Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

D uke Charles sat up in bed in his nightshirt, frowning. The knocking at his door sounded a second time, this time less tentative than the first.

A candle still burned in the lamp on his bedside table where he had put down the pamphlet he had been reading on recent developments in Holland’s economy. He had hoped that such dry matter would drive all irrational longings and regrets from his breast, but the attempt had failed.

“The door is not locked,” he said irritably as the knocking sounded a third time. “What is to do?”

If there had been a true emergency, he was sure that Lonsley or Soames would have lost no time in communicating the situation to him. There was certainly no fire, acute sickness, or serious injury in the house, he supposed. This disturbance must be something else, and he doubted he would have any good feeling towards whomever was responsible for disrupting his rest.

Still, perhaps Cecilia was having a difficult night, and a servant had been sent to fetch him. She had been so much better since Madeline’s arrival at Huntingdon Manor, but his sister’s reaction to Lord Morgan’s proposed wooing had reminded him again of her mental fragility.

“Madeline!” he said in astonishment as his wife let herself into the room and then locked the door behind her.

They regarded one another silently across the dimly lit expanse of the room between the door and the bed.

What on earth was she about at this hour? Had she come to berate him further over his imaginary dalliance with Lady Juliette? Or to confirm her arrangements for leaving Huntingdon Manor, out of the hearing of other household members?

Whatever her reasoning, his wife’s dress of mossy-green muslin figured with gold exposed far too much of her generous bosom to his eyes, and the pearl choker at her neck reminded him only of when he had first given it to her. The luster of the pearls almost blended into the pale but glowing skin of Madeline’s throat.

I hope you will wear this one just for me as my wife…

For his own comfort it would be best not to prolong this interview. Did she even remember his words as he placed that necklace around her neck?

“What do you want?” Charles asked shortly, folding his arms across his chest. “Be assured that I will not try to prevent your departure, Duchess. In fact, I have written to my solicitors this very day. They will give you whatever legal terms of separation you require to live a full and independent life. I am not an unfair man, even when wronged.”

Madeline seemed struck dumb by this declaration. He had rarely seen her lost for words — perhaps only when in his arms. He took a deep breath to still that particular thought.

“Charles, I came up here to apologize to you,” she said after a pause.

“There is no need to apologize,” he answered tersely. “What is done is done.”

If she wanted to clear the air between them, he would have preferred to have let a suitable time elapse first, to get the feel, scent, and sight of her out of his mind. Could he ever forget Madeline? He only hoped so.

His wife looked dismayed, standing there stock still and lost for a moment. Then, with a trembling but determined hand, she began to unfasten the ribbon at her neckline and the buttons at her back. A moment later the bodice of her dress fell, revealing her full breasts held only by light stays and an almost sheer white petticoat beneath.

“What are you doing, Madeline?” he asked hoarsely, unable to take his eyes from her.

The next moment, the dress was unfastened completely and fell to the ground, followed swiftly by the stays. In the flickering candlelight, Charles could detect the swell and quiver of her curves beneath the light petticoat.

Quickly now, he rose from the bed and came to her, seizing her hands in his before she could go any further.

“If you take that petticoat off, I must have you,” he warned gruffly, his organ already unmistakably thickening and rising through his nightshirt.

“Yes,” she said very softly, her voice shaking slightly before she pulled back her hands, took hold of her petticoat, and lifted it off in one smooth movement.

“Dear God, Madeline, Madeline…” he growled, seizing her warm, almost naked body in his arms and pulling her tight against him, leaving no room for any misunderstanding of his desires or intentions.

“Charles,” said his wife, looking up at him with eyes that seemed like burned molten gold in the candlelight.

The Duke kissed her fiercely, one of his hands running possessively over her naked haunches and drawing up one shapely silk-stockinged leg to her hip. Madeline returned his kisses, interspersed with little moans and whimpers of pleasure as his hands in her hair brought down the silk of her mane around her shoulders, pins scattering across the floor.

Her shapely breasts came easily to his hands, and the scent of her arousal was unmistakable and inflammatory. Charles no longer cared why she had come to his room. He only knew that she was his duchess, she was physically irresistible, and she wanted him to claim her again as his.

“Wife…” he said, his kisses growing fiercer at her throat although limited by the necklace she wore. “My wife.”

Madeline’s own fingers had grasped handfuls of his nightshirt, and he now assisted her in lifting the unwanted garment and dropping it to the floor. Her warm mouth peppered kisses across his shoulders and his chest, making him smile and shiver. God, it felt so good!

