Romance: REGENCY ROMANCE: The Duke of Hearts (Historical Regency Victorian Duke Romance) (Historical Regency Fantasy Romance) (6 page)

The Duke stared down at his hands, and then back up at Elizabeth. “I must confess, Elizabeth, I have not much experience in wooing a woman. Most of my life has been spent fighting and serving the King. When it comes to matters of the heart, I am afraid I am damaged.”

Elizabeth wanted to go to him then and hold him in her arms. But that would be crossing a line she was not sure she wanted to cross.
You have already kissed, you silly woman! What other line is there to cross!
But couldn’t go to him so soon after the proposal; it would send a signal. Instead, she sighed and said: “I am damaged, too. The prospects for my family were good when I was young. I was the only girl of four boys, the youngest of the family. Then two of my brothers were killed in the war. The other is abroad; we don’t know where. After their deaths, Father started to gamble. He gambled my birthright away before I was fifteen, and since then I have been drawn inward. Within I cannot feel the pain that I so often feel without. Within, I am safe. It makes it difficult to interact with people. I find myself being cold just to keep people away. I only feel like I can tell you think because you are as cold as me, if not colder. I only feel I can tell you think because you are the Duke of Ice.”

“Is that what they call me? The Duke of Ice?”

“Some call you that, yes,” Elizabeth said.

“It is a silly nickname.”

“It is,” Elizabeth agreed.

“If I am cold,” the Duke said, “it is because the world has made me cold. I have watched all of my closest friends die. I have killed more men than a man should ever kill. I have lived amongst enemies for two years and found most of their people to be kind, just, not unlike our own people. I have been warped and ill-used by war. If I were not a Duke I would be a madman. As it is, people merely whisper of me in nicknames. I remember one day, I had been hiding in a barn. The farmer discovered me and made me leave. I did not blame him. If the army found me, they would punish him.

“So I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran. I couldn’t come home, because the King was sending troops, and I am a loyal man. So I just kept running. Until one day I came to another barn. This one had two women hanging from it. It was awful. I never discovered why they had been killed or who was responsible for it. It was then that I decided it was better for a person not to feel anything at all. It is easier.”

“It can be,” Elizabeth whispered. “It can be much, much easier.”

The Duke nodded. “You look very beautiful when you look into the distance like that. Like you’re in a dream.”

“Duke,” Elizabeth said.

“Harold.”

“Harold,” she went on. “Please, tell me the truth, why do you want to marry me? There is a connection between us – I cannot deny that – but there must be some other reason. A man in your position cannot afford to marry based upon emotion alone.”

The Duke rubbed his jaw and let out a long sigh. “There is a reason,” he said. “But it is no longer valid. If the reason were not there I would still wish to marry you as soon as you would have me. But fine, I will give you the reason I threw the party and invited so many unmarried women. The King wishes for me to marry. It is making him look bad, apparently, to have a
renegade
around him in peacetime. He needs me to marry so that the rumors about me can cease.”

“I am merely a pawn!” Elizabeth cried. “I am a piece in your game of houses!”

Elizabeth felt as though she’d been punched in the chest. She had kissed this man – she had
kissed
this man, for Heaven’s sake – and now he was telling her he had lied to her face. She had dishonored herself with him. If anybody were to find out that she had kissed a man without being married to him, she would be ruined forever. “I was just one of many, was I, at the party? One of many that you thought you could marry!”

“That is not how it is,” Harold said, his voice never changing tone or inflection. “I needed a wife. I saw you. You were by far the most interesting woman at that party. I spent time talking to the others and I was disappointed. Yes, it started in a rather sordid way, I will give you that. But we have had a nice time of it over these past two days, haven’t we? I truly believe we are getting to know each other.”

“I do not know you at all,” Elizabeth said. “You lied to me and you—kissed me!”

“I should not have kissed you,” Harold said. “I own that. It was wrong of me. But do not tell me that you did not enjoy the kiss. I know you did, and you know you did. We both enjoyed it. Is that wrong?”

“We are not married,” Elizabeth said. “Whether or not it is wrong makes no difference when the consensus is that it
is
wrong. I will be ruined if anybody ever discovers this!”

“Nobody ever will,” Harold said calmly. “And it will not matter if we marry.”

“Is this your ploy, to kiss me and then blackmail me into marriage?”

“Now you are being silly,” Harold said. “I am not blackmailing you. I would never do something like that.”

“How can you just sit there and talk with such a calm voice? Are you not excited? Are you not sorrowful?”

“I am patient,” Harold said slowly. “I am patient and I am sorry. But I will not weep if that is what you wish. I wept my last tears a long time ago.”

Elizabeth breathed heavily and composed herself, summoning her inner-calm. “Leave me now, if you if would,” she said. “Please, I wish to spend this night alone.”

“Very well,” he said, rising. “I will see you on the morrow.”

Elizabeth waited for the door to close behind him and then threw herself onto the bed, feelings twisting through her like gnarled branches.

*****

Elizabeth woke in the middle of the night with a feeling of almost overwhelming dread. Like every women, she had heard horror stories about men using them and then ruining them. To some men, she knew, using a woman was just a sport, something to be done and then laughed about afterwards. You didn’t need to take a woman’s feelings into consideration when you were a certain kind of mind. You merely did what you wanted and damned the consequences. Elizabeth had to hope that Harold was not a man like that. If he was, she was already ruined. She had already crossed a line.
Perhaps there is a land where a woman can kiss whomever she wants, but it is not this one.

