A Duke Changes Everything

by Christy Carlyle

  Tobias was striding across the grass toward them.

  “Did you find her?” Mina called back to him.

  Nick glared at the young man, willing him to tell her they’d found the cat merrily slurping milk in the pantry. Anything to stop her from storming into a burning tower.

  “No sign of her, miss.” Tobias didn’t get the intended message.

  Mina lunged, nearly breaking free. Nick bent at the waist, swept a hand behind her knees and lifted her in his arms. He walked toward Tobias.

  “Take her. Hold on to her. If she makes it anywhere near that tower, you’re sacked. Understand?” Nick settled Mina into Tobias’s arms gently. “I’ll get the bloody cat.”

  “Nick, no.” She stopped struggling and went quiet, eyes wide.

  He turned his back on her and strode toward the smoldering structure. Most of the smoke was billowing skyward, but some poured out of a gap in the lower stones. The closer he got, the more he could feel the fire’s heat. At the base of the stairs, he lifted his arm to cover his nose and peered inside.

  The lower stairs were singed, but still in place. It seemed the fire had rushed upward quickly and focused on consuming the single room where he’d been imprisoned.

  If the cat was inside, there was no chance of saving her. The wind shifted, pushing smoke into his eyes. He took one step closer.

  “Millicent?” Cats were notorious escape artists, but he couldn’t imagine where a feline might hide in this blaze. “Milly?”

  An orange flash caught his eye and he leaned in to get a closer look. Only a flame, dancing along the edge of a sizzling wooden beam. Then the beam shifted, split, sparks and fiery fragments raining down. He stepped back, but burning rafters came down too quickly, and a searing pain lit his face on fire. A hot weight struck his shoulder hard, pushing him back against the heated stones. He swiped at his face and staggered back.

  “Nick!” Mina’s scream filled his ears.

  But he couldn’t see. Smoke and soot blurred his vision. Arms came around him from behind as he fell. Massive hands locked under his arms and his boot heels bounced on the ground as he was dragged into the grass.

  Part of his shirt was wrenched off. He heard fabric tearing. Then a wet cloth came down on his eyes.

  Mina’s hand slid into his. He recognized the shape of her fingers, the softness of her skin.

  Nick reached up to pull the rag away. He could see, but through bleary clouded vision, and his eyes burned. “Mina? The cat wasn’t up there.”

  “I know,” she told him through tears. “They found her. She’d snuck into the kitchen. I’m so sorry. Does it hurt?”

  Every breath burned. A searing pain raged in his cheek. His arm ached, especially near his shoulder. But most of all he felt relief. He reached for Mina, traced his fingers across her cheek and left a sooty trail.

  “I love you.” He wasn’t sure if he said the words aloud. His throat burned as if he’d swallowed an ember.

  Mina leaned forward, swept her fingers through his hair, lowered her mouth to his. “I knew you did,” she whispered against his lips.

  “We should get him inside,” Tobias insisted. “I’ve sent Emma to fetch the doctor.” When the stable master bent as if he meant to scoop Nick off the ground, he pushed at the man’s massive shoulder.

  “I can walk on my own.” He wasn’t sure that was true, but he was damn well going to try.

  “You’re not going anywhere without me.” Mina lifted his arm and ducked underneath, wrapping her arm around his waist.

  “Promise?”

  She nodded as they started toward the house. “You do know how stubborn I am.”

  Thankfully, they didn’t bother with attempting to get him up the stairs. The staff had prepared one of the sitting room settees as a makeshift bed, with sheets and a pillow laid out.

  Mina helped him hobble to the edge and he slumped down, trying to ignore the pain, struggling to get air without every breath feeling as if shards of glass were lodged in his chest.

  When Mina loosened her hold on his hand, he pulled her back.

  “I’m just going for some water and cloths to clean you up.” Her gaze kept flickering to his cheek. The one that burned like hell. The one his father hadn’t sliced with a penknife.

  “Now I’ll be a monster on both sides of my face.”

