Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
I n the somewhat scandalous novels that Marina liked to read as an indulgence—the kind that were risqué enough that she hid them from her younger sister, so as to avoid potential awkward questions, but not so outré that her reputation would be damaged if she were caught purchasing them—the heroines were always able to feel the heroes' eyes on them like a physical touch.
Marina had always considered this to be an exaggeration for the sake of drama, a handy means for an author to show the tension between the two, usually doomed, young lovers—Marina had a taste for melodramatically tragic endings, as it made the real world seem extremely cheerful by comparison.
It was oh so very rare that a gentleman gave up his lady love due to his low birth, sending her into a spiraling decline, only to learn that he was the true heir to a grand estate—or a kingdom; sometimes the heroes were even princes —only moments too late to stop his beloved from pitching herself over a cliff in despair, to be lost to the welcoming arms of a turbulent sea.
To feel a man's gaze upon her—to actually be able to feel it upon her back and along the nape of her neck—had always seemed as unlikely to Marina as, say, neglecting to read a letter that arrived just moments before resigning herself to marriage to the villain (if melodramas had taught Marina anything, it was to always read one's post in a timely manner, and especially before making any major decisions), which was to say not likely at all, because she wasn't a fool.
Well, she was the fool today, because she could feel the Duke of Haddington's gaze upon her for the entirety of their trek to the picnic site, a lovely hilltop with a splendid view, like something out of a painting.
In fact, she was the fool twice over, for, despite her efforts, the shuffling of bodies on cushions as food and drink were dispersed by the bevy of servants that had been dispatched to prepare the picnic area in advance, Marina found herself seated between the Duke of Haddington and Viscount Gloustoshire, with Martin only one seat further.
It was, in short, the absolute worst place she could have ended up, trapped.
Marina looked longingly across the spread of soft blankets and oversized pillows to where Lucy was seated near the Duke of Beaumont and—ooh, lucky girl—that nice and chatty vicar, who was not staying at the estate, but who lived sufficiently locally that he was invited to many of the outings during the house party.
Nobody could make flirtatious overtures under the eyes of a vicar, could they? She also would have been happy to be seated near the Duke of Culton, who had been the perfect gentleman during their walk, polite and friendly, if slightly cool, and who had never bustled her against a wall and made her want to kiss him, conspired with her cousin to corner her at a countryside fete, or threatened her with destitution if she didn't comply with his wishes—just to name a few of the recent sins of her present company.
"Are you enjoying the lemon cakes, Lady Marina?" Viscount Gloustoshire asked after a few long moments during which Marina—who, as the lady of the group, probably ought to have been attempting a delightful, light, genteel conversation—stayed silent.
Marina looked up to find the viscount looking at her with an unnerving intensity.
"They're lovely," she said, then took another bite of the cake in her hand so that she didn't have to think of anything else to say. The cakes were lovely, at least.
Alas, her silence created an opportunity for Martin.
"Lady Marina likes all sorts of things," he said brightly. "She really is the most agreeable girl. Living with her—and her sister and mother, of course—has really been the most tremendous experience. Lady Julia will make her debut next year; she's terribly excited about the whole thing. I'm sure you will find her very genial when you meet her. Just a smashing bunch of ladies, really. Likely the most delightful females of my acquaintance, though as head of the house, I must be biased, heh heh."
Marina swallowed her bite of cake, which had turned to ashes in her mouth. She didn't quite know how to respond to this humiliating speech of Martin's, in which he described her rather like a puppy he had never wanted to acquire—eager to please, vapidly cheerful, but hopefully soon to be gone from his house. And then he'd thrown Julia on the pile for good measure, though it was nearly a full year before her debut would come to pass.
He hadn't even laughed properly at the end of this little speech. He had actually said the words "heh heh," like a man who had read the description of laughter in a book but had never been afforded the opportunity to experience it in real life.
Should she…thank him? She supposed the words were technically complimentary, though their delivery left much to be desired. Should she pretend nothing had happened at all? Should she—oh, Lord, maybe she was becoming the heroine out of a melodrama—chuck herself off the side of the hill?
Well, no, not the last. There was no sea to sweep her away below; all she'd get from rolling down the hill was grass stains and possibly a lost shoe. No sense in making an already embarrassing scene any worse.
She was still fumbling for the appropriate response—it was ironic, really, how Martin's attempts to make her look appealing to a suitor always backfired and made her look the idiot—when the duke interjected with a teasing tsk .
