Bea smiled faintly and murmured, “Oh, surely not. He would have chosen a significantly less consequential member of his staff to sacrifice.”
Kesgrave conceded the point and speculated that the banker would have killed the scullery maid or a stable boy.
Suddenly exhausted, Bea suggested they present themselves to Mr. Mayhew at once so they could refuse his invitation and leave number forty-four.
Emphatically, the duke said no.
“You can’t mean to accept!” she cried, aghast.
“Good god, no,” he said, appalled at the prospect. “I mean to have no further contact with him today.”
Bea applauded the plan and wondered how it might be contrived. “Anticipating our refusal, he is no doubt standing at the top of the staircase waiting to waylay us.”
At this prospect, the duke furrowed his brow briefly before announcing a solution. “We will leave by the servants’ entrance.”
It was a good plan, Bea thought, simple, elegant, practical, and yet it caused her to throw back her head and reel with laughter, for it was funny, so very, very funny, to find herself in the exact spot where she had begun. There she was, a duchess with a house so immense she could wander its halls for days and a staff so large she could not keep count, and she was still sneaking out the servants’ entrance like a dreary spinster with no expectations and disapproving relations.
But not alone—oh, no, never alone again—which just made the situation all the more comical, for now she was scurrying through the staff door in the august company of Damien Matlock, sixth Duke of Kesgrave.
His ancestors would be mortified, she knew, by the depths to which she had sunk him. And so quickly too!
They had been married for little more than one full day and already she had brought him low.
No, not already, she realized. Again.
Only yesterday she had unwittingly caused him to be entombed in the basement of a modest-size theater on the Strand.
And now she was compounding the indignity by forcing him to creep out of another man’s house like a thief.
Was there no end to the humiliation to which she would subject him?
Remarkably, he did not look shamed or demeaned or even a little bit annoyed. Just the opposite, in fact, for his expression was one of delight and intrigue, as if suddenly awake to the wonderful possibilities of a secret egress.
It was absurd, of course, for he was a man of wealth and privilege and the ability to move freely had always been his own. No rules of propriety had ever constrained his desire to take a turn around the square, and yet she believed he felt something new and reckless there, with her, in Mr. Mayhew’s servants’ hall.
Abruptly, she stopped laughing, struck by the feeling that seemed to endlessly overtake her—that she somehow loved him more in this moment than she had in the one before.
Against all reasonable expectation, her love continued to grow. Again and again and again, it expanded it directions she could never have conceived—not as a timid wallflower waiting out a ball in a chair by the fig tree in the corner, to be sure, but also last night as a creature of sensation in his arms.
Overwhelmed by the utter incomprehensible beauty of life, she learned forward and pressed her lips against his. It was gentle and sweet, only a light brushing of gratitude before they made their ignominious exit through the servants’ door, but Kesgrave, not realizing her intention, immediately deepened the kiss. His arms pulled her forward while his mouth tilted her head back, and he murmured softly as she fought for breath, “Trembling beneath me.”
The air left her lungs, simply whooshed away, as desire, as uncontrollable as wildfire, spiked through her. But even as her body succumbed to his touch, her mind perceived the stark reality of the situation, for the Duke of Kesgrave was now in actual fact seducing his wife in the servants’ hall of a Fleet Street banker.
How many generations of Matlocks were turning in their graves?
Dozens, she thought, dozens and dozens stretching all the way back to the Peasants’ Revolt.
Overcome with amusement, swept away by happiness, she stepped back, momentarily breaking contact, then threw her arms around his shoulders in an embrace that was as effusive as it was clumsy. “I love you,” she said, struggling to regain her equilibrium.
Kesgrave chuckled lightly as he straightened them both and regarded her with unsettling tenderness. “How very fortunate, for I love you, too.”
Oh, yes, very unsettling indeed, she thought, staring into the brilliant blue depths of his eyes, for she could easily spend the rest of her life there, right there, oblivious to the requirements of decorum or civility.
But the duke had other plans, trembling plans, and he promptly opened the door and led her out into the passageway, where the servants who had been hovering scattered to various corners and crevices and feigned consuming interest in their dust rags and cuffs. Undaunted by their interest, Kesgrave strolled down the corridor with the blithe indifference of a gentleman sauntering among the shops on Bond Street, and Bea felt an intense urge to giggle.
She did not, of course, for she had no wish to undermine the impressiveness of his achievement, the way he made it seem as though all dukes regularly exited their neighbors’ properties through the servants’ entrance. She maintained her composure after they were outside and Kesgrave linked his arms through hers and commented mildly on the weather, which was inordinately clement for April. She even kept her poise as they entered Kesgrave House and Marlow’s gaze fell upon her with unbridled curiosity. He had questions, so many questions, but propriety prevented him from asking a single one. And duty, of course, for the duke requested that
