Dukes Prefer Blondes (29 page)

“Don't you like it?” she said.

“Let me see. Turn around. Slowly.”

She did. He swallowed a groan. And another.

When she faced him again, she gave two slow, sleepy blinks and said, “What do you think?”

He said. “Very nice. Let's take it off.”

C
lara had gone to a great deal of trouble getting into the ensemble. That was to say, Davis had done all the tying and hooking and muttering about French dressmakers.

It took Radford very little time to get it off, though he never seemed to hurry. But his hands—­those clever, agile hands—­worked so quickly and smoothly. In two heartbeats, it seemed, she was wearing nothing at all. Then he sank to his knees . . . and down, further . . . and then it was his tongue and his hands on her bare skin, teasing and heating her. Her knees weakened and her legs shook, and he said gruffly, “Perhaps your ladyship would like to sit down.”

She'd like to lie down, but the chair was nearest and her knees were buckling, and she dropped into it and gasped, “Good heavens.”

He returned his mouth and tongue and hands to their work. Soon her spine gave way, and she began to slide from the chair. As she began to sink helplessly downward, he pulled nearby cushions onto the floor for her to land on.

She said voice as thick as her mind, “I'm not sure I can survive this. Oh!”

“I promised to worship you with my body,” he said. “I said it in front of
everybody
.”

His tongue, his wicked tongue. His hands, his artful hands.

He made every inch of her quiver, inside and outside. He caressed her and kissed her. He suckled her and she thought she'd scream with the pleasure of it and the madness, too, knocking away all her lady-­ness and the veneer of civilization and letting loose a wanton.

And at last, when she thought she'd die of wanting him, he gave himself to her. His body joined hers, and he moved with her in the way that now seemed so completely right and natural, the union of body and soul she'd been waiting for all her life. She'd had only the dimmest sense, before, of what she'd been waiting for. But she had it now, she knew.

With my body I thee worship
. Yes, he'd said that yesterday. Was it only yesterday?

And this is forever
, she thought, the last coherent though she had. Then the moment came, the peak of joy she'd so recently discovered, and she swam into forever, and floated there, in his arms, until she drifted into a sweet, soft darkness, and slept.

A
maid had delivered their morning coffee and cleared away last night's debris, and Radford had expected to go down to breakfast, as one usually did.

But shortly after the maid, the footman reappeared, this time with breakfast. He set it on the table before the fire, reinvigorated the fire, and departed.

Clara, emerging from her dressing room in a more demure dressing gown than she'd worn last night, said, “Oh, how kind of your mother.” She blushed. “She wanted us to have a bit more privacy.”

“That isn't wise,” he said. “The more privacy we have, the more likely I am to take advantage in lewd and unseemly ways.”

They'd both forgotten to worry about irritations, and the debaucheries had continued into the early morning hours.

“If that happens, we won't have time for me to dress to go out again and help you lead our follower on a merry chase,” she said. “Well, not so merry for him, I suppose.”

He must have looked as torn as he felt, because she laughed and said, “My dear, we have all the time in the world for lovemaking. But we don't want our follower to give up in despair, before we can get to the bottom of the mystery, do we?”

And so they had their private breakfast, after which she went away for the lengthy process of donning a carriage dress. Able to dress in a quarter of the time, though unaided by a valet—­a domestic addition he supposed he ought to arrange for soon—­he whiled away the time thinking about possibilities for their future residence. And calculating the cost of furnishing a house suitably. And children. Since it was only logical to expect them, one must include them in the calculations.

Life was growing a great deal more complicated.

It was early afternoon before they went downstairs.

The butler met them at the bottom of the stairs and told them they were wanted in the library. Mr. Westcott had come, he said.

“Who the devil invited him?” Radford said, his heart sinking. Westcott would not have returned to Richmond so soon unless he had urgent business, curse him. Radford wasn't ready for business. But he had to be, he reminded himself. He had a wife he needed to support in a manner somewhat resembling what she was accustomed to.

“Drat the fellow,” he said as they walked to the drawing room. “Did I not tell you he'd be endlessly popping in, on this whim or that, with one curst document or another or a client in dire need of me at the most inconvenient times?”

“I'm sure he wouldn't be here if it weren't important,” she said.

“That's the trouble,” he said. “It's going to be important, and I'll have to attend to it, whatever it is. Ah, well, you were the one who wanted to marry a barrister. It seems we'll have to put our mystery aside, after all.”