  She bit her lip. He could tell she was fighting tears. “You’ll never be a monster to me.” One last squeeze of his hand and she let him go.

  When she was gone, Nick laid his head back and closed his eyes. It seemed only a moment, but when he opened them again, the sky was dimmer but for the glow of a fiery orange sunset through the windows.

  His face felt tight and constricted, and he reached up to find he’d been bandaged. Not just his cheek, but his arm too. How the hell had he slept through all of it?

  “You’re awake.” A white-haired gentleman stood up from a chair across the room and approached. “I took the liberty of giving you a bit of laudanum for the pain, Your Grace.” The man was strangely familiar.

  “Where’s Mina? Miss Thorne.”

  “Just there.” The doctor pointed to a settee in the corner of the room. “She’s been quite insistent about keeping watch over you.”

  She was half sitting, half leaning on her folded arms, her chin tipped down as she napped. Then, as if sensing his gaze, her eyes fluttered open, and she offered him a beaming smile. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better.” He was ready to take on the devil himself if he could get her to smile at him that way again.

  “Then I shall be off,” the doctor said as he turned to collect a leather bag from a table near the settee. “I’ve left instructions with the staff for treating your wounds.”

  Nick touched the edge of the bandage on his face. “What’s under here, Doctor?”

  The old man held two fingers up, one an inch or so from the other. “A burn, about that length. A cinder must have struck you and remained on your skin long enough to leave its mark.” The man’s eyes assessed Nick’s face, tracing the line of his father’s blade. “There will be a scar, but it will fade in time.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Burke.” Mina stood and escorted the gentleman to the sitting room threshold. When he was gone, she came back and settled her backside on the edge of the settee near Nick’s thigh.

  He wrapped a hand around her waist, savoring her nearness. Sliding a hand up her arm, he pulled her closer, leaning in to take her mouth. He wasn’t gentle. He couldn’t do this with any kind of gentlemanly restraint. Her hair hung down her back, unbound but for a few strands pulled into pins. He sought those pins and worked them free. Dragging his fingers through her hair, he flicked his tongue against her lips, and she opened to him on a delicious moan.

  He was hard and ready to have her climb into his lap, let him sink inside her heat.

  But someone cleared their throat on the sitting room threshold, and Mina sprang away from him.

  “Will you be wishing for a supper tray, Your Grace?” Emma called in her soft voice.

  “No,” Nick answered immediately. The only thing he wanted to taste was Mina.

  “Yes,” she protested. “You should eat something.”

  He arched a brow, failed to hide his smile, and she seemed to take his meaning. Her cheeks bloomed with heat.

  “Some soup, perhaps? Thank you, Emma.”

  The young woman backed out of the room and had the good sense to pull the door shut behind her. But when Nick leaned in to kiss Mina again, she held him back.

  “Wilder tells me you planned to depart for London today.” She wrapped her fingers around a button on his shirt, not meeting his gaze. “Will you mind staying at Enderley a bit longer? A few weeks?”

  “With you?” Nick’s throat rasped, but it wasn’t the smoke he’d inhaled. It was fear.

  “Yes,” she said simply. Too simply.

  “Yes?”

  “That’s the answer I should have given you three days ago.” She scooted close
r, cupping his scarred cheek against her palm. “I’m sorry I made you wait. I’m sorry I made you go in that tower. I’m sorry for ever making you think I cared more about Enderley than you.”

  “We can stay here if you want.” Nick grabbed her hand and kissed her fingers. “My hatred of this house was irrational. My father is dead, and you’re right. This estate is the people who live here, the ones who love it.”

  “But, you see, I’m prepared to go to London.” She let out a low seductive chuckle when he pulled her fingertip into his mouth. “If you’re in the city, that’s where I want to be. If you’re here, that’s where I’ll stay.” Her eyebrows dipped, her chin hardened, and her voice went mock stern. “I insist we never live apart.”

  “Already making demands, Duchess?” Nick leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers. “I agree. Anything you want, tell me.”

