DUKES BY THE DOZEN
ALYSSA ALEXANDER ELIZABETH ESSEX MADELINE MARTIN GRACE BURROWES GINA CONKLE ELLA QUINN MAY MCGOLDRICK BRONWEN EVANS JENNIFER ASHLEY ANNA HARRINGTON HEATHER SNOW SABRINA YORK EILEEN DREYER
DUKES BY THE DOZEN
Copyright © 2019 by Alyssa Alexander, Elizabeth Essex, Madeline Martin, Grace Burrowes, Gina Conkle, Ella Quinn, May McGoldrick, Bronwen Evans, Jennifer Ashley, Anna Harrington, Heather Snow, Sabrina York, Eileen Dreyer
DUKE IN WINTER
Copyright © 2019 by Alyssa Alexander
THE DIFFERENCE ONE DUKE MAKES
Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Essex
DISCOVERING THE DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Madeline Martin
THE DUKE AND THE APRIL FLOWERS
Copyright © 2019 by Grace Burrowes
LOVE LETTERS FROM A DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Gina Conkle
HER PERFECT DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Ella Quinn
HOW TO DITCH A DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by May McGoldrick
TO TEMPT A HIGHLAND DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Bronwen Evans
DUKE IN SEARCH OF A DUCHESS
Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer Ashley
DEAR DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Anna Harrington
MUST LOVE DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Heather Snow
THE MISTLETOE DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Sabrina York
DUELING WITH THE DUKE
Copyright © 2019 by Eileen Dreyer
Cover Design: VMC Art & Design
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including, but not limited to, xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
CONTENTS
A Duke For All Seasons!
ALYSSA ALEXANDER
DUKE IN WINTER
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
About the Author
ELIZABETH ESSEX
THE DIFFERENCE ONE DUKE MAKES
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
About the Author
MADELINE MARTIN
DISCOVERING THE DUKE
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
From Madeline Martin
About the Author
GRACE BURROWES
THE DUKE AND THE APRIL FLOWERS
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
From Grace Burrowes
GINA CONKLE
LOVE LETTERS FROM A DUKE
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
Also by Gina Conkle
ELLA QUINN
HER PERFECT DUKE
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Author Notes
MAY MCGOLDRICK
HOW TO DITCH A DUKE
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Author’s Note
BRONWEN EVANS
TO TEMPT A HIGHLAND DUKE
Preface
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
About Bron
JENNIFER ASHLEY
DUKE IN SEARCH OF A DUCHESS
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About the Author
ANNA HARRINGTON
DEAR DUKE
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Author’s Note
Letter to Readers
HEATHER SNOW
MUST LOVE DUKE
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
From Heather
About the Author
SABRINA YORK
THE MISTLETOE DUKE
Preface
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Sabrina York
EILEEN DREYER
DUELING WITH THE DUKE
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About the Author
Also by Eileen Dreyer
A DUKE FOR ALL SEASONS!
What’s better than a dashing duke?
A dozen of them!
Or in this case, a baker’s dozen—thirteen of your favorite historical romance authors have come together to bring you more than a year’s worth of tantalizing, never-before-released novellas.
Enjoy them all at once, or savor them month by month, it’s all up to you…
DUKES BY THE DOZEN
DUKE IN WINTER
JANUARY
ALYSSA ALEXANDER
PREFACE
When the highwayman demanded he stand and deliver, he didn’t know she would steal his heart.
CHAPTER 1
January 1802
An English Country House
“BEATRICE,” came the inebriated drawl. “Don’t be a prude.”
“Of course not.” There was a great deal of difference between prude and debauched, and Bea was decidedly in the middle.
Despite not being a prude, Lady Beatrice Falk wrinkled her nose, shifting the spectacles perched there. The scent of liquor in the room was strong enough it seemed a snifter had been waved beneath her nose. Or someone had bathed in brandy.
“If you are not here to scold, then let me be.”
The empty decanter winked at Bea from the side table, just as her brother winked at her from his position on the chaise longue. He sprawled over the cushions, cravat loose, the buttons of his coat and waistcoat open. He raised his glass, gestured vaguely at the room in general. “It’s a lovely time here, Sister, even if you won’t partake.”
“Lovely,” she repeated, eyeing the tableau before her.
Dice rolled between the shadows and firelight, and in one corner cards shushed against each other. Low laughter and murmurs floated between curls of tobacco smoke, swirled around bare feminine shoulders and rouged cheeks.
Bea quickly counted heads. As she’d believed, three gentlemen were missing. Some of her quarry were drunk on the drawing room floor and were of no use that evening, but others would be making their way through frozen trees to their own country homes.
She’d best get moving.
Still, she was mistress of the house until her brother married, and with that came responsibilities. Someone had to attend to them.
“I’ve instructed the butler to ensure your remaining guests have beds this night. Stewart has spoken with the housekeeper, who will see to it.”
“Excellent.” Her brother half-stood, raising his glass in an enthusiastic salute. As he listed to one side, gold liquid sloshed over the rim, dripping down his already soiled evening glove. He frowned, studying the newest stain. “Damn.”
A triumphant burst of sound rose from one side of the room. Bea watched money change hands over dice—so much money, with no purpose but gambling and drink. And perhaps to keep the laughing women standing beside the players. A pretty lot of courtesans made garish by rouge and paint and revealing gowns.
“Well, now. I think this requires a proper celebration.” The winner staggered to his feet, puffing out his chest so the embroidery on his waistcoat rippled with the strain.
Sir Winthrop. A close friend of her brother’s, who had asked for her hand three times the year of her debut. When it was clear she would remain a spinster, he’d twice suggested they be lovers.
Unlike her brother, Bea chose her lovers with great care—and marriage was out of the question with the life she led.
With a leer at one of the girls that jiggled the whiskers on his jowls, Sir Winthrop pointed to his empty glass. “We could call for another bottle. Share it, you know.”
The girl giggled through painted red lips and opened her mouth to answer, but Sir Winthrop had turned away and raised the glass high.
“Here! Another bottle!” he called out, plainly searching for a footman—only his gaze landed on Bea. Expression turning sly, he stumbled toward her. “Oh, ho, my lady. Come to play?”
“I do not think so, Sir Winthrop.” Bea attempted to keep the revulsion from layering over her voice. “Thank you for your offer; however, I am retiring. Enjoy your evening.”
Closing the drawing room doors behind her, Bea strode across the entrance hall and abandoned the guests without a backward glance. They would still be there in the morning, in various stages of drunkenness and disarray.
The men who mattered were those who had left.
With one hand, Bea removed the spectacles she didn’t need. With the other, she began to loosen the old wig of long, curling brown hair. Being a spinster of undetermined years buried in the country, no one cared if she still wore unfashionable wigs.
But they suited her purpose.
HE’D MISJUDGED THE WEATHER.
Howling wind kicked up the snow already covering the ground, mixing it with heavy, falling flakes. Only thirty minutes before, when Wulf had requested his horse be brought around to the front of Falk Manor, the moon had still been visible between the moving clouds. Now, between the impending snowstorm and the lack of moonlight, Wulf would be fortunate to return home. Ever.
He should have requested a room at Falk Manor, stayed until morning.
Even as he thought it, Wulf grimaced. Old childhood friendships still demanded attention, even though the tradition of a yule log, punch, and country dances had given way to brandy and women once the old earl died.
Now it was dissolution of the most juvenile kind.
Still, the duty was done, and Wulfric Standover, Duke of Highrow, was far enough from the festivities that the disgust clinging to his skin was slipping away.
Hunching his shoulders against the bitter wind, Wulf guided his stallion onto the narrow track between the trees. With luck, he would be standing before his own fire before the storm worsened.
“Stand and deliver!” The shout was sharp beneath the swirling snow, echoing between the silent, naked trees.
Cursing, Wulf lifted his forearm to block the white flakes and studied the shadows dancing between the wind-tossed snow.
The highwayman was not ten feet away, sitting atop a horse in the center of the path. His greatcoat swirled in the wind as he raised his arm, the double-barreled pistol he held appearing small and light.
Though size was not indicative of deadliness. The thief held the weapon as straight and steady as any spymaster Wulf had encountered during the Reign of Terror.
“What shall I deliver?” Wulf pitched his voice above the wind and narrowed his eyes, evaluating risk. He kept a pistol in his saddlebags, but he would never be fast enough to beat his opponent.
Still, he took one hand from the reins and slid it onto his thigh. Easily, he hoped, so it would seem natural and not calculated to move closer to the saddlebags.
“You may deliver whatever valuables you have on your person.” Through the eerie, dim, snow-light and thickening flakes, Wulf could distinguish a cap pulled low and a scarf wrapped around the thief’s face that was substantial enough to fight the wind. “Beginning with the winnings in your pockets, sir.”
“Now, how is it you know about the blunt in my pockets?” Wulf leaned casually on the pommel. Considered his adversary.
“A rich nabob like you, coming from a house party? Of course you have blunt.” The man’s jacket was big enough he might swim in it. A local lad, perhaps, fallen on difficult times.
Or the Honorable Highwayman.
Wulf had yet to make the acquaintance of the local legend, though he had heard a great deal about the highwayman’s ill-gained generosity.
“I don’t particularly care to give up my blunt, even for widows and orphans.” Though he was actually quite willing to forgo his winnings for such a cause. “At least not at the end of a pistol,” he continued, attempting to stall.
Another few inches and Wulf would be able to reach his weapon. He shifted again, setting his hand a little closer to the saddlebag.
Wind rattled the branches above them, so they clacked and creaked like brittle bones. Wulf’s stallion sidestepped, pranced a few paces. Using both hands—unfortunately—Wulf brought the animal under control again.
“Very well, Your Grace.” The pistol notched higher, its barrels seeming to stare at Wulf with two dark, round eyes. “Then I shall wound you with the first shot. Perhaps you shall change your mind.”
“Unlikely.” Still, Wulf had lost the precious inches he’d gained reaching for his own weapon. His stallion was edgy, and the storm swirled around them—and the coins and pound notes in his pocket were not worth the effort.
But by God, it was the principle. He’d not spent years dodging the guillotine in France only to be bested by a highwayman a few miles from his home.
The wind sharpened, howled, and in the momentary silence as it died again, Wulf clearly heard a long-suffering sigh.
“As you wish, Your Grace.”
The report was deafening, slicing through the silence of snow and night. The already-spooked stallion reared, pawed the air. Even as Wulf recognized the searing pain in his shoulder for what it was, he understood he would not keep his seat.
“Bloody hell!” he cursed, tumbling through flying snow.
When the ground slammed into the back of his head, everything went black.
CHAPTER 2
SHE’D SHOT HIM. Actually shot him.
“Damnation.” As the sound of panicked horse hooves faded into the night, Bea looked down at her pistol and let out an irritated huff. “Why did you have to pick now to be slippery?”
Her aim was nearly perfect, and she’d never yet wounded any of her intended prey.
Only frightened them.
Bea contemplated the man sprawled on the ground as snow began to blanket his greatcoat. She couldn’t leave him here. Unconscious, wounded, and without a horse, since his had gone running off into the trees.
He was also the Duke of Highrow—a boy she’d known. A man she didn’t.
“Damnation,” she said again, as she saw the stains on the snow. Blood. She didn’t need sunlight to recognize the dark drops dotting the ground.
Uncocking the second barrel of her pistol, Bea tucked the weapon into the waist of her breeches and dismounted. She tied her mare’s reins to the nearest tree, then strode forward.
Highrow lay on his back, face bared to the dark sky and biting wind. Crouching, she probed his shoulder among the folds of his greatcoat and evaluated the damage.
He groaned, which was heartening.
Her search revealed the shoulder was just a flesh wound, and she repeated the actions on the back of his head, hatless now. Beneath thick hair just long enough to curl over his collar, she found a large knot. It was no wonder he was unconscious.
Shifting, Bea stared down at the duke. She was close enough to discern the lean planes of his cheekbones, the strong jaw. Although she did not need any light to remember he was handsome. Extraordinarily so. Bea had known it since she was old enough to toddle after him at the village fair or at picnics. Before he had been the Duke of Highrow.
He had been Wulf to her, then. Especially when he’d grown into a young man who teased and laughed with her, indulging a young girl’s foolish infatuation.
She swallowed hard as guilt rippled through her. She’d wounded an old friend, even if it was barely a scratch. She ought to feel more appalled than she did, she supposed. But then, a highwayman did not feel pity for their victims when they were entirely too wealthy for their own good. Which he was.
Her bad fortune that Wulf’s tracks were the set she’d followed. He had never been her target. If there was one man the Honorable Highwayman knew to avoid, it was Wulfric Standover. He had been a soldier for far too long.
Leaning back on her heels, she studied the prone man. Well, she couldn’t leave him here. Wulf wouldn’t bleed to death, but he’d certainly freeze.
Bea judged the area, stared up into the driving snow. The storm was getting worse. Blinding. The bite of the wind penetrated her woolen coat and even the thick scarf she’d wrapped about her face.
“I suppose I should take care of you, now I’ve shot you.” Bea shook him a little, careful not to jostle his head, and was rewarded with a groaning curse. “Wake up,” she shouted over a sudden, howling gust.
Wulf twitched, cursed again and clutched his shoulder.
“Easy now,” she said, pitching her voice to the lower tenor she used as a highwayman. “I imagine it burns like hell, but it is not bad.”
Eyes flicking open, he stared up at her. She remembered quite clearly the deep blue of his irises, though in the night they only appeared to be dark and fathomless.
She wondered briefly if he would recognize her, then dismissed the idea. He’d never recognize her in her current garb. No one ever did. Hair short, no spectacles. Breeches. And it had been nearly a decade since they exchanged more than brief pleasantries. Wulf had been at war, and when he was home, he had paid no attention to an aging spinster.
“Bloody hell, my head hurts.” Slowly, as if testing whether his skull would stay attached, Wulf turned to face her more fully.
“I imagine so. You’ve a knot back there—not caused by me, I am happy to report. That was the ground.” Bea fought not to set a comforting hand on the broad expanse of his chest. Drawing back, she met his gaze. “Can you sit? Stand?”
“You shot me.” Struggling to a sitting position, Wulf peered up at her from beneath hair whipped by the storm into an unruly frenzy. Fury sharpened the already keen planes of his face.
“I told you I would. Now, you are bleeding, and we will both die if we do not find shelter.” She pointed to the sky. “Snowstorm.”
“Surely, this is a jest. Or a dream.”
“Not at all.” Bea pushed to standing, careful to keep the scarf hiding her face. “I know of a cottage not far from here. We will be safe enough until the storm lets up.”
Another groan, and Wulf staggered to his feet. Casting his gaze about the path, he growled, “Where the devil is my horse?”
“The horse has run off, and I don’t think there’s much to be done for him.” Bea retrieved her own mare, who still stood patiently waiting in the trees. “Horses are wily creatures, though. He’ll find a place to weather the—er, weather. As we should do, unless you’d prefer I leave you here to freeze?”
A long, weighty pause spun out, fighting the tossed snowflakes.
“First,” he said finally, “you intend to rob me—I presume you’re the Honorable Highwayman?” At her short, acknowledging nod, he continued. “Then you shoot me, and now you plan to shelter with me?”
“I won’t shoot you again. I give you my word.” Bea shrugged, though she sent up a quick prayer he would not recognize her once they reached the cottage. Yet she could not abandon him. “You can’t walk back, my horse can’t carry the weight of both of us, and you really should attend to the wound. Also, I cannot help being honest. Or at least, to a degree. Leaving you here to freeze seems—dishonest.”
He stared at her, mouth open. “What strange hell have I fallen into?”
WULF WAS NOT SO foolish as to deny himself refuge, even if he was sheltering with a daft highwayman.
The little cottage hunkered between dense trees, appearing barely strong enough to withstand the storm. An even more dilapidated shed leaned beside it. Wulf warily eyed the structures, expecting them to blow over at any moment.
Yet the highwayman was correct that weathering the storm overnight would be impossible. Wulf was trapped—no horse and too far from sanctuary, and now he carried no weapon.
Add to that, his damned wounds. Pain burned through Wulf’s shoulder—a pain he’d felt before, having taken a musket ball to the thigh in France, another in the shoulder in Brussels. Probing this new injury proved it was only a nick, as the highwayman indicated, and the blood had already thickened and slowed.
It was his aching head he couldn’t escape.
The highwayman gestured toward the cottage door, as if shooing Wulf inside. Narrowing his eyes, Wulf watched the man carefully lead his horse toward the shed.
No choice but to enter. Even if he overpowered the slight man, restrained him, what would that accomplish? Very little at present. So, he would wait and see.
He pushed at the cottage door, but it was stuck tight. Gritting his teeth, he thrust his good shoulder against the worn wood. The movement made his head throb, his abused shoulder beating in time even though he favored it, but he burst into the room with an explosion of dust and snow.
Breath curling out to fade into the dark, he studied the single room and the shadowed furniture ranged throughout. Beyond the walls, the wind shrieked and wailed, but there was no betraying whistle. The cold would not fight its way between the wattle and daub that snugged the cottage frame. The little structure would do well enough.
He picked his way toward the shadow of the wide hearth. Searching blindly with his good arm, he found a tinderbox and stacked wood. Kindling sat neatly beside it.
The cottage might have appeared abandoned, but it clearly was not.
He began to build the fire by touch rather than sight, then glanced over as he heard the highwayman step inside. The man moved toward a deep shadow, lifted something. As the kindling caught in the hearth, Wulf saw it was a blanket.
“For the horse,” came the explanation. The voice was smooth now that it wasn’t fighting the storm and wind. Just how young was the highwayman? “I will return in a moment.”
Whatever the highwayman’s age, he was no fool. He kept his back to the wall, eyes on Wulf, until he slipped once more through the door and into the storm. Wulf could not fault him.
As the fire grew, the shadowy outlines of furniture became visible. A table and chairs, trunks lining one wall, shelves holding lanterns, crockery—even a teapot. Light crept into the dark, chilled corners of the room just as the highwayman returned.
“A fire. Excellent.” He shoved the door closed, blocking out the howling wind and any sense of the world beyond.
“What is this place?” Wulf added more wood, watched it catch and be consumed by flame.
“Only a cottage well-stocked by those who might need it from time to time.” Face still partially concealed by the scarf, the highwayman stared at Wulf with eyes deep and dark.
“Criminals? Poachers?” Any number of secrets might be hidden in the shadows of the room.
“Perhaps.” A pause, then the deep, dark eyes crinkled at the corners. “Or a man who has angered his wife and wishes for a temporary roof over his head.”
“That would explain the blankets and crockery.” There were such places in the forests in every country of the world. Espionage occurred in many of them.
“A man needs to eat and sleep, even if his wife disagrees.” The highwayman stepped into the ring of firelight and held out gloved hands for warmth.
Wulf watched his opponent, examining the man who had shot him. He moved with a strange type of grace, held his slight shoulders stiffly beneath the greatcoat. The bottom of his face was still covered, but the delicate line of a nose and narrow, curved brows were discernable.
A thought began to form, as if all Wulf had needed was to organize the pieces of information he knew into the proper shape. Shock arrowed through him, swift and forceful, but he knew the truth.
“You are a woman.”
“No.” The highwayman did not look up, instead keeping his—her—face toward the fire.
“The small mare, the movement of your body, your voice, even the tea pot there on the shelf—it is clear enough, if a man looks close.” And Wulf always looked, because he had learned long ago that details could keep a spy alive. “You are a woman.”
There was a lengthy pause, as if the highwayman was weighing the benefits of the admitting the truth.