She tried to reclaim sleep, but it wouldn’t come. She walked to the desk and lit a candle, and hunched over a French novel about a woman who is stolen from a small town and carried to Paris, where she learns how to become a proper lady. Only at the end was the small town French woman rumbled, when she failed to read a piece of Greek script. She was thrown aside by the man who had stolen her and was forced to return to her town, disgraced.

Elizabeth closed the book. The sun was rising. She fell into bed and closed her eyes. From pure exhaustion, she was able to sleep for a few hours.

She woke to a knocking at the door. The Duke wanted her to join him for breakfast. Part of Elizabeth wanted to scream:
I’m not coming to breakfast. In fact, I’m going home this very minute!
But the pull of the Duke was strong. Harold was a man who was extremely well-suited to her, despite his dishonesty. And as much as she hated to admit her weakness, she wanted to see him again. She wanted to look into his eyes and have him look back into hers. She wanted to feel his hand on her leg. God help her, she was attracted to this man.

She dressed in a simple gown and walked to the breakfast room like a woman walking to the gallows. She was doomed by her own attraction to him, she realized. But if she was doomed, so was he. And she knew one thing: if she had to, if it really came down to it, she could completely shut off her emotions and sever her ties with this man. Dishonor or no dishonor, Elizabeth could do it if she had to.

Harold looked anxious upon her entry. He nearly jumped out of his chair and rushed around the table to pull Elizabeth’s chair out for her. Elizabeth gratefully sat and waited for breakfast to be served. They ate a simple meal of bread and meat, and then the Duke leaned forward on his elbows and stared at Elizabeth. “I am sorry for my dishonesty,” he said. “Truly, I am.”

“If you are lying about this, what else are you lying about? That is what worries me the most. We have not known each other for very long. What secrets am I to discover after we have married?”

“You can ask me anything, and I will answer honestly. But the King’s direction is the only secret I have that pertains directly to you.”

“I will judge that,” Elizabeth said. “For example, have you been with a woman before?”

“Yes,” Harold said, looking down at the table.

“How many?”

“Six.”

“Six!”

“How is that possible?”

Harold shrugged. “I have travelled, Elizabeth. But they were always flings, over within a day and never thought of again. I want to marry you, to make you my wife, and to serve you well. That is the truth of it.”

She looked into his eyes and tried to gauge if he was being dishonest or not. As far as she could tell, his feelings were sincere, but how was one to know? For all she knew, he had used these same exact lines on the other six women. But there was the lust, as well, that was calling out even now, as she looked at him. How she wanted to touch him more, and have him touch her more. How she wanted to go further than a kiss…

Stop it,
she told herself.
Stop thinking like this. It is not proper! You are a lady!

But thoughts of that kind were not so easily extinguished. “I would have some proof that you really wish to marry me,” she said slowly.

“How am I to prove it to you?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I do not know. But that is that I require.”

“If I can prove that I am sincere, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, far too quickly. She laughed at her own eagerness. “Yes,” she repeated. “If you can prove it.”

The Duke nodded and then rang the service bell. The freckle-faced girl Elizabeth had seen around the Castle walked in. “Katherine,” Harold said.

“Yessir?”

“Have you heard the good news?”

“The good news, sir?”

“Yes! You haven’t heard? Elizabeth and I are getting married.”

The girl’s face lit up and she congratulated the two of them before retrieving the plates. Harold grinned for the first time since Elizabeth had met him. “You see?” he said. “She will tell the other servants, who will tell the messenger boy when he comes in the morning. Before you know it rumors will be all over England. We are, for all intents are purposes, publically engaged. But just to make it more definite…” He rose and walked to a table upon which rested a quill, inkpot, and paper. He scribbled quickly and then handed Elizabeth the paper.

It read:

Mr. Hawk,

I am delighted to inform you that your daughter and I are engaged,

Signed,

Harold Stonewall

He folded the paper and enclosed it in an envelope, which he sealed the Stonewall seal. “I would be a flagrant liar indeed if I denied that I wrote this letter, seeing as it bears my signature and my seal. Now, I will send this off immediately.” He rang the service bell again. A different servant entered this time. She grinned as she collected the plates. “Congratulations, m’lordm m’lady.”

News does travel fast
.

“Take this letter to town and have it sent to the Hawk residence immediately,” Harold said. “I wish for England to know of our engagement as soon as possible.”

After the servant had left, Harold returned to his seat and smiled at Elizabeth. “Is that sufficient proof, my lady?”

“Harold, I want to ask something of you, but I fear it may be monstrously un-ladylike.”

“Ask away, Elizabeth. Social mores have never overly interested me.”

“Would you accompany to my bedroom?”

Her mouth was dry as she said this. She was worried that the Duke might laugh at her, or turn on her utterly. Instead, he rose to his feet and walked around the table. Standing over her, he offered her his arm. “Let us retire for the morning, my lady,” he said.

*****

Harold placed her on the bed as though she weighed nothing and began undressing her. Every part of Elizabeth was alive with anticipated pleasure. Her private area was pulsating with warmth. Harold’s body was strong and firm over hers as he unlaced her bodice and threw it upon the floor. Soon she was naked, laying on her back and looking up at him. He pulled off his own clothes until he, too, was naked.

His body was muscular, rippled with strong, tense muscles. His skin was white and hairless. Scars marked him here and there, but they were faded and did nothing to detract from his attractiveness. “I will be inside you soon, my lady,” he said.

His private area was hard and
big
. She had never seen a man’s parts before, but as soon as she saw this one, she knew it would be amazing. She reached out, and he walked toward her, and then her hand touched it. “What shall I do?” she said.