"Oh I am sorry to hear that, Lady Marina," he said, voice dripping with playful sympathy. "Only likely the most delightful female. You shall have to defend your title. Is fisticuffs the normal form of combat for such things?"
When Marina turned to look at the duke, his expression was somewhat more serious than his tone, though it was far from the stern frown or seductively intense gaze that she had henceforth come to associate with his version of seriousness. This expression, rather, was reassuring. He was providing a rescue from the awkwardness that Martin had created.
Marina felt a rush of gratitude. "Fisticuffs?" she echoed. "Your Grace, you shock me. Ladies such as I would never indulge in something as violent and uncouth as fisticuffs." She paused, just for the briefest second. "We'd use rapiers, naturally."
"Marina!" whispered Martin, apparently shocked.
The duke however, merely smiled in a way that made him look younger, handsome in a boyish way. He placed both hands over his heart and managed a bow that was surprisingly graceful, given that he was already seated.
"My lady, of course! Rapiers. You must forgive me. I am the lowest of men, the most foolish of knaves, a curse upon my good name to have ever suggested otherwise. I beg absolution. How can I redeem myself?"
Marina wanted to grin—on top of everything else, the Duke of Haddington knew how to be silly; what a delight—but forced herself to appear thoughtful. "I fear, Your Grace," she said, "that you shall have to fight me for your redemption."
The duke nodded sadly, as if this were his due. "I understand. I do warn you, though, my lady—I am quite adept with a rapier."
This time it was Marina's turn to tsk "Oh, Your Grace," she said mournfully. "Wrong again. Between ladies and gentlemen, it is always fisticuffs. I fear you know nothing of deportment."
The duke hung his head—Marina was almost certain it was to hide a smile. "Alas, I shall write to my former tutors at once and tell them to give up their profession as they have clearly failed to teach me the essentials."
"It's for the best," Marina said benevolently. "It's terribly unsafe to have that kind of misinformation bandying about."
The duke looked up at her then, unable to keep his grin in any longer, and Marina felt her own smile break out in concert. She felt buoyed by the effortlessness of their back and forth. It was rather like fencing, now that she thought about it, not that she'd ever been involved in a fencing match except as a spectator, and even that only rarely—it was a gentlemen's sport, after all.
But their conversational sparring had felt the way parries and ripostes looked, more of a dance than a battle. Marina had less experience dancing than most other young ladies of her age and class—she knew how, of course, but finding time to attend social events had always come second to making sure the household duties were attended to, and that was even before the matter of finding the budget for an in-fashion frock came into play. But she'd liked what little experience she'd had, had liked the way she and her partner both knew the pattern of where to go, what to do next.
She liked this more.
"Brava, Lady Marina," said Viscount Gloustoshire, breaking the spell that the duke's smile had woven over her. She turned to face him, taking great care not to let her smile slip, lest the viscount be offended. "A tad bloodthirsty, no doubt, but I daresay you got one over on His Grace—a rare feat."
The viscount looked at Marina with the same polite but unmistakable interest that he always did. When his gaze shifted to the duke, however, it gained that same strange edge that Marina had detected earlier.
She had the oddest impulse to make sure that she protected the duke, now. He'd interfered on her behalf when her cousin put her in uncomfortable spot, now she wanted to interfere on his, when it was his cousin acting strangely.
"Well," she said, leaning slightly towards the viscount so his eye was drawn back to her. "If I am telling the truth—" she took on a conspiratorial air, though they were not sitting close enough to warrant her lowering her voice; she was sure to keep more than a proper amount of distance between them "—I am not actually accomplished at the rapier, I confess. We ladies must rely on our wits as our only weapons, alas."
The viscount's gaze flicked behind her once more to where the duke sat, then settled on Marina's face. He appeared satisfied. "Very clever," he said approvingly. Marina smiled and nodded demurely, though the compliment felt much as Martin's had—like an ill-fitting frock, designed for someone else and forced uncomfortable on her form.
"Thank you, my lord," she said.
Martin and the viscount took up the thread of the conversation for some time after that, and Marina tried her best to listen attentively, to nod and smile and make appropriately interested noises at the right moments. A fraction of her attention, however, was unable to shake the sensation of the duke's eyes, once again at her back.
