The Tattooed Duke (15 page)

His cock was hard, throbbing with wanting, and Eliza, tempting minx, moved slowly against him. He groaned.

“I do believe I was saying something about a feather bed . . .” he said. He could see it now—could feel it now—Eliza, a feather mattress, and himself.

“My bed is closer,” she murmured wickedly. And then she drew back. “My goodness, that was unbelievably forward of me.”

Her dark hair fell loosely around her shoulders. Her lips were red from his kiss—that’s how a woman’s mouth should look, he thought, not like Althea’s painted lips. That thought jolted him back . . .

“Eliza, you may have noticed I’m not exactly a stickler for propriety,” he replied with a faint grin.

“I may have heard a rumor to that effect,” she answered cheekily.

“But I have to marry Lady Shackley.”

Chapter 28

Why the Duke Must Marry Hades’ Own Harpy

Still on the roof

T
here, he said it. At the worst possible moment, too. In fact, the
last
possible moment before he totally and completely lived up to his Wicked Wycliff heritage and ravished the maid on the roof, for God’s sake.

He had now given voice to that awful thing that had been nagging him all night and all day. If he thought he was reluctant to assume the responsibilities of his title, well, now he knew a dig-in-the-heels, lean-back-with-every-inch-of-force-he-could-harness kind of reluctance. Because it wasn’t a duke’s duty that was calling for him now. He ought to do what a man ought to do.

He might be tattooed, and all kinds of scandalous, but he was a good man. He knew what mattered, what was right.

Sailors told stories of waves one hundred feet high that simply swallowed ships whole. How anyone lived to tell after witnessing such a feat was never answered, but Wycliff had known of ships that just vanished. That was how he felt upon hearing Althea’s news that could not be committed to paper.

“Is it for the money?” Eliza asked.

“It’s not about the money, although that will be a great consolation,” he said. The only consolation.

“Oh,” she said softly.

“I have referred to Althea as Hades’ Own Harpy and a hundred other awful things that are all true,” he said, referring to the breakfast conversation that he knew she had listened to avidly. “But one cannot say such things about the mother of their child.”

If Eliza felt anything upon that revelation, she did not show it. Well, other than the way her hand wavered as she took a sip of wine. He took some satisfaction in that. He didn’t want to be the only one walloped by the news. And he wanted some indication that she cared for him—although what the devil he could do with her affection, he knew not.

As she coolly and calmly absorbed the news and drank her wine, he relived the moment in Lady Althea’s drawing room when the earth shook everything off balance, the heavens opened up to rain down curses, and life as he’d known it came to a grinding, screeching halt.

Lady Althea had smiled so warmly with her fiery red mouth.

“A baby, Wycliff. Your baby.” He couldn’t breathe.

“Where is it?” he asked. He looked around stupidly, as if it might be tucked in a corner somewhere. But by now it wouldn’t be a baby, but a small brat of ten years.

“
He.
He is away at boarding school,” she said, smoothing out invisible wrinkles in her silk skirts.

“Send for him at once,” he had said in the clipped tones of an angry duke. He wanted to see this child that was supposedly his. Not that he could do anything about it, for it would have the Shackley name.

His child. Another man’s name. How many Wycliff spawn were alive and kicking in England? Many more than the Digby family Bible recorded.

A child that was his but not his. Such a typical Wycliff thing to do, but had it burned and rankled the other dukes thus? He had scowled so violently even Althea was taken aback

“I cannot send for him now,” she said, recovering. “It’s in the middle of the school term and the headmaster is quite strict.”

“Then I’ll go to him,” Wycliff answered testily. He’d never bothered with the rules of headmasters before. Now wasn’t the time to start. “Apparently, I have a son, Althea. That means something.”

A son. The dukedom was this inanimate thing. A son—that was his own flesh and blood.

“You cannot go to him, you’ll embarrass him before his friends,” she said pleadingly, placing a hand on his arm. By God if that didn’t wallop him like a cannonball in the gut. He didn’t give a damn what other small-minded peers thought of his eccentricities, but he’d always sworn he would not mortify his children as his father had done to him.

He knew in that moment that he was not afraid of being the Duke of Wycliff, but being like every other duke who had preceded him: all the wastrels that embarrassed their children and squandered their lives and fortune. Unlike the others, he had learned a thing or two about the world, and a thing or two about duty, and a thing or two about himself.

“I’ll write to the headmaster at once, and have him sent back to London,” Althea said. She rubbed that gold, heart-shaped locket between her fingers. Opening it, closing it. He remembered now, why it was familiar. Once upon a time he had given it to her, complete with a lock of his hair. A silly thing, he thought, but she had asked him for it and it seemed easy enough to comply . . .

