How to Deceive a Duke

by Lecia Cornwall

  He stood in the doorway regarding her soberly. “We need to talk, I believe.”

  Meg swallowed. There was no indication in his expression of what he might wish to say. His gaze held none of the love he’d shown the dark-haired woman in the library. For her, there was only wariness in his eyes. Her heart sank. Talking wasn’t going to help. She desperately needed him to do much more than that if her family was to be safe.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice hoarse. Could she drag him to her bed, make him—

  “I was thinking we might take luncheon together.”

  Luncheon?

  She squeezed the vial in her hand. “I have a better idea. Let’s take a picnic outdoors somewhere.” She forced a smile.

  He smiled, relaxing. “I know a lovely spot a few miles outside London, by the river. Will that do?”

  She nodded. “Perfectly.”

  Chapter 40

  “This outing was a nice idea,” Nicholas said. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, after last night.”

  Meg was staring out the window, her hands clasped in her lap. She’d barely looked at him as he’d handed her into the coach, and there were two bright spots of color in her otherwise pale cheeks. Was she still angry, afraid, nervous? He reached out to touch her hand, found it icy. He let go. “I thought it would be easier to talk away from the servants, and—others.”

  The color spread briefly. She met his eyes at last, her expression guarded. “Tell me, how do you know of this perfect picnicking spot?”

  She assumed he took other women there. He could tell by the skyward tilt of her chin, the ice in her eyes. “I used to come here to fish—alone—before I left for Spain. I haven’t had time to come since my return. This is my first visit to the place in years. I hope you’ll forgive me if it isn’t quite as I remember it.”

  “Oh,” she murmured.

  “Did you imagine I intended to take you out into the wilds to seduce you? This may surprise you, but I prefer the comfort of a bed.”

  “Then I must assume you haven’t found one that’s just right, since you have tried most of the mattresses in Mayfair,” she quipped.

  He let it pass. He’d carefully planned what he would say. If she wished to quash the gossip about what happened at the theater, the best way was to live as if it didn’t matter. They could leave London if she wished, go to Temberlay. He had no idea how the conversation would go from there. Accusations, tears, threats . . . he was ready for anything.

  He hoped. He was as nervous as a bridegroom.

  He pulled a flask of wine out of the basket she’d arranged, and two glasses as well. “Mrs. Parry has done well,” he said, examining the contents. “There’s chicken, duck, fruit, cheese, and even cakes. We’ll be well fed.”

  He handed her the glasses, and took the stopper out of the bottle. She watched the wine flow into the glass, her lower lip caught in her teeth. It sparkled like rubies.

  “To a new beginning?” he toasted.

  Her eyes were sharp, but she nodded.

  He sipped, hoping the wine would lend him courage to tell her he’d dismissed Angelique, but her name stuck in his throat, as if speaking it aloud would sully the air between them, shatter the fragile truce. He sipped again and again, seeking courage, until he’d emptied the glass. “Do you fish? I could teach you,” he said.

  “No, Your Grace,” she said, staring at him with odd intensity.

  “Nicholas,” he said, pleasantly warm from the wine. “Say my name, Maggie.”

  “Nicholas,” she said. “More wine?”

  He sipped again. He frowned and looked into the glass. “This tastes a touch bitter. I’ll have Gardiner check the stores in the cellar. Perhaps it’s a little—”

  He felt dizzy, and suddenly sleepy. He rubbed a hand over his eyes. It wouldn’t do if he fell asleep now. He tried smiling at Meg, but there seemed to be two of her.

  “What the hell is happening?” he said, and shook his head to clear it. Meg was sitting very still, her glass still full. She tossed it out the window.

  “God in heaven, Maggie, what have you done?” he asked. Poison. She’d put poison in the wine. He dropped his glass from nerveless fingers, and watched the dregs spill across the floor like blood, crawling toward the door. She reached for the glass, and he grabbed her hand, held it tight.

  “What have you done?” he demanded again, his words slurring. She pulled away, broke his grip easily.

  “It’s only a little laudanum,” she said from a long way off.

