My Inconvenient Duke (Difficult Dukes #3)

Chapter 22

York Hotel, George Street, Bath

Saturday 19 May 1832

Lord Worbury’s doddering maternal aunt was planted at last, having dragged out the dying business for an eternity.

This morning he’d attended the will reading. She’d left her riches to be divided among several Bath charitable institutions:

the Female Orphans Asylum and House of Protection, the Puerperal or Child-bed Charity, the Society for the Relief of Lying-In

Women, the Children’s Friend Society, and the Servants’ Friend Society.

Upon Worbury she’d bestowed her extensive collection of sermons.

He wished he’d held a pillow over her face.

While tradesmen were still willing to extend credit to a rackety duke’s heir presumptive, credit wasn’t ready money, an article

even a titled gentleman required. One might ignore the tradesmen’s bills, of course. Bets, however, must be settled promptly.

Furthermore, a great many establishments catering to gentlemen’s pleasures expected pounds, shillings, and pence, not IOUs.

Worbury pushed the money problem aside for the time being, because a letter from Lady Bartham had arrived in today’s mail

from London. He and Consett had retired to a sitting room overlooking George Street to enjoy it. Consett’s mama, whose mission

in life was collecting and spreading scandal, had proved quite useful, and her letters could be amusing.

The previous one had been full of the scandal about Lady Alice and Blackwood, including various rumors about her unchaperoned,

overnight visit to Kensington with His Dis-Grace. Worbury would have been happier with eyewitness accounts of her having been

brutally assaulted by a gang of criminals and thrown into a brothel for the amusement of the patrons.

He wasn’t thrilled, either, with the change of intended spouse from Doveridge to Blackwood, though he would have preferred

rather less formidable mates for her. Still, one might take comfort in one certainty: If she and Blackwood did actually wed,

theirs would be a marriage made in hell.

If they wed. According to Lady Bartham, the nuptials had not yet taken place. With two dukes involved, a great deal of legal

business had to be settled first. And of course the trousseau required time and thought.

“Trousseau, my foot,” Worbury said. “They’re only delaying because they mean to cry off. Mark my words, one of them will balk.

He’ll never give up his friends and whoring for any woman, and she hates men. They’ll wait until the talk about the Kensington

orgy dies down, then decide they don’t suit. It happens all the time.”

Consett glanced down at the letter. “Mama says they’ve set a date. Settlements signed and... Oh.”

“What?”

“I don’t think—”

“Don’t think. You know it doesn’t agree with you. Plague take it, what’s that look for?”

“It’s only... It’s not good.”

Worbury snatched the letter from him and found the place where he’d left off.

I have it on the best authority that the Duke of Ripley has made extensive changes to his will. He and his solicitor have

contrived sufficient entanglements to leave Lord Worbury with what amounts to an empty title. They have tied up the properties

and restricted the income by so many conditions that he will be hard-pressed to make anything of it. In short, Ripley has

left your friend as near penniless as a duke can be.

The news is already making the rounds of the ton, and tradesmen will get wind of it within days. In the circumstances, Lord

Worbury may soon find his creditors baying at the window and clawing at the door. Were he my son, I should advise him to find

an heiress without loss of time.

The Duke of Blackwood and Lady Alice Ancaster were married by special license at Sussex Place on Tuesday 5 June.

The bride changed into traveling attire not long thereafter, and the couple set out for Brighton, leaving their guests to

enjoy a sumptuous wedding breakfast.

As the coachman turned the traveling chariot into Regent Street, Blackwood said, “It’s done. I began to think it would never

happen.”

“Changing Ripley’s will complicated matters,” she said.

“Among other concerns, we had to make certain Worbury had no way of touching anything to do with you. We were obliged to become

Machiavellian.”

“You’ve relieved my brother of a great worry.”

“My desperate desire to marry his sister as soon as possible spurred my imagination, and so I spurred the lawyers.”

She laid her gloved hand over his. “Now you’re stuck with me.”

He gazed into her green eyes, and the moment came back to him when the minister asked the fatal question and Blackwood had

looked down at his bride. She’d worn white then, something frothy and fanciful, but all he saw was her wondrous face. He simply

fell into her eyes, as into a sparkling sea, and said, “I will.”

