When the Duchess Said Yes (31 page)

“You’re in a rare humor now, aren’t you?” she said.
“No more swordplay for you, Duke, if this is what results.”

“You know what results,” he teased, taking her arm to reel her back. “I’ve a much more interesting sword that’s ready for play, Duchess, if you should care to see it.”

She smiled her invitation. This was the way he’d been when they’d first wed, and she much preferred it to the more careful, distant Hawke she’d had this last week. If crashing about with swords had brought back her bridegroom, then she’d hire Monsieur Theobault herself.

“Then best bring that sword of yours into the house,” she said, looking pointedly down at the front of his breeches. “I don’t wish to be eaten by the bugs out here. We’ve at least an hour before we must dress.”

But once they were in the house, he surprised her again by taking her not upstairs to his bedchamber, as she’d expected, but to another room, opening an old-fashioned parlor so seldom used that Lizzie hadn’t yet wandered into it.

“Why are we here?” she asked, hopefully expecting some intriguing new diversion possible only in this room.

“I wish to show you another picture.” He began to pull open the heavy brocade draperies himself, letting the late afternoon sun spill into the room. “Three pictures, actually.”

“Pictures?” Lizzie said, disappointed. She liked looking at pictures, liked it very much when Hawke was the one explaining them, but she’d thought he’d other things in mind. These weren’t even the usual bright-colored Italian paintings that he usually favored, but instead the kind of dark, life-sized portraits of old ancestors that hung in most grand English houses. “Pictures.”

“Pictures, sweeting, and people.” He returned, standing behind her with his arms around her waist to hold
her close. “Do you know who that old rogue is there, over the fireplace?”

Dutifully Lizzie looked up, leaning her head back against Hawke’s convenient shoulder.

“Of course I know,” she said, “because there’s another portrait of him in Charlotte’s house, and besides, you have the same rascally dark eyes. That’s the lusty old king who’s your great-great-something-grandfather, the one who gave your family the dukedom.”

“Indeed he is,” Hawke said, leaning closer, until she could feel the warmth of his words against the side of her neck. “A most charming rogue, they say.”

“Like you,” Lizzie said, tipping her head so that he had to kiss her.

Which he did, albeit more briefly than she wished.

“Do not distract me,” he said, pretending to scold. “Though likely His Majesty would approve. Do you know the lady beside him?”

To the king’s right was a portrait of a richly dressed lady who was covered with jewels. Despite wearing the stiff, heavy clothes of another century, she was still undeniably beautiful, with curling chestnut hair and an opulent figure. But what caught Lizzie’s eye was less obvious: the sly humor in her smile, the shamelessness in how she gazed from her gilded frame, one brow elegantly cocked. Lizzie had seen the same expression before, a bit bolder, a bit more daring, but nearly the twin in confidence and attitude. She should recognize it, because now, three generations later, it belonged wholly to her husband.

“The first duchess,” Lizzie whispered, almost in awe. “That’s who she is, isn’t she?”

“Who else could she be?” Hawke said, his admiration unmistakable. “Catherine Wellwood Halsbury, first Duchess of Hawkesworth. The finest harlot in a court
filled with them. They say the king was hers from the first day she arrived at Whitehall Palace.”

Lizzie looked from the rakish, swarthy king back to the voluptuous first duchess. They seemed eminently suited to each other, and she understood why they’d been such notorious lovers. As an afterthought, she finally looked to the last of the three portraits: a sour gentleman with a wispy ginger mustache over down-turned, disapproving lips. He seemed to have no place with the other two.

“And that sorry fellow is the Earl of Southwell,” Hawke said, idly running his hands up and down her sides. “They say old Roger’s spirit was as mean as his face. I’ve never thought he deserved Catherine, husband or not.”

Lizzie stared up at his painted face, trying to find a bit of sympathy for a man who’d been so publicly cuckolded. Yet Hawke was right: he did look too mean-spirited for the glorious Catherine.

