Eloisa James (16 page)

He tasted of himself, of sturdy, honorable,
delicious
man. Her fingers tightened in his hair and she arranged herself shamelessly against his body, pressing into his strength and heat and the pure maleness of him.

A burst of laughter from the sitting room jerked them back to themselves. “Blast this family anyway,” Colin muttered, cupping her face in his. “I want you again, damn it. I need you. Let’s go upstairs. Or to the lake. Around the far side of the lake.”

“You’ll have to wait,” Grace said, giving him an impish smile, quite as if her own heart wasn’t beating so fast she could feel it in her throat. “My mother would be scandalized.”

So they walked back into the sitting room to find the four parents clustered together, laughing uproariously over something the duke had just said to his wife. Grace found herself longing to paint her mother and father again. She’d done so many times, but each year they grew more fascinating.

Her mother was laughing, her thin face alight with intelligence and joy. And the duke looked at her with such adoration, a man who was unashamed of the deep devotion and love he felt for his brilliant wife.

But now Grace had new family to paint as well. Lord Barry’s head was bent as he talked to his wife, and she couldn’t see the small blue poppy that marked his cheek. Even though Lord Barry was now a respected judge and member of Parliament, the pirate was still very close to the surface. It would be fun to try to catch the swashbuckling heart inside an elegantly clothed nobleman.

Lord Barry’s wife kept him on the near side of the law, or so he liked to say. Phoebe was his even keel in a storm, the sole person who could tease him from a rage with a mere smile.

I will be that for you
, Grace vowed silently, putting her head on Colin’s shoulder.
I promise to be your rock.

Their eyes met and then, before she quite knew how, her husband was pulling her out of the house, away from the noise and the children and the servants, all the way around the lake.

They didn’t come back until it was suppertime.

But no one minded.

And the duchess was not scandalized.

Epilogue

Ten years later

Arbor House

B
y late summer, Portia was almost nine and the rest of them were a little or a lot younger. There were many children, a whole tribe of them. That’s what their mamas called them. A pack of wolves, their papas said.

That August they rocketed about Arbor House, all the children whose grandfathers had been pirates, though Portia felt that
she
was the most important. Both of her grandfathers had been pirates, and her papa had also been a fierce sea captain. What’s more, she was the oldest of all of them.

She had the sea in her blood, and sometimes, if she lay very still at night, with one ear pressed into her mattress, she could even hear the sound of waves.

If that wasn’t the sign that the sea was in her blood, what could it be?

But now August was coming to an end, and pretty soon everyone would have to go back to their homes because no one lived at Arbor House, except in the summer. Mama said (and Grandmother agreed) that the house had grown old from being battered by too many children.

Portia loved Arbor House with a passion, and she meant to live there when she grew older. The back garden was full of half-wild barn cats, and there were nettles in the fields that smelled like black currants. Her mother spent her days painting by the lake instead of tucked away in her studio.

And her papa was always there, too. This summer he had taught her how to shoot a bow and arrow, and how to tie a slipknot. She didn’t really want to live on a boat, but those skills would be useful in case she ever capsized at sea and landed on a desert island. Portia liked to plan ahead. Her mother said that she inherited that from her grandmother, the duchess.

This particular afternoon Portia had organized her troupe of eight—all the children who had learned to speak—to put on a play she had written herself. It was a very patriotic play, in which the queen (played by Portia) would quell the rascally pirates (played by the boys), with the help of her sister, who happened to be her twin. Twin or not, Portia was eleven minutes older than Emily, and liked to think that those eleven minutes were very important.

All the parents had gathered in the courtyard, ready to watch the play. Four mamas sat together, laughing, wearing gowns of strawberry pink and pale green. Portia’s papa was leaning against the wall, talking to his father, who used to be a pirate, but was now an earl. There was a lot of champagne being poured.

She clapped her hands, but she couldn’t get her audience to settle down until her father finally barked at them.

The play opened with Edmond, who, at two and a half years old, was as fat as a pigeon, and had rather a waddle. Portia knew it was just his nappy, but even so, she was glad that he was her cousin and not her brother. Edmond was supposed to start the rebellion by shooting an arrow at the queen, but of course they couldn’t give him a real weapon. So he ended up throwing a twig in the air, then picking it up and giving it to his mother.

