The Dissolute Duke(26)

Finding her satchel, she drew forth her drawing equipment and laid a parchment on the desk, liking the feel of charcoal, the dusty ease of a long-time friend calming in the face of the unknown. She drew, from memory, the house and its lines and Taylen Ellesmere on the horse, his hair against the wind, his forehead strong.

She stopped after sketching his eyes and rested because the quickness in them was disconcerting, knowing, a question framed in them that held all her own fears naked in the afternoon light. She wanted to rub them out, wanted to scrawl across such eyes with a hard strong stroke, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t countenance destruction of such raw and angry beauty. His lips followed, full and generous, lips that had offered her the promise of liberty for the price of a child. Yet he had qualified such an unexpected option with salvation and loyalty and she believed he had meant it.

Placing one finger across the drawing, she felt an easing of spirit, a lessening of tightness. A slight question of flesh? Revealing. Unforeseen.

‘Taylen.’ She whispered the name into the quiet and even as she watched his lips seemed to turn. Upwards. The black of charcoal moving in a way it never had before. Living. Breathing. Laughing. She did not dare to impart more form to his figure as she buried the sheet of paper in her sketchbook.

A flash of some hidden thing ripped through Lucinda, beating at truth. The headaches she had had after the accident had largely gone, yet here they threatened to return in the same intensity as they had whilst convalescing.

A room came through the fog, a room at the end of a long corridor and a man sitting in bed and reading.

Spectacles. She had the vague idea it was Alderworth. She squinted her eyes to try to remember the title of the book in his hands because she thought it was important in some way. But no more memory surfaced.

Rising, she picked up her cloth bag from the place she had left it in one corner and extracted the wrapped present that Beatrice had bequeathed her in the moments before her departure from London. A novel confronted her as she ripped off the bright blue paper and a note was threaded with ribbon around the cover.

Lucy,

The dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security can be underpinned with something far more wonderful. I have a suspicion that you will find what I allude to with Taylen Ellesmere.

Anne Elliot certainly did in this story.

All my love,

Bea



Jane Austen’s Persuasion. She had not read this book and was glad for the chance to do so here, though Beatrice’s note seemed more than odd. She knew her brothers hated her husband with a passion and had thought her sister-in-law might have felt the same.

Something wonderful? Such hollow hope was layered with a reality far from any such truth, the unfamiliar environment here increasing her homesickness.

When tears welled up behind her eyes she did not try to stop them as they ran down her cheeks and on to the small book across her lap, blurring the inked note in Beatrice’s handwriting.

Taylen waded naked into the lake behind the house and waited as the icy water numbed his feet and his legs, the shadow of Valkyrie reflected in the silver before him, low in the water. He had named this dash of raised-up land as a boy and had used the island as a fortress many times, a stronghold against a coercive uncle and a place to assuage the remnants of betrayal.

‘Betrayal.’ He whispered the word to himself and watched how the warm air fogged. He had never had a chance against his mother’s brother with his corrupt tastes and easy smile. The fact that he was a child whose parents saw responsibility only as a nuisance and had gladly given up any claim on a son who was alternatively badly behaved or withdrawn aided such tendencies.

Innocence was such an easily taken commodity and Taylen knew that his had gone a long time ago.

Like the small hut he had built on the rise, left to the birds and the ghosts and the wind. Only echoes in the inlets and silence in the few remaining trees, the black outline of wood sharp against the dusk where it had fallen at an angle against the sky. No longer a shelter.

Picking up a handful of sand, he let it filter through his fingers—Alderworth soil, the mark of a thousand years of ancestry imprinted in the earth. His land now, to have and to hold as certainly as a wife brought from London under the dubious flag of obligation.

He shook his head hard, the strands of wetness falling into his line of vision before he wiped them away. The air here strengthened him and gave him resolve. Lucinda would be sitting in the room beside his and wondering what exactly might happen next. He hated the fact that she would be frightened, but there was no other way of resolving this impasse, and he knew without a single doubt that had he left her in London her brothers would have made certain any access was limited.

