Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Alexander ignored the pounding in his head as he received Samuel Godwin and Eliza Parsons in the breakfast room. Lydia sat opposite him, perfectly composed, though she stole small glances every now and then.
He dared not look at her. If he did, his body might remember how it felt to wake in her proximity.
How low her gown had dipped, and what tantalizing flesh it had revealed.
His body might recall how desperately it had imagined her in his arms—how she might look divested of her clothing, her soft breasts in his hands.
Ever since waking and finding her there, he had been unable to think of anything else. Even the cravings had eased in the face of this new temptation.
During the worst of his guilt, he wasn’t sure which was worse.
“I, for one, am delighted to hear you won’t be leaving our neck of the woods today,” Miss Parsons was saying, giving Lydia a significant look.
His wife blushed a little, the color sliding down her neck.
He imagined trailing his fingertips down the same path, then looked abruptly away, only to find Godwin grinning at him.
“Dare I ask?” his friend said, leaning back in his chair.
Alexander scowled. “There is nothing to ask.”
“I don’t believe a word you say at the best of times, but now? I believe you even less.” He lowered his voice. “Does she not look delectable this morning?”
“Are you not an engaged man?”
“If it were real, of course, I would look at no lady other than her.” He glanced at Miss Parsons, his gaze seemingly caught in her dark curls and milky complexion.
Alexander heaved an inward sigh. He knew Godwin enough to know when his friend was infatuated, and from what he could see, Miss Parsons had him around her little finger.
And, if he wasn’t mistaken, she was encouraging Lydia to do the same with him.
Lydia cast a glance under her eyelashes at him, and he stabbed a kipper, his headache throbbing behind his eyes. What was he thinking, having her here, considering letting her remain? As his wife?
Wanting her?
And yet…
“You know,” Godwin started quietly, unusually sympathetic, “she wouldn’t want you to pay homage by denying yourself.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know.” He held Alexander’s gaze. They hadn’t been friends during the time when Alexander had known Helena, but he had met Alexander in the aftermath.
If it weren’t for Samuel Godwin, perpetual jokester, he might have done worse for himself than a mere laudanum addiction.
“If she loved you even half as much as you loved her, she would have wanted you to find happiness.”
“Dukes are never born for such things. Their responsibilities are too great, and their expectations still greater.”
“I know many a duke prone to a little too much happiness,” Godwin whispered with a wink. And, when Alexander merely groaned, added, “You know I’m right.”
“And for that, I am supposed to accept her in Helena’s place?” he whispered back.
“No. Accept her for who she is. A lady so beloved by her community must have her worth. You could do a lot worse for a wife, and let’s not forget your duty as a peer of the realm.”
Alexander stared at his teacup, wishing it contained something stronger. “Heirs?”
“Precisely.”
Lydia happened to glance up, and Alexander found himself recalling the way she had bent over the table for him, backside in the air, not seeming to notice the effect she was having on him.
Godwin was right enough: there were worse fates than having someone like her for a wife, and he did have to consider the possibility of heirs.
For a long time, he had vowed never to continue his family name, in part out of spite for his father.
But over the past few days, living in his family’s seat, he had come to understand the weight that rested on his shoulders.
If he did not have an heir, the land might be split up. The people depending on him would have to find new roles, new masters, new landowners who might not treat them with the respect their lives afforded.
If he abandoned them through his own weakness, what sort of man did that make him?
And yet, to continue the line, he would have to betray Helena’s memory?
Letting Lydia remain as his wife was one thing, but to sire heirs with her? To take her into his bed and make her his wife in all ways?
His body stirred once again at the thought, and he despised himself for it.
He needed more time to decide.
“Godwin,” he began, louder, turning to Samuel. “I entirely forgot about tomorrow’s dinner. In light of your recent engagement, might you bring Miss Parsons?”
Godwin’s eyes gleamed as he caught onto the ruse. “Of course. Eliza, should you wish to go?”
Eliza glanced between them with an air of confusion. “A dinner? You said nothing about a dinner, Samuel.”
“A longstanding engagement,” Samuel replied swiftly. “With our engagement deception, darling, I’d all but forgotten about it. You’d be amenable, would you not?”
