I Married the Duke (10 page)
“Well, we’re all high and mighty now that we’ve got the eye of his lordship, aren’t we, then?”
“I beg your pardon?”
The woman set her fists on her hips and looked her over again. She shook her head. “Seeing as he’s not paying the bills, though, I don’t suppose I’ll be able to serve you that bath after all.”
“You will indeed.”
The woman laid her palm out flat before Arabella. “That’ll be two louis.”
“Two . . . ? But that is robbery.”
The fist went back to the hip with a rustle of expensive fabric. “Two louis is the price of a bath in my hotel, miss. If you haven’t got it, then I haven’t got the hot water.”
“Then bring me cold water and I will make do with that.”
The palm jutted out again. “That’ll be three pennies, miss.”
Arabella pressed down on her irritation. “Good night, madam.” She walked as calmly up the steps as she could, the candle quivering in her hand.
When she entered her room, she set down the candle, tore the dirty linen wrap off of her matted hair and threw it onto the bed. Her hair fell in a thick, lusterless clump to her waist, her stomach accompanying with a mighty howl. Frustration and helplessness and exhaustion and sheer yawning hunger overcame her. She dropped her face into her hands.
Nothing came. No sobs. No tears. Not even a drop of moisture.
It never did. She was as dry in her heart as she’d been since the day after she received her first caning at the foundling home. Switch in hand, the Mistress of the House laughed at her, and Arabella had vowed aloud to the woman and to God that she would never again weep.
She went to the window, threw open the shutter and stared out at the black sea. Below in the stable, the horses that she was not permitted to hire because a saint had previous claim to them nickered softly.
Her stomach clenched with nerves—the tingling sort she used to get when she was about to do something she knew the Reverend would dislike—the sort she hadn’t felt in years, since she had become a respectable, responsible, professional, and highly sought-after caretaker of young ladies of breeding.
She stared down at the stable. No lamp or torch lit the outbuilding, and no other house was within sight of it. Earlier she had watched the stable hand close the door behind him and walk off toward the center of town. There was no one within.
She had spent her childhood in the countryside with a sister enamored of farm animals. Where mules and horses bedded down for the night, there would be water.
She could not
. If she were discovered . . .
She doused the candle and lay upon the bed in the dark. But she remained awake, submerged in the violent music of the surf, the sea air damp and salty on her skin. She felt grimy all over, sticky from her journey and not a woman that a prince would ever consider.
But he
must
consider her.
So she simply must be beautiful when she met him.
She would not be discovered
.
She climbed out of bed. The wooden floor was cold on her bare feet as she moved to the door, taking up a threadbare blanket as she went, and slipped out of her bedchamber. The stairwell was inky and she felt her way, only one or two risers complaining as she descended. From one chamber by the landing came the furious creaking of bedsprings. Arabella’s cheeks warmed, but it was nothing that she hadn’t heard in servants’ quarters before, and perfectly foolish to be missish about when her own mind had strayed to the very thing far too many times when Captain Andrew had turned his gaze upon her.
She stole on silent feet to the ground floor.
She needed soap. Where in a French inn she would find soap appropriate to wash hair, she hadn’t an idea.
She began in the kitchen. An old dog slept on the warmth of the stones by the hearth. It opened an eye as she crept toward the pantry, flicked one ear, then closed the eye, snorted, and breathed deeply again.
She found a pot of soap behind a jar of dried plums.
Curious location
. Then she opened it and stuck her nose inside.
It was not mere soap but the most luxuriant paste of lavender she had ever smelled. She dipped a fingertip in, rubbed it, and nearly crowed with glee. Bath oil. Exceedingly fine bath oil, worth a great deal more than two louis. If she possessed such a thing in a public house, she would hide it behind the prunes too.
She stole out of the inn. The night was lit with the slenderest crescent moon, the shadows deep across the few yards to the stable. The ocean crashing upon the beach fifty feet beyond the plantane trees drowned all other sounds, like prowling night creatures. Far better than bright moonlight and silence, she told herself. What she could not see or hear would not frighten her.
The stable was dark, but shards of thin moonlight darted across the straw as she opened the door. The horses snuffled in quiet sleep, and the air tasted dry, less salty, more like the earth. It smelled like home, like England. She filled her nose with it, and her lungs.