“Very well, Highrow.” She began to unwind the scarf, slowly and deliberately, features beginning to emerge. A lush mouth. Creamy skin pinked by the cold. Large, thickly-lashed eyes. The scarf fell to the floor and her cap followed suit, revealing short, sweetly curling hair.
She watched him for a moment, as if waiting for something significant.
“Is that all? Any other secrets?” After being shot, forced into sheltering with his adversary, and discovering she was a woman, Wulf wasn’t certain he could withstand any other shocks.
“I think that should do it.” She crouched in front of the hearth, pulling off her gloves and reaching toward the heat with elegant hands. Gold light edged over high cheekbones, over the strong curve of her jaw.
He must be dreaming. Perhaps he’d had too much brandy at the house party after all.
Except his shoulder burned and his head throbbed. The wind howled beyond the cottage door, rattling the windowpanes in their frames. Heat burgeoned from the flames well on their way to a blaze.
This was no dream.
The Honorable Highwayman was a woman. Clad in scarred leather boots and thick buckskin breeches, swallowed by the heavy greatcoat, but clearly a woman.
Wulf had never heard a whisper of such rumors.
Even as the revelation sank in, he searched her features for recognition, but could not recall seeing that strong face before.
The woman pushed to her feet. Angling her head to meet his gaze while loose curls danced around her face, she said softly, “I am sorry I shot you.”
CHAPTER 3
“I USUALLY MISS after the warning—on purpose,” she added slyly. “My aim is quite accurate. Tonight the pistol slipped a little, ‘tis all.”
“Forgive me if I am not impressed by your skill.” Confusion did not sit well on his shoulders, so Wulf shuffled what he knew of the Honest Highwayman to meet this new version of the truth. “I suppose I should thank you for not leaving me to freeze after you shot me.”
“So you should, though that is neither here nor there at the moment. There are more important matters.” She raised a brow, almost as if challenging him to disagree. “Please remove your greatcoat.”
“In order for you to inspect your handiwork?”
Wulf had forgotten the pain in the midst of his surprise, but it flooded back now with a hot burst. Burning his shoulder, beating against his skull.
“Just so.” Slim fingers began to efficiently unbutton her own greatcoat, moving swiftly over the wool.
He was not certain he trusted his eyes as the outdoor garment fell to the floor. It was considerably smaller than his own, yet with its capes and squared shoulders it was no less masculine.
The body beneath was anything but.
Curved. Every bit of her was curved. Not lean or slender, or trying to hide in the breeches and coat. Instead, she was boldly feminine, the male clothing emphasizing every contour of hip and waist and breast.
His mouth went dry.
She did not notice. Instead, she ran her hand through loose, gold-brown curls, shaking her head as if to free them from an invisible band. “Please, come close to the fire so I may see the wound,” she commanded. As she angled her head, considering him, she murmured, “How is your head?”
Throbbing in tandem with other body parts.
“Well enough,” he said curtly, moving closer to the hearth as its building heat echoed the building heat in his blood. “I suppose if you shot me, you should attend to the wound.”
Despite his head, despite the arm held stiffly against his side, a visceral, unexpected need gripped him. Clawed at his gut. Wulf wanted to understand this woman, unravel the mystery of her as he might a code from Napoleon’s spies. Unwrap each layer and discover what lay hidden beneath both her clothing and her unusual pursuits.
A woman taking to the road as highwayman was interesting, indeed.
“I will bring a chair over while you remove your greatcoat.” She nodded toward a pair of simple chairs huddled beside the table. “You are so tall, I shan’t be able to reach your shoulder properly unless you are sitting.”
“I am not so feeble as to be unable to retrieve a simple wooden chair.” With his good arm, Wulf picked up the nearest chair and set it carefully on the floor beside the hearth.
“Men.” She shook her head and laughed, the sound husky and amused—and very much in keeping with her accompanying half-smile. “I suppose I have already stung your pride by shooting you.”
“Quite.” Carefully, Wulf began to unbutton his greatcoat. After dropping it to the floor, he set to work on the jacket. Gritting his teeth, he slowly eased it off until he stood only in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves.
Blood liberally stained the sleeve of his shirt, brilliant crimson against stunning white.
“Oh, God.” Her whispered words held quiet distress. Full lips pressed together, thinned, then parted again after a deep inhale. “Hell, Highrow. I truly am sorry.”
“So I see.” Wulf settled gingerly in the chair, quite certain of her regret.
“I did not think there would be so much blood with such a shallow wound.” A somber expression moved across her features, sobering them as she gently touched his shoulder.
“It is often the shallow ones that bleed the most profusely.” He murmured the words, trying to ignore the scents of fresh winter and warm cinnamon she carried with her.
And her curving body.
“For some reason, I am not as angry as I should be that you shot me.”
“No?” She murmured the word, clearly distracted by her examination.
Now that he was seated and she stood before him, each feminine sweep was so close. Too close. Hips and breasts, revealed by the breeches and coat, were within reach of his suddenly needy hands. But Wulf did nothing except grip his knees, forcing his body to stay still.
“Have you previously injured your—” he paused to find the word “—prey?”
“No. A warning shot is usually all that is necessary, though I’m quite adept at wounding haystacks.” Self-deprecation threaded through her words. “Surely, you are more practiced than I. You have been abroad. Seen war.” Her hands paused as she reached for the buttons of his waistcoat. They hovered there, long fingers so still and steady they might have been carved from marble. “Fought for your beliefs.”
“Yes.” He might have said more, but the fingers began to briskly unbutton his waistcoat as if the pause in her movements had never happened.
“What was it like? Fighting, marching—doing something worthwhile?”
“Cold and hungry,” Wulf said flatly. “But I wasn’t a soldier for long. I was a spy.”
“WELL, THAT IS NEWS.” Bea efficiently continued to unfasten the buttons, though her fingertips seemed to tingle now that she was so close to him.
His words were not a surprise. She had not suspected it before, but hearing him say it aloud seemed natural. She might have guessed the truth had her mind thought to consider the possibility.
The way his eyes saw right through a person, his sense of honor, the even temperament—and his easy acceptance of a highwayman as a makeshift surgeon. Wulf’s adaptability would have proven useful as a spy.
“Such an appointment would suit you,” she concluded. “I did not know you were assigned to espionage.”
“I do not often speak of it. Few English drawing rooms are concerned with clandestine meetings in dank rooms in the French countryside. Not every cottage is as well-appointed as this one.” He winced as she drew the waistcoat over his wounded arm. “But it is in the past. Unlike your secrets, mine are now of little interest.”
“I suppose that is true.” Bea dropped the waistcoat beside his other garments, studied the cravat he still wore. She wondered just what lay beneath that fine cloth and starched linen. Such broad shoulders filled the fabric, so able to bear the heavy burden of the dukedom. “Do you intend to expose me?”
Her hands were heavy as she lifted them to his cravat, but only because a strange anticipation filled them. She began to slowly unwind and loosen the starched fabric. With each movement, the space between them seemed to swell with something powerful, even mesmerizing. Bea looked into his lean, handsome face and caught the roguish gleam in his eyes.
She could not breathe.
“That remains to be seen.” Wulf purred the words as the last loop of the cravat lifted away, revealing a squared jaw shadowed by stubble and the strong column of this throat.
Everything in her went warm and needy as he stared straight at her with heavy-lidded eyes. His gaze skipped hotly over her body, lingering here and there. The irises appeared black in the dim cabin, though she knew their color.
There was power in that gaze. Power and lust that sent licks of heat moving over her skin.
“I must maintain my reputation.” Pulse quickening, she released the cravat and let it drop to the floor. “Such as it is.”
She wanted to touch him. To skim her hand over that sharp jaw, feel the rasp of thick hair. Even lean down and set her lips to his.
“What may I call you, aside from the Honorable Highwayman?” The question rumbled from his chest, a low sound that skimmed over her senses. “You are undressing me, after all. Surely I might have your name?”
CHAPTER 4
SHE COULD NOT GIVE him a name.
‘Lady Beatrice Falk’ would reveal everything, though Wulf would not likely remember the girl nine years his junior who dreamed of riding to the hunt and going to battle. He would not remember the woman careful to hide from her brother’s drunken guests—for more than one reason.
But he would know the Falk name.
“That is a very long pause.” Amusement twined through Wulf’s deep voice. “I assume you are planning to lie?”
“I did intend to lie, but I cannot think of a proper one.” It was the truth, which was no less dangerous than lies. “Nor will I give you my name—for obvious reasons.”
“An honest highwayman, but not a foolhardy one.” Callused fingers took her hand, brought it to his lips. Pressing a firm, sculpted mouth against her knuckles, he murmured, “In any case, it is a pleasure to meet you.”
Her breath drew in. Pushed out. Flames crackled beside them, the howling wind fighting to penetrate the walls. Wulf kept her hand in his, watching her as if nothing else existed just then. It was an intoxicating sensation.
Bea drew back. His mouth was too full and sensual, his scent too strong. Everything about him made her want. And Bea knew the dangers of wanting and excess and lust. It did not matter if it was lust for drink, or pleasure, or dice, or silk.
Or making love.
Wulf would be a dangerous man to toy with. It would be too easy to fall under his spell and forget herself.
“Your wound still requires tending.” Perhaps her body would cease this heady need if she focused on the practical. “If would be so kind as to remove your shirt, it will be easier.”
Bea did not wait for him to consent. She strode to the shelves lining the north wall and retrieved one of the iron kettles stacked there. Without bothering to don her greatcoat or scarf, she threw open the cottage door and stepped into the storm.
Wind whipped up a crystalline tempest to pelt her face. Ignoring the fury, she scooped snow into the pot. Icy cold stung her skin and made her fingers burn as she filled the kettle nearly to the brim. Then she wrestled the door closed and turned once more into the warmth.
Into Wulf.
He’d come up behind her, tall and half-naked as she’d commanded—and just there. His lips were close, and the thought of pressing her mouth to his filled her with need. She wanted to brush her fingers over the broad expanse of his chest and the blond hair sprinkled there.
“I thought it might be heavy.” Wulf’s voice was rough, his eyes dark with desire as he carefully removed the kettle from her hands.
He felt it as well, then, this tug between them.
“Perhaps it is the hit to my head that makes me take leave of my senses, but I believe this evening will be very—” he paused, pinning her with those deep blue eyes. “Engaging.”
“Oh, do you?” Bea knew precisely what Wulf was thinking just then, and sent him a slow, knowing smile. “Clearly, you are not in your right mind.”
“Oh, yes. I am in my right mind,” he said softly.
His gaze was so hot, so dark, it set her body alight.
Dangerous, indeed.
“If you would bring the pot?” She moved around him, striding toward the fire and the chair. Giving herself to the Duke of Highrow would be foolish. She would risk too much, in too many ways.
Yet Wulf would make any woman cross the line.
CHAPTER 5
“I’VE no convenient petticoat to bind your arm with.” Bea stared into the melting water. Little remained of the snow now, just a few swirls of white. Testing the surface with a fingertip, she judged it warm, but not hot.
She had begun to breathe properly again as she tended the water. Still, her body was tight, her mood edgy. Bea did not want to be cautious, but pleasure must always be approached with attention.
“We might as well use my shirt as a bandage,” Wulf suggested. “’Tis a loss in any case.”
The sound of rending fabric rose into the air as she removed the iron pot. She swirled the kettle once to even the water temperature, then turned to see him tearing strips from the bottom edge of his lawn shirt. He ripped again, firelight burnishing the shifting muscles in his shoulders.
She was no stranger to the male body, but Wulf’s body was more. Masculine and virile and strong. And so very tempting.
Caution, she reminded herself.
Settling once more into the crude chair, he laid the strips of his ruined shirt over his thigh. White against the deep black. She strode forward, trying not to slosh the warmed water—but thinking of where that trail of blond hair led.
The one that disappeared beneath the waist of his breeches.
HER CINNAMON SCENT filled the air around Wulf again as his highwayman drew close. She set the water on the floor, then quickly unbuttoned her coat and shrugged out of it. Clad in shirtsleeves and a plain waistcoat, she leaned forward to study his wound.
The pain had dulled now—shoulder, head—giving way to an intense craving for her. One that balanced on the keen edge of pleasure and torment.
Competent fingers brushed against his thigh as she retrieved one of the clothe strips he’d laid there. Wulf went hard, fought not to touch her. To accept the gentle ministrations as she dipped the fabric in the water and carefully sponged away the blood.
She narrowed her eyes as she worked, leaned closer. He carefully studied each feature of her face, memorizing its contours. A strong nose, eyes he could see now were hazel, and a narrow, pointed chin. A lush, full mouth.
The dandies in London might not call her a diamond of the first water, but there was something arresting about her face, her confident manner.
“You are very beautiful,” he murmured.
She stilled, frozen as she bent to reach for the pot of water again.
“No one has ever called me that before.” Moving slowly, she dunked the cloth, then looked directly at him as she straightened. That level, honest stare was almost difficult to meet. “Someone said I was a handsome woman once, but no one has ever used the word beautiful.”
“You are beautiful. It is true.” So true, just the look of her dried his throat. Her face was fiercely lovely, full of feminine strength. Everything about those features might have come from an ancient goddess.
“Well. You are the first to think so.” She breathed deep, let it out again, and continued her task. “If you intend to flatter me into becoming your lover, it will not work.”
“I see.” Amused at both of them, he studied her fingers as she worked. Long, quick, elegant. “Thank you for being straightforward about that.”
“I am a highwayman, and I take my pleasure where and how I want, but I am careful.” She slid him a mischievous glance, long lashes flashing over eyes not quite green, not quite brown, but a mixture of both. “And you are wounded.”
“Hardly,” he snorted.
“I must admit, I did a poor job shooting you.” She probed the area gently, pursed her lips. “It is not even worth stitching, truth be told. Salve over the next few days and clean wrappings should do it.”
“To be felled so low over so small a wound,” Wulf quipped, and had the pleasure of seeing her lips turn up with humor.
“But felled by the Honest Highwayman, so that must be some comfort,” she added.
“True.” Which made him curious about her. She was certainly no village housewife or servant. “Who are you? It is whispered you give away everything you take. Why do you do this at all?”
“I am tempted not to tell you, but it is no secret among the villagers—though they may not answer if a duke were to ask.” The rag plopped into the water as she dropped it, then reached for the remaining strip of his shirt. “There are many in need. The lords write their laws, the orators in London shout about poverty and politics and money, but that does not change what is here. Right here, in the village. Many are prosperous, and many others are not. Children die of hunger from time to time, or the aged cannot pay for a surgeon or buy a tincture from an apothecary, and we lose them too soon.”
“Few of my tenants are in such dire circumstances. I see that they are cared for during the lean times.” He disliked feeling the need to defend himself but found he could not let the statement remain unsaid.
“You are particularly kind, then.” She wound the torn cloth around his shoulder, binding it tightly. “Many are not, and those in the village are unsupported. There was a young widow who gave away her four children a few years ago—to work for others for free, rather than as paid servants—because she could not feed them. They are fed and clothed now, so I cannot blame her. Yet I would have helped if I could.
“There are many who sit in London, in their finery and with their fancy brandy, visiting Parliament each day where they have a chance to make a difference.” She breathed deep, then continued. “They think nothing of those who are less fortunate.”
“I see.” Perhaps Wulf might have been included among such company. He championed his own causes, but he had not often considered the circumstances of the poor. He doubted he would ever neglect the subject again. “Still, there are other, legitimate methods to see the poor are cared for. Pamphlets, treatises, even laws. Look to those who have made a difference before, making people think with their words. Skulking around at night and engaging in highway robbery is not necessarily the best method to support your cause.”
“My method is practical, at least, and immediate.” Annoyance flashed over her face. “Those I steal from possess more than enough money, and usually spend it on drink or gambling or women. Jewelry and fashionable gowns. New curtains for a drawing room, simply for the sake of new curtains.” She tied the ends of the fabric and stepped back, examined her work.
“You rob those with excess and give to those in need.” Fascinated, Wulf cocked his head, considered her firm expression. “And when you shoot your prey, you tend to his injuries.”
“I suppose I do.” Her lips slowly curved with resigned humor, softening the features that had hardened and making him want to kiss her as much as her irritation had.
He was certain there was not another woman in all of England quite like this one.
“You are an extraordinary woman.”
She laughed at that. Threw back her head and laughed, long and loud. “You would not think so if we were anywhere but here, in this cabin.”
“I think I would.” Which brought another question to his mind. “Would I meet you somewhere else?”
“No.” Though her smile remained and her gaze was steady, the word was flat. He had heard similar tones in the secret hiding places of France and Belgium.
“Why do I think you are lying?” he asked softly.
“Because I am a thief.”
“True.”
“I am also a passable surgeon.” She grinned at him, eyes snapping once more with good humor. Stepping close, this time between his legs, she adjusted the binding on his arm with gentle hands. “You are quite cleaned up.”
“Thank you, though it seems strange to say, as it was you who shot me.”
Though she had no need to remain in front of him, she stayed, her thighs brushing against his. No petticoats and skirts between his skin and hers, only buckskin and wool. Wide, beautiful eyes met his, held. Still, she did not move away.
Heat speared through him, lust ground at his control. Her body called him. The nip at the waist of her waistcoat, the flare at her hips, the soft rounding of her belly. So many gorgeous lines and curves to follow. Unable to keep himself from touching, Wulf reached out with his good hand, set his fingers lightly on her waist.
Her breathing quickened, and her eyes went dark.
“Now that your injury is tended, what shall we do?” A feline smile moved across her face. “Games, perhaps?”
CHAPTER 6
BEA SET her lips to his, took and tasted, simply because she wanted to. Caution be damned. The iron kettle on the floor was ignored, the shirt he’d discarded only a whisper in her mind.
Instead, the heat of him thrilled. The scent of him made her yearn.
And his mouth. It gave sweetly and still greedily consumed. He tasted of winter. Of lust. Of need. She wanted more before she even understood the want. Every inch of her body was lit with fire as brilliant and hot as the flame in the hearth.
Wulf’s face tipped up toward hers. The hand at her waist curled around to her back, drew her closer as his injured arm rose. A warm, rough palm pressed against her cheek, his thumb feathering across her skin.
His strong thighs came together, holding her in place but not trapping her. Relishing the hard muscle against her softer curves, she let the sensation settle into her body, let it fuel her mouth. She moved her tongue over his lips, then pressed inside to tease.
Every movement simmered in her blood.
“Madame Highwayman,” Wulf murmured. “Your mouth is more dangerous than your pistols.”
In one strong, fluid move, he rose to his full height, the expanse of his chest filling her vision.
She had to touch.
His skin was smooth and hot. Muscle rippled beneath her fingers, the heat of his skin warming her cold fingertips. Though she felt the strain of his control, he waited. Daring, tempting, and releasing her all at once.
“Just how much do you want to play?” The rumble of his deep voice vibrated against her palm. “How far do you intend to go?”
“I don’t know yet.” But she knew how far she wanted to go.
“Decide.” The tone of his voice lowered as he stepped closer, and she dropped her hand.
He was barely an inch away. She wanted to touch again. More. Drawing her gaze upward, she let it linger on his mouth. Considered just what to do. Then two strong, callused palms cupped her face. Firm, hot lips bent to hers. Claimed.
His mouth sent lightning straight to her toes. Wrangled so much need and brought it to the surface. She could not stop her hands from roaming toward his shoulders, curving them around his neck. Settled her fingers in thick strands of blond hair.
Tugged a little. Just because.
