My Inconvenient Duke (Difficult Dukes #3)

Chapter 18

Alice opened her eyes to find herself in Blackwood’s arms again. He carried her to the bed, set her down carefully, and propped

up pillows behind her.

“What’s happened?” she said. “Did I faint? I never faint.”

“I did not knock you on the head with a chamber pot, though the temptation was strong,” he said. “I merely tapped on the door.

The maid cried out. I burst in to see you subsiding to the floor, and Mary trying to hold you up. In short, you swooned all

of your own accord, and I hope it’s a lesson to you. All this long day, taking no rest and next to nothing to eat, then driving

a pair of mares too powerful for you, then stopping for a boxing match with desperate criminals. I might as well spend my

time with Ashmont.”

“Your horses are not—”

“Luckily for you, Circe and Sappho have withstood the shock admirably,” he cut in. “Mary has gone for a glass of port to strengthen the blood. I’ve ordered a dinner, which will be sent up soon. Kindly stay where you are, and do not force me to tie you to the bed. This is neither the time nor place for jollity. Really, Alice, this will not do.”

“Ripley’s alive,” she said.

He went on fussing: He rearranged the pillows. He smoothed the bedclothes about her. He made sure her dress covered her ankles.

While he fussed, he talked. “He is. One of the men in the taproom saw the invalid for himself not two hours ago. Ripley was

sleeping, soundly and loudly. My informant attempted an imitation. Had I entertained any doubts, those horrifying sounds crushed

them. You may now stop being impossible. Good gad, what am I saying? I might as well tell the Thames to part for me.”

He straightened and went to the window. Heavy pattering against the glass told her the threatened rain had come. She could

see his reflection there, ghostlike against the night-black glass.

“You know where he is,” she said. “Nearby?”

“Pulbrook’s farm is northward of here. Unanimous opinion declares the area unsafe for traveling at present. Even if it were

not raining furiously, we should have no moonlight. Our host assures me that even locals become lost on dark nights. No surprise

it happened to Ripley, if that is what happened. Too bad he fell asleep when he was practically upon the Uxbridge Road. But

it was dark. Easy to lose one’s bearings in places like this.”

“Especially if one is profoundly intoxicated.”

He came away from the window. “Do you know, I’m asking myself the whys you asked before. If it were Ashmont who’d done this, I shouldn’t wonder. One can seldom account for his actions. But it’s

pointless to try to ascertain whys and wherefores. It’s possible we’ll get answers when we see your brother. I shouldn’t count

on it, though, if I were you.”

He pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed. He folded his hands against his stomach and looked at her. “I believe we still have time enough to get you back to your aunt. The stage and mail coaches will clutter up the Uxbridge Road in a short while, but we might reach Sussex Place at a reasonable hour.”

She ought to take time to think twice. She didn’t. She saw all too clearly what lay ahead if she returned, if she married

Doveridge or anybody else.

She’d been so careful to seek good men. She’d wanted a marriage like Aunt Julia’s. But she wasn’t Aunt Julia. She wasn’t fit

to be a proper wife. That had become clear in the past week, and especially in these last few hours. Doveridge didn’t deserve

to be saddled with the likes of her.

And she did not want to spend the rest of her life trying to be somebody she was not.

Spare yourself the charade , Blackwood had said.

“Don’t you want to marry me?” she said.

He blinked once, twice. “Certainly not. Who’d want to marry you? A lunatic, perhaps. An ancient duke with one foot in the

grave.”

“He’s two and forty!”

“Pitiable, doddering thing. If he marries you, he may look forward to an earlier-than-anticipated demise. As do I. But I at

least am used to you. No shocks in store. A strain upon the nerves, certainly. Excessive fatigue, absolutely. But you’ll have

to work harder to kill me. Still, if you’d rather not take on the challenge of reducing me to a drooling half-wit—”

“On the contrary, I look forward to it,” she said. “Among other things, it will offer a species of revenge for the anxiety

I’ve endured.”

Before he could answer, a sound made him look toward the door. Footsteps approached. Then came a cautious tap.

