Duke Du Jour

by Petie McCarty

  Bullen caught another glare to encourage his departure.

  “Business?” Jared asked.

  She eased close enough the edge of her bodice brushed his arm. “Private business.”

  Jared blinked. He was inured to the forward women of his time, but an air of danger clung to this one, and he found himself overwhelmed by a sudden curiosity to see what she was about.

  “Do we normally conduct our business in the library?”

  Lady Wilder looked at him so curiously, Bullen interjected, “He hit his head, my lady, and has a bit of memory loss. Not everything, just some things.”

  The way he said some things intimated she was one of them.

  “Is this true?” she asked Jared worriedly.

  “I am afraid so.”

  “Come.” She slid her arm through his and tugged him forward. “Let us repair to the library, and you can tell me all about it while I fill you in about our business affairs.”

  She had him across the threshold so fast, he could only cast a backward glance at Bullen, who shrugged with a you’re-on-your-own expression.

  Inside the library, Lady Wilder pulled free and closed the door behind them. Jared heard the lock snick into place, and he reached back to unlock the door. Without warning, she whirled into his arms. His lips parted in an exclamation of surprise, and she pressed her advantage, pulling his head down and slipping her tongue into his mouth.

  There was nothing dainty or timid about Lady Wilder’s approach. She pressed her body provocatively against his, one arm slid about his neck and the other snaked around his waist. The waist arm immediately shifted to grab his arse and pull him against her, wedging his ducal staff hard against the juncture at the top of her thighs.

  Already steps away from a broken engagement—an engagement that would not take place for almost two hundred years—Jared could do what any red-blooded English male would do when accosted by a voluptuous blonde who tickled his tonsils with her tongue. He could relax and indulge himself and wait to see where this merry chase would lead.

  Oddly enough, he did not wish to indulge. He wanted to first find out who this woman was and whether she fit somewhere in his ducal ancestry. Stopping by this century for an involuntary visit did not mean he could dally with ancestors and thereby change the course of his own future. Odder still, he harbored no guilt. Edwina had been relegated to the past, and thoughts of his breakup brought only relief.

  If he didn’t escape Lady Wilder soon though, he may lose his head. The woman was an accomplished kisser and given time, she could certainly wear him down. No red-blooded male would pass on this opportunity unless he was permanently tied to another, which Jared was not. Or soon wouldn’t be. But he did need to keep his head. There was precious little in the family annals about Seven, just a rather large gap. He must tread carefully, or Jared could cease to exist—at least the twenty-first-century version. And what of his own father and grandfather?

  Lady Wilder’s hands roamed everywhere and reminded him of the swirling tentacles on an octopus he had observed on a visit to the London Zoo. She scrunched both his arse cheeks, each in turn, then her tentacles wandered up his back, smoothed across his chest, and then back again—she must have liked his chest. Her groping hands trailed down his abdomen and—

  Blast and damn!

  He grabbed her wrists as she squeezed the ducal gems a little too tight.

  “You did miss me,” she said breathlessly, as she came up for air.

  No man could have withstood that onslaught without a significant, albeit involuntary, male reaction.

  She tugged her hands free, wound them about his neck, and pulled Jared’s head down for round two. Her plump breasts pressed hard enough to his chest he could feel her stiffened nipples through her bodice and his shirt. The ducal staff had proceeded to a full salute without his permission, no longer content to rest at half-mast after the additional prodding. Amazingly, all Jared could think of was pulling free of the woman.

  Maybe the breakup with Eddy had messed with his head? Yet the breakup with Eddy brought only one word to mind—freedom. Freedom to make a better and wiser choice the second time around. A choice for Jared this time, not a choice for the dukedom of Reston. He unclamped Lady Wilder’s wrists from about his neck.

  The library door crashed open, startling them both and sending them a full step back from each other. A flame-haired siren stalked through the door.

  “Bullen said you were conducting your usual business in the library. I see you did not waste any time,” the siren said.

