Forbidden to Love the Duke (19 page)

He laughed. “Aren't you, after what we just did?”

She didn't answer, but through his half-closed eyes he noticed her gaze travel the length of his nude body. Her interest gave him another erection, which he intended to put to good use after he rested for a moment. He turned onto his right side, smothering a groan.

“What is it?” she asked in alarm. “Are you in pain? Did we do something we weren't supposed to?”

“Damn me.” He laughed again, drawing a deep breath. “You're already acting like my wife.”

“Open your mouth, James.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What for?”

“Let me give you a dose of that medicine.”

He looked at her with gratitude and perhaps envy. Here this goddess sat with her steady hands and voluptuous body sticking in his mouth a brimming spoonful of the soporific before he could seize the moment.

He shuddered. “Why did you do that? I shouldn't have let you force it on me.”

“How does it taste?”

“Like a dead toad's spleen.”

He wasn't sure how she managed it, but she brought him a glass of water, reapplied the ointment and bandage to his arm. Then, with no cooperation on his part, she rummaged in his wardrobe for a nightshirt and
dressed him in it like an oversized doll. If he didn't adore her, he would never have tolerated such humiliation.

“Ha,” he said. “You're still naked.”

“You're still impossible.”

He grabbed her around the waist, aroused and possessive even as Morpheus worked his insidious magic. What a feeling. James wanted to throw the bottle in the fire. “I've never killed a toad,” he said. His eyelids felt like lead. His body felt relaxed and still aroused. “I'd kill to keep you, though.”

“I hope that is the medicine talking.”

“No.” He laid his head against the pillow. “It's the aristocrat.”

She wriggled out of his arms. “Do you love me, James?”

“I must.” He closed his eyes. “I asked you to marry me and I let you dose me with poison.”

She slid off the bed. “You need to stop playing and settle into bed.”

“I've only started to play.” He frowned. “You're the one who needs to settle into bed.”

“Would you be quiet for a moment? I'm very upset. There's something wrong with you.”

“There's nothing wrong with you,” he said admiringly. “That was the best f—”

“James.”

“I was going to say it was the best fun I've had in my life.”

She looked at him in vexation. “Well, it won't be the best moment in mine if anything happens to you as a result of what we did.”

“You have severely underestimated me if you think I will expire from a single act of sex.”

“And you've overestimated me if you don't think I'll die of shame explaining this to your doctor.”

“I'll be fine.”

“Promise?”

“Hmm.”

“What—” The woman had pulled the carpet out from under his arse. No, the counterpane. They weren't on the floor this time. God, his brains felt addled. He opened his eyes. She was dressed and bent over the bed, smothering him in covers.

“What did the physician tell you that I missed?” she asked sharply. “Obviously I didn't hear everything he said.”

“He ordered me to stay in bed for two days straight. He didn't specify what I could or couldn't do while I was here. By the way, I don't need a governess. Did I disappoint you?”

“Perhaps I should call him back.”

“Oh, my God. Do I look ill to you? Allow a man his pride.”

She didn't understand, but he was too tired to explain.

The least hesitation of instincts, an uneven skill, would prove fatal during a duel. It didn't matter that her father had died as the result of a challenge. He had cheated and paid the cost.

If James could not win a duel over her now, then he did not deserve her.

O
liver had played the role of invalid for over a week and Ivy still had not returned to Fenwick. Initially he'd enjoyed Lilac's attention to his imaginary malaise, but boredom, along with Rosemary's disapproval of his person, had conspired to bring about a complete cure. He took glee in using the duke's candles for the light he needed to compose poems to Ivy.

He glanced up as Lilac entered the room with his supper tray. “Hungry yet, Sir Oliver?” Lilac inquired with a cheerfulness he didn't know how she could maintain.

“And what is on the menu this evening, my dear?” he asked from the couch in the drawing room where he posed in languid discontent. “Ragout of duck and asparagus points washed down with champagne?”

She cleared away his papers and set the tray down on the table. “Carrot broth, stewed cabbage, and raspberry trifle. Oh, and tea.”

