The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (7 page)

In addition, I got letters asking me why I kept comparing Rafe to the Shakespearean character Bottom. People were curious, but they didn’t necessarily remember their high school English class well enough to catch the nuances. So I wrote a little essay about that as well. In
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, Bottom is an actor who is transformed by the fairy king and given an ass’s head.
Chapter Thirty
—the one readers found confusing—really cemented the theme of disguise that runs through the series (think of Mayne’s cross-dressing, Darlington’s secret career, Griselda’s
affaire
).

A Discussion of Bottom & Rafe

In the end, though, these explanations were involved and after the fact. I ended up writing an entirely new chapter, spurred by the fans who were asking question after question on my bulletin board. It was the first time I’d thought of books as elastic, with changing borders. These days, self-published authors, in particular, pull their books off the shelf, reedit them, and republish as a matter of course. This was the first time I thought about amending one of my own books and in fact, this chapter is included in several translated versions of
The Taming of the Duke
, published abroad.

Following Directly After Rafe’s Marriage Proposal

Which is a gift from Eloisa to her Readers . . . because it is hard to say goodbye to the sweetness of Rafe and Imogen.

It was the middle of the night and he was standing outside Imogen’s bedchamber, frozen, his hand on the door latch. Hadn’t he promised that he would be ducal in all things? That hardly included barging into his future wife’s bedchamber in the middle of the night, like an under-butler furtively visiting a scullery maid’s bed.

Yet the devil on his shoulder reminded him that dukes were sneaking into bedchambers all over the country. At this very moment his fellow dukes were tupping married women, housemaids, maidens . . . in truth, therein lay the problem.

He would never wish Imogen to think that he saw her as a woman to tumble, a mere
affaire
, a lightskirt. His hand slipped from the latch and he turned to go, just as that same door swung inward.

Rafe’s first thought was that Imogen wasn’t wearing much. His second thought barely registered, something to do with the smile in her eyes and the saucy tilt to her hips.

“I was about to come and join you,” she said.

He blinked at her nightgown, an affair made of rosy silk. She shifted her shoulder and suddenly the silk slid down to her elbow. Rafe’s third thought, whatever it might
have been, died a sudden death as their eyes met over the creamy expanse of plump breast before him.

“If I shrug one more time,” Imogen said gravely, though her eyes were laughing, “my gown will fall to the floor.”

Rafe didn’t say anything, just stepped into the room and pushed the door shut.

And Imogen shrugged. The gown slipped away, down her smooth curves.

No one in that room said a word for a good forty minutes, unless one counts moans, murmurs, and outright cries of pleasure as language.

“We cannot continue to act in this fashion,” Rafe said, after his chest had settled to a normal rhythm.

She was tucked, boneless, under his arm. All he could see was one eyelid and a trail of silky black hair.

He consciously schooled his voice to a commanding, yet thoughtful tone. “Imogen, I shall not come to your bed tomorrow night. In fact, not again until we are married.”

“Why?”

“My duchess will not arrive at the altar carrying a child.”

He could see the edge of a smile. “You needn’t worry about it if we marry in the near future. It takes forever to create a child. You’re going to have to work at it; did I tell you that I want at least six?”

“I hereby commit myself to slave labor,” he said, pulling her closer. “I told you that I’m the hairy, virile type.” He couldn’t help it; his fingers began dancing down the plump curve of her breast again.

She sighed, and threw an arm over her head, giving him better access. The curve of her slender wrist and the cream of her skin in the candlelight were like madness to him, better than whiskey, better than wine, better than anything he’d seen—or tasted—in his life. Their eyes met.

“Will you stay in your chambers tomorrow, then,” she whispered, “knowing that I’m wearing the nightgown I greeted you in?”

He nodded, stilling his fingers. “I must.” He said it almost desperately. “I won’t treat you like a woman to be tupped at my disposal, Imogen. You’re to be my wife.”

“I shall torment you,” she said, giggling a little. The lazy sweetness of her voice hung in the air. “I shall lean close to you at the end of the meal, and tell you that I intend to bathe before bed, and that I need help undressing myself.”

His fingers slid over the satin of her skin and his mind clouded again.

“There are times when I should go to sleep,” she said, “but I feel . . . oh . . . restless. Quite restless.”

Rafe couldn’t even answer that; he just lowered his head to her breast. Vixen that she was, Imogen kept talking, although a faint huskiness came to her voice. Talking . . . telling him all the details of her bath, and how she would lie alone in her bed, and she would—

He raised his head. “You
will
?”

