My American Duchess (25 page)

S
oon after inheriting his title, Trent recognized that he needed a study large enough to manage the operations attached to the dukedom’s several estates. His father had got around this problem by leaving his secretary to scamper after him, pleading for signatures.

For his part, Trent took over the library, designating one large table for the administration of Hawksmede, another for the London house and parliamentary matters, and a third for the smaller estates and miscellaneous business like the slate mine.

In the last seven years, he’d spent whole weeks in that room, working from morning to evening. Sometime back in the Stuart days, when the family was relatively new, the windows had been hung with green velvet curtains, embroidered around the hem with interlaced small tin medallions.

The morning after his wedding, Trent found himself ex
amining the room with new eyes. The curtains were faded, and the tin medallions were dull. Many of them were missing. He went to a window and cautiously tugged to see whether the curtain would fall, but it held.

Other than Cedric, his relatives rarely acquired new clothing, let alone drapery and furnishings.

As he and his secretary, Brickle, attacked the stack of mail that had accrued since he’d last been in residence, Trent listened to the heavy silence in the house. He’d imagined it would be different once he had a wife, but he couldn’t hear Merry anywhere.

By now she would be finished with her bath. He kept thinking about that, even as he signed contracts and read through a long letter describing a canal that might make a great deal of money for the duchy—or might not, he decided, putting it to the side.

That afternoon, he was going to find his wife and they would go to bed.

During the day.

As it happened, Trent had never cared to remain through the night after an assignation with one of his mistresses, and he had never invited any of them to his house. Thus he had never made love except in the evening, even though, like any man, he tended to think about it all day long.

It was all different now. He had a wife. Moreover, he had a wife who appeared to have a healthy appreciation for bedtime sport.

He repeatedly lost his concentration, thinking about her, until finally he could bear it no longer. It had to be close to the midday hour.

“What is the time, Brickle?” he asked.

“Nearly eleven o’clock, Your Grace.”

He pushed back his chair. “Right. Time to stop for luncheon. No, let’s stop for the day.”

Brickle’s mouth fell open, but Trent headed for the door before he could offer a reply.

Merry was nowhere to be found. He stalked through the dining room, looking around with a twinge of discontent. The walls were hung with paintings blurred by layers of varnish and candle smoke. A study of two dead pheasants might as easily depict a bunch of feathery flowers.

His wife came from a new country. He had a shrewd notion that Bess and Thaddeus Pelford lived in a large house whose rooms were whitewashed from floor to rafter, and austerely decorated with furnishings that were newly made, not handed down through generations.

If he hadn’t found Merry, at some point he would have entered a ballroom and picked out someone not unlike Lady Caroline, but more tolerable. She would have come from a house just like this, where everything was old and nothing was pristine.

Hawksmede had forty-eight rooms and almost all of them had ceilings so high that they got lost in the gloom on a foggy evening. He turned to enter the drawing room. Looking with newly critical eyes, he noticed that the dark oak chairs lined up along two walls were tired and battered, like a regiment returning from a losing skirmish. Most of them probably dated to the reign of Henry VIII, so they had reason to look worn.

There were a couple of cabinets and three sideboards, lamp stands, and two fireplaces. There was a suit of armor, missing its right arm, leaning next to a genuine Egyptian mummy case, minus its occupant. The case was one of the most colorful things in the room, brightly painted with a depiction of its former occupant, a lady who’d apparently enjoyed lining her eyes with shoe blacking.

One of his uncles had brought it back from Alexandria with the mummy intact, but when they’d encountered a
storm at sea the crew had tossed the body overboard with the justification that a female was a female, even if she’d been dead for some time. Millennia, one had to assume.

So the painted case had arrived empty, and had joined the suit of armor; they leaned together as if in cozy conversation.

He was appalled to see a stuffed crocodile poking out from under a table. When he was a child, it had been fixed to the wall, but he vaguely remembered that a rousing country dance held in the ballroom above had shaken it loose at some point.