Portia had to explain what had just happened—an assassination attempt followed an attack on Her Majesty’s Royal Navy (the entire fleet ably represented by Emily). It wasn’t easy to be a playwright when her actors couldn’t remember their lines or shoot arrows properly. She had grown used to narrating the story, because her audience was often unable to follow.

By the time she got around to explaining the middle of the play, her father had moved from where he was leaning against the wall and scooped up her mother. She was sitting on his lap now, leaning against his shoulder.

Her mother and father were mad for each other, which meant they kissed when they thought no one was looking. And if someone caught them, her father would laugh and tell them that his wife had saved his life. Sometimes he was talking about a pitcher of water she threw over his head, and sometimes it had to do with the time Papa was in the navy. The facts were unimportant.

It was just one of those things that papas said.

“Go on,” she told the band of pirates, who were all armed with wooden daggers clenched in their teeth, or at least what teeth they had. Her cousin Cedric was missing almost all of his in front. “It’s your turn. Yell and run about, but don’t forget that when Emily points her rifle at you, you have to fall over and play dead.”

It was a little irritating how long they each took to die, especially Cedric. Finally, she hissed at him until he stopped twitching and she was able to straighten her crown, put her foot on his stomach, and shout, “Huzzah!” while Emily pranced about with her sword in the air.

Everyone clapped in a very satisfactory fashion, even though Emily had forgotten a couple of lines of her victory speech, which made Portia cross. She had written the whole piece in iambic pentameter, which they learned all about in the spring by studying Shakespeare, and that wasn’t easy.

Since she meant to be a writer someday, she knew it was important to master these things. Later that night, in the nursery, she pointed out that Emily could have tried harder.

“You’re a despot,” Emily said, looking up from her book and scowling at her.

“I’m an enlightened despot,” Portia retorted. She had just learned that term, and she rather liked it. “Why do you think that all the fathers fell about laughing when Cedric said he was a warrior?” she asked. “I didn’t think it was so funny.”

“They were drunk, that’s what Nanny said.”

“Papa was not drunk!”

“Not Papa,” Emily said with a shrug. “But the other uncles. And maybe Grandpa, too.”

“Which one?”

“The duke,” Emily said. “He was laughing very hard, and then he gave the duchess a kiss on her ear—I saw him. That’s not the way that dukes are supposed to behave.”

“He never behaves like a duke,” Portia said, dismissing that as evidence. “Look at that portrait Mama made of him—the one in the National Gallery. He looks more like a robber baron than a duke.”

“Do you suppose,” Emily asked, “that they still do . . .
that
?” She waved her hand.

Portia frowned at her. They had just learned about
that
from the laundry maid, and while it was rather fascinating to contemplate, obviously no one as old as their grandparents did anything of that nature. “Of course not!” she whispered. “Be careful Nanny doesn’t hear you, or we’ll be in trouble.”

“Grandpa looked as if he liked kissing Grandma,” Emily said.

Portia thought about it. The laundry maid had explained about how a husband and wife fit together like puzzle pieces and then kissed, which resulted in children. It seemed rather undignified, and she was pretty sure that their parents had done it only a very few times.

She couldn’t imagine the duke and duchess doing such a thing, though one had to suppose they had when they were young. “Perhaps Grandmama and Grandpa on the other side,” she decided. “Grandpa the earl. They . . .” She hesitated, not sure how to explain what she meant.

“They like each other quite a lot,” Emily said. “Do you suppose that we’ll do that when we’re as old as they are? Grandpa the duke must be, oh, one hundred years old or even more. Parts of his hair are quite silver.”

“Don’t be silly,” Portia replied. “He told me once that Grandmother
stupefied
him.”

“What does that mean?”

“Makes him go to sleep,” she explained. “You can’t be kissing and so on, if you’re asleep.”

Portia often knew the answers to questions like that, which was proper given that she was oldest. Just now she didn’t want to talk any longer, so she pushed the window in the nursery open and hung over the sill, smelling the country air. Bats were darting about as if they were weaving lace in the sky.

Her father’s favorite horse, Daedalus, had escaped from the stables again and was munching on the grass under the shelter of a willow; he would probably end up sleeping there all night. No one worried about Daedalus running away, because he was old and fat and very sweet. All the children had taken their first ride on his back.

