What I Did For a Duke

by Julie Anne Long

  But in truth, the Titian had made her feel shy again. She of course knew he was wealthy and powerful and influential, but for some reason the possession of that small wonder of a painting delineated this even more sharply.

  She knew he’d wanted to show it to her because he’d known she would love it.

  She was uncertain how she felt about that.

  He said nothing else for so long she wondered if he was in fact at a loss over what to say. She’d never once during their short acquaintance heard him clear his throat or stammer. She’d never seen him fidget or blush. But she had no doubt he suffered doubts of his own. He composed himself inwardly. Sparing the world his awkwardness, hiding vulnerability. Preserving his pride.

  “Well, Miss Eversea, I think our plan is working a treat,” he said finally. “Did you see Harry’s face when he saw the Titian?”

  “Yes. But he’s suffering.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Of course he’s suffering. It’s precisely the point.” He was half amused, half irritated.

  “But . . . he’s my friend. And I . . .” She didn’t know how to put into words what it was she felt.

  “Yes, yes. You love him. And etcetera. Though he has entirely taken you for granted.”

  She bristled. “He hasn’t, you know. He cares for me, I know it. And please don’t allow him to gamble anymore! He’ll lose his inheritance.”

  “Your concern for the man who hasn’t a clue whether or not he loves you or another woman is touching. But he’s a grown man and I am neither his father nor mother, and it is not my place to stop him from gambling if he wishes to do it.” The duke was curt.

  “But you don’t have to take his money.”

  “And he doesn’t have to gamble,” he said simply.

  He was right, of course. She sighed a short frustrated sigh.

  “He’s either suffering pangs of pure jealousy simply because he’s used to your slavish devotion, Genevieve, or my attentions to you have cast you in an entirely new light and his heart has been swung ’round like a weathervane. And if that’s the sort of man you want, that’s the sort of man you will have, if our plan works. Has he said a word to you about me?”

  She said nothing. Of course he hadn’t.

  “But he looks unhappy.” She was wretchedly torn. She had never been able to bear seeing Harry unhappy. Even while he was making her miserable.

  “Wait until he sees the greenhouse,” the duke said with ghoulish glee.

  “I think we ought not look at the greenhouse,” Genevieve said firmly.

  “What do you suppose you’ll find there?”

  “Roses the size of baby heads.”

  “They all were sent to you. He’ll see nothing.”

  “Then we don’t need to see it.”

  “Very good. If I refuse to allow him to see it, then the mystery will deepen. Imagine the torment.”

  He was right, of course, about everything, and this shut her up. Strategy was indeed the answer, and it seemed to be working.

  “Though he could even now be proposing to Millicent.”

  He would have to add that. He did have a sadistic streak.

  The two of them paused a moment. The duke shaded his eyes.

  “Though she’s getting too close to the swans, and they might snap off one of her limbs. I think those swans are carnivorous. That one in particular. Lucifer.”

  Millicent was indeed trying to lure one closer with a crust of bread. Genevieve bit back a smile. Millicent’s bonnet was of course already precariously askew.

  Genevieve looked up at the duke again to discover him watching her so peculiarly, so intently, her heart leaped.

  “Genevieve.”

  “Yes?”

  “I should like to kiss you again soon.”

  Oh.

  Her breath left her in a gust. Not a word-mincer, the duke.

  He smiled faintly. “You thought I would pretend it didn’t take place?”

  “I knew you would never allow me to forget it took place.”

  The smile became something else, and that’s when she saw how and when he deployed that enveloping, wicked smile. “Well?”

  She breathed in deeply, nervously, her hands burrowing into the fabric of her skirt. “I . . . I don’t think I should allow it.”

  He actually laughed. “Let’s stop pretending, shall we, that you’re someone who approves or disapproves of things, or allows or doesn’t allow them or what have you. You and I, at least, know that isn’t true. Allow me to phrase it differently: I think we ought to kiss again. Soon.” She could tell by the way he said “soon” that he was amusing himself by tormenting her.

  “It’s not archery or a picnic or a casual pastime.” The calm discussion of something that had turned her inside out was spinning her head. She heard the taut beginning of hysteria in her own voice. “You might at least try a different tone.”

  “You prefer me to sound ardent?” He sounded dubious. “I can certainly try.”

  “Please don’t!” That would be worse.

  She walked on quickly.

  He caught up easily.

  Up ahead of them, Harry was assisting the footmen in unpacking the hamper. She saw the half wheel of cheese emerge. He looked toward them and smiled, white teeth flashing. Lest she forget how it felt to be smiled at by Harry.

  And here she was striding next to a man whose erection had pressed against her last night, with her complicity.

  “I just don’t think it’s wise,” she said again nervously. Damn, damn, damn.

  “Wise!” The duke was amused. “Of course it isn’t wise. We wouldn’t be doing it for the wisdom of the thing.”

  She gave a short, breathless, incredulous laugh. “But . . . listen to yourself. It’s just that you sound so . . . as though I should meet you again in some specific location and we should set to it? Like a shooting party?”

  “I’m so glad to hear you making the arrangements—”

  “I’m not making arrange—”

  “—as I’m not a gifted planner.”