The table that summed up the room held two brass pieces, cheek to jowl: an eagle with spread wings and a sphinx. The might of Empire had met the might of Egypt, and neither had triumphed.

Hawksmede was stuffed with things that his great-great-great-grandfather had bought, and his great-great-grandfather had used, and his great-grandfather had deplored, but kept using because the things were good quality and had been expensive, once.

Passed down along with a thirst for brandy.

He still had not found Merry, and the house was starting to feel like the moldering nest of an ancient bird that should have had the courtesy to die years ago. At last he located his butler, who reported that the duchess was out of doors.

“In the back gardens, as I understand, Your Grace,” Oswald said.

He should have guessed that.

It was far better to be outside the house than inside, as the sun was shining and it smelled like mown grass. He strode into the gardens, skirting the old hedge-maze, though he couldn’t help noticing that it was not only derelict but punctuated by gaps where yews had died.
Instead, he marched through the rose garden, discovering that the bushes had become overgrown and black with age and neglect.

Damn it, he should have paid better attention. He paid at least one gardener’s wages; he was sure of it. But he couldn’t remember walking behind the house once in the seven years he’d been the duke.

At the bottom of the rose garden sat a greenhouse, and it was inside that he finally found his wife. Merry was chatting with an old man—the gardener, he presumed—as she repotted a plant that he would have sworn was irretrievably dead.

She was wearing a long canvas apron and a pair of what looked like satin gloves. They extended past her elbows and were encrusted with dirt.

“Good morning,” Trent said, as he entered.

The gardener turned so quickly that he stumbled, and Merry grabbed his arm to steady him.

“Yer Grace,” he rasped, pulling his forelock.

“By God, it’s Boothby, isn’t it?” Trent said, recognizing the man’s overly long upper lip. Back when he and Cedric were boys, Boothby had been one of the under-gardeners.

“That’s right, Yer Grace.”

“It’s good to see you’re still with us.”

“Hello, darling,” Merry said. She smiled at him as she pulled off her gloves and laid them on the wooden table.

Everything in Trent’s world froze for a moment. No one had ever called him “darling.”

“Duchess,” he said, bowing. Because that was how he’d been taught.

Boothby cleared his throat and said, “I’ll just be on my way, then, Yer Graces.”

“Oh, do wait, Boothby,” Merry said, untying her apron. “Trent, may I hire some more gardeners?” She looked at
him with an expression of great earnestness. “Gardeners pay for themselves in no time, I assure you. Boothby tells me that there was once a kitchen garden so large that it not only supplied the house, but gave cabbages to the whole village.”

“I had no idea,” Trent said. “How many gardeners were there in my grandfather’s day, Boothby?”

“Fifteen in all, Yer Grace,” the man said, from the door. “Now there’s only meself, and I’m getting on. Yer father let all the rest go.”

Not surprising. The late duke had been too busy drinking his way through the cellars to bother with cabbages.

“In that case, we need around fourteen more gardeners,” Trent said, crossing the room toward Merry while thinking that he’d like to kiss her. But, of course, that would be unseemly.

It seemed his wife was unaware of that rule—or didn’t care. To his enormous pleasure, she came up on her toes and kissed him. Right there, in front of the gardener.

Trent cleared his throat. “Do you know some good men we might take on?” he said, turning to Boothby.

“Aye, that I do.” The gardener was grinning.

“I
am
American,” Merry told Boothby impishly. Clearly, they had already become the best of friends.

She turned back to Trent. “I plan to extensively redesign the gardens and grounds, unless you have an objection?”

“Of course not. They are your domain, Duchess, to do with as you please.”

“We can do it slowly so that the expense is spread over years.”

“There’s no need for that.” Clearly, Trent would have to have a conversation with his wife about finances. “Boothby, I’d be grateful if you could find Oswald and inform him of your needs. Mention any names that you have in mind.”

Boothby touched his forelock again, gave the duchess a familiar grin that would have made Trent’s mother terminate his employment on the spot, and took his leave.

“Where is George?” Trent asked, looking around.

Merry bent down and peered under one of the potting tables. “Asleep.”