Down by the lake Portia saw the pale green of her mother’s gown. She was with Papa, of course, and as Portia watched, he pulled her into his arms. They must be kissing, though she couldn’t see that far in the hazy light. Their bodies were so close together that they looked like one person. There was something about the way Papa held their mother tightly, as if she were very precious, that made Portia happy down to the bottom of her stomach.

“What’s out there?” Emily said, coming up behind her.

Portia pointed, even though ladies don’t point.

“Ridiculous,” Emily said with a huff of disgust. “That’ll end in another baby, mark my words, Portia.”

And it did.

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Chapter One

May 2, 1824

No. 20 Curzon Street, London

The Earl of Gilchrist’s town house

W
henever possible, Gowan Stoughton of Craigievar, Duke of Kinross, Chief of Clan MacAulay, avoided rooms crowded with Englishmen. They were all babbling gossips with more earwax than brains, as his father was wont to say.

Though Shakespeare had got there first.

Yet here he was, nonetheless, entering a ballroom in the heart of London, rather than casting a line into a Highland stream, as he would have preferred. It was a disagreeable but inescapable fact of life—or of his life, at any rate—that fishing for a bride had taken precedence over fishing for salmon.

The moment he was announced, a flock of young women swiveled toward him, each face flaunting a gleaming array of teeth. To his mind they all looked constipated, though more likely the smiles were an automatic response to his title. He was, after all, an unmarried nobleman in possession of all his limbs. Hair, too; he had more hair than most Englishmen. Not to mention a castle.

His hosts, the Earl of Gilchrist and Lady Gilchrist, were waiting at the bottom of the steps, so the young ladies did not instantly pounce. Gowan liked Gilchrist—he was stern but fair, and had a brooding gaze that was almost Scottish. They were both interested in financial affairs, unlike most gentlemen, and the earl was a damned fine investor. Because Gowan was a governor of the Bank of Scotland and Gilchrist held a similar post at the Bank of England, they’d exchanged a good deal of correspondence over the last couple of years, though they’d rarely met.

“Your Grace, may I introduce my countess?” Gilchrist asked, drawing his lady forward. To Gowan’s surprise, the countess was significantly younger than her husband, perhaps in her late twenties. What’s more, she had sensual, full lips, and her lush breasts were framed by a bodice made of a twist of rosy silk. By all appearances, she was one of those aristocratic women who emulated the attire and manner of an opera dancer.

Gilchrist, on the other hand, bought to mind nothing so much as a stern churchwarden. It could not be a harmonious pairing. A man and wife ought to be complementary in age and interests.

The countess was telling him about her stepdaughter, Edith, so Gowan bowed and expressed his ineffable pleasure at the idea of meeting the young lady.

Edith
. What an awful name.

A long-tongued woman would have that name. A fusty nut, a flap-eared . . .
Englishwoman
.

Without warning, Lady Gilchrist slid her arm through his so he might accompany her to the adjacent reception chamber; he scarcely managed to suppress a flinch. In his youth, servants had always hovered around him, adjusting his clothing, touching his neck, wiping his mouth. But in the years since he turned fourteen, he had suffered no such familiarities unless absolutely required.

Because he had very little time alone, he preferred to maintain a barrier between himself and the world. He did not lament his lack of privacy; he felt it would be a waste of time to dress, for example, without simultaneously hearing his secretary’s report. If there was anything that Gowan hated, it was wasting time.

Time wasted itself, in his opinion. All too soon, and out of the blue, you toppled over and died, and all your moments were gone.

It would be rank foolishness to pretend that those moments were infinite and endless, which—in his opinion—was precisely what people were doing when they dawdled in the bath or spent hours lazing about reading poetry. It was his inclination and his habit to do as many things at once as possible.

Indeed, this ball was a case in point: before he traveled to meet a group of bankers in Brighton on the morrow, he wanted to ask Gilchrist’s opinion about a knotty point regarding issuance of the one-pound note. Gilchrist was giving a ball, which young ladies would attend. Gowan had an acute—not desperate, but acute—need for a spouse.

Ergo, two birds with one stone. He preferred three or four birds with a single stone, but sometimes one had to settle for less.

