“Indeed, I did not,” she said softly. “I cannot fathom why you would even ask.”
The footman who had assaulted him, the maid, and Sir William stared down at him as if at the end of a dark tunnel. Their faces receded. “My God, Emma,” Sir William said faintly. “How did this happen?”
Both she and Adrian ignored him.
“Your kiss felt like the brush of an angel’s wing upon my face,” Adrian murmured.
“What a fanciful notion,” she whispered. “It must be your injury.”
He sighed. “I think I’m…tired. What happened to the half-wit who brained me?”
“Don’t go to sleep,” she said in panic. “We shall worry about the footman later. Stay awake.”
“I’ll stay awake if you kiss me again.”
“I never—Lord Wolverton?” She lifted his shoulders with her left arm and pressed her head in panic to his chest.
She could feel the reassuring thump of his heart against her cheek. He was a man in his prime, well built, with a soldier’s taut physique. It would take more than a blow on the head to snuff out the life of a man his size, wouldn’t it? Although the ladder-back framework of the hall chair that had felled him showed deep fissures that she suspected could never be repaired.
“Lord Wolverton,” she exclaimed in the voice that never failed to command the obedience of not only her students but her family. “You will be fine. You are not allowed to expire. Or to fall asleep yet. Stop frightening me. It isn’t nice. Wake up.”
His heartbeat seemed to have slowed. Was he still breathing? Frantic, she lifted her face to his throat and listened to his respirations.
Without warning he shifted into her. His wide mouth captured hers in a tentative but deliberate kiss that proved beyond doubt he was more than alive.
“Someone should have warned you,” he whispered in a barely audible voice.
For the span of several heartbeats she could not think.
And when finally she did, she told herself that while he may still be alive, he could have sustained a lasting injury. Because he had defended her. A chivalrous wolf. She brushed a lock of dark gold hair from his bleeding temple. “Warned me about what?” she asked distractedly.
He heaved a sigh against her bosom. “That an angel has no business kissing a devil.”
“I never kissed you—” He sighed and turned his head into her lap.
Her lap.
Yes, appearances mattered. Her reputation mattered, but not as much as the life of a man who had come to her defense in the blink of an eye—in fact, Emma could not help thinking that the entire situation might have turned out better all the way around had Lord Wolverton not been so hasty to play the hero. “You will be fine,” she said as much to herself as to him. How many times had her reckless brothers fallen out of trees, windows, speeding carriages, to their apparent demise? More than once the young demons had lain at death’s door. And Emma, being one of the only two Boscastle children whom everyone agreed showed a modicum of sense, and who fretted the most of her family, was the only one to despair over them.
“My little mother,” her own mama would frequently call her.
But this man, this hard, solid, handsome man whose heavy weight had virtually blocked the flow of blood to her lower extremities, would not expire.
A firm hand touched her shoulder. She glanced up into her brother Heath’s face. “What the devil happened?” he demanded.
Suddenly she realized that they were alone, Sir William and the two other servants having wisely taken their leave. “What happened, Emma?” he repeated.
Heath knelt beside her, his face grim.
One did not expect to see a duke’s heir felled by a chair on the carpet during a wedding reception. Any person of good breeding would understandably be perplexed.
“There has been an…incident,” she said as calmly as possible.
“An incident?” He lifted his brow. “Have you been hurt?”
She gestured at the splintered chair. “No. He got into a fight.”
“That doesn’t sound like Adrian.”
“He caught Sir William forcing his intentions on—”
“What?”
“—on my hand. William wouldn’t let go of my hand and Adrian interceded.”
Heath smiled darkly. “Now that sounds like a duke.”
She forced herself to remain calm. “Is he going to be all right, Heath?”
“Did he insult you?”
“Not in the least.” She shook her head, her worried gaze riveted to Adrian’s still face. “He was trying to defend me, and the footman hit him with a chair by mistake.”
