My Darling Duke

by Stacy Reid

  …

  Alexander closed the book he’d been reading and exited his library. He called for Hoyt, who assisted him to his chamber, another loss of dignity he now accepted he must suffer. Years ago, he had converted a room downstairs to a chamber, finding it arduous to get a bath chair up those stairs, finding it humiliating to be lifted about by his manservant. That had been one of the reasons that had driven him to leave the chair, and he had learned to conquer those damnable stairs on his own terms and had ordered his chamber to be set back upstairs. Once again, now he could not make the stairs without help.

  “I am here, Your Grace,” Hoyt murmured, appearing by his side. “Let me carry you up.” A suggestion he made each time Alexander would ascend.

  “No.” A reply he would always make.

  With a grunt, he heaved himself from the chair. Hoyt hooked one of his shoulders under his arm, and they slowly made the climb. A footman lifted the bath chair and plodded patiently behind them until they reached the landing of the upper floor. Once there, he settled into the chair, glanced at them, and nodded his thanks. Very much used to the ritual and his peculiarities, the footman bowed and returned belowstairs.

  Hoyt wheeled Alexander to his room without speaking. A fireplace crackled merrily in the spacious room, and though Katherine had never entered his private chambers, he scented her lovely and alluring fragrance in the air. His manservant assisted him from the chair and removed his boots, trousers, waistcoat, jacket, and unmentionables before aiding him to slip on a dark blue silk banyan.

  He stood by the windows, staring across the vast lands. The sun was down now, and deep purple twilight blanketed the mountains and valleys in stunning splendor.

  “Shall I escort you to the bed or the chaise, Your Grace?”

  Alexander shifted and faced his manservant. “Leave me with my stick, and I shall make it there tonight.”

  Hoyt hesitated briefly, then complied. Alexander grasped the walking stick, placing most of his weight on it, and propped his left shoulder on the wall by the windows.

  “Shall I ring for a bath?”

  “I had one only a few hours past,” he murmured drily.

  “A brandy, then? Or whiskey?”

  Alexander considered his manservant critically. “What are you worried about that you must hover so like a nanny?”

  Hoyt’s craggy face creased into a scowl. “A nanny, Your Grace?”

  “Yes.”

  His manservant took a steadying breath. “You seem different tonight. You did not eat supper again, and Cook is a mite worried. Shall I tell her to send up a tray?”

  “I’ll eat a hearty breakfast.”

  Hoyt nodded, glancing around the space before resting his gaze back to Alexander. “The room smells pleasant.”

  Alexander arched an incredulous brow. “I am aware you ordered the maids to spray my room with lavender. And the drawing rooms. Music room. And the hallway. Now leave me be!”

  The man had the grace to flush, but he made no reply to Alexander’s annoyance at their incessant meddling. Hoyt bowed and left the room silently, closing the door behind him, and Alexander released an irritable grunt before smiling.

  They hovered around him as if he were a babe, and while it irked him, a peculiar warmth also filled his chest. They did more than just serve him—they cared for him, and for the first time in a long while, he acknowledged his relationship with his staff was more than a master servant exchange.

  They, as much as Penny, were his family.

  They hadn’t given up on him; they had cried when he cried and felt anguish when he did.

  Now they felt the loss of his Katherine and did everything within the bounds of propriety to urge him to think of her, and he knew for what they hungered. A mistress of McMullen Castle, a duchess, the pitter-patter of little lords and ladies in the nursery.

  Alexander tugged the heavy drapes open even wider and nudged the window up. A biting chill slipped into the room, but he did not tug the pane back down. The sky was overcast, with all the stars hidden, and the weather dreary although they were now slipping into the high point of the summer season.

  Katherine was gone, and Eugene and Penny would depart in the morning. Only the memories of family, passion, love, and laughter would linger within Alexander, and he cursed himself a thousand times for not chasing after her, even if he had barely been able to walk.

