Chapter 8
“My wife?” the Duke repeated with an expression of genuine bemusement. “Victoria has been dead for seven years. It is only natural that a man would wish to marry again.”
“Dead? Oh… I…”
Cecily wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole. This man was a widower, and she had blundered horribly. This understanding put a whole new complexion on his advances to her, confirmed in his next words.
“I am asking you to be my Duchess,” he clarified bluntly. “As my Duchess, I am inviting you to play bedroom games I suspect you have never dreamed of but am equally sure you would thoroughly enjoy.”
“Are you mad?” she hissed. “You do not even know me.”
“Quite likely I am mad. A wife would be very useful to me, and I don’t care who you are beyond what you have told me, although I will need a full name for the marriage license,” he told her.
If his words were lightly spoken and shockingly flippant, his actions were startling in an entirely different way. He took her hands in his and caressed them with persuasive intimacy. His touch coaxed a low moan past her lips.
Truly, this was madness. But such delicious madness.
Part of her wanted to say yes to his bizarre proposal. Wasn’t it a perfect solution? And yet she knew she should not give in to the unfamiliar aching and yearning currents rushing through her body. It could lead to disaster, and there was something she needed from him first.
“All right. If you help me find Mary and keep her safe, I will marry you,” she told him. “Not before then.”
“Very well,” he agreed, pushing up the light muslin sleeves of her dress and tracing her wrists and then forearms. “I shall, however, seek to persuade you to the altar, and my bed, at the earliest opportunity… Good God, who did this to you?”
His fingers brushed the bruises left by her uncle’s brutal grip, and she flinched. She had forgotten why she had chosen to wear long sleeves today despite the heat.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she closed them, desperate to hold back her sobs. Would the Duke still wish to marry her—and help her find Mary—or would he be repulsed by her?
“No one should do this to a woman,” he said, with more real feeling than she had heard from him yet.
“I… It is nothing,” she stuttered, wanting them to focus on finding Mary rather than fighting her uncle. “I can look after myself.”
“I think you’ll find that a husband could look after you better,” the Duke said flatly, drawing her sleeve back down again as she tried hard to dispel the confusing desire in her blood and vulnerable tears in her eyes.
“So, how do we find Mary?” she asked, forcing herself to step back out of his arms and away from those warm hands that made her skin tingle and her inhibitions lower.
“If I send a carriage for you this evening, can you get out of your house and meet it? Our first stop should be Greyhaven Park, and then we’ll follow the road north from there and ask at coaching inns.”
Cecily thought about this for a moment and then nodded slowly. It seemed that she, too, was about to run away from home. Although in her case, she doubted that her uncle would care, and her grandmother would only miss having someone to lean on and order about at social events.
“Yes, I will meet you tonight, but if I leave my uncle’s house like this, I do not believe I will ever be able to return,” she murmured.
“Do you even want to?” the Duke questioned. “If he’s the one who did that to your arm, I do not want you going back there anyway. I could easily—”
“No!” Cecily interrupted, not wanting to hear any glib offer of renting a house for her, or keeping her at Greyhaven House or Greyhaven Park until their wedding—a prospect that still sounded insane.
Such arrangements were how so many young women ended up as mistresses after accepting a proposal, she supposed.
Well, she would rather go out to work than face that shame.
She was well-read, spoke French and Italian, and played the pianoforte and harp reasonably well, having strong fundamentals from early childhood lessons, although her uncle had begrudged her more.
Surely someone would want her as a companion or governess?
“I was going to say that I might easily arrange for you to stay with my cousin, Lady Jackson, in Richmond,” he said with an amused smile.
“She is a very respectable married lady, but shares some of my views on the foolishness of society’s more mindless rules.
She also loves company, which is one of the reasons why I never accept her invitations. ”
“Oh,” Cecily breathed, blushing all over again at the apparent wrongness of her assumptions, and vaguely remembering something about Lady Jackson from the gossip columns. “Yes, I see. That would do very well.”
The Duke of Greyhaven really was the most impossible man. She could not predict at all what he would say or do next. Masking her confusion with action, she went to his desk and scribbled her address on a piece of scrap paper with a pencil.
