Authors: Michelle Woodward
“What did he announce, darling?” Ania finally asked.
Margaret looked up at her and a fresh wave of tears threatened to spill out. “He announces that he is leaving to India for a year!” she cried, and the waterworks began anew.
Ania was slightly taken aback by this news. Shooting Nicholas a desperate glance, she immediately turned to comfort her sister. “Silly goose, that does not mean he does not love you! Have you ever even asked him if perhaps he feels something for you?”
Margaret looked at her angrily, her tears stilled for the moment. “Do you think me a total fool, Ania?” she demanded. “I asked him right away, I said, ‘What about me?’ And he just looked at me strangely and then said of course he would miss our little conversations together. As if I were a complete stranger! It was utterly humiliating!”
Ania’s heart swelled in sympathy towards her sister’s plight. “It is terrible to lay your heart out to someone and have them demonstrate indifference, I know,” she said, stroking her sister’s back.
At her words, Nicholas visibly jerked. He had not expected such frankness from his wife, and although she had not addressed him directly, he could not doubt that her words carried a double meaning. He watched the two sisters huddled together in a picture of abject misery and a number of thoughts occurred to him.
Blond, long, and languid David Turnquist was in his study pouring over the paper when his manservant announced that a Duke Nicholas Connols was there to see him. Putting down the paper with surprise, he issued the order to have him shown in. He had heard about the nuptials between the contributor to his newspaper and the rakish duke, but he had not been expecting a personal visit quite so soon. Was it possible that the lady had informed her husband of her creative endeavors? Lord Turnquist thought she was a bold lady, indeed.
There was an air of danger coming off the darkly colored duke as he entered the study. He looked for all the world, a man on a mission with a secret quite close to his heart.
“Duke Connols! To what do I owe the pleasure?” asked Lord Turnquist from behind his heavy oak desk.
Nicholas looked him right in the eye and decided to be forthright with it all. “What’s this about you going to India?”
“Ah, I see you have heard of my latest exciting endeavor!” cried Lord Turnquist, obviously well pleased with himself. “Yes, I have been meaning to go for ages and see what adventures lay in that rather hot area of the world, and I thought since I have no attachments as of yet, I may as well take advantage of the situation.”
The duke’s expression darkened considerably, and the newspaper man wondered if he had said something amiss. “No attachments?” asked Nicholas. “And what of Margaret Cromwell?”
“Ah, the Lady Cromwell. A delightful girl, really, with such a sharp mind. Was it from her that you learned of my upcoming travels?”
Nicholas met his gaze squarely head-on. “Out with it, Thunrow. Why have you lead the lady to believe your attachment was more than it is?”
Lord Turnquist turned an alarming shade of pale at these words, but recovered nicely. “I assure you, I did nothing of the sort.”
“Come now. Allowing her to be party to her sister’s secret, paying her attention, having long ambling conversations right in the Cromwell’s sitting room. Surely you do not imply that this was all in the lady’s imagination?”
“Well, no, but surely you must understand my point—”
Nicholas’s fist slammed down on the desk, making both the inkwell and the owner jump. “Out with it, Turnquist. How do you feel about Margaret?”
“What I fail to understand, Connols, is what business it is of yours how I feel or do not feel about her.”
“She is my wife’s sister, Turnquist. And if I have to face another breakfast that has both of the ladies upset over one of your remarks, then I promise you, I will not be the only man left dazed. Do we understand each other?”
Young Lord Turnquist’s face underwent a rapid color change and he sat in front of the darker duke quite pink in the face. It seemed several minutes before he collected himself, and when he spoke, all traces of politeness were gone from his voice. “See here, Connols. I will profess to you that I have admired the lady for quite some time. Quite the mind! And attractive, as well, but surely you can understand that given Margaret’s involvement in her sister’s subterfuge, I cannot take the lady for a wife.”
“And why is that?”
“It would not—well, it would not be decent.”
Nicholas took a long, hard look at the man sitting before him, squirming behind the desk. “You are a hypocrite and a half, Thunrow,” he finally said with undisguised distaste. “So it is all right for you to run such a paper and for my wife to publish her work in it, but it is not all right for Margaret to be the messenger? You’re a scoundrel, Turnquist.”
“See here, Connols—”
“No, you see here,” replied Nicholas angrily. “What exactly is it you fear? That the ton will learn of your involvement in the paper? I have some information for you—they already know! And if you would turn that puny brain of yours away from your own skin for just a moment, you would see that in addition to being a lovely woman, Margaret has carefully kept her sister’s secret for quite some time.”
“Then how did you learn of this information?” bit out the other man.
Nicholas paused here and swallowed hard. “My wife has informed me of her pastime.” Seeing the look on Turnquist’s face, he continued on. “If you feel the need to keep your editing under wraps, then you could not choose a better person to have as your partner in this regard than Margaret. She is loyal to a fault.”
Lord Turnquist said nothing for several long minutes. Finally, his face returning to a more normal tone, he looked up at Nicholas. “There are norms, Connols. It may be all right for me to edit such a paper, but to be involved with a lady who writes for it—that is another story altogether.”
