Four Nights With the Duke (3 page)

“Your Grace,” she said. “I implore you to read the letter.”

Vander stared at her for one second longer, before he took it from her and straightened, falling back a step. The letter was definitely from the late duke; Vander could recognize his hand anywhere. It was dated long before his father had been declared insane, but his handwriting belied that fact.

When his father was suffering from a mad fit, his writing reflected his state of mind. The script hurtled across the page, the letters slanted as if blown by a stiff wind. There had been weeks when twenty- or thirty-page letters arrived from the asylum, each page urgent, demanding . . . incoherent.

He read the letter.

He read it three more times, then carefully folded it back up.

“They’ll take my title and estate if you publish this.”

Her eyes were grave, not at all triumphant. “I believe you are correct.”

Vander felt light-headed. “So my father was a traitor to the Crown.” He’d believed his family had hit rock bottom when his mother died in Carrington’s arms; it turned out that there was a further drop. Madness, adultery—and now treason.

“So it seems.”

“I doubt he could have assassinated the king, even if he had mailed this offer. My father had no entrée to the court. As I understand it, everyone avoided him even during his schooldays; his feelings were too extreme and unpredictable to make him easy company.”

His mind was reeling from the blow. His dukedom was the key to everything that mattered to him: his stables, his estate, his cottagers. Everything would be forfeit to the Crown. After the debacle of his childhood, and the scandals his parents caused, his horses were his life.

Words shot from his mouth without conscious volition. Swear words, rough oaths that he had never used in the presence of a lady.

But was she a lady?

No. She was a damned blackmailer.

Her mouth tightened, though she was pretending not to hear him.

“Despite this letter, you can’t possibly think that I will agree to marry you.” For a second control eluded him, but he reined it back in. He’d be damned if he threatened a woman, even one who was trying to bend him to her will.

Not that she showed the faintest sign of fright.

No, Mia Carrington looked like an Amazon, if that race of female warriors had a corps of petite archers. It was oddly provocative.

But he felt like a footman being called to a bedchamber, summoned for her lady’s pleasure, which was intolerable.

“Years ago, you vowed not to marry me if I were the last man on earth. What in the hell has changed, Miss Carrington? Besides the fact that our reputations are even more notorious than they were when we were young? Why in God’s name would you embarrass yourself like this?”

NOTES
ON
H
ERO

Angel’s Form: Hero is elegant to a fault—wears coat made by Weston, silver-topped cane.
Tumbling black hair
. Hair—flaxseed in the sun. Brown eyes.

Titled. A count? Last 4 Lucibella heroes all dukes.

But why does he have a devil’s heart?

Draw from real life? Heroine jilted? REASON??? Not bec. change of heart—hero too enamored. Bring in evil count? Twin?

Is ‘Count’ an English title? Never met one (check Debrett’s). Or:
French
Bavarian
comte
. More perfidious. (Will readers understand perfidious? Comte, for that matter? Spelling?) stay with Count.

Count Frederic!

Leaves her at the altar in St. Paul’s Cathedral . . . Why?

Good question.

“E
mbarrass myself?” Mia had never heard a voice that angry. And cold.

If she was gorgeous and dewy-eyed, it wouldn’t be quite so humiliating to propose marriage. But as it was . . . some part of her was writhing with humiliation. Some part? The whole of her.

“I do not consider a proposal of marriage to be an embarrassment,” she said untruthfully, fighting to keep her voice from rising into a squeak. “I am in possession of a special license, and I would like to marry quite soon.”

Instead of thunder, she got another crack of laughter, sharpened by rage. “You have to be joking. You think I would marry
you
?” His eyes raked her from head to toe.

She fell silent, swallowing hard. She tried not to think about her attractiveness—or lack thereof—and most of the time she was successful.

“You are not joking.” He didn’t move a finger, but she felt danger in the very air, as if he might turn and smash his fist straight through the window if he lost control of his temper. He had already uttered some words she’d never heard before.

She forced herself to speak. “My solicitor obtained the license. I hoped we could marry in a few days. At the least, within the week, Your Grace.”

“Unbelievable. I’ve asked you repeatedly, and I’ll ask again. Why do you want to marry me, Miss Carrington? Is it a matter of ambition?

“Oh my God,” Vander continued, not waiting for a
response. “You’re getting revenge for the poetry episode all those years ago?”

