Duchesses in Disguise

by Grace Burrowes

  Her teeth began chattering, and she clenched them in a futile attempt to stop them. “Thank you, sir, for your assistance. Please accept my apologies for behaving in such an absurd manner.”

  “You are freezing.” He took off his coat and held it out to her. How she wanted to accept it, and the warmth it would offer, and the return to smelling his intoxicating scent. And, not least, the feeling of being looked after. She shook her head, declining his offer.

  “I don’t know what came over me. I... was startled. I certainly had not been expecting a plunge in the pool.”

  “It is not absurd to be terrified of falling in the water when one cannot swim.”

  He was right, but she couldn’t accept his words, as if doing so would let him define her.

  She lifted her chin. “I was not terrified.”

  He tossed his coat on the table, and she wondered that he was not chilled in his shirt-sleeves. “You weren’t? Why was it then that you were clinging so tightly to me? Perhaps because you were unable to resist me?”

  The blush swept over her quickly. “Only a man like you would say such an ungentlemanly thing.”

  Her words were not polite either, but when he replied, his tone suggested he’d not taken any offense. “Perhaps, or perhaps I am less inclined than the average fellow to speak in silky platitudes and gracious phrases. I prefer to be direct. And you were terrified.”

  Why was she resisting the truth? Not only had she been terrified, but some craven part of her had wanted terribly to continue holding on to a man who’d evidently had an affair with a married woman and purposefully shot her husband, even if there were perhaps extenuating circumstances.

  “Very well, I was,” she said. “I have been afraid of water all my life, ever since I fell in a pond as a child and nearly drowned.”

  “A not uncommon fear, Miss Thorpe. Why did you feel the need to hide it?”

  “Because it is a weakness I do not care for in myself.”

  He laughed. “You are the most interesting and confident spinster I have ever met.”

  The arrogance! As if a woman who’d never married could not be interesting or confident. As if she’d been waiting for his approval. She fixed him with a steady gaze. “I am, in truth, not a miss. I have told you a lie.”

  His eyebrows rose slowly, as though she’d just revealed a piece of delicious gossip. “You are married? Should I expect a dawn appointment from an angry husband furious that I have spent the evening alone with his wife?” he drawled. “If so, I might have to prevail on you to explain that, for once, I am quite innocent.”

  “There will be no angry husband pursuing you, sir. I was once Miss Thorpe, as I told you. That was before I married the Duke of Coldbrook. I have been widowed these four years.”

  She had the satisfaction of seeing that she’d surprised him as the customary mask of boredom slipped for a moment from his face.

  “The Duchess of Coldbrook. I’ve heard of you, though not often. Society threw up its hands over the pair of you after you married and retreated, for the most part, to the country. It all sounded terribly dull, the old duke and his shy virgin. I suppose it was months of quiet days and nights in some rambling old ancestral place?”

  Her temper flared. “What a poor view you have of married life. I suppose the life Harold and I shared would sound very dull to someone such as you. We had six wonderful years before he died. And our time in the country never felt like a retreat. It was a fulfillment. We were very happy together.”

  “How nice for you.”

  His tone was mocking. Of course. What should she expect from a man who cared so little about all the things that meant so much to her? And yet, he’d rescued her, and been kind in her moments of terror. She thought again of her suspicion that he simply had not wanted to be alone.

  “It was nice. And wonderful in every sense of the word, and many other things.” She believed in love and in goodness, and if he did not, then she was a little sorry for him. But only a very little, because that was his choice.

  “Still, you, a duchess. I confess I did not guess.”

  “That I was of the same station as the heir to an earldom?”

  He grabbed the poker and stirred up the dying fire. “Oh, a duchess would trump the disgraced heir of an earl any day.”

  He was the heir to the Earl of Roswell, with all the duties and benefits that entailed, but he clearly had only scorn for the very thing that made him special in the eyes of the ton. Having come into the role of duchess, she could not understand his cavalier attitude toward what he owed the title, but he was hardly the only such wastrel—London was full of young bucks living dissipated lives. Still, he was surely near her age, and a man of thirty or more ought not to behave like a youth.

  “Why didn’t you say who you were to begin with?” he asked.

  “I had decided to have a sort of holiday from being a duchess.”

  “Ah, playing at commoner, then. Thus the reason you are not currently partaking of the Season in London, where you would doubtless be popular with the fortune hunters.”

  She inclined her head, not disposed in the least to discuss such things with him. “Well, thank you again, Mr. Stirling, for pulling me out of the pool. If you had not been here to help me, I cannot imagine what might have become of me. Though if you had not been here,” she managed a small, insincere smile, determined to banish the strange mood that had come over her this evening, “I should not have visited the pool at all.”

  “You should learn to swim,” he said in that careless tone of his.

  “Oh, well, it’s a bit late for that. I assure you that I shall in future be very good at avoiding plunge pools, in addition to ponds and streams and the like. You will not be required to rescue me again.”

  “Why would you want to go through life avoiding something so essential to us as water, and so potentially delightful?”