Eliza gave Lydia another of those significant glances. Although she was younger than Lydia, Alexander had the distinct impression that when it came to feminine arts, Eliza was distinctly more experienced. He didn’t know if that was a relief or a shame.
“Tomorrow?” Lydia asked.
“Would it bother you to postpone our journey?” Alexander asked, striving to keep his tone easy and lighthearted. “We can just as easily set off the morning after.”
“Oh, of course.” Her expression turned wicked. “Unless you were to, for example, over-imbibe again.”
“I assure you I have no intention of that,” he murmured wryly.
“And if I were?” she asked, still a little coy.
He sipped his tea. “You make me afraid to enter my cellars for fear that they have been cleared out.”
Her eyes sparked with challenge. “When you left me last year, I am certain you told me to make myself at home here. Did that not include the cellars?”
“I had no idea that your concept of comfort meant drinking me out of house and home.”
“I engage in moderation,” she shrugged, hiding her smile behind her teacup. “For instance, I made no dent in your Scotch.”
“My thanks,” he replied gravely.
“I cannot, however, promise the same with the wine.”
“It seems I must ascertain the damage, after all,” he pounced shrewdly. “After breakfast, accompany me to the wine cellars. We shall see how much preference you truly have for the wine.”
A foolish move, the rational part of his brain informed him. If he engaged her for this, in a small, enclosed place all by herself, he expected he would find himself unreasonably tempted by her proximity.
And yet he was tempted. Not to see how much wine she had—he expected she would have used some for the purpose of entertaining and very little for herself—but just to see how she would respond.
He wanted to know how it would feel between them. She had responded to his barbs with surprising spirit, and heaven forgive him, he enjoyed it.
Knowing the details of their dynamic would better help him make a decision, he told himself. If he decided they should remain in a marriage, then he ought to do it with his eyes wide open.
Godwin disguised his laugh in a cough, and he shook out his handkerchief. “We should take our leave, especially as you are not leaving yourselves,” he put in. “Come, Eliza. Let us leave them to their own devices.”
Eliza, whose eyes had been wide at the exchange between Alexander and Lydia, nodded and rose. “I confess, I am relieved,” she added. “I would have been sorry to do without Lydia. Even another day feels like a reprieve.”
“It does indeed,” Lydia smiled, and Alexander didn’t have to know her well to hear the relief in her voice.
Lydia tucked the list she had adapted in the hidden pocket sewn into her dress, patting it to hear the reassuring rustle. Any second now, the duke would expect her to take him into the cellars. Supposedly to see the damage a year’s occupation had done—but what if it was an excuse for more?
Could she kiss him, if it came down to it?
Yes, she realized. Once, the answer had been a no, but no longer.
When she descended, Alexander was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
At the sight of her, he held out a hand, the tremor minute today.
His eyes were heavy and tired, but the sharp blue of a winter morning, and her stomach did the same swooping sensation it had made that very first day he had rescued her from the pool.
How was it possible she could still want him this much after everything he had done to her? And yet it was undeniable, the way her body reacted, entirely separate from her mind.
“After our conversation at breakfast, I am expecting to see the cellars entirely wiped out,” he remarked as she took his arm.
They were behaving as though they were about to set out on to a grand social setting rather than the stone steps to the musty cellars.
“I confess, the entertainment in the country is not what you might have been accustomed to in the city.”
“I think, sir, you will be surprised.”
When they emerged through the door into the cellars, the barrels of ale and the dusty bottles of wine largely intact, he paused. “I am,” he said at length. “I had thought you would have used my collection for your soirees and other events…”
“In truth, I only arranged a few, and in the latter days of being here.” She fidgeted slightly. Number five on her list was play questions and commands, but how to initiate such a thing? “And I never drank myself.”
“I confess, I’m glad of it.” He was still looking at the cellar, the scent of aged wood mixing with the slight damp that always occupied these spaces. “It is a bad habit.”
“Is that not hypocritical?” she asked teasingly.
“Somewhat.” He glanced at her wryly. “A man may know he is making a mistake even as he indulges in it.”
“And a lady is not allowed these freedoms?”
“The role of a man is to protect the women under his care.”