How to Tame Your Duke (26 page)

“Never mind. Emilie, my dear, I have prepared you a batch of my special elixir. Calms the nerves, refreshes the senses.” Miss Dingleby picked up one of the glasses from the tray and held it out to her.

“I’ve told you already. My nerves are calm enough.”

“Nonetheless.” Miss Dingleby jiggled the glass. The light reflected in tiny wavelets across her face, making her irises appear to shift color to green and back again.

“Not just now, Dingleby. I’m not a bit thirsty.”

Miss Dingleby sighed and replaced the glass. “Now, look at you. You really must remove those spectacles, my dear. It’s your engagement party. Your duke awaits you below; the Prince of Wales himself is among the guests.” She walked to Emilie, took off the spectacles, and folded them with care. “You see?”

“I don’t, as a matter of fact. That is the point of the spectacles.”

“Ashland will be by your side the entire evening. You have no need of perfect eyesight. Really, you must look your best, for his sake. You do want him to be proud of you, don’t you?”

“His Grace will be proud of her, with or without t’spectacles,” said Lucy. “And brains is heaps more important nor beauty, me mum always said.”

“Why, thank you, Lucy,” said Emilie. “How very flattering.”

“Dear me. It seems the household staff in Yorkshire are encouraged to have opinions.” Miss Dingleby smiled, a faint stretching of her perfect rosebud lips. She picked up the glass of elixir, her own private recipe. “Come, now. You must have a drink. You’ll find yourself much refreshed.”

Emilie took the glass and held it up to the light. It was pink in color and rather cloudy in its fine crystal tumbler, reminding her oddly of the thick fog drifting off the river last night. A hint of grapefruit tickled her nose. Miss Dingleby had always propounded the merits of grapefruit. She had insisted on each princess eating a half, carefully sectioned and without sugar, for breakfast every morning, regardless of season. The governess had consumed the remaining half herself; she hated waste of any kind.

The smell of the grapefruit wound through Emilie’s nostrils, recalling all those mornings about the table in the breakfast room, unsweetened fruit poised expectantly on her plate, the routine and formal beginning to every routine and formal day. Each hour passing by like the drip of rain on a window, exactly like the one before. The smell, the memory itself, made her feel faintly ill.

“Come along, then,” said Miss Dingleby, her hazel eyes bright in her sharp face. She put one finger to the base of the glass and nudged it to Emilie’s mouth. “Bottoms up.”

The nausea welled up from Emilie’s belly. Saliva filled her mouth. She swallowed hard and put down the glass on the dressing table with a distinct crash.

“I think I’d rather not,” she said.

T
he footman stood at attention outside the Duke of Olympia’s private study, looking rather like a black-and-white guard dog.

“Why, Lionel,” said Emilie. “I see you’ve been pressed into duty this evening as well.”

“Your Highness.” He inclined his head gravely. His face remained expressionless.

“I should be grateful, Lionel, if you’d step aside and announce me to Their Graces at once.”

At this, a hint of pain touched Lionel’s grave face. “I am under orders, Your Highness, not to allow anyone inside t’room.”

“Pish,” said Emilie. “Or posh. Whatever it is. I am the Princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, a personal friend of the Kaiserin herself, niece to the Duke of Olympia, and affianced wife of the Duke of Ashland, whose persons you presently guard. I assure you, you are fully authorized to open that door to me.”

“Your Highness . . .”

“Not to pull rank, of course,” she added.

“Your Highness . . .”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lionel. For old times’ sake, if nothing else.”

Lionel hesitated, sighed, and reached for the door handle.

The two men inside the room bolted to their feet at her entrance, though she had eyes only for the Duke of Ashland: impossibly tall, fearfully immaculate in his white knee breeches and his tailcoat of blackest black. His white satin waistcoat gleamed against the starched pleats of his shirtfront. Her eyes drifted upward along the broad reach of his formidable shoulders and landed at last on his blurred face, his rigid jaw, his black mask, his cropped white hair, his icy blue eye open wide as he took her in.

“My dear,” said the Duke of Olympia, dimly, from some other world entirely unconnected with the one in which she currently existed, “you look beautiful.” He was next to her, he was kissing her hand, she was murmuring something polite, while the image of Ashland burned in perfect photographic negative in her brain.

Her dream-uncle took her hand and drew her across the room. “My dear fellow, I give you my niece,” he said, and placed her hand within the broad palm of the Duke of Ashland, which swallowed it up whole.

“Your Highness.” As he bowed before her she caught a glimpse of the tiny white triangle of his handkerchief poised correctly in his waistcoat pocket, and she forgot her own name.

“My dear, you’re blushing,” said Olympia. “Have you no loving words for your husband-to-be?”

