Four Nights With the Duke (29 page)

“You misunderstood. It wasn’t like that.”

“Neither of you even thought to inquire whether I would prefer to remain married to you, or marry Edward.”

Vander couldn’t bear the look in Mia’s face: her expressive features were lifeless, all her joy and passion locked away so it didn’t shine from her eyes.

His wife was standing before him, telling him to leave, but he would not leave. She was his. With that thought, he picked her up, ignoring her gasp, and carried her to the bed, following her down. The moment his body lay on hers, he felt an exquisite wave of relief.

“I’m at home when I’m with you,” he muttered,
kissing her nose, then her cheekbone. Other words eluded him, so he took her mouth.

And her body. When he slipped his hands between Mia’s legs, she was already wet. After a second her eyes glazed over and she pulled him to her, so he slid into her tight warmth, mating with her like an animal, mad with the taste and the smell of her.

It was raw and magnificent, not slow and gentle. But after she had come three times, and he rolled, breathless, to the side, she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. And when she sat up, his heart sank.

“This isn’t right,” she said.

“Duchess—”

She turned like a flash. “You see? Even now, you don’t use my name.”

Vander hated her hard, frozen look. He sat up and took her face between his hands, as if he could warm her with his touch. “Mia, you
are
my duchess. It is the greatest gift I have to bestow. My name, my title, everything that’s mine.”

Mia closed her eyes, opened them again. “I need . . .” She trailed off and began again. “That isn’t enough. I need respect, Vander. You can’t know how much I need it. I have to respect myself, and be respected. It’s the one thing my family couldn’t give me, and you do not feel it either.”

“That’s not true,” he said, tempering his voice, keeping calm.

She waited, but the right words didn’t come to him. He could only think of crude words.

“To you, I’m not someone worth loving,” she finally said, with a sigh. “Not that I can blame you. I wrote that appalling poem; I blackmailed you; I lose my head utterly when you touch me. I’d rather . . . In time, I’ll lose myself.”

She got up without looking at him and put on a wrapper. “Go now, Vander. Please.”

Vander followed and swung her about, not gently. “Everything you’re saying is wrong. It’s rubbish.”

She gave a crack of laughter. “I suppose you do think that.” She broke free, her chin in the air. At least she didn’t look empty and wooden: now every part of her blazed with fire and determination.

“My feelings are not rubbish, Duke. Just because you do not agree does not mean that my feelings are invalid. In fact, you just confirmed what I already told you: at the heart, you think my opinions, my feelings, are unimportant. And if we remained married, your opinion would always come out in one way or another.”

The pain in her voice made each word feel like a needle piercing his skin. “I don’t think that,” he said, straining to explain to the fiery, rebellious woman whom he’d hurt that—that what? He had never had any use for eloquence; he had paid for his pleasures. But Mia deserved eloquence.

“Go. Just leave me alone. Please.” Her face and her voice were empty again, the charm and strength that everyone from Chuffy to Jafeer had responded to gone.

He tried one more time. “I know your name, Mia, and I don’t want to live without you. I love being married to you. You are
mine
, my wife.”

“I am no man’s possession!” she flashed. “I am my own person, Vander. Always. And I want a divorce.”

He stared at her hard as he realized something. Mia was right.

He didn’t respect her the way a storybook hero might. He didn’t want to kneel and beg for her hand; he wanted to throw her on the bed again, and do all sorts of disrespectful things to her. He wanted to
spend a lifetime arguing with her over anything and everything, giving up and kissing her until neither of them cared about their disagreement.

He wanted to possess her, eat her, fuck her, live with her, die with her. Put his seed into her and have children—not because he needed an heir, but so that they created a child together.

So that someone with her eyes and her intelligence and her deep sweetness would always live in England, on his estate. So that future Pindar dukes would have some of her blood to counter the madness in his.

With a sharp nod, he turned to go.

Only when he was back in his carriage, turning into the drive leading to Rutherford Park, did it occur to him, with a pulse of despair, that the saintly Frederic would never talk about “putting his seed” into Flora.

When it came to it, Frederic wouldn’t want to fuck her either.

