The Duke's Disaster (R) (4 page)

“Dote on me?”

“And allow you to dote on me, a little.” He smiled crookedly, a different smile than she’d seen on him before. Warmer, almost charming.

“We must discuss a few things first,” she managed as that long, tanned finger moved slowly over her forearm, from wrist to elbow and back again. She felt that touch right down to her knees, which should not have been possible.

“We have decades to talk,” he said, gently uncrossing her arms, “and if you’re fretting over what’s to come, talking will not ease your worries. It won’t be so bad, Thea. In fact, I’ll make it as good as you’ll allow it to be.”

“But there are matters…”

As Thea spoke, Anselm slowly, gently wrapped her in his embrace, bringing her hands up to his neck, then settling his mouth over hers.

“Later, Thea,” he murmured. “Now comes pleasure.”

How could a man who stomped, smirked, and ordered his way through life kiss with such languor? Thea knew the meaning of melting bones as the duke’s mouth went on campaign, moving over her lips with such tenderness she could barely remain upright. Just a brush, a tease, a nuzzle, a taste, a sighing of his breath over her cheek, and Thea’s knees threatened to buckle.

“Kiss me back,” Anselm challenged her. “Dote on me.”

His
mouth
was doting on Thea, exploring slowly and thoroughly, and then his tongue…

A man ought not to have such an appendage, and certainly not both a tongue and that other most troublesome bit of flesh. He could invite with that tongue, insinuate, flirt, encourage, and,
God
help
her
, arouse. Thea’s fingers sifted through his hair, her body curved into his taller frame, and her lips learned the feel and taste of a man who intended to dote on her to the limit of his conjugal rights.

What
on
earth
had
she
got
herself
into?

* * *

Noah’s bride was charming him, despite her inexperience, her starch, her uncertainty. Prior to marriage, he’d dealt exclusively with professionals in the bedroom, usually keeping a mistress, and occasionally sampling the charms of those other women available for a price. He was emotionally uninvested, and so were they, and he liked it that way. The bored widows and straying wives were for Meech to deal with, as were the messy endings and sad misunderstandings such encounters often led to.

Noah’s partners were playing a part, and he paid them to play it well. They were to make him feel desired, inspire his lust, accommodate it, and send him on his way lighter in the pocket. Increasingly, he had not been lighter in the heart when he’d left their powdered, perfumed, diaphanously draped company. They were assessing his worth as they cooed and sighed, seeing not
him
, but a ring, a bracelet, a parure, or perhaps even rooms on Curzon Street.

Those women could smile at a man as if he were their every carnal dream personified, and yet be thinking as they panted and sighed of what to wear to tomorrow’s opera. The calculation of it was almost admirable… Almost.

Araminthea Collins…
Winters
was having trouble keeping any thoughts in her head at all. She was shyly enthusiastic about kissing Noah, and her grip on his hair was fierce. She probably didn’t hear the sounds she was making, of desire and surprise, and she couldn’t be aware of how her unconfined breasts pressed against Noah’s chest.

Breasts whose fullness surprised him—wonderfully.

A figure suited to childbearing was also a figure suited to bed sport.

“Are you laughing at me, sir?” Thea’s eyes were wary, but he didn’t let her pull away.

“I’m smiling. Not that I have anything against laughter in bed. You, madam, are overdressed.”

When Thea would have scampered off, Noah gathered her close.

“We’ll blow out the candles, Thea,” he assured her, “but you’ll have to be my valet.” When she relaxed in his arms, he stepped back and held out one wrist for her to undo his sleeve button.

“You didn’t bring in a dressing gown,” she said, staring at his hand as if it bore claws, “or a nightshirt.”

“I won’t need them.” Noah kept his hand out and saw that Thea was inclined to argue, but she stifled her inclination with a huffy sigh and deftly unfastened his cuffs.

One garment at a time, she relieved him of his clothes, folding each item tidily over a chair. When he told her to unbutton his shirt, she stayed right where she was, his cravat in her hands.

“You are decidedly fond of imperatives, Your Grace,” she snapped. “You might consider asking me to tend to your buttons.”

“I just did, and you are stalling.”

“You ordered me,” she said, taking great care to fold the cravat before stepping closer and getting back to work. “You
told
me to remove your waistcoat,
told
me to untie your neckcloth,
told
me—”

Noah grasped Thea’s hand and brought her wrist to his mouth.

“Now I’m
telling
your wrist how lovely it feels to put my mouth on your flesh,” he murmured, bending over her wrist and tasting the pulse there. When he allowed her to have her hand back, she finished unbuttoning his shirt.