His low, needy growl followed, and his mouth nipped once in response.
Suddenly she could not touch enough of him. Her hands roamed over his skin, down the muscled torso to grip his waist. The buttons of the fall-front breeches were just there, so she flicked them open. The breeches slipped to the floor to reveal—everything.
Long torso, strong thighs, and a body more than ready for her. She took him in her hand, reveled in the soft skin and hard strength.
“It is to my benefit you were only half-clothed,” she murmured.
“And mine.” Wulf’s hands circled her waist, cupped her bottom and drew her close.
Bea abandoned her grip and pressed against him, the length of his arousal hard against her belly. She wanted him inside her, yet wanted this moment—this night—to last so much longer.
Wickedly, she grinned up into that lean, handsome face. “I have decided, Highrow. Making love is exactly what I will be doing tonight.”
APPROVAL ROARED THROUGH HIM.
He had wanted more of her than just a few kisses, a few touches. Had struggled against the fierce demand for more. He would have only gone as far as she would have allowed, but he was ridiculously satisfied by her choice.
He may not have survived otherwise.
Fueled by the haze of lust rushing through his blood, Wulf slanted his mouth over hers, continued to press that warm, feminine body against his. But it wasn’t enough to drown in the scent of her, the taste of her mouth.
He had to touch.
Running his hands over rounded hips, over the soft waist, he aimed for the buttons on her waistcoat. Quickly unfastened the tiny fabric-covered discs. She shrugged out of it herself, in between feathering kisses over his jaw. The nibbling touches pulled a growl from him and he began to untuck her shirt before the coat had even dropped to the floor.
White cotton followed dark wool a moment later, and she quickly removed the simple shift beneath her shirt, then her breeches—until she was standing naked before him. Gold and pink in the firelight, gaze fixed on his and her full mouth lifting with wicked invitation.
The body hidden beneath the men’s clothing was alluringly feminine. Heavy breasts, soft thighs. Dangerously curved and rounded. This was no slender willow, but a magnificent, lush woman.
Woman.
She might be the embodiment of the word.
Gorgeously confidant, she prowled across the room to one of the trunks. He had the pleasure of watching her round bottom as she retrieved a pile of blankets. She quickly spread one, then another, on the floor before the hearth. The remainder she laid aside, neatly piled for future use.
Neither of them was cold now.
“Come.” Passion swirled in the word, seemed to rise from her skin as she held out a hand for him.
Wulf accepted, wanting his hands on every inch of her body. She drew him down to the blanket, then ranged herself over it. Stretched her arms over her head and let him look his fill at a body he had not known he would crave so deeply.
He did. Crave her. Want her. Need her, as he needed his next breath. Everything he knew had tumbled away with the whirlwinds of snow, leaving only this passionate, powerfully sensual woman.
He could not quite regulate his breath, or control the lust pounding through him. He slid his hands over her body, listened to her purrs of approval. He took one breast in his mouth, tugged lightly at her nipple, and reveled in the tremble of her thighs even as she gripped his hair.
So responsive, so uninhibited. A man could lose himself in her passion.
He forgot everything beyond the circle of firelight, beyond the velvet of her skin, the heat that gripped him when he entered her. Her sigh of welcome shook his soul, her soft limbs drawing him in until he did not know where he was—except with her.
When his mind whirled like the storm outside and his blood burned like the fire indoors, he allowed himself to be lost in her.
CHAPTER 7
THE WOOD BLAZED ONCE MORE as Wulf added fuel and stirred the coals back to life. Bea snuggled into the blankets he’d covered her with and let her gaze roam over his naked body. He was almost too exquisite to look at. Hard, lean, muscled. He had been a solder—a spy—and it showed still, even if he had been home for a few years. Certainly, he did not appear to be a duke.
But then, he was not supposed to be, until fate had played its hand.
“Do you miss your brother?” Bea wished she had not spoken the words as soon as they tumbled from her lips. The question was unpardonably rude, the answer entirely too private.
But he was staring at her over his shoulder, beautifully naked and carefully tending the fire. Everything about him had stilled, and she wondered if he had forgotten his important bits were not far from the flames.
“You know of my brother?” He set the poker aside and drew away from the hearth. Crawling over the pile of blankets and Bea herself, he settled himself beneath the covers and drew her close, leaving her near the warmth and his back to the cold room.
She resisted for a moment, but it was too pleasant to ease against his frame. To accept the heat of his body, the way his chest fit against her back. Watching the flames, aware of Wulf just behind her and doing the same, she said carefully, “I know you are not the firstborn.”
Crackling flames filled the silence.
“I am sorry, Highrow. I should not have asked.” Guilt rippled through her satiated body. “Please forget I did so.”
“No. It is a good question, and I do not shy away from the truth.” He dropped a kiss onto her bared shoulder, as if he had done such a thing a thousand times before. “I miss my brother very much, though not due to anything related to the dukedom. I simply miss my brother.”
Everything in her sighed with sympathy. Poor Wulf.
“You were close.”
“Very, but I rarely took the opportunity to return home once I became a spy. I had found a purpose in serving my country and pursued it relentlessly.” The arm around her waist tightened, drawing her closer still to his hard, heated body. “He was gone just a few years later. I received word it was a fever of some kind.”
“And so, you became the duke.” Bea stared into the flames, trying to imagine such a moment. She loved her brother, though she did not always like him. Still, if he were gone, she would be mired in grief.
“And so, I became the duke.” There was no bitterness in his voice. Instead, a deep sorrow coated his words. “My brother loved the land, the family. The title was at risk, and the history that went with it. I came home—to honor him. The family.”
“You gave up espionage,” she murmured.
“Family is more important.” The hand circling around her waist drifted up to cup her breast. Easily, once again as if he had done so a thousand times before. But it was both the first time and the last, so Bea let herself enjoy the sensation of his callused hands on her skin. “Now Napoleon’s missives have been exchanged for the grain yield.”
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
“I miss my brother more.” His fingers toyed with her nipple, each touch sending sparks through her. “Nor does it matter any longer. That life is gone. Forgotten.”
“Nothing is ever forgotten. It is only behind you.” Shifting within the circle of his arms, Bea turned to face him. Stared hard into those deep blue eyes. “Sometimes, you need to look behind you to determine where you are going.”
“A philosophical highwayman.” In the shadowed half-light, his face might have been carved from stone. Rough and strong, and blessed by the pagan gods.
“I am a highwayman of many parts.” She pressed her lips to his. Softly, because she felt the hurt that still reverberated through his body. “You did what was right, coming home. You will continue to do what is right as the Duke of Highrow. Your brother would be proud.”
“I hope so.” He nibbled at the corner of her mouth, sending little shivers right down to her toes. “The wind has died down.”
She had forgotten the snowstorm and the world beyond the warm cottage. It seemed as if, for a brief time, nothing existed outside the circle of golden firelight. Only the two of them, warm and naked and cocooned in blankets.
But morning would come, and with it a return to Lady Beatrice Falk, a spinster in her twenty-seventh year, and the commanding Duke of Highrow.
There would not be another man like him in her life.
No lover before, no lover after, could compare to Wulf.
“Dawn is only a few hours away,” she whispered, cupping his cheek so the rough stubble brushed against the palm of her hand. “Will you make love to me again? Once more before the night is over?”
He did not answer her. Instead, he dipped his mouth to hers. Hot and firm and skilled, he seized the control she’d had only a while earlier. Heat swirled in her belly, clogged her lungs, as she ran her hands over his chest.
Mouth never leaving hers, Wulf continued to play with her tongue—teasing, tasting—as one hand drifted below to caress her hip, her bottom.
But his gaze had shuttered. He was different now, as though he’d reined himself in. From her body, from their conversations. She understood that. Knew he had lost himself the first time—and knew as if it had been she just how terrifying that was. Control was as necessary as breathing or eating.
Could she give it to him? She did not know if she wanted to.
When he trailed his mouth between her breasts, she sighed. Let the licks and nips and kisses stir her desire. Sliding her hands upwards, she gripped the edge of the blanket and bared herself to him. He settled between her thighs, created magic with his fingers and mouth.
She wanted to stop him, to make him bend to her will instead of being lost in the need pulsing between them. In his caresses. In the pounding of her heart and the singing of her skin. Instead, Bea let his mouth and hands draw her up, bring her to pleasure, and lay her down again.
She opened her arms as she had before, wanting to bring him close to her again. Wulf shifted above her, arms braced on either side. His eyes, so deeply blue they held her captive, stared into hers.
“Who are you?” he whispered. “I want more of you. I don’t want tomorrow to be the end.”
“No one.” A part of her soul broke away, the pain of it slicing through her. There was nothing for them, whatever she might want. “There is only tonight, Wulf. That is all.”
His body was poised just at the entrance of hers. Hot, heavy. He held himself still, waiting. Thinking. Oh yes, he was thinking. And wanting.
“It is not enough.” He pressed his lips to hers and thrust into her, the muscles in his arms and shoulders shifting beneath his skin.
“Only tonight,” she repeated. Clamping her legs around his waist, she swung them around until she straddled him. Took him into her and rode him. “There is only tonight. We will make every moment count.”
CHAPTER 8
THE THICK BLANKETS still enveloped him, but Wulf was alone in that warm soft wool. Morning light crept through the cottage windows, infusing the room with a white glow. The fire had died to embers, and the air had cooled enough he could see his breath.
Through the curling vapor, he saw her clothing was missing. The boots she’d set by the fire had disappeared.
The highwayman was gone. Without a goodbye, without a word.
Damnation! At the very least, she could have woken him. Instead, she’d stolen away in the dark.
Wulf shucked off the coverlet and rose into the chilled air to dress. Cursing again as the cold fabric touched his skin, he pulled on his breeches, then what was left of his tattered shirt. They had agreed to nothing, but the woman could have afforded him common courtesy at least and said goodbye.
Intent on leaving the cottage prepared for some other stranded traveler—or highwayman—he folded the blankets and replaced them in the trunk. She had already stacked the kettle on the shelf with its mates, so there was little to tidy. He spread the embers in the hearth and strode toward the door.
Setting his hand on the latch, he turned for one final look at the room. The simple table and chairs. The wide hearth. He would always remember her lying naked on the blankets, beautifully curved, her nipples a dusky pink.
That vision would be forever seared into his mind.
Part of him understood they should mean nothing to each other beyond shared passion. She was clearly a woman who went her own way. A highwayman, while he was a duke. They would not meet again, and that was for the best.
Bugger that. He wanted more than one night. Wanted more from her.
He opened the door to the cottage, the chill of the morning bolstering his sudden fury instead of cooling it. He would find her—find her, explain that one night was not enough, and make love to her again. Then once more.
Because she had made him think, made him feel. Made him want more deeply than he’d ever wanted.
She was his highwayman. For good or ill, and for how long, he did not know—but at least for a little while, they would belong to each other.
Assuming he could find her.
Pulling the door shut with a snap, he studied the clearing in front of the cottage. White blanketed everything, bringing with it a still winter silence. Small boot prints disturbed the smooth surface of the snow, pointing toward the shed. A little farther beyond, horse tracks arrowed toward the north. Toward the forest path, as far as he knew.
He followed the tracks, each step in the ankle-deep snow increasing his discontent as the outside world crept back in. His stallion had disappeared, his shoulder was aching again, and his cursed highwayman had left him stranded. He did not know precisely how far he was from his own estate, nor where the nearest tenant or villager’s cottage might be.
Looking down at the horse tracks, he continued to follow them.
At least he knew where she was, and when he found her, he would wring the neck of that discourteous, beautiful, irritating, clever, sensual—
A wagon appeared on the path, bringing with it creaking wood and the muffled sound of hooves. A sway-backed mule led the weather-worn wood vehicle, its driver wizened and hunched against the cold—all three of them might be a century old.
“Yer Grace!” The driver reined in the mule, raised a hand, and wheezed, “I’m ‘ere to get yer!”
“Is that so?” Wulf eyed the piles of fresh hay in the wagon bed, then the wrinkled face, red with cold. Surely the man was one foot in the grave and did not deserve to be out on a morning like this.
“The ‘onest ‘ighwayman sent me, Yer Grace. I’m to take yer home on me way to find work.”
“I see. Thank you, then, sir.” At least the blasted woman hadn’t abandoned him entirely, though her gesture did not even his temper. “I would prefer to return to Falk Manor. Would you be so kind as to see me there?”
“’Spose.” A frowned creased the old man’s face. “I was going t’other way to pick up some work, but the ‘ighwayman said as ‘ow I ought to git you, and the jobs aren’t plentiful anyhow. So, work can wait.” He jerked his head toward the back of the wagon. “I’ve put out fresh hay.”
“That is kind of you.” Favoring his aching shoulder, Wulf pulled himself into the wagon and braced for the jolting ride. Even as he did so, he noted patches on the jacket draped over the hunched, frail shoulders in driver’s seat. Surely the threadbare garment would not be warm enough for this bitter cold.
Yet the man was looking for work, despite shoulders bent with age.
Wulf thought of the Honest Highwayman’s words the night before, of the poor and the old and infirm she provided for. Was this man one of Wulf’s own tenants? He did not know, and could not say he would have paid attention before. He would not have looked. Really looked.
That shamed him, though he doubted he would ever fail to notice those around him again.
“My good sir,” he said, turning in the wagon and leaning against the planked wall. “Might I ask how long you have been acquainted with the Honest Highwayman?”
“Fer some time.” The driver clucked to the mule and did not turn around. “I came to git yer, because I was asked. I won’t say no more, for the ‘ighwayman ‘as done well by me.”
Wulf had thought as much. The ancient man was one of the recipients of her thievery, and from the look of his frail frame, he could use it. “You are looking for work, you said?”
“Aye.” The word carried a cautious tone. “Cutting ice, dragging it to the ice houses. The big families will want it come summer.”
“Hm. Well, I’ve a need for another man in my stables, if he’s good with animals and vehicles. Light repair to wheels and such, a bit of polish to the carriage lamps, currying the horses.” He rubbed at his chin, as if he wasn’t thinking about that frail body hauling huge blocks of ice through the winter cold. “If you’ve the interest.”
“Could be.” The man clucked to the mule again, the sound inattentive rather than meaningful. “In the stables, you say?”
“Yes.” He waited as the man glanced over his shoulder, consideration moving over weathered features. “Just present yourself at the rear door of Highrow Place if you’ve a mind.”
The sound the aged driver made as they passed beneath the gate to Falk Manor was part grunt, part assent. Wulf accepted that as noncommittal, but noted he needed to speak with the head groom about finding a place for another set of hands should the offer be accepted.
The wagon trundled to a stop in front of Falk Manor’s double doors, and the butler quickly opened them. Eyes wide, he examined the rough vehicle and the less-than-respectable appearance of both its occupants.
“Your Grace!” The butler called out as Wulf jumped from the wagon to stride up the front steps. “Has there been an accident? Are you injured?”
“I was delayed by a highwayman last evening and my horse bolted.” He knew he sounded irritated and gruff, and smoothed his tone. “If I might seek assistance?”
“Of course, Your Grace.” The butler glanced behind him as the lord of Falk Manor staggered across the parquet floor of the entryway, muttering something unintelligible “His lordship,” the butler murmured, “would be willing to offer whatever assistance you require.”
“Thank you.” Wulf eyed his host of the evening before.
The man still reeled from the effects of brandy and smelled like a perfumery. He appeared to have been sleeping, as his gaze was heavy-lidded and vague, and there were crease lines across his cheek.
“Highrow.” The earl squinted one eye and focused on Wulf. “Are you back? If so, ‘tis too late. My damned sister has rousted the lot of us, and the enjoyment is over. Everyone is off to bed.”
“I am sorry to hear that.” Not, of course, that he was. The fewer guests he had to address, the better. Still, he decided to avoid mention of the Honest Highwayman altogether to the earl. “I was forced to shelter in the woods overnight. I thought perhaps I might impose upon you to arrange conveyance to Highrow Place.”
“’Course. Stewart?” The earl turned to the butler, waved vaguely in the air.
“I will send word to the stables to arrange a carriage.” Stewart bowed to Wulf and spared his lordship not a glance—the butler was clearly accustomed to taking the reins of responsibility from his employer. “In the interim, I shall procure a room for you, where you might refresh yourself and perhaps break your fast.”
“That would be most appreciated.” He ignored the earl as much as the butler had, which was just as well. His still-drunk host was listing sideways as he peered into the empty snifter in his hand.
“Your Grace,” Stewart gestured toward the stairs leading to the upper floors. “If you would follow me—”
“Bloody hell!” Filled with utter fury, the feminine shout rang under the high, painted ceiling of the entry and echoed long enough that the subsequent silence became ominous.
To a man, the occupants of the hall hunched their shoulders against that most terrifying thing—a woman’s anger—and turned toward the sound.
CHAPTER 9
THE LADY STRODE briskly through the sliding doors of the front drawing room, heels issuing a staccato beat on the polished parquet. Green flowers dotted her muslin gown, shifting over her skirts as if they marched along with as her temper.
“Did my brother ruin the drawing room rug? Truly? Mother took great care in bringing that from India ages ago. She would be heartbroken. There are burns. Burns!” The lady opened her arms wide, not in supplication or explanation, but as if to encompass the enormity of the transgression. A dusty paste bird nested in wigged curls just as the creature might have done during the woman’s come out a decade earlier. “The rug is not meant for the ends of cheroots. Or brandy. There is an extensive spill—Oh.”
She stopped, blinked at Wulf through round, wire-rimmed spectacles. Her skirts floated to rest around her slippers, the embroidered flowers ending their patrol.
“My lady.” He nodded in greeting, wincing because he should have addressed her as ‘Lady Christian Name’, but he could not remember her Christian name. He gestured to the wrinkled greatcoat, his bared head. “My apologies as to my appearance.”
“Of course.” A quick nod of her head, a flush of cheeks. “Your Grace.”
He did remember the girl—woman now—from his childhood. He had seen her a handful of times since then, hovering at the fringes of her brother’s house parties. Awkward in conversation but sweet in nature.
Desperately ready to wash, eat—and dear Lord, to sleep on a bed—Wulf turned back toward the butler. Stopped.
Cinnamon and woodsmoke.
He looked back, certain he was wrong. Sunlight reached beyond the lady’s lenses, shining on eyes not quite green, not quite brown. Eyes he had not expected to see again. Not here, not so soon.
It was she.
His lover. His highwayman.
Everything in his body heated, hardened, flamed. He did not need to search her face for the truth. Did not need to think about it.
He simply knew. He’d learned each burst of green amid the warm brown of her eyes the night before, how the firelight played on them. They were different now in the bright sunlight and behind wire rims, but no less beautiful. More so.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, traced the full shape. Oh, yes, he knew those curves. Quite well. Other curves were hidden by the muslin gown, which sagged rather than clung, but he knew the contours of her lips.
The Honest Highwayman had been hiding in plain sight—behind ugly spectacles and elaborate, unfashionable wigs—but in plain sight nonetheless.
“If you would be so kind, my lady, I should like to speak with you in the drawing room.” He paused, pinned her with his gaze. “About the circumstances surrounding last night, of course.”
He had found her now.
She would not escape again.
“THERE IS NO NEED.” Bea coughed, sputtered.
“I insist, my lady.” Wulf’s dangerous tone shivered through her veins, though she tried to quell the rising panic that accompanied it.
Surely, he did not recognize her. No one ever suspected an aging spinster could possibly be the Honest Highwayman. Yet his eyes held cool steel—not the warm blue of the passionate lover she’d left sleeping at dawn.
