“When did the duke die?”
“Four years ago.”
“Leaving you all alone, all this time.”
The suggestiveness behind his words did not escape her. Her eyes flicked to his face and color came into her cheeks. “Do you go out of your way to be coarse in the hopes of getting a rise out of me? I cannot imagine why I am to be the recipient of such attention. Or perhaps this is the way you treat everyone, even your friends.”
“You have to admit that you were very agreeable last night to my attentions.”
“I don’t believe I was, actually. Agreeable, that is. I reluctantly came with you to the kitchen when pressed, reluctantly came to the pool. I will acknowledge, however, that I was a willing participant in what happened afterward. But you are making an assumption if you think it was because I found your attentions particularly agreeable. I think we were both simply inclined towards physical contact in that moment.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Inclined towards physical contact, I like that. Surely the most bloodless description ever given of lovemaking.”
“I would not call it lovemaking where there is no love, Mr. Stirling.”
“Kit, please. After all, we have been intimate—we can agree on that term, I believe, at least—and need not be formal with one another.”
“On the contrary, I would prefer that we remain formal with each other. We are here at Rose Heath with our friends, and there is no reason for them to be aware that there has been anything between us.”
“Our friends seem to be quite taken up with each other and would likely think it a fine thing were they to discover we fancied each other.” Or at least, his friends would probably be delighted if, despite his plummeting status, he were to be connected with a woman such as the Duchess of Coldbrook.
“But I don’t fancy you, Mr. Stirling. And I doubt my friends would think it a good thing if they knew I had spent an evening with the Wastrel of White Horse Street.”
She wanted no doubt to tell herself she did not care for his company, but her response the night before was not the response of a woman who found him unappealing. Clearly, he would have to be more circuitous in his pursuit of her, for he did mean to pursue her. He meant to taste again the explosiveness that had surged between them when they touched.
“As you wish,” he said. “I can certainly be discreet.”
“There will be no need for discretion,” she said tartly, “because there will be nothing between us.”
He traced a fingertip along the glossy curve of one of the almond-shaped leaves growing on a plant near his hand. It was quite pretty, actually. He had not, until he came in search of the duchess, spent a single moment in Stratton’s conservatory. Grey, with his passion for plants, probably spent a good portion of time here when he visited Stratton. Though this was doubtless infrequently, as Grey was usually away from England, traveling the world to further enrich his studies and his collections.
It was because Grey and Stratton cared so little about Society that they had pressed Kit to join them at Rose Heath. Kit was unwelcome in more than a few drawing rooms among the ton, a matter in which he generally took amused satisfaction. He certainly wasn’t feeling any more concerned about his status in Society just now because he wanted the Duchess of Coldbrook to be agreeable to him. He was simply realizing that—well, he was dashed lucky to have Grey and Stratton as friends.
“Have you given any more thought to swimming lessons, Your Grace?”
“I believe I made my wishes plain, sir, when I thanked you for your offer and declined it.” She moved farther along the display of plants, taking her notes with her.
He moved to stand opposite her. “Ah, but I thought you might perhaps have changed your mind after what happened after your dunking.”
She closed her eyes briefly, as if having to call on the heavens to deliver great forbearance. “We all have lapses in judgment sometimes, Mr. Stirling. I think you as well as anyone could agree with that. I have said all I care to on the subject and do not wish to discuss it further.”
“But how can I understand such a thing as a single lapse, Your Grace, when my entire existence is surely one continuous lapse in judgment?”
“If it is, that is your own choice, as you are an adult.”
He laughed. “Come, let down your hair and let me teach you to swim, ma’am.”
Color flared anew in her cheeks. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The seduction couched as swimming lesson. The sensual education of a deprived and lonely widow. But I’m not deprived or lonely, Mr. Stirling, and I’ve already been very happily married. Nor am I the least bit interested in spending time with a man who’s little better than a youth.”
“A youth?” he drawled. “You may be well into your fourth decade, ma’am, but I assure you that I am as well. I was thirty-five on my last birthday.”
“And you’ve made no strides to do anything in life but pursue your own pleasure, have you? You seek my company here only because you are bored. I would think the country is the last place you would like, with its out-of-date fashions and its lack of Society and diversion.”
She was so direct. Blisteringly so. “I wasn’t bored last night. You were quite an accomplished lover. Indeed, the best I have known in some time.”
“Do you think to entice me with this sort of coarse and boring nonsense? Perhaps we behaved like animals last night. I am hardly unaware that our bodies offer us all temptation. But I am not a beast, to be led only by my desires.”
Boring? She found his compliments boring? True, they were coarse, he supposed with an unaccustomed prickle. He hadn’t guarded his tongue in so long that he’d lost his awareness of the borders of propriety. But boring?
He picked up a trowel near him on the high table and stabbed halfheartedly at the soil in a pot of dirt in front of him, loosening it. “And I am a beast who is led by my desires, is that it?”
“I cannot say what your motivations are, sir. You must make your own choices.”
“And I choose you, here, now, Your Grace. Come, why should we not get to know one another better while we are here? There is little else to do.”
