The Reluctant Duchess

by Jane Goodger

  “At least no one will call you a fraud.”

  At those words, he bristled. “Winters was wrong to say that.”

  While Rebecca was glad of her husband’s loyalty, she couldn’t help but think that perhaps Mr. Winters was at least partly correct. In St. Ives, word that a member of the aristocracy was passing through created as much excitement as Christmas morning. The villagers would strain their necks and gawk, all the time hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever was in the ornate carriage driving by. When the Earl of Berkley took up residence in St. Ives, it was all the locals could speak of, as if some miracle had happened to their little village. Aristocrats were on the moon and the rest of the villagers were firmly treading on earth. Given how woefully unprepared she was to face the ton, it was becoming clear how ill-conceived their marriage was. But Rebecca realized she was fiercely glad they were married, just the same.

  Rebecca was distracted from her thoughts by Oliver, who was nuzzling her breasts and whose hands were beginning to roam rather enticingly over her body. His warm hand, his breath on her neck, his big body stretched out beside her had her forgetting her weariness. It was always this way, a simple touch or even a look and she was ready for lovemaking.

  She let out a soft moan as his fingers grazed one nipple, and any notion that she only wanted to sleep was quickly gone.

  “You’re not too tired?” he asked, then kissed her neck, which he knew drove her quite mad.

  She giggled and turned toward him to get closer. “Not anymore.”

  He let out a manly sound of satisfaction and pressed his erection against her thigh as he kissed her. “Not a day goes by when I don’t thank God for giving you to me,” he said. “I adore you, you know.”

  “I’m rather fond of you, too,” she said, then gasped when he bit her nipple lightly through the thin layer of her nightdress.

  Suddenly, he stiffened, lifting his head as if he’d heard something.

  “What is it?” she whispered. “The cat?”

  Without a word, he flung off the covers and moved quickly, completely naked, to the far end of the room and then…disappeared. In the moonlight, it was easy to follow his progress, his skin ghostly white in the gloom. So when he suddenly vanished, a chill ran over her. It was almost if he’d walked through the wall. Like a real ghost.

  Rebecca could feel her heart pounding madly in her chest as she stared at the spot where he’d been last. Sounds of scuffling, coming from somewhere indeterminate, drew her attention. Pushing off the covers, she stood and grabbed her robe, shivering in a cold draft coming from the area where Oliver had vanished. Wrapping her arms around herself tightly, she tip-toed across the room. “Oliver?” she whispered.

  And then she saw it: a hidden door in the wall that had been completely solid not two minutes prior. Rebecca peeked in, seeing only utter blackness but hearing, somewhere in the distance, footsteps, which faded the longer she stood listening. Rebecca debated lighting a lamp and following him, but decided to simply wait for his return and question him about the passageway then. How exciting. A spooky house with secret passages. Her younger sisters would be mad with jealousy.

  Rebecca returned to bed, pulling her knees up under her tented nightdress, and waited. It seemed an interminably long time before Oliver returned, quietly entering the room and doing something to cause the hidden door to close silently behind him. He began walking back to the bed, and paused when he realized she was still awake.

  “Secret doors and passages?”

  Oliver got into bed, the mattress sagging toward him a bit. “My grandfather was a smuggler. The house was built with that operation in mind. There’s a labyrinth of passages, so many, in fact, that I can move from one end of the house to the other without ever setting foot in a common area. A feat of unimaginable engineering brilliance.”

  Rebecca lay down and Oliver drew her against him. “You’re freezing,” she said. Indeed, his skin was ice cold so she snuggled closer in an attempt to warm him. She let out a little screech when he tucked his feet against her calves.

  “And you are warm,” he said, chuckling as she tried to move away from his icy toes.

  “Are the passageways a secret?” Rebecca asked, not liking the idea that anyone could be behind her wall, eavesdropping, spying.

  “Only Mr. Winters and I know of their existence. Most of the staff were hired in the last ten years.”

  “No wonder the servants thought you were some supernatural being, appearing suddenly in rooms where no one had seen you enter.”