At present she wore a pink-and-green dress. A pleated cambric chemisette filled in the low neckline and effectively covered

the skin beneath. The overly enthusiastic flower and lace hat decorations matched the green of the dress. It was all very

silly and excessively feminine and altogether too inviting. Getting all those layers off, for instance. So tempting.

“I regret nothing,” he said.

“If you do have second thoughts—”

“Too late for that now.”

“It’s never too late. One might do away with unwanted persons in scores of ways.”

“Doubtless you’ve thought of them.”

“Women warriors need to employ guile and cunning to compensate for lesser physical strength than men.”

“After all the bother I’ve endured, I might as well keep you,” he said. “At least for a time.”

“Let’s pretend, though. We’ve a longish journey ahead, and it will help while away the hours.”

He had fine ideas about how to pass the time, but those constituted Incorrect Behavior. She was the Duchess of Blackwood.

He was not going to deflower her in a traveling chariot on the Brighton Road. He’d married her properly, and he’d endure six

or so hours of travel in order to perform the wedding night rites correctly.

What an idiot he’d been to suggest Brighton.

Why not Twickenham or Richmond?

But he wanted her to know England’s beauties and wonders. Then, perhaps, she wouldn’t miss the Continent so much.

“I could always leave you in one of those lanes in the northern part of Kensington, where you might wander for hours and never

be found,” he said. “I’d say you’d run away from me, and everybody would understand why.”

“That’s clever. But people might point out that traveling through Kensington is an odd route to take to Brighton. What about

a brewery? You might take me to visit—there must be one on the way, or not far out of the way. Then I could accidentally fall

into a vat of ale and drown.”

In his mind appeared an image of this concoction dropping down into a large vat, rather like a balloon landing. “Not in that

dress. You’ll float.”

She looked down at the dress. “It’s French. The Queen would not approve. But Parisians have infected my taste, and I haven’t

yet found the perfect London modiste. There was a splendid shop in Paris, but the dressmakers closed it during the cholera

and riots. They never reopened, and I don’t know what’s become of them.”

“I am not the Queen,” he said. “Furthermore, I’m a man, and I don’t give a damn about your dress.”

“But your duchess must look like a duchess.”

“My duchess is free to wear whatever she likes, the world’s or the Queen’s opinion may go to the devil, and her spouse will

merely make witty remarks about the expense. I believe it would be wise to stop talking about your dress because I find myself

debating the quickest way to get it off—or not necessarily all off—and—”

“What about kissing?” she said. “Can there be kissing?”

“Of course there can be.”

“Now?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good—”

“Because it seems to me that there has not been enough kissing of late.”

“I’ve been busy,” he said.

“You’re not busy now.”

“I’m busy thinking about the wedding night, which will happen in a bed , not in a vehicle.”

She looked about her.

It was a ducal carriage, furnished in the height of luxury. Nonetheless, it was not the correct location for the business.

On the other hand...

“However, it’s true that you haven’t had much practice,” he said.

“No, I haven’t had anybody to practice on since our visit to the Colosseum. While that was exciting, it was insufficient.”

“I don’t doubt that any number of men would welcome the opportunity to be practiced upon.”

“That may be, but for some reason, I’ve felt disinclined to offer it.”

He sighed heavily. “Then I suppose it will have to be me.”

She smiled up at him, and down he went, to drown in the sparkling green sea.

Blackwood didn’t take her in his arms and kiss her, as Alice expected.

He lifted the hand that rested on his. He pushed back the edge of the glove and kissed her wrist.

“Oh.” Not a word but a tiny gasp of a word. It was a wonder that so small a touch could do so much, making her insides tighten

and quiver.

He drew the glove off, finger by finger, and slipped it from her hand.

He did the same to the other glove. He brought her naked hands to his mouth and kissed the palms. He brought her hands to

his jaw, and she held him that way and looked up into his eyes and found herself falling into midnight.

“I wish you would kiss me, in your own amateurish way,” he said.

She slid her fingers into his thick hair and drew his head down and brought her mouth to his. The merest touch, yet she felt

it deeply. Tiny shocks skimmed along her skin and set her alight.

She pressed a little more, and he brought his arms about her and drew her closer while his mouth moved against hers. As soft

as velvet but potent, it brought a rush of warmth and joy. All this, from no more than a meeting of lips. It was like another

sort of speech between them, another secret shared.

