Chapter 15

It seemed to Georgiana that the Duke's final words to her in the library turret had been little less than a promise that he would come to visit her chamber again soon. Tonight, probably. She should, she thought, be anxious at the prospect – Alice would have been terrified – but if she was honest with herself, she was not. She should, of course, have repeated her demand that he close up the secret stair that led to her room, or show her how to do so herself. She had done neither of those things, had not so much as mentioned the matter, despite having had several opportunities to do so. The idea that he was still free to come and go as he pleased should have appalled her. Not excited her.

Miss Spry's suggestion on the beach had set all manner of thoughts and fancies roiling in her brain, and the Duke's brief caress in the library had electrified her body. She was still tingling at the memory of his touch. She dared not look at him for the rest of the day for fear of what he might read in her eyes. The afternoon and then the evening passed – she could scarcely say how, what she ate, with whom she conversed – and she found herself in bed at last, curtains open to admit the fitful moonlight, with her eyes fixed on the section of the panelling that she knew concealed the hidden stairway.

It was a little after midnight when he arrived. The panel did not creak this time; perhaps he was more careful, or perhaps he had oiled the mechanism as he said he would. She could easily believe it of him. He set down his lantern on the tallboy and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘You were expecting me. That's encouraging.'

He crossed the room and sat on the bed, very close to her. ‘I saw you walking on the beach earlier today with the poetess,' he said very low. ‘She is uncommonly tall, of course, and unmistakeable, but you are much of a height with most of the other young ladies, and yet there was no way I could mistake you for another. You looked quite at home there, I thought. And I began to realise as I watched you, and later when we talked I became sure of it: there is not the least need for all this heart-burning and worry about your reputation.'

‘How so?'

‘Marry me.'

He had said it, and her heart pounded in her chest at his words. But he was not done. ‘I have the finest flower of English womanhood here, do I not? Or nearly so, for we must exclude any fortunate damsel whose parents have too great a care for her to let her marry such as I. But here they all are, at any rate, and I must confess that I find them dead bores, every last one. But you, you are not a dead bore. You are a constant surprise to me. And after all…' His voice was a caress, always, but his words held a sting. ‘After all, the main requirement of me in this proposed marriage is somewhat… functional.'

She must have betrayed some small sign of distress or disapproval, for he said, ‘I need an heir – you must surely know this. I would not have involved myself in this farrago otherwise. Until my younger brother and then my cousin died, I had no thought of marriage. I was lucky – I did not need to think of it, and Lord knows I did not want to. But now I must, for the sake of the estate and all its people. The next heir now, my man of business has informed me, is the elderly grandson or great-grandson of some distant great-uncle of mine – I confess I was not attending to the precise details – and lives a blameless life as professor of Greek and Latin in distant Massachusetts. A blameless unmarried life. The heir after him, his nephew, though they are apparently not on visiting terms, runs a low tavern on the dockside in Boston, and is married in a casual sort of way to a lady who rejoices in the name of Leaky Sue. There's a parcel of grubby brats about her heels, nominally his, though it is by no means clear if he is indeed their father. So you see…'

Still she did not speak, and he said with a twisted smile, ‘I am sorry it is not a very romantic offer, Lady Georgiana. A sadly clumsy one, I fear. Put it down to inexperience, if you please, for I have never asked a woman to marry me before. But setting Leaky Sue aside for a moment, and setting aside too the fact that I am apparently to be the prize bull of the North Riding, I think we could deal together rather well, you and I. Looking at you now, I am sure we could. I promise you, it would not be such a terrible life, the one I could offer you. Not terrible at all. The status of a married lady is no small thing in our world, and I would strive to be a charming, undemanding sort of a husband most of the time – except of course where demands might be… appropriate and necessary. On both sides, my dear.'

He reached out and stroked a stray strand of hair back from her cheek. ‘Will you not answer me?'

She found her voice at last. ‘Such a flattering proposal.'

His eyes sparked silver fire in the lantern light. ‘Hardly that. If I am the prize bull, what does that make you, or any woman who marries me? There, I have spared you from saying it. But I am sure we could enjoy ourselves more than a little, both of us, while we engaged in our… agricultural endeavours.'

She did not know whether to laugh or cry, and so did neither, nor did she speak. ‘Would a kiss help you make up your mind?' he said softly. ‘I seem to recall I made you something in the nature of a promise earlier.'

