Say Yes to the Duke (16 page)

He looked at her a moment. “I know,” he said eventually. “But old habits die hard.”

She watched him make a new path through the snow back to the stables and mourned the
boy who’d become the groom with the unyielding back, the shadowed eyes, and the heart
so wounded he knew no other way.

Chapter Thirteen

“Wha’?” Grayson sat up in his huge bed—which he’d once dubbed the small country of
Carnalia—and looked around him. There was usually one, two, or even three women sprawled
upon the ducal sheets with him (not
under
the sheets; he never shared that way), but this morning he was alone.

He looked down at his erect member and didn’t like that it was doomed to wilt. He
never had to pleasure himself these days. That was someone else’s job.

And something else was wrong. He winced, but his head didn’t pound from too much drink.

Why not?

Then he remembered … that female, the blasted Sherwood girl, Lady Janice. She’d changed
everything with her arrival at Halsey House. He’d finally gotten the Yankee chit to
strike his rear end with a horsewhip with just the right amount of wrist action so
that the sting was pleasurable. And as for the two sisters, he was ready for them
to depart. The younger one cried every time he wanted all three women at once. And
the older sister wasn’t attractive enough to bed in daylight, which was his favorite
time to rut.

He’d been on the verge of sending the two siblings packing, but he couldn’t now. There
was the snow, of course. But the primary reason they must remain was that he feared
one of them might seek petty revenge by blurting out the truth to Lady Janice: not
that he was wicked—which he could deny if he had to—but that he couldn’t finish off
any coital activity without wearing a certain diamond necklace he’d picked up in Venice.
Supposedly, it had belonged to one of the former czar’s concubines.

That would be a much more difficult story to fob off. It was too interesting, too
detailed, to be entirely false.

Of course, it was entirely
true.
He looked longingly at the necklace on the dresser—unworn last night. Word certainly
couldn’t get out in London. He’d become a laughingstock.

He chuckled. Even
he
thought his fetish amusing. He might be wicked and indulge his sexual appetite in
an unusual way, but at least he had a sense of humor. Not that he let other people
know. It was much more exciting to let them be afraid of him.

Entirely naked, he slid out of bed. “Prescott!” he called.

A mere second later, his valet opened the bedchamber door, a silk banyan already over
his arm.

“Where’s Lady Janice?” Grayson asked him as he held out his arms.

“In the breakfast room,” said the valet as he wrapped Grayson in the royal blue fabric.

“Is she being as obstinate this morning as she was last night?”

Prescott never made eye contact as he tied the banyan’s belt in a smart knot. “According
to the footmen, she’s very agreeable.”

“Agreeable? Hah.” It was only Grayson that she said no to, and he didn’t quite understand.

He stalked over to the looking glass and smoothed back his hair. He wasn’t a fool—some
females recognized that men lusted after the unattainable and so threw up obstacles
at every turn, but this young woman was carrying the age-old strategy to the extreme.
He’d had a difficult time not laughing the night before when she’d said she hated
all of Shakespeare, but no one else seemed to recognize her game.

Yarrow and Rowntree—the idiots—had fallen for it. For
her.

They wanted her.

Grayson did, too. But only because he believed that she really
was
here to see his grandmother and that, despite her toying with him, she didn’t give
a fig for him.

Good God, why didn’t she?

He was handsome, and he was a duke.

He didn’t like when people didn’t crave his company.

At first he’d been annoyed with Lady Janice for ruining his preferred country routine—ride,
wench, drink, play cards, and wench—but she intrigued him enough that he was willing
to forgo his regular schedule and instead focus on her. She seemed very clever indeed,
apart from her foolish nay-saying. How amusing it would be to bed her.

But she was off-limits, of course. Her stepfather wouldn’t stand for Grayson’s ruining
her—not unless there was a wedding involved, which was the last thing on his mind.

So as of that morning, he was undecided what to do, other than to observe her a bit
more, see what he could see, lust after what he couldn’t have, and wonder why he didn’t
appeal to her.

“Sir Milo Falstaff is here,” said Prescott as he shaved him.

Grayson opened his eyes. “Is he? It’s about time.”