  “Just you.” Mina kissed his scarred cheek, the edge of his mouth near his bandaged cheek, and then his lips. A soft, delicious kiss that was over far too quickly. “The house, the club, all of that will fall into place, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” She made him want a life he wouldn’t have imagined a month earlier. Made him believe happiness, contentment, peace was in their grasp. “But honestly, right now I can’t think of anything but locking that door, removing every stitch of your clothing, and making love to you on this settee.”

  “Your wounds.”

  “Nothing hurts when you’re this close to me.”

  Her hand was balanced on his thigh as she leaned into him. Nick shifted her palm over an inch.

  “I promise you, Duchess, I feel quite up to the task.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Mina woke with sunlight warming her face, and Nick’s long, hard body warming her everywhere else. She moaned and pressed closer, her back to his chest, his arm wrapped protectively around her.

  Then realization crashed in.

  She was in an Enderley guest chamber. In Nick’s bed. Emma would be up soon to light the fire and bring a breakfast tray.

  Nick was still asleep. The gentle rumble of his breath warmed the back of her neck. She lifted his arm and slid as slowly as she could out from beneath his hold.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The sun’s come up. Emma will be here soon.”

  Nick touched her, dragging his fingers across her skin. Just firmly enough to make heat shimmer down her back and pool between her thighs. “You’re still worrying too much about what others think.”

  “It’s more a matter of what they’ll feel. Emma will be scandalized if she finds us like this.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want that.” He removed his hand and shifted on the bed.

  Mina looked back to find he’d sat up, letting the sheet fall low on his stomach, his hands folded behind his head. Even with the bandages on his arm and face, he looked like a very self-satisfied demigod. Black hair tumbled in tossed curls and tangled waves, almost to his shoulders. The sun lit up his eyes and gilded the chiseled muscles of his chest and arms.

  “At least kiss me before you go,” he said, reaching out one hand to cover hers.

  He was the moon and she was the waves. His magnetic pull was irresistible, but she forced herself to resist offering more than the briefest brush of her mouth against his. “If I kiss you again, I won’t want to go.”

  He leaned in and captured her lips again. “That is rather the idea.”

  Mina got out of bed, scooped her clothes from the floor, and felt Nick’s gaze watching her every move as she dressed.

  He surprised her by rising from bed too and bending for a fresh pair of trousers from the trunk he’d brought from London.

  Mina gulped at the sight of him. He was sculpted on a different scale from other men, not just his height, but the thickness of his arms, his thighs, his everything.

  “You sure you want to go?” He shot her a mischievous grin over his shoulder as he pulled on a shirt.

  “Sometimes want and must are worlds apart.”

  “Indeed.” He came close and refastened the top three buttons on her blouse that she’d misaligned in her haste. “There’s some business I must attend to as well before we head back to London.”

  Mina reached for the buttons of his open shirt, making sure to fasten them correctly. “Please tell me you’re not going to confront the Lyles again.”

  “God, no. Though I can see the sense in mending relations with some of the families in the village.”

  “Can you?” Mina was quite prepared to leave Enderley and only come back rarely. Late into the night, she and Nick had talked of the future they wanted. He’d agreed that any Enderley staff who wished to could be employed in their future London household, or stay behind and maintain the property for when they were in residence. Nick no longer spoke of emptying or renting the estate out.

  “I know this house means a great deal to you.”

  It had. Always. But it was just a house. Nick was her heart. She could live without Enderley, but she couldn’t live without him.

  “If we refurbish, rebuild parts, knock down a few walls.” He gazed around the guest chamber as if he could see through the wallpaper to the bones of the castle. “Maybe we can chase the ghosts away and make something of our own.”

  “We needn’t decide today.” Mina slid her hand up to his face, traced the hard stubbled edge of his jaw. “After all, we have a wedding to plan.”

  “Lavish.”

  “Modest.”

  “I’m thinking Westminster Abbey.”

  Mina choked on a bubble of laughter. “I’m thinking the village church at Barrowmere with Vicar Pribble officiating.” She lifted onto her toes, leaned into him, and kissed his chin. “You did say I could have anything I want.”