She found a full bucket of water beside the first stall. She stood for a moment, longing to pour the entire contents over her, and felt confounded.
Her gown would be soaked. Her petticoat too. Even if she washed bent over, she was bound to end up sodden like that night aboard ship.
Her heart did an uncomfortable turnabout.
She could not afford that sort of problem now. For a whole host of reasons.
The horse within the stall stared at her with eyes the color of tea as she shed the blanket, then her gown, petticoat, stays, and stockings, set them neatly aside, went to her knees, and bent her head into the pail.
Cold, blessedly clean water tickled through the matted strands of hair, freeing her scalp. Tiny fingers of pleasure scampered all over. She shivered in perfect delight. After weeks of the tight linen wrap, this was freedom. It felt
magnificent
. She moaned in pure satisfaction.
Nearby, a man cleared his throat.
She whipped her head out of the bucket, pushed streaming strands from her eyes and clasped her hands to her breasts. She blinked into the dark. “Who is it?”
“You might consider all the wonders of the world, duchess, before you bury your head in the sand.”
Water dribbled along her nose, over her shoulders and between her breasts, trickling down her belly beneath her shift. A little tremor shook her. “You might have announced your presence sooner, Captain.”
“I could claim you acted too swiftly for me to do so. But that would probably be a lie.”
She saw him now, a shadow standing with his back to a stall as though it were perfectly normal for him to stand in the dark in a stable in the middle of the night. As normal as it was for a respectable governess to wash her hair in a horse bucket, she supposed.
“Don’t let me interrupt.” He gestured, and a spot of moonlight caught the gold of a ring on his hand. “I pray you, continue with whatever it is you were doing. Drowning yourself, perhaps? I hope not on my account.”
“You are absurd.”
“You have chosen a poor method for ending it all.”
“I am not—”
“I know this from experience, you see.”
Her heart stumbled.
She forced disdain to her tongue. “Do go away now.”
He crossed his arms, stationary and large in the shadow. “I was here first.”
She rolled her eyes, suppressing the memory of the muscles in those arms and the way that looking at them made her feel peculiarly tight inside. “Are we nine then, Captain?”
“If we were nine, duchess, I would not wish to remain here.”
Heat rushed up through her in little spikes. “I want to . . .”
He remained silent.
“I want to wash my hair,” she whispered as though she were about something scandalous. Which of course she was. “But I cannot do it with you watching.”
“I won’t watch. I cannot see you anyway. Not well at least. Pity.”
“Go away.
Please
.”
There was a lengthy silence during which the swoosh of the waves sounded muffled without and the soft rustlings of horses within.
“I will pay you for it.” The rumble of his voice was deep and serious.
The tremor shook her again, this time of regret. Of all men, she did not want this man to wish to purchase her. She did not want him to believe she was a woman to be used and discarded. Foolishly, she wanted him to be different. “I told you—”
“To wash your hair here, now, before me. Only that.”
Only that?
“I don’t—”
“You haven’t the funds to pay for a night in this inn or a carriage to the chateau. You haven’t even a change of clothing. Aside from a ring of which I will not speak, you have a cloak, a sorely abused gown, and a cravat my cabin steward has lent you. You cannot intend to enter the castle of a nobleman clad in worn garments, even through the servants’ door. They will expel you as a beggar.”
It was true, of course. But she could not admit it.
“I will pay you sufficient money to hire your room tonight and to purchase new clothing,” he said, “if you continue with your bathing now.”
“I will not—”
“Only your hair, Miss Caulfield. And I will remain standing here.”
“Will you also cease interrupting me?”
“Will you do it?”
Her gown was within arm’s reach. She should cover herself. But in order to do so she must first expose herself for a moment. The idea of it sent a wicked thrill through her. This was not how her journey to France to meet a prince was supposed to progress. But for the first time in ages she wanted to feel
something
. She wanted to allow herself a moment of purely irresponsible and thoroughly unwise pleasure.
She mustn’t.
“I do not believe you will remain there,” she said hesitantly.
“Then I wish you luck with your bills.”
“Your charity is not so unselfish now, is it, Captain?”
Another pause. “If I offered you gold for doing nothing, would you accept it?”
“No.”
“You do not trust in charity.”
Arabella had encountered too many men of the world to trust that anyone would ever give her something for nothing.