Althea still kept it. Althea still cared. Althea had been waiting. For him.

Yet he had taken the money from her husband, boarded a ship, and never looked back. He thought he had escaped. Apparently, he had not.

“Send word when the child arrives,” Wycliff said, his tone sharp.

“Fine,” Althea replied, pouting.

He showed himself out.

What the devil had happened?
A child?
He would have to marry her now. Yet, he felt a duty to do it. Responsibility. Mainly, though, he felt pity for the child. How could he leave a child to be raised by the likes of her? A pack of wolves would provide more maternal, affectionate care.

Why did his insides revolt at the notion of marriage? She had the money he needed. He could marry her and promptly leave on an expedition. And then another and another . . .

He should be relieved. Tremendously. But why did his chest feel so tight, like he couldn’t breathe, and sore, and like he’d been trampled by a team of oxen?

The entire situation was troubling and he did not know how to make sense of it. Hence, the brooding.

“A child?” Eliza echoed, and he was brought back from that damned scene, back to the present, where he was on the roof with a very disheveled maid perched upon his lap. One who he’d quite nearly ravished. She slowly untangled herself and her skirts.

“Don’t go,” he said. Commanded.

“I’m merely removing myself from your person,” she replied.

“Don’t go.” He said it again, employing the Ducal Voice so she wouldn’t know how he desperately wanted her company, especially tonight.

“You didn’t have to tell me,” she said, and she seemed almost annoyed that he had done so. As if she wanted a tumble with no strings, nothing serious, attached.

“I know. And yet I feel that I owe it to you,” he said, and she glanced away.

“Your Grace, I am only a housemaid. I wouldn’t be the first or the last to dally with my lord and master. I wouldn’t be so foolish as to think it means anything.”

“You needn’t be cruel,” he said. He didn’t know what it could mean, or what it might be. But he knew with utmost certainty that it wasn’t just some tumble.

“I am merely being practical,” Eliza told him, pushing back a lock of her hair.

“I’m not.” He reached out and grabbed her wrist. “I couldn’t make love to you without telling you. I feel something for you, Eliza.”

“You really shouldn’t,” she whispered, devastatingly.

“Too damned late for that,” he murmured, and lowered his mouth to hers. As if that last hour hadn’t happened, Eliza turned away.

Chapter 29

Inconvenient Truths

Wednesday

D
ays passed in which Wycliff existed in an extended state of tension. Althea. Eliza. Duty. Pleasure. England. The world. The wild, wicked recklessness of his Wycliff blood, or the cool, self-control of his mother’s family.

He’d spent days poring over maps of Timbuktu, as if to remind himself why he would not indulge in an affair with his maid, and why he must marry Lady Althea. Money for his expedition, for one thing. His duty to the child, for another.

A child. He couldn’t fathom it.

Frankly, he couldn’t keep his thoughts concentrated on any subject, unless the subject happened to be Eliza’s eyes, or her breasts, or her mouth, or what she might look like naked, how she might feel writhing in pleasure beneath him, the softness of her hair, the delicate sizzle when she gave him a wicked look, and the explosion when their lips touched.

Damn. His breeches were tight again.

No woman had ever preoccupied him so relentlessly and incessantly.

The good news: he had taken to reading the account book in order to cool his heated blood and restore himself to rights. Riveting stuff, that was. It read like a tale of lovesick idiocy. There were purchases of jewels and rents for rooms in fashionable (read: bloody expensive) neighborhoods, followed by a cease in the rent payment and the purchase of massive quantities of wine, brandy, and snuff.

So that’s where the Wycliff fortune had gone. It was some gaudy bobble around the neck of a whore. Or it was literally pissed and snorted away.

Any shame he might have felt about using ducal funds for an expedition to Timbuktu just evaporated. There were stupider, more useless things to fritter money away on than enriching experiences, scientific expeditions, or bold conquests for his country.

“Knock, knock, Your Graceship,” Harlan said as he strolled into the study, uninvited.

“I’m busy with account books,” Wycliff told him.

Harlan snorted and tossed a newspaper on the desk before sauntering off to pour a brandy for himself.

“Really, Harlan, more damned newspapers?”

“This town is awash in them. They all seem to be fixated upon Your Graceness, too. Oddly, I don’t find you nearly as interesting as they.”

“I don’t find myself that interesting either,” Wycliff muttered.

If only Eliza did . . .

Dear God, he was becoming besotted. He had kept his wits about him while in a sinking rowboat traveling through crocodile-infested waters in an African river. But now he couldn’t manage a conversation on any subject without thinking of his housemaid.

