What A Gentleman Wants (24 page)

Slowly the corners of his mouth turned up. “More than you think, probably.”

Hannah shook her head. “Not a bit!”

“No one would ever guess,” he told her.

Hannah blinked. “Thank you.” Then she laughed ruefully. “I should say thank heaven! I’ve been certain I would make a monumental fool of myself from the very first day.”

“Nonsense. If anyone would have looked a fool, it would have been I. How many men will insist they’re married to a woman who appears ready to walk halfway across England to escape him?”

Her cheeks flamed at his wry tone. “Not quite halfway,” she hedged. “Just back to Middleborough.”

He flipped one hand. “Far enough to persuade everyone he wasn’t a good husband.”

Hannah gave a very unladylike snort. “I don’t think that’s what they would believe. More likely, that the lady had lost her mind.”

“Perhaps then it was a bit of both,” he replied, a small smile hovering on his lips as he picked up his teacup again. “I gave a very bad imitation of a husband, and you suffered a lapse in judgment in agreeing to it.”

That was a very kind way of putting things. Hannah bit her lip, but not enough to hide her smile. “May I ask you something?” she said on impulse. “Why did you want me to stay?” The light in his eyes disappeared at once. His teacup stopped halfway to his mouth. “I know you didn’t want a scandal,” she hurried on. “But there must be more than that. I’m… well, I’m simply curious.”

He replaced the cup very precisely on the saucer. “I did not want there to be a scandal. That is absolutely true. But mostly, I did not want to explain to Rosalind. Not only would it have been humiliating for her, after the welcome she gave you, but it would have destroyed her affection for David.” He paused. “Rosalind was always David’s champion. My father… suffice to say he did not expect much from David. David was only the second son, and for years my father still expected to have a third and a fourth. David was for the church—a profession he was spectacularly ill-suited to,” he added as Hannah couldn’t restrain a gasp of laughter at the idea. “Or perhaps the army—again, not something David embraced.”

“No, I can see not,” she murmured.

Then, when my father began to accept that David might be his last son, he tried to impose some sense of duty. David grasped the finer points—an excellent tailor, a ready wit, a certain reputation among the ton—and discarded the less interesting ones. He got himself into more tight spots—“ He stopped again, then shook his head. ”I needn’t hesitate at telling you, I suppose. I daresay this won’t be any surprise to you, that David has a knack for mischief. When my father charged me on his deathbed with keeping David out of trouble, I’d no idea how monumental that task would be.“

“Do you always save him?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said evenly. “What else should I do? Watch my brother be taken off to debtor’s prison? Sued for fraud? Called out for defaming a woman of very questionable morals?” He lowered his voice, throwing her a significant glance. “Cause a scandal by ruining an innocent woman and making a fool of his entire family?”

“Instead you would take a woman you’d never laid eyes on into your household and try to pass her off as a duchess.” Hannah grinned as he opened his mouth, then closed it, with a piercing look at her.

“Yes.”

“David would be impressed,” she went on, thrown off balance by the way he was looking at her. “That seems like a jest he would appreciate.” For a moment he stared at her in affront, his gaze sharp, then
the
expression faded. His mouth curved up.

“You are absolutely right.” His grin grew wider, almost sheepish, and Hannah sat entranced by the transformation again. “I never thought of it that way.” He shook his head. “So I’m no better
than
David, am I?”

No
, she thought with a pang.
You’re much better
. David caused a mess and the duke put his own position and status on the line to repair the damage—not for his own sake but for Celia’s, and Rosalind’s, and David’s, and even Hannah’s and Molly’s. All this masquerade had brought him was inconvenience and expense. People thought he had been duped into marrying a poor, unattractive country widow, Rosalind pestered him about being a dutiful husband, and Hannah had meddled in his affairs worse than if she
had
been his wife.

“You’re certainly no worse,” she said, forcing herself to keep those thoughts to herself and maintain the cordial, lighter atmosphere.

“It is an enormous relief to hear that.” He smiled again, and Hannah’s heart turned over. “Now that you’ve set my conscience at ease, may I ask you something?” he asked. “Why… if I may be so presumptuous… did you accept my proposition?”