Heath slid two fingers beneath Adrian’s white neckcloth to feel his pulse. “In that case, I can state with complete confidence that he shall be all right.”
“Then why isn’t he moving?” she asked in a distraught voice.
Heath smiled. “Ask him.”
She looked down into a pair of hazel eyes smoldering with unholy mirth. Adrian’s lean cheek pressed into the curve of her breast.
A wolf, indeed.
Chapter Three
Adrian observed the figures that flitted around his bed through half-closed eyelids. He wanted to tell whoever they were to go to the devil and let him sleep for an hour or so. But it had been insult enough to his dignity to suffer Heath and Drake Boscastle examining his head and peering into his eyeballs while he lay uselessly on the floor.
He’d also wanted to inform the pigheaded fools that he could have walked to the carriage on his own if the walls had stopped spinning for a moment and some jokester had refrained from yanking the carpet out from under his feet every time he attempted to take a step.
He would have been content to remain cradled against Emma Boscastle’s enticing bosom until he found the energy to chase after the dunghill who had insulted her. And the other idiot who’d brained him into the bargain.
He picked out her graceful figure standing at the window of Heath Boscastle’s town house.
From what he could see of her, and his vision was deucedly blurred, she appeared to be unharmed, not a red-gold hair on her slender neck disturbed, which was more than he could say for his pride.
He had meant to come to her rescue, not the other way around. He lifted his head to speak. A piercing pain shot through the base of his skull into his back teeth.
She glanced around at him unexpectedly.
“Hell,” he said. “Hurts like hell.”
“He’s stirring, Heath,” she whispered to a shadowed form at her right. “Fetch the physician from downstairs.”
A minute or so later a brusque white-bearded Scot stood at Adrian’s bedside. “He might be perfectly well in the morning,” he announced with little conviction.
“Well, thank heavens,” Emma said from the opposite side of the bed.
“Then again,” the physician added, “he might not.”
“How does one know?” she asked in consternation.
“One doesn’t,” the Scottish doctor replied with cheerful morbidity. “That’s the challenge of medicine.”
She ventured closer to the bed. Adrian would have recognized her by her subtle fragrance alone, sweet and alluring like roses after a rain. The challenge from his point of view was not medicine. It was hiding his fascination with the woman standing at his side. His head might hurt. The rest of his unfortunate male body seemed to work well enough.
“I believe he’s coming around,” the doctor said. “Can you give us your name?” he asked, biting off each word with a distinctive burr as if he were addressing a child.
Adrian folded his arms across his chest and sat up, his head pounding. “King Tutankhamen.”
“He’s fine,” Heath said with a droll smile.
“He does not look entirely fine to me.” Emma glanced down at Adrian. He stared back at her keenly.
“And indeed he might not be,” the physician warned with a grave air. “If he has sustained a skull fracture, he might never be himself
again.”
“Who will I be?” Adrian asked in a wry under-tone.
“A skull fracture is no laughing matter, my lord. There might be bleeding in the brain, and consequences of a lasting nature.”
Emma frowned in concern. “What are we to do?”
“Allow him to rest,” the physician said. “Give him his medicine if he’ll take it. He looks to be a contrary one.”
“Just give me your cursed nostrum,” Adrian said in annoyance. “And I shall go back to my own hotel—” He made a face as the maidservant behind Emma brought a spoon of foaming brown liquid to his lips.
“You’ll not go anywhere after that,” Emma said in satisfaction.
“If he does not rest,” the physician continued, addressing Heath and Emma now, “he shall have to be restrained. Excessive conversation should be curtailed.”
“Then why the hell doesn’t everyone stop talking?” Adrian asked, subsiding back against the pillows.
“Darken the room. Keep his head wet. I shall prescribe strychnia.”
“Strychnia?” Emma asked, stealing another look at Adrian’s face. He stared back at her. “What for?”
“It’s a tonic,” the physician answered. “It also prevents constipation. I suggest keeping him mildly sedated in case he becomes violent.”
