Tamed by her Duke (Seductive Mysteries #4)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

“ W hat are ye doing here?”

Caleb remembered, with a sort of aching melancholy, a not-so-distant time in his life when he never had to ask such questions. Now, it seemed, his days were full of them. What are ye doing? Why are ye doing that? Why did ye think that was a good idea?

In fairness, most of these questions were directed toward his wife, whose quest to do…whatever it was she was doing to the house had not abated. Therefore, it was something of a relief to be asking this question to his solicitor, Mr. Nicholas Proctor, instead of Grace.

Not much of a relief, however.

Nicholas grinned at Caleb from the doorway to his study, and Caleb’s relief vanished. Oh, it was going to be that kind of visit.

“Can a man not come to see one of his oldest friends? Perhaps I want to congratulate you on your nuptials,” Nicholas said.

“We’re nae friends,” Caleb countered. “Ye’re my solicitor. Naught else.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Nicholas said—as he always did. Caleb scowled. This was the problem with solicitors—and people who had known you all your life. They were bloody hard to argue with.

Caleb rolled his eyes. “What is it that ye really want, then?” he demanded. Nicholas’ practice operated out of London, as did nearly all of the best solicitor’s practices, but as the man did much of his work for aristocrats whose estates were in the North, he did some of his businesses from Newcastle upon Tyne, too.

Even so, it was a fair journey to Montgomery Estate.

“Well,” Nicholas said with annoying cheer, “you would know this, if you paid the slightest bit of attention, but I am here to inspect the estate, something that I do every quarter. I then write it all up in a nice little report for you, and you, I assume, throw it directly into the fire. It’s a delightful little exercise for which I charge you double my other clients, for the sheer trouble of the thing.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. He assumed the bit about the overcharging was about as true as the bit about chucking the reports into flames, which was to say, about halfway accurate. Caleb only sometimes ignored Nicholas’ missives. The remainder of the time they simply never reached him; receiving mail in the army was a precarious operation.

Even so, he decided not to quibble about this. There was only one way, in Caleb’s experience, to win an argument with Nicholas, and that way was by walloping him, which Caleb hadn’t done since they were twelve at Eton. Nicholas had dodged in completely the wrong direction, which meant the punch Caleb had aimed for his shoulder had ended up on his nose, which had broken. And even though that had been, as Caleb had passionately argued, entirely Nicholas’ fault , he still hadn’t liked it when Nicholas had refused to speak to him for three full weeks.

Even if they weren’t friends—and they were not —nobody liked to be ignored.

“Very well,” he said instead, returning to his work. “Be about yer business.”

When he looked up again a moment later, however, Nicholas had not moved.

“What?” he growled.

It was really unfortunate that Nicholas, for all that he now worked for a living, was a gentleman by birth—the fourth son of a baron without a chance of inheriting, hence his profession, but a gentleman, nonetheless. His lofty origins, not to mention his many brothers, meant he was entirely unaffected by Caleb’s title.

Nicholas smiled. That smile never meant good things for Caleb.

“You should ride out with me. I’m set to see the vineyards today, and the brewery.”

“No.”

That really should have been that, but Nicholas steepled his fingers eagerly under his chin.

“Ah, but you’ve not yet heard my reasons why you should do it.”

Caleb ground a knuckle into his forehead. Christ, he did not have the energy for this.

He’d been up half the night, waiting for the sounds of his wife’s door as she returned from her nightly ramble around the castle. He didn’t know why she insisted on doing this, and it was all he could do to stop himself from getting up and following her. The only thing that kept him abed was the dual knowledge that she was not so stupid as to actually leave the house in the dark and his pride, given the way their last two nighttime encounters had gone.

These two reasons were not enough to actually let him sleep through her nighttime wanderings, however. So he waited, listening, until she came back to bed, sometimes hours after she’d left.

Just one more sin to lay at his wife’s door, he grumbled to himself each evening.

“Is there any chance ye’ll just leave me alone without makin’ me listen to those reasons?” he asked, wishing with all his heart that Nicholas was not strangely impervious to bullying. This was what Caleb got for honorably refusing to hit a man.

Honor was, he always told himself, what compelled him. Nothing else. Nothing worse.

“None,” Nicholas said with evident relish before Caleb could retreat too deeply into darker thoughts. “You are thus left with two choices: come with me without argument or sit and listen to my arguments and inevitably give in to their brilliance.”

“You are an exhausting man,” Caleb told him flatly.

