Authors: Michelle Woodward
“How did you find the map-drawing this week, Margaret?’ he queried. They hid the nature of the papers from the busy ears of the servants under the guise of semi-regular cartography lessons. Pulling the ribbon from the sheaf she had just handed him, Lord Turnquist perused the papers quickly, getting a taste of the latest installment of the series he had commissioned from Ania. “Ah, I see that as always, you are progressing quite splendidly in your studies,” he said to Margaret in code, but she found herself blushing anyway, as if it truly was her work on the papers he held in between his square, strong fingers, and not the work of her older sister.
“Well, I do learn from the best,” she told him, and found her cheeks growing hot. What nonsense was she spouting at this man? But David Turnquist only smiled, and she was grateful for his kindness in not embarrassing her.
“You know, Margaret,” he began, taking her by the elbow and settling her gently in the chair across from his, “With such a sound mind and lovely face, you are going to make some lucky duke or earl a lucky man one day.”
“Oh, my sister is the one marrying a duke, not I,” answered Margaret, and then wanted to smack herself on the forehead for being so literal. David, however, seemed not to notice, and was in fact rubbing the ribbon in between his fingers, clearly enjoying the satin feel of it.
“And how does she feel about this? Given that she is such a....unusual personality?”
“I think she hopes for some kind of understanding, if not actual love,” Margaret told him honestly, a note of sympathy entering her voice as she considered the very real implications of her sister’s future. “Truth be told, I think she is sitting in her chambers right now, hoping that our parents will not make her marry the new duke.”
“Yes, I heard about what happened. Poor Duke Connols,” David said, and although Margaret was unsure of which duke he was referring to, the new or the old, she found the empathetic look on his face and the fact that he was considering the feelings of the people involved rather than the scandal everyone else had been discussing decidedly appealing. As a whole, she thought, considering the way a shock of blond hair was falling over one of his eyes, Lord Turnquist was decidedly appealing. She was so absorbed in the way the light was hitting his fine wool coat that she scarcely heard what he said next.
“What?” she queried, hating herself for missing it.
David Turnquist looked at her bemusedly. “Head in the clouds today, Marge? ‘Scuse me, Lady Cromwell.” Margaret returned his teasing smile, feeling herself buoyed by his attention. “I was just saying,” he continued, “that it is a damnable shame that ladies and gentlemen of a certain class do not get to choose their spouses for the right reasons.”
“And what exactly are the right reasons, Lord Turnquist?”
He creased his pale brow. “I think that when a man and a woman have good conversation, a strong companionship, and respect each other, these are the right reasons.”
“We have good conversations,” Margaret suddenly found herself saying without thinking.
A look of mild alarm passed over Lord Turnquist’s face. He looked, in fact, as if he had just been startled out of a pleasant reverie with a pot of rather cold water being thrown in his face. “Yes, yes, I suppose we do,” he mumbled quickly, before his voice took on his previous languid tone. “Although I suppose that in most cases, the choice is not always ours. Propriety always wins.”
“Damn propriety,” Margaret said in a low voice, inwardly delighted at being able to say such a naughty word with David, who tossed his head up in laughter.
“Yes, indeed, propriety be damned,” he answered, and Margaret added her smile quite deliciously to his.
Upstairs in Ania’s chambers, the darker haired sister’s hopes had swiftly been dashed. Struggling to maintain her perspective on the situation, Ania uttered a few sentences about how it had turned out to be lucky after all that the new Duke Connols had chosen to keep to the legal deed and take her on for a bride, despite not truly having to do so after all.
“You will be married in St. John’s in a week’s time, and your father and I will be hosting the breakfast after,” Lady Cromwell was saying, and Ania found herself wondering what all the rush was about. Were her parents afraid that during that time, her husband-to-be would return to his previous sport of bedding the more fashionable ladies of the ton? If he was anything like his brother, then Nicholas Connols was a smart man and it would be decidedly stupid of him to continue to tarnish the reputation of his family, since it was tarnished beyond repair. And then she realized what it was that her parents were truly afraid of. They cared not a whit for the reputation of her husband to be, or even her own.
They were afraid Nicholas Connols would change his mind and not marry her.
Not for the first time, Ania seriously considered turning tail and fleeing from this whole mess, this whole misguided sense of duty and fealty. She had made enough money, certainly, to be able to live somewhere else for a while, rumors be damned. But catching the worried expression on both of her parent’s faces made her think about another member of her family who was depending on this marriage to happen, someone she cared about deeply, even if she did not care for the way she had to save her.
Margaret.
Margaret Cromwell deserved better than to be penniless. Her little sister Margaret deserved to choose who she wanted to marry.
And so with a curt nod of the head and an inner steely resolve, Ania Cromwell shouldered the burden of a self-sacrificing hero and began preparing for her marriage to scandalous rake Nicholas Connols and all that had to offer.
* * *
When Ania finally caught sight of her husband, the Duke of Connols, her breath caught. Lawd, but he looked a dangerous man! From the cleft in his chin to his smooth olive skin, you might have thought he would be the one to be the illegitimate son, not his peaches and cream brother Brent.
There was something about him that caught the eye; he looked less the hero and more like the pirate Ania imagined, although from the rumors she had heard, he might be less gentlemanly than even that imagined man. His dark hair was cropped close to his head like his brother’s, but his wide brown eyes shone with an innate intelligence that, when compounded with the air domination about him, made him all the more interesting to look at. He was not a particularly tall man, but he had a powerful build that made him seem as if he would be excellent to hold on to in a storm. Not that Ania was going to hold on to him or that there was any storm. She shook her head, willing the ridiculous train of thought out of her head.