  “Laudanum? How bloody much?” he mumbled. “You can’t—” His tongue wouldn’t work. His eyes drifted shut, and he couldn’t force them open again. Oblivion rushed up to claim him.

  Chapter 41

  Nicholas had a feeling that opening his eyes would be a bad idea. His head was pounding and his mouth tasted vile. He rolled his head to one side on the pillow and wished he hadn’t.

  He tried to remember where he’d been and how he’d come to be so roaring drunk, but even thinking seemed more complicated than it was worth. He swallowed, but his tongue was thick and dry, too big for his mouth.

  He heard the unmistakable rustle of taffeta, painfully loud in the silence.

  “He’s awake,” a gruff male voice said, and Nicholas tried to reconcile the sound of taffeta with a man’s voice.

  “He’ll need a drink of water. Laudanum makes you thirsty, and fuzzy in the head,” a woman replied.

  Laudanum? Where in the hell had he gotten that? He forced his eyes open, the edge of memory tantalizingly close in the fog that filled his brain.

  A pair of blue eyes stared into his own.

  While he was no stranger to waking up next to a pair of blue eyes, they usually came with an attractive female attached. This pair had thick dark brows above them and a bulbous nose and a bushy brown beard beneath.

  He drew a sharp breath and instantly wished he hadn’t. Onions.

  “I’ve got some water for ye,” the man said gruffly, but not unkindly. Nicholas shut his eyes, and opened them again. He was still there, hovering over him.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice thick and sticky.

  “John Ramsbottom,” the man answered in a thick country accent.

  It meant nothing.

  Ramsbottom chuckled. “Don’t fret, Yer Grace. Meg will be here soon. Amy’s gone to get her.”

  “Meg?” he said, trying his tongue again. “She drugged me—”

  John Ramsbottom cupped a beefy hand behind Nicholas’s head, raising him like a sick child. Nicholas gritted his teeth against the lip of a cup and swallowed obediently. John Ramsbottom smelled of horses in addition to onions.

  He dropped Nicholas’s head back on the pillow none too gently, rattling his brains.

  “There. That’s better, eh?”

  Nicholas looked around the room. It was sparsely furnished and somewhat shabby. There were dark squares on the faded wallpaper where pictures had once hung. The fireplace squatted like a ghost in the dim light. The window was shuttered, the drapes drawn. He couldn’t tell if it was night or day.

  “Where am I?” he croaked.

  “Welcome to Wycliffe Park, Yer Grace,” Ramsbottom said brightly, as if this was the usual way guests were greeted.

  “How the devil?” Nicholas looked around again. “Why? How long have I been here?” He rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. He might have been here for days, weeks even, in a drugged stupor.

  “Since yesterday evening.”

  The door opened, and Meg came in. She wore a plain blue gown, and her hair was tied at the back of her neck with a bit of ribbon, a country lass today, instead of a duchess.

  She had the grace to blush when she looked down into his angry eyes. It took almost Herculean strength to reach out and grab her wrist.

  “I’ll call you if I need you, John,” she said calmly, and waited until he’d left the room.

  She plucked her hand loose. “Would you like more water?”

  “I’d like an explanatio
n.”

  She stepped back out of reach and folded her hands at her waist. “I needed your undivided attention, away from—distractions. I promised that I would provide an heir. That seems impossible in London. You may leave once I am with child.”

  Anger swept through his butter-weak limbs, gave him the strength to sit up. “You mean I’m your prisoner? Not only a prisoner, but a sex slave?” He forced a laugh, though it hurt.

  She blushed scarlet. “Is it truly that difficult? Doesn’t every gentleman want a legitimate heir?”

  Right now, he only wanted to wring her neck. “Eventually. May I point out we barely know each other?”

  “Know,” she repeated bitterly. “In the five weeks we’ve been married you’ve only managed to ‘know’ me once. I cannot compete with Angelique Encore and your other lovers. If I am the only woman available, and there is no one better, then perhaps it might be easier for you.”

