Four Nights With the Duke (31 page)

“Yes,” she said huskily. “I do love you, Vander. I’m yours.”

“Thank God,” he said, low and rough, pulling her close and burying his face in her hair. “I’ve been such a fool. Tell me that you will never leave me.” His voice was raw with emotion, as if the ferocious warrior had finally been brought to his knees.

“Never.” The word felt as right as sunshine, as right as Charlie’s smile. “I love you,” Mia told him again. “Always.” What had seemed shameful was now a simple fact. “In fact, I have loved you since we
were both fifteen years old, if you want the truth of it. Perhaps even before that.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Vander said, pulling back, under control once more. “But I have this.” He reached into his coat pocket, and brought out a handful of yellowed and torn scraps of paper.

The handwriting on them wasn’t elegant, but it was earnest.

It was her handwriting.

“I fancied you back then,” Vander said, spilling the poem into her hands. “Mostly your breasts, but I liked your laugh, and the way you made me less angry even if your father was in the room.”

“Oh,” Mia breathed.

“One of the worst things that can happen to a boy is to be mocked. I had had so much of it in school that by fifteen I had a very thin skin. After Rotter came in the library that day, I couldn’t think straight. He said he was going to tell everyone. You would have been ruined, so I said the only thing I could think of to make him stop. Of course, it made everything worse.”

Mia stared down at the scraps of paper. “You kept my poem all these years?”

Vander nodded. “I’d be damned if I would let my poem—the only poem anyone would ever write for me—be swept up like rubbish. So I took it.”

Mia’s smile was so large that it felt as if her face might crack. “Where has it been, all this time?”

“I put it in a box, and there it stayed. Until Thorn said I should make a grand gesture, and write a poem. Charlie helped me, but we both knew our verse was a failure. Then I thought of this.”

“How on earth did you come up with the idea of wooing me with poetry?” She couldn’t help giggling. The smile in her heart couldn’t be kept down.

“I was desperate,” he said simply. “But I have another plan in reserve as well, in case verse isn’t persuasive enough.”

Of course he did. “What is it?” she asked.

“Here.” He handed her a letter. It was stamped and sealed and looked entirely ducal.

Mia crooked an eyebrow at him, and then broke it open. She read it once. Three times. “You’re
blackmailing
me?”

He nodded. “If you leave me, I will send that letter to
The Times
. The entire world will know Lucibella Delicosa’s real name. Everyone from the king to the littlest scullery maid reading by the kitchen fire.”

She laughed, and let the letter fall.

“Do you know what I want most?” she whispered.

“I will give you anything I own, Mia. Anything you desire.”

He meant it.

“A kiss,” she breathed.

Vander surged forward, taking her mouth as he pushed her backward onto the carriage seat. His body felt wonderful on hers, and her blood sang with the pleasure of it, so much so that tears came to her eyes. Her arms curled around Vander as if her life depended on it.

“I love you,” he told her again, just as one of his hands slid down and cupped her breast. Madame duBois’s bodice gave way and Mia’s breast spilled into his hand.

Vander bent his head and took her right nipple in his mouth. It felt so good that Mia whimpered, and her body went liquid, boneless. One of his hands had pulled up her skirts and was roaming, leaving quaking trails of fire, coming closer to where she most wanted him to be.

“I want you,” he bit out.

A moan broke from Mia’s throat. “Take me, then,” she whispered. “I’m yours, Vander.”

He stilled. “Say that again.”

His eyes had changed from tenderness to something infinitely wilder. Still, he hesitated. “I do want you, Mia, but mostly I love you.”

“You can have me,” she said, giddy with the joy of it.

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

There in the carriage, on a too-narrow seat, Vander came to her in heat and love and laughter. He came to her with respect and adoration.

After a while, things had become hot and sweaty. Mia’s tangled hair was spilling onto the dirty floor. She was sweating behind her knees and other places too. She was gasping because Vander kept taking her mouth again, as if he could never have enough of her.

“I can’t—not again. I—” she pleaded.

“Come, Mia,” his voice was raw again. “Come with me.”

She did.

A
POEM WRITTEN BY THE
D
UKE OF
P
INDAR, WITH THE INVALUABLE AID OF
M
ASTER
C
HARLES
W
ALLACE
C
ARRINGTON

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue.
Your duke respects you, and he loves you too.

T
he following morning, Gaunt had a terrible shock when he opened the front door: Jafeer was grazing on the front lawn below Mia’s bedchamber window, riderless, his reins trailing.