“My thanks.” Noah offered the words as an olive branch. He hadn’t intended to aggravate his new duchess when she was already understandably nervous. He was, however, trying to find the present limit of her sensibilities, so he could push her right to that limit and a bit beyond. The next time they were intimate, he’d push beyond that, and beyond that, until she was as comfortable with their carnal dealings as he could make her.

Handling a new wife was the same as acquiring a market, or the controlling shares in a business. One simply needed a plan, some resources, time, and determination.

Noah and Thea were married, after all. Thea could turn to no other for her intimate diversions, not for quite some time. Fairness required that Noah teach her pleasure, and share it with her often.

Assuming she’d allow him to.

“Why don’t you get into bed?” he suggested—not ordered. “I’ll see to the candles.”

Thea drew off her dressing gown and climbed into bed while Noah politely busied himself dousing the candles. He left one burning while he finished undressing. In the dim light, he took his time using the wash water, because he intended that Thea watch while he made use of it.

Considerate of him, if he did say so himself, virginal sensibilities being the tedious impediments to passion that they were.

Naked as God made him, his cock anticipating the consummation of their vows, Noah padded to the bed and climbed in. He bounced over to his wife’s side and wrestled her into his embrace, all their previous kissing apparently forgotten.

His dear bride was stiff in his arms and averting her face.

“You said you’d give me time, Anselm.”

Time to become even more nervous and fearful? Not likely.

“I said we’d consummate our vows and then take our dealings slowly,” he reminded her. “There’s no point to putting this off, Thea. None at all.”

“Yes”—he heard her nervous swallow—“there is.”

Four

“Wife, you will settle yourself.”

Noah grazed his nose along a delicate feminine collarbone. “You are giving in to maidenly vapors. You should be trusting your lawfully wedded spouse instead, because what will pass between us in this bed is nothing remarkable. We’re designed for this activity by God Almighty, and it does not require more discussion.”

He seized her mouth a little inexpertly—she was wiggling—and she grabbed his hair. She’d taken off the night rail, though Noah spent a small eternity distracting her with kisses so he could ease the nightgown up over her curves. He’d just about got the dratted, endless nightgown up to her thighs when
she
distracted
him
with a foray into his mouth with the tip of her tongue.

He was so distracted, in fact, that his hand stole up over her ribs and gently shaped a soft, lush breast. Because Thea lay flush against him, Noah felt her body undulate in response, felt her spine give as she groaned softly into his mouth.

“You like that.” Not a question or a ducal command, but a satisfying, whispered statement of fact. As Noah caressed that same breast a tad more firmly, Thea arched into his hand. “You like it a lot.”

Surely that meant she liked her husband some too?

Thea fused her mouth to his for his honesty, silencing him. Noah sneaked a hand under the billows of her nightgown and palmed her breast with his bare hand in retaliation, feeling tremors of desire reverberate through her.

Well, thank all the gods, he’d married a passionate lady, and wasn’t that just the best surprise so far?

Noah shifted over Thea, but didn’t let their mouths part for more than a moment.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he whispered, and when her eyes flew open and her body went still, he smiled down at her. “
Please
, rather. Would you please wrap your legs…?” He fitted her legs around his naked flanks and settled his body closer to hers.

“Your job,” he said as he nuzzled at her sex with his arousal, “is to relax. There will be time later for more exuberant measures, but for tonight, you let me… Ah, there you are.”

He found his true north, or her true south as the case was, and flexed forward carefully. She was damp, wonderfully, invitingly damp, and he’d not even touched her sex.

“Your Grace—”

“Noah, or Anselm if you must.” He flexed again, and gained the first, blissful hint of penetration. “Or my dear or dearest Husband or—”

“Your Grace, please, you must not—”

“Hush now.” He dropped to his forearms, settling in for the most pleasurable business. “Relax, just relax.”

“But my…
Noah, you must stop
.” Her voice rose on a panicked note as he gave her the first solid thrust, then another, even as she pulled on his hair.

“Almost there, love.” He tossed his head, liking that she didn’t let go of his hair. “And I won’t—oh, Jesus, that’s so damned sweet.” Thinking only to spare Thea a prolonged breaching, Noah thrust hard enough to hilt himself in the wicked, wet heat of her, then went still.

“That’s it.” He lowered his cheek to rest on hers. “That’s the worst of it. You’re all right, aren’t you?”

“Oh, please just get
off
me.”

Thea’s tone held such misery that Noah stayed exactly where he was—despite the lust screaming at him—and considered coming without moving. He could do it, he was sure of it, but his passionate wife was unmoving beneath him, and that would not do.