  He sighed dramatically. “As you wish, Duchess.”

  Nick waited a beat after the servant answered the door. The housemaid was waiting for him to offer a calling card, but he had none. He endured her shocked expression a moment longer, musing that it was probably for his bandaged face rather than his scar and odd-colored eyes.

  “The Duke of Tremayne.” It was the first time he’d announced himself formally in such a manner, and it still felt unspeakably odd. Not as miserable as the day four months ago when his father’s friend had come to Lyon’s to inform him of his bad luck. But uncomfortable. Ill fitting. He wondered if he’d ever be at ease in his father’s shoes.

  “Right this way, Your Grace.” The maid led him to a prettily decorated sitting room with colorful watercolors dotting the walls and lace doilies under every item on the mantel.

  He was surprised to find that nothing screamed wealth or ostentation, but each surface spoke of comfort and family. Small miniatures of children and pets sat in silver and polished bronze frames on various surfaces in the room. He recognized the face of a young girl. She had the same notch in her chin as Lady Lillian.

  “She was nine when that was painted,” Lady Claxton said as she entered her drawing room. “Wouldn’t sit still to save her life. We had to bribe her with the promise of a new toy for the artist to finish his work.”

  Nick turned to face the old woman and was surprised to see none of the ill will he expected in her eyes.

  “I heard of the burning of the Tudor tower. Looks as if you played the hero too well.”

  “It’s nothing.” Nick gestured toward his bandage, marveling at how odd it felt to have someone stare at the opposite side of his face.

  “Have you come to apologize, Tremayne?” She gestured toward a chair for him before settling onto a well-worn settee. “It’s true I don’t take kindly to my guests engaging in brawls when I’ve invited them to a ball, but I noted that you did avoid outright fisticuffs.”

  “Did I not offer apologies on the evening of the ball, Lady Claxton?” Nick hadn’t come about the incident with the younger Lyle, but he was content to take his share of the blame if it would smooth the way for his real purpose in visiting. “If not, accept them now.”


  The older woman nodded and sniffed, as if that would do.

  “The ball isn’t why I’ve come.”

  “No?” She arched a silvery brow. “Shall I ring for tea while you tell me?”

  “Not necessary, my lady. This won’t take long.” Nick shifted the edge of his chair and thought best how to broach the topic. “I would like your help.”

  “Beg your pardon?” The lady rose an inch and arched back in surprise. Then she narrowed one eye at him. “You’ve not visited any of the best families since arriving at Enderley and you’ve refused two invitations to dine at Claxton Hall. Now you wish for my help?” She lifted her lorgnette to examine him. “What’s gotten into you, Tremayne?”

  “Would you believe me if I said love?” Nick chuckled.

  “Love?” A hint of a smile played around her lips, and then she sighed. “You don’t mean my Lillian, do you?”

  “I do not.” Nick tugged on his ear, casting his gaze to the carpet. “I’ve asked Miss Thorne to be my wife.”

  She tilted her head, as if she wasn’t certain she’d heard him. Nick waited, watching her frown ease and her eyes widen as understanding dawned.

  “The steward’s daughter? Your steward?”

  “My future duchess.”

  “She’s not a nobleman’s daughter.”

  “She’s perfect.”

  For a moment she looked forlorn, and she cast her gaze around her drawing room, as if seeking an answer. “You’re the Duke of Tremayne,” she finally said. “You’ll do as you please.”

  “Nothing will please me more than marrying her, of that I can assure you.”

  She lifted her spectacle once more. “You do seem in earnest, Your Grace.”

  Nick smiled. The noblewoman wasn’t pleased, but she was taking the news far better than he’d imagined on the carriage ride to Claxton Hall.

  “I offer you felicitations and blessings, Tremayne, though I suspect you don’t wish or need them. Or anything else from me.”

  “Actually, I do need something from you, Lady Claxton.” Nick swallowed his pride. “I want Barrowmere society to accept Mina with open arms.”