Sure enough, the puppy was curled up on a dusty sack.

“He’s going to need washing again,” she said, straightening up. “Boothby said that he is definitely part ratter because he exhausted himself trying to unearth the occupant from a hole.”

In Trent’s opinion, George had a motley appearance that might include any number of breeds. He moved to the door and closed it tightly. He was quite certain that no one could see in; the greenhouse was so old that it was glazed with thick, semi-opaque crown glass. It had never been transparent, but the accumulated grime of many years had obscured everything but the strongest sunshine.

He removed his coat and tossed it on the table next to Merry’s gloves. Then he picked her up and placed her curvy bottom on it.

“Where is Snowdrop?” she asked him, her dimple showing.

“Resting from her labors. This morning she managed to chew the hem off one of the green curtains in my study.”

“For such a small dog, she is extraordinarily aggressive,” Merry said. “I rather admire the way she makes up for her size.”

Trent didn’t want to talk about Snowdrop. His wife looked like a flower sitting there, prim and straight-backed, pretty ankles peeking from the hem of her skirt. He placed his hands on her knees and slowly pulled them apart, watching her face for signs of protest.

Instead, the color in Merry’s cheeks deepened, and
small, even teeth bit into her bottom lip, which sent such a flare of heat through him that he almost groaned.

Thank God, her dress wasn’t one of those narrow ones that hobbled a woman around the ankles; it was full enough that he could step between her legs, close to the heart of her.

When he bent his head, her mouth opened instantly, and her hands stroked into his hair. They kissed as if they had been kissing for years, his hands moving down to grip her hips.

Merry took a shuddering gasp, air shared with him because he hadn’t let her mouth go. But he supposed she had to breathe, so he licked his way from her lips to the line of her jaw, to the slender column of her neck.

She let her head fall back and a little murmur escaped her lips, something between a prayer and a song.

“I want you again,” he growled into her ear before kissing her.

A long time later, he pulled away. His wife’s eyes were heavy, her mouth deep red, bruised from his kisses. She looked like a courtesan in a naughty French painting, a woman sated, yet still shimmering with desire.

“I would like to carry you back to our bedchamber,” he said, his voice deepening as he spoke.

He saw her throat move as she swallowed and whispered something so softly he couldn’t make it out. He lowered his head again and ran his lips along the pale skin of her forehead.

“All right,” Merry said, clearing her throat with a little cough that made his heart jerk because it was abashed and lustful, all at once. More color spilled into her cheeks.

He shook his head. “We can’t. You need time to heal.” His mouth drifted over her cheekbones. Was there ever a woman so beautiful?

No wonder Adam followed Eve, and Abélard followed Héloïse, and all those other foolish men followed their women through the ages. The turn of a woman’s lip had them on their knees.

“It isn’t unbearable,” Merry said, looking bashful but desirous. “Isn’t it peculiar to think that we are husband and wife?”

Trent had no interest in discussing the philosophical implications of their unexpected marriage. “I have an idea,” he said casually, and began pulling up her skirts.

Instantly Merry’s hand caught his wrist. “We’re surrounded by glass, Trent!”

“Jack,” he corrected.

“In private, you said,” she flashed back. “This is hardly private!”

“Surely you noticed that no one can see through these old panes?”

“Of course I have. I’m afraid that we’ll have to build a new greenhouse at some point, but not until I find the perfect location. This is a bit far from the house.”

“As I approached,” Trent said, “the only reason I knew someone was inside was that I saw motion.”

“And what if someone sees motion?”

“We have no gardeners yet, and Boothby is no fool. He won’t come back for hours.”

She stopped protesting, because Trent had one hand under her skirts and his fingers were caressing private places. Plump, sensuous flesh.

His wife’s hands clenched his forearms and her eyes turned smoky. Her mouth eased open, but no sound emerged.

Trent leaned closer and dusted a kiss on her right cheekbone, and one on each eye, and then on her sweet, pouting mouth.

A pleading sound came from the back of Merry’s throat.