She laughed at him. “Do you think that I haven’t found you in my dreams and in my thoughts the last few nights?” Her eyes met his. “I’ve dreamed of you touching me, just so.” She trailed a finger across her breast. “And so.” The finger wandered lower.

“But you didn’t think you were meeting
me
. You were making love to Gabe—that is, you—”

She was laughing again, not giggling, but full-out laughing. “You must think I’m a fool! A woman tricked by a mustache and a slow manner of speaking!”

Her laughter warmed some part of him that he hadn’t even known was mortally cold. “I gather I’m the fool,” he said, trying vainly to sound casual. “I thought you only found out in the last day or so. When did you discover my ploy?”

“Not immediately. Although”—she frowned—“I should have known within the hour. Do you remember when you kissed me in the carriage?”

“I did so more than once.”

“The first time. The truth is—” She propped herself up on her elbow, eyes serious now. “I should have known immediately because I
knew
Gabe didn’t really want me.”

Rafe opened his mouth, but she put a finger over his lips.

“He didn’t. I asked him, rather than the other way around.” There was something sweet and rueful about the curve of her mouth that made Rafe’s chest ache. “I knew he didn’t really want me, because I experienced precisely that with Draven. Draven was . . . perfectly willing.”

“I too am perfectly willing,” Rafe said, desperate to take the shadow from her eyes. He grinned at her wolfishly. “Always.”

She leaned over and dropped a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t understand desire until you showed your version of willing.”

“Thank God, my brother’s a blind dolt,” Rafe said, heartfelt.

“Draven was rather cheerfully punctilious,” Imogen said. “And I imagine that had you not intervened, with your false voice and your mustache, Gabe might well have shown me the same favor.”

“I’d have had to kill him.”

Imogen looked at her husband-to-be and decided, calm though Rafe’s voice was, he really meant it.

“Well,” she said hastily, “do you see why I should have known immediately? Because when we kissed in the carriage, on the way to see Cristobel—well, that was my first kiss. My first
real
kiss. Of course that wasn’t Gabe kissing me.”

“But you didn’t realize,” Rafe said, looking ridiculously pleased with himself. “And I did pretty well in the inn, didn’t I? Did you notice that I knocked my wine on the floor?”

She laughed. “No. I
did
notice that Cristobel had obviously met you before, though, and in the company of an earl. I’m quite certain I know exactly which earl that was: your closest friend.”

“Damn Mayne,” Rafe said, putting on a tragic face. “I never had a chance with Cristobel, given that he was around.”

“And even so I didn’t jump to the right conclusion,” Imogen said, as much to herself as to him. “What a fool I was. I thought it was remarkably odd that a Cambridge professor had found his way into Cristobel’s presence—and yet it made sense, in an odd way. How else would Gabe have known about her, if he hadn’t heard her sing before?”

“He had no idea what he was suggesting. Saw a placard nailed to a tree and likely thought he was taking you to a revival meeting to listen to some rousing hymns. Well, then, when did you finally realize the truth?”

She laughed. “It was a little thing, really. But you asked me what I thought of Rafe, in the carriage on the way home.”

“So?”

“Gabe would never have done such a thing. Never. It was akin to asking me to criticize his brother, and it simply isn’t in him to do such a coarse thing.”

“So you realized on the spot?”

“Oh, no. But I remember blinking at you—it was quite dark in the carriage—and thinking
this isn’t right.
There had been several points in which you sounded just like Rafe—well, of course you did!—and then there was an odd eagerness in your voice when you asked me that question.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Rafe said. He was looking remarkably happy. Almost as if he were bursting with it. “I can just imagine what you could have said.” He put on a fierce scowl. “
Dastard, thou are not whom thou sayest thou art! Avast, and ne’er darken my door again!
”

“I didn’t want it to be you,” Imogen said flatly.

The laughter faded from Rafe’s eyes. “Oh.”

She looked down at the sheet and started pleating it with her fingers. “If Gabe had handed me to you, that meant I was a charity case again. Draven married me because I loved him so much. And if you had slapped on that mustache so that my feelings
wouldn’t be hurt, that meant that even when I offered myself to a man, without marriage being part of the gift—he wouldn’t bed me.”

There was a second’s silence, and then Rafe’s voice, as deep and tender as any man’s could be, “Sweetheart.”

She shook her head, looking fiercely at the pleated sheet. A tear slid down her cheek. “I know that’s the case.”

