What I Did For a Duke

by Julie Anne Long

  Suddenly the both of them were quiet, and their daisy wreaths were growing at an almost frenetic speed beneath their fingers. They both looked up at Harry. He smiled a smile that caught like the sweetest hook in her heart.

  And lifted his hand in greeting.

  Millicent and Genevieve lifted their hands in reply.

  And behind Harry, Genevieve could have sworn the duke lifted an eyebrow.

  Chapter 12

  The evening passed uneventfully in terms of proposals being issued.

  It didn’t pass uneventfully for Harry, who lost enough money to the duke in five-card loo to make him perspire. Or for the ladies, who made significant headway with their embroidery.

  “There!” Millicent announced happily. She’d put the finishing touches upon a sampler.

  Genevieve leaned over and peered. It featured a bundle of gray kittens tumbling about with a ball of yarn.

  “It’s wonderful,” Genevieve assured her warmly, exchanging glances with Olivia from across the room, who mouthed the word kittens in a question. They both stifled smiles.

  “What’s on your sampler, Genevieve? You’ve been so secretive about it. Come, let us see.”

  She sighed. “Oh, very well.”

  Ironically, she’d been working on it for some time. But she finally felt ready to show it.

  Millicent took it in her hands and studied it.

  Hers featured an enormous urn stuffed full of astonishing flowers in a profusion of oranges and crimsons. She’d invented those flowers. They were roselike but not roses, and chrysanthemum-like but not chrysanthemums. No flowers quite like them had grown anywhere on the planet except in her imagination.

  She had, in fact, been working on it for some weeks. She’d chosen her finest silk threads for it and the piece glowed.

  Millicent ran an admiring thumb over them. “Oh, you’ve embroidered Olivia’s flowers.”

  Genevieve looked long and expressionlessly at her.

  “I’m not quite finished,” was all she said, and took the sampler back to do just that.

  But then came time to retire for the evening.

  This is how Damocles felt, Genevieve thought dismally.

  Flat on her back, wide awake, blankets up to her chin, a hot brick at her feet, she ought to feel cozy and sleepy. She’d all but memorized her ceiling since Harry had informed her he intended to propose to Millicent. The fire burned at a medium height.

  There was no point in attempting sleep while her mind was crowded, and so she allowed whichever thought was most compelling to crowd through.

  And it was this:

  Harry had spoken of Millicent in terms of qualities of character. But he never rhapsodized about her lips, or her eyes, or her hair, or her smile. Beyond “you look lovely,” Harry had never gone into specifics.

  And each and every compliment issued by the duke had been just singular enough to kindle her imagination. Calculated to intrigue, to imply that he saw her in detail, that touching her was a pleasure.

  Unconscionably, he’d said. As though being soft was something she did specifically to torment him. It had almost been an accusation, a dare. She’d received more than her share of compliments in her life. But for some reason the duke made her feel very much like a . . .

  Like a woman.

  Purely and simply.

  It had nothing to do with love. Or with marriage. He was thinking of her in terms of . . . of sensual pleasure. And in concluding this, she was overtaken by that raw, awkward feeling again, a restlessness she wanted to surrender to and to escape.

  And her restlessness evolved, shifted distinctly into curiosity, which, she discovered, was a remarkable palliative for pain.

  Regardless, there was no point in attempting sleep. No matter how she courted it, it wouldn’t come. She thought she’d read a book, something pleasantly dull, but this required a trip downstairs to the library.

  So she slid from her bed and padded across the carpet.

  Then hesitated. And almost tiptoed to the window, and tentatively parted the curtain an inch and peered out.

  But there was no one in the garden.

  She lit the candle next to her bed and brought it down with her to the library. Likely there would be just enough of a fire left burning to help her find the book she wanted. She raced down the marble steps, quickly and on tiptoe, as they were blocks of ice by this time of night, and as she crept across the foyer toward the library she saw a tall shadowy figure standing in the green salon, pointed toward the window.

  Dear God!