“Do you like that?” she asked uncertainly, and in response, Charles kissed her deeply on the mouth again, his tongue and the press of his now fully erect shaft communicating exactly how much he liked it.

As soon as he raised his head, her mouth was at his chest again, kissing its lightly haired expanse and then dipping lower, kissing his waist, his navel. Dropping to her knees before him on the Persian rug, Madeline pressed an unsure kiss to the head of his throbbing manhood and looked up at him questioningly.

Charles felt his heart do a complete somersault in his chest at the combined sensation of her warm lips on his most male part and the sight of his buxom wife kneeling before him, aroused but unsure, dressed only in silk stockings and garters.

“Yes,” he said. “God, yes, Madeline…”

It was not a game that he had yet introduced during their all-too-brief interlude of sexual initiation, and he wondered if she knew how to play it.

The lightning-flash of erotic sensation that shot through him as her hot mouth engulfed the head of his shaft told him that it didn’t matter.

Again, her eyes turned up to his, seeking his guidance.

“Like that, yes,” he nodded, letting himself surge a little between her lips as she began using her tongue to explore him. “That feels…amazing…Madeline…”

With great concentration she caressed him with her lips and tongue, growing in confidence as Charles’s groans of pleasure reassured her of his appreciation. One of her hands even came up to hold the sack that held his spheres of life.

He gave a sharp sound of disappointment as she abruptly pulled back then.

“So, is that good?” she asked him, more than a hint of teasing now on her usually all-too-serious face.

“Good?” he asked her with mock incredulity, pulling her to her feet and then swinging her into his arms and immediately onto the bed. “You know exactly how good such things feel, My Duchess.”

Parting her thighs, he kissed her womanhood as passionately as he had previously kissed her lips, enjoying her wriggles and cries as he held her in place for his tongue’s laving of her swollen button of pleasure.

But as soon as he released her, Madeline was again kissing her own way down his body, drawing his rod into her mouth once again.

“I want to pleasure you tonight, Charles,” she said, with a heart-stopping smile. “I want you to enjoy this as much as I do.”

Letting her have her way for just a little longer, Charles abruptly spun her around so that she was facing the end of the bed.

“But it’s your turn…” Madeline began to say before his caressing of her thighs, halted her words.

“Both are possible,” Charles told her, gently pushing himself back into her welcoming mouth. “My pleasure and yours at once. Possible, desirable, necessary…yes…”

Abandoning words, he applied himself instead to arousing and stimulating Madeline’s soft, open and excited flesh before him, its juices coating his lips and tongue.

Thanks to his experience and practiced skill, Charles managed to hold back and drive Madeline over the edge before he lost control of himself, spurting again and again into the mouth that sucked at him so sweetly and so shyly.

After that, everything seemed to have come right without any great material change. Madeline was his again, it appeared, and the world was in its proper order.

Duke Charles took his duchess several times during the night to Madeline’s loudly voiced satisfaction each time. First on her back, gasping and clutching desperately. Then, slow and writhing on her side, his long body wrapped around hers and shaft held fully up her tight heat. The third time, he took her hard and fast on her hands and knees, those beautiful breasts swinging with his thrusts.

“Tell me you’re mine, Madeline,” he panted fiercely as he rode her. “Say it.”

“I’m yours,” she had gasped, her soft, rounded bottom pressing into him as she simultaneously peaked and received his seed.

Sometime before dawn, the candle guttered and extinguished itself as they lay together in companionable collapse before sleep finally claimed them both.

When Charles awoke, Madeline was gone, causing a stab of alarm until he saw the quickly scrawled note on a scrap of writing paper, carefully folded and propped on his bedside table.

Gone for a ride with guests. You looked tired. M x.

He grinned. Yes, he had been tired after their exertions last night, but this morning he felt wonderful and could easily have ravished his wife all over again. His manhood tingled at the thought, and it occurred to him that he must tell Madeline that she was never to leave his bedroom again without bidding him good morning. He could have given her another kind of ride…

Still, too late today. Rising and retrieving his nightshirt, the Duke rang for Soames and pulled the covers up over the mess of the bedsheets from last night’s passion. They had still not talked, he realized with a pang of concern. Surely, last night meant that Madeline was no longer leaving him, didn’t it?