  He chuckled. “I imagine that did not help my reputation.”

  Rebecca was silent for a long moment. “You thought it was Mr. Winters, didn’t you? Just now. In the passageway.”

  “Yes.”

  “My God,” she whispered. “Do you think he’s been listening? Watching?”

  “I forbade it,” he said tersely.

  “You forbade it? That makes me feel so much better!” Rebecca sat up, anger making her blood hot. “I want him gone, Oliver. I know you feel obligated to him, though God knows why, but he clearly detests me. And now, he’s been spying on us? Listening to our intimate conversations? To our…” She could not bring herself to mention it. The idea that Winters had listened to them as they’d made love, heard her cry out, known what was happening. It didn’t bear thinking.

  “He would not, Rebecca. He is a man of strict moral code and honor. If he says he would not, he would not.”

  He reached for her, but Rebecca moved away. “I think I’ll go to my room,” she said.

  “Please, Rebecca.”

  “I am angry. And I have a right to my anger. Would you like to know what makes me the angriest? That you continue to take his side at all times.”

  Behind her, Oliver let out a growl. “I nearly beat him for not honoring you. A man I have thought of as a father. Let me make this clear to you, Rebecca. Should I have to choose between you and Mr. Winters, I would choose you without hesitation.”

  Rebecca, who had been striding toward her door, stopped. She stared blindly at the connecting door, debating what to do. “Would you truly?”

  “I would. I have told Mr. Winters as much.” He let out an audible sigh. “If Mr. Winters was behind the wall, it was only that he was traveling by, not spying. Like me, he prefers to travel unseen throughout the house. He says it keeps the servants on their toes for they never know when he will appear.”

  “If that is what you believe, then why did you chase after him?”

  His hesitation told her all she needed to know. “Mr. Winters has always been inordinately protective of me, which is something that I cannot abide now that I am a man, but at the same time I cannot help but be gratified that he is. It turns out, he was not there. No one runs those hidden passages as quickly as I. I have been doing it since I was a boy. I know those hallways better than I know my own room.” Rebecca still stood, just feet from the connecting door, and looked back at her husband, a pale outline in the large bed. I would choose you. Those words, more than anything, helped her decide. “Come back to bed, Rebecca. Please.”

  “Very well.”

  He chuckled. “It is not a punishment.”

  “Is it not?” she asked, with mock anger.

  “No,” he said solemnly, not allowing her to jest.

  She climbed into bed, getting small satisfaction when he hissed in a breath as her cold feet touched his now-warm calf. “You need to warm me,” she whispered.

  “I shall be happy to do more than that.”

  Oliver leaned forward, inches away from the parlor of his tiny house and smiled. There on the floor was a homey rug, one that had not been there the day before. Rebecca must have slipped into the tower after he’d gone and laid it there. It was the sort of thing he imagined a mother doing, a simple kindness, something he had never experienced but even now, as a man grown, longed for. When he w
as a boy, he’d wondered what his mother was doing, whether she missed him. If she even gave him a thought. She never wrote, never sent gifts. Never came back to see him before she died.

  Rebecca had only been with him for three weeks and already he could not imagine life without her. He was a different man altogether. Never would he have imagined traveling to London, but now he was willing, even knowing what it would entail. The last time he had been in public had been extremely unpleasant. He’d been twenty-one, having just reached his majority two weeks earlier, and invited to a dinner at Sir Robert Gilbert’s home not three miles down the coast.

  Mr. Winters had not wanted him to go. “They have a daughter and I believe they are hoping for a match, Your Grace. She is far below your station and it would not be a match anyone could condone. And your affliction…”

  Oliver was damned sick of his affliction. He’d become used to himself, he supposed, and did not find his appearance all that objectionable. If the servants acted skittish around him, it was because he was a duke and not because his appearance was so grotesque. At least not entirely.