Later that day, the sheriff paid a visit, reporting that Sir Richard Magruder, who had been erroneously released from custody, had stolen a horse, and was a fugitive from justice, had been thrown into a ditch in the midst of his flight, and had died instantly of a broken neck.

Jafeer, it seemed, had not enjoyed having Sir Richard on his back.

In fact, he much preferred his own herd; as long as his family was near, Jafeer was the most amenable of animals. In the year that followed, he went on many a painfully slow walk, during which he pranced around Lancelot and Mia. Yet no matter how ardently Jafeer courted her, Mia adamantly refused to ride a horse that size.

The following spring Her Grace changed her story, announcing that she didn’t want to risk her unborn babe by riding a mount more energetic than Lancelot.

Two years after that, she declared that Flora became very irritable if separated from her mother for long periods, and so she meant to bring her on her daily ride. No one would trust Flora—who had her father’s tumbling black hair and her mother’s laugh—to a horse other than Lancelot.

Flora was followed in rapid order by Cuthbert (named after a beloved great-uncle) and by Edward (named after a special friend of his mother’s); thus the Duchess of Pindar successfully avoided being thrust onto a monstrously tall horse for a long time.

By that point, Jafeer had won every race there was to win in all Great Britain, and he’d retired to stand at stud, a task which he took to with great enthusiasm.

Then, early one morning as the duke and duchess were lying about in bed after behaving in a fashion that would have shocked their nearest and dearest, His Grace pointed out that Lancelot was growing elderly, and probably would be happiest remaining in the stable.

Since anyone in the world could tell that Lancelot would, indeed, be happy never to leave his stall again, the duchess offered no counter argument. His Grace added that Jafeer wasn’t
terribly
tall, and besides, all three of their offspring were dashing around on horses twice the height of the duchess.

Mia was draped halfway across her husband, tracing circles on his chest with one finger. “I simply can’t believe the children all turned out to be such giants,” she said with a sigh. “They were tiny babies, and now look at them.”

Vander kissed her forehead. “They have your beauty and my height.”

“Do you know, I think Bertie might become a novelist? He told me a story about something that happened at Eton with a perfect sense of timing.”

Later that morning, Vander helped his wife onto Jafeer’s back, much to Mulberry’s astonishment. Though Mia showed a lamentable tendency to cling to the pommel and close her eyes—and Vander felt very strongly that all riders should keep their eyes open—they finally ambled down the path that led through the wood.

After that, there was never another horse for Mia.

If Mia had spent a great deal of energy avoiding Arabians, the same could not be said for Charlie. Just as Vander had predicted, Charlie quickly became the finest equestrian in five counties. He was fearless on the back of a horse, and could handle the most intractable of stallions.

At Eton, he had special permission to miss classes for various races, which at first caused not a little envy. But once the other boys came to understand that as long as young Lord Carrington rode for the equestrian team, Eton would not lose the Steeplechase Cup—a silver goblet that had been traded back and forth between Eton and Harrow for years—well, after that, no one begrudged him the missed classes or ever dared to call his lordship “Limpy” or “Peg-Legged Pete.”

In fact, as Mia confided to her editor, Mr. William Bucknell—who had ceased to be Mr. Bucknell and become simply “Will” a few years before—it was as if her nephew had taken one look at the duke and decided to become Vander.

“Charlie has grown so muscled wrestling half-trained horses that he even looks like my husband; no woman notices his limp,” Mia said. “And he talks like Vander as well. By all accounts, Miss Alicia Gretly,
who is pretty enough to be one of my own heroines, is pining away for love of my nephew. But when I mentioned it to him, Charlie winced and said that when he took a wife he planned to chase her, rather than the other way around.” She wrinkled her nose. “Precisely what Vander would have said at that age!”

Will Bucknell couldn’t help laughing. It was the first day of his annual monthly visit to Rutherford Park, during which he edited the duchess’ latest manuscript; that month was invariably the happiest of his year. “If he follows His Grace’s pattern, Lord Carrington has a good ten years in which to find the right woman,” he pointed out.

“It seems like only yesterday that he was a tiny boy, hopping around with his crutch,” the duchess said with a sigh, picking up her quill. “I suppose we ought to start working; we’ve been gossiping for at least an hour.”

Before Will could reply, the duke poked his head in the door. “Might I lure my wife away for a brief consultation on a matter of grave importance?”

Will watched with some interest. In his opinion, one of the reasons why the duchess’ novels were being compared, in some circles, with Miss Jane Austen’s, was because she took the joy that was so evident in her private life and shared some of it with her readers.

