The Duke’s Obsession Bundle (3 page)

“The last two,” she said over her shoulder.

He let her have the last word—or two—and also let himself enjoy the sight of her retreating backside again. He’d put her age well below thirty. The Corsican’s years of mischief had left a record crop of widows in many lands, perhaps including his housekeeper.

And more than just young, he was seeing for the first time that she was pretty. Oh, she didn’t emphasize it, no sane woman in service would. But to the earl’s discerning eye, her drab gowns hid a marvelous figure, one enforced proximity had made all too apparent to him. Her hair was a lustrous shade of dark brown, shot with red and gold highlights, and her eyes a soft, luminous gray. The cast of her features was slightly exotic—Eastern, Mediterranean, or even Gypsy. She was the antithesis of his mistress, a petite, blond, blue-eyed woman who circulated easily on the fringes of polite society.

He wondered on a frown why he’d chosen a diminutive woman for his intimate attentions, as tall women fit him better. But then, finding a mistress of any description was no easy feat. Given his station, the earl was unwilling to frequent brothels. He was equally loathe to take his chances on the willing widows, knowing they would trap him in marriage just as quickly as their younger counterparts would.

So that left him with Elise, at least when she was in Town.

Still frowning, he picked up an epistle from his brother, who was standing guard at Morelands while the duke and duchess enjoyed a two-week holiday there. Valentine was happiest in the country, playing his piano at all hours and riding the countryside.

The man was no fribble, though, and he’d appended a little postscript to his report: “The land you rent on Tambray is being ploughed, if not planted, by Renfrew in your absence. One wonders to whom the harvest will fall.”

Elise’s rented house was on Tambray Street, and Baron Renfrew was one of those fun-loving, randy young lords the ladies doted on. Well, let Elise have her fun, the earl mused, as his arrangement with her was practical. When they were both in Town, he expected her to be available to him by appointment; otherwise, she was free to disport where she pleased, as was he.

If he had the time—and the inclination—which, lately anyway, he did not.

“Your drink, my lord.” Mrs. Seaton placed a tray on the foot of the bed and held a glass out for him.

He glanced at the tray then regarded her thoughtfully. “I believe it might be more comfortable on the balcony, Mrs. Seaton.”

“As you wish, my lord.” She set the glass back on the tray, opened the French doors, and shifted to stand beside his bed. Carefully, he levered himself over to the side of the bed and waited for her to sit beside him and slip an arm around his waist.

“What is that scent?” he asked, pausing when she would have risen.

“I make my own,” she said, glancing over at him. “Mostly lavender, with a few other notes. It turned out particularly well this year, I think.”

He leaned in and sniffed at her, assessing.

“Lavender and something sweet,” he decided, ignoring the presumptuousness of his gesture. “Lilies?”

“Perhaps.” Mrs. Seaton was blushing, her gaze on her lap. “The details will shift, depending on one’s sense of smell, and also with the ambient scents.”

“You mean with what I’m wearing? Hadn’t thought of that. Hmm.”

He gave her another little sniff then squared his shoulders to rise. To his unending disgust, he had to steady himself momentarily on his housekeeper’s shoulder. “Proceed,” he said when his head had stopped swimming. They were soon out in the silky summer darkness of his balcony.

“Honeysuckle,” he said, apropos of nothing but the night air.

“There is some of that,” Mrs. Seaton said as they closed in on a padded wicker chaise. His balcony overlooked the back gardens, and a soft breeze was stirring the scents from the flowers below.

“Sit with me,” the earl said as he settled onto the chaise. Mrs. Seaton paused in her retreat, and something in her posture alerted him to his overuse of the imperative. “Please,” he added, unable to keep a hint of amusement from his tone.

“You were not born to service,” the earl surmised as his housekeeper took a seat on a wicker rocking chair.

“Minor gentry,” she concurred. “Very minor.”

“Brothers and sisters?”

“A younger sister and an older brother. Your lemonade, my lord?”

“Please,” he replied, recalling he’d sent her down two flights in the dark of night to fetch it.

But it was a moonless night and dark as pitch on the balcony, so when Mrs. Seaton retrieved the drink, she reached for his fingers with her free hand and wrapped his grip around the glass.

“You are warm,” she said, a frown in her voice. She reached out again, no doubt expecting to put the back of her hand against his forehead but instead connecting with his cheek. “I beg your pardon.” She snatched back her hand. “Do you think you are becoming fevered?”

“I am not,” he replied tersely, setting down his drink. He reached for her hand and brought it to his forehead. “No warmer than the circumstances dictate.”

He felt—or thought he felt—her fingers smooth back his hair before she resumed her seat. The gesture was no doubt intended as maternal, and it was likely Elise’s protracted absence that had him experiencing it as something much less innocent.

“How is your head, my lord?”

“Hurts like blue blazes. My back is on fire, and I won’t be wrestling my chestnut geldings any time soon, either. You pack quite a wallop, considering the worst I could have done in broad daylight was perhaps grope the girl.”

This recitation inspired his housekeeper to a very quiet yawn.

“Is my company that tiresome, Mrs. Seaton?” He wasn’t offended, but neither had he intended his tone to come out sounding so wistful.

“My day is long in your service, my lord. We do a big market on Wednesday, and Cook and I spend much of the day laying it in, as the men aren’t underfoot to bother us.”

“So you are tired,” he concluded. “Go rest, Mrs. Seaton. The settee in my sitting room will do, and I’ll call when I need your assistance.” She rose but hesitated, as if filling her sails for a lecture about propriety and decency and other virtues known mostly to domestics.

