Duchesses in Disguise

by Grace Burrowes

  “Aren’t you cold?” Francesca asked.

  Grey had neglected to draw the covers up, and yes, his backside was cold. She was warm, though, and soft, and fragrant, and naked.

  “How am I to think of covers when your abundant charms are resplendent in my very bed?” he groused, sitting back to yank the quilts up. He took the place beside her on the mattress and drew her into his arms.

  Now that the moment was upon them, any pretense of finesse had deserted him. “You mentioned communication and mutuality of participation. This would be an ideal time to elucidate your meaning.”

  She sighed and snuggled closer, and Grey relaxed. They were to talk, apparently, and of all people, Francesca was the person with whom he’d never wanted for conversation.

  “Tell me about your home,” Francesca said. “About your dragon of a mama and your decent brother. I was an only child, and both of my parents are dead. I have two aunts, whom I dutifully visited in Sussex before coming north.”

  His home? A fine place to start. “I haven’t a home, exactly. I have some means thanks to one of my grandmothers, and I own a lovely estate in Kent, which I rent out. Property close to London is in demand, and I’m seldom in England for long periods.”

  “Do you want a home?”

  She asked the most peculiar questions, but they bore the insight of a colleague at a distance from the subject.

  “I haven’t given it much thought.” Until now. “There are nomadic peoples who thrive, but their wanderings are driven by the need for food, fresh grazing, fuel, or other necessities. As an Englishman, I was raised with an attachment to the land—king and country, et cetera—but my livelihood and my contribution have rested on exploring wildernesses. What about you?”

  He’d dodged the question. Spouted off knowledgeably on irrelevant tangents in the best scientific tradition. Though how was a man to ponder imponderables when delicate female fingers were stroking over his chest and belly?

  “I own property in Italy and England,” Francesca said, “also lands in France, though I’m thinking of deeding the French land to my tenants. It’s difficult to manage an agricultural holding at a distance, and the wars left so many in France with so little.”

  “Keep a portion of that land,” Grey said. “French vineyards are a lucrative proposition, though they take time to become profitable. I have an associate who can advise you in detail. The man is mad about grapes.”

  Francesca’s caresses were driving Grey mad, and she still hadn’t ventured below his waist.

  Time to do some exploring of the treasures at hand. Grey drew Francesca close, close enough that he could stroke her neck and shoulders.

  “I would not have thought you’d be mad about tea,” she said, leaning over to kiss his chest. “I’ve become fascinated with the scent you’re wearing.”

  “A colleague sent it to me. It’s made from a bunchgrass native to India. Khus is drought resistant, and can also withstand submersion for weeks if the root system is developed. Generally noninvasive—God in heaven, Francesca.”

  She’d scraped her teeth across his nipple. “Perhaps you can grow this grass in your tea garden.”

  Grey endured in silence while she explored his chest, his ribs, and eventually—three eternities and four ground molars later—the contours of his arousal. Her touch was more curious than bold, suggesting her late husband had failed utterly to indulge his lady’s scientific inclinations.

  “You desire me,” she said.

  “Madam has a talent for understatement. One hopes my sentiment is reciprocated.”

  She arranged herself over him and pinned him at the wrists as the end of her braid hit his chest. Her next experiment involved letting just the tips of her breasts touch him as she fit herself over his arousal.

  Grey tried to catalog impressions, but got no further than heat, dampness, and madness as Francesca began to rock.

  “I have investigations to make too,” she said, “and experiments I’ve longed to perform, but I was never in the right company, never properly provisioned. Move with me, please.”

  He became her private wilderness as she kissed, tasted, caressed, and undulated. By the time Francesca took Grey into her body, he was a welter of need and delight, longing and jubilation. This was erotic intimacy in the ideal, a joining so profound it eclipsed awareness of any other reality. Grey might have been back in Brazil or on a ship to India, for all his surroundings had fallen from his notice.

  There was only Francesca, pleasure, and wonder.

  “Up,” he said, patting her bum. “I want to touch you.” Needed to, and not only for his own satisfaction. He was in bed with a woman glorying in the wonders of her body, and he was determined no pleasure should be denied her.

  “You are touching me,” she retorted, complying nonetheless. “You are most assuredly… I like that.”

  He’d covered each full, rosy breast with a hand and counterpointed thrusts and caresses. Francesca’s nipples were wonderfully sensitive, and when her head fell back, and she surrendered to sensation, Grey made a vow to get her damned braid undone before the next time they coupled.

  Because there would be a next time, and as many times as he could manage between now and when she left him.

  Francesca’s breathing quickened, and she pitched forward, her movements becoming greedy.

  Grey held her, and held on to his self-restraint, while she thrashed her way to completion on a soft, sweet murmur of his name. For long moments, she remained panting in his arms, and his own satisfaction surprised him.

  He hadn’t spent, and didn’t intend to when it would risk conception, and yet, he was happy, proud, and content, despite the clamoring of desire.

  Francesca’s breathing slowed. She kissed Grey’s cheek and whispered in his ear. “I bring news from Marathon. The Persian invaders have been routed by our brave forces. Let the celebration begin.”

