The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke (24 page)

“Gollumpus!” she squealed with delight as Adrian rose politely from his chair to acknowledge her.

And then, fortunately before Emma was prompted to say something uncharitable, such as, “Nice of you to join us for dessert,” Serena fairly galloped across the room and thumped Adrian on the back with a blow that would have knocked a normal male under the table.

He coughed, raising his brow. “I suppose I deserved that.”

“And about ten more,” she said gleefully before she glanced around the table. “So sorry we’re late. Lady Hellfire needed a good worming, and then the vicar had to change his shirt.” She stared past Adrian at Emma in surprise. “Don’t tell me
that’s
your wife—”

He grinned. “I won’t. But she is.”

Hermia nearly dropped her wine goblet.

Emma managed to set her glass down beside her plate. Where in the etiquette manual was
this
sort of thing covered? “Yes, I am his wife and I’m so very pleased to make your—”

“Well, blow me over with a feather,” Serena said with a guffaw. “I can see straight off that she’s too good for you, Adrian. For one thing she’s dainty as a dewdrop, and she’s got manners. Did you take her captive in one of your harems?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “How did you guess? I brought back a few pirates for you to play with, too.”

Serena poked him in the arm. “I don’t need a pirate. I’ve got the vicar now.”

“Who’s the vicar?” he asked with a derisive smile. “Another horsey?”

“He’s my fiancé,” she replied. “In fact, if your wife doesn’t mind me stealing her thunder, he and I thought we might announce our engagement here tonight. And discuss plans for the charity assembly to raise funds for the village school.” She made a belated curtsy in Emma’s direction. “All jesting aside, Lady Wolverton, I welcome you on behalf of the parish. I do hope you and I can become friends and work together for the good of Scarfield.”

Emma’s eyes misted over with an emotional if un-seemly response of tears. To be loved by a man of good heart, to be helpful to the disheartened was everything she could ask of life. And she had no rival for Adrian’s affection.

Her obligation to the academy must still be met, and the move to the country would benefit everyone. She would never stop worrying about her infamous Boscastle family in London.

But—she was needed here, too. The duke needed his son. Florence needed a husband. And Cedric surely needed a wife.

There followed a merry evening of nibbling on stewed pears with white cheese, Moselle and Bordeaux wines imbibed in a spirit of celebration. The vicar arrived shortly after Serena and apologized that Lady Hellfire had made him late. Odham expressed his deep concern over her ladyship’s health until Hermia gently elbowed him and explained that Hellfire was a horse, not a woman.

And although the duke appeared to weary long before his company, he appeared contented when he excused himself for the night.

Emma walked with him to the staircase.

“I don’t deserve this happiness, I know,” he said, smiling at her.

“If the gifts we are granted came only by our merit, I think we would all be beggars, your grace.”

He nodded. “Perhaps he does deserve you. God willing he will not make the same mistakes that I have when it comes to love.”

“Fraud,” Emma said the moment she and Adrian stood alone in their bedchamber.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Your table manners are impeccable.”

“Are you complaining?” he asked in mock astonishment.

“Not about your manners, only about your devious nature. You who pleaded for me to instruct you. You were elegance incarnate from your finger bowl to the filbert pudding.”

He unknotted his cravat, smiling at her. “What if I said I was merely watching what you did?”

“I wouldn’t believe you. And by the way, Adrian, Serena is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.”

He winced. “And one of the most boisterous. I told you she didn’t want to marry me. She knows me too well.”

“Or not well enough.”

He unhooked the back of her gown with his free hand. Within moments the bisque-satin dropped to her feet. Her undergarments followed.

“By the way, Emma,
you’re
the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.” He kissed the vulnerable curve between her shoulder and collarbone. “Haven’t I made that point clear to you?”

Adrian awoke before dawn and walked to the bluff overlooking the estate. Years ago he had often escaped here during one of his father’s tirades. Pretending he was a conqueror who commanded an invincible army, he would plot to storm the house and overthrow the duke. Foolishly he had hoped to liberate not only himself but his mother’s ghost.