“I don’t—”
“Unless, of course, you would prefer to discuss various nighttime activities here in the hall?” His voice rumbled lowered, warning Bea just how precarious her position was.
She looked toward her brother, already lurching up the steps to his bedchamber, then toward the butler who watched with guarded eyes. She could not see a choice.
“Very well, then.” Wulf knew her secret—but she’d be damned if he held the reins for this particular reunion. Coolly, angling her head, she murmured, “Please join me in the drawing room, Your Grace.”
Turning on her heel, Bea led him toward the chamber. She could feel his knowledge of her identity—her body—boring into her spine. If a few weeks had passed before they met again, he would not have identified her, and all would have been well. The night would have been nothing but a memory.
Damn him for arriving at Falk Manor instead of returning home.
Damn, damn, damn.
Bea was unprepared to meet him so soon in her spinster garb, had barely been able to set the night from her mind to attend to her other responsibilities. Just the sight of that wicked face and broad shoulders—knowing what was under the greatcoat—had her pulse scrambling.
The drawing room doors snapped shut before she was more than a few feet into the room. Bea swung around, prepared to argue, to defend, to lie.
And was swept up. By his scent, by his arms, by his mouth. Hungry and hot, his lips slanted over hers. Bea met his mouth with the same hunger, because the want had been hiding beneath the surface of her skin. Waiting to surge through her blood and pound into her soul. Gripping his shoulders, she leaned into the kiss, into him, and reveled in the hard body pressed against hers.
Without releasing her, he drew back and looked at her. Just looked. Beyond the spectacles, beyond the blasted wig.
“You are an extraordinary woman.” He’d said the same words before, in those moments trapped between snowstorm and firelight. “Hello, my Honorable Highwayman.”
“I suppose the jig is up.” It stung her pride to be discovered, yet there was relief in sharing the secret. Even for a few moments. “Will you turn me over to the magistrate?”
“I’m considering it.” His mouth came back to hers, tasted and took and gave in the most delicious way. “If you ever leave my bed again without waking me to say goodbye, I most certainly will.”
“I beg your pardon?” Bea drew back, looked hard into those dark blue eyes.
“You don’t think for one minute that we are done, do you? I don’t want last night to be the end.” Gently, he reached for her spectacles, removed them. “Do you need these?”
“Not at all.” There was no point in more lies, so she took the spectacles and slipped them into the pocket of her gown. “They are only glass.”
“The wig?” He flicked a finger at the dull brown curl dangling over her left ear.
“Useful.” Bea tugged at the wig, pulling at pins and scattering them about. She dropped the monstrosity of hair and paste and powder onto the ruined rug, then shook out her cropped natural locks. Reveled in the release of the weight, as she always did.
“There you are.” He framed her face with his large hands, studied it. “You are more beautiful in the daylight than you were in the firelight.”
“Oh, Wulf, that is nonsense.” But it delighted her nonetheless.
“It is true. No, the London dandies would not cater to you, and perhaps you would not have your pick of the marriageable gentlemen—”
“Oh, well,” she said dryly. “That’s flattering.”
“Wait.” He laughed and slid his arms around to circle her waist. “You don’t need the dandies and the gowns and jewels to be beautiful, which is what they judge beauty by.”
“No?” She should not be turning into a puddle with such words, but she was.
“You are beautiful because of something else altogether.” His mouth pressed against hers, soft and sweet. “Your heart.”
Damn him again. Her knees went weak.
“Wulfric Standover, you are a rogue.” At his bland expression, she added, “A sentimental one, but a rogue nonetheless. Which you know.”
“I know nothing.”
“That line belongs to the highwayman of our little scene.”
“So it does.” He traced her mouth with a finger, then the edge of her jaw. That finger slid down the neck to play with her collarbone. “Might I have the pleasure of your name now?”
“Beatrice.” She paused, because it mattered that he used the name she had given to herself. “Bea.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you again.” As he had in the cottage, Wulf raised her hand to his lips. The calluses of his fingers were no less exciting, the touch of his mouth no less thrilling. “Bea.”
Her body shuddered and yearned, just as it had then. Pressing herself against his wide chest, Bea raised her mouth for a kiss. His lips molded to hers, so ready to provide just what she wanted.
“The butler is likely wondering what is happening behind the closed doors,” she murmured against his mouth. “My brother is gone to bed, of course, not that he would notice or care, particularly.”
“I would say ‘let them wonder,’ but you have a reputation to maintain.” He drew back, raised one blond, wicked brow. “Of sorts.”
“If a spinster of twenty-seven cannot take a lover, then the world is a dreary place indeed.” Bea pursed her lips. “Now that you know who I am, I’m quite inclined. It would be a novel experience to make love with a man who knows both the spinster and the highwayman.”
“What if I choose not to settle for just a lover?” Even as he spoke the words, Wulf appeared as shocked as Bea felt. Then his shock smoothed away and determination replaced it. “What if I want more?”
More than lovers? What was there? Bea could only see marriage, and she was not at all certain she wanted to be under someone else’s control in such a way.
“I may not have more to give, Wulf.” In fact, she was certain of it.
“With a heart as deep as yours, I know you do.” He swung her back into his arms. Strong, kind arms that did not restrain her. They only held her carefully, as if avoiding hurt or caging, before he claimed her lips for a deep kiss. “It is not a discussion for today, however. Today I only ask for a bath, breakfast, a decent bed—with you in it—and tomorrow we shall see what we see.”
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow might be filled with lovemaking and laughter, if Wulf was there. With conversation that did not involve gambling and brandy. With something deeper, if she could be open to it.
She might be.
“Today we shall see to breakfast and beds and—” she grinned wickedly at him. “Loving.”
“I am ready for that, as these moments in the proper drawing room are a torture. I am already seeing your gorgeous body on a soft bed, where I can love my highwayman properly.” He drew her close, set his lips to the curve of her neck. “Tomorrow and the next day, then, and we shall see to the rest.”
Bea could not fault that logic, so she settled into the circle of his arms and let Wulf kiss her senseless.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Despite being a native Michigander, Alyssa Alexander is pretty certain she belongs somewhere sunny. And tropical. Where drinks are served with little paper umbrellas.
Until she moves to those white sandy beaches, she survives the cold Michigan winters by penning romance novels that always include a bit of adventure. Her books have been translated into multiple languages, received Top Picks from RT, Publisher Weekly Starred Reviews, and nominated for RT Best First Historical and the Best First Book RITA®. She has been called a “talented newcomer” and “a rising star you won’t want to miss.”
Alyssa lives with her own set of heroes, aka an ever-patient husband who doesn’t mind using a laundry basket for a closet, and a small boy who wears a knight in a shining armor costume for such tasks as scrubbing potatoes.
Interested in previous titles? Visit http://www.alyssa-alexander.com/books/.
Or you can follow Alyssa’s cooking misadventures and writing life at all the usual places, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. No guarantees what you’ll find!
THE DIFFERENCE ONE DUKE MAKES
FEBRUARY
ELIZABETH ESSEX
PREFACE
Miss Penelope Pease is what every bright young thing never wants to be—ruined, thanks to an ill-conceived flirtation with the late Duke of Warwick. But ruined suits the new duke, his brother, Commander Marcus Beecham just fine—because after a career in the Royal Navy, he’s rather ruined himself. All it takes is one frosty night for two imperfect people to make the perfect February valentine.
CHAPTER 1
London, February 1816
COMMANDER MARCUS BEECHAM turned his face into the bitter wind on the River Thames, closed his eyes and thought of England. Of easy living, lazy summer afternoons in the country, with picnics and long rides across the rolling hills. Witty conversations with charming girls who gazed at him with—
No. It was impossible. After more than a decade at sea, he doubted he could even hold a conversation with a girl.
And yet here he was, back in the damp land of his birth. His family had insisted, having written that he must resign his commission in the Royal Navy and abandon the career to which he had sacrificed ten long, hard years—and very nearly his life.
Marcus would just have to show his family that he was well now, if not entirely whole. That he was sound of mind and judgment, no matter his injuries. That he was as fully capable as any officer in the fleet—more so, for he knew the cost of battle better than most men.
He also knew his duty, which was the only reason he had left his ship to return to a city he disliked with an intensity that rivaled his odium for his callous, authoritative older brother, Caius, Duke of Warwick.
A sentimental homecoming, it would not be, but a short one, Marcus hoped. Caius could not want him to stay long in London, either.
Ahead, a figure hailed his captain’s gig from the Hungerford Stairs. Marcus recognized an older version of Hodges, his brother’s stern-faced butler, extending his arthritic hand as if he would assist Marcus out of the boat. “Welcome home, Your Grace.”
The sudden dread in his chest weighed him down like a cannonball in a canvas shroud. Marcus had to use his good arm to push himself to his feet in the boat. To meet the man’s eyes. To make sure what he had heard was no mistake. “Your Grace?”
There had been no news in the letter that had reached him off Recife. No hint that he was no longer the spare. Nothing in the short, formal lines insisting upon his return that his brother, the heir—the bloody Duke of Warwick—had finally done the world a favor and been put to bed with a shovel. Or a bullet between his eyes.
“Indeed, Your Grace,” Hodges bowed his head in solemn confirmation.
The boat tipped beneath Marcus’s feet. Shock made his body heavy and his brain stupid. “Dead?” Caius had always seemed invincible—a reckless force of nature who had inherited his dukedom young and learned early to aggressively insist upon having his way.
“How?” Caius was little more than a year older than Marcus—a man in the prime of his life. A man safe ashore, who might be expected to live a far less hazardous life than Marcus, or any of his Royal Navy brethren, certainly had. “Accident? Misadventure? Revenge?” Caius had always done as he pleased. Perhaps he had done as he pleased with someone else’s wife?
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Your Grace.” Hodges still held out his hand to help Marcus ashore. As if he thought Marcus so frail that he needed an arthritic old man’s help on the water-slick steps.
There was nothing for it, of course. With one well-aimed shot across his bow, Marcus was being made to quite literally give up his ship.
And so, he would.
Because Commander Marcus Beecham knew his duty. He planted his sea boots ashore and became a duke.
Damned if it wasn’t one hell of an unexpected demotion.
THE PALATIAL TOWNHOUSE on Grosvenor Street was as it had always been: stone-faced, curtained and immaculate, with not so much as a weed daring to poke through the clean-swept pavement. Inside was the same—nothing out of place, everything as unchanged and preserved as if it had been under glass for ten long years.
His mother, whom he had not seen since he was a raw boy of ten and four, barely looked at him. “Oh, Marcus, there you are.”
As if he had come from the next room and not half a world away. “Mother.”
“I prefer Mama—so much more elegant.” She chanced only a glancing look at Marcus, as if she were afraid to look at her own child. As if she couldn’t bear the sight of him.
Ten years away and he had become a hardened man—two minutes back in her presence and he was already as surly and uncomfortable in his own skin as the adolescent boy he had been when he left. More so.
The ache where his left arm used to be wasn’t helping his mood.
Marcus took a deep breath and resolved to be himself. “Well, Mama, I reckon what prompted you to send for me was that Caius has died.”
“Don’t say died.” The teacup in her hand trembled ever so slightly. “I prefer passed away.”
“I prefer no double speak.” His decade of service had given him a taste for simplicity and the character for honesty. “When did Caius die, and how?”
“Months ago. It’s taken you forever to get here.” The dowager duchess frowned into her teacup, as if she were put out at him for not being more conveniently located than the coast of Brazil. “You’re so awfully out of fashion with that ill-kempt beard and antiquated clubbed hair.”
No mention of what else about him that was more permanently altered.
Marcus worked to keep the slow match of his temper dampened. “Fashion doesn’t matter at sea, Mama.”
“Well, now that you’re finally here, you can see to such things. Martins is secretary.” She waved her wrist in the vague direction of the library, where this secretary was presumably to be found. “He can sort you out and do…anything you might need done for you.”
As if his missing arm made him incapable of doing anything for himself. “I can still write a bank draft, if that’s your worry.”
Her teacup shook enough to splash hot pekoe into the saucer. “We’ll have to make an effort right away,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard him, “if we’re to have any luck a’tall before the Season is in full swing.”
“Any luck at what?” His mind was already busy toting up a long list of questions for this as-yet-unseen secretary—Caius had never been an attentive, dutiful sort of fellow to begin with, but if the estates had been left to their own devices for months, there was doubtless much work to be done. “Are you done in? Did Caius bankrupt the estate before going toes up?”
“Marcus!” His mother’s tone was affronted, but she finally turned to face him, and meet his eyes. “Any luck at doing what I failed to do for your dear brother—finding you a respectable wife.”
CHAPTER 2
MARCUS SENSIBLY ABANDONED LONDON, making all sail directly for Warwickshire, settling quietly into the ducal seat of Warwick Court, and setting his mind to learning his newfound ducal duties. But not even his removal to the country could stop Society’s mamas, who waged a battle as direct and brutal as Admiral Nelson ever had—the invitations for country card parties, musical evenings, and balls immediately arrived with the relentless regularity of mortar rounds from a shore bombardment.
As little as he liked it, Marcus was a man too used to duty to shirk from responsibility, even in such aggrieved circumstances. He silently cursed his fate and chose a winter ball at nearby Oakley Hall as the lesser of all the evils on offer, on the presumption that he could not be required to dance.
Yet after only a few minutes of standing awkwardly by the side of the dance floor, he regretted his decision. He’d be damned if he would spend another strangled breath—the spacious ballroom was somehow as sweltering as the horse latitudes even in February—making idle conversation. And by conversation, he meant gossip. He did not care to hear who was sleeping with whom—especially as he was bloody well not sleeping with anyone at the moment.
But people—and by people, he meant the wide-eyed, stammering young things the local mamas kept foisting upon him—could not seem to speak of anything more substantive. That was if they could bring themselves to speak at all. Most of them just stood there, quivering in their virginal white muslin as if they feared his empty sleeve might jump out and grab them.
Marcus had had enough of being stared at from behind fans—nothing made his missing arm ache like feeling useless. But just because he was a fish well out of seawater didn’t mean he had to flop ignominiously about the deck. He was now the bloody Duke of Warwick—he could do as he damn well pleased. And what he pleased was to find a snug harbor to moor up in and have—as his naval steward used to say say—a bit of a wet.
He found the quiet library with a mercifully full decanter of brandy and poured himself a heavy measure before cracking the window to let in some fresh air. He settled comfortably into a wing-backed armchair by the hearth and was contemplating which of his sins had got him condemned to such a purgatory, when the sound of the library door latching shut made him sit up and take notice.
Across the room, a tiny, dark-haired young woman in claret-colored velvet was attempting to shove a large chest of drawers across the door.
He had to ask, even though he could plainly see the answer. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The young lady in question let out an oath so old, so Anglo-Saxon and so familiar that Marcus feared he must have misheard her, for he had never heard it uttered anywhere but between the decks of a ship.
Fuck him indeed.
But then she said, “Oh, good Lord. Beech? Is that you behind that beard?”
Everything within him eased. “It is.” Only one female of his acquaintance had ever called him Beech—Miss Penelope Pease, daughter of his host for the evening, Sir Harold Pease. And Marcus, in his oh-so-tedious and unimaginative youth, had called her, “Pease Porridge?”
“Dear Beech!” She came forward with her hand extended, all astonished happiness. “What an unexpected pleasure! If you aren’t a welcome sight for sore eyes.”
And here he had been thinking that he was a sore sight for her welcome blue eyes. Devil take him, but she had grown into a beautiful young woman, whose hand he gladly took. She was the first real human contact he’d had since he'd returned—he felt the warmth of her grasp all the way from his fingertips to places better left unmentioned. “Why Pease Porridge Hot—how is it possible you are no longer ten and three years old?”
Her smile lit up her heart-shaped face, all mischievous, laughing angel. “More like Pease Porridge Cold these days, my friend. And you are no longer the gangly lad of our gloriously mis-spent youth, either. Gracious, but you’re a long drink of water.”
Marcus was pleasantly surprised to find his mouth curving into his first real smile in days. “Well, the passing decade has clearly not dimmed your hoydenish tendencies one bit.”
“It’s not as if I haven’t tried, but—” Behind her, the door latch rattled, and she sprang back to action, lowering her voice to an urgent whisper. “Help me!” She motioned for him to join her as she laid a determined shoulder to the chest of drawers.
“I don’t think I should.” Even he knew barricading them in alone was definitely not the done thing.
“I’ll explain if you’ll only help,” she promised. “You’re supposed to be a bloody hero, Beech. Come act like one.”
He was drawn in by her wayward charm. “My dear Pease Porridge, whatever have you been doing with yourself these many years?” His question went unanswered while he snugged in beside her to lay his good shoulder into the chest of drawers—careful so as not to spill his drink—and shove the heavy piece of furniture the necessary remaining inches to bar the door.
“Thank you.” She blew out a gusty breath before she smiled up at him and patted his lapel in an absent gesture of casual intimacy that nearly rocked him back on his heels. “Good Lord, Beech, you smell divine. What are you drinking?” She swiped the snifter of brandy from his hand and took a hearty sip. “Mmm. Thanks.” She kept possession of the glass as she all but flung herself into the other armchair opposite the hearth. “I’m meant to be good and stay well clear of trouble, but to do so I’m in need of some fortification. You?”
“As you see.” Marcus decided he rather liked the offhand, ordinary way she treated him, much like his brother officers had—as if there were nothing wrong with him.
He fetched himself another drink. “Well clear of trouble? But wasn’t there some stupid talk of you marrying my late, unlamented brother?”
She nearly choked on the brandy, but when she recovered her aplomb, she shot him what he could only describe as a sharp, cutty-eyed glance. “Dear Beech, you have been away.”
“Aye.” He distinctly remembered his mother had written about an engagement between Pease Porridge and his older brother Caius, if only because the news had given him such an awful, riveting pang that had stayed with him, lodged deep in his chest like a broken rib.
“There was talk, but it was quickly dismissed.”
And just like that, the pain was healed, and he could breathe again. “Glad to hear it.”
“Ha!” she scoffed. “You’d be the first of your family to feel so.”
Something in her tone told Marcus he was clearly not in possession of all the facts. “Enlighten me, Pease Porridge.”
She laughed, but by the time she answered, the twinkling warmth in her eyes had hardened into studied nonchalance. “Did no one write to tell you all the gory details? That I made the unforgivable mistake of daring to decline the engagement that was so thoughtfully and hastily arranged for the Duke of Warwick and me? That I refused to marry your brother, and was that instant and forevermore declared entirely unsuitable?”
The flush of satisfaction—she had refused Caius!—quickly burned itself out. Such childish triumph was beneath him with his brother cold in his grave.
Still. “Unsuitable for being smart enough to say no to my blaggard of a brother?” Such a choice only raised her up in his estimation. “Hardly.”
“Kind Beech. You have been away a very long time, haven’t you?” Penelope Pease took another deep drink, before she met his eye. “It’s like this, Beech. I’m ruined, you see. Utterly and completely ruined.”
CHAPTER 3
“THE DEVIL YOU SAY!”
Penelope could tell by the scowl on Marcus Beecham’s delightfully scruffy face that he did not believe her.
“Come now,” Beech continued in his lovely low baritone. “Don’t distress me with such nonsense.”
It was kind of him, if naive. She wouldn’t have expected that of a naval man—especially one so obviously aware of how unfair, unkind and harsh life could be. “I wish I were, Beech. I wish—” So many things. Things she couldn’t say to dear Beech, who seemed to have come back to her from the dead—certainly his family had made no mention of him for years. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here, and that’s what matters.”
