Dressed to Kiss

by Madeline Hunter, Caroline Linden, Megan Frampton, Myretta Robens

  “She did.” A nasty glint entered Giles’s eyes. “Damned high-handed she was. Dismissive. As if she were lady of the manor and not only some little—” He caught himself. “She would have never dared aim so high if not for me. She should be grateful, but instead—”

  Rand found himself beyond anger. He could imagine that conversation Giles had with Selina on the street. He knew what Giles had said, to explain just how grateful she should be.

  “You are my brother, Giles. I love you as such. I will be settling your last round of debts, but that is all. After this you are on your own. Have no doubt in your head that I am serious. Also, it is time to establish your own household. Your wife will appreciate that, and I require it.”

  Giles’s expression fell. “You cannot be serious. You know I don’t have enough for that.”

  “If you do not squander your income, you have more than enough. Many peers have smaller incomes. If you are unwilling to change, then join your wife’s parents in their home. There should be a few rooms for you there. Shall we say you will be gone in a fortnight?”

  Giles sank back onto the divan. “Her family? Her mother—her father— Rand, you are condemning me to hell.”

  “Hardly hell, Giles. Purgatory, perhaps.”

  He left the dressing room, and put Giles out of his mind at once. Selina had left town. Of course she had. He could think of only one place where she might have gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She could see her family home from up here, in the distance outside the village proper that stretched out at the bottom of her hill. She enjoyed standing at this window, looking down at the village’s main lane. The people appeared like tiny dolls, and the buildings like miniature abodes and shops.

  Her parents knew she was here, but no one else down there did. The few servants who served as caretakers of the estate had been informed of the change in ownership before she even arrived. They were already paid through the middle of the year and sworn to secrecy about the new owner.

  She would have to decide soon what to do with the property. It was not intended as compensation, he had said. Nor a bribe, since he hardly needed one. Justice, he had called it. She still did not know if she accepted that explanation, after what Giles had told her. She still considered having her father find a solicitor who would sign the house and land back to Barrowmore, just as he had signed it over to her.

  All of that could be discussed on Thursday, when her parents came here for dinner. Many, many things would be decided at that meal. For now, however, she gave herself permission to put it off.

  She turned away from the window and took a seat on the bench that hugged a stone wall in the bedchamber she used. The entire building still showed elements of the old medieval structure at its core, even if later additions and changes made living here less Spartan. The stone walls, the beams in some chambers, the narrow windows—all spoke to the time long ago when this had been the manor house of some feudal lord whose fief included the surrounding miles.

  She closed her eyes, and pressed her back to the cool stones. She had spent a lot of time on this bench the last four days. Sitting quietly, and thinking, and examining her heart. The peace of the country and the silence of the stones soothed her.

  Sounds distracted her this time, however. Distant ones. Somewhere a little chaos had begun, and with each instant it grew louder. Finally she could not ignore it. She got to her feet and returned to the window.

  The noise came from below, in the village. It rolled toward her, a dull buzzing on the breeze. Tiny people emerged from their miniature homes and shops to form groups. Others leaned out the windows.

  The reason came into view. A grand coach rolled slowly down the lane. A magnificent one, with brass and gilt that caught the sunlight and created blinding reflections. More gilt picked out the relief of an escutcheon on the door. Four footmen rode outside, all in livery complete with wigs, pumps, and braided tricornered hats. Four immense black horses pulled the equipage.

  The coachman moved very slowly, no doubt wanting to be sure those horses hurt no one. Finally he reached the end of the lane, and turned onto the drive that rose up the hill to the big house. She squinted to look in the coach’s window, but all she could see was a handsome male hand resting on the sill.

  It was enough to set her heart flipping like a schoolgirl’s.

  The door to her chamber opened. The housekeeper who tended the house with her husband burst in. “A boy just ran up from the village. His Grace’s coach was seen. The duke is coming! We are not prepared for him. We are not ready.” Hands flying in frantic gestures, she ran out.

  Selina bent to her looking glass and tried to pinch some color into her cheeks. I am not ready for this either. Not at all.

  “Thank you for receiving me,” Rand said.

  “You knew I would. Doesn’t everyone?”

  Selina sat in a chair, farther away from his than he would like. She had donned her poise like a heavy cloak. He might be paying a morning call on a chance acquaintance, not visiting his lover.

  That probably was because, to her mind, she no longer was his lover.

  He had tried to accept that. For a hellish two days he had taken refuge in anger, indignation, then guilt and regrets. Finally, unable to conquer his sense of loss, he had called for the coach.

  “Do you like the house?”

  “Very much.” She looked around. “Although the word house sounds too diminutive for an abode of such size and history. I already knew this chamber of course, and the drawing room and dining room. I have enjoyed discovering all the rest.”

  “So you could come back, after all.”

  She speared him with a sharp glance. “I came here quietly, not down the main lane as you did. No one knows I am here except my parents and the servants, all of whom are being discreet. I came to this house instead of my parents’ to spare them a revival of all that talk, although now of course the talk is well founded, isn’t it?”