  He accepted the invitation, feeling young and brash and sick to death of being alone and isolated from society. At twenty-one, most men had gone to university, had already attended balls and caroused to their hearts’ content, while Oliver remained at Horncliffe growing more and more restless. Mr. Winters had wanted to accompany him, and Oliver had forbade it. He was not a child, after all.

  Of course, it had been a terrible mistake. Even now, nearly seven years later, Oliver could feel the heat of humiliation of that night. The Gilberts, apparently, had been wholly unaware of his appearance and unable to conceal their shock when he entered their home. Mrs. Gilbert had uttered a single “Oh” before turning to her husband, an odd smile plastered upon her face. Miss Gilbert, a pretty girl with brilliant red hair and vacant blue eyes, had stared at him wide-eyed all night, flinching noticeably whenever he tried to make conversation. The social skills Oliver had been taught were worthless in such a situation, and he soon felt completely out of his element. He did not know the people of whom they spoke, could not recognize the subtleties of conversations, and was wholly unprepared—an awkward, strange-looking fellow with few social skills. Ten people sat around the table, including the Gilberts, their daughter, and a sullen son who said not a word during the entire evening. Another young man, introduced as Mr. Bagley, would not stop talking, and Oliver decided quickly he preferred the son. Everything Mr. Bagley said was met by a giggle from Miss Gilbert, and Oliver began wondering if there was something mentally wrong with the girl.

  “I say, Your Grace, are you ill?” Mr. Bagley asked, then looked at Miss Gilbert as if to make certain she was listening. “You look rather pale.” Miss Gilbert hid a smile behind her napkin.

  “I am not ill at all,” Oliver said, feeling his face heat. It was most humiliating when he blushed, for his face turned an unattractive pink.

  “He’s gone as red as a cardinal, he has.” This was from the general, who’d had a bit too much to drink. He’d been a pleasant dinner companion up until that moment. The old man leaned back and took a good look at Oliver, his eyes widening a bit as if he’d just realized the man sitting next to him was unique. “Are you a foreigner? Maybe Finnish.”

  Oliver swallowed. “No, sir, I am English.”

  “Were your parents…normal?” This hesitant question came from Mrs. Gilbert, who no doubt was having second thoughts about tying her daughter to him, no matter his lofty title. He could feel the eyes of everyone at the table and for the first time was glad his eyesight was such that he could not discern the fine details of their stares.

  Oliver smiled tightly. “My father, the fifth Duke of Kendal, was quite normal, madam. My mother took one look at me and fled in horror. But I understand she, too, was, as you say, normal.”

  “Then it’s not a family trait? It’s not a family trait, Cissy,” she said cheerfully to her daughter, smiling encouragingly.

  “Mother,” Miss Gilbert said, shaking her head, her eyes tellingly going over to Mr. Bagley.

  “Unfortunately,” Oliver said, his pride stinging and his anger rising, “I do not care for redheads. And that, I believe, is a family trait.” He looked directly at the woman’s vibrantly red hair.

  Mrs. Gilbert had gasped, and Miss Gilbert had the audacity to looked shocked. Oliver forced himself to remain until the meal was over, even though he felt as if he might lose his supper. Afterward, he declined the invitation for a smoke and a brandy with the men, and thanked everyone for a pleasant evening. He had, after all, been well-trained in politeness.

  Now, Oliver was just as socially unready as he had been then. He rarely ventured off his lands and only in the evening when the bright light of day didn’t burn his eyes. Until the day he’d seen Rebecca’s portrait, he’d thought himself content with his lot. Some distant cousin could inherit the title or it would go into abeyance. He didn’t care. At least, he hadn’t cared. Now his dreams had been reawakened, his heart beating with hope that he could be a man who would make his father proud. With Rebecca by his side, nothing of his appearance mattered because it mattered not to her. He stared blindly at his little house, grinning like a besotted fool. In this very room, she had called him handsome.

  His smile broadened when he heard a sound from behind the wall. Oliver’s hearing was quite acute, and he heard Rebecca long before she managed to puzzle out how to open the secret door to the tower. When she finally burst through, her hair askew, her dress a bit dusty, a small oil lamp in her hand, he acted surprised.