  Her heart leaped into her throat. Motionless, as riveted as a statue, her spine was suddenly as icy as the floor beneath her feet, she tried to shriek, but no sound emerged.

  It was about time an Eversea ghost made itself known, but that didn’t necessarily mean she wanted to be the first one to see it.

  But her senses settled. A moment later she knew it was the Duke of Falconbridge.

  Her breath caught.

  And her heart began to hammer in her throat, and this time it was from a peculiar excitement.

  His back was to her. His arm was upraised, holding the drawn curtain away from the window, and he was looking intently out, but she couldn’t imagine what he might see. That full moon, a sky full of stars. He was still dressed, or mostly dressed. Trousers and boots, a white shirt rolled up at the sleeves. A candle no taller than a thumb was lit and pressed into a dish on the table next to him, and it illuminated a small crystal glass in which glowed what appeared to be brandy. Likely poured from the library decanter.

  Which meant he’d likely wandered from room to room.

  So she had seen him in the garden. Why did he haunt the house every night after midnight? Were all those things said of him true, and did his conscience dog him? When precisely did he sleep?

  He picked up the brandy and sipped at it, then lowered it again. The dying fire in the salon illuminated half of him. He appeared to have been dipped in gold.

  She stared longer than she ought to. As he was coatless, she could clearly see the outline of his body. He was lean and spare, dangerous as a whip.

  She saw his shoulders move in a breath, perhaps a sigh.

  And then he released the curtain, and it shimmied back into place.

  He turned slowly away from the window, seemingly resigned to needing to return to his room. He began to reach for the candle.

  Then he went still.

  Something must have caught his eye, because he spun so quickly she jumped.

  He straightened slowly to his full height . . . and stared.

  Perhaps he thinks I’m a ghost.

  But no. She was certain he knew at precisely whom he stared.

  Riveted, silent, mutually breathless, they regarded each other across a gulf of marble and carpet. His cravat was looped ’round his neck, undone. His shirt was open, revealing a vee of skin burnished by low firelight and fascinating curling dark hair.

  She couldn’t at all see his expression.

  But she could feel his eyes on her. And from the distance he managed once again to make her acutely aware of her good mouth. Her naiad hair. Her unconscionably soft hands. And every inch of her skin was suddenly alive, restless, and even the night rail she wore was a sensual disturbance, reminding her that she was a creature that could touch and be touched.

  What would happen now, she wondered . . .

  . . . if I went to him?

  His reputation as a man who took the women he wanted preceded him. He wasn’t known to be a despoiler of virgins. Or a cuckolder of married men. And everyone had been shocked when he’d courted Lady Abigail in more or less traditional fashion.

  He was absolutely motionless. She entertained for another brief disorienting moment the notion that he was in fact a dream. Her heart slammed in her chest.

  She decided to back away.

  She took a step forward.

  She could have sworn his breath caught.

  And then she whirled abruptly, her night rail
whipping at her legs, and dashed up the stairs again.

  Chapter 13

  The following morning dawned a bit cloudy, but the kitchen was warm and bustling as usual, and Moncrieffe was surprised to discover he was in fact rather pleased to be there. He took the seat he took yesterday, and noticed that everyone else had done the same thing.

  “Good morning, Lady Millicent. What will you be sketching today?”

  He’d decided to be a devil.

  “Kittens!” she said happily. “I found a nest of them in the barn. I should also like to sketch some ducks. Perhaps we can all walk out again.”

  Harry looked less happy about that, the duke noticed. He was decidedly subdued this morning.

  “Never gamble with the duke, son,” Jacob said from his end of the table, bluntly reading his glum face. “He never loses.”

  The duke gave a shrug; Harry produced a wan smile, Ian had laid down his silverware because his appetite deserted him in the presence of the duke.

  The duke was hungry. He took a bite of egg and stabbed at his ham with a fork, while the housekeeper and a trio of maids bustled about clucking and spying and filling his cup with steaming black coffee fresh off the fire.