Then, what if she was with child after all their couplings? It was possible, he realized soberly, even if Madeline had temporarily put the thought from her mind. It would be dishonorable to abandon her in such a condition, but what if she insisted on leaving and gave him no choice?

They were weighty questions indeed but not questions the Duke could answer without his wife’s input. He tried to temporarily set them aside.

After Soames helped him to dress, Charles made polite conversation about sculpture with Lord and Lady Terrell in the breakfast room and had a most peculiar conversation with Mr. John Stephens about young ladies in need of protection from their own families, leaving him none the wiser as to the other man’s actual point. Politicians always had their social projects, he supposed.

He also evaded Lord Oakley’s offer to discuss Holland business further, increasingly inclined to eliminate the Earl entirely as a potential partner but wishing to think the matter over carefully before informing his guest of any change of plan. Throughout the various other conversations, the Duke ignored Harry Barton regarding him with expectant hang-dog eyes, evidently waiting on his answer about Cecilia, not yet at breakfast herself.

Deciding to seek his sister out once more before delivering the bad news to the young man, Charles went upstairs, meeting Gabrielle D’Orsay at the junction of corridors that led to the Duke’s suite on one side and the Duchess’ suite on the other.

The Frenchwoman carried a cream silk dress and bronze sash on one arm while her other hand held a letter at which she was frowning and shaking her head.

“Good morning, Mademoiselle D’Orsay,” he greeted her with a polite bow and an eager smile, recognizing that the dress on her arm implied Madeline’s imminent return.

“Your Grace,” the maid returned with an elegant curtsey that would have shamed many an English noblewoman. “I shall dress Her Grace in cream silk today with the choker of pearls if that pleases you both.”

She held up the gown with a small smile.

“Well, it certainly pleases me,” Charles laughed. “Although Madeline must choose her own outfits.” He nodded to the letter which Gabrielle had lowered in her other hand as though seeking to distract him with the dress. “Not ill news, I hope?”

“No, Your Grace. C’est rien. The news is old, and I was well aware of all.”

Charles was intrigued suddenly by the self-possessed and well-educated young Frenchwoman whose manners and learning so outpaced those of her English peers. Who were her family? Mrs. Becking, his London housekeeper, had assured him of the D’Orsays’ utmost respectability, but he had simply taken her word and asked few questions. Now, he wished he knew more but did not wish to pry.

“There are those among Lord Oakley’s French acquaintances who were not sorry to hear that this man was stung by a wasp,” Mademoiselle D’Orsay volunteered cryptically as though reading the Duke’s mind.

Aha, now this was interesting. Perhaps the maid had acquaintances among Lord Oakley’s household staff. Would it be undignified to inquire further? Charles decided that it was worth the risk of a little indignity, given the stakes of his business venture.

“Does Lord Oakley often behave so in his cups?” he asked casually.

“Invading the ladies’ retiring rooms, or being stung by wasps?” queried Gabrielle innocently, giving Charles another important missing piece of the puzzle over what had actually happened on the night of the ball.

Lord Oakley had deliberately entered the ladies’ retiring room?! That was not an offense Charles could brook under his own roof. What if Cecilia or some other vulnerable young woman had been alone inside?

“Either,” he said.

“Not only in his cups, Your Grace. Not only once. Sometimes with the direst consequences for ladies concerned.”

“Good Lord!” Charles said in reaction to this news.

“I have these things on authority from former French noblewomen of high rank. There is some delicacy involved, you will understand. I would be happy to give some details to the Duchess if it pleases you.”

The Duke nodded, and Gabrielle dropped another curtsey before leaving him for Madeline’s rooms. It was certainly food for thought. Oakley was sounding increasingly like an absolute sot and a menace to the female sex.

“How are you today?” Charles asked with a smile, seeing the answer for himself in Cecilia’s rosy cheeks and the dust of her riding habit.

He could hear maids coming and going with hot water in the bathroom next door.

“I had a wonderful ride with Madeline and Lord and Lady Bentham. We went all the way to Latchingford and back. I even galloped across the meadows although Madeline stopped us on the rougher ground. We walked together while the others rode ahead. I think Madeline wished to get away from the Benthams as much as spare me. Lady Bentham was most odd this morning, brother.”

“Odd?”

“She kept whispering something to Madeline about having met Lady Martin in the garden and seemed to think Madeline could tell her some gossip, but I don’t think she knew what Lady Bentham was talking about any more than I did.”