  “You plan everything,” she said irritably, which made him smile again. She did like his smile. “And besides, what can you possibly gain from another . . . kiss?”

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. Footsteps over leaves on the path as they walked. He seemed to be considering his reply.

  “I enjoy it. I enjoyed kissing you. You enjoyed kissing me. What more reason do we need to do anything?”

  Heat rushed over her limbs. I enjoy kissing you.

  “We are not in love.”

  He sighed, and the sigh evolved into a short exasperated laugh. “For heaven’s sake, Miss Eversea. Last night alone should have taught you that love and desire do not necessarily go hand in hand, and one can indulge one without . . . enduring the other. It wasn’t virtuous, what we did. And I shall not believe you if you claim virtue as a reason for not wanting to kiss me, for I’m very certain you are not the sort.”

  He was so darkly wry.

  “But you know that we won’t ever . . . that I’ll never entirely . . .” Her voice was choked and faint. She couldn’t say it. That you’ll never see me stretched out nude like Venus on the chaise in your gallery.

  He stopped abruptly.

  She stopped abruptly, too. Like a bloody pet called to heel.

  Infuriatingly, the duke got one eyebrow slowly, sardonically up. “You won’t ever what, Miss Eversea? Make love to me?”

  She was scarlet again, judging by the temperature of her face. But the things he felt free to say . . . !

  If she’d had any sense at all, she’d run as fast as her legs could carry her to join Harry and Millicent. But safety was hardly available there, either.

  Harry glanced back then, sensing . . . something. As he always seemed to. He shaded his eyes, watching the two of them.

  Clearly his equilibrium had been disturbed. Oh, Harry. He does care for me, he does know me.

  Oh, bloody, bloody hell.

  “I don’t want to kiss yo
u again,” she said faintly. Emphatically.

  She wasn’t certain whether it was true, but it was certainly the right thing to say.

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t,” he soothed insincerely. And continued walking swiftly.

  The swans seemed to have massed and were advancing on Millicent, who still appeared to be cooing and holding out a slice of bread.

  “And I think we ought not,” she called to him firmly and conclusively.

  “Of course you do,” he called back with mocking equanimity.

  She made an exasperated sound. She should have stalked in the opposite direction.

  She hurried to catch up to him.

  “Unless your plan is to . . . inveigle an indiscretion and compromise me in order to . . .”

  He paused again and mulled, head tilted.

  So she paused again. She’d begun to feel like his shadow.

  “Ah. I see what you’re saying. A trap? Clever! But now, now, Miss Eversea, now what did I just say about planning? And how it isn’t my forte? I hardly lured you like a spider into a web last night. You arrived and accosted me with your irresistibility, and in my drunken helplessness, what choice had I but to kiss you? I’m a creature of instinct. You really ought to have known better.”

  She snorted inelegantly. “You plan your every breath.”

  He smiled at that, tipping his head back, and she saw that double set of dimples at the corners of his mouth made by his smile, like a stone skipped across water. The wind ruffled and lifted his black hair.

  And her heart skipped, too.

  Black, that was, apart from a frost of gray at each temple.

  He was old. He was almost forty.

  “I did not plan . . . last night.” And now he was sincere. She could tell by the falter. He was almost bemused. And the way he said “last night” made the words seem like a euphemism for splendor. They encompassed a world of sensations and memories, those words.

  It was one of the most terrifying, exhilarating conversations she’d ever had.

  She felt buoyant and helpless, like a leaf that could be borne away on the wind and end up anywhere at all. Someplace marvelous, higher and higher still. Heaven.

  Or crushed beneath a foot.

  She felt sickly nervous.

  “And speaking of traps, one might be tempted to believe the trap was all for me,” he continued on an air of feigned injured indignation. “Can you imagine what would have happened had your father happened upon our tableau? Of the two of us, I’m the one with the title. He’d shoot me on the spot or hold me at gunpoint until a special license could be obtained.”

  She didn’t like the reference to marriage. She cut her eyes nervously to Harry and Millicent again.

  Only to discover that Millicent was quite a distance away now because she was fleeing a swan, her skirts clutched up in her hands to free her ankles. The swan made shockingly good time on its webbed feet, long neck outthrust as it tried at intervals to take snaps out of her. They were trailed by a footman who fruitlessly pelted it with bread, and by Harry, who was waving his hat madly and shouting.

  The footman’s wig flew off and smacked Harry full in the face. He stopped to claw it off.

  The duke shrugged. “Lucifer has a temper. He’ll get bored in a moment.”

  “But I’m the one with the fortune. I needn’t trap anyone,” Genevieve said, believing him about the swan.

  “Touché,” he said almost happily. “No, you are a prize. You’re no Olivia, of course,” he reiterated, mocking her again. “But you’re hardly a consolation prize.”

  “Is this a trick? Do you plan to seduce and abandon me to punish Ian?”

  This brought him up short. He was genuinely surprised. “Genevieve, listen to me. We will both be agreed on the beginning and end of it. I will never, ever willingly hurt you. Do you believe me?”

  She stared at him, biting her lip.

