The School for Brides (35 page)

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Authors: Cheryl Ann Smith

BOOK: The School for Brides
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“What is happening?” he asked, yawning, and rubbed a palm over one eye. His hair was tousled and scattered around his face. Her heart flipped.
“I don’t know.” She eased from the bed and crossed to the window. A huge coach pulled by six matching bays thundered to a stop before the house. She could see her courtesans, her sisters, and Harold, as well as several others she didn’t recognize, lingering on the stoop. It looked like the entire household had come out to welcome the guest.
A thin footman in blue and silver livery climbed down from his perch and opened the door. A woman descended beneath a flurry of feathers dancing on her wide lavender hat, and went directly to Harold. She gave him her hand and he bowed over it as a proper gentleman should. Eva smiled.
“Do you plan to leave me curious, or will you tell me what you’re staring at?”
Eva screwed up her face. “It is a woman. She must be of the nobility. She has the trappings of wealth.” It wasn’t the woman who drew her curiosity, but the tall man tucking her hand beneath his arm. “Harold is a servant no more,” she said more to herself than to Nicholas. He carried himself with a bearing she’d never noticed before. Though an impoverished baron, he’d been raised befitting his birth. She tried but failed to imagine him laughing and dancing at the Pennington ball.
“Enough about Harold,” Nicholas scolded, impatience raising his voice. “Tell me about the woman.”
Eva turned back to the visitor. “I cannot tell the color of her hair, but she is petite. She is wearing a lavender hat, and it appears that her gown matches the deeper purple of the plumes.”
He released a harsh breath. She turned to face him and frowned. “What do you expect, Your Grace? I can’t see her face,” she said tightly. “My view is limited by the distance and the angle of this window. Perhaps you would like to hobble over and see for yourself.” When he appeared to take her comment as an invitation, she pointed her finger at him. “Don’t you dare get out of that bed.”
His Grace slumped back and crossed his arms. Satisfied, she returned her attention below. The household members had gone inside. All that was left was the coach and servants. “The footmen are clad in blue and silver, and a full half dozen bays are pawing up Harold’s drive. There is some sort of crest on the side that I cannot make out. It looks like a stag, and a dog?”
Eva pursed her lips. She’d never seen a crest with a dog. It was an odd pairing of a deer and a canine.
“It’s a wolf and a stag,” Nicholas said, his voice tense. She peered over her shoulder and saw his face tighten. The woman was not unknown to him. She was certain of it.
“Do you know that woman?” she asked, and a thrill of jealousy prickled her spine. Though she hadn’t had a good look at her, Eva was fairly certain the stranger wasn’t Miss Banes-Dodd, and there was no reason for anyone else to know Nicholas was here.
Did he have a lover she didn’t know about? Had he sent a message to her in hopes she would carry him back to London and her bed? Or was this visit unrelated to him?
“Nicholas? Tell me.”
He met her gaze, and his eyes were troubled. “I know her very well. She’s my mother.”
Chapter Twenty
 