Marina slipped through the hallway, the furtive nature of her movements at odds with the warmth of the late afternoon light pouring in through the windows. It was an errand more suited to midnight, but this was a house party for members of the ton , so at midnight they'd likely be playing parlor games or bullying some unsuspecting guest to display their dubious talents on the pianoforte. Besides, Marina couldn't wait.
She needed to speak with the Duke of Haddington.
This was the best opportunity she was likely to get, Marina reminded herself sternly as she crept towards the family's wing of rooms, on the other side of the house from the guests' quarters. After their picnic, the guests had all retired to their individual bedchambers for an hour or two of rest before it was time to prepare for dinner, which would be a bit more formal tonight than it had been the night before, now that all the guests had arrived. Even the servants were unlikely to be moving about the upstairs halls at this time, as they would be taking advantage of the ladies and gentlemen's period of rest to accomplish various essential tasks elsewhere in the house.
Still, Marina felt extraordinarily stupid skulking about in the broad light of day.
She held her breath as she rapped on the door to the duke's bedchamber, then altered course and began to breathe too rapidly as she heard movement inside.
In the matter of seconds it took between the onset of that movement and the opening of the door, Marina had an entire, furious argument with herself. She shouldn't be here. She absolutely should not be here. This was a gentleman's bedchamber . Was she mad? Had the lemonade she'd enjoyed at the picnic secretly been some sort of nefarious potion that led normally levelheaded young ladies to do absurdly idiotic things?
On the other hand, however, the duke had infected her mind, with his annoying, mercurial ways, and his piercing eyes, and his manhandling .
Goodness, Marina could not stop thinking about how he'd guided her back against the folly, his grip firm and commanding but not too tight or uncomfortable on her arms. She kept reliving the tight, hot feeling that gathered in her chest and abdomen when he'd leaned in towards her. She was consumed with recalling how she'd longed for him to kiss her. How she longed to kiss him, still.
Which could not continue. After they'd returned from her picnic, she'd been awarded the doubtful privilege of Martin's praise for the attention she'd awarded Viscount Gloustoshire, his criticism for the "unbecoming argumentativeness" she'd displayed with the duke (proving, once again, that Martin wouldn't recognize levity if he were forced to eat it for supper), all capped off with the lightly menacing reminder that she had best be wed soon—or else.
Yet, coming to a man's bedchamber was the height of recklessness. Marina was about to go—about to flee, really—when the duke opened his door.
"Lady Marina," he said, sounding surprised but maintaining sufficient composure to keep his voice low. "I wondered who that was. You don't knock like a servant."
He'd removed his jacket and loosened his cravat, though—and Marina thanked God for small mercies—he still wore his vest. He leaned with a sort of reckless insouciance against the jamb of his open door. Though his sleeves were loose, Marina could see altogether too much of the shape of his strong arms through the fine lawn of his shirt. She tried to keep her eyes averted from that extra exposed inch of throat. His uneven smile, hitched up higher on one side than the other, was criminal.
"I need to speak with you," she said, grateful when her voice came out evenly. "Let me in."
"Bossy," he commented mildly, but stepped aside.
As soon as she entered his room, Marina realized she'd made a mistake. Not just for the external, societal reasons—immediate and irreversible ruin if she were ever found here—but for the ones related more to her own sense of tranquility, as well.
It smelled of him in here, a light scent, laundry soap and fresh air mixed with something unidentifiable and undeniably masculine. Instinctively, Marina drew in a sharp breath and regretted it. They were in a small antechamber, a miniature sitting room of sorts, but through the open door ahead of her, Marina could see a large bed, its linens rumpled.
Oh, God , she thought despondently as an image flashed through her mind's eye. Had he been lounging ? Had he been relaxing—as the hour was scheduled for—in his bed ? Some perverse instinct made her glance down at his feet before she could stop herself. Oh no, oh dear, he wasn't wearing shoes. He was in his stockings . She looked away before she could, however accidentally, see something as horrifying intimate as the shape of his feet.
Why was she even here, again? Besides a twisted desire to torture herself with this dreadful man's wretched handsomeness?
Oh, right. She opened the eyes she hadn't even realized she'd closed and found the duke looking at her, visibly amused. "How can I help you, my lady?" he asked. His tone was wry, but his gaze sparked with genuine interest.
Marina took a deep breath—oh, blast, there was that appealing scent again—and braced herself. "I've come to tell you that there can be no dalliance between us," she said firmly.