That wasn’t romantic. That wasn’t what Mia wanted.

There truly was no saving his marriage.

T
he next morning, after a few short hours of sleep, Vander entered the breakfast room to find Thorn meditatively spreading preserves on a roll while reading a note from his wife. Thorn and India were constantly sending notes back and forth, via footman if Thorn was in his study and India in her sitting room a few paces away, or groom if he was in London and she in the country.

Vander contemplated sending a letter to Mia, but promptly discarded the idea. She was the writer, not he.

“India is not pleased,” Thorn remarked, looking up from his note.

“Did you tell her about your cracked rib?”

He shook his head. “Only the black eye. We’re supposed to go to a royal drawing room next Monday, and a battered look leaves me at ‘bastard’ without reaching ‘gentleman.’” He said it with distinct satisfaction.
Thorn had grown up on the streets, and this morning, he looked as though he’d never left them.

“Why do you want to go to a royal drawing room? It’ll be bloody boring.”

“India is rehabilitating me.”

Vander snorted.

“She thrives in polite society, and I love her.”

Thorn said that easily: as if his love were a fact of nature. Yet the very word made Vander feel stranded, as if he were on a small island encircled by rough waters.

For most of his life, he would have insisted that his father loved him dearly. But the duke had tried to kill him, multiple times, according to Chuffy.

Still, that didn’t mean
he
couldn’t love. He had loved his mother, even though he had cut her from his life. He had loved his father too, despite the tempests and violence he had conveniently forgotten. He loved Thorn. Chuffy. Charlie.

Mia.

He loved Mia. In fact, the truth was that talking about fucking her was just a way of saying that he wanted to be
in
her. The feeling that she was his . . . it was the same. A crude way of saying he loved her. A way of insisting that she could never be taken away from him.

He had the irrational conviction that she had taken all the broken, blackened parts inside him and mended them.

“So I am entering polite society,” Thorn was saying, unaware that Vander’s entire world had just turned upside down.

“What does that mean?” Vander asked through stiff lips. How was he to convince Mia of his feelings?

“A knighthood. My father favors it, so I suspect it is inevitable.”

Vander chewed a piece of ham that tasted like sawdust. He’d no doubt that Thorn’s prediction would be born out: the Duke of Villiers always got whatever he wanted.

He had to return to Mia. Kneel down if he had to. Tell her in the right words. Avoid saying things about bedding and owning her.

“You look like hell,” Thorn observed. “May I take it that your wife is not inclined to return?”

“I intend to make her change her mind.”

“Wasn’t it scarcely more than a week ago that you were incensed at being blackmailed?”

Vander didn’t bother to respond. For a while, there was only the clicking of cutlery as they demolished a great number of eggs, endless slices of beef and ham, and a mountain of rolls.

He had learned long ago that fashionable breakfasts sustained only those who spent the day moving languidly between carriage and sofa. He ate like a man with a mission, because he had one—the most important one of his life.

“I hope I didn’t resemble you before I married,” Thorn said, putting down his fork. “Though I probably did. Are you certain that the duchess does not love Reeve?”

“Yes,” Vander said, sure of that now. “But she says I don’t respect her.” He suspected that when Mia talked about respect, she really meant love. And when he talked of
his
duchess, he meant the same. Love.

“Can you point out to her that blackmail does not precisely—” Thorn broke off at Vander’s scowl. “Oh, very well; I suppose commonsense is irrelevant. I’ll take it as a given that you’ve made a royal hash of it. That means you’ll have to make a truly grand gesture.”

Vander thought that over. What did he value above all else, apart from Mia? “I could give her Jafeer,” he suggested. “I began to receive offers for him even before his first race was over. At present, he’s the most coveted horse in all England.”

“She doesn’t want a horse, you idiot.”

Chuffy rolled into the room and fell into a chair, looking the worse for wear. His hair resembled a graying bird’s nest.

“Lads,” he said blearily. “Don’t ever challenge the village baker to a game of darts. I didn’t win a single game until an hour ago, and that was merely because I hold my ale better than he does.”

“Vander must win back his wife,” Thorn said, without greeting. “Have you any ideas?”