Hannah filled her teacup again very carefully. She added a lump of sugar and stirred very carefully. She could answer quickly and lightly, or truthfully. She decided on truthfully. “You promised Molly a dowry. She won’t ever have to make the choice I did, to marry for security. You promised her a Season in London, so her choice of husband needn’t be made from a small country village. There is so much in the world I could never offer her in Middleborough, and now, thanks to you, I can.”

“Ah.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “We are the noble martyrs for our families, then.”

“I should hardly equate living as a duchess with being burnt at the stake,” she retorted. “I’m certainly no martyr. You at least have suffered some inconvenience for others.”

For a long moment he just looked at her. Hannah would have given anything to know what he was thinking.
Impertinence becomes you
, he had told her once.

“Well,” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “Let me just tidy up. It’s late.” She cleared away the dishes, half wishing he would leave, half hoping he would stay. He stayed.

When she had put the last washed cup back on the shelf, he was still standing by the table, still watching her. She smiled nervously, pinching out the candle out of habit. As soon as she did, she cringed; of course the duke of Exeter wasn’t trying to conserve candles, and would probably have lit a whole candelabra to light his way back to bed. But the dark was also comforting, so she said nothing and hurried past him through the door he held open for her.

He walked beside her, not touching and yet very close. His dressing gown billowed behind him and against her legs. The informality of the situation—she was only wearing a nightdress beneath her robe, for heaven’s sake—unraveled another thread from her composure. Instead of leaving her warm and sleepy, the tea seemed to have left her hot and flustered. What had come over her?

He glanced at her with a faint smile then. Hannah smiled back, nervously, and quickly looked away. Thank goodness it was so dark. Hopefully he couldn’t see her blush. He was handsome when he was stern and aloof; when he smiled at her, it made her knees go weak. This was not supposed to happen. She had only meant to make things a bit more cordial between them, not fan the sparks of awareness that glowed within her. It didn’t matter that she was attracted to him, or that he was attracted to her. They were too different in station and background for this to be anything other than a charade.

Marcus was glad she was silent as they walked through the dark house. He was too discomposed by their conversation. He had been surprised when she invited him, and then shocked by how much he hadn’t wanted it to end. Although he would have sworn they didn’t have a thing in common, for the first time in his life that he could recall, it seemed as though someone had understood him completely. It was shocking, and unnerving, and utterly irresistible.

That, he decided, was a problem. He was finding too many things about her that were irresistible. She was not his wife. Being kind and understanding did not give him leave to seduce her.

There was the crux of the matter, he wanted her, but couldn’t have her. With every other woman he had known what they wanted from him, and what he wanted from them. He rather feared, though, that making love to Hannah would only be the beginning of what he wanted. He feared that once he made love to her, he would never be able to let her go. But the longer he resisted his desires, the stronger they grew, until his very soul seemed to roar and rage with frustration and despair. How much worse would it be to have her for a little while and then lose her? Or even worse, to suspect that seducing her had hastened her leaving? It was better, for both of them, to do nothing. Sometimes it was best not to know what one was missing.

They had just reached the stairs when Marcus heard a noise. That was unusual; the servants did not wander the hallways so late at night. Perhaps Rosalind or Celia had awoken and gone in search of a book from the library. Still, Marcus glanced down the corridors to see who was about.

A shadow slipped through the back of the hall, going toward the east wing of the house. Whoever it was carried no lamp. Marcus came to an abrupt halt, instandy alert. Something about that figure was not right. It moved too stealthily. Beside him, Hannah continued a step or two before realizing he had stopped. When she noticed, she, too, stopped and turned. In the faint light he saw her brows rise, and heard her draw breath to ask what was wrong.

In a flash he caught her around the waist with one arm, clapping his free hand over her mouth. She jerked, then started twisting against his grasp with a muffled gasp. “Quiet,” he breathed in her ear, still straining to see and hear, and she went still. A door opened with a faint yawn of hinges. Marcus’s eyes narrowed; he knew that sound. It was the door of his study, a heavy oak door that wouldn’t operate silendy no matter how much oil the servants dripped into the hinges. Pulling Hannah with him, he moved a few steps to the right, placing them in the deep shadow of the spiraling stairs and opening a clear line of sight toward the study.

