Chapter Twenty-Three
HOURS LATER, HARRIET AND ALEXANDER WISHED THE MEN WELL, crossed back over the unsound plank, and climbed back into the carriage.
Harriet flipped through her notebook, which had hardly been sufficient for all she’d wanted to write down.
Offhandedly, she let out a breathless: “I can’t wait to show this all to Mr. Dawkins. ”
Alexander frowned. Unavoidable though it was, he didn’t relish Mr. Dawkins benefiting from his surprise. Something rotten twisted in his gut at the thought of Harriet gleefully spending hours with a man going over all the words for a prostitute or a prick that she’d just learned.
Moreover, here she was thinking of blasted Mr. Dawkins while he was mooning over her and calling her “love.” How had that slipped out?
And then there was the kiss she’d given him on the cheek—was it meant to be as pleasurable as it felt?
To tease him all day long? Or was it intended to convey an almost sisterly affection for him?
Had she been thinking of her dictionary and Mr. Dawkins when she’d done it?
And why was he thinking so hard about a kiss on his cheek anyway?
He’d had kisses in far more intimate places that he’d never thought of again.
He was stewing in his thoughts when Harriet looked up at him with her gorgeous sea-glass eyes, which were worryingly damp. Lord, he hoped she wasn’t going to cry.
“Thank you ever so much for today. It really was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” She seemed so sincerely grateful that Alexander’s heart pinched. But then she bit her lip, and any sensibility Alexander had abandoned him.
“Really?” he asked, crossing the carriage to crowd her bench.
“Nicer even than this?” And with that he hauled her onto his lap and pulled her into a kiss.
Even without his hardness pressing into her, there was no possible way to interpret this as anything other than selfish desire on his part.
This wasn’t a lesson for her in how to find or give pleasure; this was simply for the sake of having her.
Impatient, he reached his hand down to lift her skirts; it had been hours since he’d seen her legs, after all.
“It’s midday!” she shrieked, pulling back.
“Yes, well, I’m feeling ever so carriage sick.
And only my wife knows the cure,” he teased, pulling the curtains closed.
Then he reached behind her and flicked open a button on the back of her gown, and followed with his mouth, brushing her hair back and placing kisses along her neck.
His other hand reached to the front of her dress, tugging down the bodice to expose her breasts.
Fucking hell.
He dearly hoped the carriage never arrived home.
Harriet woke up in her bed with Alexander snoring softly next to her.
Late afternoon sun spilled through the curtains; she couldn’t remember a time she’d slept in the middle of the day.
Napping was Philippa’s answer to almost any problem larger than a broken teacup, but Harriet wasn’t ever able to fall asleep.
In fact, now that Harriet thought about it, Philippa might have napped over a broken teacup too.
“A nap won’t clean up the shards, but at least I’ll feel better,” she could imagine her saying. She laughed lightly to herself.
“What’s so amusing?” Alexander grumbled next to her. His low, sleepy voice sent shivers of arousal through her that she tried to ignore. She was already in bed naked in the middle of the day; surely that was enough wantonness for one day, Lord help her.
Alexander flipped over onto his back and rested a bare arm—a superbly muscled bare arm—over his eyes, his other hand rubbing up and down his sternum idly.
Harriet watched the movement, rather dazed, as she answered. “I was thinking of my sister. She loves napping. She told me once her goal in life was to be horizontal as often as possible.”
Alexander choked out a laugh that turned into a cough and Harriet swatted at his arm. “She didn’t mean like that!” Harriet protested. Alexander lifted his arm and quirked an eyebrow at her.
“All right, maybe she did,” Harriet allowed, sitting back against the pillows.
“But she really was always napping. She could fall asleep at the dining table. She swore she could sleep while riding a horse, although we never had the chance to test it after … after Mama died. Papa sold all the horses.”
Harriet hadn’t meant to bring up her mother, and she tried to trail off at the end of her sentence so as not to encourage more conversation. Alexander snaked his hand under the covers and found hers, giving it a light squeeze. Somehow, Harriet felt the squeeze in her heart instead.
“You miss her?”
“I miss all of my sisters.”
“I meant your mother.”
Harriet smiled weakly, trying her best not to cry.