Minutes later

F
ather half-­reclined on his sofa as usual, near the fire. Mother sat beside him in her usual place. Westcott, who'd occupied a chair on the other side of the fireplace, rose when Clara entered.

Everybody looked angry.

This was odd, an oddness that didn't bode well.

Father took up from the table in front of him a heavy document bearing a familiar seal. “Westcott brought this,” he said. “Express from Glynnor Castle.”

Bernard, drat him. What now?

“I told Bernard's man of business as well as his secretary to address all correspondence to me, as you and I agreed was wisest,” Radford said. It was absurd to disturb George Radford's retirement with business matters Radford and Westcott could easily handle. Only Bernard wrote directly to Father these days, but not often. He reserved his long, tedious, boastful letters for his
dear little Raven
.

“It went to Westcott, but it was addressed to me, as it was required to be,” Father said. “Your cousin—­blast him—­” He broke off, glaring at the letter.

“What's he done now?” Radford said.

“That's what he's done.” His father threw the letter down on the table in front of him.

Radford looked down. A weight settled in his chest.

The legal hand, the verbosity, the seal . . .

“Dead,” said his father. “Dead, dead, dead.”

 

Chapter Seventeen

DUKE, in Latin
Dux, à ducendo
, signifying the leader of an army, noblemen being anciently either generals and commanders of armies in time of war, or wardens of marches, and governors of provinces in peace. This is now the first rank of the nobility.

—­
Debrett's Peerage
, 1831

T
hrough the noise in his head, Radford was aware of Westcott speaking . . . apologizing . . . to Clara.

“I'm so sorry to be the bearer of this shocking news,” he was saying. “I must beg your ladyship to be seated.”

“Do sit down, child,” said Mother. “You're white.”

Radford looked away from the ghastly document to his wife. Though she had her screen in place, the color had drained from her face. He discerned other small signs of distress: the slight tremble of her lips and hands.

“Very . . . surprised, that's all,” she said. “But I promise you I won't faint.”

“I might,” he said. “Do sit, Clara. Westcott has left his comfortable seat by the fire for you. And he'll feel better about ruining your honeymoon if you'd at least deprive him of the chair.”

She gave Radford one quick, anguished look, then sat. She composed herself. “I beg your pardon. I can't quite take it in. Does the letter say how it happened?”

He couldn't quite take it in, either. He could scarcely think, his brain clamored so. He made himself stare at the paper in his hand until the blur of ink resolved into words. He scanned the pages.

“The news runs rather longer than my father's announcement,” he said.

“A lawyer wrote it, that's why,” Father said. “You'd better translate for your lady, son. I can't bring myself to repeat the story. Too infuriating.”

“Better you don't, my dear,” Mother said.

Better Father didn't, indeed. He was badly shaken, though anger seemed to be displacing shock. All the same, any strong emotion debilitated him.

Even Radford felt as though somebody had struck him with a club.

Naturally, logic had allowed for the possibility of Bernard's dying young. This awareness had always hung in the back of Radford's mind, especially lately, since the other Radford men had become deceased so unexpectedly. But the idea had hung very far in the back of his mind.

Beyond question Bernard was obese and a drunkard. Radford had warned him about damage to his liver, among other health concerns. But overindulgence rarely caught up with a man so early in life. England abounded in men like Bernard, and they lived into old age. The previous King, a glutton who swilled drink and laudanum by the gallon, lived into his sixties.

Thirty years old.

It made no sense. Yet it had to make sense because here it was, written in a legal hand on costly paper, page after page of it.

Radford read it through once, picking out the essentials, then once more, translating and condensing the lawyerly convolutions for his wife.

“He'd been hunting,” he said. “A large party, including his chosen lady. It seems he'd come out of a wood and to the edge of a steep bank. It had rained hard the day before and the stream below was swollen. Oh, and better and better: He was riding a hunter he'd bought very recently—­to impress the lady, I don't doubt. A new horse, slick ground—­and of course he was near blind drunk, though one obtains only a glimpse of the fact through all the careful verbiage dancing about it.”