“How could he be an earl if she was a duchess?” she asked. “That makes no sense.”

“But it does,” Hawke said, his caresses becoming more purposeful as he drew her back more tightly against his body. “The king made her a duchess after the birth of their first son, the one who’s my ancestor. Practical creature, she signed the royal patent and became a duchess, and claimed all the power and riches she could get. Roger, however, would have none of it, and in disgust left for Paris, where in time he died a stubborn earl. I’ve always been grateful that sorry worm’s no blood kin of mine.”

“Not at all,” she whispered, pressing her bottom against the fall of his breeches to feel the hardness of his cock. “I understand why she must have loved the king more.”

“What choice did she have?” Hawke said, kissing the
place beneath her ear that always made her shiver. “Every woman would believe herself in love if her king desired her.”

“
I
wouldn’t,” she said, turning to face him and loop her arms around his shoulders. “I already love my duke. Besides, our king is newly wed, and besotted with his own wife.”

He kissed her lightly, feathering more kisses over cheeks and brows. “That’s hardly the point, is it?”

She frowned and pulled back a fraction in his embrace. “Then what is the point, Hawke?” she asked breathlessly. “Why tell me of your faithless grandmother now?”

He slipped his fingers into her hair, holding her face before his. “Because when I was fighting Theobault, all I could think of was you, and how I would never let you slip from me, the way Catherine’s husband did.”

“But I would never leave you for anyone else, Hawke,” she protested. “I love you, and you are my husband, and I—I am not faithless, like that first duchess.”

He shook his head, barely listening to her. The earlier fierce aggression that she’d seen when he’d a sword in his hand still lingered in his face, but now it was tempered by a desperation that she’d never expected, and which wrenched at her own heart.

“I would not let any other man have you, Lizzie,” he insisted. “I want you to know that. For your sake, I would challenge His Majesty himself if I had to.”

“But I already know that of you, Hawke,” she said gently. “You are that honorable, that loyal, to me, and I never would doubt you.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said gruffly. “What does is you, Lizzie. Only you. I would rather die on another man’s sword than surrender you. I do not believe I could live the rest of my life without you.”

“Oh, Hawke,” she murmured, reaching up to kiss
him. She wished he wouldn’t speak with such violent finality of swords and death together with devotion, but such things must have been in his thoughts after this afternoon. Besides, even the mildest of gentlemen could fall into unexpected, raging jealousies; hadn’t March himself once fought a duel to defend Charlotte’s honor? “Such brave words for you to say!”

“They’re true words, sweeting,” he said, tightening his arm around her waist as if fearing he’d lose her even now. “Every one.”

“My darling husband,” she said, kissing him again. “That is what it is to love and be loved, or very nearly. Come upstairs with me now, and together we’ll discover the rest.”

They were late arriving at the Lady Merton’s little gathering, so late that it would have been disgraceful in anyone of a lesser rank.

Hawke didn’t care. The later they arrived meant the less time they had to be in actual attendance, which also meant the fewer of his father’s friends he’d have to tolerate.

He’d other reasons not to care about being late, too. He’d spent much of the afternoon matching blades with one of the best professional swordsmen in London, and he’d acquitted himself reasonably well. Better yet, Lizzie had hidden herself to watch him, and he’d had the double pleasure not just of performing well but of doing so before his awestruck wife.

Lizzie hadn’t exactly understood what he’d been trying to tell her before the old portraits of his louche ancestors, but then, he wasn’t exactly sure what had happened there, either. His original intention for showing her the paintings had been to tell her that he intended to always defend her honor the way that sour old Roger hadn’t. He’d never meant to question her fidelity, or even hint that she resembled avaricious, sinful Catherine. Somehow, however, with Lizzie wriggling so wickedly against him, he’d lost his train of thought and the purpose of his conversation, too.