‘Perhaps,' she said, as she had said once before. His words could not be described as flattering, but they were undeniably honest – had she not told herself she wanted honesty? – and she craved his touch, had been craving it all day. All week. All month.

‘Well, it seems "perhaps" is good enough for me this time.' As he spoke he moved closer, and bent his lips to hers. He was not forceful, his mouth did not claim her ruthlessly, but the gentle pressure of his lips was irresistible to her, and she opened herself to him. He fixed his hands in her short hair and they melted together. It did not seem to matter what the circumstances were: when once they began kissing each other, the urgent impulses of their bodies would take over.

After a little while he withdrew from her slightly and said against her mouth, his voice less controlled than was usual for him, ‘I told you that kissing you was something that deserved a great deal of time and attention, did I not?'

‘Oh,' she said breathlessly, confused, uncertain, a little disappointed by the brevity of his kiss. ‘Are you done, then?'

‘I have barely begun.'

He was lying on the bed with her now, her face held between his big hands, and very slowly he acquainted himself with the contours of it. He took his time. He kissed her eyelids and feathered his way across her cheeks. When he came to her soft pink earlobe, he sucked on it and bit it gently, and she gasped. He explored her mouth again, and then the line of her jaw, and then her throat, as much as was revealed by the high neck of her nightgown. There were buttons fastening it, and he undid one – just one – and pressed a hot, lingering kiss on the tender skin he had revealed, where her pulse beat hard in the hollow of her throat. Then he raised his head again, and returned to her mouth, and now he was more assertive, and his tongue found hers, and hers came to meet it eagerly. She wrapped her arms about him and pulled him close, closer, and his body covered hers; the weight was welcome, and she shut her eyes and surrendered to sensation, pushing away any thoughts of right or wrong, or of how practised he must be in the arts of seduction and how easily she succumbed to him.

Presently he said, between kisses, ‘Another button?'

‘Yes!'

An electric moment later, ‘Another?'

A while later, Georgie's gown was undone to the waist, and the Duke's lips were at her breast. He teased her with his tongue and with butterfly kisses for a long time, until she moaned in frustration, then finally he relented and drew one erect nipple into his mouth and sucked on it, while his clever fingers found the other, and tweaked it, gently and then a little harder. One of her hands was tangled fast in his silky hair, and the other clutched at the bedclothes. The sheets and blankets that had covered her had been pushed aside, and his body pressed hers to the mattress, a delicious pressure. She wondered in a sort of daze if he intended to continue his exploration; if he would kiss his slow, tantalising way down her belly and once more drive her to the edge of madness with his tongue and his lips in her most secret places. In that moment she hoped he would, it was all she wanted in the world, and she did not care what came after. Or, if she was honest, she knew what came after, and she wanted that too as she had never wanted it before.

He raised his head and smiled up at her, his eyes dark with desire. ‘Christ, Georgiana, I want you, and I know with every fibre of my being that you want me just as much,' he said, his beautiful voice low, infinitely seductive, just a little ragged. The less controlled edge to it did not reduce the power it had over her: quite the opposite. ‘Even if you thought to deny our mutual desire in words, and I notice you do not, your body always gives you the lie. Say you will marry me as soon as it can be arranged, and there will be no reason in the world for us to stop. I can stay here with you all night if you want me to, and we can share such pleasure…'

There was triumph in his tone along with the hunger, and something about it made her feel suddenly cold, though her body still yearned for the fulfilment she knew only too well he could provide. She was aroused, but she was also afraid, not of him, she realised, but of herself. ‘No,' she heard herself saying, and she let her hand drop from his head.

‘No?' There was no indignation or anger in his tone, just a sort of bewilderment, and his possessive fingers, which had begun to make their tantalising way further down her body, to pull up the hem of her nightgown, stilled, withdrew.

‘I do not deny that I want you,' she said unsteadily. ‘It would be foolish to do so and expect you to believe me.' She saw that he was about to speak, and put her finger to his lips, trying not to make it a caress. ‘Perhaps what I mean to say will make no sense to you, but I need to say it none the less.'

