My Scandalous Duke Page 6

  She ascended one step, her eye level at his. “What do you want…Your Grace? Do you want me to call you Nick?”

  Why had he such a cursed big armful of flowers? He couldn’t see her as well as he wished. I want to know how long you were infatuated with me. Or if infatuation was all it ever was.

  “No,” he said instead. “I want you to call me whatever seems right to you.”

  “That depends on the occasion,” she said dryly.

  “So…why did you call your husband Palmer? Why didn’t you call him Adrian? Didn’t you want him to see you differently?”

  “I didn’t worry about that. He was my husband; that made him different from all others.” She waved her roses, dividing that sentence from the next. “And being called Palmer was what he liked.”

  “What did you want to call him?”

  “I never thought about that.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was telling him the truth, but he liked the answer anyway.

  She was wearing a simple gown tonight, but it was a color. Not a mourning gown; this one was deep, drenched, vivid even in the low light. The color of wine on a just-kissed mouth. Her eyes were curious and liquid.

  They were beautiful eyes. He had been looking into them all his life, always sure they would reflect the truth.

  Before he thought, before he considered, he climbed to the step on which she stood. Arms full of flowers that were drowsy-sweet and lush, he closed the distance between their faces…and kissed her.

  He didn’t know why he had; he knew only that he had wished to. That not to kiss her right now, gold and wine-dark in the moonlight, seemed impossible.

  Under his lips, hers opened to match his, a warm welcoming brush of mouth to mouth. He sank into the pleasure of it, tasting her. She hummed, a little sound of deliciousness, and he sipped at it. Oh, she was everything familiar and lovely and right and…

  …and good God, he was kissing Ellie. The lips that he’d seen every day for years were pressed against his, opened to him with the passion of a lover.

  It was as startling as a bolt of lightning in the night. It was beautiful.

  He could have kissed her until the ball ended, until the torches were doused against the coming of the sun. Each kiss, a sweet discovery of something familiar but never known—

  —until she broke free and took a step back. Her breath was shallow; her eyes were wide.

  For a long moment, they simply stared at each other. “I…” She was the first to speak, but that was all she said. Neither of them quite knew what to say now that the night had changed color, become warm.

  Applause rang upward; hoots shattered the crystal silence that connected them. London’s wealthy and powerful were climbing the stairs before them, behind them. Nicholas and Ellie had been seen, of course, kissing out in the open like lovers on a stage.

  Yet he wouldn’t take it back, not for any amount of fast-traveling gossip. He would not wish undone a rain of kisses like that. “Ellie, I—”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Just…don’t, Nicholas. Don’t make it into anything more.” She turned away, and in another moment, she was fleeing up the stairs.

  He wasn’t going to let her get away that easily. He set a foot on the next step, ready to dash up after her.

  But the step was wet. His shoes were slick. The flowers in his arms blocked his sight.

  And instead of climbing toward her steadily, it went entirely wrong, and he toppled backward down the steep steps and everything went night-black.

  Chapter Five

  He awoke to the heavenly scent of tea. Strong tea, dark and fragrant, with a sugary edge.

  “Mmm.” Bleary eyes blinked open. The world was too bright; he shut his eyes again. “Who’s there? I smell tea. Is it for me? I’d give an absolute fortune for it.”

  “Don’t roll over!” Ellie’s voice, quick and sharp. “Careful. You’re on the sofa in your mother’s parlor.”

  Squinting, Nicholas shaded his eyes and brought the world into focus. It was indeed his mother’s parlor; there stood Ellie’s piano at the center of the room.

  He was lying on the long sofa, folded and propped up at head and feet by bolsters. His right ankle was encased in a great deal of batting. As if craving his further notice, it gave an angry throb.

  Gingerly lifting his head, he took in the rest of his appearance. Waistcoat and shirt. No cravat, no coat. Breeches. A stocking, at least on the foot he could see. No shoes.

  Memory flickered. Stone and nightfall. A clamor of voices around him.

