One Dance with a Duke (29 page)

“You wouldn’t?” Amelia stroked his arm in a sympathetic manner.

“Oh, it wasn’t so noble as it sounds,” he told her. “Pride was my true motive. I’d bought the damned mare, and I didn’t want to lose the investment. Or admit defeat.” Releasing Amelia, he walked forward to offer his hand to Juno. She nosed his fingers with rough affection, then turned her head to offer him her favorite spot under her left ear. She liked to be rubbed there, so he humored her for a bit.

“I took personal responsibility for her and then turned her out to pasture for a full year,” he said. “Made no attempts to train her, asked nothing of her. I fed her, watered her, groomed her as much as she’d allow. Even once I’d gained her trust, it took a full year of slow training to ride her. With time, I was able to break her to halter, bridle, eventually saddle … Strangely enough, those rides were what finally improved her disposition. As if that’s what she’d been waiting for, been needing—the chance to carry a rider and gallop across an open park. So I began riding her regularly, and her mood improved. Now it’s our habit. She’ll let the stablehands feed and groom her, but to this day, I’m still the only rider she’ll allow.”

He looked to Amelia, and she gave him a slight, disarming smile. It occurred to him he’d been talking for an uncharacteristically long time, and she’d been standing there patiently for a long time, too—pointedly silent, unwilling to interrupt until he finished.

“She’s getting old,” he went on. “Too old to be ridden by anyone, much less a man my size. I’ve always been more weight than she really ought to carry. But if I try
tapering off the frequency of our rides, she grows touchy again. Starts refusing to eat, kicks at the stall. I hate to keep riding her, but I’m more concerned about what will happen if I stop altogether.” He rubbed the mare’s withers briskly, then stepped back and folded his arms. “That’s where Osiris comes in.”

“Osiris?” she asked, obviously baffled.

“It’s difficult to explain.”

Again, she gave him that patient, friendly silence.

So he explained, and found it wasn’t so difficult after all. “I’d been trying to learn more about Juno’s early years, to see if there might be something else to calm her, or
someone
else she once trusted. A groom, a jockey perhaps. It wasn’t easy, so many years after the fact. But I found the farm where she’d been bred to racing age, and the old stable master was pensioned but still living nearby. He remembered her, of course. He told me she’d always been difficult—no surprise—but that in her second year she’d formed a strong bond with an orphaned colt. Horses are much like people, you see. They form friendships and often remember one another, even if parted. We once had a pair of geldings who’d been separated for years, but once they …”

He stopped, absorbing the fact that her blue eyes had grown wide as shillings. God, he knew this would sound ridiculous spoken aloud.

“So this colt that she bonded with … it was Osiris?”

“Yes.” He tapped his heel defensively. “I know it sounds absurd, but it was the only possibility I could think of. Juno’s never socialized well with the other horses here. But I thought if she’d bonded with Osiris in her early years, before the horrific abuse she endured, perhaps she’d warm to him again and have some companionship to … to soothe her.”

They stared at one another for a while.

“So …” She pursed her lips around the drawn-out
word. “This is why you’re pursuing Osiris. You’re willing to spend tens of thousands, rearrange your life, risk the fortunes of others—including my own brother—all so your ill-tempered mare can be reunited with her childhood friend?”

“Yes.”

The surprise in her expression suggested she’d been expecting him to protest, but really … Amelia was a clever woman. She had it pegged. He hadn’t anything else to say.

“Yes,” he repeated. “Yes, I put your brother in insurmountable debt just to buy my old, crotchety horse a consort. Make of it what you will.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you what I make of it.” She closed the distance between them, step by slow, deliberate step. “Spencer … Philip … St. Alban … Dumarque. You”—she jabbed a finger in the center of his chest—“are a romantic.”

The air left his lungs. Damned inconvenient, that—because bloody hell, if ever there was an accusation he
needed
the breath to refute …

“Oh, yes,” she said. “You are. I’ve seen your bookshelves, and all those stormy paintings. First
Waverley
, now this …”

“It’s not romanticism, for God’s sake. It’s … it’s simple gratitude.”

“Gratitude?”