“Pease Porridge.” His tone brooked no change of conversation. “What don’t I know?”
How strange—or refreshing, she was not sure which—that he didn’t know the whole of her very short, but ultimately sordid, affair with his now-deceased brother.
Lord, but they grew them fine, these Beecham boys. They were so alike physically—tall and strong-boned with piercing grey-green eyes—she might be forgiven for her imprudent infatuation. Beech was all tanned, naval robustness, even with that empty sleeve, where Caius had been a paler, more citified version of handsome.
But even a blind woman could tell that Marcus Beecham had become everything his devilishly good-looking older brother had not been—upstanding, honest and forthright. Too good for the likes of her. “All you need to know is that I am ruined, and you are meant to stay well clear of me.”
“Devil take me if I will.” His tanned face was marred only by that ferociously lovely scowl—and that interesting little scar on his forehead. “You’re the first friendly face I’ve seen since I put a foot on land, and I’ll not abandon a friend to the foul winds of rumor.”
“Kind Beech.” He would be such a man.
If only she had had been patient. If only she had been prudent. If only.
But there was no way to put spilt milk back into the pail. “Sorry, Beech, but I’m afraid I’ll soon be abandoning you. I’m being sent to the hinterlands—banished to some Backwater-By-Nowhere as companion to a maiden aunty in punishment for my sins—whilst my parents try to launch my younger sister, Susanne, off.”
“Like a ship of war, ready to go into battle?” he chuckled.
“Indeed.” Penelope found her own smile to mirror his. “In light of my scandal, they feel they must wage a campaign to find sweet Susanne a husband. And until they depart for London, I am meant to be as quiet and invisible as a mouse, which is why I made for my lonely bolt hole here this evening.”
“Lonely?”
“I beg your pardon, Beech. I meant to be alone, but that does not mean that I am not delighted to have the unexpected pleasure of your company. Lord, but it has been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“A lifetime—Caius’s lifetime, at the very least.” Beech knocked back another drink of brandy. “Which is damned ironic, considering I was meant to be the expendable one.”
Such a thought was not to be borne. “Not expendable, Beech. Never that. Out of sight, perhaps, but never out of mind, surely.”
“Out of mind until they had use of me,” he scoffed. “My mother, and the lawyers and secretaries she has set nipping at my heels like a pack of rat terriers.”
“Poor Beech, to discover yourself a duke,” she teased.
“Aye, well…” One side of Beech’s lovely mouth curved up in a rueful smile. “I know there are a thousand men—nay, a hundred thousand—who should love to be standing in my well-polished boots, but…” He let the thought trail away as he absently touched the empty sleeve of his coat where it was sewn under his lapel. “I daresay I’ll be happier once I settle into my duties and escape society’s demands. At least in the country I can get a fresh breath of winter air. I was like to suffocate in that ballroom.”
To Penelope, leaving society was exile, not escape. This winter, and every one thereafter, would be spent as a companion to a relative she had never met, in some frozen corner of the countryside where she would doubtless spend the coming years being made to stop up drafts.
Such a bleak prospect was enough to prompt sarcasm. “I should recommend getting yourself ruined if you want to escape society entirely, Beech. Though I daresay a fellow as handsome as you got himself good and ruined a long time ago.”
“I beg your pardon?” His tone was incredulous enough to remind Penelope that Beech had done nothing to earn her spleen.
Yet some still-wounded piece of her tattered pride prompted her on. “But, of course, chaps aren’t accounted ruined whenever they indulge in…shall we call it ungentlemanly behavior, are they? Because my unladylike behavior—being caught alone with your brother, to be specific—is how I was ruined.”
He looked slightly stunned. “You went apart with Caius? Willingly?”
“I have to admit so, yes. Very willingly. Enthusiastically, even.” She gave Beech that much of the truth. She had been a fool for a handsome face so very much like Beech’s, and the late Duke of Warwick had been irresistible to her—all brooding, dark delight that she had learned nearly too late was the sort of self-loathing that poisons everything and everyone it touches.
She had only just missed it touching her.
Still, she had been poisoned, and everything that had made her life comfortable, everything she had recklessly taken for granted—her good name and her family’s regard and protection—was gone in an evening.
“He fooled you, then.” Beech’s scowl loomed across his brow like a thundercloud. “He always did like having his way, and he never did care who he hurt while he got it.”
Dear, clever Beech, to see so clearly, and yet, still not see all.
“Alas, Beech, I was the one who kissed him,” she admitted.
Penelope could not tell if the look in his eyes was pity or disappointment. Either way, it was more than she could stomach. “What about you? Have you never kissed anyone, Beech?”
Her question took him aback for only the briefest moment. “Indeed, I have,” he confirmed without a trace of rancor. “And enjoyed it. Immensely. Great stuff kissing, when properly done—amicably and with the right person.”
Something within her—something ridiculously, miserably hopeful—sparked to life. Properly done, indeed.
She attempted to douse the ember by taking another drink. But the brandy only seemed to loosen her tongue. “Be glad you are not a woman, Beech, else you’d be ruined for such enthusiasm.” Lord, but it felt good to say what she’d been thinking, to let the words loose upon the world. She propped her feet upon the fireplace bumper. “Utterly ruined—your very existence treated as an affront to all well-bred behavior.”
Gracious but she was airing out all sorts of her dirty linen this evening—even she could hear the bitterness in her tone. But Beech had been a loyal friend in their long-ago youth—before he had gone away to the Navy and she had been fool enough to turn her reckless fancy to kissing handsome men—and he deserved the truth. The whole truth, and not what she had been admitting out of some idiotic mixture of resentment and pride.
“So here you are, an affront, barricaded behind a chest of drawers,” Beech concluded in that steady, smooth baritone as deep and rich as the liquor. “Might I venture if that precaution is to keep you from being imposed upon by idiot chaps eager to keep you ruined?”
“Why, Beech.” Penelope felt the brandy’s warmth spread all the way to her toes. “How extraordinarily perceptive you are.”
He deflected her praise. “Human nature is the same on a ship as it is in a ballroom.”
“Is it? That brings to mind all sorts of interesting questions I should love to ask. But the problem is that it is February, and the St. Valentine’s poems have begun. I can normally endure them—the poems as well as the idiot chaps who send them—but my present circumstance seems to have brought out the absolute worst in the county’s bachelors.”
The horrible doggerel was nearly enough to make her eager for the escape of exile. Nearly—she supposed the post could still reach her in Backwater-By-Nowhere.
“St. Valentine’s Day poems?” Beech’s dark scowl scoured his forehead. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Poor Beech. You—”
“—have been away,” he finished for her. “So it seems.”
“Poor Beech,” she said again.
“I’m not sure I like being called that—it smacks of helplessness.” He put down his drink. “And I assure you, despite present appearances, I am not helpless.”
“I never meant to imply so,” she agreed. He looked too vital, too real for helplessness. “You’re only too good—too honest and open—for your own good.”
“I am flattered you should think so,” he said. “I’ve seen too much of the world to wish to be anything other than honest. There is no hiding from the truth.”
He touched his empty sleeve again in that strangely reassuring gesture, as if he needed to remind himself that his arm was indeed gone.
“Brave Beech, then.”
And she was Ruined Penelope Pease, who was now too far beyond the pale to ever marry, and though she had become inordinately skilled at ignoring the proverbial elephant in any room, she was damned tired of it.
So, she looked Beech in the eye. “Tell me what happened to your arm.”
CHAPTER 4
FOR A FRAUGHT MOMENT Penelope feared she had overstepped the mark—his eyes went still over the rim of his brandy glass.
“I lost it, of course,” he said with such offhand grace that she wondered if she were making too much of the injury. But then, his mouth curved into a wry smile. “Brava. Do you know you are the very first person I’ve encountered since my return who has had the”—he hesitated for the barest second, as if he might have been about to say something else before he settled upon—“temerity to speak of my alteration.”
She wasn’t sure whether she was meant to be chastened or affronted. But she felt affronted—for him. “It seems a rather stupid thing not to notice that where you once had two arms hanging from your rather fine shoulders, you now have but one. And I keep track of my friends.” What few she had left. Which made her rather anxious to keep the one fate had been kind enough to provide for her this evening. “I read the newspapers, and know what ships you’ve been on, when you’ve been in battles, and when you’ve been mentioned in dispatches. Especially when you were counted as grievously injured.”
“How flattering.”
“Yes, well.” Penelope felt heat suffuse her cheeks. But she wanted to be done with cynicism—Beech of all people deserved honest admiration for his sacrifice. “You were listed at the Battle of Pirano, when you were first lieutenant on Victorious. I’m afraid I lost track of you for a while, until you were posted as Commander out of the squadron at Malta.”
“Devil take me.” His smile lasted only a moment. “You are well-informed.”
“People talk.” And she still listened—even when what she heard wasn’t entirely flattering. “And heroes are talked about everywhere.”
“I’m no hero.” He looked at her from under his brows. “But it was the Battle of Pirano, in the Adriatic Sea. Glorious, sunny day with a good wind. And I was the first lieutenant on Victorious, in charge of sailing the ship while the captain ordered the battle.” Beech ran his good hand through his hair as if he needed to settle his brain before speaking of what she knew must have been an unspeakable trauma. “We engaged in close battle with the French seventy-four, Rivoli, raking her to bloody splinters until we truly were victorious. But as battles go, we both inflicted casualties and took them. And as you see, I was one of those casualties.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then took a deep drink of his brandy before he added, “Lucky for me, I was not one of the fatalities. And thankfully the loss has been no real impediment to my career—I can give orders as effectively with one arm as with two.”
“Very sensible of the navy.” And so like Beech to make so little out of so great an injury. “Indeed, we should be the poorer as a nation—and perhaps not even be a sovereign nation—if we had not had Admiral Nelson, damaged as he was, to lead us.”
“Aye.” The scowl came back to mar Marcus’s sun-swept handsomeness. “But I am no longer a commander, and I fear my appearance in the ballroom shall prove a great impediment to my new career now.”
She did not follow his logic. “I should think you could give orders as efficiently as a duke with one arm as with two.”
“True.” He acknowledged her point. “But the business of being a duke is not only giving orders. It is, according to my mother, getting a wife.”
Wife. The word slid under her skin like a wayward thorn—a piercing, misplaced hurt.
She would never marry now, but Beech would have to.
Penelope swallowed the realization like bitter medicine and set herself to being cheerful. For his sake, if not for hers. “Come now, Beech. You are a hero, no matter what you say. You could arrange for some girl to fall in love with you in an evening, if you wanted.” Though she prayed God he did not. “You have but to smile.”
For the longest moment he stared at her over the rim of his glass, before the hint of that wry smile brewed at the corner of his mouth, “Why, Pease Porridge, do you mean to tell me you think I’m handsome?”
“Do have a look at yourself in a mirror, Beech.” She hid her embarrassment behind sarcasm, though it made a wretched fan—her face had gone hot. “Though you could do with a good barbering if you hope to please the bright young things in the ballroom.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the unsullied girls with spotless gowns and unstained reputations who made themselves available to be married, damn them. “On second thought, damn the bright young things. Keep the beard—it gives you a dashing, piratical air.”
“Must be the terrifying combination of the arm—or what’s left of it—and the beard for piratical. Perhaps I should employ a parrot, so I might amuse as well as frighten.”
“Oh, I should like that.” Beech had always been able to make her laugh. “But you are as you always were, Beech—witty and fun and as handsome as the day is long. You’re the same man at four and twenty that you were at four and ten—kind to your core.”
“Hardly,” he demurred. “If the last ten years have taught me anything, it is that I was certainly not a man at ten and four. But I thank you for the compliment.”
“Most welcome.” She ought to have left it at that, but some prideful last vestige of vanity prompted her to ask, “And how do you find me?”
He closed his eyes, as if he could not conceive of an answer. But then he said, “I should never have thought such a gangly girl should outgrow her spindly legs and pigtails to become such a ravishing, rosy beauty.”
Blissful, blessed warmth rose in her cheeks. “Now, Beech, I shall be forced to give you up, even as a secret friend, if you take to such extravagant lying.”
“I am not lying.” He was not to be talked out of his opinion. “Surely you have a mirror yourself?”
She did, though she had stopped looking into it, afraid that she might see what others saw—a woman tarnished and diminished by her own foolishness. And eaten up with her barely concealed rage.
But why should she rage at Beech? “Thank you, my friend.”
“You’re damned welcome.”
How remarkable. Penelope had not felt so comfortable, so blessedly accepted by another person—man or woman—in quite some time. And that he was a man—and a handsome, desperately attractive one at that—made it all the more remarkable. “Thank you for the brandy as well as your company, Beech.” She raised her glass. “It is beyond lovely to have you back.”
“I thank you.” He raised his glass as well. “Do you know, if this is what being a duke shall be like, I might like it more than I anticipated.”
“How should you not like it? To have your own money, and do as you please, and be the person to whom everyone but the king must show deference? Oh, yes, what an intolerable burden.”
His smile was all in the corners of his grey-green eyes. “When you put it like that, the burden does seem negligible, and certainly much less demanding than my former career.”
There was something wistful in his tone. “Will you miss it—the navy—do you think?”
He closed his eyes and let out a sigh as weighty as a secret. “Like a dead friend.”
She felt his longing like a weight upon her heart. “Even though it has cost you so much?”
His eyes found hers, and he gifted her with that wry, half-smile. “Not so much as others.”
Others who had lost their lives. Or their legs. Or their minds.
The thought was sobering. “Dear Beech—”
“That is the third time you have called me that, Pease Porridge. If you will insist on doing so, I do think I’m going to have to marry you.”
CHAPTER 5
MARCUS’S impromptu proposal shocked her. Sweet Pease Porridge gaped at him, as if such a thing were not just improbable, but impossible. “Truly, I begin to think we are admirably suited to—”
“What’s this?” Behind them, the barred latch rattled, and a voice from without interrupted the intimacy of the moment. “Who’s in there? I say, open this door!”
Penelope bolted to her feet. “My father,” she mouthed as she practically dove for the window farthest from the door.
“Let me go.” Marcus was beside her in an instant.
“No—I’ll never get that blasted chest of drawers moved myself,” she whispered as she flung back the draperies. “I’d have gone out the window in any event, and just circled back around.”
An excellent plan—and one that she, who knew the house, could accomplish more stealthily than he. Marcus threw up the sash and stuck his head out into the frigid night to reconnoiter. “All clear. Handsomely now,” he cautioned. “It’s an easy drop—I’ll let you down.” He clasped the bare skin of her forearm with his right.
She stilled at the sudden contact but didn’t object. Instead, she said, “Thank you. For not arguing. Or questioning.” The chill night wind whipped through the window, blowing her closer—so close she pressed an impulsive kiss to his cheek. “For everything.”
Her lips were unspeakably soft against the taut, sun-scoured skin above this beard. “My dear Pease Porridge, the pleasure was mine.”
She was so close.
So close, he felt the febrile warmth of her chest just barely brushing against his. So close, his eyes fell to the sweet curve of her lips. So close, he could think of nothing but what they might feel like against his.
“Devil take me, Pease Porridge, but I very much want to kiss you,” he murmured, as if he could not fathom why. As if his lips were not already descending toward hers. “Properly.”
Her own voice was nothing but breath and desire. “Oh, Beech, I do wish you would.”
He met her mouth with all dispatch. And of course, Penelope Pease kissed like an angel. A lovely, impish, fallen angel—if she was to be believed—who looped her arms around his neck and pressed herself to his lips, so he could taste the brandy on her tongue when he opened her mouth ever so slightly to appease the needy ache that washed through him like a rogue wave.
“Devil take me,” Marcus breathed against her forehead, before he lowered her down until her tiptoes scraped against the frozen gravel of the courtyard. “Damned if you don’t give ruined a bloody good name.”
Marcus made sure his lovely bundle of contradictions was safely delivered to the ground and well away before he turned to the door. “Belay that racket,” he growled as wedged himself between the wall and the chest of drawers. He put his back into it, leveraging the hulking piece back to its proper place, before he flipped the latch and snatched the door open wide.
In front of him, Sir Harold Pease was bent double in an attempt to peer through the keyhole.
Marcus drew himself up to his full height and weighted all his displeasure into his voice. “What the devil do you mean interrupting a man’s peace?”
“This is my house, sir,” the startled father barked before he demanded, “Who the devil are you?”
“Warwick. Newly duke thereof. Commander Marcus Beecham, as was, Sir Harold.” Marcus stepped forward into the corridor and shut the door behind him—Penelope’s brandy snifter lay overturned on the floor near the chair she had only just vacated. “Is there something I might do for you, sir?”
“Your Grace.” Sir Harold lost a great deal of his bluster and made him a hasty bow. “Your pardon. Looking for m’daughter.”
“Which daughter, sir?” Marcus asked with the wry directness he had perfected as a commanding officer. “Or have you lost more than one?”
Sir Harold turned a satisfying shade of puce. “Miss Pease. Penelope.”
At least the damned man had lowered his voice, but by now Sir Harold’s commotion had drawn an even dozen neighbors waiting breathlessly for fresh scandal.
Marcus was just the man to give them satisfaction. “Ah, yes, Miss Penelope Pease. How fortunate— I should very much like to speak to Miss Pease myself.”
“Your Grace?” the man stammered. “Surely you know—”
“Good of you,” Marcus cut in, already moving back toward the ballroom, towing Sir Harold along like an empty barge in his wake. “Come along, sir.”
They arrived at the ballroom door just as Penelope cleverly managed to take a chair on the far side of the room. “Is that not she, sir?”
Sir Harold followed the line of Marcus’s gaze to the improbable sight of his daughter doing her best to look idle, innocent and bored. Which was impossible, especially in that claret gown that set off her creamy complexion to perfection. She drew Marcus’s eye like a ship on a wine dark sea.
“Ah, yes, indeed. Beg your pardon, Your Grace,” Sir Harold blathered. “Seem to have overlooked her there.”
“Indeed.” Marcus could only agree. “It appears everyone has overlooked her there.” He gave his coat an unnecessary tug. “Let us remedy that at once.” He came to moor directly in front of where his Pease Porridge was pretending to make a concentrated study of the parquet floor. “Is that my old friend, Miss Pease?”
Pease Porridge looked up at him from under her lashes with such a delicious, dark angel combination of astonishment and delight that he very nearly laughed out loud. “Why, it is you!” He began to enjoy himself. “Sir Harold, if you would be so kind as to make the formal introductions?”
“M’daughter, Miss Pease, Your Grace.” Sir Harold gestured awkwardly. “Penelope, His Grace, the Duke of Warwick.”
“Miss Pease.” Marcus reached out his hand to raise her to her feet. “What a pleasure it is to be reacquainted with you after all this time.”
“Your Grace.” Her eyes danced with impish glee. “Why, it seems only a moment.”
Oh, she was fine—as nimble and quick as a yacht.
Marcus took command of the deck. “Indeed, it has been so long since I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to you, I wonder if you would take pity on an old sailor and take a turn about the room, while we talk of old times?” He turned to her father with the uncompromising smile that had made naval lieutenants jump to do his bidding. “With your permission, of course.” Which he did not wait for, making off with his prize ship while he showed her father a clean pair of heels.
“Well done, Commander Beecham. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father so flummoxed, even after he’s had an argument with me.”
It was a pleasure to hear the familiar rank from her lips. “That is what we navy men call a cutting out expedition,” he explained before he steered the conversation back to her comment. “Happen often, those arguments?”