  “I swear it on all that I hold dear,” he added.

  She looked at him skeptically.

  “I hold some things dear, believe it or not.”

  “Don’t swear it at all. You don’t need to. I believe you.”

  He nodded once. “Very good.”

  “But don’t you see? I can’t. It’s simply very wrong.”

  He took three more long strides away from her. And then stopped. He actually sighed a long-suffering sigh. She was surprised he didn’t extract his watch from his pocket, because he had the air of a man who was done negotiating and had tired of the topic.

  He looked around at the landscape, but apparently his eyes found nothing they wanted to light on.

  His mouth quirked in resignation. And he turned to her.

  God. He’d eyes like mirrors. A changeable dark green splashed through with gold shavings. Hazel, she supposed she’d call it. His lashes were so black and thick. She stared at him now. There was a powder mark beneath his skin. A tiny scar beneath his chin. He was almost ugly, when viewed as a set of amplified details and features.

  Taken together, those details were devastating. She could not have designed a more thoroughly desirable man if God had assigned the task strictly to her.

  Though it seemed more the sort of task the devil would delegate.

  It could also have a little something to do with the fact that she knew what it was like to kiss him.

  And when he spoke he spoke quietly, quite seriously. He didn’t look at her.

  She followed his gaze.

  Millicent was growing more and more distant. One of her slippers had flown off and arced through the air. It landed, bounced, and began to tumble down the green.

  Harry and the footman were far behind her, both doubled over, hands on their knees, wheezing.

  The swan stopped at last, apparently bored. He waddled back to the pond and waded in. He glided majestically, serenely back over the water.

  “Genevieve, I saw something in you Lord Harry didn’t see, can’t see, because it isn’t in him to see it. Ask yourself why this is so. Ask yourself whether this might be rather an essential oversight on his part. Ask yourself if you’ve just discovered something about yourself that you may otherwise never have known. Ask yourself why you came looking for me last night, and whether you want to know more.”

  He turned to look at her now. “Because . . . I’m the one who can show you. And you may never have another chance to learn it in just this way. With someone you can trust. And who wants it as badly as you do.”

  She stared at him. She scarcely heard him, because she was panicked and furious with this new realization:

  She thought his eyes were beautiful.

  “Two members of the same species always recognize each other, no matter how unlikely that might seem, Genevieve. That Redmond fellow, Miles, he would be able to tell you a thing or two about that.”

  “I’m not a member of your species. And please don’t speak of the Redmonds to me.”

  He grinned because he’d made her say something ridiculous. The grin was wicked, white and tilted.

  She panicked, because she thought of sun-shot ponds and sunlight coming down through trees when she looked in his eyes now, and judging from the temperature of her cheeks he was a devil sent up from Hades, not a bloody poem.

  She might be turning any number of colors, from scarlet to parchment to all those shades of rose in-between, but he regarded her evenly.

  He was older, bolder. He knew of whores and wars, violence and vendettas. He knew precisely what he wanted, always.

  He wanted her.

  For a disconcerting few moments he didn’t speak. And she had the strangest notion he was studying her the same way she’d been studying him just moments before. Reassessing. Entertaining impressions about her and rejecting them (her eyes are beautiful!), only to have them float insistently back before his mind’s eye.

  He didn’t seem to care that she wasn’t speaking.

  “You’ll kiss me again.” His low-voiced, arrogant confidence made her wish she had som
ething clutched in her hand to throw at him. “The advantage of being a member of our species, Miss Eversea . . .” very deliberate, that, and he waited for her face to go thunderous “. . . is one that does whatever one wants because they want to and because they like it. And you both want to and you liked it. Not every woman does. Ponder that.”

  She glared at him.

  “But liking it has more than a little to do with who you’re kissing. And when you kiss me again it will have naught to do with wisdom. It will be because you will be unable to think of anything else until you do. Find me after midnight.”

  He strolled onward, whistling what sounded like The Ballad of Colin Eversea.

  Chapter 18

  It was of course all she thought about the following day.

  The duke had sent Genevieve, Harry, and Millicent back to Pennyroyal Green in his barouche, and stayed behind at Rosemont to take care of some estate business. During the journey, Millicent shared with Genevieve a new collection of sketches she’d made.

  “I call it Angry Swans,” she announced.

  One sketch showed a swan rising up out of the water, enormous span of wings upraised menacingly, neck outthrust.

  “This is what I saw just before it came after me,” she explained.

  Millicent was still a trifle put out that such beautiful animals should have been so unwelcoming, so as proof she’d captured their behavior in charcoal.

  “They’re wonderful,” Genevieve said very sincerely. “Very convincing. It’s a new direction for you, though, isn’t it? Menacing waterfowl?”

  “I think I prefer the kittens,” Harry said. He’d been silent until then.

  “You dislike moody animals, even if they’re beautiful, Harry?” Genevieve teased.

  “I dislike believing things are one way when they’re really another way entirely.”

  And if that wasn’t an innuendo, Genevieve didn’t know what one was.

  She just didn’t know if he was referring to his own heart, or to her, in general.

  But that could very well be her conscience interpreting it.