My American Duchess (34 page)

He stepped back and stared at her.

Shame swept through Merry like a cold wave as she met her husband’s eyes. The words he had just said went straight out of her head. Guilt and shame warred for a place in her heart.

“Merry, is there something you forgot to tell me?” Trent said in a quiet voice. “And I use the word ‘forgot’ quite deliberately.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I did remember our disagreement.”

“Did you
always
remember it?”

“No, no! All the day of the accident I had been wishing that somehow you would forget what I had said, and we could go back to the way we were. At first, I honestly remembered nothing after our picnic in the flax field. But on the fourth day, I suddenly remembered everything.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you didn’t want to hear about love from me.” She bit her lip but kept her eyes on his. “I never felt anything like this for my other fiancés. I know you don’t be
lieve that, but so it is. So I fibbed—no, I
lied
to you, but it was with the best of intentions. I only want you to be happy, and you didn’t want to hear about that—about love.”

“I’m not happy.”

“I’m sorry,” Merry whispered, her eyes falling. She started pleating a fold of her dress.

He took a step closer. “You should be.”

Surely she hadn’t ruined everything again?

“I know,” Merry said earnestly. “Trent, if I promise
never, ever
to—”

“
Jack
,” he said. “I hate it when you call me Trent.” His mouth met hers; his tongue teased hers, flirting, promising, seducing . . . loving.

By the time he raised his head, she could hardly breathe, let alone speak.

“I love you,” her husband said.
Jack
said those words. “Please, Merry, will you tell me that you haven’t forgotten to love me?”

She knew that tears shone in her eyes. “Is that what you thought?”

Trent’s smile was rueful, but there was real pain behind it. “Emeralds, the pineapple stove . . . I could think of nothing else to give you. You have all the flowers you could possibly wish for.”

Her duke was looking at her with an expression that seemed to fulfill every promise she had ever longed for.

“Even when I forgot our quarrel, I didn’t forget what I felt for you,” she told him.

Her hands were trapped between their bodies and she didn’t pull away from his kiss until she could feel his heart beating madly against her palms. He buried his face in her hair. “I was afraid the accident might have knocked sense into you.”

“I’ll never stop loving you,” she whispered.

“But then I realized that even if you didn’t feel it any longer, even if you had fallen out of love with me, I would never stop loving you, to the end of my days.”

A tear ran down Merry’s cheek. “Oh, Jack.”

“You just have to understand that I’m very new at this.”

“
This?
”

“Loving.”

He meant it, Merry could see. He was serious. She felt a deep pang in her heart at the certainty in his eyes.

“You are wrong,” she told him. “If you will forgive me for my bluntness, your mother was a monster. But you loved her anyway.”

His eyes were so dark that she could hardly read them, but with one fierce movement his mouth swooped onto hers again.

“Jack,” Merry whispered sometime later, “you don’t mind that I’m American, do you?”

“Hell no.”

“If I embarrass you by kissing you in public?”

“I am never embarrassed by you. Never. I just don’t want you to fall out of love with me, the way you did Bertie.” He pulled her so close that she could feel the hard contour of his shaft between them.

“I shall always love you,” Merry promised. “You are my one and only.”

A smile crept into his eyes.

“I never loved Bertie, nor Cedric, either. I didn’t even know what that sort of love was until I discovered it with you. I love Bess and Thaddeus, but they are my family. My love for you . . . it’s bigger than a river.” She colored. “That sounds stupid.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Trent kissed her again, almost compulsively, as if he couldn’t stop. “Mine is deeper than a tanner’s pit.”

She choked with laughter.

“Higher than—than a flax plant,” he finished, realizing that his poetic ability was as laughable as he’d always thought it would be.

One more thing was left to be done.

Trent pulled back and sank down on one knee before her, right there in the greenhouse. “Merry Pelford, would you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”

His wife appeared to have forgotten how to speak—a simple yes would do. She had a hand clapped over her mouth, and tears were slipping down her cheeks.