 
Y
our mother?” Bile burned Eva’s throat. She was locked in a room with her lover while his mother, the dowager duchess, lingered below, in the company of a houseful of former courtesans. And not a one of them was discreet.
By the time Her Grace made it through the house and up the stairs, everything they knew about Eva and Nicholas would be laid out in vivid color for her perusal.
A
whoosh
echoed in her ears, and she felt light-headed. Had the window not been only two floors up, she’d consider climbing over the sash and jumping to her death. But at that height, she couldn’t count on a fatal injury.
“Do something,” she beseeched Nicholas, frantic.
“What can I do?” He didn’t hide his amusement. His mouth twitched, and crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “I’m injured and also imprisoned. I fear we will just have to wait for the duchess to mount a rescue.”
The level of strain in her head threatened to turn Eva’s mind to mush. She’d never met a duchess, much less the mother of a suitor. Though she hesitated to call Nicholas a suitor, she was his lover, and should be kept carefully hidden from his noble mother. Her Grace wouldn’t be pleased to have their scandalous relationship flaunted in front of her. She’d likely snatch Nicholas from the bed and drag him back to London by his ducal ear.
“A duchess. I am about to be shamed by a duchess.” Eva paced, as she’d done many times of late, and it had yet to offer her any solutions to her problems. “Who sent for her? Harold? Noelle? This would be just like Noelle. But what could she gain by bringing the duchess here? This will end badly, I know it will.”
“My mother will not gobble you up, Eva,” Nicholas said drolly. “She gave up such pursuits a fortnight ago.”
Eva stopped. “I’m pleased you find this situation amusing, Your Grace.” She wanted to dissolve into tears. “She is your mother, I am your lover. We are locked up together in this chamber of sin. Certainly you can see why I find this state of affairs troubling.” She swung out her hands. “No mother wants to find her son injured, naked, with his whore.”
A low grumble burst from him, and he pushed up on his elbow. His eyes darkened. “Call yourself that again, Eva, and I will pull you over my lap and beat the word out of your vocabulary.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would. You are not a whore.” The words weren’t a casual threat. He was furious. “You are to be my wife and the mother of my children. You wouldn’t be the first woman to share a bed with her future husband before vows were said.”
“We are not engaged.”
Nicholas sighed. “Do you wish to argue with me about this again, or would you rather help me into my breeches before my mother finds me like this?” He shoved aside the blanket to expose a halfhearted erection.
“You—you—oh!” She gasp-laughed, and her mood instantly lightened. “I am about to throw myself from the window to avoid your mother, and you find our argument arousing?” She stomped over to the chair and retrieved his soiled breeches. She threw them at him, and he caught them against his chest. “I will never understand men.”
Pulling up a leg, he tried to slide his foot into the breeches. With the bandages around his waist, he couldn’t bend far enough to manage the feat. Pain etched his features.
“My dear Eva, it isn’t the argument that rousts my cock. Have you seen your delightful bum lately? Of course I’m aroused with your confounded hip swishing.” He bunched the breeches in his hand and indicated his erection. “Since our first painful kiss, this is a condition I suffer with regularity. I fear you are the only remedy to my illness.”
With a short, exasperated laugh, Eva moved to the bed and took the breeches. It was difficult to stay angry with him. With the thick bandage and his hair sticking up in patches around his head, he had a seldom-seen boyish quality she adored. His Grace was intensely aggravating but also entirely fascinating; the kind of man a woman could spend years and years with and never tire of the experience.
“If you think I’ll relieve your suffering now, with your mother below, you are mistaken. But I can help you dress.” She got onto her knees on the bed near his feet, and began the slow process of sliding the tight-fitting garment up his muscled legs. His cock twitched. Her mouth watered, and he grinned wickedly. She very much wanted to impale her body on it and ride him to a stunning release.
“If I guarantee a quick end, will you reconsider, love?” he said, and she wondered if he could sense the raw hunger seeping from her. One well-placed touch beneath her borrowed skirts and she would be lost.
“Lift your rump.” She ignored his plea. The desire to strip off the dress and join him grew to a painful ache. If she didn’t get him clothed soon, his mother’s discovery of them, Eva’s ankles about her ears and Nicholas pumping away in her like a randy stallion, was a distinct possibility.
He scowled, and did as asked. She tugged and pulled, and had managed to get all but his raging erection covered when the sound of a key rattled in the lock. With his hurried help, she got his breeches over his cock a second before the door swung open and Her Grace walked in, Harold and Noelle at her heels.
Panicked, Eva jumped to her feet to hide him behind her skirts as he jerked the blanket over his lap.
Clearly, the duchess thought they were up to mischief. Her brows went up, and something akin to dark humor tugged at her mouth. “Perhaps we should return later, Nicholas?”
Eva’s face burned. The only thing worse than actually being caught in a compromising situation with Nicholas was for his mother to think she’d interrupted said situation. She wanted to explain the innocence of her actions, but her throat had closed off and she was struck mute.
Thankfully, Nicholas came to her rescue. “Miss Winfield was kind enough to help me with my breeches, Mother. I didn’t want to injure your sensibilities with my nudity.”
Pained, Eva squelched a groan. This was helpful?
“Hmm.” The duchess ran a quick glance over her son, as if to check his condition, then crossed to Eva. Her Grace perused her face and dipped her gaze briefly downward to the shabby gown. Her lids narrowed slightly. “You are the Miss Winfield who so ensnared my son at the ball?” Eva nodded soberly. “I was disappointed we missed an introduction. I went home early with a headache.”
Doubtless the headache had been caused by watching her son flirt with a woman far beneath them in every way. Her Grace had expected that her son would be engaged that evening, and Eva’s presence had ruined her plans. How she must hate her!
Twisting her hands together, Eva softly said, “I do apologize for the pain my actions may have caused at the ball, Your Grace,” and averted her eyes from the duchess’s lovely face. She turned a pleading glance at Noelle, who shrugged helplessly. “And I also apologize for last evening. It was never my intention for your son to be hurt.”
The stream of babbling ended when the duchess lifted her hand. “Please, Miss Winfield, no more apologies.” She smiled softly. “If you haven’t yet noticed, my son is a man who makes his own decisions, quite forcefully in fact.” She shot Nicholas a stern look. “He chose to chase after you, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.” The duchess returned her attention to Eva and reached for her. She tucked her arm around Eva’s. “I am happy your Yvette is safe and my son is alive. Now let us leave him to rest. You and I have much to discuss.”
Eva sent Nicholas a helpless glance as the duchess led her from the room by the elbow, as if she were a child. Harold and Noelle stepped out of the way and let them pass. There wouldn’t be any rescue from that quarter. She’d been tossed to the wolves.
With her mind awhirl, Eva worked over every possible explanation and excuse in her mind as the duchess took her into the parlor and released her arm. Without a word, Her Grace positioned herself on the settee, smoothed out her skirts, and lifted her face. She cocked a brow.
“Do you plan to stand all day, Miss Winfield, or will you sit with me?”
Eva hurried to claim a chair opposite the duchess. She felt like a dusty church mouse in the presence of a queen.
The duchess was dressed in her lavender and purple finery, and the drab borrowed dress Eva wore was patched at the knees. Clearly Harold’s sister had enjoyed outdoor pursuits. Climbing trees and crawling under hedges would be her guess.
“Miss Winfield,” the duchess began. Eva braced herself. “I could pretend ignorance and lead you to believe I am unaware of your relationship with my son. I know how forceful he can be, and that you were an innocent in his seduction.”
Shamed, Eva felt all the blood in her body race to her face and pulse at her temples. The secret was out, and her humiliation was intense. She wanted to run from the room, from the house, all the way to the farthest reaches of the world. Nicholas, with his need for vengeance, had done this to her. Not only had he seduced her, he’d told his mother about it. She never, never wanted to face him again!
“I will remove myself from this house immediately, Your Grace.” Eva stood with what little pride she had left and lifted her chin. “I’ll be gone within the hour.”

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