Authors: Mary Balogh
But …
Something made him hesitate, and he was not quite sure what it was.
Was it that
she
had chosen
him?
But there was no reason why a woman might not go after what she wanted just as boldly as a man could. When he decided upon a woman, after all, he always pursued her with determined persistence until she capitulated—or did not. Besides, was it not flattering to be singled out by a beautiful, desirable woman who could have almost anyone?
Was it that she was
too
available, then? Had her lovers not been legion while the old duke lived? Were they not likely to continue to be numerous now that she was finally free, not only of the duke but also of her obligatory year of mourning? But he had never balked at the prospect of competition. Besides, if it turned out that she expected to keep other lovers as well as him, he could simply walk away. He was not looking for love, after all, or anything like a marital commitment. Only for a lover. His heart was not going to be involved.
And she had said in so many words at the Heaton concert that while he was her lover no one else would be.
Was it, then, that she was too much of an open book, as he had told her at the concert? Everyone knew all about her. Despite the bedroom eyes and the half-smile she kept almost always on her lips, there was no real mystery about the woman, nothing to be uncovered a layer at a time, like the petals of a rose.
Except her clothing.
One never knew exactly what a woman was going to look like unclothed, no matter how many times one’s eyes roamed over her clad body. One never knew exactly what she would
feel
like, how she would move, what sounds she would make …
“Constantine.” His aunt, Lady Lyngate, his mother’s sister, had come up behind him and laid a hand on his arm. “Do tell me you have not been down by the river yet. Or, if you have, do lie about it and tell me you will be delighted to escort me there.”
He covered her hand with his own and grinned at her.
“I would not be lying, Aunt Maria,” he said, “even if I had been down there a dozen times already, which I have not. It is always my pleasure to escort you anywhere you wish to go. I did not know you were in town. How are you? You grow lovelier with every passing year and every newly acquired gray hair. More distinguished.”
He was not lying about that either. She was probably close to sixty years old and a head-turner.
“Well,” she said, laughing, “that is the first time, I believe, I have been complimented on my gray hair.”
She was still very dark. But she was graying attractively at the temples. She was Elliott’s—the Duke of Moreland’s—mother but had never cut their acquaintance just because her son rarely talked to him. Neither had Elliott’s sisters.
“How is Cece?” he asked of Cecily, Viscountess Burden, the youngest of them and his favorite, as he led his aunt off the terrace and down the broad steps to the lawn. “Is her confinement to be soon?”
“Soon enough that she and Burden have remained in the country this year,” she said, “much to the delight of the other two children, I am sure. What a good idea it was to set up tables on the terrace down there. One may sit and enjoy refreshments and be right by the water.”
They proceeded to do just that and sat for ten minutes or so before being joined by three of his aunt’s friends—a lady and two gentlemen.
“You will take pity on me, if you will, Lady Lyngate, and if your nephew can spare you,” the single gentleman said after they had all chatted for a while. “We came down here to take out a boat, but I have always had an aversion to being a wallflower. Do say you will make up a fourth.”
“Oh, indeed I will,” she said. “How delightful! Constantine, will you excuse me?”
“Only with the greatest reluctance,” he said, winking at her, and he watched as the four of them climbed into a recently vacated boat and one of the men took the oars and pushed out into the river.
“All alone, Mr. Huxtable?” a familiar voice asked from behind his shoulder. “What a waste of a perfectly available gentleman.”
“I have been sitting here waiting for you to take notice and have pity on me,” he said, getting to his feet. “Do join me, Duchess.”
“I am neither hungry nor thirsty nor in need of rest,” she said. “Take me into the greenhouses. I wish to see the orchids.”
Did anyone ever say no to her, he wondered as he offered his arm. When she had announced at the Heaton concert that she would sit with
him
in the music room, had she even considered how embarrassed she might have been if he had refused to sit with
her?
But why should she fear rejection when even the crusty, crabby old Duke of Dunbarton had been unable to resist her after resisting every other woman for more than seventy years?
“I have been feeling dreadfully slighted,” she said as she took his arm. “You did not come to greet me when you arrived.”
“I believe,” he said, “I arrived before
you
did, Duchess. And you did not come to greet
me
.”
“Is it the woman’s part,” she said, “to go out of her way to greet the man?”
“As you have done now?”
He looked down at her. She was not wearing a bonnet today. Instead she was wearing an absurd little hat, which sat at a jaunty angle over her right eyebrow and looked—of course—quite perfect. Her blond curls rioted about it in an artless style that had probably taken her maid an hour or more to create. The white muslin of her dress, he could see now that he was close, was dotted with tiny rosebuds of a very pale pink.
“That is unkind repartee, Mr. Huxtable,” she said. “What choice did you leave me? It would have been too, too tedious to have gone home without speaking with you.”
He led her diagonally up the lawn in the direction of the greenhouses. And he gave in to a feeling of inevitability. She was clearly determined to have him. And for all his misgivings, he could not deny the fact that he was not at all averse to being had. Being in bed with her was going to be something of a wild adventure, he did not doubt. A struggle for mastery, perhaps? And mutual and enormous pleasure while they fought it out?
Sometimes, he thought, the prospect of extraordinary sensual pleasure was enough to ask of a liaison. The mysteries of a character that had some depths worth exploring could wait until another year and another mistress.