  “Ho, there, what is this? A fair maiden trespassing in my rooms.”

  Rebecca laughed as she caught her breath, then placed the lamp on a nearby shelf before blowing it out. “Goodness, why would anyone go through that,” she said, pointing an accusing finger at the secret passage, “when one can simply walk through the hallways? It’s like a maze. A dark maze filled with cobwebs and all sorts of creatures.”

  “Creatures?”

  “I swear I heard something skittering all around me.” She walked up to him, and he could see her cheeks were rosy from her exertion, making her look even more lovely than usual. Without a warning, she threw herself into his arms, laughing, her soft body pressed against his, and his arms went around her without a second thought. “I thought I’d never make it, that I’d be lost within the walls forever.”

  He looked down at her upturned face, a strange surge of joy filling him. By God, he must be the luckiest man on Earth. “I would have found you.”

  He kissed her, then, as if he would die if he didn’t, as if she were the one thing that was keeping him alive, a desperate kiss. In all his life, he had never felt such a raw surge of desire come upon him. All at once, he burned for her, his cock hard and straining against his trousers, his hands working her skirt up because it had suddenly become necessary to touch her, to make her find her release. And so he knelt before her, her skirts bunched in his hands as she stood, panting, looking down at him with drowsy eyes.

  “Hold your skirts,” he said. “Higher.” When she did as he asked, he pulled down her drawers, his palms sliding the soft material down her impossibly silky thighs.

  “Oliver,” she said, sounding hesitant. He looked up and kissed a thigh, smiling until she relaxed.

  His eyes never leaving hers, he pressed his mouth to the apex of her thighs and tasted her. A gasp. She shifted, and for a second, he thought she would step back. But no, his beautiful wife spread her legs wider, welcoming him, and leaned against the wall. She was wet for him, her soft hair damp with her desire, and he stifled a groan when he slipped one finger inside her heat and found her ready. In the last few weeks, he’d learned what Rebecca liked, how to touch her, how to make her shake, her insides convulse around him, but he had never made love to her like this. It was heaven, tasting her, hearing her breath become labored, feeling her squeeze against the fin
ger that caressed her hot wetness. She let out small sounds, unconscious little whimpers that encouraged him, that let him know he was pleasing her.

  “Oliver. Oh.” She convulsed, shaking, as she found release, letting out a high, keening that made him want to shout. She was still pulsing when he dropped his trousers and lifted her up, bracing her against the wall, and entered her. Had anything in his life ever felt like this? He was a god, an animal, a king as he thrust inside her. Rebecca wrapped her legs around him, and as he clutched her sweet buttocks and pressed his mouth against her neck, he felt an unexplainable need to taste her, feel every part of her. She smelled sweetly of lavender and he breathed in, trying to inhale her, make her part of him.

  “Oh. Again,” she said, breathlessly, and he felt her tighten around him as he drove into her again and again, mindless, seeking release. It seemed as if he’d become another creature entirely, one that was consumed with lust, with a desire so intense, he nearly screamed when he finally found his release.

  For too long, he held her, finding his breath, trying to come back into the refined man that he was. What the hell had just happened to him? He slowly withdrew, afraid to look at her, afraid to see that he’d frightened her, and held her as she stood a bit unsteadily in front of him. Her chest was still heaving, her hair in complete disarray.

  “That was—”

  “I am so sorry, Rebecca. I lost my mind. You must forgive me.”

  Rebecca ducked her head and Oliver forced himself to look at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was too rough,” he said. “I could have hurt you. Did I hurt you?”

  She bit her lip, and damn if he couldn’t stop himself from staring at her kiss-swollen mouth. “That was perhaps the most wonderful experience of my life, Oliver. Don’t you dare apologize.”

  His heart nearly swelled out of his chest and the words that had been hiding inside him for a few days, burst out. “I love you. God, I do. I love you so damn much.”

  Rebecca pulled back, her expression filled with what could only be described as surprise. Or shock. Or horror? And his heart hurt—not in a pleasant way at all.