  Most days, he couldn’t bear to think of the manner in which he had hurt her. And yet he could think of nothing else. It had been weeks since he had ordered flowers delivered to her daily. Only a simple note had accompanied the blooms, for he had not known what to say, how to express his regret and his uncertainties. A man once lauded as an orator in parliament for his speeches championing the indigent found himself bereft of words.

  I am so damn sorry, my darling Katherine seemed inadequate to express the pain and embarrassment he had caused. Her replies were even more succinct than his and bereft of any warmth or sentiments or an inkling of where he stood with her.

  And he deserved her insouciance.

  He jerked away from the windows and ambled carefully over to his bed. Resting the cane on top of the plush comforter, he climbed onto the bed with a soft groan of relief. He thought of what the doctor had advised and what it might mean if he successfully roused his cock to life.

  He might be able to give Katherine a life that was not so empty.

  Alexander stared at the Renaissance-painted ceiling for several minutes, clearing his mind from all the doubts that lingered within. He filled his mind with Katherine. Her warm scent, the sweet shyness of her smile that could so easily bloom to that of a wicked vixen. The way she tossed her head when she laughed, that soft, hungry moan she’d made when he had touched his tongue to hers that very first time.

  A kiss of heat coasted over him, and he closed his eyes, allowing only Katherine in his mind. He imagined tracing her spine downward to that delicious curve of her buttocks, then upward again, caressing the delicate softness of her bare shoulders, trailing his fingers along her collarbone and over her rosy nipples. His heart jerked, and desire warmed his body.

  Alexander gripped his flaccid cock in his palm and slowly rubbed his hand over the length. With each stroke, he pictured Katherine flushed with passion, remembered the hot, sweet taste of her quim on his tongue, felt the tight clasp of her cunny as she had squeezed his fingers. His gut clenched, his heart raced, and a hiss escaped him as urgent need coiled through him. Yet, as expected, his cock remained limp.

  He shifted closer to the edge of the bed and reached for the jar of lavender-scented oil on the bedside chest. Bringing it just below his nose, he inhaled deeply, stirring his senses by recalling Katherine’s subtle and arousing smell. Alexander pried the lid open and dipped three of his fingers in the oil before stretching to place the open jar on his chest. He allowed the oil to trail between his knuckles down to his palm. Using his oil-slicked hand, he reclaimed his cock once more and began a slow massage.

  Alexander stroked from the base of his manhood up to the tip several times to no avail. He tugged and even jerked harshly a few times before he released his manhood, placing his hand across his forehead with a groan of frustration. There was no pain to distract him, yet he could not rouse his body.

  His breath puffed harshly in the stillness of the room, and it shocked him utterly to feel tears sting his eyes. With a snarl of frustration and determination, he freed his mind once more and clasped his cock, and after several minutes of trying to rouse himself with chaotic thoughts and images of a well-pleasured Katherine crowding his senses, he accepted defeat.

  Alexander acknowledged then that this was the very reason he had waited almost two weeks after Dr. Grant’s suggestion of self-ministration to tempt his cock to rise. Fear of failure.

  Alexander ached, quite desperately, to bring into existence the future he envisioned with K
atherine—traveling the world, making love with her, but most of all, the laughter…the sweet way she smiled, her bold vivacity for life…that would sweep away the emptiness he had lived with for so long.

  But more than anything else, he wanted to fulfill her happiness and dreams.

  His heart was lost to Katherine Danvers, and every prudent consideration as to why their match would be ill judged scattered like ashes to the winds.

  He would go for her…and explain that while she had his heart, his love—everything else he could give her as a man…as a husband had been lost. The promise of pleasure that had been rekindled had vanished, and it might never be regained. His heart, his title, and his wealth would be hers, but her body would never know the fulfillment of pleasure, and she would not have a child to cradle against her bosom.