Adrian snorted. “In case? Keep cosseting me like an invalid aunt, and it’s certain.”
Emma’s gaze flickered to his. Their eyes held until he glanced down at her mouth. Her lips opened.
The physician leaned over and gingerly probed the back of Adrian’s skull. “Does that hurt?”
“Of course it hurts, you damn fool.”
“Can you describe your injury to me?”
“Yes. It’s a painium in the cranium, and I want you to keep your twiggy little fingers off my blasted head.”
“He’s becoming agitated,” the physician said in a grim voice.
Adrian glanced at Emma. “She can touch my head, but no one else.” She could touch him anywhere she pleased, in fact, but he wasn’t so dicked in the nob he’d say it aloud.
The physician blew out a sigh of concern. “Shock, it seems; he’ll need smelling salts and strong Scottish whiskey.”
Adrian grinned inwardly. Shock, his arse. He had a headache, nothing more. He allowed his eyes, crossed though they were, to drift over Emma Boscastle’s sylphlike frame. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had worried over him, but he took pleasure in the feeling. “I’ll take the whiskey,” he said tiredly.
“I also recommend a mustard poultice applied to the soles of his feet and his belly.”
“Ballocks,” Adrian murmured, stealing another look at Emma before his eyes drifted shut.
“We can put a poultice on them, too,” the physician said in a dry voice, “but it won’t do your head a damned bit of good.”
The seamless life of respectability that Emma had hoped to maintain had suddenly started to unravel. By now the scuttlebutt of what had happened today at Miss Marshall’s wedding would be repeated in all the polite as well as impolite circles in London. The bon ton did love to talk.
A physical assault. A duke’s heir felled by a footman with a Chippendale hall chair. She understood how it would be interpreted. She accepted her responsibility for having made a poor association in Sir William, and as for what had transpired, she would rise above it.
Still, as the foundress of an academy for the moral edification of young ladies, she had proven herself to be a poor example, indeed. It did not matter that she was entirely innocent of any misdoing. A proper gentlewoman would not have been caught in such a provocative situation to begin with.
Hadn’t she known the moment she laid eyes on Lord Wolverton’s charismatic personage that he exuded a disrespectable air? It once again proved that instinct should be obeyed.
And yet she could hardly have left the valiant rascal lying on the carpet. Thank goodness no one had witnessed him stealing that kiss or, heaven forbid, nuzzling his strong jaw against her breasts.
To think she had held Sir William in such high esteem and believed him to be a gentleman. Defender of the downtrodden, indeed. He and his trinkets and tailored striped trousers. It had been an entirely humbling day and Emma would be thankful to see it end.
“Whatever am I supposed to tell the girls?” her cousin and trusted assistant Miss Charlotte Boscastle asked outside the private bedchamber designated for Lord Wolverton’s recuperation. In recent weeks, the upper-floor room had been used as an evening office or sickroom when one of the academy’s students took ill. Ofttimes Charlotte escaped there for the quiet to write.
Emma paused to catch her breath. She’d scarcely been able to think the whole time she had stood at Lord Wolverton’s bedside. How a man could sustain such a devastating blow and yet manage to disconcert those around him was past explanation.
Even now she flushed at the thought of his impudent hazel eyes as he studied her from his bed. Clearing her throat, she realized that her cousin was awaiting a reply. The girl was too beautiful for her own good and observant to a fault.
Furthermore, she was a Boscastle, a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed member of the family, and as such, totally trustworthy and worthy of worrying about.
“Tell the girls as little as possible of this incident, Charlotte.”
“Easy for you to say,” Charlotte retorted. “The young imps have been practically crawling up the curtains for a peek at the duke’s heir. I for one feel like murdering the lot of them.”
“How vulgar,” Emma murmured. “Perhaps I’ll ask Heath to have bolts installed on all doors that give access to Lord Wolverton’s room.”
