How to Tame Your Duke(36)

       
           



       

"It isn't seawater, is it?"

"It is." Freddie picked up his cup, drank, scalded himself, and set down  the cup again with an oath and a clatter. "Shipped in fresh by rail  every month. Haven't you noticed the delivery? Converted fire engine  brings it in from the railway station. Confounded fuss."

"I had no idea. None at all."

Freddie blew carefully over the top of his cup and tried again. "Of  course, I admit it's rather nice to be able to swim in the convenience  of one's own home. I made them heat it, of course. It's as good as  swimming in the Arctic in wintertime, otherwise."

"So your father told me."

Freddie glanced up, amused. "Caught him at it, did you?"

"No. He was at boxing practice." Emilie selected a third piece of toast  from the rack at her right. She was feeling quite remarkably hungry this  morning, for some reason.

"Oh yes. He does that, too. A regular John Sullivan, my Pater. Jolly  reassuring, should we be waylaid by a gang of prizefighters while  trotting across the moors some afternoon. Is that the newspaper?"

"It is." She pushed it toward him. Freddie's face was beginning to lose  its greenish tinge, under the effects of the coffee. Her own thoughts  were reeling. Did Ashland really rise before each dawn and exercise like  this? Boxing and swimming and God knew what else? She had been  breakfasting in the family dining room for weeks now-a single invitation  that had somehow stretched into a habit-and never noticed a sign of  recent rigorous exercise in Ashland's demeanor. For what reason did he  do it? Why should a duke, a man who scarcely ever dined in company, let  alone left his estate to face the physical dangers of the wide world,  keep his body honed in such battle-ready shape? As if he were preparing  for some great test. She lifted her own coffee-also black, God help  her-and tried to banish the thought of Ashland striking that punching  bag, his muscles bunching effortlessly under his glowing skin.

Of Ashland's body atop hers, connected with hers, heated and powerful, stroking into her with exquisite strength.

Beneath her neat jacket, her plain wool waistcoat and cotton shirt, the  linen bandage binding her chest, Emilie's breasts tingled painfully. She  cleared her tightened throat and finished her toast. "Speaking of  which, where is His Grace at the moment? He's never been so late for  breakfast."

Freddie looked up. "Oh, that. Hadn't you heard? Pater's gone off."

Emilie's knife clattered on her plate. "Gone off?"

Freddie waved his hand. "Off. Gone. Exit, pursued by a stag."

"A bear."

"Whatever it is. Absconded to London, at the crack of . . . dawn . . ." He stared at her and frowned.

"London!" Emilie's forehead stretched upward with astonishment, causing  her spectacles to slide down her nose. She pushed them up hastily. "The  duke in London! Whatever for?"

"I haven't the foggiest. I'm quite as perplexed as you." Freddie cocked  his head, still frowning, his eyes fixed on Emilie's face. "Daresay  things have gone along so swimmingly with this new bird of his, he's  decided to try his luck in the capital."

Emilie's fingers went cold. "I . . . I daresay."

"You know . . . the oddest thing . . ." Freddie said slowly.

Emilie stared down at her plate. The yolks of her half-eaten eggs had  met a pool of grease from the kippers, and were beginning to congeal.  Her enormous appetite had evaporated. "What's that?" she asked absently.

"No, no," he said hastily. "A dream. I'm sure of it. Ha-ha. A dream, of course."

She glanced up. "A dream?"

Freddie was plunging his fork into his breakfast, looking miraculously  human, a living testament to the restorative powers of strong black  coffee. "Ha-ha. You'll never credit it. Last night, you see, I dreamt  that you'd shaved those whiskers of yours."

"Ha-ha." She picked up her cup and hid behind it.

Freddie stuffed his mouth and smiled reminiscently. "Astonishingly vivid  dream. I can see your face quite plainly, shorn as a newborn lamb."

"Newborn lambs aren't shorn, as a rule."

"Well, but you looked like a precious little newborn baa-lamb, without  your whiskers. All wide-eyed and innocent. Gone, the avenging tutor!  Ha-ha." Freddie threw back another cup of coffee. "I should sketch it  out before I forget. Then the next time you're scolding me, I'll bring  it out to remind myself of your humiliation."