Nicholas smiled even more broadly. “Feel free to sack me and get yourself a new solicitor.”

They both knew Caleb never would. Caleb told himself it was because he didn’t want to go to the trouble of finding someone else competent.

He’d been spending an awful lot of energy trying to convince himself of things recently, he noticed. It had started when he’d married.

That was the thought, in the end, that made him give in: if Nicholas met Grace, Caleb would never know a moment’s peace again.

“Fine,” he said shortly. “I’ll have the horses readied.”

“I’ve already set the grooms to it,” Nicholas told him smugly.

Caleb swore at him in Gaelic. Nicholas was predictably unperturbed.

Once they got outside, Caleb reluctantly admitted that this was perhaps not the worst idea anyone had ever had. He’d spent too much time recently skulking around that dusty old pile of a house, and not enough outdoors. His time in the army had made him the kind of man who worked best under an open sky. Caleb’s father had done him a favor in making him enlist, not that the old bastard had ever intended it as such. As they rode, he felt the tension in his shoulders loosen, felt his spine straighten. He did not belong at a desk.

This relief lasted approximately two minutes after they arrived at the edge of the first vineyard.

The rows of growing grapes were bustling with activity; spring came slowly this far north, and it was only now time to draw back the soil that had been piled up to protect the fragile plants from winter’s chill. Other workers were trimming back flowers that would inhibit the growth of the desired fruit, while even small children were helping, scraping at the ground to remove weeds.

As Nicholas and Caleb approached, a woman spotted them, then turned to hail an elderly man, evidently the person overseeing the operation. He squinted at them and then, recognizing Nicholas, raised a hand in greeting.

It was only when he got closer and recognized Caleb, too, that the smile dropped from his face.

“Oh, I do beg yer pardon, Yer Grace,” he said, bowing low, his knees looking like they were trembling under the effort. “Apologies for not recognizing ye at once.”

Caleb had been amused when the local baronet and his increasing wife had been alarmed by his sudden appearance, though that amusement had largely arisen from Grace’s pinched-face fury. He had been beside himself—more entertained than he’d been in years—when he’d needled her to the point of throwing that pillow at him.

This, though, felt less entertaining. He wasn’t insulted, of course—what did he care if an elderly farmer didn’t like him? But it did not tempt him to laugh, not in the slightest.

He gave the man a nod. “Of course. Please, go on.”

The man nodded, though not in a way that suggested that this was because Caleb had successfully put him at ease—instead, it seemed more that he was too terrified to do anything other than obey. As he gave his report to Nicholas, his voice, thick with the local accent, positively quavered, and he kept shooting anxious glances in Caleb’s direction.

“I don’t mean to criticize your methods,” Nicholas said as they rode away, even though this was precisely what he did nearly every time he saw Caleb. “But might you consider glowering a bit less at the next place? That took me twice as long as usual.”

Foolishly, Caleb thought of his wife asking him to blaspheme “a bit less” so as not to bother the maids. Why did everyone seem suddenly so insistent on whether or not he was likeable?

“Fine,” he said flatly.

It didn’t really work. At the next field, the farmer was just as terrified, just as obsequious. Nicholas was beginning to look irritated, like he regretting demanding Caleb come along, which Caleb might have enjoyed, if he wasn’t noticing how many things were amiss on his lands…things he should have already known about.

He thought about Grace accusing him of neglecting his duties as a duke . He thought about his foolish promise that he would investigate matters with his tenants.

Well, he was looking. And there were problems. More than there should have been.

When they finally rode back to the house (after stopping at the brewery where, mercifully, the young man running things didn’t recognize Caleb—which was, Caleb supposed its own indictment), he glared at Nicholas.

“Why did ye nae tell me how bad things were?” he demanded.

It was unfair, and he knew it, and because Nicholas was Nicholas, he didn’t let it go unsaid.

“I assume,” he said in his dryest tone, “that this is some witty ducal quip that I, a mere younger son, am not sufficiently elevated to understand. Because if it was not, I might remind you that I have told you how bad things were, many times, for many years. You have ignored me so you can ride around and whack people with swords.”

They hadn’t used swords as a primary weapon in the British army for several centuries, as far as Caleb knew, but as Nicholas’ overall point was fair, he decided to let this detail go.

“If you had read my letters, Your Grace, you would know I’ve been applying to you for funds for various things for ages.”

“Well, ye’ve my approval now. We’ve the funds. Do whatever it takes. Get it all done—as quickly as can be done.”

