The Lost Duke of Wyndham

The scandal will be amazing.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you should.” She stopped, forcing herself to take a breath before she continued. She wanted to grab her head and press her fingers into her scalp. She wanted to make fists until her fingernails bit into her skin. Anything-anything that would eat away at this awful frustration that was pulling her inside out. Why wasn’t he listening? Why couldn’t he hear that-

“Grace-” he began.

“No!” She cut him off, perhaps more loudly than she ought, but it had to be said: “You will need to tread carefully if you wish to be accepted into society. Your wife does not have to be Amelia, but it must be someone like her. With a similar background. Otherwise-”

“Are you listening to me?” he cut in. He grasped her shoulders, holding her in place until she looked up at him, directly into his eyes. “I don’t care about ‘otherwise.’ I don’t need for society to accept me. All I need is you, whether I live in a castle, a hovel, or anything in between.”

“Jack…” she began. He was being naive. She loved him for it, nearly wept with joy that he adored her enough to think he could so thoroughly flout convention. But he didn’t know. He had not lived at Belgrave for five years. He had not traveled to London with the dowager and seen firsthand what it meant to be a member of such a family. She had. She had watched, and she had observed, and she knew exactly what was expected of the Duke of Wyndham. His duchess could not be a nobody from the neighborhood. Not if he expected anyone to take him seriously.

“Jack,” she said again, trying to find the right words. “I wish-”

“Do you love me?” he cut in.

She froze. He was staring at her with an intensity that left her breathless, immobile.

“Do you love me?”

“It doesn’t-”

“Do…you…love me?”

She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to say it. If she did, she would be lost. She would never be able to resist him-his words, his lips. If she gave him this, she would lose her last defense.

“Grace,” he said, cradling her face in his hands. He leaned down and kissed her-once, with aching tenderness. “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

“Then that is all that matters.”

She opened her lips to try one last time to talk sense into him, but he was already kissing her, his mouth hot and passionate on her own.

“I love you,” he said, kissing her cheeks, her brows, her ears. “I love you.”

“Jack,” she whispered, but her body had already begun to hum with desire. She wanted him. She wanted this. She did not know what tomorrow would bring, but at this moment she was willing to pretend that she did not care. As long as-

“Promise me,” she said urgently, grasping his face firmly in her hands. “Please. Promise me that there will be no baby.”

His eyes shuttered and flared, but finally he said, “I promise you I will try.”

“You will try?” she echoed. Surely he would not lie about this. He would not ignore her plea and later pretend that he’d “tried.”

“I will do what I know how to do. It is not completely foolproof.”

She loosened her grip and showed her acquiescence by allowing her fingers to trail along his cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered, leaning up for a kiss.

“But I promise you this,” he said, sweeping her into his arms, “you will have our baby. I will marry you. No matter who I am, or what my name is, I will marry you.”

But she no longer had the will to argue with him. Not now, not when he was carrying her to his bed. He laid her down atop the covers and stepped back, quickly undoing the top buttons of his shirt so he could pull it over his head.

And then he was back, half beside her, half atop her, kissing her as if his life depended upon it. “My God,” he almost grunted, “this thing is ugly,” and Grace could not help but giggle as his fingers attempted to do their magic on her buttons. He let out a frustrated growl when they did not comply, and he actually grasped the two sides of her nightgown, clearly intending to wrench it apart and let the buttons fly where they might.

“No, Jack, you can’t!” She was laughing as she said it; she didn’t know why it was so funny-surely de- flowerings were meant to be serious, life-altering affairs. But there was so much joy bubbling within her. It was difficult to keep it contained. Especially when he was trying so hard to complete such a simple task and failing so miserably.

“Are you sure?” His face was almost comical in its frustration. “Because I am fairly certain that I do a service to all mankind by destroying this.”

She tried not to laugh. “It’s my only nightgown.”

This, he appeared to find interesting. “Are you saying that if I tear it off, you will have to sleep naked for the duration of our journey?”

She quickly moved his hand from her bodice. “Don’t,” she warned him.

“But it’s so tempting.”

“Jack…”

He sat back on his heels, gazing down at her with a mixture of hunger and amusement that made her shiver. “Very well,” he said, “you do it.”

She had been intending to do just that, but now, with him watching her so intently, his eyes heavy-lidded with desire, she felt almost frozen in place. How could she be so brazen as to strip before him? To peel her clothing from her body-to do it herself. There was a difference, she realized, in taking off her own clothing and allowing herself to be seduced.

Slowly, fingers trembling, she reached for the top button of her nightgown. She couldn’t see it; it was far too high, almost to her chin. But her fingers knew the motions, knew the buttons, and almost without thinking, she slipped one free.

Jack sucked in his breath. “Another.”

She obeyed.

“Another.”

And again. And again, until she reached the one that lay between her breasts. He reached down then, his large hands slowly spreading the two sides of her gown open. It did not reveal her to him; she’d not unbuttoned enough for that. But she felt the cool air on her skin, felt the soft tickle of his breath as he leaned down to place one kiss on the flat plane of her chest.

“You are beautiful,” he whispered. And when his fingers moved this time to the buttons on her nightgown, he mastered them with no difficulty at all. He took her hand and gave it a gentle tug, indicating for her to sit up. She did, closing her eyes as the nightgown fell away.

With her vision dark, she felt more keenly, and the fabric-nothing but a plain, serviceable cotton-raised shivers of sensation as it slid along her skin.

Or maybe it was just that she knew he was looking at her.

Was this what it had felt like for that woman? The one in the painting? She must have been a woman of some experience by the time she’d posed for Monsieur Boucher, but surely there had to be a first time for her, as well. Had she, too, closed her eyes so she could feel a man’s gaze upon her body?

She felt Jack’s hand touching her face, the tips of his fingers softly trailing along the line of her neck to the hollow of her shoulder. He paused there, but only for a moment, and Grace sucked in her breath, waiting for the intimacy that awaited her.

“Why are your eyes closed?” he murmured.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

She waited. She gasped. She even jumped, just a little, when his fingers slid along the outer curve of her