“Did I hurt you, Thea?”

She shook her head, her movement brushing her cheek against his.

Her damp cheek.

Lucifer
in
Hades
. Noah’s bride was crying, her tears silently leaking into her hair as she lay passively in his arms. He withdrew, slowly, so as not to hurt her, sat on the edge of the bed, and reached for one of the handkerchiefs he’d stacked on the night table.

In the interests of marital tranquillity—and Noah’s own sanity—he brought himself to a brisk and intense climax, his back to Thea as he stroked himself to completion. When he finished, he tidied himself and gave a thought to how many other dukes were consigned to onanistic pleasures on their wedding nights.

“I did not hurt you, but you are crying.” Noah regarded Thea as she lay, still quietly producing tears.

“I’m so s-sorry, Anselm.”

In a parody of his usual flashes of brilliance, Noah realized what Thea was apologizing for. Rather than keep his stupid, randy mouth shut, he had to know for sure.

He’d encountered no real resistance as he’d joined their bodies, only a bliss-inducing snugness. He’d hardly made it a habit to lie with virgins, though. For all he knew, Thea might have been chaste.

Except the light of the last candle was enough to illuminate the sheer misery on her face.

The
new
duchess
of
Anselm
had
not
been
chaste.

“Do you love him still?” Disappointment as old as Noah’s oldest memory, as familiar as his own hands, settled in his belly where arousal had been moments earlier.

“I did not love him.”

Thea’s voice was low, throaty, and dry as ashes with crying, and Noah felt an unwelcome pang of pity for her.

“You might have said something.” Noah climbed back under the covers, and this at least had Thea’s eyes flying open. “For God’s sake, don’t look at me like that. I’ve never struck a female of any species, and I’d hardly start with my duchess.”

Noah smacked a few pillows though, and settled on his back, arms crossed behind his head.

“We will have this discussion now, Araminthea, and then not talk of this matter again.” He kept a howling sense of betrayal at bay, only because betrayal was eclipsed by the self-disgust of a boy who might choose any one toy to play with, and had unwittingly selected the broken one.

Would he never learn?

“You will pursue an annulment?” Thea asked.

Noah yanked the covers up. “Oh, you’d like that, but one can’t exactly claim inability on the groom’s part, can one? Nor adultery on yours or a lack of adequate years or mental competence.”

“But you didn’t…”

Unchaste and blushing, both. Noah wanted to howl.

“Hardly germane, madam, as the ecclesiastical courts are not getting their prurient paws on the details of my wedding night, thank you very much. Nor will I have it bruited about that I was unable, or that I chose poorly. Are you breeding?”

Noah should have asked Thea that before ruling out an annulment. He was a duke and a Winters. He could have any damned marriage he pleased annulled.

“I am not breeding.”

“You will allow me leave to doubt that.” Noah fell silent, resenting his wife to the depths of his stupid soul. He’d been so intent on seeing this task accomplished, and she’d been his brilliantly insightful choice.

Bloody blazing damn.

“I expect business associates to attempt to cheat me,” he said. “I expected my mistresses to have their dainty hands in my pockets at every turn, I expect my family to wheedle and manipulate and beg favors, but I did not see this coming. I commend you.”

Thea didn’t shrink from him physically, but he might as well have slapped her, so palpably did she react to his insult.

“Nobody would leave us alone,” she said. “I wasn’t raised to know how to broach such a topic. I can’t think when you start kissing me, much less speak coherently. My sister has no other hope of a proper match, and
I
could
not
find
the
proper
moment
to
s-say
anything
.”

Nor had Noah exactly sought privacy with his bride since she’d accepted his proposal. What would have been the point?

“What would you have said?” he asked.

“That I am not pure.”

“But you are chaste,” Noah muttered. “You exude chastity.” And virtue, and feminine grace, and dignity, and all manner of qualities appropriate to a duchess.

Thea rolled to her side, her back to him, and he suspected she was crying again.

“Stop that.” He rolled too, to spoon around her. “Would you please stop crying, rather.”

“I’m not crying.” Her body shuddered to the contrary, and Noah felt unaccountably like a bully, for which he also resented her.

“Thea, this is not a tragedy,” he said, his hand tracing the line of her spine. Even in the yardage of her nightgown, even lying in bed, she gave off an air of dignified injury, which was confounding, when she wasn’t the wronged party. “Araminthea…”

“I’m listening.”

Two words bearing an entire lecture on bruised feminine sensibilities, which was amazing, and ironically amusing too.