Not that it had mattered, for they’d both benefited well enough when they’d retired to his bed. He doubted the old king and his mistress could have been any more spectacular in the royal bed than he and Lizzie, amusing each other until it was well past nightfall. Giacomo (and likely Margaret) had his work cut out to make Hawke presentable for evening, but Hawke had been much too content to take notice of the muttered jibes in Italian that had accompanied his dressing.

The pleasurable satisfaction lingered still, with Lizzie insisting on sitting beside him in the carriage, where they could continue to kiss and dally, no matter the mussing that might occur to her gown: a rare and excellent quality in a lady. They’d time for dallying, too, since they were so late that their arriving carriage was stuck behind a line of others whose owners were already leaving.

Finally they stopped before Lord Merton’s door, and Hawke stepped out first to hand Lizzie down. Her gown was a froth of ruffled white muslin, covered with swirling embroidered flowers and vines in silver threads that twinkled by the light of the house’s flambeaux. She’d chosen to wear the rubies and diamonds he’d given her, too, all of them, the bracelet and necklace as well as her wedding ring, a fiery show that would likely make every lady in the house sick with envy. What every man would notice, however—after Lizzie’s obvious beauty—was the warm glow to her cheeks and the softness to her eyes, the undeniable look of a woman who’d been recently pleasured.

Except that of all those gentlemen, he’d be the only one who knew how she felt and tasted and made little chuckling cries of joy when she came, because he was the one who’d done the pleasuring, and the only one she loved.

“What are you thinking?” she asked as they walked up the steps.

He smiled. “I was thinking how I’ll have the most beautiful lady in the house on my arm,” he said, his words close enough to the truth, “and how that makes me the most fortunate of men.”

“Oh, Hawke, you say such pretty nonsense,” she said, her smile small and tight as she clung to his hand. “Faith, I am so wicked anxious!”

“What reason could you have to be anxious?” he asked, genuinely mystified. How could a lady who fearlessly clambered up walls and rode with aplomb be nervous about a drawing room filled with stuffy folk? “You’re likely much more familiar with these affairs than I am, considering how you trailed after March and your sister.”

“I never was taken to any house like Lady Merton’s,” she said. “I was considered too young. Likely they’ll all still believe me too young, though because I’m your wife now, no one will be able to say anything.”

“You’re fine exactly as you are, sweeting,” he said, kissing her cheek. He’d forgotten she was only eighteen. Compared to graybeards such as Merton, she would be a babe in the cradle. She left him briefly, disappearing for a few moments to wherever it was that ladies went to shed their cloaks and pelisses and dust fresh powder on their hair and noses, and returned to take his arm.

“I am ready, Hawke,” she said, her jaw set and determined. Yet when she tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, he felt how she trembled, her uneasiness all too real. “I only pray I won’t say something unwise to shame you before so many important gentlemen.”

“I told you, Lizzie, you’ll do extraordinarily well,” he said, reassuring her again. He knew that likely all those important gentlemen would be so busy ogling her that they wouldn’t hear one word, wise or unwise, that she
spoke, but he saw no reason to tell her that. “Pray recall that you are my wife, and that to be wed to me demonstrates untold bravery.”

Finally she laughed: not her usual boisterous laugh, but enough that he knew she’d do perfectly well. They entered the large parlor, and the footman announced them. It was, he realized, the first time they’d been paired that way in public, the Duke and Duchess of Hawkesworth, and he liked the way it sounded. He liked it very much.

They walked slowly through the crowded room, nodding and making small greetings. He had lived abroad for so long that most of the faces were as new to him as they must be to Lizzie, or so changed that they might as well be new. Yet because of who they were, and newlyweds at that, every person they passed smiled warmly, as genial as if they really were all the dearest of friends, or more accurately, the dearest of his father’s friends. Calming Lizzie’s worries about this evening had put his own to rest, too. If the evening proved no more challenging than this, then they’d be fortunate indeed.