  Jared stared into the most expressive green eyes he had ever seen and could actually follow the myriad of emotions funneling through them—relief, surprise, disbelief, anger, worry—and miraculously, the color altered a bit with each vibrant emotion. The emerald eyes eventually settled on fury and sparked with anger—at him. Undaunted, he could only stare.

  The siren was breathtaking, not classically beautiful like Lady Wilder, but uniquely beautiful unlike any woman he had ever met. Sunlight streamed in through the windows lining the back wall, caught the blonde glints in her hair, and flamed her locks like a bonfire on a cold winter night. Yet, it was the green eyes that pinned him and held him in place. Dark emerald pools that seared his very soul.

  Jared had torn free from Lady Wilder, but he gaped guiltily in a frozen stare, incapable and unwilling to break eye contact with the siren. He wanted to keep staring and lose himself in those amazing emerald-green eyes, made even greener by the rich color of her gown.

  The young woman was tall and slender with smooth, sleek curves at hip and breast. Strands of red-gold curls had pulled free of her pale gold bonnet with its sassy emerald green trim and curled enticingly around her cheeks, marked by two bright flags of color. He felt his own cheeks flush hot when those amazing green eyes shifted downward and spied the traitorous ducal staff in full salute, then snapped back to glare at him.

  “I brought your dog,” the siren said flatly. “I feared you would forget to come for Harry. He missed you.”

  An enormous mass of black fur bounded into the library and sent the squealing Lady Wilder back to Jared’s side. The immense dog promptly knocked them both to the floor.

  The siren frowned her displeasure and headed for the chaise to make herself comfortable.

  “Get him off! Get him off!”

  Lady Wilder’s high-pitched shrieks almost burst Jared’s eardrums. He rolled her off him and reached for the dog’s collar. The massive black hound danced away, totally unaffected by Lady Wilder’s shrieks and slaps, and managed to squeeze in a few sloppy licks between her swings at the dog’s head, which would have been funny if Jared’s ears did not ache.

  “Come here, boy!” Jared barked as he scrambled to his feet.

  “Don’t you dare hurt him!” the red-haired siren shouted.

  “You did that on purpose, Ariana! You little witch!” Lady Wilder screamed.

  Ariana? What a perfect name for the flame-haired beauty.

  “Don’t you yell at me, Lucilla Tartley! I am not responsible for Harry’s lack of taste,” Ariana shot back.

  So Lady Wilder was Lucilla. Who was Harry? The dog?

  Jared tried the name, and the black dog bounded over to him.

  “I am surprised Harry even noticed you, now that Jared’s home,” Ariana told Lucilla.

  Jared glanced down and noticed the dog sat patiently at his side, but only because his finger was hooked in the dog’s collar. Good Lord! The canine knew he was not the real Jared—or rather Seven. This could be a problem.

  Indeed, Lady Ariana stared at him suspiciously now. “Harry’s not jumping all over you like he usually does.”

  “I have been gone too long. He has forgotten me,” he replied, thinking quickly.

  “Harry does not forget.” She eyed him more closely.

  He turned toward Lucilla to avoid Ariana’s scrutiny. “Let me help you up.”

  He reached out a hand, but Lucilla shrank back and shrieked, “Get
that dog away from me!”

  Jared walked Harry over to the fireplace and ordered, “Stay!” in his most ducal tone. Amazingly, the dog obeyed. Ariana looked less worried.

  He crossed back to Lucilla and held out a hand, which she grasped and then pulled herself up and all the way into his arms until she had flattened herself against his chest.

  “Ooh, Your Grace! You are so strong,” she gushed and nudged her ample breasts a bit right and then left across his chest. “But you shouldn’t hold me tight like this.”

  Her octopus tentacles whipped out before he could step back. A sharp hiss echoed, and he glanced toward the door but caught only a glimpse of Ariana’s skirts as she whisked out of the library, the big dog on her heels. He squeezed free of Lucilla and darted after her.

  “Wait, Lady Ariana!”

  She paused at the front door. No glare, no recriminations, only a profound sadness in her eyes. An inexplicable urge overcame Jared to take her in his arms and comfort her with promises to make everything all better. He could not ever remember feeling such a primal protectiveness toward any woman.