So he prompted her. “‘Deeper than a tanner’s pit’ is poetry. I’m on one knee and I have a diamond to give you. Those two things, Miss Pelford, mean that you will fall madly in love with me, and promise to marry me. Luckily for me, I can tie you to my bed if you try to resist me.”

Her hand fell from her mouth. “Are you teasing me?” Merry demanded.

“Yes,” he said instantly.

“In the middle of your marriage proposal?” Her voice rose a little.

“Yes,” he said. And then added, “You make me laugh, Merry. But do you suppose that you could answer me? A brick is cutting into my knee.”

His wife leaned forward, which put her breasts at a delicious distance from his mouth. But he kept his eyes above her chin.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh yes, Jack, yes, I will. I will love you, to the top of an aspen, and to the bottom of that pit, and all the way to London and back. I’m already your wife and I shall never change my mind.”

He stood up and took her left hand in his. Then he slid a diamond on her finger that glittered in the sunlight filtering through the thick panes.

“You are my
American
duchess,” Trent said gruffly, his finger tracing the shape of her cheek. “You pour milk into tea at the wrong time, but you do everything else the right way. I love the way you speak. And I love what you say. I’ve never met another woman who is as fascinating.”

Merry shut her eyes to listen to what her husband was saying.

To
memorize
what he was saying.

His hand slid down over her breast with an affectionate pause over her nipple and then continued down the curve of her stomach.

“When you are carrying our first child,” Trent said, his voice dropping to a deeper register, “I will hope she’s a girl, because she will keep her younger brothers in line.”

Merry’s mouth curled into the biggest smile of her life. She opened her eyes.

“I’m not practiced at this, love, but I will give you everything I have. I only hope our children have your laughter and your curiosity and your gift for love.”

Another tear ran down her cheek.

He smelled like wintergreen soap and clean sweat and everything she loved most in the world. He tasted like happiness.

Sometime later, she opened her eyes again and said huskily, “I wouldn’t be your duchess, but for a rented pineapple. Do you suppose that we should send a crate of them to Mrs. Bennett, once we have harvested our first crop?”

A slow grin spread across Trent’s face. “I believe it’s time for bed,” he said conversationally.

“It’s not even time for luncheon,” she protested.

Her husband’s smile hadn’t a trace of that quiet darkness that he usually carried with him.

“That was a ducal order,” he clarified, eyes gleaming.

It was foolhardy to let him know how much she adored
that commanding tone, so she just slipped from the table. He grabbed her arms. “All those things I taught you how to do in bed?”

Merry grinned. “I’m getting better, aren’t I?”

Trent shook his head. “That was bollocks.”

Her smile evaporated.

“Making love to you has nothing in common with anything I’ve experienced with any other woman. Nothing. There’s no need for those things; you look at me and I’m hard. Wiggle your hips and I want to come, sometimes in my breeches, like a mere lad.”

“Oh,” Merry breathed.

He gave her a hard kiss. “Right now, we will make love and it’s all going to be for your pleasure.”

What woman would say no to
that
?

Inside the house, Trent escorted Merry to her bedchamber and gave her another kiss in full sight of a chambermaid, who promptly fled. Merry tugged at his hand, but he shook his head. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” His eyes promised wicked things.

Merry managed to wriggle out of her dress—because she’d rather die of shame than summon her maid—and lay down on the bed naked, pretending to be as bold as her husband always was.

The door between their rooms opened and Trent strolled in, carrying a bowl covered with a white cloth.

“What on earth is that?” she asked, sitting up.

He stopped short and his eyes flared with desire so heady that she started tingling all over. Particularly in her breasts, which happened to be where he was looking.

With a visible effort, he looked back at her face. “May I just say how unbelievably lucky I am to have you?” His voice was a husky rumble.

Merry gave him a smile that was only a bit shy. It felt
odd to be naked in the daylight but right then and there she realized that she would stroll through the whole house without a stitch of clothing if she knew that Trent would look at her in that fevered way.