  How did he manage to ask a question while making it seem that he was only slightly interested in the answer?

  “Because it’s also incredibly dangerous?” she said with bright sarcasm. “I assure you, Mr. Stirling, I have not been missing out on swimming my entire life. I have never yearned to do it, nor, in fact, ever even given it a thought.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “That you have not been missing out on swimming? You’ve never experienced it, so how can you know what you’re missing?”

  “In the same way I know that I should not like to step into a fire just to see what it’s like, or sample the flavor of a poison.”

  “Water isn’t like fire and poison. It’s innately harmless, and with a little guidance, you would be able to swim. I could even teach you.”

  Could this night grow any more absurd? The Wastrel of White Horse Street was offering his services as a swimming tutor. She spared a thought for how she might recount all of this to Francesca and Mary Alice, but immediately knew that she would not. None of this was as easily explainable as it should have been, especially the part where she had clung to him. That had been from terror, but not only terror in the end.

  “Kind of you, sir,” she said, though she doubted his offer had anything to do with kindness. Boredom was surely the reason. “But no, thank you. I really have no wish or need to learn to swim.”

  His dark eyes glittered at her. “What will happen the next time you fall into some pool or pond, Duchess, and no one is there to save you? Oh, that’s right, you’re never going to come close again.”

  “Why should you wish to teach me anyway?”

  “Why?” he said lazily. “It will give me something do, of course, in this godforsaken quiet place. And then, of course, there is this.”

  He was standing perhaps three feet from her, and when she blinked, he’d moved closer. She ought to have felt that he was invading the space that anyone would expect two people who knew each other so little to keep between them—he was—but she had already been much, much closer to him, and she rem
embered. Her body remembered.

  “I liked having you in my arms.”

  His body was strong and large, and even in the midst of her terror, she had liked clinging to him, had felt the inexpressible satisfaction of a need for those things that only a man could offer her.

  He lifted a hand and, with a fingertip, traced lightly along her jawline. “I want to touch you more. May I kiss you?”

  She did not even think. His touch was what she wanted, though the craving was senseless. She did not know this man, and what little she did know of him, she didn’t like. But she had forgotten this part of herself. She had put it away after Harold died, and now Kit Stirling was making her remember. And making her imagine that there was more, still, that she had yet to experience.

  “Yes.”

  His head dipped toward her, and then his warm lips were on hers. He teasingly but insistently nudged her lips apart, then his mouth plundered hers with a sureness she’d never experienced. Harold had not been like this; he’d been tender and reserved. Always considerate. But Kit Stirling was completely different from Harold in every way, starting with his lack of reserve.

  She responded to him with an eagerness that shocked her, barely pausing to wonder how it was possible to shock herself.

  He broke the kiss to murmur next to her ear, “Let me warm you.” His mouth trailed along her jaw and down her neck, stirring a response deep and low in her body. She wrapped her arms around the breadth of his chest and surrendered to the sensations he was stirring in her, heedless of alarm bells of propriety. What he was doing felt too good.

  That’s because he’s a practiced seducer! part of her mind shouted at her. But she could not make herself care that she was merely the next woman in line for him, that she was just a body to him. Because he was just a body to her, and she wanted what they were doing, wanted it with a fierceness she hadn’t felt about anything in a very long time.

  From the experience of her marriage, she knew she was likely barren. This would simply be a free experience, devoid of any strings or complications, and she meant to have it.

  She pushed her hand under his coat, reveling in the feel of his firm, muscled flesh under the thin barrier of his shirt. He began undoing the buttons on the front of her dress, his lips following the work of his fingers. When her dress gaped open over her breasts, his tongue came hot and wet against the tender swell of her right breast. And then he moved lower and took her nipple in his mouth and dragged his teeth rudely against the swollen tip. She loved it and moaned aloud in pleasure, something she’d never done in her life.

  Pressed firmly against him as she was, she could be in no doubt of his desire for her, the evidence of which prodded her belly. He began to urge her backward, until her backside came up against the empty worktable next to the hearth, and with a sweep of his arms, he lifted her onto it. Pushing her skirts upward, he stepped between her legs.

  “Let me warm you,” he said again, though she had completely forgotten her cold, wet sleeves and skirts. Wishing he would not speak, she reached for the fall of his trousers. She unfastened the buttons, but she did not look. Instead, she tugged him closer to bury her mouth against the hot skin of his neck. He pushed her skirts farther back and touched her softly where she ached, and his knowing fingers made her need expand its already unwieldy dimensions.

  And then he was at her entrance and pushing inside her. She pulled him hard against her, needing to wring everything she could out of this moment. He moved in her, and she moved against him, her body responding in a rhythm she had missed desperately without even knowing it.

  “Good God, woman,” he said hoarsely, as if the words had been torn out of him. He worked into her, and it felt unbearably good.

  She cried out when she found her release and pressed her mouth to his cloth-covered shoulder to muffle the sound. He pushed into her again, then with a deep groan, shifted away from her. She knew that he was spending himself outside her body, and she kept her face against his shoulder.