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  Reason, the enemy of passion and adventure, tried to dim Francesca’s joy not three hours after she’d left Sir Greyville’s bed, and bedeviled her over the next sennight.

  She was not a giddy girl, to be falling in love after five years of widowhood. In one week, she’d be leaving, and then this interlude on the stormy dales would be nothing but a memory. She had been overdue for some pleasure, long, long overdue, and Sir Greyville Trenton had happened into her life at the right time under the right circumstances.

  “Balderdash,” she muttered.

  Grey peered at her from the chair behind the desk. “Beg pardon?”

  He looked delectable, with his spare pair of spectacles perched on his nose, his cuffs turned back, and his jacket hung on the back of the chair. His eyebrows would grow more fierce as he aged, but Francesca couldn’t imagine his heart growing any more fierce than it already was.

  Perhaps Pietro had been a selfish dullard, but Francesca suspected the boot was on the other foot: Sir Greyville Trenton was a force of nature in bed, on the page, and everywhere in between.

  “Creating these indexes will be my undoing,” she said. “You refer to the same plant or insect by its English name, its local name, and its Latin name, if it has one. I often don’t grasp that you’re referring to the same bug or flower until the tenth time I see it. You’re just as bad with landmarks, and that’s before Spanish and Portuguese get involved.”

  “I hadn’t realized I’d created such a muddle.”

  He’d created the muddle to end all muddles, and not only in his notes.

  “I’ve decided to use English as the unifying reference,” Francesca said. “The glossary will be in English, with all foreign language terms listed after the English definition. If that doesn’t suit, you can devise some other system on the voyage to India.”

  He rose and came around the desk. “If I get to India. I’ve had nothing but rejections and silence in response to my letters.”

  They’d developed a system in this regard as well. The mail came in, Grey opened
it, and he stacked the rejections on the corner of the desk. When Francesca wanted a break from ocelots, jaguars, and indexes, she wrote a gracious response to the rejection. She begged leave to keep the esteemed party informed regarding future developments and thanked them for their continued interest, with all good wishes, et cetera and so forth.

  Grey signed the letters and off to the post they went, to be replaced by more disappointment the next day.

  Each night, Grey made love with her more passionately and tenderly. Each afternoon, he opened the mail and became quieter and more pensive.

  “Your friends seem well-off,” Francesca said. “Colonel Stratton and Mr. Stirling, I mean. I realize asking for their support might be awkward, but needs must.”

  Grey drew her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. “They both supported the last expedition generously. I have hopes that some of the samples I brought back can be developed for medical or horticultural purposes, but so far, it seems I’ve discovered more poisons, of which the world already has enough. My memoirs will bring in some revenue, and I did find four new species of orchid that will catch the interest of the bromeliad enthusiasts. Even so, I can’t ask for more money without showing a return on the investments already made.”

  He would not accept support without giving something in return, damn him.

  “What about your brother?” Francesca asked. “You gave him your pony. If he’s an earl, surely he has some coin to spare.”

  Grey drew away, went to the sofa, and patted the place beside him. “I’ll tell you a secret, one unknown even to my friends.”

  Francesca knew much about Sir Greyville Trenton that she suspected nobody else knew: what a mare’s nest he made of the covers when he was dreaming, that he missed England for all his talk of thriving on exploration, that he was an accomplished artist with an eye for natural beauty, that he was both affectionate and playful.

  And that she would miss him for the rest of her days.

  “As a diplomat’s daughter, I learned to be wary of secrets,” she said, coming down beside him. “They can be more trouble than they’re worth.”

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and Francesca cuddled close. They’d taken to working like this in the evenings, she reading over his writing for the day, and he reviewing her work. The closer the time to part came, the more constantly Francesca craved Grey’s touch.

  “Here’s the Trenton family secret: Earldoms cost a bloody lot of money. If anybody ever offers you one, politely decline, lest you end up bankrupt. I suspect this is why peers cannot be jailed for debt, because a need for coin goes with the lofty title.”

  Francesca’s late husband would not have argued. On the rare occasions when Pietro lost his temper, it was in response to one of his sons overspending, or one of his ministers failing to manage within the budgetary means allotted.

  “Your brother is pockets to let,” Francesca said. “That’s why you rent out your estate in Kent, because your family needs the money.”

  Grey let his head fall back against the cushions. “I made the suggestion that Sebastian and my mother use my estate as their residence and rent out the family seat. This is done, though I know it causes talk. The scheme was eminently sensible, the family seat being huge, commodious, and well maintained. Mama threatened to disown me. Sebastian’s wife would rather plague visit the house than become an object of pity.”

  Francesca scooted about, wiggling down to rest her head against Grey’s thigh. “They refuse to practice economies, so you go hat in hand to strangers, hoping to find a means of supporting your family while risking your life, braving all manner of hardship, and having no home of your own.”

  His hand paused mid-stroke over her hair. “You sound like Stratton and Stirling, though they aren’t half so blunt and at least wait until we’ve done some justice to the brandy.”