“Thank you,” Nicholas said primly.

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Without his solicitor’s chatter to fill his ears, Caleb found himself dwelling on a most frustrating topic—what would his wife think, when she learned that he’d fixed all the problems she’d wanted handled? And how might she see fit to thank him?

Grace was getting good at reading a book with one hand and eating with another. She was even starting to not entirely hate the idea of eating alone, meal after meal, day after day. She was just getting to a good part, in which the somewhat witless heroine was starting to realize that perhaps not all was well in the spooky old manor house full of odd characters (Grace made a mental note to recommend this book to Diana; she’d no doubt adore the melodramatics), when her husband entered the room, sank into his chair, filled his plate, and began eating as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

All without saying a word.

She resisted the urge to stare at him though—really? Honestly? He was just going to sit here, like it was normal, like he had been doing so all along?

And he was going to do it without even mentioning it ?

Caleb glanced up at her and arched a brow. Grace busied herself with her plate, though she cast her book aside. Her husband might be a strong competitor for the single most irksome person Grace had ever met in her life—and she had been kidnapped —but it simply felt too rude to read while he sat with her at the table.

She fiddled with her fork. It was a bit boring to just sit and eat without even the barest attempt at conversation. But she wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence.

No. Certainly not. She would not break. Not a chance.

“It’s a week today,” she blurted.

Drat!

With deliberate slowness, her husband set down his fork. Then, with similarly careful movements, he smirked at her.

As he did so, Grace discovered that she had a very serious problem: it was much harder to get annoyed at him for smirking now that she knew what he looked like when he smiled.

When he laughed.

Instead, she found herself noticing the most wretched things, like the way his mouth tipped up higher on the right than the left when he looked at her like this. Which then led her to even worse thoughts, like how that mouth had felt when pressed against hers—how other parts of him had felt, when pressed against her.

“Are ye eager for it, then, lass?” he asked.

This was a terribly crude thing to say. It should have infuriated Grace. It did not. She flushed with heat.

“No, certainly not,” she said primly, though she knew her cheeks had to be blazing. She fixed her attention resolutely on her meal.

“No?” She could hear it in his voice, the way that smirk would be growing even more crooked, would cause the slightest crease in his upper cheek, something she might have called, on a less masculine person, a dimple.

“Ye’re rather pointedly countin’ down the days for someone who isnae eager,” he commented with exaggerated mildness.

She put her nose in the air. “I am not counting down anything,” she insisted. “I am merely observing.”

“Hm,” he said and for a breathless, hopeful moment, Grace thought he might let the matter drop. He even took one more bite of his food, chewing, swallowing, and following it with a sip of wine in an entirely unhurried fashion.

“So what ye’ve observed,” he added in that same light tone, sending Grace’s hopes plummeting to her toes. “That ye have a week more to wait before I have ye.”

She tried to look disgusted but worried that her blush was giving her away.

“Is that why ye roam about at night, lass? Can ye nae stand to be close to me while ye’re alone in yer bed?”

He’d noticed her leaving her room? She’d assumed she’d only alerted him that first night, when she’d allowed herself to scream. She’d remained silent ever since, no matter that it disrupted her sleep all the more, required never letting herself fall fully into a deep slumber.

“Of course not,” she snapped. “And even if I were, it would not be out of any excess of…interest.”

She sniffed as though the very notion were absurd. Instead of looking offended, however, Caleb started to look rather intrigued. Perhaps hungry. Though not for the meal on the table before him.

“’Interest?’” he echoed. “Is that yer fancy English way of saying ye ache for me?”

She gasped. “No!” After a shaky breath, she made her voice remain even. “No. I do not…I would never… I don’t want you.”

The words were hard to force past the tightness in her throat.

He pushed back from his seat, and Grace wondered if she’d finally insulted him enough that he would stalk away. It seemed to be how things went between them, after all. They’d come together briefly, then ricochet apart, like balls in a game of billiards. This was the part where he ran so that they could both recover from whatever this was that they played at between them.

He didn’t run. He didn’t leave.

He approached.

It was a stalk, however, Grace noted, swallowing hard. It was the lazy stalk of a predator, of a wolf who knew his prey was cornered, who saw no reason to rush his victory. And Grace, like a scared little rabbit staring into a dangerous, toothy maw, froze.

Caleb took the arms of her chair and turned it—and her within it—without even seeming to strain. Something low in Grace’s stomach trembled at this casual show of strength.