Chuffy’s head slowly sank down onto the table. “Not sure it’s possible.”

Vander’s heart thumped. “Mia hates me that much?”

“No. But you don’t measure up to a Lucibella hero.” Chuffy’s voice was muffled by the tablecloth.

That wasn’t news to Vander, but Thorn frowned, clearly confused. “Measure up to a what?”

“Mia is an immensely popular novelist who publishes under another name, Lucibella Delicosa,” Vander explained. “My uncle has read every one of her books.”

“Novels and Shakespeare. Not exactly your forte.”

“I realize that,” Vander said grimly.

“So how does he fall short of a fictional hero?” Thorn asked Chuffy.

“He hasn’t a poetic soul.”

That was exactly the conclusion that Vander had come to.

“Kinross swears that he wouldn’t be married
except for some poem by John Donne,” Thorn said. “You could always memorize a poem. Or”—he grimaced—“you could try to write one.”

“Are you referring to the Scottish duke?” Vander asked. “I have a very difficult time imagining Kinross reciting poetry.”

“He told me one night that he considers Donne responsible for the happiness in his marriage.”

“Poetry would be a start,” Chuffy put in, straightening up, though he had the distinct look of someone who might pass out in the butter at any moment. “But there’s more to it than that. At the climax of a Lucibella novel, the hero always does something heroic. In the one Mia is writing now, Frederic saves Flora from mortal peril.”

“Frederic is an unmitigated ass,” Vander said grimly. But he asked the obvious question anyway: “How does Frederic do it?”

“Presumably he saves her from the burning orphanage or something along those lines,” Thorn said.

“No, a wild tiger,” Chuffy said, stumbling to his feet. At some point during the night he’d lost his cravat, and his waistcoat was both unbuttoned and inside out. “I have to go to bed,” he muttered.

“The tiger comes in at the end of the novel?” Thorn asked.

“Flora is fleeing the ghost-infested castle, but the villainous Lord Plum is enraged by her rejection of his unsavory advances—even though he has a wife in the attic—so he looses the half-starved, man-eating tiger he keeps in a cage in the castle courtyard.” Chuffy rattled off the plot without pausing for breath.

“What’s the heroic part?” Vander asked.

“Frederic sees his beloved about to be eaten by the tiger, so he hurtles into the courtyard to distract the
beast, and as the animal is racing toward him, the man draws out a bow and arrow and shoots it dead. I tried to convince Mia that a pistol would do better, but she thinks arrows are more romantic.”

A moment of brief silence followed as Vander (and presumably Thorn) tried to imagine this singularly unlikely sequence of events.

Chuffy added defensively, “It sounds a bit melodramatic, but that’s because the two of you don’t understand the genre. I assure you that readers all over the kingdom will be shivering with terror during that scene.”

“Unfortunately, there’s a scarcity of tigers in Berkshire,” Thorn said, “so Vander can’t reproduce that thrilling denouement.”

“In one of Mia’s most popular books,
Esmeralda
, the villain leaps from a stallion onto the heroine’s moving carriage, which ends up in the river,” Chuffy said, looking more alert. “The hero—that would be you, Vander—dives into the black and icy waters in order to recover the heroine, reaching her at the very instant she starts to drown.”

“Ridiculous,” Vander said impatiently, coming to his feet.

“Write your own ending, Nevvy!” Chuffy exclaimed. He thrust out a trembling but declamatory hand. “‘The Duke, the Duchess, and the Orphan’! To be sold in fine leather with a gold-stamped binding.”

“I think you should memorize some poetry,” Thorn said, ignoring Chuffy. “Try for someone less quoted than John Donne and you might even be able to pass it off as your own.”

“Can you really see me falling on my knees and reciting a poem?”

Thorn and Chuffy looked at him, and Vander knew exactly what they saw: a burly man with no
resemblance to a duke. At best his smile was wolfish; at worst it was downright menacing.

He had never read a Lucibella novel, but he had spent years listening to Chuffy recite breathless summaries of the plots of his favorite books. An idea began to take shape.

It would need Charlie.