not one of those ladies. And it was not because she grew up with a maiden aunt or because she had been jilted; it was because she had been given the gift of this wonderful unity with a man she actually loved.
She let him take her to the end of the world and back. She lost count of how many times he licked her, sucked that tiny hot button that made all her nerve endings scream for release. She knew only that when she slipped over the edge into a sensation that rocked her entire body, it was he who steadied her trembling legs and wrapped her in his arms. In the aftermath that followed, she knew only the safe haven of his embrace, and an incredible closeness to the dark-haired Duke of Worchester she would treasure for the rest of her life.
* * *
Worchester Abbey was abuzz with preparations for the arrival of Lord David. “That sounds positively biblical,” said Olivia to a harried Mrs. Huxting, who never seemed to lose her composure amidst all of the hustle and bustle.
“And what do you know of biblical matters, my dear?” joked Mrs. Huxting while handing the cook the menu for the following week.
She meant it lightly, but Olivia had to rush from the room lest the friendly housekeeper see her face flush scarlet. She dreamt of that night between her and the duke endlessly, replaying the way the blood rushed between her legs, how low his voice had been when he called her by her given name for the first time, the way his shoulders had felt beneath her hands. The way her fingers curled perfectly around his arms, and the hard swallow in his throat as he held her and she him. It said everything and sadly nothing about them, for she knew now how he felt.
It had just lead down a road to never-ending pain.
The following day, the duke had received word that his brother, Lord David, was about to make a very hasty business investment in a London inn. Their solicitor had written to the duke, obviously concerned as to the practicality of the plan, and the duke had decided to take his little brother in hand quite firmly. Unfortunately, this had put off any talk of what had occurred between them indefinitely, not that Olivia hadn’t tried.
She had, in fact, made her merry way down to the duke's study, where she felt much like a child caught doing something awful in the schoolroom and afraid to approach the headmistress. There he was again, head bent over the solicitor's letter, and it was as if the previous night had not occurred at all. But it had, it had. Olivia's face burned when she splashed water on it in the morning from the hundreds of tiny scrapes she had received from hi
s prickly chin. She ran her finger over her lips in memory of the softness of his and knew she had to speak else she would go mad forever.
Then the duke looked up and his eyebrows were a question. “Yes, Lady Knightbridge?”
And just like that, her heart cracked.
It was remarkable how the anxiety built in her over the next few days as the entire house began preparations for Lord David. As each day went by and the duke became busier and busier, Olivia wondered if it was actually possible for a person's head to burst open from sheer tension, which is why the next time she entered the duke's study, she locked the door behind her. Not to out them to the servants who might be watching, but to lock her own self inside and ensure she would not try to escape like a coward.
“Duke,” she breathed, running a hand over the smooth wood of the desk.
“Lady Knightbridge,” he acknowledged, scribbling away furiously.
“It was Olivia not long ago,” she said, amazed as usual at her own boldness. It appeared the duke was, as well, for he froze and dropped the quill down on the table, no doubt spattering the papers he was writing on. When he finally looked up, his eyes were agonized. He pushed his chair back and rose from the desk. Olivia watched him like one watches a caged tiger, uncertain of his next move though he was contained by the bars of social norms and regulations.
“Olivia,” he breathed, and in one swift motion, crossed the small space between them and enclosed her face in his hands. She could feel him stroking her hair until it tumbled down from the mess of pins that held it in place, and, caught in the nook of his shoulder, she could feel him lifting strands of it to his nose, burying himself in it as if the smell of her was so intoxicating he would never be able to get enough.
She pressed her hands against his chest and templed her forehead to his. “Duke, duke, what does this all mean?” she asked, holding her dear one so close and yet so far way.