He lifted his weight from her, and moved so that his body no longer touched hers. It made her want to whimper in instinctive protest, but she repressed the impulse, determined to continue. He lay at her side and looked at her, and she could no longer read his expression. ‘If I marry you, I see two ways my life might be,' she said. ‘Indeed, I had thought about this before, when I did not know who you were and believed I would never see you again. I can imagine – no, I am sure – that we would give each other a great deal of pleasure, as you say, and perhaps there would be the child or children that you need, but after a while, when you tired of me, I begin to understand my own nature well enough to know that I would continue to want… this, and I am very much afraid that I would seek it elsewhere, as, of course, would you. I fear I would become like Lady Oxford, or Lady Jersey, or one of a dozen ladies in society.'

‘You would take lovers,' he said, his voice entirely expressionless.

‘Are you saying I must not? Yet you would!'

‘I suppose I would. But please, madam – you said there were two ways your life might be. What is the other?'

‘I might fall in love with you,' she said. ‘I'm sure a hundred women have before. And that terrifies me even more. I do not want to be that sophisticated, immoral woman – the duchess whose lover passes her husband on the stairs, and they greet each other with a smile, as though it is a sane and decent way to live when it is not. But much more than that, I do not want to be the woman who sits in this castle breaking her heart because the husband she loves has left her for another woman, or another dozen women. I do not want to lie alone in a cold bed missing you, or welcome you back, all the while hating myself because I need you so badly, even though you have come from someone else's arms, and will go back to them directly.' She fell silent, and he did not answer her. A long moment stretched between them, and at last she said desperately, ‘Can you understand me even a little? Does anything I say make sense to you at all?'

He let out a great gust of breath, and lay back on the bed beside her, gazing up at the canopy. His face in profile had the stark beauty of a knight on a Norman tomb, of the marble face of one of his distant ancestors. That hard man, she was sure, would have seen her words as madness, would have entirely refused to accept her rejection. Would have taken what he wanted, merely because he wanted it. But he was different, as she had reason to know.

‘You could use my body and its needs against me,' she said. ‘I'm sure you know that. You have so much experience and you know exactly how to make me desire you. If you came back to me again now and put your hands on me, I do not think I would refuse you. I do not think I would refuse you anything at all, even knowing the danger I would be placing myself in if we risked conceiving a child. But it would not change anything. I still would not marry you.'

‘I wish…' His cold voice dropped the words like poison into the quiet room. ‘I wish I had never laid eyes on you in that house. Or, seeing you, had left you there to your fate.'

‘I can't agree,' she said, and she wondered that she had the strength to speak. ‘I needed to realise this about myself, however painful it is. You said I was spoilt – well, I am. But it is past time I grew up. As my brother said to me once, people's lives are not playthings. My own life is not, nor yours – we should take them seriously. Lust is not a good enough reason to marry. Or it should not be.'

He rose to his feet in one fluid movement and stood looking down at her, frowning, icily controlled. ‘I can only be delighted, Lady Georgiana, to have provided a lesson that you feel you have profited by.'

‘I know you are angry, and I cannot blame you, but thank you.' She had not covered herself, but lay exposed to him still, naked to the waist. She was oddly calm, and saw the remnants of desire warring with other, less easily read emotions on his face. Reluctant amusement was one, she thought.

‘I do not think I want to know what you are thanking me for. I may be a rake, but I am still, I hope, a gentleman. Even as I wish profoundly that I had never met you, I must admire your resolution and your courage. You realise, do you not, that since you have refused me so very decisively, I must persist, and woo one of the other ladies? I know it is in poor taste to do so, but all my urgent reasons for marriage still remain. The people who depend on me, the estate. Leaky Sue, you may recall.'

‘I know they do. I had not forgotten Leaky Sue. We will go away straight after the ball and leave you to your wooing, even if I have to tell Louisa all in order to make her understand.'

‘Will you dance with me there, though, just once?' he said softly, and there was no anger in his tone now, only what she thought must be regret.

‘Of course I will.' He smiled, as enigmatic as he had ever been to her, and turned to leave, and as he did so she spoke again. ‘Can I ask you one thing?'

‘I hate to think…' he said over his shoulder without turning.

‘Please don't marry Mary Debenham.'

He looked back at her, silver eyes glittering. ‘That is a promise I believe I can safely make. Goodnight, Lady Georgiana.'

‘Goodnight…' she whispered, as the panel closed silently behind him.