The duke sank onto a well-worn settee that looked exceedingly comfortable and regarded her with interest. He waved her towards a similarly well-used chair placed across from where he sat, but she shook her head. Best to stay standing, though for what, Marina wasn't certain.
She continued speaking. "You have made your disinclination for marriage well known throughout the ton . Indeed, you reasserted such a position to me only this morning. I, however, find myself in the unfortunate position of needing to find a husband. Therefore, any entanglement between us would pose a threat to my interests, my reputation, and my future. Thus, there can be no dalliance between us."
There. She'd gotten it out.
She peeked at the duke and found him eyeing her quizzically.
"What were you doing six years ago?" he asked.
"Wait—what?" Marina blinked at him. She hadn't really thought that the lemonade was a madness-inducing potion, but perhaps she needed to revisit that theory.
"Six years ago. What were you doing?"
Barely keeping my household afloat as my father gallivanted about Europe, only rarely remembering to send home funds for things like food and coal, and flaunting his dalliances with enough obviousness that they reached the press in London and sent my mother into continual fits of rage and despair.
She elected to say none of this. "I was sixteen," she said instead. "Why?"
He shrugged one shoulder and Marina wasn't sure if she was enraged or…interested. "You delivered that speech of yours so well—do you realize you used both 'thus' and 'therefore'?—that I wanted to know where you were hiding during the years I was at university. I'd have paid you to write my essays for me. You've a talent for argument."
Enraged. She was definitely enraged.
"That's what you have to say?" she exclaimed, only barely remembering to keep her voice down. She wanted to shout and squawk at him in the way that made men roll their eyes and complain about the emotionality of women, even thought it was almost always the absurdity of men that inspired such responses in the fairer sex.
"After all that—that business in the garden this morning and the further business at the picnic—that's all you have to say?"
"I take it back," he said. "Business and further business? I was clearly better off writing my own essays, sub-par though they were. Thank you for saving me from a lifetime of regret, Lady Marina."
Marina let loose an incoherent, strangled sound that was not ladylike in the least. The duke was openly laughing now, which—only furthering Marina's annoyance—made him look very attractive.
"You are impossible," she gritted out through clenched teeth.
The duke rose to his feet then. It was another move that was impossibly graceful. Marina didn't know how he managed to be so graceful, not when he had those broad, muscular shoulders that truly had no place on a duke. And then she was looking at those shoulders more than she ought, truly knowing she needed to look away, but she couldn't manage it, probably couldn't have managed it if someone had offered her a hundred pounds, a thousand, a million.
He was standing in front of her, then, that sly grin still on his face. As she watched, though, the edge of it shifted, almost imperceptibly, until it was no longer the smile of a fox but the hungry, confident look of a wolf.
"I am impossible," he agreed, tone light. He reached out a hand and Marina couldn't help but track the movement. He made as if to touch one of her curls but, the instant before he made contact, dropped his hand back to his side. She didn't know why—he hadn't even touched her, and even then, it was only her hair—but it made her breath hitch.
"But then again," he continued, "so are you."
"What?" said Marina, voice breathy. She cleared her throat. "No, I'm not."
"You are," the duke corrected. He clasped his hands behind his back but leaned in towards her, a variation on the way he'd crowded her against the folly, only now Marina was hideously aware that they were in a private, secluded place, where nobody could come upon them unawares. A place that had a bed right over there.
"You arrive at my bedchamber, insist upon coming inside. Lovely. Cannot say I did not enjoy it." His voice was low, almost hypnotizing, and Marina felt as though she might be swaying under its power.
"Then you insist we cannot—what was the word?—have a dalliance. I did find that one a bit disappointing, to be honest, but it's entirely fair. I have no interest in pressuring a lady who is unwilling."
He tilted his head slightly to the left and Marina found herself, almost subconsciously, echoing the movement.
"But then you look at me in a fashion that contradicts your words. You blushed most prettily when you spoke of our business —" he licked his lip with the smallest motion and Marina felt dizzy over the barest glimpse of his tongue "—and it spread down your throat when you thought of the other business ."
Marina understood why the duke had clasped his hands behind his back. If he was feeling even a fraction of what she was feeling in this moment, he could scarcely control himself from grabbing at her. She clenched handfuls of her skirt.
"So you see my conundrum. The choice is yours, my lady—but you must be the one to make it."