Loving words? She pulled her eyes up from his handkerchief, from the memory of last night’s handkerchief, and met Ashland’s stern gaze.

Dear God. This matchless man, shimmering with controlled power, had been locked in frantic sexual congress with her. Last night. In a darkened carriage.

The sounds, the scents flooded back in her brain. The bounce of the carriage, the slick thrust of his body into hers. The filthy words he’d poured into her ear. The jerk of his hips as he lost himself into his handkerchief.

His handkerchief.

His voice, deep and muscular. “Emilie, where are your spectacles?”

She made a clearing little shake of her head. “In my room. I was told that such things are unsuitable for balls.” She managed a smile. “I am to look my best, after all.”

Ashland looked down at her, unblinking. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and left the room.

“Wherever has he gone?”

Olympia spread his hands. “I haven’t the faintest notion.”

Ashland returned in under a minute, spectacles in hand, and fitted them to her face with infinite tenderness. “Much better.”

A stinging sensation invaded Emilie’s eyes. She fought it back. Princesses did not cry, certainly not in front of others. “Thank you, Your Grace. Uncle, may I have a private word with my fiancé?” The word
fiancé
seemed to swell with intimacy in the lamplit room.

“My dear, our guests will be arriving within minutes . . .”

Ashland’s voice cracked above her. “Her Highness wishes a moment of my time, sir.”

A weary sigh from Olympia. “Very well. I beg you not to abuse the furniture.”

He left in a flash, before Emilie had time to catch his meaning and blush anew.

“Well! Why on earth would he say such a thing?”

Ashland chuckled. “Something to do with the expression on your face, I imagine.”

She looked up, and his gaze came into brilliant focus: no longer glacial, but warm and amused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Because, if I’m not mistaken, I was thinking the same thing you were. The same thing I’ve been thinking about since I woke this morning.” His voice slid downward into an entirely new range, somewhere between a growl and a purr. “You, straddling my lap last night, shivering as you took me inside you.”

“Sir!”

He took a step closer. “The carriage bouncing us together as we shagged each other silly. You telling me to shove my big . . .”

“Sir! The footman is just outside the door!”

“. . . harder and faster . . .”

“I
said
that?”

“You did.” He wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her right up against his pristine black-and-white body. “Do you know what I think, sweetheart?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“I think, once we’re married, we should order a midnight carriage ride at least once a week.”

“We would scandalize the neighbors.”

“We could vary the neighborhood.”

She tried to push herself away, but he held firm. “Such levity, at such a moment. I came to speak to you seriously, to discuss tonight’s ordeal in detail, to discuss my suspicions and to try to dissuade you from putting yourself in certain danger like this . . .”

He swept her up, blue satin skirts and artful curls be damned, and carried her to the Duke of Olympia’s brown leather Chesterfield sofa. “Oh, that. Well under control. Your uncle and I had a most productive discussion. Nothing to fear.”

“What’s that?” She struggled against his arms, but he simply sank down on the cushions and held her in his lap. “Ashland, there were men with pistols last night. Pistols! And Miss . . .”

“All under control. By midnight tonight, the whole damned ring of them will be smashed.” He leaned down and kissed her. “And I shall be demanding the earliest possible date for our marriage, or I cannot be responsible for my actions.”

“Your actions?” she said breathlessly, because his warm lips were smothering the long point-by-point discussion she had put together in her head before coming downstairs. There was something about Miss Dingleby, something important . . .

“Primarily, making love to you as often and as thoroughly as possible. Carriages, sofas. Even the occasional bed, if necessary.” He slipped his index finger inside her bodice—her most conveniently low-cut bodice, trimmed with only the flimsiest excuse for a lace ruffle—and stroked her nipple.

“Ashland! It took fully an hour to assemble this dress, and I will not have you ruining . . .” Her words were swallowed in another kiss. She gave up and put her arms around his neck. What could possibly be more important than kissing Ashland, after all?

A sharp knock rattled the door.

“Ignore it,” said Ashland, from the corner of his industrious mouth.

“You’re certain”—he stroked her tongue; she shivered—“you’re certain there’s no danger? Because I think . . . Miss Dingleby . . .”

“All under control, I assure you. And I shan’t leave your side for an instant. Not a thing to worry about, except this scandalously low bodice of yours.” He gave her bosom a proprietary kiss.

Another knock, repeated with energy.

“Ashland, what on earth has come over you? This isn’t like you at all.” Her head fell back against his arm.

“Because I’ve just realized I’m free. Free of my wretched past, free of the imminent threat of a pack of murderers taking you away from me. Free to marry you and take you to bed . . .”

“Not necessarily in that order, I surmise.”