“Charity always comes at a price,” she said.
“I am offering to pay for your charity now.” He shifted his stance and his voice eased. “Come now, duchess, amuse a sailor who has been at sea far too long with only the beauty of the blue horizon to please him. Allow him to enjoy a beautiful woman. Innocently.”
There was nothing innocent about him. His words teased again now, but he was not a man of light temper, and if he wished to hurt her he could quite easily.
But she did not believe he would. He might have already at any time aboard his ship—when she was drunk and in his arms, in his bed, in his power. But he had not. He had mercy on desperate thieves and he looked at her like a man starved.
“It is a simple transaction, Miss Caulfield,” he said. “You wash your hair, I give you gold. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“Yes.”
In response, he was silent, not even a nod to indicate that she agreed to his salacious proposition.
Arabella turned her face from him, willing her sixth sense that felt him close to obey.
What she could not see or hear would not frighten her.
She bent and scooped a handful of water from the bucket, and as she spread it on her hair and scrubbed, she hoped that he did not see her trembling now, or that if he did, he would think her merely cold.
S
hreds of moonlight peeking through the stable door doused her in silver. Luc was as good as his word, but through no particular nobility of character. In truth, he could not have moved if he wished it. The image of the little governess on her knees, her pale, lovely arms stretched up and tightening the damp linen across her breasts, paralyzed him.
Her hair fell in dark rivers down her back and over her shoulders, rivulets of soap sliding down as she worked her hands in it. Eyes closed and lips tight, she moved with purpose, not intending to seduce, yet seduction was inevitable. He had imagined those slender arms, those small breasts, and the curve of her buttock to her thigh, and now they were before him like a banquet.
He was famished.
His body responded. Of course it did. He hadn’t seen an unclothed woman in months. The heir to the duchy of Lycombe did not spread his seed carelessly. No lowborn by-blows must mar the Westfall family tree; that much his uncle Theodore had taught him. As Luc had been content to share his bed with women of experience and discretion, he’d never had need of common tarts. But willing widows were in short supply at sea. It was no wonder that watching the beautiful little governess now made him hard. He was only a man.
She lifted her behind from her heels and spread her thighs to hug the bucket, then bent and submerged her hair once more, and Luc lost his senses. He wanted the bucket gone and her legs wrapped around him. She splashed water onto her head, and her breasts, perfect peaches ripe to be tasted, strained against the chemise. A woman of experience would know what this did to a man—what it was now doing to him. Either this woman was intentionally taunting him or she was a virgin and knew no better.
A virgin.
Dear God
. He could not bear it.
She twined the stream of hair into a thick cord, dropped it over her shoulder to fall heavily down her back, and stood. Then she turned fully to him.
“I have done it,” she said. “I need only enough to purchase a new gown and shoes and to hire the carriage. Give me only that.”
The pain of complete denial was too great to withstand. He went forward to be closer to her, because he knew now that he could not have more of her.
She stood her ground, her chin tilting up almost as an afterthought. Her arcing throat was entirely bare and beautiful, glistening with moisture, and he thought he might go mad. She put on a brave facade but she was thoroughly innocent, a child playing with a lit taper yet defending her play even as fire burned down the house around her.
He halted close—close enough to touch her if he dared, and close enough for the distance to be torture. His hands wanted her. The soaked linen undergarment clung to her, the soft swell and contours of her breasts and waist on display for him in the moonlight. The thatch of hair at the apex of her thighs showed dark through the wet cloth, and her nipples stood out in taut glory.
Cold
. Her body was cold, he told himself. But color shone in spots high on her cheeks and along the column of her satin neck down to the clinging chemise. Her lips like raspberries parted, and a soft sound escaped them.
But she was uncertain. Her eyes were luminous, not seducing, instead questioning. Brave, warm, and wary.
“It gleams even in the dark.” His voice was husky. “Your hair. Even wet.” He must make himself speak or he would touch her. “By what conjurer’s trick does it do so? Are you a witch after all, merely disguised as a governess?”
“Yes. But what of you? Are you a prince disguised as a pirate?”
He could not mistake the glimmer of hope now in the cornflower eyes that at other times flashed so sharply.
He stepped back. “Not a prince.” Rather, a man whose mission to produce as many of the most uncontestably ducal heirs as possible should be at the forefront of his desires now, not a bedraggled little underfed governess of uncertain virtue crossing France alone in search of a castle.