  “I loved my husband, Grey. He was a good man, though far from perfect. When he became ill, and his mistresses took up with his wealthy friends, he apologized to me. He began to make promises, all of which began with, ‘When I’m back in good health…’ He never regained his health, and our marriage never blossomed into what it might have been. I want you to blossom.”

  She used the edge of her sleeve to wipe at her eyes. “Two years in China, four years in the jungle, you mentioned a voyage to Greenland when you were twenty. Is that what you want for the rest of your life? Do you really owe your family that much risk and deprivation, year after year?”

  He lifted her into his lap, when Francesca had feared he might leave the room.

  “I cannot abide your tears,” he said, mopping at her face with a wrinkled handkerchief. “Francesca, you must not cry. Please stop.”

  “I c-can’t,” she wailed. “I don’t want you to go. I know you love the adventure, and I know you make a great contribution, but I want you to be safe and happy, and I want—”

  He kissed her, which was fortunate, because she’d been about to confess to wanting to sleep beside him every night, whether in a bed, a hammock, or on the bare, hard earth.

  “This is why I must go to India,” he said. “Because there, if I can learn to cultivate tea, I will have a commodity of great value, and I’ll be able to produce it within the British empire. I can also teach others how to grow it and use my plantation to start more tea gardens. The venture could be enormously lucrative, and while India is exotic, it’s not the Amazon jungle. I can see no other way to justify the faith my friends and the scientific community have shown me, Francesca. Fortune for once smiled upon me, and I owe it to my country and my family to seize the opportunity with both hands.”

  Grey grabbed the afghan from the back of the couch and wrapped her in it. Francesca closed her eyes and reveled in his embrace, even as she resented his devotion to honor.

  All too soon, one of those dratted wealthy sponsors would realize what an opportunity Grey’s next adventure posed, and he’d be away again, for years, possibly for the rest of his life.

  And yet, she found a reason to be comforted too.

  He was no longer spouting lofty platitudes about science, knowledge, and the betterment of mankind. He’d admitted to a very human ambition to look after his family. Francesca had been unable and unwilling to compete with science as Grey’s first passion, but she understood the need to care for loved ones.

  She understood that need very well and fell asleep pondering how she might assist him to reach his goal, because she cared very much for him indeed.

  * * *

  “Another one,” Grey said, putting the letter on the stack for the day. “The comtesse has developed a passion for mummies. I had high hopes for her, but even your skill was insufficient to interest her in my next expedition.”

  Grey was losing interest in his next expedition. India had seemed perfect—exotic but not a series of unrelenting perils. He’d visited a few of the Indian ports on the voyage to China and liked what he’d seen. In India, he could find a balance between a need for scientific stimulation and a need for goddamned coin.

  He’d lost his balance the moment Francesca Pomponio had joined him in Zeus’s saddle. What he needed more than anything was time with her.

  Francesca rose from the table and came over to perch in Grey’s lap, which she’d occupied for some agreeable time the evening before.

  “I’m sorry the comtesse disappointed you. Are there more potential sponsors you’d like me to write to?”

  He drew her close, the feel of her in his arms a comfort against all miseries. “I’ve gone through my old journals, asked my colleagues, and importuned my brother. My resources are exhausted. I will be reduced to taking a professorial chair at Cambridge, while better connected, more charming fellows are getting back out into the field.”

  He was whining, and Grey detested whiners.

  “You’re tired,” Francesca said. “You haven’t taken a break yet today, and the sun is even shining, or it was.”

  Some considerate soul named Francesca had put a c
ushion in Grey’s chair, and thus his ability to remain seated had improved. His ability to remain optimistic had deserted him utterly.

  “Francesca, I am not very good company right now. Perhaps you should dine with your friends.”

  She rose, when he wanted to cling to her and bury his nose in her hair.

  “I will order us trays,” she said, “because the dinner hour approaches. I suspect my friends are finding the company of your friends very agreeable, though one wonders where Mr. Stirling has got off to. Are you fretting over money?”

  “Yes.” No money meant no travels to India. No travels to India meant no hope of repairing the family fortunes. No hope of repairing the family fortunes, much less fortifying his own, meant no hope of taking a wife.

  Grey had admitted that to himself in the small hours of the morning, as he’d carried a sleeping Francesca back to her bed.

  Because Francesca was regarding him with that level, patient look, he told her the rest of it.

  “I’m also increasingly resentful of my brother’s unwillingness to take what steps he could to put us back on solid footing. It’s not as if I’m inviting him to move into a crofter’s hut.”

  “You’ve made do with much less than that on many occasions.”

  “I’ve slept in my canoe and been grateful. Slept in trees, subsisted on coconuts, fished with a knife lashed to a stick, and damned near watched my toes rot off, but my brother cannot make do with a mere three thousand acres of some of the best farmland in the home counties.”

  “You put me in mind of a duchess I once knew,” Francesca said, picking up the letter from the comtesse. “Her life looked like one grand soiree, all jewels and pretty clothes, lavish meals and handsome courtiers. She was terribly lonely, often exhausted, criticized for what she did and for what she failed to do. Court intrigues ranged from affairs with her husband, to plots on her life, to attempted poisonings. I would not wish that life on anybody.”