  He watched Genevieve Eversea incise her egg again. The idiosyncrasy fascinated him unduly. It was as precise and singular as she was.

  It was interesting to discover she haunted the house at night, too. He had lulled himself to sleep with that image: her dashing up the stairs, her long black hair sailing out behind her, her nightdress billowing.

  Running away from him.

  Running away from herself. Miss Eversea did that very well.

  He anticipated a time when that would no longer be true.

  “Waterfowl are handsome subjects,” the duke agreed gravely with Millicent.

  “I like to shoot them when they’re grown,” Jacob Eversea said.

  “Papa!” Olivia and Genevieve reproached in unison.

  But Millicent wasn’t offended. She was diverted by the marmalade when it was passed beneath her nose on its way to Harry, who sat next to her, and she intercepted it with a charming wrinkle of her nose.

  “What?” Jacob Eversea said mildly. “They’re not downy and adorable when they’re older, but they are delicious,” he said amiably and tore off half of his bread in his teeth. “Harriet knows how to do marvelous things with waterfowl and the like and your mother makes a mint jelly . . .”

  Isolde Eversea glanced up at her husband with an expression of almost . . . it was almost entreaty.

  But then Jacob stopped talking and he never quite met his wife’s eyes.

  Moncrieffe wondered again what it was about. Some secret marital discord. Perhaps not terminal. The duke remembered a bit of marital discord with his wife along with . . . along with everything else.

  “What shall we shoot today, lads?” Jacob continued as if shooting was a given. “Grouse? Pheasant? Duck?” He said wickedly, “The ladies can get their portraits first, and then we’ll shoot them.” He winked.

  “I wouldn’t mind shooting a thing or two,” the duke offered.

  Ian paused mid-chew. He gulped noisily, and then, “I believe we’re expecting rain,” he said firmly.

  The remaining clouds slid away then, and a brilliant celestial ray came crashing through the window.

  “My musket is always clean,” the duke almost purred.

  “And you always were a crack shot,” Jacob commented idly.

  “Still am,” the duke agreed cheerily.

  He caught Genevieve’s eyes, glinting wickedly at him from across the table. She ducked her head again.

  At some point they all noticed Harriet the cook standing silently in the kitchen doorway.

  She’d gone pale, and she’d knotted her hands in her apron.

  “What is it, Harriet?” Jacob Eversea asked sharply.

  “Summat . . . well, summat has arrived, sir.” Her hands twisted in her apron.

  “Judging from your expression, it’s a ransom note of some sort,” Mr. Eversea said dryly.

  “No, sir. It’s . . . they . . .” She abandoned her effort to explain. “Well, I think you ought to see them,” she said darkly.

  She vanished from the dining room and returned to the kitchen. The Everseas and their guests heard a good deal of muttered discussion, then some shuffling and jostling ensued.

  And then two footmen staggered forth.

  They were bearing between them a flower arrangement so brilliant it was nearly sentient. A profusion of roses, the heads of which were nearly as pulsatingly crimson and large as actual hearts sprung from a luxurious froth of ferny greenery and minuscule lacy white flowers. It was magnificently intimidating and almost indecently sensual.

  The whole thing was the height of a three-year-old child.

  Everyone stared at it uneasily, as though it might pull a chair up to the table and help itself to kippers.

  Even Olivia was nonplussed.

  And then she looked resigned. “I wonder who on earth . . . It’s the same after every ball, isn’t it? Perhaps we can find a place for them in—”

  “They’re for Miss Genevieve.” Harriet seemed as troubled by this as by their very presence in the house.

  Genevieve would never forget the stunned silence that followed. Or the sight of every head at the table swiveling toward her. She gained an immediate and very funny impression of being surrounded by Os: mouths dropped open, eyes gone wide.

  All the eyes beamed such potent curiosity at her she thought little singed holes might appear in her gown.

  “Only an outrageously wealthy man would be able to afford flowers such as those,” her mother finally said archly.