He leaned very low over her; his hands braced on the arms of the chair, and he gave her that smirk again. Her heart skipped. Her breath caught.

“How would ye know, leannan ,” he asked, his voice a tender, deadly caress, “if ye’ve never had a taste?”

She couldn’t help it. A little sound, a mortifying little whimper of a noise, escaped her, no matter how hard she bit her lip to try to hold it in.

And then they were kissing again.

She frankly hadn’t the faintest idea who had started it this time. They weren’t touching, and then they were, and she was no longer sitting, and his arms were tight bands around her.

“Christ, I daenae know how ye taste so good,” he praised her between kisses. He tasted of wine and warmth, and she knew, just knew, that she’d think of this moment with every sip of wine for the rest of her life.

“Mrs. Bradley is very talented,” she said, and then loathed herself for it, for that was an insane thing to say, absolute lunacy?—

But then he laughed, his mouth still against hers, and now she knew the taste of that laugh, too, and she would never, ever be the same.

One of his hands was already at the base of her neck—he seemed so wonderfully, terribly fond of playing with her hair there, and it made Grace feel as though she was melting—while the other was quite brazenly placed on her bum, pulling her up and in, pressing her close to him.

“Let me have ye, Grace, leannan ,” he pleaded, punctuating the request with a nip against her jaw, which made her make the sound again. “Ye must let me have ye.”

This was less polite—a demand, not a plea—and it was one of only a thousand reasons Grace should have told him no. She’d not had her two weeks, for one. He was very annoying, for another. Not to mention that they were in their dining room , which was hardly an appropriate place for…any of this.

“Yes,” she gasped, throwing her arms around his neck, running her fingers though his dark hair. It was improbably silky, not at all what Grace had imagined a man’s hair might feel like. She wanted to touch it forever, and he didn’t seem to be stopping her, so she wound it through her fingers, back and forth.

When she tugged, it was an accident—but a happy accident indeed, as it caused her husband to growl against her mouth and lift her entirely from the ground by bracing an arm beneath her and hoisting her against him.

It was a wholly undignified way to move about and it thrilled Grace to her bones.

And yet it was only half as thrilling as when she heard the crash of—no doubt very expensive—plates hitting the ground.

She glanced back at the table in the split second before her husband deposited her directly atop the now empty table.

She gaped at him. She was still holding his hair.

“You knocked down the plates,” she said, awestruck.

“Do shut up, Grace,” he said, startling a laugh out of her before swallowing it with another of his consuming kisses.

She felt very small, sitting on the edge of the table so that her legs dangled over the side. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, not with her massive husband looming over her, blocking her from anything that might come her way. He planted an elbow next to her head and tilted her chin up so he could access her mouth more deeply. She wanted to hate that he merely moved her where he wanted her, wanted to push back, to try to move him, but her limbs were too warm and languid to even attempt such a thing.

The most she could do was continue toying with his hair, her hands running lazily down his neck, dipping under the edge of his collar.

Her brow furrowed as she touched something rough and not quite expected beneath his shirt, but she was distracted in an instant when her husband reached up and took her wrists in his grasp. He put her hands firmly on the edge of the table, curling her fingers into a tight grip.

“Daenae move yer hands,” he ordered. He didn’t even bother with threatening what he would do if she disobeyed.

Grace, Lord help her, didn’t want to disobey.

She was laid out before him now, like she was the feast. His gaze roamed over her, blue like the hottest part of a flame, as if he simply could not decide where to begin devouring her. His hands were similar indecisive, curling briefly around her throat and making her breath hitch before traveling down, rough calluses sparking sensation in her decolletage, across the tops of her breasts.

She outright moaned when he pinched her nipple without warning, finding the bud beneath her dress and her stays with shocking accuracy.

His voice was low and teasing when he spoke, but it did not feel cruel, particularly not with the roughness to it that suggested that he was as affected as she.

“No, ye’re not eager for it in the least, are ye, leannan ? Ye’re not wondering in the least where I might touch ye next, what pleasure I might bring ye?” He stepped back long enough to begin lifting her skirts, cool air quickly replaced with the warmth of his hands. “Ye are the very picture of dread now, Gracie mine. Are ye no?”

He sounded infuriatingly smug beneath that roughness and, oddly enough, that made Grace’s breath pant as hard as had the caresses to her breasts. She felt overwhelmed, intoxicated with the knowledge that if he lifted her skirts a few inches more, she’d be bared to him entirely.