  “It appears you regret that. If so, I am sorry I lured you into my arms.”

  Her tight expression broke. So did her rigid posture. “Do not be sorry. You did very little luring. I am not sitting in this house constructing lies about any of it.”

  “Then I should not either. Giles told you things, I think. Things that hurt you.”

  She began to respond, but closed her lips. She nodded.

  “He did not lie. I wish I could say he did, Selina. But he did not. When I came here that summer, I found him living here like a lord, with a beautiful young woman on his arm. I confess that I assumed the worst of Giles where you were concerned. He let me. He encouraged it. Perhaps if he had not I would have been more circumspect in how I reacted when he introduced you. I would not have been so obviously entranced.”

  “I only saw an aloof man looking at me briefly with disdain and annoyance.”

  “Giles saw much more.”

  “So he sold me to you.” Petulance entered her gaze. “Did you require that? If so, you did wait a very long time, as he said.”

  “I only required he give up something that mattered to him. I never—and I swear this is the truth, I swear it as a gentleman—said he had to give you up, or that he had to give me whatever he chose to relinquish. That, I am sorry to say, was all Giles’s idea. He probably thought it gave him some advantage to cast it that way.”

  It was damnable to sit here, twenty feet away, while he explained this. He got up and went over to her, and knelt on one knee beside her chair so he could look her directly in the eyes if she allowed it. “If you want to blame me for letting his notion of a bargain stand, do so. I never expected to see you again. I had no intention of taking his place, so whatever clever trade he thought he concocted did not matter.”

  She had been staring at her hands on her lap, but now she did look right into his eyes. “And yet, eventually, you did take his place. You more than took his place.”

  He covered her hands with his. “That was a thing apart. A different time
. The result of a happy accident.”

  “Not totally a thing apart, I think.”

  No, not totally. But in all the ways that mattered.

  She looked at their hands, bound together. She managed to give his a little squeeze. “You came a long way to explain all of this.”

  “It was important that you know the truth. All of it. And important that you also know this truth: I do not want to lose you. I have been miserable these last days. Worthless, and dangerously out of sorts. You broke my heart when you left town without so much as a note to me. I thought…” He kissed her hands. “I thought we had truly become lovers, Selina. That we shared more than desire and a passing infatuation. If I was wrong, say so, and I will not try to win you back.”

  She removed one of her hands and placed it on his face. She gazed at him with an expression he would remember forever.

  “You were not wrong. Not at all. If you had been wrong, I would never have had to leave. I would have thrown you over properly, the way those sophisticated ladies do.” She leaned forward and kissed him. “I made the worst mistake, you see. I fell in love with my lover. How could I hope to recover from that if I stayed in the same city as he?”

  He stood and pulled her up into his arms. “I hope you never recover from it. I never shall, I know. I want us together, Selina. I want you by my side and in my home and bound to me forever. Will you marry me so we have each other in a right and proper way?”

  “Marry?” She looked confused. “Surely you must do better on that duty.”

  “I am a duke, darling. Not a prince. I get to marry whomever I want.”

  “And you want me? Are you very sure? My only fortune of note is this house now. I have been laboring as a seamstress and am known as one. I am not at all suitable.”

  “You are supposed to say yes, not try to talk me out of it.”

  She laughed. “I suppose so.”

  “I am very sure, Selina. This is no whim, or hurt pride talking. Nor is it my conscience forcing me to do the right thing by you. I truly want you as my duchess. I will forever be grateful if you agree.”

  She stretched up to kiss him. “Then I will say yes, although I fear you have gone a little mad.”

  “Totally mad.”

  They kissed long and hard while the spring breeze spun sweet scents around them. “We will do it soon,” he said. “I will get a special license and we will—”

  “No. Not soon.” She pressed against his chest, as if to physically stop his thoughts. “I must help Felicity until the coronation. I owe it to her, and I promised. Let us keep our engagement a secret, too, so people do not gossip for months about how you proposed to a shop girl.”

  He did not want to keep it a secret. He wanted to tell everyone he knew. “You feel obligated to do this? To remain in that shop?”

  “Only until summer. Can you stand being discreet that long?”

  “If it is important to you, I can stand anything. So we tell no one that we are engaged?”

  “Perhaps we should tell my parents, so my father does not call you out once he realizes that you have been having your way with me.”

  “It may keep your mother from crowning me with an iron pan, too.”

  “You are safe from her no matter what we tell them. On learning this house was now mine, she pointedly did not ask how I came by it. Mothers are practical that way if the seducer is a duke.”

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her like the precious, lovely woman she was. “I hope that discretion and secrecy does not require abstinence. If you prefer that, of course I will—”

  She turned her head and kissed his palm. “Do not speak such impossible nonsense, Rand. In fact, do not speak at all for a long while.”

  He lifted her in his arms and turned to the bed. “I promise to put my mouth to better purpose, but only after I say this. I am in love with you, Selina. Hopelessly, wonderfully in love, and I won’t let anything keep us apart.” He kissed her. “Not here or anywhere. Not now, or at any time. We will be lovers forever.”