He really was capitulating with very little struggle, he thought. Which meant that she was very good at seduction. No surprise there. And he would not begrudge her that since it was beginning to feel rather pleasant to be seduced.
“Where is Miss Leavensworth this afternoon?” he asked.
“Mr. and Mrs. Park invited her to accompany them on a visit to some museum or other,” she said, “and she preferred to go there than to come here with me. Can you
imagine
such a thing, Mr. Huxtable? And they are to take her to dinner afterward and then to the
opera.”
She shuddered delicately.
“You have never been to the opera, Duchess?” he asked. “Or to a museum?”
“But of course I have,” she said. “One must not appear an utter rustic in the eyes of one’s peers, you know. One must show some interest in matters of superior culture.”
“But you have never enjoyed either?” he asked.
“I really
did
enjoy looking at Napoleon Bonaparte’s carriage at… Oh, in
some
museum,” she said, waving the hand that held her parasol in a dismissive gesture. “The one in which he rode to the Battle of Waterloo, I mean. He could not ride his horse because he was suffering with piles. Did you know that? The duke told me and explained what piles
are
. They sound like dreadfully painful things. Perhaps the Duke of Wellington won the battle on the strength of Napoleon Bonaparte’s piles. I wonder if the history books will reflect that fact.”
“Probably not,” he said, feeling vastly amused. “History will doubtless prefer to perpetuate the modern eagerness to see Wellington as a grand, invincible hero, who won the battle on the strength of his grandness and invincibility.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed. “That is what the duke said too.
My
duke, that is. And he took me once to see the Elgin marbles and I was not at all
shocked
to see all those naked figures. I was not even vastly impressed by them. They were pale marble. I would far rather see the real flesh-and-blood man. Greek, that is. With sun-bronzed skin instead of cold stone. Not that a real-life man could ever be quite so perfectly beautiful, of course.”
She sighed, and her parasol twirled again.
The minx, Constantine thought.
“And the opera?” he said.
“I never understand the Italian,” she said. “It would all be very tedious if it were not for all the
passion
and the tragedy of everyone dying all over the stage. Have you noticed how all those dying characters sing the most glorious music just before they expire? What a waste. I would far prefer to see such passion expended upon
life
.”
“But since opera is written for a living singer and an audience of living persons rather than for a dying character,” he said, “then surely that is exactly what is happening. Passion being expended upon life, that is.”
“I shall never see opera the same way again,” she said, giving her parasol one more twirl before lowering it as they came to the first greenhouse. “Or hear it the same way. Thank you, Mr. Huxtable, for your insight. You must take me one evening so that I may hear it correctly in your presence. I will make up a party.”
It was humid and very warm inside the greenhouse. It was filled with large banks of ferns down the center and orange trees around the glass walls. It was also deserted.
“How very lovely,” she said, standing still behind the central bank and tipping back her head to breathe in the scent of the foliage. “Do you think it would be eternally lovely to live in a tropical land, Mr. Huxtable?”
“Unrelenting heat,” he said. “Bugs. Diseases.”
“Ah.” She lowered her head to look at him. “The ugliness at the heart of beauty. Is there always ugliness, do you suppose? Even when the object is very, very beautiful?”
Her eyes were suddenly huge and fathomless. And sad.
“Not always,” he said. “I prefer to believe the opposite—that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.”
“Indestructible,” she said softly. “You are an optimist, then.”
“There is nothing else to be,” he said, “if one’s human existence is to be bearable.”
“It is,” she said, “very easy to despair. We always live on the cliff edge of tragedy, do we not?”
“Yes,” he said. “The secret is never to give in to the urge to jump off voluntarily.”
She continued to gaze into his eyes. Her eyelids did not droop, he noticed. Her lips did not smile. But they were slightly parted.
She looked … different.
The purely objective part of his mind informed him that there was no one else in this particular greenhouse, and that they were hidden from view where they stood.
He lowered his head and touched his lips lightly to hers. They were soft and warm, slightly moist, and yielding. He touched his tongue to the opening between them, traced the outline of the upper lip and then the lower, and then slid his tongue into her mouth. Her teeth did not bar the way. He curled his tongue and drew the tip slowly over the roof of her mouth before withdrawing it and lifting his head away from hers.
She tasted of wine and of warm, enticing woman.
He looked deeply into her eyes, and she gazed back for a few moments until there was a very subtle change in her expression. Her eyelids drooped again, her lips turned upward at the corners, and she was herself once more. It had seemed as if she were replacing a mask.
Which was an interesting possibility.
“I hope, Mr. Huxtable,” she said, “you can live up to the promise of that kiss. I shall be vastly disappointed if you cannot.”
“We will put it to the test tonight,” he said.
“Tonight?” She raised her eyebrows.
“You must not be alone,” he said, “while Miss Leavensworth is off somewhere dining and attending the opera. You might be lonely and bored. You will dine with me instead.”
“And then?” Her eyebrows remained elevated.
“And then,” he said, “we will indulge in a decadent dessert in my bedchamber.”
“Oh.” She seemed to be considering. “But I have another engagement this evening, Mr. Huxtable. How very inconvenient. Perhaps some other time.”
“No,” he said, “no other time. I play no games, Duchess. If you want me, it will be tonight. Not at some future date, when you deem you have tortured me enough.”
“You feel tortured?” she asked.
“You will come tonight,” he said, “or not at all.”