  You are a flame that has no end, and it would be such a damn pity to see your spark dim…

  Words he meant with his entire being. And damn his selfish soul, he could not let her go. He loved her too much. Hungered for her too much.

  But once he took her, it was inevitable that burning passion and sweet flame would eventually die. And even knowing that, he closed his eyes, damning himself and Katherine, for tomorrow he would prepare to travel to London for her and, if she would have him, never would he let her go.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kitty had not supposed a well-rumored courtesan and wicked lady of society would live in one of the newer and far more elegant townhomes in Mayfair. Perhaps Soho or a less respectable part of town she had assumed, to her shame. Nor would she have thought Princess Cosima Wagner to be so beautiful, charming, kind, and just lovely. Ophelia and Kitty had called upon the princess at her invitation that morning and had been escorted by a chirpy young maid to an attached sitting room in her private boudoir, which was lavishly and charmingly decorated in peach and with artful touches of pink.

  The petite and lushly curved princess hadn’t batted one of her perfect lashes when she had heard the explanation for Kitty’s visit. Ophelia had left, granting them privacy, but thankfully the princess hadn’t launched into lessons right away, perhaps sensing Kitty’s nerves. For the last hour, they sat and spoke of the amusing trivialities of the ton. The tension that had held Kitty rigid had passed, and she found herself relaxing and even laughing gaily at Cosima’s—as she insisted on being called—amusing recollections of court life in Prussia and how that life compared with England’s ton. Though many supposed her to be indecent and lascivious, she and her father, a grand duke, were invited to most drawing rooms.

  We could be friends, she realized with a sense of shock, and she fancied Cosima had the same thought at the warm smile they shared.

  “I am so very pleased Ophelia has introduced us,” said Cosima. “Often she has spoken of her other friends, and I admit my heart has been hungry for more friendship so far away from home.”

  “I am very glad we could meet as well,” Kitty said with a smile. “I’ve enjoyed our talk.” And it saddened her that should society know of this visit, they would seek to cast Kitty and her sisters in a scandalous light, and possibly they would be cut by the very people who had been recently embracing them.

  Pushing a strand of her vibrant dark red hair behind her ear, she asked, “Are you ready to tell me what you want to know about making love with a man?”

  “That was rather blunt,” Kitty said faintly, blushing.

  “Seduction often is,” the princess murmured. “Though it is the nature of the man that determines how forward we should be. Some men like…even hunger for us ladies to be the seducer…then for others we must be the tasty morsel they entice with kisses and barely-there touches.”

  In her eyes, there was no judgment, only compassion…and an odd glint of wickedness. Kitty realized Cosima was quite comfortable with her sensuality and perhaps reveled in her rebellious nature.

  “You must tell me of this man so I might advise you,” she said in her purring accent.

  “Not just any man,” Kitty murmured, her belly fluttering with anxiety and anticipation. “He is…” And she stopped, lacking the words to describe the complexities of Alexander Masters.

  “The Duke of Thornton, society’s most enigmatic recluse,” Cosima filled in. “The newssheets speculate frequently on his life, and there is no one to help society separate the truth from the lies. I do not have enough information to inform you of how to approach him.”

  Of course the princess would correctly assume it was the duke. With a heavy sigh, Kitty leaned against the padded back of the comfortable sofa and tipped her head to the ceiling. “He had a terrible accident years ago.”

  “What manner of accident?”

  “I’ll not divulge it,” Kitty said, quite aware society was not entirely certain what caused Alexander his greatest pain. “But it has made him believe he…he cannot give me the pleasure a man would give his woman.”

  There was a speculative pause in which she shifted her head to stare at the princess, who was observing her rather keenly.

  “And you believe otherwise? A man in charge of his faculties would know more than anyone else if he can achieve a cockstand.”

  Kitty’s eyes widened. “A cockstand.”

  The princess seemed to consider just how improper she could be, then answered, “When that part of him that is in his trousers becomes hard…very hard. It is called a cockstand or an erection. And from your terrible blushes, I will guess that you are familiar with the duke’s manhood.”