Blackwood went to the door and let in Mary, with the port. He took it from her and brought the glass to Alice’s lips.

“I’m not an infant,” she said. “I can hold it myself.”

“Promise you won’t dribble it all over your dress.”

“The dress is ruined.”

“But it doesn’t smell of drink yet. You see, it is in fact possible for you to appear even more disreputable than you do at

present. Still, your face is clean and your hair is somewhat less Medusa-like. That’s an accomplishment. Thank you, Mary.

You may carry up the lady’s dinner when ready.”

Mary went out, closing the door behind her.

He gave Alice the glass. Her hand was only a trifle unsteady, and that, she told herself, was hunger and the daylong strain

on her nerves. She drank. It felt good, better than she’d expected, warming her as it went down. As the warmth spread, she

could feel herself calming. Only then did she understand how acutely uncalm she’d been.

Mad with anxiety was a figure of speech, yet uncannily accurate. How impossible it had been to think clearly or care about anything but finding

Ripley. How frightened she’d been, without realizing how deep the fear went. She’d been angry as well—with him, with men,

with the world.

“That’s better,” he said. “Your color begins to return. You looked ghastly. Ashen-faced doesn’t become you.”

“One of the things I’ve missed about you is your honeyed speech,” she said. “The sweet way you have of making a girl believe

she’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever seen.”

“You’ve missed me?”

“It’s the brain injury,” she said. “One of the times I had to climb out of prison at Camberley Place, I must have fallen on

my head.”

“I have not missed you,” he said. “Not in the least. You’re nothing but a bother.”

“Excellent. You raise my spirits no end. I shall bother you for the rest of your life.”

“The rest of my markedly short life.”

“If I’m going to send a husband to an early grave, I prefer it be you.”

He gazed at her steadily for a time. She let him. She finished the port and gave him the empty glass. He set it down on the

table next to the bed.

“You’re thinking,” she said. “I can always tell when this momentous event occurs. Your eyes become very black.”

He folded his hands again, on the bedclothes this time, and looked down at them. Then he raised those coal-black eyes to hers.

“I want to make one detail clear,” he said. “I am not a Turkish sultan. I get only one wife at a time. If we wed, ours cannot

be a marriage in name only. Ours cannot be a business arrangement. Ours cannot be a marriage of convenience. If we’re to take

this step, it cannot be a sham. My current heir, unlike your brother’s, is more than acceptable. Nonetheless, I should like

to have my own family.”

Her heart decided to skip a few times, then break into a run.

“I broke a man’s nose without even trying,” she said. “According to you, I drove horses too big and strong for me. Do you

imagine I’m afraid of your bedding me?”

He looked away and bit the corner of his lip. A smile. He bit back a smile. Her spirits rose.

“I wanted to make sure we understood each other,” he said. “No screaming on the wedding night.”

“That’s unfair, Giles. I had hoped to start wearing on your nerves at the first opportunity, and screaming on the wedding night—”

He leant in, cupped her face, and kissed her.

She forgot to breathe.

Eight years.

Since that kiss, the one endless yet too-short kiss, the one she couldn’t forget and hadn’t wanted to, though she knew better.

She trembled inwardly, and her heart beat hard, like the rain against the window. It had beat this way long ago, and the long

ago came back:

Camberley Place and the gardens in the deepening twilight, the stars beginning to show themselves, faint glimmerings in the

gold-streaked, ultramarine heavens... he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, and it seemed he’d lifted her off the

ground, off the earth altogether, and she was tumbling into another, dark and dizzying and inviting world. She’d wanted to

tumble forever. She hadn’t looked for it or realized she wanted it until that moment, and then she was lost.

Now, the first touch of his mouth called it all back.

He started to draw away, but she grasped his lapels. “Ah, no, my lad. You don’t get away this time. This time I’ll put up

a fight.”

His eyebrows went up. The glint in his dark eyes told her he knew what she was talking about.

“I was a boy,” he said. “Nineteen. A callow youth.”

“You were afraid.”

“An ignorant boy, yet not altogether brainless.”

“And not altogether heartless.” He could have taken advantage of her youth and innocence. He hadn’t.