Housemaid. Housemaid. Housemaid . . . whom he wished to ravish.
Damn.

“You were saying, Harlan?”

“I was saying, read the sodding gossip column and then tell me what’s really happening.”

With an annoyed frown, Wycliff read the sodding gossip column, entitled “The Man About Town.”

All of London is humming over reports that the Tattooed Duke was seen calling upon Lady Shackley for an extended, private visit. Might they be discussing a new venture? Perhaps it is one in which Shackley money once again funds the wild wanderings of a Wycliff, as the mysterious W.G. Meadows reminds us. Or do they have a joint venture in the works, otherwise known as marriage?

Our best hope for the truth lies in W.G. Meadows, that unknown author of “The Tattooed Duke” in
The Times
’s rival newspaper that shall go unmentioned. But who knows who W.G. Meadows is? Lords and ladies alike are frothing at the bit to discover his or her true identity. The supremely wealthy Earl of Alvanley has offered the enormous sum of ten thousand pounds to the person who uncovers the true identity of W.G. Meadows. Dissolute rakes, debutantes with lamentable dowries, the poorly, the greedy, and dare we say the Tattooed Duke himself ought to leap at the opportunity.

My sympathies lie with W.G. Meadows, but this Man About Town is on the hunt.

“Oh for the love—” Wycliff muttered. Each day, the storm and drama surrounding him became more ridiculous.

“God, anything holy, etcetera, etcetera. You have assumed epic proportions,” Harlan said dryly, but then his voice turned earnest. “But what is the truth, and what are you going to do?”

“I might marry Lady Shackley,” Wycliff said, strangling the urge to spit after saying such a horrible sentence. “Probably.”

“If you marry Hades’ Own Harpy, then you’ll have no need to ferret out W.G. Meadows.”

“And if it weren’t for the child, I could ferret out W.G. Meadows and wouldn’t need to pledge my troth to Lady Shackley.”

“What are you going to do, Wycliff? What of Timbuktu?” Harlan asked plainly. He began to pace, always the sign that he was agitated. Wycliff settled in and wished for a brandy. His one-armed friend had only poured one—for himself. “You have ties here, Wycliff. I do not. Do you know what that means? I am free to go anytime.”

The truth of the matter hit Wycliff in the gut, hard. Harlan had every reason to go, and no reason to stay. There was a flare of jealousy, and then a question: why did he stay? Or was this the part where the old comrades in action and adventure parted ways?

He caught himself grinding his jaw and forced himself to stop.

Harlan carried on: “You want to
lead
an expedition. You need to find the money for that and solve all the problems. I just want to go along for the ride, Wycliff. I merely need to enlist in another outfit . . . like Burke’s.”

The truth of that landed on Wycliff like another blow, too. Had he not the noble and selfish goal of being a leader of men, he could just tag along with anyone else. Perhaps, after all, he was more ducal than he previously thought.

But what did that have to do with this betrayal? It felt like a betrayal. Reason intruded, told him Harlan had just as much a right to that feeling. For years, Wycliff had been content to see where fate, luck, and opportunity took them. They had no plans, no destination.

That wasn’t enough for him anymore. For Harlan, it still was.

When had this gulf between them developed? Had it been there on the open seas, or crept up while he was obsessing over the housemaid and cursing his ill luck?

And for God’s sake, where was a drink when a man needed one? He stood, crossed the room and poured one for himself, and Harlan continued pacing and spewing gut-wrenching truths.

“Yes, yes. I know that you have saved my life. But I have also saved yours, Wycliff, so it’s really a wash. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“You are leaving,” Wycliff said coolly. But his skin was hot. This was a sea change, the shifting sands, etc., and he had not prepared for it. He had not even seen it coming. What a blind idiot he’d been.

“You have ties here,” Harlan said, standing still by the mantel. His one eye was a dark brown, almost black. “I do not.”

“This damned dukedom, I know . . .”

“You left it once before and haven’t exactly been thrilled to assume the responsibilities, though I see you have taken to perusing the account books,” Harlan said, with a jerk of his head toward the open book on the ducal desk. “And whatever it is you do behind that locked door for hours on end.”

Then Harlan’s voice lowered and his gaze intensified, and Wycliff almost couldn’t stand it. “You are developing ties, Wycliff, the kind that cannot be disentwined or broken. The kind that make a man stay on dry land and give up on reckless pursuits.”

“Frankly, the only way I could tolerate marriage or ties to Althea is if I am engaged in reckless pursuit on an ocean far, far away.”

“Not Althea, you scurvy cork brain.
Eliza
.”