  “Damn those shoes,” he said. “It was the shoes, wasn’t it? The soles were slick as ice. How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Not long at all.” Ellie bustled closer, kneeling beside him. She held a great earthenware mug and extended it to him. Carefully, he took it from her and sipped.

  Ah. Heaven. He hadn’t noticed his head was throbbing too, as it always did of a morning, until the bracing tea eased the discomfort. “But it’s morning,” he said after a few more sips.

  “You’ve been sleeping, not unconscious. You did strike your head, but you returned to your senses almost as soon as Lord Killian arrested your fall and helped you to sit on the lawn beside the steps.”

  None of that sounded familiar at all. “That memory has gone begging, but it sounds well enough.”

  She made some sort of a splutter. “You are lucky you are here and not in your family crypt.”

  He blinked. “But you just implied I was not—”

  “Oh, I don’t mean you nearly fell to your death. I mean that I was sorely tempted to murder you.”

  That did not sound well enough. “How dire.” He looked into the depths of the mug. “Should I suspect poison?”

  “Not today.” She brushed a falling curl from her face, then rose. She dragged the piano seat toward the sofa. “We’d better have this out.”

  “What, you’re not going to play for me?”

  She fixed him with a dire look. “No, Nicholas. I am not going to play for you.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happened.” He struggled to sit up straighter without sloshing tea all over. “What do we need to have out? Why do you want to murder me?”

  She held up her hand, ticking off reasons on her fingers. “You said you liked being told when you did something stupid. Then you immediately did something stupid again. You kissed me! In public, as if I were a doxy! When both of us are meant to be courting someone else!”

  Oh. That. That, he remembered. “I am sorry?” He really was not stupid, and he could tell that saying anything more would be a match to a spill of oil.

  But apparently even this short reply was too much. With a huff, she stood, crossed the room to a writing desk, and took up a pair of shears. Yanking an assortment of pink rosebuds from a vase, she lopped off the ends of their stems, one by one. Little bits of green scattered over the carpet.

  “What are you doing?” he finally had to ask.

  “Something constructive. I am keeping these flowers in good health by cutting off the old ends of their stems.” Fixing him with a sharp glare, she brandished the shears at him. “How dare you apologize?”

  “But I thought you liked it when I apologize.”

  “Not merely for the sake of apologizing, to get yourself out of hot water. An apology only has meaning if you’re truly contrite.”

  For kissing Ellie? Beautiful, upset Ellie, with a cloud of curling hair and her hands full of roses?

  He wasn’t contrite at all—not for kissing her. “I understand. I should not have kissed you in public.”

  She shot him a sidelong glance. “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

  From his awkward position on the sofa, he managed a shrug. “But why am I here, instead of at my own house?”

  She stuffed the roses back into their vase, then crouched to pick up the snipped-off pieces of stem. “You were hurt. You were acting strangely. I was worried, despite my murderous mood. I didn’t really think—I just said thi
s address to the coachman.”

  “I’ve only injured my ankle. That’s not much to be concerned about.”

  “Your ankle might be broken. Now that you are awake, your mother’s frightening butler will summon a doctor to set the bones.”

  He’d had a broken bone set once before in his life. It had not been a pleasant experience. “I wish that had been done while I was asleep. And how was I acting strangely?”

  Crossing to the fireplace, she tossed in the handful of stem ends. “You sat up saying, ‘She needs to have the roses!’ So someone brought Miss Lewis the pink roses, and you said, ‘Not those,’ and then you cried like a baby.”

  His jaw dropped. “I did not.”

  When she turned to face him, she was almost smiling. “Well, maybe not that last part. No, you didn’t cry. You got huffy and indignant and wanted to know what had happened to your roses.”

  “Did I mean the red ones? The ones I gave you?”

  “Yes.” Ellie set the shears back on the desk, then fussed with the flowers in a different arrangement. More pale-colored blooms; there was not a red rose in sight.

  “Where are they?”