  “Well,” he said in a quiet voice some moments later, “you are warm now. Quite warm.”

  Yes, she was warm now, inside and out, warmed and softened in the way only a good loving could accomplish. But almost as soon as she’d become aware of how very relaxed and languid she felt, how boneless and how, in that moment, there was nothing on earth that she lacked, the sting of remorse began to steal her warmth. This wasn’t loving, what they had done together.

  She shifted, urging him off her, and pulled her dress back into place on her shoulders. He handed her a handkerchief, which she accepted without looking at him.

  The hearth now held nothing but smoldering ashes, and the room had grown cold and cheerless. Without speaking, they made their way upstairs. As she opened the door to her bedchamber, he quietly whispered a good night. She said nothing and closed the door.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  The next morning, Kit sent a note to the duchess, inviting her to come for a ride. There was no reply, so he went alone. When he returned, he was informed by Stratton’s butler that the duchess’s friend, the one who’d been injured in the coach accident, had arrived at the manor. As he passed one of the bedchambers on his way to his room, he heard feminine laughter.

  He bathed and went to the dining room for lunch, thinking the others might join him, but no one appeared.

  Kit was eager to see the Duchess of Coldbrook again. Their sexual encounter had been spectacular. And completely unexpected. When he had brought her to the kitchen, he had thought only to entertain himself with her company. He could not have guessed, from her tidy, plain looks, that she was in fact a woman of remarkable sexual appetite.

  Of course, he had also not known that that average-looking spinster was the Duchess of Coldbrook. Not that it mattered to him that she was a duchess. If he cared about such things, he would certainly not let anything stand between himself and the earldom that currently belonged to his uncle. Kit was meant to be the earl’s heir, and he had been brought up to know all the duties and expectations of the title that would one day be his. But that was his old life, and Kit had made a new one for himself, one that centered on all the best entertainments—of which the duchess was currently, and most unexpectedly, the most interesting one.

  He finally found her in the greenhouse.

  “Your Grace,” he greeted her as he moved past a tall, exotic-looking plant and drew near where she stood examining an orange-colored bloom, doubtless something Grey had brought back from one of his travels and presented to Stratton, who was well known for his interest in nature and science.

  She was wearing a different gown, this one of chocolate brown; apparently the ladies’ trunks had arrived. Now that he knew she was a duchess, he could see that it was made of extremely fine, if very understated, fabric. Her hair was pulled back in a knot, unadorned by any plaits or ribbons. The plain style suited her. Her eyebrows were already such a distinctive and strong aspect of her face that busy hairstyles and elaborate decorations would have looked silly on her. He gave her credit for good taste.

  Her lips were a nice color, he noticed for the first time. Ashes of roses, he believed they would be called. Though they were really a more rosy color than that, he decided as he considered them further. He supposed his friend Arthur, a perpetually impoverished painter who was always going into raptures about shades of color, would have had a name for the exact shade of the Duchess of Coldbrook’s lips.

  She looked up only briefly before returning her gaze to the orange flower. “Mr. Stirling.” She leaned closer to the plant and sniffed delicately.

  “I trust you are well, ma’am.” His eyes were inescapably drawn to the curve of her bosom. He wanted to see her breasts in the daylight. He’d hardly been able to determine their contours the night before, had seen only erotically teasing portions. They were of an average size—there was that word again that he had associated with her from the first—but his feelings toward them now bordered on deep interest. He meant to se
e them again, all of them. And all of her.

  “As you see,” she said, addressing her words to the plant.

  When she did not abandon her inspection of the flower, he said, “Might I ask what is so fascinating about this particular bloom, ma’am?”

  She finally looked up properly, and he saw it: The confidence that had surprised him when he thought she was a spinster belonged to a duchess. But her air of self-command also seemed so clearly a part of her that he guessed it would not matter whether she was dressed in fine silks, plain gowns, or rags.

  “I was thinking of acquiring one of these plants for Brookleigh.”

  He noticed a piece of foolscap near the pot, and a piece of lead. She’d apparently been making notes.

  “That is the family seat?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s where you and your husband spent so much happy time together?”

  “Yes. It’s a beautiful place, and I’ve always loved it there.”

  “I suppose your husband was a paragon? The dead always are, to those they leave behind.”

  Her eyes grew hooded with hauteur. “He was a tremendously good man with a very big heart. We loved traveling together, and we loved staying in of an evening together. We were companions who were happiest in each other’s company. But he was a real person, just as I am, and he had flaws, just as everyone does. I have not turned him into a saint in my memories of him, if that is what you wish to imply. I simply loved him as he was.”

  “Very admirable.”

  “I don’t need your approval, Mr. Stirling.”

  His mouth twisted in a smirk. “Nor would you wish it, I believe I’m meant to understand.”

  She inclined her head. Apparently, she did not wish to continue their conversation, because she shifted her attention to the pale blue flower that was neighbor to the orange one. From all signs, she’d been doing nothing more exciting than making a study of flower blooms for the last hour and had been entirely contented in doing so. Her serenity irked him.