  “As a child, I always looked up to you,” she said gravely, “but I grew up a long time ago. Barwood’s ball helped with that.”

  Chapson appeared at her side and swept open the massive door. She ordered the black dog to stay with but a raised hand, and she sashayed outside without a backward glance.

  Jared stared after her feeling six kinds of guilty and miserable—and asinine, for standing there regretting things he had never even done. Who the devil was Barwood? And what the hell had happened at the chap’s ball? He needed to get back to that blasted fountain and fast, before he really did go crazy.

  Trudging back to the library, he dispatched Lucilla with promises to visit her soon. The tart gave him one last arse squeeze and took her leave, not nearly as reluctant as Jared had feared what with Harry on his heels.

  Avoiding the inherent risk of escorting Lucilla to the door, he deferred that task to Chapson and headed for the back gallery, thankful he knew this house like the back of his hand. Some wings and extensions from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries were missing, but the central part of the manor looked exactly the same.

  The big dog Harry padded faithfully alongside him. Talk about poor timing. Jared had begged for a dog the whole of his young life, and both parents cleverly came up with an obsessive list of reasons to the contrary. Now that he had no time, nor the chance to properly care for a dog, Harry had literally been dumped in his lap. He stopped, and the black dog promptly sat at Jared’s heels and stared up with eyes that looked as though he had lost all his friends.

  “Maybe you have,” he muttered and crouched to give the dog a good petting, which Harry properly rewarded with a dog-sloppy kiss.

  Jared smiled. “Come on then. Maybe you can use the fountain, too. Wouldn’t that be a kick? To take you back with me?”

  No more than three strides into the gallery, he froze. The sight in the long hall befuddled him for several moments. Half the ancestral paintings were missing from the gallery, and the most recent portrait hung directly before him—the sixth Duke of Reston, though the scowl seemed different. The air whooshed out of Jared. If he had needed any further proof he had landed in the Regency era and the time of Napoleon, he now beheld said proof. No portrait of his father, his grandfather, and the others of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries existed here. So utterly weird to be standing here in this time and place and know that his father and grandfather had not yet been born. No one was expecting them either. At least not yet.

  Would his activities in this here and now affect the lives of his more immediate ancestors? His own life? He experienced a brief spate of panic. Could something he did now prevent one of those lives? Or even his own?

  Good Lord in heaven! I need to get back to that dreaded fountain and fast.

  He strode swiftly down the gallery and out onto the terrace, then stopped to get his bearings and locate Cook’s kitchen garden since one had never existed in his time. Looking out from the terrace, Jared spied a markedly different landscape than the one he had viewed that very morning—two hundred years later. The rear estate gardens here covered twice the area of the gardens in his century, and the land sloped at a far steeper angle to the southernmost boundary. He spied the kitchen garden at the southeast corner, and beyond that, he could see the grassy meadow that bordered the lake.

  Three small structures lined the border between the manor garden and the kitchen garden. The first was a lean-to of sorts, filled with stacked cords of wood and a loaded oxcart out front. Cook had mentioned the middle shed was her herbal hut, and the third building—a mystery shed—looked to be twice the size of the other two. Maybe for hanging salted or smoked meat.

  The late spring air was crisp and clear, and spent flowers littered the grit and clay path through the gardens. Jared took off at a trot, Harry matching him stride for stride, tail wagging madly. The faster he ran, the more excited Harry became, prancing and twisting about in front of him and barking his delight at their unexpected run together. The dog dashed off into some shrubs and bounded back with a stick in his teeth as Jared made the turn at the middle arbor.

  “Want to play, do you?” He tugged the stick from Harry’s mouth before the dog could clamp down, then tossed it toward the far side of the garden.

  The dog raced toward the kitchen garden, but returned in only seconds, dancing and leaping about, so Jared threw the stick again. And again. And again. With each throw, they edged closer to the fountain. Finally, Harry dropped at Jared’s feet, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and such a silly grin on his muzzle that Jared laughed aloud. He plopped down next to Harry to pet him, and the dog crawled into his lap, all ninety or so pounds of him.