“This horse saved me, as much as I saved her. I was nineteen, and my father had died. I’d spent my youth bashing about the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly I was here, preparing to inherit a dukedom. I was angry and unfocused and out of my element, and so was this horse, and … and we tamed one another, somehow. I owe her a debt for that.”

“You’re only making it worse, you know.” She smiled.
“Keep talking, and I might just deem you a sentimental fool.”

He was about to object, but then her hand flattened and crept inside his coat. The bronze fringe of her eyelashes fluttered as she leaned forward. Her breasts pressed against his chest, soft velvet on the surface and softer still beneath. Perhaps he should rethink his disavowals. Really, he had no objection to
this
.

He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face to his. And then, because it suddenly seemed he should have had a reason to do that, he asked her, “You know all my names?”

“Yes, of course. From the parish register.”

He froze, recalling the image of her poised over that register, quill in hand, peering down at it for long, agonizing moments. He’d thought she was having misgivings, and she’d merely been memorizing his name. Some emotion ballooned inside him, hot and dizzying and much too vast for his chest to contain it. And for a moment, Spencer wondered if he just might be a sentimental fool after all.

“It was just …” Her voice broke as he slid his hand along the smooth, delicate flesh of her neck. “You already knew my middle name.”

“Claire,” he murmured.

Her pulse leapt against his palm.

Smiling a little, he lowered his lips to hers. “It’s Claire. Amelia Claire.”

Ah, the sweetness of this kiss. The softness, the warmth. The soul-shaking beauty of it. He took her mouth tenderly, and her arms slid around his chest under his coat, and … and oh, God. This was so, so different from any of their kisses since they’d wed. They hadn’t kissed standing up since they’d shared that first incendiary embrace in her brother’s study, and deuce if he knew why not. When they kissed like this, it emphasized
how small she was against him. He had to bend his head to reach her lips, shore her up with his arms so his kiss wouldn’t send her stumbling back on her heels. When he held her this way, she felt delicate and breakable in his arms. And he knew Amelia was anything but fragile, but for some loutish, deeply male reason he liked pretending she was. Cradling her tight against him, giving her the heat of his body, inclining his head to cherish her lips with the softest, most tender of kisses … as though her mouth were a delicate blossom and those dewy pink petals would scatter if he dared breathe too hard. As though he needed to be very, very careful.

Because then it became an easy thing to imagine she trusted him. Not only trusted him, but needed him. Relied upon him. He liked imagining that, because he was beginning to worry, in some rogue corner of his mind, that the truth was quite the other way around.

Then something changed. She stiffened in his arms, breaking the kiss.

“On second thought”—her gaze focused—“perhaps you are merely a fool. Has it occurred to you, that instead of bankrupting my brother in pursuit of this stallion, not to mention enduring suspicions of murder, you might simply be honest with Lord Ashworth and Mr. Bellamy?”

“I tried,” he said. “I offered to stop pursuing the remaining tokens if they would let me stable Osiris here. They refused.”

“Did you tell them your true reasons for wanting him?”

He snorted. Oh, yes. Because it was his life’s ambition to hear Bellamy and Ashworth deem him a romantic, sentimental fool. “They won’t give a damn. Why should they do a thing for me, much less an old, maltreated mare?”

“Because they’re your friends.”

“Precisely what gave you that impression? The part where Bellamy accused me of murder? Or the part where I ground him into the carpet? I took my swings at Ashworth years ago, no need to revisit those.”

“No,” she said evenly. “The part where I asked if you’d nothing more important in your lives than a silly club and a handful of tokens, and the three of you discovered a sudden fascination with your boots.” Her arms tightened around his waist. “Maybe you’re not friends, not yet. But if you expend the time and effort to
make
friends with them, they’ll give you what you want.”

“Are you mad? They believe I killed Leo.”

“Lord Ashworth doesn’t. And Mr. Bellamy’s investigation will clear your name any day now.”

“It may not. Amelia, I turned that neighborhood upside down and shook it with vigor. There’s a very real possibility Leo’s killers will never be found.”

“Then you will prove yourself and earn their trust. Just give them a chance to know you, the same as you’ve done with me.” Her lips curved in a smile. “Much as it might pain you to do it, you’d save yourself a great deal of trouble simply by revealing your most deeply buried secret of all.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

She touched his cheek with the back of her hand. “That against all reports to the contrary, you’re a decent, kind, shockingly likable man. At least …” She paused. “I know I’m coming to like you, a great deal.”