The only problem was that the room was filled with English ladies, and he had determined that it would be a bad idea to marry one of those. It was true that a Scottish nobleman always had good reason to tie himself to one of the great houses of England.

But it was also true that an English lass was, perforce,
English
.

Theirs was an indolent race, as everyone knew. Their gentlewomen sat about doing naught but quaffing endless cups of tea and reading novels, while their Scottish counterparts to the north thought nothing of running an estate with a thousand sheep while raising four children.

His own grandmother had worked from morn to dusk without complaint. If reading was to be done, she had always said it should be for improvement of the mind. The Bible and Shakespeare, with Montaigne’s essays for light reading. His late fiancée was, by all accounts, cast in the same mold, which made sense given that his grandmother had arranged the marriage herself. Miss Rosaline Partridge had died from a fever she caught while paying visits to the poor . . . virtue, in her case, proving less than rewarding.

Gowan rather thought diligence was his primary requirement in a bride (other than the obvious—that she be beautiful, maidenly, and well-bred). The future Duchess of Kinross could not be a time waster.

Lady Gilchrist had towed him through the ballroom, and they now entered a smaller chamber. A quick reconnaissance of the room told him that in matters of wealth or title, no unmarried man present matched him. In any case, there were likely only three contenders in all London.

So, strictly speaking, he needn’t waste time courting a wife once he’d chosen her. Marriage was a market like any other; when he found the right lady, he would simply outbid his rivals.

The countess drew him to one side of the chamber and stopped before a young woman, whom she introduced as her stepdaughter.

It was the sort of moment that cleaves past from present, and changes the future forever.

Lady Edith did not belong in an overheated English ballroom. There was something otherworldly about her, as if she were dreaming of her home under a fairy hill. Her eyes were green pools, as deep and dark as a loch on a stormy day.

She was delightfully curved, and had hair that gleamed like the golden apples of the sun. It was pulled up in ringlets and curls, and all he wanted was to unwind it and make love to her on a bed of heather.

But it was her eyes that truly beguiled him: they met his with courteous disinterest, a dreamy peacefulness that showed none of the feverish enthusiasm with which unmarried young ladies generally regarded him.

Gowan did not consider himself a man given to carnality. A duke, to his mind, had no right to succumb to lust.

He had watched with bemusement as men of his acquaintance fell at the feet of women with saucy smiles and round bottoms. He had felt pity, as he did now for the earl with his lush wife.

But in the moment, looking down at Lady Edith, love and its attendant poetry made sense. A line came to him as if it had been written for that moment:
I never saw true beauty till this night . . .

Perhaps Shakespeare was useful for something after all.

Lady Edith’s rosy mouth curved into a smile. She dropped into a deep curtsy, inclining her head. “Your Grace, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

To Gowan, it was as if the countess had ceased to exist; indeed, a roomful of people faded into the wallpaper. “The pleasure is entirely mine,” he said, meaning every word. “May I have the honor of your hand for this dance?” He extended his hand.

His gesture was met not by rippling eagerness, but by a composure that drew him as surely as eagerness would have repelled him. He wanted nothing more than to make those serene eyes light for
him,
to see admiration, even adoration, in her gaze.

She inclined her head again, and took his hand. Her touch burned through their gloves, as if it warmed some part of him that had been cold until this moment. Rather than flinch, he had the impulse to pull her closer.

Once in the ballroom and in his arms, Edith danced as gracefully as the wave of the sea. And she was quiet.

The dance kept separating them and bringing them back together; they had progressed to the far end of the set before it dawned on Gowan that they had yet to exchange a word. He couldn’t remember the last person who’d been so silent in his presence, yet she seemed to feel no need—nor inclination—to speak to him. Still, it was the most comfortable silence of his life.

He was aware of a feeling of profound surprise.

They turned and began to proceed up the room again. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind. He had mastered the art of polite conversation; a whole drawing room full of people unsettled by his ducal presence could be put at ease with a few well-chosen words.

But in his experience, young ladies did not need prompting. Generally, they smiled feverishly, their eyes sending sparkling messages while inanities tumbled from their lips.

Gowan was no fool. He recognized that life had just presented him with a fait accompli. Everything about Edith was exquisite: her easy silence; her serenity; her enchanting face; the way she danced, as if her toes scarcely touched the ground.