“Yes, he got snowed in at the village. He managed to make his way over here this morning
on his Arabian. He’s in the stables now.”

“He’d stay there all day if he could. Are Yarrow and Rowntree awake?”

“Yes. In fact, they just walked out to see him.”

Grayson hated being left out of anything. It went back to the days of his childhood,
when no one appeared to notice him at all—at least after his mother died. “Hurry up,
then,” he told the valet.

Ten minutes and an empty stomach later—Grayson really
did
hate being left out and so skipped his usual toast and coddled eggs—he and his hounds
were in the stable block with his so-called friends, sycophants all. It really began
to wear on one, to have to endure the false joviality of desperate men and women both.

Nevertheless, Grayson indulged them, knowing that at any moment he could toy with
their lives and ruin them completely. He was a good man for choosing not to. His mother
would have been proud, or at least relieved—so he liked to tell himself.

As a groom brushed Milo’s black stallion, Grayson noted with jealousy the man’s muscular
back and bulging thighs. He was a prime specimen of manhood, the same servant Grayson
had taken to task the day before in front of Lady Janice. Funny how he’d not noticed
him before. He must have stayed out of Grayson’s way in the stables.

Grayson would fire him as soon as the snow melted. No one on the estate was allowed
to outshine the duke. That only made sense, of course, so he didn’t feel guilty in
the least. The title must be propped up, revered, respected. He was doing his share.

“There was a lovely barmaid I had to part with this morning in Bramblewood,” said
Milo.

“Good thing you got in a last romp.” Grayson pulled out a cheroot, held it up, and
waved it back and forth. “What are you waiting for, groom?”

The servant paused in his brushing.

“Yes, you,” Grayson said.

It felt so good to have power.

Just don’t lose it.

God, he hated his father’s voice. Grayson was practically haunted by him. He’d been
the most vile, cold father a boy could ever imagine, and Grayson had been so relieved
when he was near death—until Father had told him he wasn’t the real duke and that
some rotten bastard was roaming the earth at that very moment who was the actual Duke
of Halsey, and that Grayson would have to take up his father’s pursuit of him, whoever
and wherever he was, and be rid of him.

It was such a miserable burden to endure, day in, day out.

How would he be rid of this supposed duke if he was ever to find him? Grayson wasn’t
a murderer, for God’s sake. He wondered if his father was crazy enough to ever kill
someone over a title and properties, and sometimes Grayson thought he might have been.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

So Grayson preferred to ignore the entire problem, pay lip service to it by occasionally
rattling the nerves of those nuns at St. Mungo’s Orphanage, where the trail of the
real heir had run cold years ago.

No wonder he drank and wenched incessantly when he was in the country. He frightened
nuns.
And at any moment he might lose everything, if this missing duke ever appeared.

The home estate was the only place Grayson could let go. In London, he had to pretend
to be a sober, high-minded peer of the realm. Indeed, his glittering life there would
have been quite amusing if he hadn’t had this diabolical secret.

While Grayson’s hounds milled about, the groom laid the brush on a wall, strode to
the coal stove, and lit a small but tight twist of straw. He then approached Grayson
with a purposeful stride and applied the flame to the end of his smoking stick.

Grayson inhaled, glad that he wasn’t a stable hand. “We have to be on our best behavior
for the time being,” he muttered round the cheroot clamped in his teeth.

After a moment, the end of the cheroot began to glow, but before the groom could retreat
Grayson blew a plume of smoke in his face.

Yarrow and Rowntree chuckled.

The servant refused to blink, and nothing registered in his eyes beyond a calm neutrality.
Bastard,
Grayson thought when the man sidestepped him and put the straw out in a pail of water.
He took all Grayson’s fun away.

“Why must we behave?” Milo squinted at him.

God, the baronet was ugly. The only reason Grayson put up with Milo was because he
was unsurpassed at selecting prime goers for purchase.

“There’s a decent chit in residence.” Grayson hid it well, but he was always restless,
like Milo’s Arabian. “She’s here to see Granny. And she intends to stay a full month.”