Grace had spent a very long time thinking about what the concept of ruination entailed. She’d not imagined it would rob her of words, leave her taut as a bowstring. She’d not thought it would be heat and wonder and wanting.

And she’d certainly never imagined it could involve broken crockery and laughter.

He’d asked her a question, she realized, as his movements became lazier, less a clear progression and more a meandering path. His fingertips teased lightly at the soft skin on the inside of her legs, above where her stockings were tied. The feeling was astonishingly distracting in its inadequacy.

“Please,” she said, because she didn’t know to find any other words—his original question was so far lost she had no hope of recovering it. “I—please.”

“How very pretty when ye beg,” he murmured, and she had a distinct flash of awareness that he was trying to be mocking but couldn’t quite manage it.

And then she was aware of nothing else beside the hot press of an openmouthed kiss against her inner thigh, perilously close to her most private place.

She squeaked and tried to sit up—surely he couldn’t mean to? Not there ? With his mouth !—but Caleb’s hand shot up, fast as a shot, and pressed to her lower belly, pinning her in place.

“I told ye to stay ,” he said, biting her leg in a way that gave her such savage pleasure she didn’t know how to understand it.

“Yes,” she panted. “Yes, yes.” She likely would have agreed to anything at that moment. Because she felt, at that moment, exactly as eager as he’d accused her of being. Every inch of her screamed with the knowledge that there was something more that would happen, and she needed that elusive thing to start happening. Immediately.

Caleb pressed his mouth to her core.

The breath gusted out of her, more a sob than mere air, as he pressed against her, strong and vicious and sure. It felt filthy, the knowledge that his mouth was pressed against her sensitive place, the place even she scarcely dared touch, but in a way that she found intoxicating rather than appalling.

He moved and it was brilliant , his movements controlled and sure in a way that left her free to give herself over to him, to trust in whatever plan he held for her. In this, at least, she felt safe in his hands.

“Fuck, lass,” he panted. “I—fuck.”

“Yes,” she said again. His rough language made her feel like her dress was too tight, like she should be tearing it from her body. She clutched the edge of the table so hard she wondered if the wood would bear the imprint of her fingers.

If her words were little more than incoherent panting, his were not much better. He growled at her as he touched his mouth to different parts of her—her legs, her center, a sensitive spot that made her back bow off the table—letting her hear only every third or fourth word clearly.

Aye—that’s it—good lass .

The sensations, the words, the pounding of her blood—they all ratcheted her higher and higher until she was poised on a precise. It took only scant seconds after he slipped two broad fingers inside her, his movements sure and devastating, for her to fall, a scream ripping free from her throat.

Pleasure wracked her and her breaths became sobs before she could slow them entirely. Gently, almost tenderly, her husband withdrew from her body and draped her skirts back over her legs. Grace left her eyes closed for a long moment, feeling the sturdiness of the table beneath her, knowing that if she opened her eyes and he had already left, it would destroy her.

But neither could she ignore the problem and simply lay here forever, for if the servants found her sprawled here, for one, she would have to simply walk until she hit the sea and keep going until it swallowed her whole.

When she gathered her courage and opened her eyes, she sighed with relief. He was still there.

His expression wasn’t tender, but neither was it hard, and Grace found she could survive it. The thought gave her hope. Maybe this whole farce of a marriage would be…manageable. It seemed foolish to think so just because he’d given her physical pleasure—though a great deal of physical pleasure, in fairness—but Grace had learned the benefit of taking what one was given and accepting it, if she could.

Outright hostility with her husband, she decided, she could not abide. But this? Lovemaking without love—so long as it was without hate, too?

She supposed she could manage it.

He extended a hand to help her gain her feet. Her fingers were stiff from how intensely she’d been clutching the table.

“Are ye all right?” he asked, a bit awkwardly, as if solicitousness were a foreign language.

“I’m—yes,” she said. “Are you?—”

She knew enough about carnal relations to know that act had not tended to his needs. She nearly glanced down at his trousers before she stopped herself.

Even so, he caught the movement. Of course he did. He missed nothing.

He turned from her before she could see anything, then cast a parting shot over his shoulder, as if he didn’t care much one way or another—though Grace had the suspicion that wasn’t entirely true.

“Go to bed, Grace,” he commanded gruffly. “Before I change my mind.”

Grace let him go without comment, though she could not decide if him changing his mind was more a threat or a promise.