  He stared at her, wondering if he was still under the influence of the drug, and this was a dream or a hallucination. “So you intend to wait until I’m so desperate that anything in skirts looks good, and then just throw yourself in my way, is that it? By God you hold yourself cheaply! What if I decide to walk out that door right now?”

  There were tears sparkling in her eyes, and her fingers twined together into knots. This was not Meg’s choice, and he wondered what was driving her to such foolish, desperate measures.

  “John will ensure you stay,” she said.

  He glanced at the door, wondered how close by the burly manservant was. No doubt his grandmother was right behind him.

  He gave Meg one of his best go-to-hell grins. “And will John stand by and ensure that I perform to your satisfaction?”

  She raised her chin. “He will lock us in this room together at night, and let me out again in the morning.”

  “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you, Maggie? I could choose not to play.”

  She frowned, confronted with something she hadn’t considered. “Your appetite is well known, and I am the only woman here.”

  She looked more like a child, wide-eyed, pink-cheeked. “You are even more innocent than I imagined,” he said.

  “You have made no secret of the fact that you do not wish to bed me, Your Grace, though we have established that I am indeed your wife. I promised to marry you and provide an heir. I have done the first. Once the second is accomplished, and I am with child, you may go back to—her, or them.”

  Anger rose. He’d tried to be considerate, to woo her and win her, despite the circumstances of their marriage. Once they knew each other, felt some regard . . . oh, he’d made a dreadful mistake! Was there a more complicated woman alive than Marguerite? “Just like that?” he asked. “I play stud, and then we are rid of each other for good?”

  She met his eyes, and he read fierce determination, and a touch of sadness. “Yes.”

  He called her bluff. He tossed back the coverlet and patted the mattress. Someone had done him the service of undressing him down to his smallclothes. “Then take off that dress and get into bed. I have a busy social schedule in Town. Ladies are lined up around the block, in fact.”

  She shot a look at the door, and colored. “But it’s the middle of the afternoon!”

  “Some of my most memorable moments in bed were in the middle of the day. In fact, I do my best, most potent work by day,” he dared her.

  “No!” She darted forward to flick the cover over him again. “Tonight.”

  “Not so easy as you thought, Maggie?”

  She blushed. “You need more rest, and a meal, and, um, a bath!”

  He lay back. “As you wish. If I am to be up all night, so to speak, I suppose I’d better rest while I can. Will you be the one giving me my bath, or did you kidnap Partridge as well?”

  She colored again, and opened the door. John Ramsbottom nearly fell into the room. He quickly righted himself.

  “Everything all right, Meg, er, Your Grace?”

  “I’m going to get His Grace some soup. Perhaps you could assist him with what is, um, necessary,” she said.

  “I object! If anyone should handle my intimate needs it should be you, Maggie. In fact, I insist on it. John is not my type.”

  John stepped forward with a frown. “Now see here, Your Grace, I mean no disrespect, but no one’s going to speak to our Meg that way. You’ll mind your manners, if you please.”

  “Our Meg? She’s my wife, Ramsbottom,” he said with all the haughty authority his title afforded.

  John wasn’t impressed. “Maybe so, but she’s been our Meg since she was a babe. There’ll be none of the kind of thing here that you get up to in London. There are children in this house.”

  “With more to come, I understand,” he muttered, glancing at Meg, who still hovered in the doorway.

  “Let him bathe, John, and keep an eye on him.”

  “You heard her, Your Grace,” John said equably. “Up ye get.” He crossed the room and lifted Nicholas bodily out of bed.

  Nicholas wasn’t a small man. He was taller than most, and strong, but not as powerful as John Ramsbottom. “Put me down!” he commanded.

  “Don’t worry, Your Grace, John won’t drop you.” Meg laughed. “I’ve seen him lift colts heavier than you. He’ll be as gentle as a lamb as long as you are.”

  Damn her, he thought as her manservant dumped him in a chair, rattling his brains again. She had no idea how dangerous this game was. Or how easy it would be for him to win.

  It was an intriguing situation.

  He wouldn’t make it easy for her to seduce him. He had his pride.

  He was anticipating the night already.