“Ye gods,” he said, hoping his reflexive grimace passed for a grin in the poorly lit chamber. “I mean, you spoil me. I don't deserve your continued kindness.”

Lilac plopped down in the chair on which she had placed his papers. He thought to protest, but then she pulled them out from beneath her derrière and placed the pile on the end of the couch. “I'm enjoying taking care of you, really. I never thought I had it in me.”

He stared down at his broth and swore he felt his nose twitch and sprout whiskers. “How could you enjoy it?”

“Well, it isn't every day that Rosemary traps a man in the tunnels and forgets about him.”

“How would anyone know?” he asked with a morbid sniff. “There could be dozens of lost souls down in those—tunnels, did you say?”

“Yes. The passages are attached by tunnels. We explored them every summer when we were girls.”

He was appalled, both by the soup and the thought of little girls crawling through cobwebs and who knew what else. “Your parents allowed you to do this alone?”

“Sometimes Mama accompanied us. But usually it was Quigley or Terence who came along as guard.”

Quigley, the gardener, had yet to succumb to Oliver's charm. Quigley had lived at Fenwick since before the sisters had been born. He might know a thing or two about hidden treasure. “Who is Terence?”

Lilac blushed a becoming shade of peach. She was a golden-pink-complexioned girl, lovely in her own way, if eccentric, as were the rest of the quartet. “Terence is my best friend. He sailed off somewhere for the East India Company, Morocco or—”

“Malacca.” He grinned. “How long has he been gone?”

“Six or so years.” Lilac put down the soup spoon. “Don't give me a lecture, Sir Oliver. Everyone else has. It's my affair if I choose to wait for him.”

“Well, have you heard anything from him?”

“Perhaps.”

He didn't ask her how long ago that had been. There was no reason to embarrass her, but Oliver couldn't imagine waiting six months for a woman, never mind six years. A week had strained his patience. “When do you think Ivy will come back?”

Lilac had picked up his notebook and was moving her lips as she read his latest rendering to herself. He watched her face, forgetting what he had just asked her. She appeared to be lost in his most recent poem. He was entranced, aroused, her opinion suddenly all that mattered in the world.

“What do you think?” he asked softly.

She blinked. “It's enchanting. I've never read anything like it.”

A thousand stars shone upon you like day

While I stood alone in the dark

That night in Bulgaria when you went away

With a stranger you had met in the park

He winced. “It's Belgravia, Lilac, not Bulgaria, and the way you read it, it sounds awkward and lacking cadence.”

“It's not the way she read it,” an amused voice announced from the doorway. “It's how you wrote it. ‘Stars shining upon one like day.' I think, Sir Oliver, it would have been more enticing if you had written a poem about a stranger in Bulgaria.”

His mouth tightened. He set aside his tray as Rosemary pushed the door open with her shoulder, a handful
of dried thistles in her hands. “And your obscure novels are blazing a trail across the Continent, are they?”

She tossed the thistles in the fireplace. “I could have been a best seller in Bulgaria for all you know.”

“I
was
a guest at one of Lord Byron's house parties last year. He declared one stanza of my work to be practically excellent.”

“How cruel of him,” Lilac said after a long pause.

“It could have been worse,” Rosemary said, plucking a burr from her skirt.

Oliver gave her a negligent glance. “Oh?”

“He could have declared you to be practically awful.”

He laughed reluctantly. She was a bold Amazon whose face became breathtaking when she smiled. Oliver was quite unprepared for the impact. Whatever the Fenwick sisters lacked in reputation they atoned for in allure. “When do you think Ivy is coming home?” he asked her, uncomfortable with his thoughts.

“I honestly don't know. Is that raspberry trifle?”

“Yes,” Lilac said. “You might as well have it. He hasn't touched it. And, Oliver, I'm afraid if you want Ivy, you'll have to go after her.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, expelling a sigh.

“Obviously she isn't about to chase you,” Rosemary said, squeezing in the chair beside Lilac.

“It's almost as if she's forgotten you exist,” Lilac said with her typical candor.

Oliver tapped his spoon against the bowl of tasteless broth. “I realize that all of you are the victims of circumstance, and that owing to events over which you had no control, you withdrew from society and have during the period of your involuntary ostracism—”

“You think we're ill-mannered,” Lilac said as Rosemary calmly devoured the trifle.