“Our house is on the edge of Mayfair, just off Park Lane. I will be at the eastern corner of the street at ten o’clock tonight, or as soon after as I can manage. Now, I must go, or my grandmother will be suspicious. She thinks I am doing the rounds of Mary’s friends to look for her discreetly.”
“Perfect,” the Duke responded, reading the paper as she handed it to him and then folding it into a pocket. “But there is one very important thing you have forgotten.”
Cecily looked at him quizzically. “What?” she asked, caught again in the blue of his eyes.
“I will need your full name and age for the marriage license. No bishop will grant one without those details. It would help to have your father’s name too, although I dare say I could look it up.”
The Duke might as well be mad, but he was also desperately attractive and apparently serious in his intent to marry her.
Cecily swallowed. “Cecily Alice Elizabeth Holt,” she told him. “I am six-and-twenty, and my father was the Baron Charles Holt.”
“Cecily Alice Elizabeth Holt,” he repeated, as though the name charmed him. “Until tonight, Miss Holt.”
“Until tonight, Your Grace.”
Before the Duke could kiss her hand again, or kiss her anywhere else, Cecily fled from the room and out of the house.
* * *
“Will you be dressing, Your Grace?” the valet asked, calling back Nathaniel’s attention from the window on the first-floor landing where he was watching his visitor depart.
“Indeed, Rogers. I will dress to ride on Hampstead Heath, although I have business in London first. I may swim in the Serpentine later if I have time, so pack some spare linen.”
Nathaniel congratulated himself on his good luck and fast action with Miss Holt.
With very little effort at courting on his part, he seemed to have secured an excellent duchess.
She was clearly practical, resourceful, and self-reliant, with no false deference to social nonsense when it stood in the way of life. Yes, she would do well.
Glancing back outside, he watched his betrothed hurrying toward her carriage, only to pause at its step. She looked back at the house with an expression of confusion and longing that made his loins throb.
How perfect her figure…
When Miss Holt had retrieved that letter from her stays, Nathaniel had caught a glimpse of her round breasts reflected in the window glass and had ached to feel their weight in his hands.
Then, he recalled those bruises on her arm and anger surged in his chest again, almost outpacing his desire. He would marry Miss Holt mainly for his own benefit, but if that protected her from such unconscionable abuse, it was all the better.
“Has the new dark suit arrived from my tailor yet?” Nathaniel called after his valet. “I am going to want it sooner than envisioned… for a particular occasion.”
Rogers turned back, shaking his head and looking quizzical. It was rare for his master to ask after such things.
“I shall go to Jermyn Street in person and inquire this afternoon,” he promised. “There were only very small alterations needed after the last fitting. I will have it for you as soon as possible.”
“Good,” Nathaniel said, walking slowly after Rogers in the direction of the ducal suite.
His ears recalled the little gasps and moans Miss Holt had made when he stroked her hands and wrists. He wondered if anyone had ever kissed her before, and thought it was a distinct possibility that the answer was no.
Twenty-six years untouched and such hot blood in her veins… She must be like a volcano waiting to erupt. Well, now she was going to be his, and he would be the one to revel in the heat of that explosion.
Perhaps he could finally have what he had envisioned for his first marriage—a deeply sensual wife who required his attention regularly in the bedroom but made few demands on him outside of it, capable of running a household and raising children with very little input from him.
“One other thing, Rogers. Pack me a travel bag for tonight. I may be on the road for the next few days, and I wish to be comfortable. I may also stop at Greyhaven Park, but my plans are uncertain.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” his valet agreed, not voicing his curiosity. “Will you require me to travel after you?”
“No, you will be better here in London until I return,” Nathaniel replied with a smile. “My clothes have more need of you than I do, and I want that dark suit ready. My present errand is a purely personal matter, and I’m sure I can accomplish it satisfactorily.”
Yes, everything was falling into place so very easily. All Nathaniel had to do now was find that fool Patrick and make sure he reached Gretna Green with his geographically challenged lover.
After that, Miss Holt would be his—to explore, to savor, and to teach in every wicked way that pleased him.