A strong wind rose from the southeast, fighting his stance. He fought harder. He always had. And now—now he wanted peace. He could still walk away. Emma would fuss and insist he meet his duty, but in the end she would support his decision.

He’d sworn he wouldn’t stay.

He’d sworn he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. He had come back in part to prove to his father that he’d lived a full life without benefit of family or his aristocratic background.

But suddenly he wondered whether Emma had been right all along. He was the duke’s son, heir not only to his father’s wealth and position, but also to his obligations.

He was no longer a child playing conqueror. He stared across the estate, at the mist-enshrouded lake, the cattle grazing on the hills, and the village beyond. The golden stone manor house dominated the land as it always had. But it too showed signs of age and neglect.

Home.

It wasn’t home.

Home was the warrior angel climbing up the hill to meet him, waving his coat in her hands and shouting that he would catch his death standing out here in his shirtsleeves, and didn’t he feel the wind?

He took the coat from her hands and wrapped it around her. She was still fussing about something when he pulled her into his arms.

Scarfield needed a guardian.

The guardian needed Emma Boscastle.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked her, resting his chin on her head.

She wriggled out of his arms. “I’ll say. I have just gotten a letter from London.”

“From?”

“Charlotte and Heath. ‘No need to worry,’ they assured me.”

“Which of course means—”

“—there’s something to worry about.”

He guided her down the hill, his body shielding hers from the wind. “I don’t know why you would assume that.”

“Well, Adrian, Miss Peppertree has threatened to resign.”

“But she hasn’t?”

“Who knows? I’ve been warned
not
to believe anything I read in the papers about the academy and Audrey Watson’s house.”

“Who’s Audrey Watson?” he asked curiously. “I think I’ve heard her name before.”

“Well, it’s to your credit, believe me, that you are not familiar with her establishment. Oh, Adrian. She owns a School of Venus.”

He burst into unrestrained laughter.

“Listen to you,” she said in a disparaging voice. “That isn’t even all of it.”

He sobered. “There’s more?”

“Yes, and it’s so disturbing. Charlotte has expressed a wish to become a writer.”

“That sounds harmless enough.” He waited a moment. “Doesn’t it?”

“Not when she wishes to chronicle the social history of the Boscastle family,” Emma said as if he were supposed to have read her mind. And Charlotte’s letter.

He whistled, then said, wisely, or so he thought, “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll say it for you,” Emma said, her color rising. “There are some social histories that should remain secret. There won’t be a single chapter, nary a page—a paragraph—that does not detail some scandal.”

He glanced up guardedly at the sky, then back at her. Her delicate ears and nose blushed pink from the wind. Her strawberry blond hair had uncoiled from its chignon. She looked a little wild. How he loved his wife. How glad he was to be done with a life of fighting and fevers and wandering about. His future would be breeding a family, perhaps horses, and he would stuff himself every winter on Christmas pudding with a woman who made him wear his coat to keep him warm.

“Let’s have a look at the lodge,” he said on impulse, taking her hand. “Cedric mentioned it’s in dire need of repair and is being used as a barn.”

She wrinkled her nose. “A barn? Oh, I don’t—”

“It’s going to rain, Emma,” he insisted. “Can’t you feel it in the air?”

“No.” she said, lifting her brow. “And I don’t see a cloud in the sky, either.”

“That’s because you’re too short to see as high as I do.”

She laughed indignantly. “Toplofty, are we, your grace-to-be?”

Toplofty and a lord of temptation.

Several minutes later he’d lured her into the lodge that overlooked the lake. As she was dutifully taking tally of the bolts and beams that needed to be replaced, he advanced on her from behind and gently jostled her onto a bed of straw. It wasn’t a fair fight. The woman was half his size, and his motives were inarguably impure.

“What are you doing?” she said in dismay. “I can’t go back to the house with hay in my hair.”

“I’m the lord of the manor,” he said in a gruff voice. “And you’re to do what I say.”

“And if I refuse?” she asked breathlessly, sprawled out under his shadow.

He frowned. “I might have to spank your soft white backside.”

“As if I’d let you,” she said, laughing.

He pinned her beneath him. “As if you could stop me.”