He walked across the room—no, he
prowled
across the room—and sat on the edge of the bed. “We will sleep in my bed tonight.”

Merry was having trouble keeping her breath steady. It would never do to let her husband know how melting she felt when he issued commands. At least, this sort of intimate command. “We will?”

“Yes. Because we’re going to play in this one now. Afterward, the sheets will be rather sticky.” He pulled off the cloth.

The bowl was filled with chunks of sweet, ripe pineapple.

“I brought more than a stove from London,” he said with a devilish smile. “Now lie back, Duchess.”

“Jack! What are you planning to do?”

He took a cube of the fruit and shook a drop of juice into the bowl. “Eat some,” he said meditatively. He held the scrap of sweetness to her lips. “Actually, I’m going to feed it to you.”

“I’m quite hungry,” Merry said huskily. She opened her mouth and he slipped the fruit inside, bending to lick a stray drop of juice from her lips.

“As am I.”

He took a second piece, but didn’t feed it to her. Instead, he leaned back, gazing at her body as if it were a work of art.

Her eyes widened.

Then she squealed. The pineapple chunk that slid over her nipple was chilly. But the tongue that followed was blissfully warm.

T
he letter arrived around six months later, when the duke and duchess were sitting down to breakfast. That very morning, Merry had deduced that she must be carrying a child because—among other clues—the smell of wintergreen soap made her stomach lurch.

Something was obviously not right.

She was drinking a cup of tea and nibbling a piece of toast while Trent read aloud bits from the newspaper so they could argue about them later.

In the middle of an article predicting an invasion by Napoleon—which Merry feared, but Trent scoffed at—she started wondering whether she ought to tell her husband about her suspicions now, or hold off as long as possible.

She had the idea that he might be intolerably protective upon learning she was
enceinte
. She’d never known
anyone like Trent, someone who would do literally anything for someone he loved.

That was a surprise: this man who swore he would never love, loved more fiercely and passionately than Merry could ever have imagined.

When Oswald entered with the post, Merry perked up. “Is that letter on top from my aunt?”

“I’m afraid not, Your Grace.”

Trent took the letter, his brow furrowing. “From Cedric,” he said. “Posted a month ago.”

Merry gasped and straightened. They hadn’t heard from her brother-in-law since he left England. They hadn’t discussed it, but she knew that her husband worried about his twin, for all he growled at the mention of him.

“This is a first,” Trent commented, tearing open the letter.

“Have you written to him since he left?” Merry asked.

“Once or twice.”

Of course he had. Trent would never give up on his foolish brother.

She took her last bite of toast, thinking about family. Then she heard a deep chuckle and looked up.

“Did I ever tell you that arrogance runs in the bloodline?”

“I ascertained that by myself,” Merry said demurely.

“Read this.” He tossed over the letter.

To His Grace, the Duke of Trent

Dear Jack,

I shall keep this brief, because I find apologies ill-bred. I realize that implies that genteel behavior
precludes vulgarities, which is clearly not true in my case.

I received your letter, and although the draft on your bank was much appreciated, it is not needed. I suppose that surprises you, but the fact is that I have landed on my feet. No need for money, so you will find it enclosed here, along with some part of what I owe you.

You are likely shocked to your core, but you will have to wait until I return to England to hear the story. I am not sure when that will be, since I embark for India on the tide tonight. I might not be in touch for quite a while.

I did want to say one thing, though. I know you think that I do not love you, but you are mistaken. In fact, you are the only person I love in the world, although I rarely showed it.

I did show it once, though. I had only one possession in my life worth anything, and I gave it to you.

I mean Merry, of course.

It took me some time to understand that you and she belonged together. And it took a few nights of drunken plotting to get around the fact that you would bungle it, and she would leave for America and meet some fellow on the boat who would stick a fourth ring on her finger, and by the time you found her again, the captain would have married her off.

So I arranged things for you. One of my few triumphs!

Spare your sons that ghastly name “Mortimer,” will you?

Your brother, Cedric