“Often enough. As I said, I am persona non grata, meant to be properly chastened. Which, by my very presence at your side, I am clearly not.”
Properly chastened for not marrying Caius—the thought was not to be borne. “The words ‘gloriously defiant’ come to mind.”
Pleasure pinked her cheeks, though she sailed on, as unruffled as a wine-dark swan. “Unrepentant will do.”
“Nothing to repent.” They reached the end of the room and turned back to face the barely concealed stares of the assembly. Their unrestrained interest put him on his mettle, determined to return fire with fire.
He abandoned his earlier plan of battle for a new strategy that Admiral Nelson would have approved—engage directly with the enemy. If his brother had ruined Penelope, he would un-ruin her. “Well, we’ve had a drink, and walked and talked and proposed marriage, so the only thing left, it seems, is to dance.”
Her answer came on a laugh. “That would give my father a satisfactory apoplexy.”
“Excellent.” Marcus offered her his hand. “Then let us do so, now.” While his blood and courage were high. “A set is just forming.” A waltz, thank the devil.
But she looked at the hand he had offered as if it were a species of ship rat—small but potentially lethal.
“I won’t bite, Pease Porridge.”
“Oh, Beech.” A smile—slow and impish and entirely teasing—spread across her lips as she looked up at him from under her lashes. “And here everything had been so promising.”
The bolt of awareness and pleasure that shot through him was stronger than hot brandy. Oh, she was more than fine—she was as sharp and well-aimed as a carronade. And he was ready to strike the slow match. “Still might be—if you dance with me.”
Definitely would be, if she married him.
“Beech.” Her smiled faded slowly into something too much like disbelief. “But what about— Can you really?”
Heat—embarrassment, shame and that ugly feeling of diminishment—broke out under his collar, but he would be damned if he would let it show. “I am not helpless. Some things, a man doesn’t forget how to do.” Some things a man knew in his bones, even if some of those bones were missing. “Dance with me, and I’ll show you.”
CHAPTER 6
PENELOPE LOOKED AT HIM—REALLY looked at him to see the man whom experience had tempered like a steel sword. The man who had so calmly and so casually proposed they marry.
A proposal she had been too stunned to accept.
“Come, Pease Porridge. Let’s give them something real to gossip about.”
She was still stunned by the calmly casual courage in him. “They’ll look askance at you for this, Beech,” she said, nodding toward the avid onlookers trying to eavesdrop upon their conversation. And she wasn’t just talking about the dance.
He smiled, unconcerned. “Let them. I have faced down the cannons of the French, my dear Pease Porridge.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “I know how to survive.”
Her breath all but left her body. He was such a man. “I’m terribly glad you did, Beech.”
He squeezed her fingers. “Fortune favors the bold, my friend.”
“About time something did.” She let him lead her past the astonished lookers-on and was raising her right hand to take his before she realized—
“Right hand on my shoulder,” he instructed easily, as if she hadn’t nearly made an unforgivably unthinking blunder. “Left on your skirts.”
She circled her hand down to rest upon the precisely fitted coat of midnight superfine as if she had intended on doing exactly that. Beech slid his good hand into the small of her back, snugging his arm around her waist and drawing her so close she had to lean away to keep her bodice from brushing against his buttons. And then he spread his fingers so that his thumb aligned with the ladder of her spine and found its way through the subtle gather of fabric at the back of her high-waisted gown to brush against the edge of her short stays beneath.
Everything within her—every thought, every breath—stilled, suspended in time for one long, luxurious moment. And then the taut strains of the fiddles penetrated the silence, and Beech stepped forward into the deeper embrace of the dance.
She stepped back, away from the intimate interjection of his leg between her skirts, and they were dancing. The firm press of his hand in the small of her back guided her along, forward and back, side to side and around. Around and around and around, spinning into the swirl of the music, following the flow of the fiddles as if they were puppets led along by their heartstrings.
Penelope closed her mind to her doubts and fears—it was one thing to be silently unrepentant, but quite another to dance with the new Duke of Warwick with her father fuming like a chimney across the room.
She closed her eyes to the relentless stare of nosy neighbors and let the swirl of the music carry her troubles away. Let Beech lead her where he would.
Which was strange. She wasn’t the sort of girl who liked to be led. She liked to set her own course—witness her rejection of the arrangement made for her with the last Duke of Warwick. But Beech was…different. The press of his hand against the small of her back made her skin tingle with an awareness that went far deeper than the flirtation she had attempted with his brother. An awareness that was more than infatuation, more than mere physical attraction—this was an affinity for Beech, and Beech alone.
For the strength of his character. For the warmth of his embrace. For the calm surety that radiated from him like rays from the sun.
Penelope gave herself the gift of looking up at him, and was both surprised and elated to find him smiling down at her. As if he liked being with her, dancing with her, as much as she liked being with him, safe in his arms, whirling in deliriously delightful circles that would have made her dizzy if she hadn’t abandoned propriety and tethered herself to him with her arm around his neck.
It was heaven—he was heaven, this calm, assured man who looked like a glowing archangel, one of God’s warriors, armored against the sharp weapons of society with his heroism and honesty and dashing courage. Nothing could injure her while she was with him. She was free—to feel the heat of his chest seep through the intervening layers of her clothing until she was as warm as a flower in the sunshine. To feel awareness skitter across her skin until her chest began to feel tight with need. To feel the cool rush of the air on her cheeks as they twirled and twirled and twirled.
Until the fiddles drew to a long, closing note, and it was everything she could do to let go and step back. And curtsey. And breathe.
“Thank you, Beech.” Her voice sounded small, as if it came from far away. “I’d forgotten how much I loved dancing.” And how much she was going to miss it when she was sent away.
“My dear Penelope, the sentiment is entirely mutual.” He offered her his arm. “I meant what I said before. You really must consider if you won’t mar—”
“Do introduce me, Warwick.”
Penelope felt all her warm pleasure wash away like a cold rain. In front of them was Lord Robert Maynard, the same damned impertinent fellow whose earlier attentions had driven her to barricade herself in the library.
On second thought, perhaps she ought to thank him. But Maynard gave her no chance. “Introduce me so I, too, may dance with the infamous Miss Pease.”
Beside her Beech stilled, which was not in itself an alarming thing. He seemed to conduct himself with a particular economy of motion—a sort of tensely precise awareness of where his body was in space. But in a man so still and watchful his eyes moved with a power and perceptiveness that was telling, and at the moment Beech’s dark scowl should have sent a cleverer fellow running for cover.
“I beg your pardon,” Beech said carefully. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Maynard appeared impervious to sense. “A friend of your brother’s, don’t you know?”
“I don’t know.” Beech’s tone was as precise and sharp as flint.
“This is Maynard, Your Grace—Lord Robert Maynard.” Her own tone was as cool as she could manage over the heat of her anger. “Though I haven’t been formally introduced to him either, that didn’t stop him from sending me a smutty valentine—did it, Maynard? No. You’re a credible enough pornographer, but not, I think, a tolerable enough dancer to tempt me.”
“Now, don’t be like that, Miss Pease. It’s all in good fun.” Maynard laughed and continued in a confidential aside to Beech, “It was a damn good, damnably smutty valentine.”
A sulfurous combination of rage and mortification gripped her as tight as a noose. “You insufferable—” Her throat was so choked she could not speak.
Mercifully, she did not have to.
“You sent a lewd valentine to Miss Pease—a woman to whom you had not even been introduced?” Beech’s question was everything calm and collected, but Penelope could hear the ominous warning in his darkening tone.
“Everyone knows her.” Maynard winked suggestively. “All about her. And your brother.”
Beneath her arm, Beech’s grip tightened, as if he feared she might strike the blighter. And she would have—if Beech had not looked so likely to do the honors for her.
“Maynard,” Beech instructed in a voice as calm and polished as a blade, “kindly remove yourself from my presence, and keep entirely out of Miss Pease’s, before I am forced to put a hole through that obviously vacant brain of yours.”
Maynard remained as thick as a doorjamb. “What? It’s all in good fun.”
“Good fun does not consist of taunting defenseless young women.” Beech began to speak slowly, enunciating each word in the deceptively calm tone that ought to have made Maynard’s cods shrink up into his body for cover. “Go. Away. Before. I. Do. You. A. Very. Great. And. Very. Precise. Violence.”
“I say, Warwick.” An unsure smile curdled Maynard’s cheeks. “Thinking of taking up where your brother left off, are you?”
In an instant, Beech had Maynard seized by the neck like a rag doll, his thumb pressed hard into the hollow of the blighter’s throat, cutting off his wind.
Maynard scrabbled at Beech’s hand to ease the pressure, but Beech held fast. “I will kill you”—Beech whispered so cool and low only she and Maynard could hear the lethal threat—“gladly and effortlessly, if you ever utter her name, or so much as look in Miss Pease’s direction ever again. Do you comprehend me?”
Maynard bobbed his mottled red face in frantic accord.
Beech let go and stepped back. “Remember that—and how hard it was to breathe—the next time you think to sully a lady’s name. Especially this lady.”
“But she’s not a la—” Maynard flinched, throwing up his hands to ward Beech off, before he obligingly scuttled away.
Beech made an infinitesimal adjustment to his coat. “My apologies. Where were we?”
“I hardly know.” Every idea was overthrown by Beech’s astonishing actions. Though he was as cool as a summer ice, she was very nearly shaking.
“Indeed.” Beech spoke into the silence that was the sound of every gossip within the room holding their breath in anticipation what might happen next. “Come, my dear Miss Pease. We need air to rid ourselves of that fellow’s foul stench.” Then he gave her his hand, to lead her away from the gaping assembly.
She went with him, her father and his apoplexy be damned. A reckless mixture of astonishment and gratitude filled her so full, she thought she might burst into tears. “You really are the bravest bloody man, Beech.”
“It is only a country ballroom,” he said in his wry way, “not the deck of a man-o-war.”
“That was more than a dance, Beech,” she insisted. “You must know that.” He had to know that the ballroom, and society in general, was a battlefield for her—that she had already lost upon such ground. “You must know what it meant to me. So, I will thank you for defending me. And for dancing with me.” She came up upon her tiptoes to press a hasty heartfelt kiss to his cheek.
“And you must know, I would give you more than a dance, my sweet Miss Pease.” His voice was low and all the more earnest because of his quiet. “I would give you the world.”
CHAPTER 7
“COME AWAY WITH ME NOW—WE’LL elope.” Marcus felt the strange, heightened calm before a battle, knowing he was doing the right thing and trusting himself to fate.
Penelope laughed as if such an idea were surely a joke. “Elope? You can’t mean to run off to Scotland?”
“Too far. And far too inconvenient,” he returned. “I find I’m a duke, and I ought to be able to persuade a bishop to write me a special license. We can be married tomorrow morning.”
“Beech, you can’t be serious.” She gaped at him. “And anyway, tomorrow it’s going to snow.” She turned to the darkened window. “See, it has already begun to fall.”
Now that he had made up his mind, he would allow no obstacles to block his path. “Snow or no snow, I mean what I say. I always mean what I say.”
But she was unsure—of him, surely, and probably of herself. “Beech. We dare not.”
“Why not?” He set himself to convince her. “Where is the girl who never refused a dare? Where is my old friend, the girl who went first, jumping off the old bridge into the Avon that summer afternoon?”
“That girl was thirteen and a monstrous hoyden.”
“Nothing about you was monstrous. You were magnificent—daring and bold and everything I admired.”
“That was a long time ago.” Her low voice was full of emotion he could not quite fathom. “We aren’t children now. We can’t jump off bridges or go rushing out into the snow.”
“Why not? What are you afraid of?”
“Afraid it will make everything worse,” she whispered.
“How? I thought you were about to be banished to the hinterlands? How much worse could it be?”
That put the wind back in her sails—the color rose in her cheeks. “You have a point.”
“Don’t go to the maiden auntie,” he pled. “Come away with me into the dark and snow and make me happy—as happy as I promise to make you. Please.” He wanted it so badly he ached.
He ached for her affection. He ached for her simple kind touch.
So, to convince her he meant every word, he kissed her. But what began in persuasion, soon became something more, something hungrier and more assertive. A hunger they shared—her lips, her lovely, plush, bow-shaped lips—pressed into his again and again as if she could not get enough of kissing him.
Marcus had never thought of himself as an impulsive man—his youthful brashness had been thoroughly trained out of him by the Royal Navy. But the feel of her delicately boned fingers combing through his beard fired more than his imagination—he felt the heat and promise of her touch like a brand.
So, he angled her mouth for a deeper kiss.
She met him without hesitation. Her tongue stroked and licked at him, kindling the fire between them with each blissful touch. She folded herself into his embrace and everything within him, every nerve, every fiber of his being, was reaching out to her with heat and urgency. He left her lips to kiss his way down her neck, to taste the sweet slide of her skin while she angled her head in response, granting him tacit access while her hands raked through his old-fashioned queue, pulling away the carefully wrapped ribbon.
“Lord, Beech. Even your hair smells divine.”
She smelled of velvet and winter irises, chilly and fresh, and he wanted to gather her in like a bouquet.
But it was she who gathered him, her hands at his coat, parting the buttons and pushing it wide across his chest. Her palm sliding through the narrow slit at the throat of his shirt beneath his stock to lie flat against his skin. Her mouth at his nape, putting her lips and teeth to the sensitive tendon at the side of his neck until he was bowing his head to let her have her way with him.
Until he felt her explore the line of his shoulder, and curve down around his shoulder to his upper arm. Or rather what was left of it.
“No.” His voice was a fog of strangled desperation—and the relief when she ceased her exploration was so profound it nearly unmanned him. Nearly. Because there was some noise above, at the top of the stair that started them into flight. “Come.”
They plummeted toward the bottom of the stair, hand in hand in a breathless race, like the children they once had been.
“Left here,” she directed, navigating the narrow turnings. “And then left again for the door that leads to the stable path.”
In the darkness of the passage Marcus paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Ready?” If she went with him now, she would be doing more than crossing a threshold.
She drew in a deep breath before she nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He pushed open the door to the cold night air and held fast to her hand as they flew across the bitterly cold cobbled courtyard of the stable block. The night wind lashed at them, sending Pease Porridge’s velvet skirts and plain petticoats whipping against her legs, making him regret he had not thought to retrieve his heavy sea cloak from the footmen—she was like to perish in so insubstantial a gown.
But there were his carriage and coachmen in the yard, already putting the blanketed horses back into harness, mindful that he had instructed them that he would be no longer than an hour and a half at the ball.
Yet what an astonishingly productive, life-changing hour and a half it had been—he had barricaded himself in a room, made a public spectacle of himself dancing a waltz, throttled and threatened a toad of a man, asked a lass to marry him, and was attempting to carry off an elopement.
Devil take him, but if he wasn’t in love, he didn’t know what he was.
“There are fur rugs inside.” He held the coach door for his already shivering duchess-to-be. “Get yourself under the fur.”
She clambered in, but still he held her hand.
“Penelope.” Marcus said her name aloud for the first time because he wanted her to know he was serious, and because he had been wanting to say it, longing even, to taste her name like tart sloe wine upon his tongue. “You may trust that I will take care of you, and I will always do everything in my power to do what’s right.”
“Of course you will,” she answered. “Just as I will take care of you.”
“Is that a yes?”
Her smile warmed him far more than any raging bonfire could. And just like that, the cobbled courtyard seemed to move beneath his feet, like the deck of a ship rising and falling upon the sea. He was upended—as dizzy as the young midshipman he had once been. And twice as exhilarated.
“Another successful cutting out expedition, Commander?” Penelope held his hand fast. As if she would never let go.
“Aye.” This was what Marcus loved and had lived for—the excitement of action and command. This was what he missed. All he had needed was Penelope Pease by his side—excitement and adventure seemed to follow her wherever she went. “Worried?”
She gifted him with a rueful smile. “I’d be a fool not to be.”
“And you, my darling girl, are no fool.” He gathered her close to his good side.
“Hardly, Beech—I seem to be a fool for you.” And then to prove it, she kissed him.
A kiss of such sweet promise and soft passion that the world fell away again, and he was nothing but aching pleasure. Nothing of hurt or pain or loss. Nothing that was not hers and hers alone.
Devil take him, but she was fine.
CHAPTER 8
PENELOPE PUT EVERY FEELING—EVERY thrill and every worry—into that kiss. Every inch of gratitude and wonder and exhilaration, until her body tingled, and she felt giddy and strange and afraid.
Because if running off with Beech wasn’t the most reckless, exhilarating thing she had ever done—and she had done any number reckless, exhilarating things in her life—she didn’t know what might be. Because this was not the Beech she remembered.
It was Caius Beecham who had been all rash, mad impulse, not his younger brother. Beech had always looked before he leaped, always wanted to make sure the water was deep enough before he took any plunge. He had been a cheerful, fun companion and a thoughtful, wry lad, but the years away had added something more—an experience that put him at a soaring distance. A sort of gravitas that set him well apart from the reckless rascals and heedless swells of her recent experience. A surety, a self-command that showed he truly did not care what others might think of him.
How steadfast. How ruinous.
Marrying Beech was the answer to all her problems, of course—she would be a bloody duchess. But she had been offered a duke before.
The real temptation wasn’t the dukedom. No, the real temptation was Beech himself. Even with only one arm, he was twice the man his brother had ever been, and three times the man of two-faced swells like Lord Maynard.
Lord, what must Beech have been like before he was injured? He had been sent away to sea before she had been grown-up enough to ever have the pleasure of so much as a country dance with him.
If only he had not been sent away.
If only she had not been lured in by the dark fascination of passion. If only.
Cold caution of the sort she had never felt that night she had closeted herself with his brother in the Warwick Court library gripped her in its icy fist now. That night, the flirtation with Caius had been a game—one that she was sure she could win. But she knew better now.
Knew that she did not want to play any sort of game with Marcus Beecham.
And, so, she asked, “Why, Beech? Tell me why.”
“Why we should marry?” He smiled at her as if he had ten reasons to hand. “Other than the obvious?”
Penelope felt heat blossom under her skin from the top of her forehead all the way down to the edge of her bodice. And lower. “Be serious, Beech.”
His eyes softened at the corners. “I know what is right and true and valuable in this world, my dear Pease Porridge,” he said in that low, sure, captainly way of his. “And I know my duty.”
Duty. It was as if the heel of his large leather sea boot had stepped directly upon her heart, so sharp and painful was her disappointment. It was as it had been before with Caius—Beech would marry her because he felt he ought to. Not because he wanted to.
“Beech.” Penelope could not entirely swallow down the bitter brew of her dismay. “I thank you for your candor, but I am quite firmly decided against being anyone’s duty.”
“Ah.” Her words seemed to strike him with force—his head tipped back—before he leaned closer. So close she could see the glint of his grey-green eyes, dark and piercing, regarding her with an intent that was as thrilling as it was mesmerizing. “Had you rather be my compulsion?”
Something darker and too needy for caution stirred within—a volatile mixture of pride and unadulterated want. “Lord, yes.”
Their lips seemed to meet with an elemental force, gravitating together as if both ends of the Earth had simultaneously tipped them into each other’s arms.
Yet once met, the second touch of his lips was less urgent, far more tentative. He slid his hand along the line of her jaw carefully, in the way a man raised a too-full glass to his lips—slowly so as not to spill. As if this were more than a mere tasting of flesh. As if he were offering his trust—his very self.
“Beech,” she said, because there was nothing else she could think to say, nothing that would communicate the riotous mixture of want and apology that made her feel hot and needy and unworthy all at the same time.