What a sweet thing she was. Not innocent or naïve, just … truly good-hearted. Only the most generous of souls could conceive of such a thing—three men putting aside class, fortune, hatred, and suspicion and becoming the sort of friends who traded heartfelt secrets over port. Even men who
weren’t
divided by class, fortune,
hatred, and suspicion didn’t trade heartfelt secrets over port. That’s what made them men.

But staring into those clear blue eyes, he almost wished he could make it happen, just for her.

And suddenly, a thought came to him. The best idea he’d had since proposing to this woman. By God, every once in a while he scared himself with his own brilliance.

He couldn’t help but grin with self-satisfaction as he asked, “Would you do me a very great favor?”

“Ask me, and see.”

“I want to have a house party. Just a small one,” he added in a rush, before her eager gasp of excitement carried her away. “I’ll invite both Ashworth and Bellamy, and the three of us will hash out this business once and for all.” Not in the way Amelia was envisioning, but she need never know. That part would take place behind closed doors. But to execute his plan, he needed the other men loosened up first. Relaxed, well fed, content, and complacent. “I need a hostess. Do you mind?”

“I’d be delighted, and you know it. But only two guests, in such a grand house as Braxton Hall?”

“No, not here. I think it’s best if we meet on neutral ground.” Here was the truly brilliant part. “I’m thinking of renting a summer property. I’ve heard there’s a cottage for lease, in Gloucestershire.”

Gripping his shoulders, she pulled back to stare at him.

“The rent’s horribly inflated,” he went on. “Four hundred pounds, for a summer cottage? For that price, it had better not be drafty.”

Her fingers laced behind his neck. “Briarbank is the loveliest cottage you ever saw. And only the slightest bit drafty.” She launched herself into his arms. “Oh, Spencer. You’ll love it there. It’s beautiful country, with the valley and the river. You can take the men angling.
May I invite Lily? She told me she’d be returning to Harcliffe Manor, and it’s quite nearby. I’m sure she’d be glad for the company.”

“I don’t see why not.” In fact, the idea struck him as fortuitous. If anyone could make that idiot Bellamy see sense, it might be Lily Chatwick.

“Will Claudia go with us?”

“Yes, of course.” There was no way he could leave her behind.

“Oh, good. Then my dinner table will have equal numbers of ladies and gentlemen. And it will be so good for her. For you both. No one can be unhappy at Briarbank, it simply isn’t possible.” She slid back to the ground. “When can we leave?”

He laughed at her impatience. “Not for a few weeks, at least. I’ll need to make arrangements, and so will you, I imagine. And in the meantime”—he stroked her back—“we’ll be occupied with your riding lessons. It’s three days by carriage to Gloucestershire, and you’ll be miserable if you can’t ride part of the way.”

She nodded in acquiescence, catching her plump lower lip between her teeth. Oh, how he needed to kiss that mouth.

But before he could act on the impulse, she kissed him first, throwing her arms around his neck to pull him closer. Her tongue teased his, stoking wild sensations in his blood. Raw lust powered through him, sweeping away any vestige of restraint. Together they stumbled into an unused stall, and he threw an arm out to soften the impact as her back collided with the wall.

So much for fragility. And tenderness be damned. Her fingernails raked his scalp, and the kiss was barely a kiss anymore, but more a series of hot, gasping clashes of mouth against open mouth. He slid his palms over all her velvet-cloaked curves—breasts, hips, bottom, thighs.

“Amelia. We shouldn’t begin this if …”

“I want you,” she breathed, rolling her hips against his.

Between the husky promise of her words and the grinding friction of her pelvis, Spencer thought he might spill right then and there. He fisted his hands in her skirts, lifting the folds of velvet above her knee and thrusting his fingers into the flurry of petticoats. She said she wanted him, but he wanted proof. He needed to feel it.

She sighed, biting her lip as his fingertips grazed her bare inner thigh.

The devil in him wanted to tease her, draw out the contact inch by torturous inch—but he’d expended his reserve of patience days ago. He cupped her sex in his palm. A low groan escaped him. God, was she ready. Her most feminine places were hot and wet and quivering under his touch, both erotic and innocent.