At this, Nicholas rose from his place and strode purposefully behind the desk until he and the sniveling lord were at eye level with each other. What did Margaret see in this man? Nicholas wondered, but knew it was not up to him to judge. “Listen, you prig,” he said quite calmly, as if he was merely asking for the state of the weather, “You would not be involving yourself with someone who writes for the paper. I am involved with someone who writes for the paper and it does not bother me one whit how my wife chooses to express herself in her free time. In fact, I admire both her courage and her creativity, and the fact that she has chosen to make her own way in the world. I do not understand why Margaret would want a boy like you, with your backwards ideas about what lords and ladies should not do, but given the lady’s inestimable character, I would count yourself lucky that she holds you in any regard at all, let alone such a high one. Are we clear?”
And with that, Nicholas, Duke of Connols, strode out of the study of his wife’s sister’s lover.
* * *
Ania was indulging in her nightly ritual of brushing out her hair when Nicholas finally returned to her room after almost a week’s absence. Swallowing her surprise, Ania continued on with her mahogany brush as if it was perfectly normal to have your husband run out on you, say nothing, and then with equal suddenness, return to you as if nothing at all had transpired.
“Ania,” she heard behind her, her husband’s voice a deep rumble. She put down the brush.
“Yes, Your Grace?” she asked primly, well aware of how churlish she was being.
Nicholas approached her chair, and it was not long before she felt the tall column of his warm against her back and head. He lowered his hands to her shoulders and kneaded them, unkinking every tight muscle that had managed to stiffen with the weight of his silence over the past week. “Ania,” he said again, nudging her to rise from her chair.
She did, and turned, a ready remark at her lips that died as his mouth closed down on hers. There was a different feeling to this kiss, a kind of hunger that made her feel as if Nicholas wanted to climb inside of her and hide there forever. It was a fierce sort of possessiveness that quite made the blood rush completely from her head, so that when at last he released her, she stumbled and would have fallen if Nicholas had not wrapped his large hands around her waist and was holding her upright.
“Nick,” she gasped, and with some careful angling, their mouths closed again.
They scrambled at each other, releasing folds of clothes and hardly noticing as the garments began to sink to the ground around them. Nicholas was quickly divested of his shirt, allowing Ania to delight in exploring the broad expanse of his muscular chest with her hands. He caught her mouth again and again, and she wound her arms around his neck, drawing him closer and deeper, allowing her tongue to slip into his mouth. She hardly noticed as she did this, but when she did, the fissure of excitement at her own boldness expanded, and she was suddenly filled with the incredible knowledge that Nicholas enjoyed her ministrations as much as she did his. She flicked her tongue against him once, then twice, and heard his sharp intake of breath as his own tongue tangled with hers in an instinctive dance.
She was divested of her chemise soon enough, and as he gazed down at her nude body, Ania was caught somewhere between unbearable shyness and wanton desire. Under his eyes, her body felt beautiful; as he lowered a palm to stroke her from collarbone to nipple, her breasts plumped and her head fell back, exposing a white morsel of throat that Nicholas took advantage of. She gasped as his tongue parried with the tender flesh there, flicked against it, inflaming her and causing her head to positively swim. With one miniscule step, she pressed her bare chest against his and felt him fully nude against her. She could sense his excitement from the low rumble in his throat as she repeated his actions back to him, catching his earlobe in her teeth and, having cloaked her teeth with her lips, bit him gently.
Nicholas shuddered. Where had his wife learned all this? But he knew. He knew that he knew, that her explorations were sourced by naught but her own imagination, which he had come to speak to her about. But having seen her so lusciously righteous before the vanity mirror, he had been unable to help himself. Now, as she pressed her thigh against his arousal, Nicholas lost his train of thought completely yet again, and relied instead on pure instinct to guide him.
He almost bent her body in twain as he leaned in to drink the next kiss from her lips. Responding to him and the position of their hungry bodies, Ania wrapped her arms around his neck and hooked each of her legs around his hips; when he straightened, he lifted her, and she felt the softness of her sex brush against his, leaving her shivering, wanting more. He supported her lower back with his arms and carried her over to the lush bed, setting her down as carefully as a package to be opened on a holiday morning, unwrapping her hands from his neck and looking down into the wide expanse of her green eyes as one looks into the hearth of the home, understanding it is the place where one wants to be most of all.
He saw a thought pass through her mind and saw the expression in her eyes change as he bent over her body. “Nick,” she said, her voice delightfully hoarse from arousal, “Margaret came to me today.”
Nicholas stilled.
Ania lifted one hand to his face and he wanted to close his eyes against it as she stroked his cheek gently, but the nervousness he felt peeled his lids open. “She said that Turnquist proposed marriage to her last night.”
Nicholas smiled and Ania went visibly lax.
“Was it your doing?” she asked wonderingly.
Nicholas shifted so that he laid sidelong his deliciously naked wife. Running a hand down the smooth skin of her stomach, he felt something swell inside of his chest that he had never felt before. It was possibly because he had never felt quite this way about another woman. Looking at her small form and trusting eyes, a surge of protectiveness filled him, and he knew that this was a moment that could make or break the future of his relationship with his wife. His wife, who he had looked for such a long time, his wife, who had stumbled into his life by some lucky accident, becoming his family at a time when his own had managed to fall apart so spectacularly.
“Margaret being unhappy made you unhappy. Myself, I think Thunrow is a right arse, but for better or worse, he is your sister’s choice,” said Nicholas finally, fingers inching towards Ania’s hand. Intertwining his digits with hers, he lifted her hand to his lips to plant a soft kiss there, feeling her eyes follow his every motion. “So I simply explained to him that if I could be married to the Illustrated Lady herself, surely he should have no objection to being wed to her sister.”