She would make a perfect Duchess of Kinross. Already he could envision the portraits he would commission: one of the duchess alone, and, later, another of the four of them—or five; he would leave the number of children to her—to hang over the mantelpiece in the great drawing room.

The dance ended, and the strains of a waltz began.

Lady Edith curtsied before him.

“Will you dance with me again?” His voice tumbled out absent its usual measured tones.

She looked up at him and spoke for the first time since they’d begun dancing. “I’m afraid that this dance is promised to Lord Beckwith—”

“No,” he stated, though he’d never done such an impolite thing in this life.

“No?” Her eyes widened slightly.

“Waltz with me.”

He held out his hand. She paused very briefly, and then once again put her hand into his. Carefully, as if he were taming a bird, he placed his other hand on her waist.

Who would have thought that all the romantic tripe about being burned by a lover’s touch was true?

As they danced, Gowan was vaguely aware that the entire assembly was watching them. The Duke of Kinross was dancing twice in a row with Gilchrist’s daughter. The news would be all over London by morning.

He didn’t care. His heart was thudding in time with the music as he studied her minutely, feature by feature. She was utterly delicious. Her lips held a natural curve, as if she had a kiss or a smile in reserve, one that she had never given away.

Her feet and his moved in perfect harmony with the music. Gowan had never danced better in his life. They swept through the waltz like sparks thrown from a fire, neither uttering a word.

It occurred to him that words weren’t necessary. They were speaking through the dance itself.

Another thought came to him: he had never realized that he was lonely. Not until now.

As the final strains of the waltz died, he bowed to his dancing partner, and straightened again to find Lord Beckwith just there, waiting.

“Duke,” Beckwith said, a distinct chill in his voice. “I believe you mistook my dance for yours.” He jutted his elbow toward Lady Edith with the air of a man ill-used.

She turned to Gowan with a polite smile of farewell, and slipped her hand through Beckwith’s arm.

Gowan burned with impatience. He was a Scot: he didn’t trade in that sort of politeness, not between a man and a woman. He wanted to show her what he felt, snatch her behind a pillar, wind her in his arms, and kiss her.

But she wasn’t his wife . . .
yet
. Until she was, he had to follow the rules. He watched his future wife move into the next dance on the viscount’s arm.

Gowan was wealthier than Beckwith. And he was better-looking than the viscount. Unless Edith preferred slender, twig-like men. He couldn’t honestly say that she had looked at him with desire.

But of course, one wouldn’t want a flagrantly lustful wife. His grandfather had met his grandmother at a formal dinner and had known instantly that she would be the next duchess, even though she had been only fifteen at the time, and shy for her age. One certainly didn’t want one’s future—let alone one’s current—duchess to crave strange men.

Gowan decided he would return in the morning to pay a call. That was part of the courtship rituals in England: visit the house of the intended three or four times, take her for a drive, and then ask the father for his daughter’s hand.

Once that was settled in his mind, he searched out the earl and broached the subject of pound notes. Their work concluded, Gowan said, “I’ll stop by on the morrow to pay a call on your daughter before I continue on to Brighton to discuss our conclusions with Pomfrey’s Bank.”

He saw approval in the earl’s eyes. Obviously the man had invited him to this ball for reasons that had nothing to do with whether the government reimbursed its banknotes with gold sovereigns.

Gowan did not dance with any other women that night. He had no inclination to, and he certainly didn’t want to lounge at the side of the room and watch Edith dance with other men. The very thought made his jaw clench.

Jealousy was the downfall of his countrymen. It was the dark side of their greatest virtue—loyalty. A Scotsman is loyal until death; unlike fickle English husbands, he would never turn from his chosen bride to seek other beds.

Still, Gowan knew he was a damned possessive bastard, who put loyalty above all else. It would eat him alive to watch Edith moving from man to man before he had a ring on her finger that told the world she was his.

Though his imprint on her heart would be even better.

It would be a waste of time to stand about snarling at Edith’s suitors, and Gowan was not a time waster. Instead, he went home and composed a message to his London solicitor, Jelves. In it, he noted that he planned to marry in the near future, and directed Jelves to draw up a suggested settlement and bring it to his door in the early morning.