Ah, Madeline must also now be back, Charles realized, his smile deepening as he considered Cecilia’s short account. He did not care about Lady Bentham’s oddity in the slightestm nor anything to do with Lady Martin.

“What are you grinning about, brother?” Cecilia asked him curiously, dropping the previous subject. “You look so much happier this morning than you did last night, I must say.”

“I suppose I am,” he admitted. “Was Madeline well when you saw her?”

“Madeline is always well,” Cecilia remarked. “You must have noticed that, Charles. I have never met a woman so strong and healthy.”

The Duke thought again of the strength of Madeline’s thighs gripping his sides and the power of her sexual appetite that matched his own.

“Nor have I,” he commented laconically.

“Well, I still do not wish to court Henry Barton if that is what you have come upstairs to ask me about this morning,” Cecilia said then, dropping her riding hat and crop onto her dressing table. “Madeline said I should simply be straight with you on that subject.”

Charles nodded.

“I agree. He is not himself a vicious man, but his circumstances are such that I should not invite any deeper connection with our family. Your own feelings also preclude it. I want you to have a good life, Cecilia, but it must be a life you choose for yourself as an adult woman. You have been ill, but you are not a child.”

“Thank you,” Cecilia said, reaching up to kiss his cheek.

“What was that for?” asked Charles with a puzzled smile.

“For listening to me. I did think about Lord Morgan, as you asked me to, but it was impossible, given his father.”

Cecilia had taken a deep breath before making that final statement, and Charles wondered exactly what she knew.

“Has Gabrielle D’Orsay told you something about Lord Oakley?” he inquired, and Cecilia shook her head, confused by this question.

“Well, no. It is…” her voice trailed off, and she turned from him, her hands balling into fists but then relaxing. “As I need never see Lord Morgan again, it does not matter now, does it?”

The Duke shook his head. Maybe everyone knew of Oakley’s ill-doings except him…

“No, I will speak to Henry Barton myself, and after Lord Oakley leaves the house this week, his family will never return. I have made my decision in that regard.”

Cecilia turned and threw herself at him in an impulsive hug.

“Thank you, brother,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Baffled but not displeased by this sudden and violent show of affection, Charles kissed the top of his sister’s head and patted her back until she released him.

“Well, I shall leave you to change now, Cecilia. Your bath must be almost ready. I will give young Barton his answer, and then I should speak to Madeline about something…”

‘Something’ being the white curve of his wife’s throat, the roundness of her breasts, the tight pulsing heat of her slit, and his desire to bury himself inside her…

“Duke Charles,” called out Archibald Barton as Charles set his foot on the lower stair. “Might I have the honor of five minutes of your valuable time?”

There was something both obsequious and sarcastic in the man’s voice. Or perhaps Charles was merely irritated by the idea of anything further keeping him from Madeline, whom he believed now to be upstairs in her chambers, likely alone.

The day had felt long so far. He had already endured the painful dismissal of Henry Barton’s suit in his study. Then there were the incomprehensible glances of polite disapproval from both Lady Bentham and Lady Martin all morning. Luncheon had also been a long, frustrating affair where Madeline’s family and Benedict enthused excitedly over their various peculiar pursuits to the more or less tactful disinterest of everyone else present.

Throughout all this, Charles had gazed surreptitiously at Madeline’s curves in their cream silk and pearl wrapping and imagined all that he would like to do with her when he finally got her alone. His duchess flashed him subtle glances of her own, hinting at reciprocation of his desires. When she said she planned to rest upstairs for an hour after lunch, he hoped he had understood her message…

With Madeline likely waiting for him, the Duke considered pretending not to have heard Lord Oakley’s voice and continuing up the stairs, but the man was unfortunately far too close for that to be credible.

Swallowing his irritation for the sake of courtesy, Charles turned around with a smile. If Archibald Barton wished to talk business at length, he could always suggest a later meeting in the library.

Now or later, their conversation need not take long in any case. The Duke had concluded that a business partnership was as impossible as a connection between Lord Morgan and Cecilia. It would be as well to end both possibilities in the same day without further prevarication.

“Of course, Lord Oakley,” he said pleasantly. “Shall we speak here?”

“Somewhere more private would be best,” Oakley smiled, something almost sinister crossing his usually bland face.

Charles sighed. This was going to be about Henry’s rejection, wasn’t it? He steeled himself for an indignant father’s defense of his son.

“Come to my study, Lord Oakley. We can talk privately there.”