A kiss, an endless kiss, and the feel of his mouth and the scent of his skin, the whisper of their clothing as they drew closer. Her lips clung to his, and she let her hands slide down to grasp his coat, the way she’d done so long ago, holding on while she fell, deeper and deeper.

This time he didn’t draw away.

This time he made a sound like a low growl and pulled her onto his lap.

She knocked off his hat and dragged her hands through his hair and along the back of his neck. She felt the muscles tighten

under her fingers, and her insides tensed in sympathy, as though invisible cords tied his body to hers. He brushed his tongue

against her lips, and she opened to him, easily and unthinkingly. The intimacy of it brought a wash of inner heat that hurried

everywhere, outward and downward and into her brain to make her drunk. A drunken being inside her whispered, I want I want I want .

She dragged her hands up over his shoulders, and down along his arms, and mine mine mine , the drunken being whispered. It was a shadow, a feeling, and the whispers were feelings more than words.

She broke the kiss to let her lips touch his cheek. She brushed his cheek with hers and took in the familiar man-scents of

starch and wool and shaving soap mingled with whatever it was that was this man’s alone.

“Good God, Alice.” His voice was a groan.

“I know you,” she said, letting her mouth graze his jaw. “Why do I know you?”

Because I love you. I’ve always loved you.

It played in her mind, the whispering feeling, telling secrets she kept even from herself.

“Affinity,” he murmured.

She nuzzled his neck—the precious bit of it she could get to, between his neckcloth and ear. The way he smelled was an intoxicant.

She needed more. She wanted to touch more of him.

He moved his hands over her in the same way she did to him, learning and claiming him. He slid his hand down her back to the bottom of her spine and pressed her closer.

She let out a little gasp. “Oh, when you touch me...”

She might have said that. She might have simply made noises. She didn’t care. He filled the carriage and the world, and she

wanted only to be in that world, close to him and part of him.

He eased his hold and made the growling sound again.

“This won’t do,” he said. His voice was hoarse.

She laid her head on his shoulder, aware of her breath coming and going so quickly, her heart beating a gallopade.

This will do very well , she thought. This ought to go on doing. That was virtually all she could think. That and, Why do we stop?

“I don’t want to stop,” she said.

“Neither do I,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

“That is not a problem.”

She felt rather than heard his laugh.

“This time it is. Another time, not at all.”

She lifted her head to look at him.

He was not a beautiful golden angel like Ashmont. Blackwood was dark and not angelic. The angles of jaw and cheekbone were

sharp, the nose commanding, the mouth sensuous now, but she’d seen it hard and unforgiving.

His eyes were even more intriguing. They could be soft or amused or stern or dangerous. Sometimes looking into them was like looking into nothing. This was not one of those times. They were gentle now, with a hint of laughter and something more that she wasn’t sure of but rather liked.

“That hat,” he said, shaking his head. “That hat has taken leave of its wits. It thinks it’s a hat but it’s gone too far.

It’s much too much hat. I want to take it off. I want to take off the rest of your excessive clothing. But.”

“I believe I should like for you to take off the rest. But leave the hat on. So many pins.”

“Alice.”

“Giles.”

He smiled. “You’ll make me dote upon my own wife.”

“Is that so wrong?”

“It’s very difficult to think while you sit in my lap,” he said.

“Why are you thinking at a time like this?”

He put his lips against her ear. She shivered.

He said softly, “I had in mind a large, well-appointed bedchamber in my Brighton town house. A grand ducal bed. Champagne

and a bite to eat. But if we continue in this way, the lovemaking will happen awkwardly, uncomfortably, and far too quickly—in

a carriage. All very well in its way, that sort of thing, but I had wanted our wedding night to be special.”

She wanted the wedding night to be this minute. Sitting in his lap, she was fully aware of his desire for her. The awareness

was making her have feelings she wasn’t used to and needed assuaged. She had a reasonably good idea how this might be done.

Aunt Florentia had explained wedding night matters on the previous night. Alice was already schooled in the basics. She’d seen animals mating. She and Cassandra had closely studied pictures they were supposed to know nothing about. Even so, she’d insisted that her aunt provide all the particulars. At present she felt not at all afraid, except of not knowing exactly what to do when. But Blackwood knew, and he’d teach her.

“You have a point,” she said. She eased herself off his lap. “How much farther have we to travel?”