As he swung around toward the door, he must have imagined the sinking of her proud shoulders and the light sigh that followed him from the stable.
He went to his bedchamber but could not sleep. Instead he paced like an animal in a cage. As always. But for the first time in years he had cause.
Heirs to dukedoms did not tarry with governesses unless they wished to murder a tradesman or tradesman’s son on a field at dawn. Women like this one inevitably had stalwartly rash fathers or brothers prepared to defend them against the ravages of the libertine aristocracy. At least, such stories were common enough in the gossip mills.
He could not offer her a more permanent arrangement either, not this little thing with a quick tongue and spine stiff with pride. She had proved tonight that in desperation she could be bought. But he did not want a desperate woman in his bed. Even upon the remote chance that she would agree to it, he suspected she would make an exceptionally uncomfortable mistress.
Snatching a handful of shining new coins from his travel bag and a candle from the mantel, he climbed the stairs to her bedchamber. He stood before the door and imagined breaking it down, imagined what he would find on the other side. Would she welcome him? Would she scream for help?
Would she even be there?
He really was going mad.
He knocked.
No reply.
He turned the latch and the door gave way. He studied the latch. No lock. Not even a bolt to protect her. Gripon was a worm.
The room was frigid. There was no glow at the hearth, no coals lit for warmth. Nothing more than the stub of a greasy candle already burnt through.
She was curled up at the corner of the bed beneath a blanket thinner even than her chemise. Her undergarments were carefully arranged on a chair by the hearth, too flimsy and thin for travel and now at least one of them wet.
She was so desperate to reach the princess of Sensaire that she had allowed her luggage with all her clothing to sail to another port without her.
At dinner his cousin had interrogated him about his lack of forthrightness with the lady, and asked a question that now pressed at him: Why did he believe that she was who she claimed?
Because he had no other reason to believe otherwise. Honesty lit her eyes when she looked at him. She had put herself in jeopardy to save a starving sailor. And those children in Plymouth . . . He knew she had in fact helped them. He had spoken with his clerk, who assisted her.
The greatest confirmation, though, was her integrity. With her beauty, she might be much grander than a governess. A sennight in the right rich man’s bed could have easily won her a shop, a modiste’s or some other respectable profession allowed to poor gentlewomen. Longer might have merited a house of her own. Gowned and perfumed, she would be a courtesan to drive men wild. But she did not trust men. She had been propositioned before, certainly. She had clearly refused.
None of this explained why a woman of her beauty and spirit was yet unwed. Unless she was unfit to wed a respectable man. Unless she was not in fact a virgin.
Her glorious hair, draped across the bolster, was still damp and tangled. She wore no cap. She would catch a chill and perish because he was too much of a coward to see that she dried her hair by a proper fire. He should bring wood for the grate, wake her, find her a comb and make her dry that hair.
But he could not wake her. In sleep, her cinnamon lashes hid the sparks in her eyes. She was less beautiful asleep.
Not
beautiful, in fact, merely a too-thin maiden past the bloom of youth, or perhaps only scored by the trials of servile life.
But he could not cease staring. She did not feign sleep, this much was clear, and he knew himself to be the only real fool between them, wakeful and wanting still.
On the bedside table, he deposited the coins he owed her from his self-inflicted torture episode and went out. In the stairwell, he pressed his back against the wall and felt the heaviness of his limbs, the dizzy imbalance of his legs on land, made worse by the narrowed field of his vision.
In the darkness, he strode from the building toward the beach. Scaling the woody ridge, he tore off his coat and waistcoat. His neck cloth caught on the wind, which blew harder now, and it fluttered for several yards before it came to unsteady rest on the sand. His boots went next. The crashing of the waves drowned out his curses at the crescent of the moon, which even so shone too brightly for him now, and more curses at the white froth of waves that seemed to illuminate the beach in a holy glow.
Stripped to his drawers, he threw away the black kerchief that he never went without now and walked into the ocean. The water was icy. He strode to his waist then dove into a breaker.
It hit him in his face and across his shoulders. The scar hollered, and he dove again, then deeper, farther from the shore and docks and ships and civilization. He turned away from the moon to the south, his arms commanding the current. He closed his eye. His chest grew tight, his breathing hard, the taste of cold sea in his mouth and the scent and sound of it everywhere, and always the current urging him away from the beach. He let it carry him.