But his lips were smooth and taut above the soft brush of his beard, and he tasted of brandy—just wicked enough to entice. She wanted to drink him in, gulp him down, until she was intoxicated by the possibilities he promised.
She fisted her hands in his lapels, pulling him closer. Holding on to him the way a drowning woman clings to a lifeline.
He met her desperation with a merciful lack of reserve—slanting his mouth across hers and kissing her more deeply, searching with his lips and tongue, pushing his hand into the twisted arrangement of her hair, scattering the pins to the upholstery.
His thumb fanned along her cheek, and he kissed her with heat and abandon, drawing her out, thawing the chill of the winter night. Warming her in a way that nothing else ever had. Everything else faded, until there was nothing but the longing for the feel of his mouth on hers, and the pleasure so strong and sharp it nearly took her breath away.
Oh, Lord, how she loved kissing. Loved the give and take. Loved the sensual abandon. This was her true ruination—this hoydenish, hungry neediness. This unbecoming, unladylike affinity for passion.
Oh, how he kissed.
The rough texture of his whiskers rasped against her skin as he arched her head back to kiss down the curve of her throat. His teeth slid down her neck to worry and nip at the hollow at the base of her throat.
And all she wanted was for him to go lower. “Lord, Beech. Please.”
“Devil take me, Penelope,” he breathed against her skin.
The devil had clearly already taken them both. Because she did not care that they were in a freezing carriage, eloping to only Beech knew where. She did not care that she had abandoned everything she held dear—what was left of her good name and every last shred of her tattered reputation—to go away with him.
Because sometime in the past hour, she had fallen heart over head in love with Marcus Beecham, and she no longer cared anything for her name or reputation. She cared for him.
And so, she would give him the love and affection he so clearly needed, and so clearly deserved. She would give him her love until she had no more to give.
Or until he came to his senses.
Whichever came first.
CHAPTER 9
THE CARRIAGE BEGAN TO SLOW. “Warwick Court, Your Grace,” John Ramsey called from the box.
Marcus was obliged to stop kissing his duchess-to-be and attend to the practicalities of his elopement. “You’ll want to bring that fur, Pease Porridge—it’s snowing something fierce.”
“I am certainly Pease Porridge Cold and rather stupid to come away in nothing but my gown and evening slippers.”
He instinctively took her chilly hand to chafe warm and found himself at a disconcerting loss to do so—he could not do so with only one hand.
The realization shocked him anew, because for a moment there, he could swear he had felt it—pins and needles of feeling along the whole of his missing arm, from elbow to fingertips—alive and reaching for hers.
But the feeling faded into an empty ache. An empty, ravenous ache he needed to assuage. As soon as he got her safe and warm.
“Your Grace!” If his secretary was astonished to see his employer ushering a young woman with no cloak and no chaperone over the doorstep of Warwick Court, he hid it well. “You must be perishing from the cold.”
“We are indeed, Martins.” The snow had begun to fall in earnest, slanting down at such a rate that he and Penelope were covered from their dash from the carriage. “It’s a bitter night. My betrothed will require some warmed wine, if you would please alert the household. No—belay that.” Marcus had wanted to begin as he meant to go on—Penelope would be his wife as soon as he could find a clergyman to make an honest man out of him—but until he was sure of the special license, it were more prudent to keep the whole of the staff from gossip. “If you might do that yourself, to leave us privacy?”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Able Martins was all wary accommodation. “Let me wish you very happy.” He bowed to Penelope. “There is already wine, and a fire laid above stairs, in your chamber, Your Grace. If you pleased to take your ease there?”
“Thank you, Martins. We’ll go up directly.” Indeed, his Pease Porridge was shivering in her snow-dampened gown. “Damn my eyes, I seem to be conducting this elopement rather badly.”
Penelope’s small smile was teasing. “Have you conducted many others?”
Marcus could only bless his stars that she met difficulties with such good humor—it boded well for them. “Not a one. You are my first. And only.” He took her hand again and kissed it before he led her up the high, twisting staircase. “You?”
She shook her head. “No. Though I will admit I contemplated one, before I came to my senses.”
He did not need to ask with whom she might have contemplated eloping. He need to remember that she was eloping with him. They were together. And he meant for them to stay that way. Always.
He took up a fresh blanket from the carved chest at the bottom of the bed to replace the snow-wet fur but could do no more than offer it to her. “Wrap yourself up in this.” With only one arm, the ability to perform that service was beyond him.
What other services he was yet to be unable to perform, he would soon discover.
Penelope seemed to feel his unease—she rubbed her bare arms. “It’s very elegant,” she said of the tall room.
“It’s overlarge,” he answered, happy to talk of easy nothings. “After the comfortably close confines of shipboard life, I will confess I find Warwick Court so big it feels empty.” He poked up the fire to chase more of the chill to the corners. “But I hope you will like it.”
Penelope took a deep, steadying breath before she stood. “I like you.”
“Brave girl.” He handed her a glass of warm spiced claret. “Get that in you to chase out the chill.”
“Thank you.” She took a sip. “Gracious, that tastes divine. Almost as good as you.”
Everything within him eased and tensed all at the same time. “I am honored you should think so.” He kissed the soft lips she turned up to him.
She tasted of wine and winter warmth, of cinnamon and nutmeg-spiced happiness. A happiness he would drink in until he was no longer thirsty. He touched her face to draw her close, to feel her petal-soft skin pressed close to his.
She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck to run her fingers through his loose hair. “Your hair is wet,” she whispered against his lips. “And your coat is damp, too. Come under the blanket with me,” she coaxed as she began to push the coat from his shoulders.
“No.” The word came out no less harshly than he intended.
“Beech.” Her voice held no rebuke, but he felt her reproach all the same. “If you mean for us to be together,” she asked quietly, “do you mean to keep yourself from me? Am I to keep myself from touching you?”
“No.” He would overcome this hesitancy—this defect, this weakness. He would trust the impulse, the surety that told him she was the one—the one who would most let him be himself.
“Has no one else touched your arm?”
Marcus drew in a deep breath and let it out, and finally said what he had not. “It is not an arm any longer—it is a stump.” He could not look at her but turned his gaze into the dancing fire. “And yes, someone has. My steward, Sealy Best, has. He was the surgeon’s assistant on Victorious and nursed me back to health after—” Marcus had spent so much time trying to forget those searingly painful, angry early days that it was difficult to speak of them now. “He stuck with me, like a barnacle on my hull, becoming my steward when I was eventually posted to my own command.”
“I’m glad—glad you had such care. But I will care for you as well. I’ll learn,” she promised. “I’ll learn what you like. If you let me.”
This is what he admired about her—she did not retreat in the face of difficulties. No polite sidestepping of the problem. She would look him in the eye and hold him to account. Just as she ought—if he was prepared to trust her with his heart, why could he not trust her with his body?
Because he didn’t always trust his body himself.
Because despite the passage of nearly two years since he had lost his arm, sometimes he felt it burn and ache as if the whole of it were still there. Because he woke from sleep gripping the sheets with a hand that was gone. Because the nightmare of the surgery visited him each and every time he closed his eyes.
Because he was not entirely himself. And he feared he never would be.
“Give it time,” was all he could ask.
“Dear Beech,” she whispered. “My time is entirely yours.”
He could answer only with a kiss—across the line of her shoulder, pulling fabric away with his teeth, nosing into the soft perfume of her body until he found the shoulder laces of her stays. And then her hands were over his, guiding him, aiding him in untying the laces and tugging her bodice down just enough that the tips of her breasts were bared to his gaze. And his mouth and his tongue.
He all but fell into the softness of her—he kissed each tight pink peak, delighting in the sweet scent of her skin and in the supple strength of her body as she arched her spine, her hands tangling in his hair as he sucked and tongued, moving from one tightly furled peak to the other.
“Oh Lord, Beech. I’m yours.”
He could only smile against her skin. “Not yet. Not until you marry me.”
She laughed. “And what, pray tell, will you do until then?”
“Oh, Pease Porridge, the night is young. And so are we.”
CHAPTER 10
NOW THAT TRUE ruination was at hand, Penelope had a moment of doubt—but only a moment. Loving Beech wasn’t ruination—it was fulfillment. The fulfillment of all her deepest, most secret desires. The fulfillment of every promise she had ever made to herself while relegated to sitting in ballroom chairs.
And Beech was kissing her with heat and a tenderness so kind and full of longing she had no defense against it, and she wanted none. She was empty of everything but a growing need that was fed by every taste of his smooth, clever lips.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and carried her to the bed, while he trailed hot kisses down the side of her neck, finding the secret place at the turn of her nape that made her shiver and sigh and angle her head away to give him greater access. Appeasing the low hum of want that built within, fanning the flames higher with every touch.
They sat on the bed with their legs enmeshed and their hearts entwined. His lips rounded to the hollow of her throat, and Penelope could feel her own heartbeat rise in response.
But it wasn’t enough just to be touched—she needed to touch him, too. Needed to taste the warm salt of his skin, needed to run her fingers through his long, snow-dampened hair, and tumble the unruly locks through her palms.
She kissed his dear, kind, achingly handsome face, letting her lips skate over that interesting little scar, across the high line of his cheekbones and down the strong line of his nose, taking little sips of him, as if he were hot spiced wine. As if too much at once might intoxicate her.
But she had already drunk too deep, because his clever fingers were at the four buttons at the back of her gown, and she was turning to make it easier.
Beneath the layers of chemise and stays and gown, her breasts grew full and tight with longing, and she closed her hands across the front of her bodice not just to hold her gown over her nearly-bared breasts, but to appease the needy sensation that swept under her skin.
And somehow, he understood—his hand came around to cover hers, answering her unspoken need by holding her tight. Filling her senses until every thought and feeling began and ended with his touch.
And she was falling again, or coming back. That was it. Coming back to him. To herself. To the rightness that had always been between them.
But she was falling as well, her head cradled safely against his shoulder, boneless under the press of his warmth and the safety of his embrace.
He began a slow but thorough exploration of the sensitive swath of skin below her collarbone, tracing the span and curve of her loosened neckline, and delineating the edge of her stays beneath. Back and forth, his clever fingers stroked the tips of her breasts, bringing a flood of sensation pooling beneath the heated surface of her skin. Winding her higher and higher, until she was straining toward his hand, silently urging her breast into his palm.
And then not so silently. “Beech. Please.”
He answered by delving his hand under her stays, firmly curling around her breast, until he could roll the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. The sensitive peak instantly contracted into a tight bud as need spiked through her, hot and nearly painful in its bliss.
She was as taut as a drawn bow, ready to fly loose at the slightest pressure. Need—want and lust and desire—grew until it was an insistent feeling of sharply pleasurable pain driving her on. Pushing her toward the irresistible lure of the passion he loosened within her. And she wanted more. “Beech, please.”
She showed him what she wanted by pulling her arms out of the velvet sleeves and pushing her gown down to pool at her waist, so she could undo her front-lacing stays.
He looked his fill, watching from over her shoulder as she unstrung the laces. And when there was nothing between them but the thin cotton of her shift, he slowly traced the outline of her nipples through the fine layer of fabric, sending streaks of sensation stretching deep into her belly.
“So beautiful,” he murmured against her neck. “You have no idea how often I have thought of you. Years of thinking and wishing.”
Penelope had to close her eyes against the rush of heat behind her eyes. She had spent years of hoping and wishing to be so wanted. “Beech.” She would repay his years of loneliness with love. She would give him everything she had left to give. “I am yours.”
His solemn vow rumbled through him. “As am I yours.”
His pledge held an earthy urgency that fed her restlessness, making her shift and surge beneath him until his fingers closed around her nipple, tweaking it possessively before he turned her in his arms and took the peak fully into his mouth.
There was nothing but his hands and his mouth and his possession of her body. But even as he laved and teased her with his lips and tongue, he closed the curtain of the bed around them, cocooning them in the dark, before he began to divest himself of his clothing, shrugging his way out of his coat, freeing the remaining buttons of his long waistcoat, and flinging away his cravat without ever taking his mouth from her.
When he was down to his shirtsleeves, he came back to her with a look of such heat and intent, it stole the breath from her lungs. With his hand at her shoulder, he urged her back upon the bed, but he did not come over her to kiss and caress.
Instead, he raised her legs to either side of him, and began to unlace the ribbons of her slippers.
Penelope instinctively squeezed her knees together. “Beech?”
“Yes, Penelope?” he answered as he flipped up her skirts and ran his hand up her legs, over her stockings to the edge of her garters.
Penelope’s heart—as well as other equally unruly organs—began to pound. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
“I don’t know.” He smiled and frowned all at the same time in that achingly contradictory way of his. “What do you think I’m doing?”
She was no green girl, but even she wasn’t sure. “Beech, you can’t—”
He slid to his knees in front of her. “Oh, I can. I will. Gladly and effortlessly.”
Effortlessly? Surely—
Beech settled his hand upon her knee and gently nudged her leg wider. Penelope knew she ought to be shocked at the openness of her pose and the sheer carnality of his intentions, but she felt heat spread under her skin, and her head went deliriously dizzy with anticipation. She was aching for his touch.
He lowered his head to feather kisses along the inside of her thighs, and she felt herself come slowly but surely undone, inch by tantalizing inch.
Oh, God, yes, he could—Penelope nearly shrieked at the first warm, wet lick of his tongue across her sensitive flesh. “Beech!” she whispered through the hand she had cast across her mouth to keep from saying anything more.
But he did not need her encouragement. “Yes,” he agreed, and she could feel his voice vibrate through her as his kisses grew more assured and intimate still.
When his hand joined his mouth, Penelope gasped and laughed all at the same time. She had never felt so vulnerable and so absolutely adored all at the same time. She closed her eyes and gave in to the sexual languor—she was afloat, buoyed along on a current of soft, infinitely pleasant sensation that stretched endlessly into the darkness. Their flight in the night, the cozy confines of the room, the bitter cold of the night—all was forgotten. Time ceased to exert its authority upon her. She belonged to no one but herself.
And Beech. Sure, clever, heroic Beech.
Seducing her with solace. Lulling her with love.
And then with a precise touch, he kissed her there.
Want blossomed within her like a weed, wild and tenacious, and she tangled her hands into his hair, pushing and pulling, encouraging him to press his lips—God, his beautiful clever lips—against that most sensitive place.
She felt herself grow so giddy under his unrelentingly gentle attention, that she let go of him, and dug her fingers into the linens covering the bed, grasping for purchase to keep from being carried off by the rising sensual tide. She was floating on the crest, her weightless body riding the rhythm of the waves until, with one elegant touch she tumbled over the top, and everything was light and heat and bliss within.
And she could only gasp his name, and let herself go down, pulled into the sweet wash of warmth.
After some time—she had no idea when—she came back to herself enough to discover Beech lying beside her with such a look of amused confusion—smiling and scowling all at once—that she couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.
As for herself, she could barely think at all, and frankly, didn’t want to. “Good Lord, Beech. You really are a bloody hero.”
CHAPTER 11
“PEASE PORRIDGE SWEET.” Marcus kissed her temple and let his gaze wander over the sublime lines of her beauty—her wide, plush lips, her gloriously arching brows—gathering his scattered thoughts to plot his careful course. “I wonder if I may ask pertinent question—just how ruined are you?”
Penelope blinked against the dim glow of the firelight and immediately started putting her clothing to rights. “Ruined is ruined.”
“I’m going to have to disagree, Pease Porridge.” He reached for her, stilling her hands by tucking her up against his chest. “Fact is, you are missing some telling attributes of a ruined woman.”
Her lovely heart-shaped face flamed with fresh color. “Am I? Shows what you know about ruination.”
“Yes, it does,” he affirmed gently. “Forgive my crude curiosity, but just how much did my brother importune you?”
She drew in a long breath. “Trust you to ask the dire direct questions, Beech.”
“My dear Pease Porridge, I don’t ask to censure. Far from it.”
She gave him no ready answer, but he was a man who had learned the virtues of quiet patience. He let the reassuring weight of the silence settle upon her for a long moment before he mused, “You see, I begin to think the term—ruined—is applied far too loosely to any young lady who might step her toe out of line and displease others who think to control her fate.”
“Beech, don’t make me out to be a saint. I am no innocent miss.”
“No, how could you be?” he agreed philosophically. “Anyone our age who could live in this world and remain a complete innocent would be either remarkably stupid, or remarkably callous. You strike me as neither of those things.”
“Beech.” Her voice was nothing but a whispered plea—for quiet or continuation, he could not tell.
So, he stayed his course. “I am a man of experience and observation, Pease Porridge—a man of facts. And I should very much like to be apprised of the true facts of the situation, which only you possess.” He drew his fingers across her temples, as if he could see the truth writ large there. “Now, I collect you’ve kissed before, as you are—if I may compliment you—an extraordinarily enthusiastic kisser. But that may be my own enjoyment clouding my judgment of experience.”
“You were rather enthusiastic yourself,” she countered.
“I am delighted you think so.” He began to brush his fingers absently along the sweet sweep of her jaw—an intimate, soothing gesture. “And we shall return to that pleasing activity just as soon as you satisfy my curiosity. And my sense of justice.”
“Justice?” Her tone edged back toward bleak. “In the court of social judgment, justice is hard to come by. Rumor is evidence, verdicts are swift, and appeals are nonexistent.”
“Too damn true.” He hated that she was clearly bearing the cost of his late brother’s sins. “The world is an astonishingly dangerous and deceptive place, isn’t it, Pease Porridge? Full of traps and pitfalls for the unwary. You seem properly wary, and yet…” He shook his head, because he could not quite puzzle it out. “I must ask, Penelope, if you know how my brother died?”
“He was shot to death in Grosvenor Square,” she answered carefully.
“And do you know,” he pressed, “by whom?”
“Yes.” She let out a long sigh before she said, gently, “He was shot by his married lover, poor Viscountess Guilford, for the unforgivable sin of infecting her with the pox.”
“Devil take his soul.” Marcus heaved out his own sigh. “I feared as much, though I assumed he was shot by somebody’s husband. Although I had not seen Caius in ten years, I did know he was a libertine.” Still, Marcus had some sympathy for his unapologetic ruiner of a brother—bleeding to death in Grosvenor Square was a messy, merciless way to die. “Poor bastard.”
“Yes,” Penelope agreed.
The uneasiness he did not want to believe was jealousy weighed on his chest like a five-pound shot. But she had just called him a hero, so he had to act like one, and face his fears. “What I still don’t understand is why you went to him? And why then, you later refused him? Please tell me you did not know that—that he had the pox—when you went to him. Please.”
“I went to him,” she said carefully, “perhaps because I recognized another wayward soul. But I refused him—or more correctly, my father—because Caius warned me. He told me of his disease himself. I think perhaps he was already dying.”
Marcus was sure he could not have heard her aright. “My brother, Caius Beecham, eighth Duke of Warwick, known libertine and despoiler of any number of women—and who knows what else—acted the gentleman and warned you off?”
“Funny, isn’t it?” Her bittersweet smile did not reach her eyes. “And incredibly sad.” She took a deeper breath and turned to face him. “It was meant to be a very great secret—the truth of his death—so, of course, all of society now knows that Caius Beecham, Duke of Warwick, had the clap.” She did not shy from the vulgar truth. “And now they are also sure that I must have it, too, because I was shut away in a room alone with him for some time. No matter that he never actually kissed me.”
Something sharp and shameful eased, and then tied itself into a new knot in his chest. “Devil send himself to hell,” Marcus swore. “My dear Pease Porridge, you astonish me.”