“Of course not! The subject is irrelevant.” Mia pulled another folded sheet from her reticule. “You may keep the letter written by your father, Your Grace. I took the liberty of putting into writing my specifications as regards our marriage.”

“‘Specifications?’” Vander echoed.

He felt as if he had fallen into another world. Ladies did not propose marriage. They did not issue “specifications” for male behavior, within marriage or without.

“The terms of our marriage.” She put the document on a side table. “Here they are.”

Vander took a step forward and caught her wrist. It was shockingly small. “This makes no sense.”

She tried to pull free, but it was no use; he had restrained horses that were far taller than she was and weighed ten times as much. “Are you ambitious for social status? Or did your father put you up to this before he died?”

Her eyes skittered away, and he realized the truth with a sickening thud. “That’s it. I didn’t even ask how you got that damned letter. He stole it, didn’t he? Or my mother gave it to him. It wasn’t enough to drag my mother into the gutter and shame my father—Carrington made sure that he would befoul the Pindar line.”

“Befoul?”
She stopped struggling to free herself and stared up at him with an absurd air of innocence.

“Taint my blood,” he said, wanting to hurt her. “I think anyone would agree that children of your family will sully the ducal line. My father expected me to marry into the best of families, Miss
Carrington.
Your
father was not ennobled by his association with my mother. Quite the opposite.”

She glared at him. “May I remind you that you’re talking about sullying a ducal line headed by a madman and—” She stopped.

“A what?” he said, his voice dangerously low. “By what word would you characterize my mother?”

“We should not be having this discussion, Your Grace.”

This time he snatched both of her hands and reeled her close to him before she could do more than gasp. “I think the word you were looking for is
whore
.”

“I wasn’t, and you should not speak about your mother that way,” she cried. “What’s more, you shouldn’t even speak that word in my presence!”

Vander’s grip tightened. “You don’t make an outcry when I curse, yet I say the word ‘whore’ and you squeal like an insulted nun? Who are you, really, Mia Carrington?”

“I’m all those things you’ve called me, Your Grace,” she said steadily. “A wallflower, an old maid, a charity case. A desperate woman in need of a husband.”

“A husband?” He looked her up and down. “In your bed? Is that what this is about?”

Red flashed through her cheeks. So that was it. She still lusted after him, which should make him laugh. But this close, he could feel the warmth coming from her lush little body.

He didn’t want to look at her eyes; they made him feel odd, unbalanced. With one swift movement, he turned her about so that she was snug against his front, his arms crossed over her chest.

She fit in the circle of his arms perfectly, so perfectly that he pulled her even closer, before he realized what he was doing.

“Do you imagine that you and I will have the sort
of relationship that our parents had?” he asked. He spread his right hand over her stomach, pulling her tightly against him so that she could not mistake the reaction of his body to hers. He was still hard as a rock and had been since he loomed over her in the chair.

She was no lady, and he refused to do her the courtesy of treating her like one. What he wanted to do was act like a man who had never heard of civilized society: bend her over that chair and take her.

“Let me go!” she demanded. He heard no fear in her voice, so he ignored her protest.

“If I want a whore, I pay for her,” he said, thrusting forward with his hips in a rough motion that she could not mistake. “I don’t marry the woman. Your father didn’t bother with such formalities, so why should you?”

She didn’t respond other than continuing to struggle to pull away, her head bent forward and her hair falling from its pins. Vander had a discomforting feeling that perhaps
he
was the one more affected by their position. For some damn reason, her body was practically burning him, and he felt as if he were surrounded by her soft elusive scent.

He had never felt like this: dizzy with raw lust, hungry to take her and prove—

With an oath, he released her and backed away, as if that would save him from the hunger that had him wanting to throw her on a bed, any bed, and tuck her body beneath his own.

She turned around slowly. Pale gold ribbons of hair fell around her neck and curled against the drab fabric of her gown. It sent another shock through him.

“Your mother was not a whore,” she repeated, as fierce as ever. “She was in love with my father. It’s not fair to brand her that way!”

“She may not have been, but her son will be. After all, you’re buying my services, are you not? The market price for one duke, in fairly good physical condition, seems to be an incriminatory letter. Perhaps you should search your father’s belongings. Just think what you could do with two such letters. Two noblemen, in the same bed, at the same time.”

“That is a loathsome thing to say,” she said, her voice shaking for the first time.