  ****

  Ari made it as far as her phaeton before she paused to reconsider her angry departure. She ached with disappointment. Seeing Jared in Lucilla Tartley’s arms had sent a stab of pain right to her disloyal heart. As long as he had restricted his rakish activities to London, Ari had pretended they did not exist. Seeing him with her very own eyes holding the village wanton had hurt beyond belief.

  Worse yet, she had ordered Harry to stay behind without first accomplishing her original goal today—to determine whether Jared would provide the hound a decent home. He had not exactly been a model dog owner in the past. Harry had often been penned in the stables or staked on a tether outside when he had dug holes in Cook’s garden or indulged in other canine mischief. But Harry was not her dog or her concern any longer. She climbed up into the phaeton and untied the reins.

  The front door of the manor burst open, and Lucilla stalked out, followed by Jared’s giant footman, Gordy. She made a beeline for her carriage, and her coachman Paul Peepers came running from the direction of the stables.

  “Hurry up!” she screeched at him. “You should have been right here waiting.”

  “S-sorry, m’lady,” Peepers said, ducking his head as he approached.

  “I should sack you for this,” she railed.

  The poor man blanched. “Please no, m’lady. I have a family to support.”

  “You left your post,” she said indignantly.

  “But m’lady—”

  Ari could not watch the poor man grovel any longer. He had a sweet wife and four well-behaved children at home in the village, and jobs in these parts, especially good jobs like that of a coachman, were scarce.

  “Mr. Peepers had no way of knowing how long you would be inside with your visit,” Ari called.

  Lucilla glared back. “Stay out of this!”

  “—as well acquainted as you are with His Grace,” she continued, as though Lucilla had not spoken.

  That last comment snagged the witch’s attention.

  “In fact, I know of no other woman in Hampshire quite so well acquainted with the Duke of Reston,” Ari finished.

  Lucilla preened and seemed not to notice Gordy hiding a snicker.

  “We a
re dear friends,” she proclaimed smugly.

  “And so, Mr. Peepers cannot be blamed. He would never dream you would be leaving quite so soon,” Ariana said.

  “Yes, well, I suppose.” Lucilla eyed her warily. “Why haven’t you left yet? You cannot go back inside. Jared said he has business to attend.”

  “I have no intention of returning inside,” Ariana replied, although she had entertained precisely that notion a moment earlier with her worry about Harry’s future. “Cook is bringing me a basket for her sister in the village,” she added, thinking quickly for a reason to still be here.

  Lucilla stared at her for a long moment and then held out a hand for Gordy to assist her into the carriage. Peepers, already forgotten, scrambled up to his seat and, once out of Lucilla’s sight, doffed his hat to Ariana in gratitude.

  She held up a hand and watched the carriage head down the entrance drive, then picked up her reins again. She would not go back inside. Jared had taken up with Lucilla Tartley, and he was welcome to that nasty bit of muslin. Ari now considered him tainted. She would ask Bullen to keep an eye on Harry for her.

  Before she could turn her horses about, three or four loud barks erupted from the far side of the manor house followed by a high-pitched yip and two more thunderous barks.

  Harry!

  She tied off the reins and scrambled from her seat. Had poor Harry already been tied up? Were they trying to lock him in the stables, as one of the footmen had during Harry’s prior tenure with Jared? The wolfhound had run free at Wakefield for over two years, solely under Ari’s voice command, and he had been a perfectly behaved hound. She had grown to love the big lummox and hated giving him back to his master, but Harry did not belong to her. Two more frantic barks and Ari grabbed up her skirts and raced to the rear of the manor. Her new gold bonnet tore free in transit.

  Rounding the back corner of the wooden lean-to, she slowed to a halt. At the entrance to Cook’s kitchen garden, she spied Jared and Harry. Stunned, she could only stare. The two rolled about on the ground, both fighting for a large stick Harry clutched in his teeth. Jared laughed uproariously as Harry broke free and danced just out of reach with a joyous yip.