He turned a page and frowned. “Since he got separated from the others, we have no eyewitnesses. No way to be sure whether he tried to leap the stream and his mount balked, or the animal was game but Bernard's weight and the wet conditions undermined the jump. In any event, given the horse's superficial scratches and coating of mud, it's clear the creature slipped and went over the edge. The hunt party found Bernard in the water, with a gash in his head. Either he'd hit his head, and the blow killed him, or he'd hit his head, lost consciousness, and drowned before he could be rescued. The doctor who examined him afterward said the blow killed him.”

“He would,” Father said. “The victim was a duke. Most physicians would choose the explanation most liable to absolve others in the party of fault or guilt. No one could have saved him, in other words, even had they reached him sooner or heaved him out of the water more quickly.”

“I'd better examine the body myself,” Radford said. “And question the doctor.”

“You'd better,” his father said. “And without loss of time.”

The wives were too wise to ask,
What difference does it make?

In the great scheme of things, exactly how Bernard had died didn't matter. Dead was dead, and their world had changed irrevocably.

But in the minds of the Radford men, uncertainty had to be put to rest. Moreover, solving the puzzle would settle one's mind.

“I could forgive him more easily, had it been purely an accident,” Father said. “But this is so like his stupidity and arrogance. He should never have mounted a horse—­any horse, for any purpose—­when deeply intoxicated. He couldn't think clearly at the best of times. Naturally he'd overestimate his skill and underestimate his weight. We ought to be grateful he didn't maim or kill his horse, or any innocent bystanders.”

“However it happened, I'm very sorry,” Clara said, her voice clear and level. “I'd hoped he'd marry the lady and would be happy, and she would make something of him.”

Everyone looked at her, and Radford was startled to discover his throat was closing and his eyes itched. Grief? Over
Bernard
?

No, no. It was the shock, that was all. If anything, the grief was a perfectly rational one, for the life he was about to lose. His career, especially. Clara understood—­the look she'd sent him! It was selfish of him, yes, to repine the loss of his career when he would gain so much. Yet he was human, and even normal and less selfish human beings resented having their plans disrupted.

He felt grief, too, for his father, whom he'd wanted to shield from Bernard and the others, from the dukedom's problems and demands.

And yet—­here was the madness and the difficulty of it—­Radford was pleased for his bride. He would be able to give her the life she ought to have and was always meant for.

She went on, “What you told me about him led me to believe he had potential to be better than he had been. And then there were the gifts.”

Radford could barely make sense of what she said. He was preoccupied with wrestling his emotions into submission.

“I know it will seem a small thing,” she said, “but it seemed to me he had taste or at least cared enough to charge somebody with taste to choose our wedding gifts. Generous choices, too. And such beautiful things. The tea and coffee ser­vice, with scenes from the
Odyssey
. You said it might have been a private joke, because you'd provoked him with quotations from Homer once upon a time.”

Radford came back to the moment, and his mind painted a vivid picture of the wedding gifts. He'd briefly wondered at the extravagant choice, and allowed for the possibility, slim though it was, that Bernard had softened a degree. Perhaps he was, if not in love, in unusually good humor on account of his new lady.

“And the Sèvres, with the Olympians,” Clara said.

Apart from the brief and quickly forgotten surmise about motives and state of mind, Radford had not, in fact, given the wedding gifts much thought, except to wonder where they would put everything. Now he considered the splendid gifts Bernard had sent, when he had every reason to send nothing at all to a distant cousin who, in his view, had never done anything but bother him.

Dear little Raven . . . Why, Raven's got a sweetheart, what do you know?

Of all ­people, drunken Bernard had known.

He'd lent his traveling chariot and postilion for Radford's hasty return to London. Could this have been the drunken boor's way of expressing thanks, or at least appreciation, for his despised cousin's coming to his rescue? Or had he found the idea of Raven having a sweetheart so hilarious, he'd encouraged it simply for the fun of the thing?

One would never know.

Radford gave a short laugh, though his irrational self wanted to weep. “He must have been deeply impressed when he learned I'd won a beautiful lady of high rank. He probably thought I did it through some lawyer's trick. Very likely, the gifts were meant to be a consolation prize for you.”

“I thought it extremely generous of him,” she said, “considering he might have had me for himself, if not for your wicked lawyerly wiles.”

Radford explained to his parents his wife's threat to marry Bernard.

“Did you, really?” Father said.

“Well done, my dear,” said Mother. “Men were ever obtuse, even otherwise keenly perceptive barristers.”

“Let us agree to give Bernard credit for generosity,” Father said. “Then we might say something good of the dead.”