“Do I?” She tried to muster a shrug. “It was none of my doing, I assure you. I did throw myself at Caius, if you must know, Beech, and he put me off. He saved my life.”
He would not excuse Caius of all responsibility. “But ruined it anyway, by making you a pariah by not speaking up for you,” he insisted.
“Beech. You really are the kindest man.” In the low firelight, her eyes looked dark and liquid and sad. “Did it never occur to you that I might have known what I was doing—or thought I knew what I was doing—when I went into a closed room with your brother? That I might have had caddish Caius Beecham, and the Dukedom of Warwick, in my sights?”
CHAPTER 12
PENELOPE FELT him draw away from her.
“No,” he answered. And then, “Why?”
His voice was packed tight with hurt, but no accusation, and so she gave him the truth.
“Because I deserved no better. I told you I was no saint, Beech. I liked to dance. I liked to flirt. I loved to kiss. And I got caught. More than once, or even twice.” Now that their passion had cooled, she curled herself into a ball against the chilling draft. “My father told me no decent man would have me, so I decided upon a cad—a cad who might take me as I was. Your brother might have been many things—most of them bad—but he was no hypocrite.”
Beech shook his head as if he didn’t want to believe her. “If that was so, then why didn’t you marry the blighter when he proposed?”
“Because Caius didn’t propose.” Penelope closed her eyes, as if that might help her sort out the truth from the convenient lies. “But there was my father saying it had all been arranged, with your mama’s blessing. That I had no choice, and neither did Caius. But of course, I had a choice, awful as they tried to make it. And I chose to show Caius the same mercy he had shown me: I refused. I insisted nothing had happened, though nobody believed me.”
Beech stared at her as if he were finally seeing her as she was and not as he wished her to be. “How extraordinary.”
“Hardly.” Her own opinion was that she had been rather mercenary—both in going to Caius, and in refusing the proposal. “I had no want to end up dead of the pox.”
“Who would? Very prudent of you,” he agreed on a deep exhalation.
“I’m not prudent,” she insisted. “I’m damaged goods, as they say, Beech. I am ruined—nothing will take that stain away.” Especially not if she eloped with his brother. People would say she had bamboozled poor Beech into marrying her.
He seemed to finally hear the irredeemable truth about her. “Devil take me.” He drew away.
“Yes. So, you may put away your need for justice, and ask yourself if you still think we should marry now that you know all the sordid details that only I possess. If you truly want a ruined wife.”
He took another deep breath. “What I ought to ask myself is if I want you to wife.”
“Yes.” Straight to the dark heart of the matter. “You deserve better.”
He leaned closer, as if he were trying to see her more clearly in the shadowed bed. But it was she who saw him more clearly—saw the light of something more ferocious than justice lighting his eyes. “Now, don’t make me out to be a saint, my dear Pease Porridge. I have my own selfish needs as well.”
For a wonderful moment she thought he was speaking of attraction, of that marvelously giddy feeling of glad rightness she felt when she had been in his arms. But then he touched his empty sleeve again, in that involuntary, instinctive gesture of reminder.
And she understood. The truth stung like a slap, hard and unforgiving. “Oh, Beech. That’s what you think, isn’t it—that you’re the damaged goods? That you’re so altered, that only someone like me—who has no other choice—would ever agree to have you.”
The yawning gulf of silence that stretched out between them like a chasm was his answer.
“Oh, Beech.” Penelope had never felt more defeated. She ached for him—and for herself. “A fine pair of idiots we are.”
His laugh was tinged with suppressed pain. “And that, Pease Porridge, is my solace and my hope—that we are indeed a fine pair.” He shoved his hand through his disheveled hair, as if he were quite literally getting a hold of himself. “I have asked myself that question you posed, and I find that I do want you, and only you, for a wife. No matter your disadvantages or my disabilities. No matter what society, or my mother, or your father may say. Only you will do. Of this I am sure—I will have you or no other. But only if you will have me.”
Hope was a persistent flame that sparked hot and hungry. “Do you really mean it, Beech?”
“I always mean what I say, Penelope.” He met her eye squarely, no trace of mockery in their grey-green depths. No evasion. “Always.”
“Beech.” A month ago, she would have leapt at the chance to secure such a man. But the long weeks of her humiliation had taught her not to be so hasty or reckless. And he was such a man—an honest man whom she liked very much. Almost too much.
“I am tempted, Beech. Beyond thought, beyond reason. If I were to consult only my feelings—”
“You can trust me, Penelope.”
“I want to, Beech. But—” Trouble seemed to follow her like a dark angel. Bad decisions, impulsive action, disastrous results.
“Do you doubt your constancy? Do you think you will stray to another man—a whole man?”
“No!” Of this she was sure. “Your arm, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with it. It is my own lack—lack of prudence, want of character—that would make me a terrible duchess.”
“I don’t want a duchess. I want a wife.” He closed his eyes, as if he were consulting some internal barometer. “Do you know, that for all the years that I was away, I never suffered homesickness? My fellow midshipmen, and later my fellow officers, often talked of home, of the family or loved ones they missed. I never thought of Warwick, or my family like that. I frankly felt relief to be away from Caius. I liked being forgotten for the most part—it suited my sense of freedom and independence. Even when I was injured, I had no thought of going home. But when I received my mother’s letter about you and Caius, my peace was absolutely and irrevocably shattered. Shattered,” he repeated as if he still could not fathom why. “But I did not have enough time to understand why before I received another letter, calling me home. The whole of the trip I feared the event that precipitated such alarm was your marriage. You cannot imagine my relief—my horrible, guilty, profound relief—when I found the cause was instead Caius’s death.”
“Beech.” She wanted to warn him to stop, to cease with such useless remorse.
But he went on. “Imagine me, if you will, receiving the news that I was now the duke—that I was now the one who needed to marry.”
Anticipation, astonishment, and even a little fear began to beat hard in her chest.
“Imagine that the moment I was told I must marry, I set out directly from London for Warwickshire. Then imagine that I waited only until I received an invitation to Sir Harold Pease’s ball to accept. Imagine then that I attended, and let people stare at me as I searched the rooms for some sign of the young lady to whom I most wanted to speak, and when I could not find her, imagine I retreated to the library in defeat.” He finally turned his gaze back to hers. “And then imagine that you, the object of my unrequited and unsuspecting obsession, simply appeared to me, like the vision from a merciful, generous God.”
She could not draw breath—all the air stopped up in her throat, hot and thick and aching.
“Imagine all that, and then imagine that you, of all the people in the world, were the first person to be clear-sighted and honest and caring enough to ask me about my arm.” He took her hand very carefully in his. “Imagine my relief at such honesty. And then imagine that you kissed like an angel and made me laugh and forget myself enough to be happy.”
He kissed her hand. “And then tell me what I should do next.”
Tears of regret for all the years lost, mingled with tears of gratitude for all the years that just might be yet to come, scalded her eyes and streaked down her face. “You should kiss me, dear Beech, and marry me.”
CHAPTER 13
RELIEF AND GRATITUDE buoyed him up. “In the morning, my darling Penelope.” Marcus kissed her forehead. “Get under the covers and stay warm. I need to see to…things.” Like giving Martins instruction on caging a marriage license out of the Bishop of Warwick at first light.
Able Martins was a font of information, as well as discretion. “A regular license, Your Grace, is what is required. It shall be done at the earliest possible moment, Your Grace.”
“I thank you.” Marcus had no choice but to return as quietly as possible to the chamber where his darling Penelope had fallen soundly asleep. He didn’t want to sleep, of course. He wanted to crawl in beside her and make love into the wee small hours of the morning. To take solace in her body. To keep the unquiet dreams at bay, if only for a night.
But they would still come—the dark memories he could not forget. The necessary violence and blood of battle. The pain and instant understanding the moment he had been hit. The endless torment that followed.
And so, he did not join her in the bed. He did not sleep.
Instead, he sat in a chair before the hearth dozing on and off, as was his way, for the rest of the night, until the gray light of dawn roused him out of his self-imposed purgatory. The crystalline sunlight slanting through the window told him the storm had broken, and the sound of footsteps trailing off toward the stable told him Martins was already on his way.
Fresh hope was overtaken by zealous enthusiasm—it was his wedding day! It only remained for Marcus to make himself presentable for his bride.
On the stand in the dressing chamber, he found soap and water and a razor, and prepared, in the absence of Sealy Best, his skilled and steady-handed Bajan steward, to do for himself.
Half an hour’s labor left Marcus swearing and bleeding as if he’d been peppered with grapeshot.
“Beech?”
Penelope’s voice was too close for him to fully cover himself—he hastily flung a linen towel around his loins.
But she was already through the door. “Good Lord, Beech! What have you done?” She was looking not at his oozing face, but at the remains of his queue, sheared and lying discarded on the floor.
“Brought myself into the nineteenth century. Or at least tried to.” It had seemed such an easy task when he had conceived of it half an hour ago—to do away with his scruffy, piratical appearance for his wedding day.
“Why?”
“You said you thought I could do with a good barbering if I hoped to please.” The phrase had stuck in his mind like a pebble in his boot, urging him to take pains with his appearance on this day of all days.
“Not to please me—I rather liked you in the eighteenth century,” Penelope replied before she placed an offhand kiss on his bare left shoulder. “Where’s your man, Martins?”
“Gone for a bishop.”
“Dear Beech.” She tsked and ran her fingers through his uneven hair. “Here— If you’ll allow me?”
Marcus hesitated. He felt hideously exposed—she could see the stump of his arm, the ugly puckering of skin and scar that crossed the base.
But she wasn’t looking at his arm. She was looking at his face. “We’re to be married today, are we not, Beech?” she asked in answer to his silent disquiet. “If you can’t trust me now, when are you planning to do so?”
Marcus ignored the heat under his skin, swallowed the shameful fear in his throat, and handed her the shears.
“Thank you. I will strive to be worthy of your trust. If you would sit”—she directed him to a chair, as efficiently business-like as his steward ever was—“so you don’t loom over me. And here. You can keep watch”—she rearranged things on the shaving stand, angling the mirror to reflect into another large pier glass so that showed his profile—“so you can assure yourself that I’m doing you proud.”
She couldn’t do otherwise with her brilliantly straightforward demeanor.
Marcus relaxed enough to do as she advised and looked in the mirror.
And the image before him hit like a blow to the chest—there, in the prismatic trick of the reflection, was his arm.
He knew—he knew it was gone, and yet, there before him, he was whole again.
While Penelope took a turn around him, deciding upon her approach, making snips here and there, Marcus tried to keep his breathing calm and even. In and out. Drawing air evenly into his lungs.
But he could not look away.
Something—the omnipresent phantom itch that often clawed away his sanity—compelled him to scratch. To flex and rub his good right arm against his side and the edge of the chair as inconspicuously as possible while he watched the reflection in the mirror.
And miracle of miracles, it eased the prickling ache in his lost arm.
His heart filled his ears with a low pounding excitement.
Marcus took a deeper breath and did it again, rubbing his right elbow more purposefully, pressing harder against the wooden slat of the chair. And he felt it in his left arm—the phantom arm he watched in the mirror.
He did it again, and again until it must not have been inconspicuous at all, because the sound of the scissors had ceased, and Penelope was standing still behind him. Watching.
Shame warred with astonishment—with the miracle of discovery. “I—”
“Would it help if—?” And then she dropped the scissors and was rubbing his shoulders, pushing her thumbs into muscles made knotty by pain and tension and the sheer effort to hold himself up like a duke. Her clever hands rounded his shoulders and began massaging lower, down the full length of his good arm. Kneading deep with her knuckles and the heels of her palms, threading her fingers with his, rotating his wrist and letting him stretch out his fingers as he watched in the mirror.
The exquisite relief—the sheer totality of feeling—was so profound it was nearly cataclysmic. His breath was sawing in and out of his chest as if he had raced up a masthead, or fought in a battle, or made insanely pleasurable love to his wife.
“Does it help?”
“Aye.” He had no other answer. “Aye.” He tried to ease his breathing. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t, really. I saw you and thought—” She shook her head. “Just luck, I suppose.”
Just luck. The same sort of luck that had preserved his life instead of his arm. The same luck that had brought him to Warwickshire when he might have stayed in London. The very luck that had brought her to the library, so he might talk and drink and walk and dance and fall in love with her.
He pulled her down onto his lap. “Just so.” He kissed her in the knowledge that he was the luckiest man in the world.
“We’ll do it again with the mirrors, whenever you feel the need,” she suggested between kisses.
“Aye,” he agreed. “But I can think of a few other things we might be able to do with some mirrors.” Because when he looked down at just the right angle, her perfectly round breasts were just there, served up as soft and steamy as a fresh pot of porridge. “Pease Porridge Sweet.”
“Dear Beech.” She kissed him back. “I do wish you wou—”
He didn’t wait to find out what she wished, because a door opened and shut below before footsteps could be heard on the stair—Martins was back.
He lifted his bride-to-be off his lap and set her onto her bare feet. “Come, Pease Porridge. Make an honest duke out of me.”
She smiled up at him. “I should like nothing more.”
“Indeed.” A chilly voice came from the open door. “I am quite sure you would.”
CHAPTER 14
HIS MOTHER WASTED no time on politeness. “For God’s sake, Marcus. Have you lost your mind? What on Earth do you think you are doing?”
He found a banyan to pass to Penelope, so she might cover her shift. As for himself, perhaps it was past time his mother saw him as he really was, and not as she wanted him to be. He held the linen wrap in place and stood. “No, Mother, I have not. I have found my heart.”
“Don’t talk such romantic nonsense—your brother never did.” His mother, the soon-to-be Dowager Duchess of Warwick, turned away, as if she didn’t know where to look—certainly not at him. “But I expected more from you.”
“More than what?” Marcus damned both his embarrassment and his fury and stood where he was—if his mother couldn’t bear to look upon him, she could remove herself to a more proper distance.
Which she did, retreating to the other side of the dressing room door while Pease Porridge headed out the other.
“Such behavior,” his mother was saying. “Acting like the veriest green boy and not the Duke of Warwick. Chasing after the first passable face that throws herself at you.”
Marcus’s anger made it difficult to see straight, let alone speak with any clarity. “Do not speak of Miss Pease like that. She is my betrothed and will be my wife.”
“Never. The Duke of Warwick needs must make an alliance of family and fortune—a marriage that will bolster the Warwick fortunes and fame, rather than tarnish or diminish them.”
“I have spent enough times with the books to know that the estate is not on the brink of financial collapse.” Marcus tried to counter with logic instead of anger. “And I am sure Miss Pease has a dowry, but if she does not—”
He looked to Penelope to confirm this statement, but she had sensibly ducked out of the line of his mother’s fire.
“Of course, she does not,” his mother insisted. “Sir Harold took it off of her when she tried to ruin poor Caius—added her portion to the youngest daughter’s to try and marry her off in the wake of the scandal.”
“A scandal that would never have occurred if you’d let poor Miss Pease cry off quietly.”
“Poor Miss Pease? Have you lost your mind?” his mother asked for the second time. “None of this would have happened—Caius would still be alive, if that fool girl hadn’t gotten it into her head to refuse him. If he had married and had a wife to act as she ought and keep him as he ought, he’d still be alive.”
“He would not—he would be dead from the venereal disease that caused his mistress to murder him, and like as not, he’d have passed the bloody pox on to poor Miss Pease. And she’d be dying as well.”
“How do you know she hasn’t already got it?”
Something more furiously cold than anger slid under his skin. “I will not dignify your question with an answer, Mother. Suffice me to say that I am a man experienced of the world, and I know what is right and true and valuable in it.”
His mother was not persuaded. “She trapped you into this!” she accused. “Threw herself at you. This is her revenge. She’ll do anything to degrade the House of Warwick. She’s not worthy of—”
“Enough. Devil take your suspicions, Mother. If you must know, I threw myself at her—threw myself upon her mercy.”
His mother drew back in hauteur. “Do not swear at me. I only want to protect you.”
Marcus lit the match to his slow temper and let the cannonball fly. “Then you are nearly ten years too late to do that.”
His mother gasped in affront, or hurt, but Marcus had done battle with more than the French—he had faced his own fears, and he would press his advantage while he could. “Your care has always been for the House of Warwick, not for me. But I am a man now, Mama.” He even went so far as to use her preferred address to soften the blow. “And I am Duke of Warwick. I will act and marry as I see fit.”
“You wouldn’t dare defy me in this, Marcus!” his mother fumed. “Such a marriage would be an unmitigated disaster. I refuse to stand by and watch such wanton destruction of our good name.”
“Then I should advise you, Mama,” he counseled, “to go home to London.”
He stomped out of the room and went to find his bride-to-be—his Pease Porridge, his savior. Only to find that she had abandoned him.
She had broken her pledge and was gone.
CHAPTER 15
TARNISH. Diminish. That fool girl. She’ll do anything.
She’s not worthy.
They were the last words Penelope heard before she shut the door to keep from having to hear any more. But they were enough.
Enough to tell her that her lovely idyll with Beech was at an end. Enough to remind her that she deserved no better. More than enough to send her snatching up her clothes and running for home.
Penelope had the small presence of mind to wrap herself in the fur rug from the carriage as a ward against the frigid chill of the morning, but she didn’t have far to walk—her father’s carriage was already waiting in the snow-swept courtyard.
Penelope did not question how the empty coach came to be there, but simply climbed aboard, let her tears fall hot down her cold cheeks, and let them take her where they would—which turned out to be Hayholm Mote, a lovely moated medieval house tucked away in the countryside some ways up the Avon, where the great aunt she had never before met, Lady Sarah Pease, lived in quiet comfort with her cats.
“Poor lamb, you look like you’ve had a time of it,” Lady Sarah welcomed her with glad smiles and warm understanding. “Get this cup of tea into you, then tell your Aunt Sarah what happened, love.”
Her compassion was so unexpected that Penelope had no reserve. “I’ve made a proper mess of things, my lady. I’m sure my father—”
“Oh, fathers!” The lady waved her lace at the general notion of fathers. “What do they know of daughters’ love.” She patted the chair beside her. “Now, I do know bare outlines of your scandal—though I admire your ambition, and your taste. Caius Beecham, no less!” She patted Penelope’s hand in approval. “His death was unexpected, I suppose, but by the look of your poor face, I can’t help but think that you must have loved that lovely bastard very much to still be so brokenhearted.”
“No, ma’am.” Penelope would have laughed if she had not been so full of tears. “I was not in love with the late duke.”
“Pish tosh.” Aunt Sarah made a decidedly unladylike sound of disagreement. “I know a girl in love when I see one.”
Penelope felt her face flame. But why should she be ashamed—loving Beech had been everything right and good, even if it was ruinous. “I am in love,” she admitted. “Or feel I am—but it feels terrible. I seem to have jumped from the cold frying pan into the burning fire. And got myself properly roasted as a result.”
“Have you?” Aunt Sarah was all avid interest. “Tell me all.”
Penelope almost didn’t know where to begin. “I didn’t mean to, but I’ve somehow fallen in love with Caius’s brother, the current duke—Marcus. So, you see why it is so impossible.”
“Good God.” Aunt Sarah was so astonished she stood, unceremoniously dumping the cat from her lap. “Marcus Beecham? Of course—the naval man, and quite the hero, from what I’ve read. Of course, you would fall in love with him.”
She made it sound so simple. “Yes, I couldn’t seem to help myself.”
“One never can,” Aunt Sarah consoled. “So, what went wrong?”
“Everything,” Penelope said, even though so many things had gone perfectly with Beech—they had shared a true affinity. “But I suppose I didn’t have the courage to stay.”
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