  And at that, the room was resoundingly silent. Everyone seemed to be vibrating with the effort not to look at the duke.

  “Oh, Mama.” Genevieve was careful to say this with an eye-roll. Her voice only shook a little. Her heart was flinging herself at the walls of her chest. “That, or a man who just happens to possess or has access to a thriving greenhouse, and that describes most of our acquaintances. I haven’t the faintest idea who sent them. Will you kindly bring them to me?”

  The footmen shuffled over and settled them down near her with a grunt.

  And she reached out with trembling fingers and touched one of the roses. It was, unsurprisingly . . . unconscionably soft.

  “A message was sent along with it, Miss Genevieve.” Harriet handed over the sheet of folded foolscap, closed with a blob of wax. No seal was pressed into it.

  Genevieve slid her finger beneath it to break the seal.

  My esteemed Venus—

  These reminded me of you. In my dreams, your lips are just this soft.

  —Your devoted servant,

  Mars

  Her breath was officially lost.

  Her eyes blurred. Instantly she burned, burned with the scandalous pleasure and shock and . . . hilarity of it.

  As usual, the duke had done far too much and precisely the right thing.

  She looked up a moment later. She, too, refused to meet his eyes.

  He’d accused her of being a poor actress. She would need to prove otherwise, despite the fact that she was certain her complexion was forty shades pinker than it had been when she arrived at breakfast this morning. Because these flowers were both for her benefit and for the benefit of . . . Harry’s education. She shouldn’t like to waste the duke’s efforts.

  “They’re perfect,” she said almost offhandedly. As though she received such things every day.

  “We can find a place for them in . . .” Mrs. Eversea stared, her teeth in her bottom lip. She was clearly having difficulty imagining the roses in any of her lower rooms.

  The duke had no compunctions about staring at Genevieve.

  A throat was cleared. She looked across to see Millicent, wide-eyed and wondering, face aglow with wicked but not at all resentful speculation, and Harry, whose face was, once again, unreadable.

  Though it was considerably
tense about the jaw.

  It was Harry who had cleared his throat.

  “I say, Genevieve,” Harry’s voice was cheery, but pitched about an octave higher than usual. “Do you know who sent them?”

  “Mars,” Genevieve replied laconically. “Or so the message is signed.”

  This caused another silence, while gazes ricocheted about the table frantically.

  “Who is Mars?” Ian demanded suddenly. He shot a quick dark look at the duke.

  “The god of war, as I understand it. It’s also a planet. A red one, I’m given to understand.” Genevieve was enjoying herself.

  Not the least because of the expressions on the faces of her family. Her parents wore identically watchful expressions, bemused, eyebrows poised in mid-mast position, prepared to dive or hike as the situation evolved. Their offspring provided endless opportunities for them to test their flexibility and ingenuity. But never had Genevieve tested it.

  “Who is the mysterious Mars? I think I might swoon!” Millicent placed the back of her hand against her forehead.

  “I’ll catch you, Millicent,” Harry said flatly. The promise rather lacked conviction.

  Everyone was clearly waiting for Genevieve to say something.

  “Why don’t you take them up to my bedchamber, if you would?” she suggested softly to the footmen.

  And as though those roses were instead a coronet and she’d been crowned Queen of the Morning, whose commands were not to be countermanded, no one suggested otherwise.

  With grunts and knee cracks, the footmen hoisted them again, and stoically prepared to shuffle the long journey up the stairs to her bedchamber.

  They needed to pause for a rest and a cool drink on the second landing.

  “Do you know who sent them?” Harry whispered to Millicent.

  “No. But she asked me just the other day if I’d ever kissed a man!” Millicent murmured to Harry.

  The arrival of the roses effectively put an end to breakfast, as it was far too disturbing and exciting an occurrence. Silverware was abandoned, napkins folded, and Harriet ceased pouring the coffee. She wanted to shoo the family from the kitchen, obviously, so she and the rest of the kitchen servants could have a good gossip about the roses.