Lord, but was it any better here? The whole place teetered under a strange spell of melancholy, the staff left reduced to a bare handful of overworked servants.

He had left it too long to return, he supposed, but the memories here had always repelled him, the child without rights struggling inside the man he had become, dissolute and uncaring. Swallowing, he fisted his hands hard against his thighs and lifted his face to the rain that had begun to fall in a mist.

Back. Again. This time with a spouse who distrusted him and the threat of retribution from the Wellinghams should he ever hurt her.

A flash of lightning above the hills to the east reflected in the lake. A sign, perhaps. A portent of battle.

That evening Lucinda came down the wide staircase with a feeling of disbelief, her heart tight and her stomach filled with butterflies. The dress she wore was her newest, light-yellow silk shot through with gold, the décolletage on the prim side of fashionable heightened by a line of frothy Brussels lace, her arms covered by a shawl against the cold. Her hair was pinned to her head in a tall and elegant chignon, with a few curls left to frame her face, that had taken a maid a good hour to complete. On her feet were slippers of fine calf leather, the lacings drawn in tight.

The Alderworth servant accompanying her stepped back as they came into the front salon. In the ensuing silence a bead of sweat traced its way between her breasts to fall across the skin above her ribs.

Taylen Ellesmere was already there, dressed entirely in black, the collar at his neck open. A gentleman at home and at leisure or a man expecting a woman to entertain him?

‘Duchess.’ His teeth were white and even and perfect.

Part of her wanted to run, wanted to lift the embroidered fall of silk and make for the safety of her room, negating any contract between them.

I do not think he would stop me if I went! The thought came from nowhere but it was there in his eyes, soft velvet with a sort of pity.

She did not wish for that. Raising her chin, she walked through the opened door and tried not to flinch as it shut behind her.

His eyes took in her gown and her hair, his expression tightening. ‘I have something to show you,’ he said as the silence lengthened. ‘It is this way.’

He did not take her hand or shepherd her forwards. He did not touch her at all, but walked in front through the long corridors of the place to a room filled with books. Two glasses sat on a desk with a bottle of white wine chilled in a bucket of ice.

Intentions, she supposed, a heady amount of alcohol to loosen the restraints of almost thirty-six months of distance.

‘Please, take a seat.’

She chose a chair with enough room for one person. Unexpectedly, though, he pulled a stool over to where she was and sat in front of her. A shaft of light bathed him, turning his hair to shining raven black. Like the cut sides of coal. He was the most handsome man she had ever met. She could not dispute that fact.

‘I was not intimate with you three years ago no matter what you might say, Lucinda. I put you in the carriage before anything could happen between us and tried to take you home. If it had not been for the accident, I would probably have succeeded.’

Lucinda felt her insides curl. Taylen Ellesmere had always used words well to suit his intentions.

‘You were in bed. I remember you … touching me?’

‘You ran into my room to escape from the Earl of Halsey. I kissed you once. That was all.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You lie.’ Her eyes flicked to the line of her breast though she could not bring herself to voice all that she remembered.

His fingers at her nipples, the feel of him hard against her skin in places no one had ever touched before. The full naked size of him as he stood before her. Shocking. Thrilling. Forbidden.

Reaching over to the wine, he poured her a glass, fine crystal, and the stem vibrated under the pressure of her fingers as she took it. As easy to break as her innocence had been?

‘Perhaps a drink might refresh your tangled memory,’ he toasted, shattering the bubble of détente completely. A sharp bud of shock took her breath as hard eyes gleamed, the warmth of his glance searing through silk.

Her face was pale, the smile she had forced upon it tightly stretched.

A small droplet of wine lay on her top lip. Once he might have leant over and licked it away, but he had never been a man to take a woman against her will and the wariness on Lucinda’s face was easy to read. Drawing back, he opened the folder on the table beside him. There was a file fat with the transfer-of-ownership documents tucked inside the front cover. He pushed the papers across to her.

‘I have signed the town house over to you already. The terms allow you sole use of the place until you die. Then it shall revert to our heir … or heirs if sins of the flesh are as enjoyable as I think you will find them to be.’