“Do you know what manner of family you’ve married into?” Noah went on talking, mostly to distract her as he worked his way closer. “My late uncle, from whom I inherited my title, had three wives, each of whom he esteemed greatly, to hear him tell it. Nonetheless, the love of his life was a countess he referred to as his Unattainable Muse, whom he cherished his entire life, to the extent he left at least one cuckoo in her nest, though my father suggested the tally might have been closer to three.”

All of whom Noah nodded to politely in the park. “I bear a striking resemblance to both of the lady’s sons. My surviving uncle continues to cut a swath through the ballrooms and house parties, often taking up with willing ladies half his age. It’s either an inspiration or a complete farce, I know not which.”

Thea was listening, Noah sensed, because her posture gradually eased, and she didn’t flinch when he brought his legs up along hers.

“There are those who believe my half brother, Harlan, could be the result of my youngest uncle’s attempt to console my father’s third wife,” Noah went on, “though I don’t credit that rumor, myself. My uncle has consoled many a widow, though, and the resulting progeny are considered the deceased’s posthumous miracles. I’ve forbidden him to attend any more funerals, unless the grieving widow is past childbearing age.”

Thea peered at Noah over her shoulder, and he used the moment to finish stealing a march across the bed.

“Are you serious, Anselm?”

“I was single-handedly upholding the standards of common sense among the menfolk in my family, and then you came along—I thought you an eminently sensible choice, I’ll have you know—and upended my good opinion of myself entirely. I do not appreciate it.”

Noah did not know exactly what to do about it, either.

“I am sorry.” Thea subsided, facing away from him. “I am truly, truly sorry.”

Noah believed she was sorry to be found out, but he wasn’t a saint, and practicalities demanded consideration.

“We will not be intimate until you’ve had your courses, Thea. You will understand my reasoning, given that there’s a ducal succession to consider. Unlike my father or my uncle, I believe children should be raised wherever possible by those responsible for their creation.”

“As do I.”

Noah had sensed that about her, sensed she’d be an involved parent, not a woman who pretended her own nursery was located in another shire.

“Please assure me you haven’t any children, Duchess.”

A moment of banked dread passed as Thea drew the covers up, tugging hard until they came free of Noah’s hip.

“I have no children, Your Grace. For Nonie, I would surrender all of my worldly freedom, my independence, and my dreams of a less pragmatic union. I could never leave my children, and certainly not for something as trivial as a tiara.”

Noah’s heart resumed beating. A child would have been… His stores of civility were unequal to considering that hypothetical.

“When I am assured you haven’t played me entirely false,” he said, “we will embark on relations with the intent of producing my heirs.” He hoped. Even his breeding organs weren’t entirely without emotional sensibilities. Anger and bewilderment did not make endearing bedmates.

Thea was back to peering at him over her shoulder, scowling, really. “You’re sure?”

“You are my duchess.” Also his wife. “I could rely on Harlan to secure the succession, but he’s only seventeen and might turn out every bit as rackety as the generation before him. The most reasonable choice is to content myself with your charms, keep a close eye on you, and hope the good Lord sees fit to give us sons in short order.”

Though getting roaring drunk seemed a fitting addition to the list too. Noah simply could not muster the sangfroid to interrogate Thea further about the details of her past now, when they were both exhausted, he was naked, and she might well be missing another man’s attentions.

“And after the children have arrived?” she asked.

Noah rolled over, so they were back to back. “Enough chatter. Go to sleep, and please recall when you arise that we’ve passed a night exploring conjugal bliss in each other’s arms. If you steal the covers, I will fetch them back.”

He fell silent, and his bride took a long, long time to fall asleep, though she did not at any point in that interminable and disappointing night intentionally steal his covers.

* * *

As Thea lay unmoving beside her husband, she mused that her wedding night had been an exercise in humiliation, but she was mindful another man would have beat her and tossed her into the street by now. Many other men. Given Anselm’s general irascibility, marrying him without disclosing her past had been risky, but he was being surprisingly decent about it.

The duke thrashed about on his half of the bed, his knee bumping Thea’s hip.

She recalled him holding forth once to Marliss, explaining he’d promised his grandsire he’d marry by age thirty-two—the grandfather had been pressing for marriage in the next fortnight—and Anselm’s thirty-second birthday loomed at the end of summer.

His Grace was not quite twice Marliss’s age.

But he was eons older than Marliss would ever be in terms of experience and world-weariness.

And that, Thea mused as the duke’s hand stole up to rest on her shoulder, was the greatest humiliation of all. Noah Winters was inured to disappointment in his familiars. His litany of role models—father, both uncles—was a pathetic recitation of all that was self-indulgent and immature about the typical privileged male.