“As to that, Alice, I—”

“Not so much talking, my lord duke. The sweet kiss was a good beginning, but I know you can do bet ter. You may try again, but with more concentration, please. You are not to trifle with my affections.”

“You have affections? For me?”

“Mere seedlings,” she said. “You’ll need to cultivate them. Let me offer a helpful hint. You might start by kissing me again.

How long will you make me wait this time?”

The world could change in an instant.

His world slipped, fell, and came right again altogether differently.

Blackwood was not sure he understood, although he was reasonably sure he’d acted correctly, at last.

He didn’t stop to ponder. He did as he was told.

He kissed her cheek. He heard her breath catch and felt her tremble, and his heart turned over.

“Giles.” A murmur.

“Give me time,” he said.

He drank in the scent of her skin. He felt its softness against his mouth. He let his arms close about her and draw her nearer.

He slid his mouth to her jaw and kissed the place near her ear. He kissed her neck. Then he turned her face to his and kissed

her the way he might have done all those years ago.

He hadn’t been altogether wrong to stop then, but he’d done it badly, like a fool of a schoolboy. And he’d hurt her, then

and more than once thereafter.

He wasn’t a boy anymore. He wasn’t the man he’d thought he was, either. He was not sure how that had happened. He knew only

that his life was changed and could not be put back the way it used to be.

He didn’t want to put it back.

This man, in this new life, held her and drank in the taste of her and the way she felt in his arms and the reality of her, the woman she was now. He let the feelings, good and bad, rise and fall about him, waves breaking upon a rocky shore.

She held on to his lapels, and her mouth pressed to his, following his lead without hesitation, as though she’d been waiting

for this, as though she’d been waiting for him to come to his senses.

She responded in the way the seventeen-year-old version of Alice had done so long ago, tipping her head back for more, her

lips slanting against his as she clung to his coat, as though she were drowning.

He was drowning.

He shifted onto the bed to hold her more closely still, and warm, turbulent waters closed over him, a sea of feelings. She

tasted the same and different. The girl was there and the woman, too. She pressed her body to his, her full curves shaping

to fit against him. He deepened the kiss. Her mouth was soft and yielding, unlike her character, and the kiss was like that,

honey and fire.

He drew her down onto the pillows with him. He pulled her closer. He let his hands slide down, over her back, her bottom.

His brain, the one in his skull, began to close up shop, and leave business to the little one lower down. He brought one of

his legs over hers, entangling himself with her, while he slid his fingers toward the fastenings of her dress.

She stiffened.

Jolted, he stilled, while his mind shook itself awake and tried to run a dozen different ways at once. Too soon. He went too

fast. She was an innocent, in spite of appearances and sophistication, and he was an idiot. The most inconsiderate of idiots.

A boy, a lust-addled boy.

Then he heard the rap at the door.

He dragged his mouth from hers and disentangled himself from her. “Damn and damn,” he said.

She gave a soft laugh.

He looked at her, into her shimmering green eyes and full into her smile. He laughed, too, and hastily slid from the bed,

to open the door to Mary and the dinner tray.

The Duke of Blackwood dined in one of the private dining parlors. He needed to think, and he knew he couldn’t manage it in

proximity to Alice. In normal circumstances she was no small challenge: clever and willful and all too fearless.

Current circumstances were abnormal, even for a man who’d spent most of the past fifteen years in the Duke of Ashmont’s company.

Blackwood had never, after all, lusted for the Duke of Ashmont, and therefore never suffered such extreme mental confusion,

even during their most drunken episodes.

He thought, What am I to do about Ashmont? I can’t leave him entirely to Ripley. We can’t leave him to himself.

He thought, What am I to tell Ripley about Alice?

I did mean to shield her from Worbury but matters became... complicated.

It turns out that my feelings for her are not as brotherly as I believed... wanted to believe... pretended to believe.

Do you mind very much? I hope not, because I shall marry her, and I had rather that didn’t mean you and I must meet at a ghastly

hour to shoot each other.