After a time he turned onto his back, filled his lungs and stared at the stars.
“Blast and damn,” he cursed at the moon again, for the sheer pleasure of cursing aloud. The water lapped about him, rough at the estuary, submerging him in swells then laying him level. He could no longer see the shore; it was too distant and the shimmer of the water overtook all else. But he knew where it was. The stars and moon would not abandon him.
With slow, measured strokes he began the journey back. The current caught at his arms and legs, pulling him out, but he fought it now.
When his feet finally touched land and the waves knocked him about, he dragged himself from the surf and onto the rough sand, and he went to his knees. Exhausted, he bent forward and his hand brushed cloth.
He opened his eye and laughed. Hooking his thumb around the kerchief, he lifted it and returned it to its rightful place over his ruined face. Then he turned onto his back on the sand that still embraced the warmth of the day’s sun.
For the first time in months he slept until daylight.
W
HEN SHE AWOKE,
Arabella discovered beside her bed five gold coins emblazoned with the French king’s profile.
She rose, and with skin covered in gooseflesh, dressed in her chemise, stockings, stays, petticoat, and wrinkled gown. She tied on her boots, donned her cloak, and went downstairs and out of the inn. The morning was so new that the mists clung to the street, and she pulled her cloak tighter, willing the sun to rise from pinkish uncertainty to gold. In the sunshine, she might be able to forget the night and moonlight in the stable and how he had made her feel.
The shutters were opening over the front of a bakery. The baker greeted her with a smile and a curt,
“Bonjour, mademoiselle.”
She chose two hot rolls and a twist of pastry laced with preserves, paid the man, and walked swiftly back to the inn. A man pulling a cart laden with trinkets passed her and tipped his cap. A boy sitting in a crevice of a wall stared at her food. She gave him a roll, tucked her cloak tighter about her, and went toward the beach. She would not give the innkeepers the pleasure of seeing her breakfast like a peasant.
The pastry beckoned to her. She stared at it with eyes like the captain’s staring at her last night. As perhaps she had stared back at him.
She mustn’t think of it. She mustn’t admit it to herself. After breakfast she must simply hide in her bedchamber until the festival was over. Then she would hire the only witnesses to her shame and their carriage for the drive to Saint-Reveé-des-Beaux.
Through the trees, the barest hint of sunlight cast the sand in layers of pale gold and shadow. Tiny blue crabs skittered about, rushing forth from their burrows then darting back, and gulls circled overhead, searching for breakfast. In the center of the beach a naked man lay on his back on the sand.
Arabella halted, consumed in confusion.
The captain’s arm moved at his side, and he covered his face with his hand.
She should leave. She should run away.
Now
.
She could not make her feet move.
He sat up. His back was broad and golden brown in the dawn rays, sand clinging to it and his arms. He brushed it off absently, watching the ocean.
She
must
leave. He would stand up and she would see . . .
He drew up his knees and propped his elbows on them, and her nerves collapsed in a quivering heap. He wore drawers. She was safe.
She drew in a shaking breath.
He could not have heard her; the crashing of the waves drowned out all else. But he turned, and she understood that she was not safe. Not in the least. She had never known a live man could be so beautiful. The shift of his muscles as he twisted around to see her, his evident strength in even this slightest movement, rooted her feet to the sand now.
Words from the Reverend’s sermons—words like
girded loins
—came to her, and she drew in an unsteady breath. He had seen her. She must be courageous. She could not run away.
He climbed to his feet and she nearly lost courage. But she must return some of the coins, for he had certainly given her too many. And, quite simply, she could not walk away, or run, or even crawl on wobbling legs. She could go to the inn, wait until he dressed, and speak with him then. But she might never see a man like this again. She would never see
this
man again.
He walked toward her.
She made herself go forward to meet him as though it were nothing unusual for her to meet a half-naked man on the beach at dawn, regretting her earlier wish for sunlight. Newborn gold illumined his skin, casting the muscles into breathtaking contours. She had the most frightful urge to touch him. She had never before wanted to touch a man except him, and certainly not a man’s unclothed body. She tried not to stare. She failed.
But when she thought he would halt several feet away, he did not.