“I don’t remember much about her. I was only six when she died.
I remember she smelled good, and she had big hands.
Or maybe we just thought they were big because we were so young.
But we always teased her about them. Papa was happier then; he wasn’t mean.
He was never sweet like she was, and he wouldn’t play with us. But he was … he was better.”
Alexander smoothed his thumb over her hand, which was so kind it made Harriet want to cry even more, which was not at all what he’d signed up for when he’d brought her to bed after their excursion.
“Sorry,” she said, dashing a tear from her cheek.
Alexander sat up against the headboard then, the covers slipping deliciously down his broad chest. Really, the man was obscene in his beauty.
Harriet appraised him unabashedly, which made his lips quirk into a smile.
He didn’t know what to do with a crying woman, she supposed.
Not at all the thing to do in Lord Alexander’s bed.
He spread his legs wide and gestured between them, and Harriet glanced around, unsure of what came next. Surely her crying didn’t make him … aroused? Did he mean for her to …
“Come here,” he said, lifting her as if it was nothing, and settling her so her back was against him—against that stupidly broad chest.
He pulled the covers back up over the two of them, tucking them under Harriet’s armpits, which made her smile. The man had no compunction about nudity—he probably could have strolled quite unaffected through Parliament with no shirt on; Harriet wasn’t quite there yet.
Leaning against him felt heavenly, almost as good as what they’d done in bed before falling asleep.
In fact, it may have been better. Harriet felt warm and content and—though she wouldn’t have liked to admit her enjoyment of the feeling—protected.
She was in grave danger of instructing the man to hang the rules—she’d give him her virginity any time he inquired after it.
Alexander brushed his hand lightly through her hair, a surprisingly comforting gesture. Was the man truly good at everything?
“What about you?” Harriet ventured softly, her hand tracing absently along his thigh. They didn’t normally talk about his family. She knew he had a brother, but only because of the rumors about him, not because he’d mentioned his sibling. “What is your family like?”
Harriet felt Alexander still behind her at the question, and she fought to keep her composure casual, as if he were an easily spooked horse and not a rich, handsome duke’s son.
“You’ve met my father,” he said dismissively.
Harriet, for all the talking she’d done in her life, knew a little something about listening.
Most people, if you gave them long enough, would fill a silence.
So she waited, urging herself to breathe normally.
She hoped he’d give her this. She was rewarded for her patience when he let out a deep breath and continued.
“My mother, well, she wasn’t meant to be a mother.
She was much younger than my father, and they hated each other from the beginning.
But she gave him an heir—my brother John—and then he couldn’t complain so much when she went on her long sojourns across the continent.
Then she returned after a suspiciously long trip to Sardinia with a child who had suspiciously black hair and dark eyes,” he described wryly, almost bitterly. Harriet tried to think of what to say.
“Is she—” Harriet had no idea how to ask her question delicately.
“Alive? Yes, actually. At least, as of a few years ago. She was in Calais then.”
“You don’t see her, then?”
“I’ve only seen her once since she brought me back to England.
I was a few years old, and she had run out of money, so she had to return.
The duke took one look at us and decided he wouldn’t house us both.
And a son, even a base-born bastard son, was worth more than a wife who would fuck everyone except him.
” Harriet knew somehow not to ask more. “So, there I was with a father who loathed me and an infallible older brother, my perfect foil.”
“Was he cruel to you?”
“My father?”
“Your brother.”
“Much worse. He was marvelous to me. He didn’t care for my father’s favor, which quickly turned into my father’s poorly concealed contempt when he discovered that John liked reading and poetry more than fencing and riding.
My father tried to beat it into him for many years.
Literally. John just took it. Then he’d quote some poetic verse or a bit of philosophy about suffering to me.
I had no idea what the hell he was ever on about.
” Alexander spoke of his brother with so much love and admiration it made Harriet’s heart feel heavy.
“Did your father beat you too?” she asked, sorry that fathers were allowed to be like this.
“Occasionally, though he mostly ignored me. Until John got sick.” Alexander said the sentence so matter-of-factly that Harriet could feel how sad it made him.
“Why … why don’t you see him? Do you see him? Is he here in London?” Something about the situation aroused anxiety in her. What had happened to the golden son?