  Chapter 42

  Meg returned to Nicholas’s room at dusk. She helped Amy carry up trays of food and drink for two.

  If she expected her husband to be angry, or eager to see her, she was mistaken. He was sitting at the table playing cards with John. He got to his feet as she entered.

  “That looks heavy—let me help you,” he said, and brushed past her to take Amy’s tray. He left Meg holding her tray while he grinned at her housekeeper. “Something smells wonderful.”

  “Nick, this is Amy, cook and housekeeper,” John said amiably. “Amy, Nick’s been telling me stories about the war, and I’ve been telling him about your jam tarts. Can ye make him some?”

  “Nick?” Meg muttered. She set the tray down with a thump that rattled the dishes. She narrowed her eyes at her husband, but he was kissing Amy’s hand as if she were the duchess. And Amy, damn her, was as charmed as John. She was blushing, and nothing had made Amy blush in years.

  “I was just about to make a batch,” Amy simpered. “I’ll bring you some hot from the oven, Your Grace. They’re best when they’re warm.”

  “In the kitchen you swore he’d get nothing from you but bread and water,” Meg said. Amy sent her a look.

  “Please, Amy, call me Nick. Only Meg calls me Your Grace.”

  He crossed the room to her at last, and her heart tensed, waiting for him to greet her. Instead he untied the napkin on the basket of rolls, took one, and turned back to Amy.

  “Delicious,” he said.

  “The little lasses can’t decide which they like best, my jam tarts or hot bread rolls with fresh butter,” Amy said.

  “Little lasses?” Nicholas asked.

  Amy giggled. “Oh, they’re charming creatures, both of ’em. They take after their mother. They’ve been asking all day when they could see you, but Meg said—”

  “Why not now?” Nicholas said. “I’d love to meet them.”

  Meg folded her arms. “They’re in bed.”

  Amy shook her head. “No, they aren’t. They’re too excited to sleep. I’ll go and fetch them.”

  She was out the door before Meg could stop her. Nicholas had the audacity to wink as she glared at him.

  “Another hand while we wait, John?” he asked.

  “The food will get cold,” she said.

  “Amy wo
n’t like that,” John said. “She can be a trifle sharp if things aren’t done properly.”

  “A family trait perhaps?” Nicholas asked giving Meg a sideways glance as he rose to uncover the dishes. “Would you like some, John? Looks like there’s enough for two.”

  He fed her manservant her supper, without even a by-your-leave. He poured wine for John as well, and sat down to deal the cards. They appeared to have forgotten she existed.

  Amy returned with the girls. Their blond curls bounced as they bobbed curtsies to Nicholas, two more of Papa’s perfect daughters.

  He dropped to one knee and kissed their hands as Amy introduced them, making them giggle. “I am honored to meet you, Lady Lily, Lady Mignonette. How are you this evening?” he asked, as if they were meeting in a ballroom. Even Minnie, who was only seven, sighed.

  Was there a woman born Nicholas couldn’t charm? Except her, of course. She knew exactly what kind of wicked, wanton, vile—

  “You didn’t tell me he was so charming,” Amy whispered, her eyes on Nicholas. “Or so handsome.”

  “Handsome is as handsome does,” Meg said tartly. “He ought to be locked up somewhere away from anything female.” Or male, for that matter, she thought, glaring at John Ramsbottom’s besotted expression.

  Somehow, he’d managed to turn a kidnapping into a party.

  Meg was starving. She snatched the last roll from the basket. Amy looked at her expectantly, as if she expected Meg to go and fetch more from the kitchen.

  Meg glared back. Minnie was sitting on Nicholas’s lap, and Lily was leaning against his knee. Both girls were beaming at him. How many times had she seen older women looking at him the same way? He was telling her sisters a story about when he was a child, something about learning to ride a pony and falling into a pond.

  Lily sighed. “Meg promised to teach me to ride before she left for London. Perhaps now you’re here, you could teach me instead.”

  “Me too!” piped Minnie. “But Meg said I was too small for her mare, and I haven’t a pony.”

  “Then we’ll get one for you,” Nicholas promised, pinching her nose.