“God forbid. I’m too old to wait for the proprieties.” His hand, having abandoned her bodice, began to wind its way through the thicket of frothing petticoats at her ankles. He shifted her downward into the deep cushions of the sofa and stretched himself alongside.

“Yes, quite. Which brings to mind the final point I wished to discuss with you . . . rather important, really . . .”

The door crashed open.

“Damn it all, Ashland,” said the Duke of Olympia. “I gave you strict instructions about the furniture.”

*   *   *

T
he singing elation in the Duke of Ashland’s blood lasted well past his third waltz with his fiancée. Everything was going along swimmingly, after all. With Emilie standing steadfast and graceful by his side, the endless receiving line hadn’t proven quite the torture he’d imagined; their well-bred guests had generally taken his left hand without undue awkwardness. And Emilie looked resplendent in her pale blue satin, having been put back to rights by a hastily summoned Lucy.

Just before their sweeping entrance down the staircase—Olympia always did have a taste for grand theater—he had pulled the Ashland sapphires from his pocket and laid them about her neck, where they now glittered shamelessly in the light from the electric chandeliers.

They suited her, he thought, as he whirled her past the rapt gathering of dowagers in the northeast corner of the Duke of Olympia’s ballroom. Sapphires worthy of a princess.

He told her so.

“Worthy of a princess, indeed,” she said. “A banker’s wife, you mean. They’re quite deliciously vulgar.”

He bent to her ear. “On our wedding night, I’ll put them to even better use.”

That earned him a swift rap of her fan, but her charming blush was well worth the punishment. He glanced downward to observe its pink progress along her bosom.

The waltz lumbered ponderously to an end. “Really, you’d think my uncle could have arranged for better musicians,” Emilie said. “That was absolute rubbish.”

“Tin ear, I expect.” He cast a sharp eye across the room at Olympia. The duke was engaged in conversation with an attractive woman of a certain age, ablaze with diamonds, but he sensed the weight of Ashland’s gaze. He turned his head slightly, made a single tug of his earlobe, and returned to his conversation.

Ashland drew Emilie along the side of the ballroom and snatched a pair of champagne flutes from a passing waiter, slipping the stems between the adroit fingers of his left hand. “You look a trifle overheated, sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s visit the garden.”

“I’m not a bit overheated, and I do believe I see my dear cousin Penhallow over there, by the musicians . . .”

Ashland leaned down and whispered in her ear.

“Oh. Well.” She patted her hair. “The garden it is, then.”

Ashland’s task (and it was, by far, the most agreeable mission he’d ever been assigned) was simply to keep Emilie otherwise occupied as Olympia went into action in the ballroom. He’d already begun in the library, seducing her with all the shameless exuberance of his relief, and now he had her pliant and undivided attention. As a result, she hadn’t noticed any of the undercurrent of activity in the ballroom. She’d enjoyed herself, she’d sipped champagne, and she’d danced only with him. She’d looked up at him as they waltzed about the room and his heart had stopped at the miraculous glowing warmth in her eyes.

Warmth for
him
.

He was the luckiest man alive.

He sent only a single glance backward as he passed through the French doors into the cool dampness of the Duke of Olympia’s garden, his hand at Emilie’s back. Olympia’s silver head was crossing the room, making its way to the secret panel on the wall behind the orchestra where Miss Dingleby waited with her decoy.

Everything in place. He had only to keep Emilie away from the ballroom.

And really, the deeper they went into the garden, the more occupied her mind and body, the safer she’d be.

It was his duty, in fact.

“Oh, it’s so chilly!” she said. “Let’s turn back. We must. Our guests will wonder where we’ve gone.”

Ashland set down the champagne on an empty urn, whipped off his black tailcoat, and settled it about her shoulders. “Problem solved. Drink your champagne, like a good girl.” He picked up the flute and handed it to her.

“I really shouldn’t . . .”

He put his hand to her back and nudged her forward. “There’s an old saying, my dear. When a lady says she shouldn’t, she almost certainly will.”

“I beg your pardon. Where did you learn that?”

“I
was
in the army.”

“I’m beginning to find that excuse wears rather thin.”

But she was smiling, she was happy. She was allowing him to urge her deeper into the garden, where the light from the ballroom faded into the shadows. The beds were all barren, of course, the roses pruned ruthlessly back and the shrubs hunkered down against the February chill. A row of boxwoods lay ahead, subdued into round balls by Olympia’s fleet of gardeners, and Ashland guided her deftly around them to the small glass-walled conservatory that lay beyond, filled at the moment with spring plantings.

“Oh, I remember this!” she exclaimed. “My sisters and I used to hold tea parties here, when we were visiting in the early summer. What fun it all was. I wish we could look inside, but I suppose it’s all locked up for the winter.”