Milo laughed. “For the love of God, Halsey, do you really expect us to be like choirboys?
We’re snowed in. There’s nothing else to do but eat, drink, and be merry. Can’t you
put her on a sleigh to the dower house and let her molder away there, arranging the
library for you or some such thing?”

“No.” Grayson scowled at him. “She intrigues me.”

“This is a first.” Milo exchanged smug glances with Yarrow and Rowntree.

“Not that way.” Grayson’s tone was cold. “I’m not the marrying sort. But I’m not going
to bed her, either. She’s of good family. You’ll behave. I won’t have you damaging
my standing among the ton by acting like degenerates in front of her. I won’t tolerate
her carrying tales back home. Is that clear?”

“But why do you care what anyone thinks, Halsey?” Milo said. “You’re a duke. You can
do anything you want. The King does. He’s a reprobate, and everyone knows it.”

For a man who wasn’t even a peer, Milo never knew when to shut up.

Grayson took a few steps, grabbed him by the lapels, and yanked him close. “Vice is
never as gratifying as when it’s performed in secret,” he hissed. “And the pleasures
of depravity sharpen oh, so sweetly when one also has the adoration of innocents and
the approval of men of good character, as I do. You won’t endanger that.” He threw
him off, and the baronet stumbled backward. “You’ll endure. And you’ll do it with
aplomb. Think of it this way: a little self-denial will make your next descent into
base indulgence that much more satisfying.”

There were several beats of tense silence—Grayson was good at causing those. Only
the groom seemed oblivious. He lifted the rear left hoof of the Arabian and peered
at it.

“Aren’t you done yet, groom?” The man irked Grayson, like a splinter in his finger.

“In a moment, Your Grace,” the servant said without looking up at him. But it wasn’t
out of deference. It was because he was so intent on examining that hoof.

Another reason to fire the man. He was too insolent by half.

“Who is this high-and-mighty female altering our plans?” Milo polished his fingernails
on his jacket.

“The Marquess of Brady’s daughter—Lady Janice,” said Yarrow.

“Lady Janice?” The baronet’s dour face registered astonishment, which was odd.

Grayson’s pulse quickened. “Why are you shocked? You’ve heard of her? None of us have.”

“All we know is that she’s the middle daughter of the Marquess of Brady,” offered
Yarrow.

“I know who she is.” Milo murmured. “Most know only of her older sister, Lady Chadwick.
But there’s a rumor.…” He trailed off with a chuckle.

“Spit it out,” Grayson ordered.

Milo scratched his temple. “The Mayfair magpies—and my mother is one of them—are well
aware that Lord Chadwick’s brother, Finnian Lattimore, broke Lady Janice’s heart before
he left England.”

“I’d not heard that,” said Rowntree.

“Nor I,” said Grayson. “I remember Lattimore well. A handsome ne’er-do-well.”

“Most gentlemen wouldn’t know the story,” said Milo. “We don’t keep up with women’s
affairs of the heart, do we? Especially women who don’t command a great deal of attention
on the social scene. As his brother married her sister, who’d ever suspect anything
tawdry? But”—he looked round the company with a lascivious leer—“there are others
who say the story between Lattimore and Lady Janice is even uglier than most people
are aware.”

“No,” said Yarrow, his eyes alight with glee. “Uglier could only mean—”

“Oh, yes,” answered Milo. “Some say he plucked her cherry before he sailed.”

The men—save Grayson—burst into whoops of laughter.

He felt a cold satisfaction. He hadn’t realized he’d put her on something of a pedestal
for defying him, but he had, obviously. His relief that she wasn’t any better than
he was strong.

“The wily little vixen.” His smile was patently false. “Here she defies me at every
turn—as if she were a duchess and I were nothing.”

“That’s the brazenness of a strumpet for you.” Yarrow shook his head.

“Hold on.” Milo raised his hand. “The general feeling is that it didn’t happen. The
marquess never would have let Lattimore get away with it. Nor would he have given
permission to Chadwick to marry her sister.”

“Lady Chadwick
is
a paragon of virtue,” said Milo.

“And a remarkable beauty,” added Rowntree.

“But this little-known rumor about Lady Janice lingers”—Milo gave a sly chuckle—“as
all scintillating rumors do.”