  Kitty bit back a groan and bravely said, “To an extent.”

  “And was it hard?”

  Searing heat burned through her veins when she recalled the thick hardness she had clasped in the conservatory.

  “I can see that it was,” the princess said with an airy laugh.

  “It was not for long,” she confessed. “And…and I was not entirely sure about the details of what should have happened between us. One moment I felt such pleasure I believed I would die, and the next my arms were empty and a most awful, unfulfilled ache lingered in my belly. He got hurt and…and our moment was interrupted; I fear we may never get it back.”

  The princess nodded. “I will impart all that I know…but in good conscience, I must confess I have never been intimate with a man myself. Shocking, I know,” she murmured, her eyes twinkling. “At a young age, one of my father’s paramours befriended me, and over the years my views have been scandalously enlightened. I am pleased to share all I have heard and seen. But I would be a poor friend to promise it would allow you to achieve what you want from the duke.”

  She leaned forward and clasped her hands between hers. “Thank you, Cosima. I believe a chance is all I need.”

  …

  Three days after meeting with Cosima, and with the gleeful aid of Lady Darling, Kitty crossed the border into the lowlands, toward Alexander and the possibility of an even greater heartache.

  Early that morning, as she and her lady’s maid had left the inn where they had stayed overnight, the day had seemed bright, clear, and without threat of rain. Now the sky was painted in shades of gray, and thunder rumbled quite ominously in the distance. Possibly a portent of how the day would unfold.

  Alexander hadn’t indicated he was willing to fight for a life together, and here she was traveling once more to his home, without an invitation…

  To seduce him.

  It all seemed so frightfully silly and scary to her. Touching the mind, body, and heart of a man who seemed to love her but was afraid to allow her into his life presented an impossible task. The easy solution would be to walk away, to take no more risks with her heart, for it was still so horribly bruised and now beat with an uncertain rhythm.

  But it went against her nature to give up anything, and this…this was a forever kind of love.

  And it is worth fighting for.

  The carriage jolted once again ove
r the rocky, uneven ground, and she shifted the curtain and peeked outside. The castle on the horizon seemed an eternity away, but then in a few short minutes, they were rounding the long driveway. The sounds of the steps knocking down reached her, and she took an even breath, struggling for equanimity, before the carriage door opened. She allowed the coachman to assist her down, and as her booted feet touched the graveled driveway, she swayed under the enormity of what she had committed to.

  “Are you well, milady?” the man asked with a concerned crease to his brow.

  “I am quite well. You may take the horses to the stables for a rubdown and oats and apples. If you were to go to the kitchens, I am sure you’ll be given a meal,” she said to the coachman, her lady’s maid, and the other two tigers who had journeyed with them.

  She breathed deeply of the clean, cool air and gathered her nerves, which shivered with such alarm, it was a wonder she was standing. Kitty had missed the castle, and she envisioned it would be quite easy to call here home when not in London. Her heart pounded, and she clasped her hands tightly together to prevent their trembling. She marched to the front door and lifted the large iron knocker a few times. In the other hand she held onto her small valise, with its scandalous garments, as if her life depended on it.

  Kitty waited a few beats and knocked once more. If no one answered, she would make her way to the side entrance to the kitchens, where the servants should be up, stirring the fires and preparing breakfast for His Grace.

  The door opened, and the butler stood, impeccably dressed and ready to serve his household for the day.

  The man sucked in a surprised breath. “Miss Danvers! Please come inside.”

  Kitty entered, handing over her shawl, hat, and gloves as she strolled with affected serenity into the castle. She glanced around, a surge of longing piercing her chest. The butler cleared his throat and she glanced up, astonished to see that his eyes were misty.

  “How are you, Albert?” she asked warmly, some of her nerves dissipating.

  “Quite well, Miss Danvers.”