He settled down and kissed her, his bare hand slipping under her skirt. “Are you an obedient or disobedient servant? There’s a vast difference.”

“That depends on whom I have to disobey.”

“Obey me.”

She laced her arm around his neck, smiling wickedly. “Only if you promise not to tell the master about this.”

He cupped one cheek of her tempting backside. “We’ll keep it our secret, sweetheart. But you can’t let on to your husband, either.” He closed his eyes, swallowing a groan. “My God, Emma—”

She went very still, whispering, “It isn’t my husband we have to worry about. Adrian, let me go. There’s a man standing in the door. We’ve been found.”

“A—who is he?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter? We cannot be discovered tumbling in a barn.”

They disengaged, Adrian swearing to himself, Emma looking embarrassed as the intruder strode up to them with a pitchfork in his hands.

“Excuse me,” the middle-aged arrival said in a wry voice. “I’m Robin Turner, the lodgekeeper. Can I be of service to the pair of you?”

Adrian whisked Emma to her feet. “As a matter of fact, this is my wife and we’re—”

“The new help?” the grizzle-haired keeper guessed. His dark eyes softened with empathy. “Well, ’tis a hell of a way to start service, but I suppose there’s no harm done as long as you’re presentable when you meet the duke. His heir is come home and we’re all to be on our best behavior.”

“You’re a generous soul, sir.” Adrian stood in front of Emma so that she could straighten her skirt and smooth away the pieces of straw that clung to it. “I’ll try to repay the favor.”

The lodgekeeper shook his hand. “Go on, both of you. Just do the job you’re hired to do. I’m not so ancient that I don’t remember—oh, hell, get out of here. I’ll say nothing of this to the master.”

And he didn’t.

Not even when, only two hours later, he met with the duke to discuss what repairs were needed on the estate’s outbuildings, and was introduced to Lord and Lady Wolverton.

Adrian thought he and his new ally Turner did a convincing job of pretending not to know each other, despite the fact that Emma winked saucily over her shoulder to the lodgekeeper as he turned to exit from the hall. Adrian’s mouth dropped. Turner nearly walked into the wall.

The duke gave a puzzled laugh. “Have I missed something?”

“Emma and I made an inspection of the lodge earlier today,” Adrian said evasively, his gaze lingering on his wife. “Isn’t that what you wished for us to do?”

“Do you know what I wish for before I die?” the duke asked, a canny gleam in his eye. “Come along with me for a minute. I’ll share my final request with you, Adrian.”

Later that same evening, Adrian laid preoccupied in bed with his wife, she tossing and turning until he finally glanced down at her and asked, “Do you have something on your mind?”

She surfaced from the depths of the Queen Anne pinewood bedstead and asked, “Do you?”

He slid beneath the covers until they were nestled together, his hand curled around her hip. He enjoyed sleeping thus, his body protecting hers. “Explain.”

“Your father’s dying wish,” she said in concern. “Is it something you are honor-bound to keep secret?”

“Actually, no.”

He rested his chin against her cheek. Her body tempted him, her spine arching beneath his hand, her skin soft as cream. She waited. So did he, a smile he could not hide surfacing at her question.

It seemed that he’d fought this moment from the day he had run away from Scarfield.

He was stronger now, his only need, his only weakness the woman in his arms.

And finally that woman drew away from him and demanded, “Then are you going to lie here smiling at me all night, or give me my answer?”

“He would like us to present him with a grandchild before he dies. He’s stubborn enough to see his request fulfilled, too.”

“I see,” Emma said, her voice reflective. “And what did you tell him?”

He cleared his throat. “I assured him that we were doing our part to perform that ducal duty.”

“You didn’t,” she whispered, laughter in her voice.

“Yes, I did. But not in detail.”

She ran her hands down his lean, muscular flanks. “A duke always keeps his promises.”

His mouth captured hers. “I’m only a duke’s son. Do you suggest an interim form of etiquette to satisfy the situation?”

She closed her hands around the thick column of his manhood, climbing atop him. He lay back on the bed, staring up at her, his breathing suddenly uneven.

“Practice,” she said with a taunting smile. “Hours and hours—no, days and nights of diligent practice.”