“That would be better than him awakening with a dozen schoolgirls at the foot of his bed,” Charlotte agreed.
Emma sighed. What a trial upon her soul, to gently usher these willful unweds into the arms of some respectable husband. In this, Emma harbored no illusions. While she might wish otherwise, her academy existed for no better purpose than the blatant procurement of a good marriage for her students. Ah, well. Upon such a foundation lay the future of England.
She ushered Charlotte toward the staircase. “Have a stern talk with the girls before evening prayers.”
“Good idea.” Charlotte paused. “You do not think Lord Wolverton would—well, wander off himself?”
“Wander off?” Emma asked, her voice rising at what her cousin was suggesting. A wolf wandering off.
“And fall down the stairs,” Charlotte added hastily. Still, her solicitous look only underscored that she was not concerned about his lordship taking a tumble in the dark. A tumble in some young woman’s bed was what she’d meant.
“A nocturnal foray is highly unlikely in his condition,” Emma said. “He has been given a sedative and will have to be observed throughout the night for signs that his symptoms do not worsen.”
“What exactly are his symptoms?” Charlotte asked.
Immoderate masculinity. Abundant charm. A wicked tongue and temper.
“His lordship has suffered a severe laceration of the scalp and is complaining of blurred vision and hammering headache.”
“The poor man could still die,” Charlotte said in sympathy, then added, “although it strains the imagination to think of one so virile being felled by a chair.”
“Greater men have been brought down by far less, I assure you. Furthermore, his virility is hardly the issue at stake.”
Charlotte appeared to fight a smile.
“I would appreciate it,” Emma continued, subduing her own smile as she swept down the stairs, “if you would alert the staff to be on guard against gossipmongers. I shall be more than occupied with the current crisis as it is.”
“I’ll say.” Charlotte trailed after her. “Shouldn’t one of us watch him through the night?”
“Heath and Julia have offered to take turns with me. This is an uncommon emergency one does not encounter in the etiquette books.”
Charlotte’s brow knitted in a frown. “Y
ou don’t think we shall have to close the school?”
“I haven’t thought past tomorrow. We can only hope that whatever scandal ensues will blow over without bringing us down with it.”
“We could always move to the country,” Charlotte said in hesitation. “I realize we are still short of funds, but—”
“And let Lady Clipstone think that she has driven us away?” Emma’s face darkened at the thought of admitting defeat to her rival in London, Lady Alice Clipstone, who had opened an academy in Hanover Square and who was unabashedly trying to steal Emma’s students. She and Alice had been friends once and were now sworn enemies in etiquette. Which meant that, as politely as possible, they never missed an opportunity to best the other. “She won’t wait long to take advantage, I tell you.”
Charlotte glanced away uncomfortably. “She hasn’t waited at all.”
“What are you saying?”
“Do you remember Lady Coralie?”
“The earl’s young niece?” Emma asked slowly. The earl whom she had been courting forever for patronage. His niece had been expected to enter the academy a week ago. Two of the lady’s younger sisters were supposed to follow a few months later. “Her baggage was due to arrive this week. I have a bed in readiness for her arrival.”
“Apparently, she is reconsidering,” Charlotte said. “She’ll inform us as soon as she decides.”
“How do you know this?” Emma demanded quietly.
“Our butler’s sister has gone to work for Lady Clipstone.”
“To work for my rival?” Emma allowed a note of mild indignation to deepen her voice. “Well, I never. She’ll be threatening to expose our secrets next.”
“You have no secrets, Emma,” Charlotte said with a consoling smile.
“I didn’t until today, but—oh, dear, I don’t suppose that Lord Wolverton’s presence can be kept secret.”
“He is a little large to hide away.”
Emma shook her head. “Still, we shall have to keep the girls removed from him and carry on as if nothing has changed. Thank goodness their wing is on the other side of the house.”
“We should be able to manage.”
The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke Page 3