Her husband did not appear to be weathering any kind of trouble in trying to wrap his head around their nuptials, however. He was quite calmly slicing into a roasted duck breast at the seat next to her, listening to someone’s insipid mother babble on and on about the weather. Ania snuck a glance out of her periphery at his glance; broad and finely boned, they handled the silver utensils above his plate with ease, comfort and skill. Would he also be touching her with the same practiced maneuvers?
Her mother had had only the most cursory of conversations with her about what to expect in the marriage bed, and it had served only to make Ania flush some more and instill her with a fear of the goings-on there that she had not previously had. She did not want to believe what her mother was telling her, that she had to bear her duty and submit to him entirely in bed. Surely somebody who was now telling something genial to Brent Connols and making him laugh could not be such a terrible monster that he would stand on ceremony too often. Ania’s thought strayed to that shaking rosemary bush, and she wondered if passion was something that was found outside of the marriage bed, and if her own life would include it in any capacity. With a heavy sigh, she pushed the onion-glazed potatoes around on her own plate and refused to meet anybody’s eyes, even though Margaret was peering at her closely, intent on seeing her reaction to her brand-new husband.
Nicholas Connols, in his stead, had indeed noticed his new duchess. What had Brent been talking about, “learn to appreciate it”? Ania Cromwell was indeed quite the looker, although she appeared quite unaware of the effect she had on the men around her. Curved and petite, her light brown hair was streaked with shots of gold, which made him think that there was a side to her that perhaps turned its nose at the idea that ladies needed to be out of the sun to maintain their pale beauty. Speaking of her nose, it was delightfully upturned and splashed charmingly with freckles, which she did not even attempt to hide with powder as most young ladies did, which endeared her all the more to Nicholas. But perhaps the very best thing of all were her large and intelligent dark green eyes, which upturned at the corners to make it seem as if she was always smiling at you. Nicholas imagined what those eyes would look like looking up at him from waist level when his new bride would be kissing him in a place he was sure most people would deem oh-so-inappropriate, and the picture it formed went straight to his cock. Yes, he could learn to appreciate his new wife’s looks.
But could he also appreciate her mind?
The wedding breakfast seemed to last forever, and by the end of it, Ania was visibly spent. Although she was nervous about the night that awaited her, she hoped that it would be over soon—her husband was not the tender pirate of her imagination, after all. Perhaps it would all be very civil and over quickly. Although, when she looked at her husband’s easy posture in the carriage, one arm along the seat rest, she could not help but think that perhaps it would be enjoyable, after all. The ride lasted for hours, and as the sights that went by them became less familiar, Ania’s nerves rose; she began to understand that she had started a new chapter not only for the serial, but also in her own life. Hopefully, Nicholas Connols would keep mostly to himself so she could continue on as she had before.
“Duchess,” Nicholas said wryly, offering her a hand as she stepped from the carriage. The corners of Ania’s mouth turned up at that; it seemed Nicholas Connols might have a sense of humor behind that imposing demeanor.
“Your Grace has a lovely new home,” she said back to him, accepting the hand, wholly unprepared for the electricity that passed between them when they made contact. Nicholas looked as though he had not felt the same, and Ania momentarily wondered if she had imagined the sensation; she was taken with flights of fancy, after all, although she preferred to call it work-necessitated creativity.
“It is lovely and new to me as well,” Nicholas answered, tucking her hand over his and leading her to the door. Bemused by such a reply, she glanced up at him and realized that they both wore mirror expressions of the same kind of smile. Although her heart had done a little jump at being so close to him and the feel of him against her arm was quite nice, she could not help but wonder if the charming rake beside her would turn into a completely different man in the bedchamber.
This thought pursued her all the way into the evening and into the bedchamber where her maidservant Johnson, hired, no doubt, by Duke Connols for the impending marriage, was brushing out her thick, wavy hair. Ania preferred it like this instead of forced into some silly bun that pulled at her scalp and never managed to stay together anyway. After a while, she took over the brushing herself and send Johnson away, much to the older woman’s chagrin; Ania was used to taking care of her own grooming, as her parents had not been able to afford such a luxury for a long time. It was several long minutes before she felt a pair of eyes boring into her back and turned around to find Nicholas Connols standing in the doorframe to her bedchamber.
“Oh!” she cried, hastily putting the hairbrush down on the table. “Oh, Your Grace, you’re here.” Lord, but he looked languorous as a panther leaning against the doorframe. Like the big cat itself, he uncurled himself from the posture and approached Ania from the back; she followed his motions in the mirror with her eyes.
Nicholas picked up the brush and poised it over her head. “May I?” he asked, hoping against hope that his new wife would not deny him such a simple pleasure. He wanted to be able to touch her, if only in such a small way. He felt relieved when she nodded her head yes.
Holding her slim shoulder with one hand, he began the downward strokes through her lush locks, gradually settling into a rhythm that soothed them both. How long had it been since he had done anything so—so intimate with a woman? For all his knowledge of the fairer sex, he was new at this, establishing an actual closeness with someone who he was expected to share his life with. He glanced at Ania’s reflection in the mirror and was pleasantly taken aback to find his new duchesses’ eyes closed, an expression of rapture on her face. Had he caused that? Slowly and silently, not wanting to break the spell, he put the brush down and employed his hands instead, rubbing her scalp gently, but firmly. Ania made a little noise in her throat and opened her eyes, the widened pupils betraying some secret part of her that made Nicholas feel almost as if he had intruded into some private moment of her thinking; at the same time, although his wife’s face was new to him, the look itself seemed familiar, and he recognized it as one of excitement of a certain nature and felt himself swell slightly against his breeches. He glanced at his wife’s face in the mirror once more, and while his fingers kept up a steady pressure against her gloriously soft hair, he lowered his mouth down to her neck.