But Her Grace was shaking her head. “Off with you,” she told her husband, blowing him a kiss. “No
consultations
until Will and I have finished at least ten pages.”

After the duke closed the door behind him, Her Grace turned back with a wide, impish smile. “Did you see how peaceably he left? If you can believe it, my husband used to think that he could always get his way. It took me at least a year of marriage to disabuse him of that notion.”

Will couldn’t think of an appropriate response, so
he tapped the pile of manuscript pages that lay before him. “I suggest that before we look closely at any given scene, we discuss the fact that your hero, Lord Xavier Hawtrey, loses his memory after being thrown from a horse and no longer remembers his own wife.”

“My readers will love it,” the duchess said instantly. And defensively.

“I have no doubt of it,” Will said, pitching his voice to a soothing tone. “But will they accept the fact that Lord Xavier miraculously remembers his wife’s face only once he believes his evil second cousin has murdered her? I think your readers would prefer that he at least attempt to save her life. From good will, if not because of the family connection.”

Her Grace sighed, and pulled the manuscript pages toward her. “I suppose you have a point. But we’ll have to figure out how to keep the scene in which he throws himself off the cliff in the throes of guilt. Chuffy adores that plunge, and you know that Chuffy is my best critic.”

Will chose his words carefully. “I am somewhat concerned that Lord Xavier would be dead before he could . . .”

And so it went.

If truth be told, the annual month during which Will Bucknell joined their family, editing her latest manuscript and arguing with Chuffy, was one of Her Grace’s favorites in the year as well.

Though a woman who loves so dearly, and is so dearly loved in return, can find joy in almost every moment. Certainly in every month.

And definitely during every
consultation
with her husband.

T
his novel owes a great deal to its sources, but even more to the readers who have celebrated my work, encouraging me to write an (astonishing to me) twenty-four novels to date. In creating a female author of romance novels around the turn of the nineteenth century, I wanted not only to depict how much fun it can be to plot and write romance, but also to honor the authors of the time. For the most part, the authors’ work is no longer in print, though their novels were enormously popular at the time. Authors like Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson supported themselves writing adventuresome fiction such as
The Fugitive Countess
(1807). Anna Maria Bennett began her long bestselling career with
Anna
(1785), whose first printing sold out in one day. The novels could be extremely
lucrative: in 1796, Fanny Burney was paid 2,000 pounds for her novel
Camilla
, including its copyright, which would be over 100,000 in today’s pounds. That doesn’t mean their work was universally celebrated, of course. The review that plagued Mia so much that she can recite it from memory was real; it was published in
Graham’s Lady’s Magazine
in 1848, and the novel exhibiting “vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors” was Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights
.

I invented the publishing firm of Brandy, Bucknell & Bendal, but in fact, the publisher of Lucibella’s books would likely have been Minerva Press. William Lane established the press in 1790 and thereafter published a constant stream of fiction, as well as operating a circulating library. He specialized in gothic horror-romance novels and would have welcomed Lucibella’s heroines-in-peril. While Lucibella’s prose echoes novels at the time, I took the inheritance plot of
An Angel’s Form and a Devil’s Heart
(a real novel, written by Selina Davenport and published by Minerva in 1818) from a Dorothy Parker short story called “The Standard of Living.”

To ensure they were accessible to the middle and working classes, novels of this type were typically bound in cardboard with leather labels on the spines. Jane Austen’s
Emma
(1816), for example, first appeared with “plain gray boards” and a title label made from stamped morocco leather. But Chuffy’s more luxurious bindings existed as well: the foremost bookbinder at the time was Roger Payne, who re-bound volumes in Russian leather with gold borders, embedded pearls, and even (on occasion) silk embroidery that reflected the book’s contents.

If Mia’s character was inspired by late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century female novelists, Sir Cuthbert owes his appearance and cheerful nature to
one of Shakespeare’s great characters, Sir Toby Belch in
Twelfth Night
. Chuffy mischievously quotes from that play, as Mia recognizes, but my greater hope is that he brings with him the reckless joie de vivre of his predecessor. Talking of quotations, Mia’s much maligned poetry borrows from some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s romantic poetry. Finally, young Master Charles Wallace possesses something of the preternatural intelligence of Madeleine L’Engle’s namesake character in
A Wrinkle in Time
, though arguably Charlie owes more to Charles Dickens’s earnest and captivating disabled child, Tiny Tim.