Her eyes flicked to the pot of dirt. He glanced down and noticed for the first time that there were a few wisps of green in the pot he was stabbing, seedlings that he’d slashed with the trowel. He felt unaccountably annoyed.
“Why are you here, at Rose Heath, Mr. Stirling? Why are you not in London?”
“I was invited here, of course. Sir Greyville and the colonel and I are old friends.”
“But they are busy now, apparently, entertaining new friends. Surely you need not feel that they would be bereft of company should you leave. Why not go back to London, where there is so much diversion to be had?”
He shrugged.
“Or is there something you’re avoiding in Town? Perhaps a gambling debt?”
“No. I always pay my debts. I simply do not wish to be in Town.”
She cocked her head. “A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to an engagement party for the Earl of Roswell’s daughter. He is your uncle, if I am not mistaken?”
He inclined his head.
“But you do not mean to be present at the celebration of your cousin’s engagement? It was to be tonight, I believe.”
“We are not a close family.”
“Then I am sorry to hear it. Family can be one of life’s chief joys. I would be quite sorry to miss sharing in my own family’s happiness at such a time.”
She would keep turning the conversation toward such dry avenues. “I think we have already established that you are a much better person than I am. And clearly a moralist as well.”
She was, in a word, vexing, and it was a testament to how little else was available to Kit that he found her to be like a challenge thrown down before him. Though that wasn’t exactly true either. He found talk of love and family harmony insipid, but her conversation was not insipid. She was not insipid. And he could not forget how
she’d touched him the night before, how direct and fiery had been her passion.
“Come,” he began, but at that moment, the housekeeper appeared to announce that tea was being served in the drawing room.
“Oh, thank goodness,” the duchess said, heading for the door briskly. “I’m sure I have been wanting nothing so much as tea.”
“Is that so?” he muttered, going after her.
She had a spirit of great passion, but not the courage to give it rein. He should have guessed, given the way she had handled her fear of water by resolving to avoid it her whole life. She likely kept her emotions under tight control; it was what he’d observed about her from the first, that she was controlled and tasteful. He must simply give her a taste for something new.
He caught up with her and spoke in a low voice, though the housekeeper had left. “If you change your mind, Your Grace, I shall be by the pool at midnight, ready to afford you the unique opportunity to gain a skill you are lacking. A skill, I might add, that could one day save your life, never mind what you’ve been missing through your fear of pretty little ponds and gentle rivers.”
“The plunge pool is a basin of frigid water, Mr. Stirling, not some once-in-a-lifetime treat. But you may of course wish to sample its delights yourself. I wish you joy of it. Good day, sir.”
She swept out of the greenhouse with her chin in the air, behaving for all the world as if there’d been nothing between them but plant talk. He watched her walk away, her hips barely swaying, the proud line of her neck giving no hint of the sensuous nature hiding within her.
He wanted her.
Chapter Six
* * *
Through an unexpected, circuitous, and rather amusing set of circumstances, Olivia found herself the following day standing before a small group of local children and teaching them a song. The adventure had all begun when she had slipped out of the manor after breakfast, at which meal she had not, she thanked heaven, seen Mr. Stirling.
And to think he’d meant for her to allow him to teach her to swim! No doubt with the idea that he would be allowed all sorts of liberties with her body as she struggled in the water in little but a wet chemise. His nerve and his sordid intentions clearly knew no bounds.
Except, if she were being honest with herself, calling his intentions sordid, even in her mind, was not entirely fair. At least as far as what had happened in the kitchen, because she’d been just as eager as he for what they had done. The difference was that, for her, the interlude had been a one-time lapse, while for him, interludes were clearly a way of life.
When she found herself pacing in her room after breakfast in a vain attempt to banish thoughts of Mr. Stirling, she had set out for a bracing walk in the cool spring air, taking the path that led into the village.
She arrived there to discover that it was market day, and as she walked among the stalls selling new potatoes and pots of every size, her attention was drawn to a woman’s voice that teased her with its familiarity. Seeking its owner, she discovered, amid all the strangers bustling about, someone she knew.
“Martha Sharp!” she exclaimed, rushing over to where the woman stood in an open space just beyond the pie seller’s stall, amid a circle of young children.
“Olivia Thorpe!” Martha exclaimed, and then they were laughing and embracing, and recalling the times when they’d last been together, at Miss Lockhart’s School.
Despite the passage of more than a dozen years, Martha looked almost the same, small and spry, with a pert nose and gentle blue eyes. She was Martha Tompkins now—she’d married the local vicar. And she was leading the children in practicing a song that was to be sung on a special occasion.
“Well, we are trying to sing together, anyway,” Martha said. “But I was never very accomplished at music, and I can’t seem to get this one part right with them. The music master at Miss Lockhart’s did say I would never amount to anything musically.” She laughed, shaking her head.
“He was not a kind music master, Martha.”
“I know, but he was right, Olivia,” Martha said, but then her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, I do beg your pardon, Your Grace. Here I have been calling you by your Christian name and chattering away at you, and I had forgotten all about you marrying the duke. Pray excuse my familiarity. I shall certainly call you Your Grace from now.”