“Go, Mrs. Seaton,” he urged. “I treasure my solitude, and I have much to think about. I will not fall asleep out here, and you need to at least nap. Were you anybody but my housekeeper, you’d know the Earl of Westhaven has no need to bother his help.”

That must have appeased her or spiked her guns, for she departed, leaving Westhaven to sip his tea and enjoy his thoughts.

Her scent, he reflected, blended beautifully with the summer night air. It made a man want to nibble on her, to see if she tasted of lavender, roses, and honeysuckle. He cast back, trying to recall when he’d hired the pretty, younger-than-she-should-be, more-protective-than-she-needed-to-be, Mrs. Seaton. Early spring, perhaps, when he’d made the decision to leave the ducal townhouse, lest he strangle his dear papa and the endless parade of shirttail cousins his mama trooped past him for consideration as his broodmare.

The whole business was demeaning. He understood his parents, having lost two sons, were desperate for progeny from their two remaining legitimate sons. He understood Val affected a preference for men—at least he claimed it was an affectation—rather than suffer the duke’s importuning. He understood Devlin would be years recovering from Waterloo and the Peninsular War.

He did not understand though, how—given that the ducal responsibilities took every spare hour and minute—he was going to find the time to locate a woman he could tolerate not just in his bed but as the mother of his children and his companion at the breakfast table.

“Westhaven!” Elise flew across her sitting room, arms outstretched to envelope him in an enthusiastic hug. “Did you miss me?” She squeezed him to her ample bosom and kissed his cheek. “I have expired for lack of you, Westhaven.” She kept her hands wrapped around his arm, pressing her breast to his bicep as she did. “A month is too long, isn’t it? I’m sure you were very naughty in my absence, but I’m here now, and you needn’t go baying at the moon for lack of me.”

She was tugging at his clothing, her mouth chattering on, and Westhaven knew a moment’s impatience. Desire was a bodily craving, like fatigue or hunger or physical restlessness. He tended to it, usually twice a week, sometimes more, and lately less. It had been mildly alarming to find Elise’s departure for a
month-long house party had inconvenienced him not one bit.

But she was back, and it had been a month, and his clothes were rapidly accumulating in a pile on the floor.

“Elise,” he said, stilling her hands, “you know I don’t like to be untidy.”

“But you do like to be naked,” Elise quipped, bending to scoop up his shirt, waistcoat, and cravat. She dumped them over the back of a chair and pushed him onto her fainting couch, the better to extricate him from his boots. “And I like to get you naked.” Like a small, blond fury, Elise finished peeling him out of his clothes, showing an enthusiasm he didn’t usually find in her.

“You’ve added flesh,” she observed when she’d thrown his breeches onto the chair, as well. “You aren’t as skinny, Westhaven. Oh, and look, you are glad to see me.”

His cock was glad to see her, anyway. Glad enough that when she pushed him onto his back on her silly red bed, he could concede a month of celibacy had been enough.

“Let me taste you.” Elise was still in her dressing gown, but she climbed onto the bed and knelt at his hip.

Now this was something new. Elise liked having him for a protector, liked thinking the heir to a dukedom had chosen her for his pleasures. She did not, however, particularly like him or like sex. These factors bothered him a little, but no more than they bothered her. In many ways, it was easier if she wasn’t personally attached to him, nor he to her.

Her tongue lapped at his cock, the sensations tantalizing and more arousing than the rest of Elise’s repertoire of foreplay put together. Elise, however, had been reluctant to indulge him thus previously, so with her, he usually contented himself with more pedestrian sexual play. The lapse of time since they’d last been together, and the enthusiastic efforts of her mouth, combined to undermine his usual self-discipline.

“I’ll come in your mouth, Elise,” he warned her several minutes later. “When you suck on my cock, it tempts me—”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Elise glanced up at him sharply, alarm flitting across her face. She opened her dressing gown and lay down on the mattress beside him. “You can’t have all the fun, Westhaven.”

She obligingly spread her legs, so he rolled and settled himself over her.

“I take care of you, Elise,” he said, nuzzling at her neck. She wasn’t much of one for kissing on the mouth, but she tolerated attention to her breasts fairly well.

“You do,” she agreed, arching up against him. “Though you take your damned time about it.” The words were teasing, but something in her tone was petulant, ungracious, so he dispensed with further preliminaries and found the entrance to her body with his cock.

“I will assume”—he began to rock his way to a fuller penetration—“you have simply missed your pleasures, Elise.”

“I have,” she said, wrapping her legs around his flanks and locking her ankles at the small of his back. “Now fuck my feeble brains out and cease jabbering.”

His cock liked that idea just fine, but in the part of him that always watched, always considered, something about Elise felt just the slightest degree
off
. Her enthusiasm didn’t seemed feigned, exactly, but neither was it… warm.

“Harder,” she urged, flexing her hips to meet his thrusts. “I want it rough today, Westhaven.”

Rough?
Where in the hell did that come from? He obligingly thrust harder and felt his own arousal ratchet up. Elise’s heels dug into his spine, though, and the distraction allowed him to hold back his orgasm as he listened for hers to approach.

“Oh, God…” Elise was flailing her hips at him desperately, her passion a welcome and uncharacteristic display. “God damn you, Westhaven…”

She bucked against him harder, until he felt his own climax bearing down on him. He held off until he was sure Elise had found her pleasure in full then arched his back to withdraw.