"I wasn't humiliated." Emilie glanced at the footman's impassive face. "It was only a dream, after all. Your dream."                       
       
           



       

"And a dashed fine dream at that. The memory has quite cheered me up."  Freddie used his toast to wipe the rest of his egg, shoved the lot  gracelessly in his mouth, swabbed himself with a snowy napkin, and stood  up. "I shall await you in the schoolroom, Mr. Grimsby. Don't be late!"  He tucked the newspaper under his arm, clicked his heels together, and  swept from the room.

Emilie knew she should rise and follow him, but her limbs wouldn't move.  She stared at her toast, uncomfortably aware of Lionel the footman  standing ten feet away, probably annoyed, probably impatient for the  damned tutor to lift his bony arse out of his seat and leave the room to  the poor sods who did the real work around the Abbey. She'd come to a  much deeper understanding of what it meant to be a servant, these past  several weeks.

The Duke of Ashland had left for London.

What did it mean? Trying his luck in the capital, as Freddie put it? Now  that the ice had been broken. Now that he'd finally lain with another  woman. The deed had been done. One sin might as well be a hundred.

Emilie clenched her fists in her lap.

Think logically. Of course Ashland hadn't gone to London to find more  women. It wasn't in his character at all. Emilie thought of his words  last night, his disciplined arms pounding the leather bag downstairs. He  was not a wastrel. He was not a rake. This trip to London must be some  business affair, some urgent matter.

In any case, it shouldn't bother her, even if he were after women. She  should welcome his straying to other pastures. The sooner this tie  between them was snapped off, the better. And since she didn't seem to  have the strength, Ashland might as well do the snapping himself. She  would spend this week of his absence constructing a very high, very  thick wall between them. By the time he returned, she would be quite  indifferent.

Or at least able to greet the sight of his half-naked, gloriously glowing body with perfect composure.

Emilie finished her toast, finished her coffee in a gulp. She rose and  nodded to Lionel, who returned-to her surprise-an almost imperceptible  nod of his own.

Outside in the hallway, she nearly crashed into Simpson as he strode  toward the breakfast room. "Oh! I beg your pardon, Mr. Simpson."

"Not at all, Mr. Grimsby," said Simpson, as he might say, Take your arse  to Greenland, Grimsby, on a fucking flat-bottomed rowboat.

Emilie was undeterred. "I understand His Grace departed for London this  morning. When can his lordship and I expect his return?" She inserted  Freddie's name into it, just to ensure the butler's attention.

Simpson looked as if he'd been handed a week-old pig's bladder and asked  to make a sausage with it. "His Grace did me the honor of informing me  that he would be absent a week."

"Seven full days?"

"So much I have always understood a week to contain."

"How perceptive you are, Mr. Simpson. I am in your debt." Emilie turned  and marched down the hall to the staircase-the main staircase, used by  the family-and went up three flights to the schoolroom, where the  Marquess of Silverton stood in the center of the carpet, blue eyes  globular, newspaper fluttering from his hand, staring at her with an  expression of utmost shock.

"Good God, Grimsby!" he said. "You're a bloody princess, aren't you?"





SIXTEEN




A shocked silence greeted the Duke of Ashland as he paused in the doorway of the dining room at his London club.

He expected nothing less. He hadn't darkened this particular threshold  in well over a decade, not since the eve of his departure with his  regiment. A riotous evening, that one. He'd crawled back into his hotel  room just as his old friend dawn, the rosy-fingered bitch, had broken  the horizon in the east. An hour's sleep, a bracing bath, a mug of  coffee, and he'd been off to Victoria Station to join his regiment  massing at Southampton. God, that rattling train. His head still ached  in sympathy at the memory.

The mood at the club tonight was something less than riotous, and the  stunned faces turned toward him were even less familiar. He remembered  the smell, though-that exact blend of roasted meat and smoke, leather  and spirits, wafted out to greet him as if he'd been away only a week or  two. Eau de club, he supposed. He kept his gaze high, scanning over the  tops of their befuddled gentlemanly heads, but he could feel them take  him in: his white hair, his black leather half-mask, his ruined jaw  protruding beneath. Perhaps even the empty space outside the cuff of his  right sleeve, which he kept defiantly at his side, in full view.