  She took a deep breath, then brushed her hands off against her skirts. “I didn’t keep them, Nicholas. When you fell, I dropped them. Will you quit asking about the damned flowers?”

  Bracing himself on one elbow, he set the mug of tea on the carpeted floor. “Eventually, but not yet. Was Miss Lewis very upset?”

  “Fortunately for you, Lord Barberry’s eldest son was more than glad to partner the lady for the first dance.”

  Not quite an answer, but it would do. “I am grateful to him. And…are you very upset?”

  “About the fact that you kissed me in public, with little regard for the fact that I am a respectable widow seeking to become engaged to a man of good character?”

  “Er—yes. About that.”

  She passed by the pianoforte, trailing her fingertips silently over the keys. “Lord Barberry himself is convinced that you, the scandalous Duke of Hampshire, were exercising your will on defenseless, vulnerable me.”

  Now that hurt more than his ankle. “Good God, Ellie. I would be the worst sort of beast if I—did I really—”

  “I kissed you back. I take responsibility for that.” She settled back onto the bench seat beside the sofa. “But how will you learn to determine if your behavior is foolish or scandalous, even without trying it out first?”

  She asked the question with sincerity, not sarcasm, and so he bit back a quick retort.

  The truth was, he didn’t want to think about his behavior. He wanted to act, swiftly, constantly. Only if he stayed endlessly in motion could he escape the yawning void that pulled at him, wrecking his sleep with loneliness and what-ifs.

  Coincidental, then, that it was her next question. Retrieving the mug of tea from the carpet by her foot, she wrapped her hands around it and asked, “What would you do if you weren’t a duke? Would you think about it more, if you could do what you want without having it be a ducal want?”

  “I don’t know how to separate the two.”

  “Would you play the pianoforte?”

  “Give me back that mug. You’re stealing from an invalid.” He took it from her and drained the cooling tea to the dregs. “I might play it, yes. I might play it still. What about you? If you hadn’t been Palmer’s wife, would you be looking for the security of—how did you put it? A man of good character?” A bitter note sharpened those last few words.

  She shifted uneasily.

  “Ha. The tables are turned, and she does not like it.” He returned the mug to its spot on the floor.

  “It is an impossible question.” She pleated the drab fabric of her skirts. “If I had not married Palmer, I might have married someone else much like him.”

  This was not a hypothetical direction in which he wished to wander. He should not have asked the question.

  “Our marriage was fine. Mostly. Sort of.” She let go of the fabric and smoothed it, leaving no trace of her effort behind. “There was no malice in Palmer. He wasn’t careful with money or…well, with anything entrusted to him. He didn’t mean harm. He simply didn’t think about consequences or the future.”

  Indeed. Well, she might have accused Nicholas of the former, but no one could say he didn’t prepare for the future. His correspondence with his steward to care for his tenants, the relationships he sought to build in Parliament, the damned wife he was supposed to be finding—all were for the sake of others, and of those who would come after.

  “Palmer wasn’t good enough for you,” Nicholas said.

  Green eyes met his. “Oh, nonsense, Nicholas. You’ve always said that about any man who showed the slightest bit of interest in me. Were the decision up to you, I’d have been a spinster all along.”

  That didn’t sound so bad; they could have gone on as before, in their friendly intimacy, without others coming between them. “Maybe that would have been easier than the difficult years you lived with him. At least you didn’t bear his—”

  “Don’t say it.” Eleanor’s voice was quick as a whip crack. “Don’t say something I won’t be able to forgive you for.”

  He gritted his teeth. His ankle was aching now like the devil. “Ellie…he hurt you. He would have hurt any child of yours too.”

  “No. Circumstance hurt me. And now you hurt me.” She sighed. “Only someone who has never wished to wed or have a child can dismiss the importance of such desires so easily.”

  She said all of this in a tone as cultured and calm as ever. But in her eyes, a warning green spark shone—and tied his tongue.

  “You questioned my judgment when I married him,” she said. “I see you are still questioning it now.”