“I wasn't being insulting.”

“It's all right,” Lilac said. “We are social exiles and do not care for convention.”

He glanced at Rosemary. “So you think
I
should pursue your sister?”

“I said nothing of the sort,” she replied, and set her empty bowl back on the tray.

“You did,” he insisted.

“No. I said she would not chase you. If you go to Ellsworth and the duke catches you, you shall get whatever you deserve.”

Lilac nodded. “You didn't see the way the duke looked at Ivy. Perhaps there's a reason why she hasn't come home. Sir Oliver, I'm afraid you might be too late.”

I
vy lightly traced the creases in his beautifully sculpted face with her fingertip. She wished she could stay the night, watching over James, if only to hear him tell her that they belonged together as man and wife, and that was that.

There was a chance he would change his mind by morning. But he must have been brought into her life five years ago for a reason—perhaps so that her heart would hold a place for him.

She poured another glass of water to leave at his side and debated whether to add a few coals to his fire. He still felt hot. She decided that she would check him again in half an hour and slipped from his room, hoping that no one else in the house spotted her. Of course he would be well. As he'd pointed out, it wasn't likely that a man could make love with such intensity and succumb to a grave illness hours later. Not that she was an expert on the subject. But she was the one who should be running a fever. She felt both exhausted and exhilarated.

Her mind kept returning to the offer he had made her. His wife. The duchess. A title that implied dignity
and rulership. No more trysting in the Chinese Room. Or knocking over chairs. And if they ever needed a governess, Ivy would conduct the interview and would not kiss any of the applicants on the floor.

A fine example the two of them had set for the rest of the house as well as for the children.

Of course Ivy could not have foreseen that one of the little mischief-makers would be waiting in her room, tonight of all nights.

“Walker, what are you doing in that chair and wearing on your head? And is that your uncle's cane? Are you sleepwalking? Or is that you, Mary? Answer me. This has to stop.”

She gasped as the shadowed figure rose from the chair and stepped into the moonlight. It was—she wasn't sure
who
it was at first. It appeared to be a footman dressed in a maid's frilly mobcap and apron. Had the servants been using
her
bedroom for their antics? She nearly laughed until she took a closer look at the agitated face under the cap and realized it belonged to Sir Oliver.

Her heart jumped in alarm. She hadn't believed any of his nonsense about rescuing her from the duke. “Oh, no, Oliver. Not in here. Have you gone daft?” Which was a question she realized didn't need an answer. He was wearing a cap and apron in the house of a man who had decreed he would kill Oliver if he set foot on this property again.

“I might well be daft,” Oliver said. “I can't think of any other explanation for the risk I'm taking.”

She was so upset the words tangled in her throat. “It's rash and dangerous for you to come to this house, let alone sneak into a private room. How did you find your way inside?”

His lips thinned. “I waited for hours outside the garden walls. I hoped I would see you in your window.”

“The duke will fly into an understandable rage if he catches you here.”

His gaze drifted over her with a sly knowledge that felt like a violation. Her hair needed to be brushed and bound. She had not bothered to refasten the buttons at her nape. She was relieved that he did not remark on her unkempt appearance.

“The duke is ill, isn't he?” he asked, his voice mildly taunting.

“What makes you think that?”

“I saw a physician leave the house.”

“The children often beg treats from the kitchen and suffer for it.”

“The children were playing in the summerhouse in the dark. Without their governess.”

“Leave this room right now, Oliver.” She couldn't control the quiver of panic in her voice. “If the duke discovers you here, he'll kill you and I don't think anyone would blame him.”

He looked down at her bare feet. “Why would the duke come to your room this late at night?”

“That is not your affair. Nor did I say he would. The issue is that
you
are here, a trespasser and intruder.”

He gripped her by her upper arms. “I want to marry you. Don't you feel anything for me at all?”

“At this moment exasperation is the kindest emotion I can muster. Let me go.”

“Let me kiss you. Or at least arrange to meet me tomorrow.”

“What if someone sees you here? He won't tolerate
an insult, Oliver. You're the most stupidly impulsive man I have ever met.”