For several minutes they waited, not moving, barely breathing.
Come out
, Marcus silently dared the intruder.
Come out and reveal yourself
. No one had any reason to go into that room, especially not at mis time of night, and a thief would surely not have walked through the house. There was a spy in his house. This could be the one piece he needed to fit the rest of the puzzle together, the last bit of information that would make everything else make sense.

The door groaned softly again, as the figure slipped back into the hall and closed it. Then he started back down the hall, just as quietly as before, but this time, Marcus was in position to see the intruder’s face.

It was Lily.

He felt Hannah gasp against his hand; she had seen her maid, too, and was just as surprised as he was. Lily was quite possibly the last person on earth he would have expected to see. But he had no doubt of her identity, and even now she was hurrying toward the servants’ stairs. Could Lily be some sort of spy, planted in his household for some purpose? He was sure she had worked for him for several years, though. Only a trusted, proven person would have been selected as the new duchess’s maid, and Mrs. Potts herself had suggested Lily.

He looked down at Hannah, who still stood quietly in his arm. She gazed up at him, her blue eyes wide and questioning. Abruptly he realized how tightly he was holding her, how closely her body pressed against his. How well he could feel soft, womanly curves through the thin silk of her nightdress and dressing gown. And why he had sworn not to touch her again.

Hannah saw the change in his face as he looked down at her. She had been astonished when he grabbed her and pulled her into his arms, but then she saw Lily, and realized he was not acting on any sort of attraction. And the sight of her maid, sneaking around the house well after midnight, was unsettling in and of itself. Lily had to know it was enough to get her dismissed, even had she not gone into her employer’s private study. The girl was up to something, and it couldn’t be good.

But when Marcus lifted his hand from her mouth, she knew he wasn’t thinking about Lily. It wasn’t anger in his eyes, but hunger. His fingers drifted under her chin, lifting her face, and this time, Hannah didn’t say a word.

His lips brushed hers gently, slowly. She held her breath, not daring to move. Part of her longed to cast caution to the wind, to kiss him back and damn the consequences. Part of her cried a protest, a warning that she was asking for heartache. But somehow that little voice seemed to have lost its heart.

He lifted his head and gazed down at her, his eyes dark and shadowed. She stared back, heart pounding.

For a moment neither moved, then his fingers fell away from her chin. His arm around her waist eased.

“Don’t,” Hannah whispered before she could stop herself, and slid her arms around his neck, pulling him back to her. This time she kissed him, really kissed him. His grip tightened as he kissed her again, deeper and harder, as if his self-restraint had finally given way.

His mouth, which had been tentative a moment ago, took possession of hers ruthlessly. Hannah let him. He tasted of sweet tea and brandy, and he kissed her as if he’d been waiting forever to do it.

He peeled the silk away from her shoulder, shoving aside the dressing gown to slide his palm over her bare arm and up her neck, back into her hair to hold her head and angle it just so for another ravenous kiss. Hannah’s body ignited under his touch. Being in his arms felt exactly right, even if it really were exacuy wrong.

But she didn’t care. After so many weeks of lying about everything, this, even beyond the sheer exhilaration of his kiss, this was honest; this was true to herself. And when his hands slid down her back, pressing her against the physical proof that this was no charade on his part, either, Hannah let her head fall back in surrender, practically begging him to kiss her more.

Marcus lifted his head, searching for a sofa, a chair, a table, anything. She was warm and willing and he couldn’t fight his desire any longer. His body was in agony, his soul was exulting. She was his…

And then he realized what he was dunking. He was not her husband, only playing at it, and he had no right to ask this of her, or even to take it if she offered. Would she offer? He stood very still, holding her tightly, and tried to pull his mind away from that thought. Even if she led him to her bed and whispered “
Don’t”
in that husky, inviting voice again, he would be honor-bound to say no.