  Question her judgment? Rubbish. He trusted it more than his own. But resentment burned, and his ankle throbbed, and there were so many pink roses about, and—and once again, he said what perhaps he ought not. What he had never intended to. “I question you, yes. When my father died eight years ago, instead of standing friend to me, you all but eloped with a near stranger.”

  Her mouth fell open. She rocked back on the seat, eyeing him from a greater distance as though she did not quite recognize him. “You think I ought to have paused my life for your mourning? Have I not mourned enough for your taste?”

  Taste. He had a bad taste in his mouth. “I don’t want to talk about how you felt after Palmer died. I’m only saying that I thought, as a lifelong friend, that you could have been available to me after I suffered a loss.” He sounded stuffy, he knew, but to hell with it. This was something that had long nagged at him, though he had never put words to it before.

  She arched a brow. The woman could have posed for a classical statue—the Muse of Skepticism. “Were either you or your mother particularly sorry when he died?”

  “Ellie. That’s cruel.”

  “I don’t mean to be cruel. I certainly don’t mean that you were pleased, for you’re not cruel yourself. But you weren’t attached to him. He wasn’t the sort of person who welcomed family feeling.” Drumming her fingers on the satin-smooth wood of the bench, she added, “If you want to talk of unkindness—I think he did you a great one by raising you to think that the world owes you whatever you want.”

  “Obviously, it doesn’t,” he grumbled, “because you didn’t even come to his funeral. You were being courted instead.”

  She blew out a breath through thinned lips. “Women never go to funerals, Nicholas. We are too fragile and sentimental to handle the sight of a churchyard, and we might cause a spectacle with our weeping.”

  Oh. He had forgot that was the tradition. But still, he had some spleen to vent. Elbowing the bolsters and cushions behind him with the same force he’d used on Jackson’s sandbag, he hauled himself upright.

  But she was talking again. “And anyway, Palmer didn’t really start courting me until after the funeral. It was…swift.” She colored.

  He forgot the splendid rant he’d begun t
o formulate. “Why are you blushing?”

  She shook her head.

  Which made him wonder and imagine. Had Palmer kissed her until her cheeks flushed pink? Had Palmer seen her hair unpinned and riotous before their wedding night? Had he run his fingers through the tangle of curls, loving the feel of coarse silk twining about his knuckles? Or had she made herself sleek for him, as she had become the night she met Lord Barberry, with all her exuberant bits tidied away?

  He had been looking at her as he wondered these things, and she had been looking back at him. Though she sat on the bench seat by the sofa, completely separate, he felt as if she had fallen into his embrace. Her eyes were as frank, as lovely, as they had been when he’d had to kiss her.

  “I allowed Palmer to court me,” she said, “because you had just become the Duke of Hampshire.”

  “What the devil does that have to do with anything?”

  She smiled, but it wasn’t happy. “Just this: I had waited for three Seasons for you to notice that we had grown up and that I was a woman as well as your old friend. But if you never noticed me when you were a carefree marquess, what hope did I have of catching your notice once you were a duke?”

  She spoke in a clear, quiet voice, but he was not sure he had understood her correctly. Her words were sounds, clanging on resistant eardrums, for it was impossible that she had said what he thought she had.

  “Are you saying”— it was difficult to look her in the eye, but he made himself do it—“that you married Adrian Palmer because of me?”

  “Indeed not. I married him for myself. Because I wanted to marry and have a family and home of my own. And since you’d refused to fall in love with me, or even make a dutiful offer for my hand, I took up with the most entertaining man I’d ever met.”

  The words caused a pain that was almost physical, and he sucked in air, hard, to keep his breath. “Ouch. That hurt.”

  “You haven’t the right to be hurt. I chose Palmer because I thought he would help me forget about you. And it worked for a while. He spent a lifetime’s worth of money in a year, and then we were deep in debt.” She laced her fingers together in her lap, studying them. “Debt is very preoccupying, or at least it was for me.”