He laughed. “I was half-mad before I met you. When are you coming back to Fenwick?”

“Aren't you listening to me? No, you are not. I might as well be talking to the wall. Fenwick will belong to a stranger before long if my sisters and I can't scrape together enough money to pay its upkeep. You aren't plump in the purse, and we don't
know
each other.”

He lowered his head to hers. “We could save Fenwick together. I know you won't believe me, but in the short time I've been living there, I have fallen under its spell.”

“You've been
living
there?”

“If you had
read
my letters, you would have already known.”

“What letters?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Ah. That's what I thought. The duke has intercepted your correspondences. The devil.”

The devil, indeed. Ivy wasn't at all surprised. James had made no secret of his possessive streak. “How can you be living at Fenwick? Who gave you permission? It needs to be put to a vote.”

“It was. Lilac voted yea, and Rosemary nay.”

“Well, I wasn't asked.”

“You were. You didn't reply. Nor did Rue. Quigley was the deciding vote, and a hard one to win. The lease on my London lodgings ran out at the end of the month, and I have moved into your gatehouse.”

Ivy shook her head, stunned by her sister's betrayal. “Why would Lilac agree to this? I don't believe you.”

“She agreed because Rosemary almost killed me. Yes, it's true. She pushed me into a hidden passageway
and left me there to rot. If Lilac hadn't rescued me, I would be dead.”

Ivy felt as if she were frozen in the moment. Part of her wanted to be back in James's arms. Another part wished she could return to Fenwick with its secrets and her sisters and no problem more complicated than surviving another tomorrow. The familiar, no matter how painful, called for her to return. But the duke needed her, and where or why Oliver stood in the middle of this muddle, she hadn't the patience to discern.

“I'll come to Fenwick as soon as I can.” And she would not take Oliver's word on anything until she had talked to Lilac and Rosemary for herself. “Now escape this house before either the duke or I kill you, Oliver. This is a provocation that no gentleman would excuse.”

He released her. His mouth quirked in a triumphant smile that tempted her to slap his face. “Just kiss me once.”

A cry rent the silence. A hinge creaked. Ivy turned instinctively, half-expecting to discover a naked duke standing in the door. Oliver, for all his high-flown nonsense, had retreated back into the dark. But it was not the duke who darted into the room and flung her arms around Ivy's waist. The diminutive intruder was Mary, loud sobs shaking her body.

*   *   *

The sound of a female weeping penetrated his drugged sleep. Ivy? He ordered his body to act. He preferred the agony of hell to this helpless oblivion. He summoned all his energy to shove the counterpane to the floor. His right arm jerked upward into the air. He swept his hand across the bedside table.

An enemy in the night. Where in God's name were his weapons? A soldier had cried for help.
Curtis.
He thought of his brother in battle. Goddamn Curtis's wife for betraying her family. How could she abandon those beautiful children? He would hunt down her lover and take revenge to satisfy his brother's honor.

He hated this weakness, this fog in which unrecognizable figures loomed and disappeared before he could work out where they stood. He must fight it.
Fight.
Pain jolted him into a twilight clarity. He'd rather suffer then sleep.

He wrapped his reliable arm around the bedpost and pulled himself upright. The poultice on his shoulder slithered down his chest. The drug was still strong in his blood, beckoning him back under black waves of oblivion. He released the post and reached back for the water on the table, taking a deep swallow before he realized it was morphine. Where the hell was his pistol? Not that he could pull the trigger. He grabbed something sharp.

Did he still hear crying? Had he been weeping in his sleep? He staggered from the bed but made it no farther than to the clothes chest before he had to rest.

“Damn, damn, damn.” He grasped another post, struggling to remain upright.

From his viewpoint he could look through the window to the garden. Was a deer running through the park? A maid? Was he hallucinating? Why was he clutching a pair of scissors? He glanced up again. He saw nothing in the garden but the familiar blur of hedges laid out beneath the moonlit trees.

His hand loosened from the post.

The crying had stopped, but he heard soft voices in the hall. His instincts told him that his sanctuary had
been invaded. He had ruined a young woman and failed as her protector in one single night.