He tipped up her chin. The dark eyes that she loved so much were smiling. “You are indeed a fool. There’s not a man in all this country who wouldn’t bed you if you asked. But would you have preferred that Gabe enthusiastically said yes?”

“At the time, yes.”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have gone through with it.”

“I would!” Imogen said fiercely. “You don’t know how much—”

“How much you wish to be desired,” Rafe said, for her.

She swallowed. He plucked her hand away from the sheet and turned the palm to his mouth. “You and I are birds of a feather, you know. So much did you long to be desired, so much did I. I wanted you to desire me, from the very moment I saw you. But you never seemed to look my direction: first there was Draven, and then Gabe. I hadn’t your courage. I played the role of a coward in all this, Imogen. I should have thrown away that mustache and lusted after you under my own name.”

“Why didn’t you?” Her question sounded shy, almost hesitant.

His laugh was a bark. “I dreamed of it. I almost—the words were on my lips a hundred times. But I couldn’t. What did I have to offer you, Imogen? Nothing. Gabe is—”

“Gabe is in all ways a worthy gentleman, but he bores me, and you know it.” She spoke to the question in his eyes. “From that moment in the carriage I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t let myself bring it into words. The thought was too painful. Later, I asked you to take me to Draven’s house. We kissed in the field, and I kept comparing the way the man I thought was Gabe kissed, to the way you had kissed me, and trying to convince myself that I could feel . . .
that
. . . for two men practically on the same day.”

“Vixen,” he muttered. And: “But, Imogen, when did you look at me and say,
this is Rafe
?”

The desperation in his voice filled Imogen’s heart with joy once again. She rolled just next to him and put her arms around his neck. “Five minutes ago?”

He growled at her.

“Yesterday?”

He blinked down at her. “I thought . . .”

She ran her hands through his hair, smiling up at the male foolishness of him. “You took my hand at the theater, just before the pantomime began.”

“So?”

She said it patiently. “Gabe is a scholar.”

He didn’t seem to understand, so she sat up and pulled him upright as well. Then she took his hand and turned it over. Callused from holding the reins, large and powerful, it looked nothing like the soft hand of a scholar. Something lightened in his face.

“So when we made love—”

“Rafe, did it never occur to you that I might have recognized your body from that bath I gave you?”

“My body?”

“Well, parts of it?” There was a husky tone to her voice that made all parts of his body spring to attention.

“But I was wearing a towel,” he said.

She laughed.

“So you recognized my hands before my . . . other parts.” He looked down at them. “I do read books, sometimes,” he observed.

“So do I,” she said demurely. “When there’s nothing else to do.”

“I think I shall keep you too busy to read.”

She raised her eyes to his. “It will take a great deal of children, Rafe, to keep me too busy for you.”

He smiled but—“Are you sure you love me?” It burst from his chest. “I can’t help feeling that I don’t deserve you. I’m like a—a worn-out shoe, Imogen. I daren’t drink champagne at our own wedding! I’m—”

“You are one of the most loving, most responsible, and most generous men I’ve ever met. In fact, I didn’t think your kind walked this earth. And you—you are for
me
, Rafe. Just you. Not Draven, not Gabe. Just you.”

There was a moment of silence, one of those moments that pass between a husband and his wife and change the way they live together, the way they laugh together, the way they argue together . . . forever.

“I hated you for drinking,” she said, putting her lips to his palm. “I wanted to kill you for it. I hated you . . . and I loved you. And I was too much of a fool to see that the only thing that really mattered to me was keeping you alive.”

Rafe’s eyes shone—perhaps with tears, perhaps with a fiercer emotion. “I know I’m a half-literate dolt.” He said it huskily. “But if you’ll allow me to be Dorimant for a moment, I agree with him:
my passion knows no bounds, and there’s no measure to be taken of what I’ll do for you.
”

She took his face in her hands. “I don’t want poetry, even pretty bits of foolishness from the play. All I want from you is your heart.”

A moment later he was holding her so tightly that she could hear that heart beating against her cheek. “It’s yours,” he said. And cleared his throat. “This body, my hands, my heart: they’re all yours . . . forever.”

The Duke of Holbrook never returned to his chambers that night. But thereafter, though his fiancée teased and tormented until the very night before they wed, he stayed to his own rooms. If he couldn’t sleep at night, he spent the hours planning one of the largest, most lavish, and most quickly organized weddings that had ever been solemnized in St. Paul’s.