“You will do nothing of the sort, Martha. I think we would both collapse in giggles if you were to attempt to establish such needless formality between us. Why, we have made suppositions together about Mrs. Brown’s underlinen.” Mrs. Brown had been their headmistress, a slim, hard woman with an improbably ample bosom that the girls of the school had whispered must be enhanced with rolled-up stockings. “We cannot pretend to be entirely proper now.”
Martha’s face softened with mirth. “Oh, Your Gr—” At a mock-stern look from Olivia, she laughed and corrected herself. “Olivia.”
“And if you would not mind keeping the Duchess of Coldbrook’s presence in the neighborhood quiet, I should be obliged. I’m here on a sort of quiet holiday.”
“Oh—of course. I quite understand.” And there was that kind smile that had so cheered Olivia when she had first arrived at Miss Lockhart’s.
Olivia squeezed Martha’s arm. “I shall never forget how you befriended me. I would have been alone in those first months had it not been for you.”
Olivia had been grateful, at fifteen, to be sent to school. She had asked her parents for this favor, because she had understood that school would mean a chance to study and the opportunity to eventually seek employment as a governess. Her overwhelmed parents had pounced with relief on the idea that they might no longer need to concern themselves with her future.
“Nonsense,” Martha said, “you would have made friends soon enough.” Martha’s eyes lit up. “And you had such a lovely voice too, and were so accomplished at music.”
She glanced at the children, who’d been watching the exchange between the women with a great deal of interest. “Would you perhaps sing the song a time or two with the children, just to help them along? They’re to perform the song at their teacher’s wedding celebration. We thought it would be a marvelous surprise for her.”
Which was how Olivia found herself standing in the market square with a dozen lively children, singing Love Will Find Out the Way.
* * *
Kit had only just managed to persuade Grey to come into town with him. His friend seemed unwilling to part from the manor, and it didn’t take a genius to guess that he wished to spend not a moment away from the enchanting Mrs. Francesca Pomponio.
“A pint or two will do you good, Grey,” Kit was saying as they strode through the streets toward the public house. “Isn’t it fine to get out and see something different?”
Kit might as well have been speaking about himself, so constantly had he been thinking of the Duchess of Coldbrook. Her persistence in his thoughts had put him in a dark mood. Why should he be thinking about such an uncooperative woman when he knew scores of females who were willing, friendly, and far prettier too?
“There are often very fine things to see right under one’s own nose, you know, Kit.”
Kit grunted. The Duchess of Coldbrook was right under his nose at Rose Heath, or as good as. He was constantly plagued with insipidly romantic thoughts prompting him to consider such things as the fact that she was sleeping under the same roof as he or, when he saw water being carried up, that she was bathing. She was like a disease he’d caught that he could not shake.
They were passing the pie stall at the edge of the market area when what sounded like an entire school of little voices broke into song.
“What the devil?” he muttered.
Grey pulled his sleeve to draw his attention. “Say, isn’t that our very own Miss Thorpe?” he asked, indicating a lady standing amid a group of children. Kit had, as the duchess had requested, kept her identity a secret. He quite liked that he was the only one at Rose Heath who knew she was a duchess. In a way, sh
e was his discovery.
Though now she was, for some incomprehensible reason, standing in this piddling little market square, leading a group of children in song. In a love song, he perceived, as the words floated to him over the oinking of several excited pigs.
“So it would seem,” Kit said. “What I cannot imagine is why.”
“She seems to be leading children in song,” Grey pointed out needlessly as they drew close.
Kit shot him a disgusted look. “Evidently.” They watched for several minutes as she sang along with them in a very pleasing voice, pausing twice to go over portions of the song with individual children. The whole scene was revoltingly wholesome, and Kit felt uncomfortable watching such an open display of earnest goodness.
He whistled loudly several times, then called out, “Love will find out the way, will it? Then what will it do?” Which prompted laughter from some passersby.
The duchess turned, and when her eyes lighted on Kit, a dark look came over her face.
“Come, admit it’s sentimental claptrap,” he called with a grin, trying to coax a smile from her and knowing he was failing even as he spoke. Her inky eyebrows drew down.
“Who is that?” one of the children asked. “Is this sentimental claptrap?”
“He is no one, and he can have nothing to say to us,” the Duchess of Coldbrook said, and turned away from him.
Her disdain, which he had so well earned, was like a punch to his stomach.
“If you admire her, man,” Grey muttered, “this is no way to go about courting her.”
“Admire her?” Kit snarled. He could not remember ever being more annoyed with himself. Grey wisely said no more.
Furious with himself, Kit drank deeply at the pub, staying long after Grey returned to Rose Heath without him. When night fell, Kit made his way to the manor, whistling, his mood having been lifted by quantities of brandy. After bribing a stable boy to find out where the duchess’s room would be, he stood under her window and serenaded her—with Love Will Find Out the Way, of course.
Duchesses in Disguise Page 15