  “Lovers forever,” she murmured with a smile. “Yes, before we are duke and duchess or husband and wife, let us remember we are lovers, Rand. Let us vow we will never let that change.”

  “I swear it, darling.”

  She urged his head down and gave him a sweet, emotional kiss full of their promise of love forever after.

  About the Author

  Madeline Hunter is a two-time RITA award winner and seven-time finalist, and has twenty-six nationally bestselling historical romances in print. A member of RWA’s Honor Roll, her books have been on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly. More than six million copies of her books are in print and her novels have been translated into thirteen languages. She has a PhD in art history, which she teaches at the university level. You can contact Madeline through her website www.MadelineHunter.com and Facebook.

  Also by Madeline Hunter

  The Wicked Duke

  Tall, Dark, and Wicked

  His Wicked Reputation

  The Accidental Duchess

  The Counterfeit Mistress

  The Conquest of Lady Cassandra

  The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne

  Dangerous in Diamonds

  Sinful in Satin

  Provocative in Pearls

  Ravishing in Red

  The Sins of Lord Easterbook

  Secrets of Surrender

  Lessons of Desires

  The Rules of Seduction

  Lady of Sin

  Lord of Sin

  The Romantic

  The Sinner

  The Charmer

  The Saint

  The Seducer

  An Interrupted Tapestry (novella)

  Stealing Heaven

  Lord of a Thousand Nights

  The Protector

  By Design

  By Possession

  By Arrangement

  Chapter One

  “I’m leaving now,” Delyth said to the nearly empty shop. Only Selina, the other dressmaker, and Alice, an apprentice seamstress, remained in the workroom. “I’ll just be taking this with me,” she added in a lower tone. As no one was paying any attention anyway, Delyth slid the copy of the Town Gazette into her bag and left the shop, stopping only to wish Selina a good night.

  She knew she should have left the Gazette for Felicity, who probably hadn’t had a chance to read it, but she wanted to show it to Anthea and she was also unsure of whether she really did want Felicity to see it. Delyth was beyond excited to be mentioned in such a prestigious column as “Aglaea’s Cabinet,” but she was not so foolish as to ignore the fact that the description was not wholly laudatory.

  The distinction niggled. She adored design. She’d been highly successful in the theater, but she’d come to London (against her father’s wishes, she must admit) to make elegant dresses for the elite. Nothing pleased her so much as handling sumptuous fabrics, draping flattering silhouettes, setting perfect stitches. Except maybe color. She feared that, perhaps, the theater had exacerbated that particular obsession. And in the back of her mind lurked the question, “What would Felicity think about the column?” Since taking over her mother’s shop, Felicity Dawkins had been working diligently to increase its consequence, not to mention its income. Lately she had seemed even more desperate to restore the shop to its former glory and make it immediately successful. It worried Delyth.

  The thought of returning to her lodgings and discussing her concerns with the good friend with whom she shared the flat cheered Delyth immensely. She was probably at the theater right now, but when she returned, Anthea would definitely have an opinion. She always did.

  Delyth may have left the theater for the more genteel world of dressmaking, but her heart remained with the friends she had left behind, and her home was still with Anthea Drinkwater, her closest friend in London and the driving force behind the Thalia Theatre.

  Night had fallen by the time Delyth reached her lod
gings. She found Anthea sitting at her writing table before the window.

  “Are you well?” she asked before she had even shed her shawl and bonnet.

  “Quite.” Anthea looked up from the pages she was reading. “Why do you ask?”

  “You’re home,” Delyth pointed out as she placed her bonnet on the hook by the door and dropped the Gazette next to Anthea’s pile of papers.

  “I had noticed that,” Anthea said. “It’s Tuesday, you know, and I thought I’d rather work at home. Do you mind?”

  “Not in the slightest.” Delyth dropped a kiss on the top of Anthea’s head and passed her the Gazette. “My gown is mentioned in ‘Aglaea’s Cabinet’ and I couldn’t wait to show it to you.”

  “You stole the Gazette from your employer?” Anthea opened the paper and went searching for the fashion column.

  “I borrowed it from my employer,” Delyth said, grabbing the paper back from her friend and folding it to the appropriate page before returning it to her.

  “There.” She pointed.

  Almack’s glittered in its inimitable dingy way on Wednesday last. At least, let me say that the attendees glittered, although some were more glittery than others. Although we had sufficient representation of the handsome young ladies in their first Season, clad almost exclusively in white (with the occasional interruption of pastels bordering on white), attention must be given to Lady M, whom one might be forgiven for supposing had somehow missed the entrance to Astley’s and ended up at Almack’s. Lady M not only glittered, she shone, she flashed, she radiated. One might say she flared. If you ventured close enough to Lady M to see beyond the dazzling array of colors with which she was adorned, you might notice that, eye-searing choices aside, the gown itself was of elegant and impeccable construction. One might hope that the creator of this extravaganza will be more judicious in the fabric choices for her next effort.