A part of Marina wanted to argue. She wanted to say that he was stacking the deck in his favor, that his nearness, and his charm, and his beautiful face, and the gravel tones in his voice, and his intoxicating scent—these were all utterly unfair ploys, and he was flaunting them all and then asking her to think coherently? No, it was out of the question.
But another part of her, a stronger part, thought that maybe it was a gift, making it so impossible to think. Maybe it was an opportunity she didn't dare waste, to do something without turning it over endlessly in her mind first.
Because she knew it was a gift, knew it was an opportunity when he said that the choice was hers .
She knew it in a way someone who had never before been given a choice knew it. Her father hadn't asked her before he'd abandoned their family if they would be all right without him. Her mother hadn't asked her before she'd collapsed into her bed, refusing to leave for days or weeks, if Marina were up to the task of managing the house at sixteen. Martin hadn't asked if she wanted to get married, or when, or to whom.
They had all just told her how things were going to be and expected Marina not only to go along with it, but to go along happily and without complaint.
But the duke gave her the choice. He kept his hands locked behind his back, looking at her as if he had all the time in the world, and waited.
So Marina made her choice.
Without removing her hands from her skirts, she leaned up, slowly, deliberately, and kissed him.
His mouth was firm as he held himself oh so still in a way that might have felt discouraging if not for the slight hitch in his breath as his lips touched hers. Marina stayed there, drinking in his warmth, for a heartbeat, then two, then three, before dropping back down off her tiptoes. They both kept their silence, neither moving any further away from the other, just looking.
Then the soft warmth in the duke's gaze flashed to something harder and hungrier and he growled, "Oh, come here ," sunk his fingers into her hair, and crushed his mouth to hers.
His mouth wasn't warm, now; it was searing, and that heat was nothing compared to the bolt of lightning that shot through her when his tongue swept against her bottom lip, seeking entry, or the answering liquid feeling in her core when she admitted him.
Marina could not keep her hands to herself any longer. She released her skirts and grasped at his collar, no doubt crushing it terribly, using it as leverage to pull him closer to her. One of his hands left her hair to sweep down her shoulders and to the small of her back, pressing forward and up so that she was curved into him, and he into her, each grappling just as hard as the other to press closer, closer.
Marina had had a few kisses before, brief, rushed pecks in secluded corners at the few Society events she'd attended. She'd thought they had been nice.
She knew now that they had been nothing.
The duke's grip in her hair was firm, creating a tugging sort of pressure that should have hurt. But each tug only served to build the tension within her, a coiled spring sort of feeling that she didn't know how to even attempt to soothe except to press herself more and more firmly to the hard planes of the duke's chest. Except that didn't help, either—it just made the feeling grow and grow and grow.
When the duke pulled his mouth away from hers for a moment, Marina let out a whimpering little sound that would have been humiliating if she had possessed any space left in her mind to think about such things. She moved one of her hands from his collar to his hair in an attempt to tug him back to her.
"My lady," he said in apparent protest, prompting another whining sound from Marina. "Don't you think we ought to—"
"No," she said at once, because she knew where he was going with this and did not think they ought to stop and, in fact, questioned his intelligence for even asking. She would have told him so, except it would take far too many words and she wanted his mouth back on hers much more quickly than that.
The duke gave a slight chuckle but, apparently possessed by some hideously perverse gentlemanly instinct, released his grip on her and then gently pulled her hands loose from her grip on him. Marina frowned at him.
"I'm afraid we must," he said, a rueful note to his voice. "Trust me when I say I wish we didn't have to, but it'll be nearly time to prepare for dinner, and if you're not back in your rooms by then, you'll be missed." He tucked a loose curl behind her ear. "I did promise that your reputation wouldn't be in peril, didn't I?"
"I suppose so," said Marina, making him chuckle again at her dejected tone. Then she glanced at the wind-up clock, over on a side table. "Blast, you're right!" she exclaimed. She ought to feel bad about cursing in front of him, though that seemed to be rather unimportant in light of what they'd been doing. She ran hands through her hair in a frantic effort to calm what she could only assume was a wild coiffure. "Do I look all right?"
She glanced up to find the duke looking at her with a distinct warmth in his gaze. "You look lovely," he said, voice softer than the one he'd been using before. Then he seemed to catch himself and took a few steps away from her. "Now go, before I forget why I'm being sensible."
Marina didn't like to think how strongly the promise in his gaze appealed to her. If she wasn't careful, she'd give up on being sensible, as well. So, before she could make an irreparably foolish decision, she turned and fled.