He shook his head. Not the most intelligible explanations, and that was hardly surprising after the day’s events. At this point, trying to arrive at logical conclusions was a waste of what reasoning powers he retained. He and Alice needed to agree on what they’d say. They’d both think more clearly after a night’s sleep...

Not with her.

Not this night.

But they would be married—married!—and one night...

“I don’t believe it,” he murmured. “I don’t believe this day. I must have wandered into an opium den without realizing, and

I’ve dreamt it all.”

He didn’t believe that, either, but he set his mind to his dinner, which he very nearly fell asleep into.

And when he went to bed—at the same ridiculously early hour as a farmer—he slept dreamlessly.

Meanwhile in London

As the day waned with no word from Alice, Lady Kempton gave up trying to read or do needlework. She took to her writing desk.

Sussex Place

8th Instant

My dear Julia,

I should have been happy to keep you abreast of Alice’s doings had I seen any value in your sharing my headaches. At present, however, I discern no way to protect you from the truth. All the world will be made aware by tomorrow or the next day or very soon, at any rate, that she has driven away with Blackwood to search for Ripley in Kensington or thereabouts. I am quite sure that Lord Frederick Beckingham is apprised of this matter, because he left it to me to break the news to Doveridge. You will know I’m not joking. Lord Frederick, having heard this and that—more, I don’t doubt, than I could hope to hear in a lifetime of listening—advised the duke to call on me!

We were to dine with Doveridge this evening, as you know. It was to be an intimate dinner party, with his most trusted family

members in attendance. Anybody can read these signs, of course, and draw the obvious conclusion: He was on the brink, at last,

of offering.

Alice’s abrupt departure obliged me to send a message informing him that we were unable to attend. He called—yes, as Lord

Frederick advised—that dratted know-all—ostensibly to ask after my health. In the circumstances, it seemed most unkind to

send reassurances through a servant. I felt obliged to speak to him directly. Alice told me not to deceive him, and I did

not. I explained that Ripley had gone missing in Kensington, that we should not have worried had his most trusted manservant

not been genuinely alarmed and that, consequently, she had gone with Blackwood to find him. Doveridge’s first words were,

“Dear me, how anxious she must have been! I wish she had come to me with her trouble. But that is my fault, I daresay. He

who hesitates is lost.”

Indeed, as much as I dislike Alice’s placing him in this embarrassing position, and greatly as I sympathize with his disappointment, it is true that he hesitated for too long. Nonetheless, I am now compelled to believe it is for the best, for all concerned. Alice likes and admires him. She holds him in great esteem, as he well deserves. In some cases, this is sufficient to build a marriage upon, as we both well know. In her case, however, it struck me as insufficient. That is to say, I was struck with the insight when she was on the brink of exploding from the house—to go heaven knows where to do heaven knows what, for she had no more inkling what had become of her brother than the man in the moon. She, to search for him! Alone but for a pair of servants! Then Blackwood appeared.

My dear Julia, I have tried to counsel myself about jumping to conclusions, but it has been quite impossible to watch them together and not discern what one may call an undercurrent. Indeed, Doveridge has not failed to notice it. He may be infatuated with our niece, but he is not blind. He mentioned it, tactfully, of course. He’d observed them at the Zoological Gardens, and it is clear that the sight made an impression. All the same, who would have believed there was any danger of Blackwood stealing her away? None of those three is ready for marriage, and nothing less is acceptable in Alice’s case. Ripley would tear his friend limb from limb—and we know how precious that friendship is. And so we are in a predicament, and I see no possibility of get ting out of it easily. It is now past nine o’clock and she has not—

I broke off because of a tumult downstairs. I thought Alice had returned. She has not. She has sent a message. My dear Julia,

you had better prepare yourself to think impossible things.

She and Blackwood mean to wed!

There is more, of course, but the rest is anticlimax. To spare you additional anxiety, let me assure you that they have discovered

Ripley’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, the lateness of the hour and the weather have made it impossible to go to him. However,

she writes that he is well, and they mean to collect him tomorrow morning.

At least she and Blackwood plan to do what they ought. All the same, the talk will be terrific. But no more this night. My

head is a jumble. I must make an early bedtime and try to sleep.

Your most affectionate,

Florentia