He plowed his hands through his hair, frustration mixing with his lust. “I’ll give you a dowry, if that’s the problem.” He was grasping at straws, he knew. “I can make you rich enough that you can attract a man by conventional means. You needn’t do this, Miss Carrington. We can forget it ever happened.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, her chin back up in the air. “You think I couldn’t possibly attract a husband without a large dowry?”

Vander eyed her truly awful gown. “If you bought some reasonably fashionable frocks, I’m sure that you could find someone,” he offered. “Hell, I could help there too. I know several gentlemen who—”

“Who are desperate enough to marry someone like me if a duke paid them enough?” she cut in.

He eyed her, then shrugged.

She went stiff all over, like a Greek statue sculpted by the hand of a master. But she likely had a lushly feminine grace when unclothed, a figure that those stalk-thin Greek goddesses would envy. Put it together with lips of deep rose, and those eyes . . . she could certainly have a man at her feet. Maybe a whole crowd.

He wouldn’t be one of them.

“Unfortunately for your scheme, I already have a dowry,” she said. “It is sufficiently large. Moreover, I have . . . I have money of my own.”

He narrowed his eyes. “In that case, why in the bloody hell are you forcing this? You say it isn’t revenge. Or lust. God knows our marriage would be a disaster.” And then it sank in, well and truly seeping in like a stinging poison. “Miss Carrington, you have to trust that there’s someone out there who would fall in love with you in return. You don’t really love me. You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t—”

“Look, my closest friend Thorn—Tobias Dautry—never thought to marry. He fell in love just this last year, as unexpectedly as if he’d been hit on the head by a cannon ball.”

“Love is like being hit in the head?”

He nodded, warming to the subject. “What if that were to happen to you?
When
it happens to you,” he amended. “When you meet the man of your dreams, you will be desolate if you and I are already married.”

The sensual, plump curve of her lips tightened into a thin line, suggesting he was making an impression. “There’s no possible way that our marriage will thrive,” he continued. “Not under any circumstances. Hell, I courted Lady Xenobia last year. One of the most beautiful women in all London, perhaps in all Britain. And the daughter of a marquess.”

She didn’t say anything.

“India is tall and willowy,” he said, forcing the issue. “Exquisitely beautiful, with the bearing of a goddess.” Never mind the fact that he’d decided India was a bit too tall for him.

“We are both already aware of what you think of me, Your Grace,” Mia replied, her chin held high and shoulders back, for all the world as if she were facing a judge. “You labeled me a dumpy charity case years ago, before I emerged from behind Villiers’s sofa.”

Actually, what he remembered was her bravery.
There had been more than one time when he might have turned away from a challenge, but he remembered little Mia charging around the sofa.

“Your waxing on about love has not changed my mind, nor have your insults.” She picked up her reticule and headed for the door. “Please excuse me.”

With two long strides he was past her, blocking the door. Her green eyes were dark and misty: she wasn’t as unmoved as she had sounded.

“You must give up this mad idea,” he ordered.

Mia took a deep breath. She was trying desperately to think how to respond. Her solicitor had made blackmail sound easy.
Wave the letter, and the duke will realize that he has no option, and must meet your requirements.

It was all different now, in the event, when she was actually faced by Vander. She hated doing this. She felt miserable and low, battered by his rage and distaste. But rather than give in, she made herself think of sweet little Charlie. And his uncle, the horrendous Sir Richard.

The thought steadied her, and she managed to hold back her tears. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “But I must marry you.”

A muscle worked in Vander’s cheek.

“My expectations for the marriage are enumerated on the document I left on the table,” she stated, keeping her voice steady through some miracle. “I ask for very little,” she added. “Please, Your Grace, just . . . just do me this favor.”

Vander wasn’t listening; she could tell. The flare in his eyes would have burned her, if such a thing was possible.

He reached out for her and like any silly rabbit, she froze.

“If you’re to be my wife, I might as well have a taste of you,” he said, raw and low.

But before she could say anything else, his mouth came down on hers and he forced her lips to open.

It was an angry kiss, a vengeful kiss.

When Mia had been betrothed to Edward Reeve, son of the Earl of Gryffyn, she had enjoyed his kisses. Edward had been respectful and never strayed beyond the bounds of propriety . . . or not far.

During the months of their betrothal, while they waited for her mourning period to end, there were times when he kissed her until she was flushed and giggling.