*   *   *

Ivy went to Mary without a moment's hesitation. She had only an inkling of what the child had witnessed in her past, but she vowed it would not happen again. “What is it? Walker again?”

“N-no.”

Sweet mercy. “Then what is it, my dear? Why are you crying so?”

“Papa might be killed. Uncle James is sick. And I peeped in on Walker. He's wet the bed, my lady, and I don't know how to tell him that our mother is never coming home.”

Ivy was ashamed at how relieved she felt that Mary's distress did not stem from catching her governess in an indiscretion. “Tomorrow we shall make other arrangements. Perhaps I shall sleep in the dressing closet between you and Walker. Come here. I have a handkerchief to dry those tears. I know how sad you must be.”

“Have you been sad before?”

“Oh, very.”

Mary trailed her to the wardrobe, whispering, “Is the maid still in your room?”

Ivy closed the drawer and then the wardrobe door. “The maid?” she said, turning around woodenly.

“The one I saw you talking to before I came in. I didn't mean to interrupt. Ladies like to talk to each other. She had a funny voice. Was she angry with you?”

Ivy dabbed gently at Mary's face. Was this how it started? A small untruth meant to protect an innocent person? What if Mary mentioned the “maid” to James? Would Ivy lie again to prevent James from challenging
Oliver to a duel? A little lie that grew into a circle of deceit like a serpent consuming its own tail and ensuing self-destruction? Better to say nothing than to deceive.

“You may always interrupt me when you are upset, Mary. That is why I am here. Calm yourself. Sleep in my bed tonight. I'll ring for another maid to change Walker's sheets.” And she would peep in on James on the way, allowing the moron in the maid's cap to escape before a servant on the estate sighted him and roused the duke from his bed.

*   *   *

But the duke was not in his bed. And it was Ivy who almost panicked, not Mary, when she encountered James lumbering down the hall toward them in his nightshirt, dripping the poultice she had applied and brandishing a pair of scissors. To be fair, he did look like a mythological monster and her frayed nerves could not be expected to withstand another shock tonight. As soon as she realized he was in a feverish state and had no idea what he was about, she returned to her practical self—she who mopped up messes, tended the ill, called out instructions, and promised herself she could have brandy and a private bellow when it was all over.

Mary came to her senses as most young women eventually do in a crisis. She ran back to her room to ring for help and settle down to read Walker stories in his bed when he woke, while Carstairs and three able young footmen guided the duke back into his chamber. Ivy nearly fainted when she discovered the chaos he had wreaked. The bronze-gold bed tester shimmered against the parquetry floor. Side tables and chairs had been overturned as if swept by a dragon's tail. Whatever had caused him to go into this frenzy?

Even when incapacitated the duke was a power like no other man Ivy had known.

She hung back as Wendover and the footmen herded him back into the bed, Wendover shouting for someone to call back the physician and James, in response, ranting about the insanity of Napoleon Bonaparte and an intruder in the park.

“Doesn't anyone believe me?” he roared.

Ivy stood back from the doors to his room. It was improper for her to be present at all in the duke's extremity. What did it count that he had proposed to her during the height of their pleasure? There had been no witnesses.

He might forget his promise by tomorrow. He might not remember it now.

Despite the uncertainty, she couldn't regret what she had done. She had given herself to him of her own will. Even if she weren't bound to him for a year, she knew she wouldn't leave him by choice. She would love him long after her legal obligation was fulfilled.

For five years she had lived her own life. She hadn't cared what anyone thought—until he had broken through her isolation and forced her to return to the world that existed outside Fenwick. He couldn't simply leave her to manage Mary and Walker on her own. What if she had conceived a child tonight? Had he left a will to cover this eventuality? Why was she letting herself fear the worst?

The duke's roar broke through her reflections. “Why won't anyone believe me?”

“Believe you about what?” Wendover patiently asked with the measured respect of a lifelong friendship.

“England has been invaded by an army of maids,”
James replied, and although Carstairs closed the doors and Ivy heard no more, she knew that this was not the end of the matter.

The duke would live to recover and cause more trouble in her life.

*   *   *