“Let's give him a little more credit,” Radford said. “Let's say he chose with taste and a degree of—­what—­humor? Conceivably, even affection.”

He glanced at his father. He'd relaxed a few degrees. Interestingly, he was regarding Clara in the pleased way he used to look at his son when the youthful Oliver had demonstrated signs of intelligence.

The new duke sent for wine, and made a toast to Bernard. Being the superior lawyer he was, he made an elegant speech, which neatly balanced annoyance with Bernard for dying untimely, understanding of the way his upbringing and family life had deformed his character, and appreciation of his sense of humor. Perhaps it was puerile and boorish, Father said, but at least Bernard had one. This could not be said of many judges.

Then Father turned to Clara. “Well, my dear daughter,” he said, the
dear
startling everybody except her ladyship. “You were wiser than your parents thought. I've become the blasted Duke of Malvern, and you've married my heir, the Marquess of Bredon. Pray, try to keep his lordship from getting killed before he can inherit, will you, my lady?”

O
f course Clara knew what to do. She doubted there was a better-­prepared girl in all of England.

Her new family were in turmoil, as was to be expected when an earthquake had overthrown their world.

A lady is never ruffled, and she seeks to put those about her at ease.

First order of business, therefore: Restore calm.

She'd boldly tackled the Bernard issue, and the family had responded well. Her father-­in-­law had regained his equanimity. Because his mind had been quieted, his wife's was. Clara had seen, from the moment she'd met them, how deeply devoted Anne Radford was to her husband. Her daughters adored the gruff old man, as did their children.

Though she hadn't spent a great deal of time with her, Clara hadn't needed much to comprehend her mother-­in-­law's character.

When they'd left the men to talk business, and retired to the more intimate surroundings of her boudoir, the lady confirmed Clara's impression.

“Naturally, I'll do my duty,” she said. “But you must understand, my dear, I'm sadly out of practice. By choice. I do not love the beau monde. They all turned their backs on me after the divorce, though they all knew I was the innocent party. My brute of a husband did not even want our daughters! I should have thought his eagerness to abandon them and drag all our names through the mire of a divorce would offer a hint to the world of the man's nature . . .” She shook her head. “But no, do forgive me. I never meant to go over that old story. It's an age now.”

“An elephant has fallen through the roof,” Clara said. “Our nerves are frayed. Even my husband displayed a discernible tremor of distress.”

“Ah, you noticed.” Her Grace tipped her head to one side to study her daughter-­in-­law. “You found a way to calm Oliver without saying irritating things like ‘Be calm, my dear. It is Fate.' Or some such platitude.”

“I should commit a platitude only if I were very, very angry with him,” Clara said.

“Very wise.” Her mother-­in-­law looked away for a moment, then said, “It's more than thirty years since that time. Now I'm a duchess, and all my old tormentors still alive will have to give way to me. But it makes no difference. I don't want to return to that world. I've been so happy.” She paused briefly before going on, “Radford and I lived a quiet life even before he retired. He had his excitement in the courtroom, and I relished sitting in the gallery or hearing about it when he came home. I don't wish to be a reclusive Duchess of Malvern, and hide in the country as the others did or were compelled to do. But the world will soon descend upon us, and I don't want the world. I want to be with my husband. I do not think that so very unreasonable. He is not w—­” Here her voice broke.

Clara said gently, “In your place, it's where I should wish to be as well. But did he not say I was clever to marry Mr. Radford? Well, I say Mr. Radford was clever to marry me. You're aware I was brought up to marry a duke.” She could hardly fail to be aware of it. Mama had been unable to resist mentioning the subject. Repeatedly. “I shall be happy to do as much or as little as you choose, in the way of making your life as you wish it to be.”

Her Grace gazed at her for a moment, and her eyes misted. But she, too, had been born and bred a lady. She blinked back the tears and, to Clara's surprise—­for this lady had always seemed a trifle aloof—­leaned toward her and took her hand.

“I had doubts, I admit,” she said. “I feared you and Oliver would have a difficult time of it. Disparity of rank is no little problem. But I know you truly care for him and he cares for you, and you are a good, kind girl.” She slid her hand away and sat back with a smile. “And so I thank you for your offer, and promise to take full advantage of your goodness, kindness, and youth. I believe I shall be exceedingly selfish and lazy and throw everything on your young shoulders, my dear.”