A Duke Never Yields (21 page)

“No! No, not yet.” The jacket settled around her shoulders, warm and heavy, dwarfing her. She was shivering, from cold and from excitement. Wallingford’s hands lingered at the collar of the jacket, drawing her a step closer, and another step.

His breath was fanning across the top of her head now. His chin touched her hairline. Her face hovered in the warm nook beneath his jaw, where the skin of his neck lay so close to her nose and lips, so damp and alive, smelling of nothing but sweet fresh water.

Abigail lifted her arms and laid them against his waistcoat, from elbow to fingertip. “If I ask you a personal question, a very impertinent question, will you answer me truly?”

“Miss Harewood, when have you ever asked me anything else?”

She laughed into his neck. They were not quite embracing; Wallingford’s hands remained at the collar of the jacket, bracketing her between his arms but not altogether enfolding her. Still, she felt deliciously secure in this intimate space between their two bodies; almost a part of him. His heartbeat crashed beneath her hands; his breath warmed her hair. She felt as if she could say anything, do whatever she wanted; she was his prisoner, and yet more free than she had ever been in her life.

“You and Mr. Burke. You’re related, aren’t you?”

“Hmm.”

“I noticed it at dinner last night. I don’t know why I never saw it before. Your coloring’s quite different, of course, but you’re both tall and lean . . .”

“I’m not quite so tall and lean as Burke.”

“No.” She laughed. “It’s as if he’s taken your body and stretched it longer. And your faces, they’re built alike, Penhallow’s, too, those same cheekbones and jaw, and the way your brows meet your eyes . . .”

“You were studying the matter a great deal.”

She gave him a nudge with one hand. “Tell me the truth.”

Her arms rose and fell with the depth of his sigh. “Burke’s natural father is the Duke of Olympia, my mother’s father.”

“Oh,” Abigail breathed out. The information was shocking, of course, but even more shocking was that he had told her this fact at all. Perhaps it was common knowledge among a certain set, acknowledged wordlessly in aristocratic hallways, but it remained a delicate family secret, a matter of trust. “Then he’s . . . he’s your . . .”

“My uncle, yes.” His tone was dry, and just faintly amused.

She laughed into his throat, almost a giggle. “Your uncle!” She laughed again, bubbling over, until her back was shaking and Wallingford’s hands slid around her shoulders at last and held her, cradled her against his big body. “Your uncle,” she said again, and this time he laughed, too, vibrating under her hands.

She laid her head against his chest. “But it must have been rather hard for you.”

“Not at all. He’s a fine chap, Burke. I’m proud to own him. Every family needs a genius, and . . . well, he’s an absolute legend, as you know. A colossus in his field.”

Abigail thought of the little jolt of Wallingford’s body, back in the peach orchard. “He’s a darling fellow, of course. But I believe I like
you
best.”

Was she mistaken, or did his arms tighten around her, a fraction of a degree? He bent his head to press his cheek against her hair. “Then you’ve no sense at all, as I suspected,” he said.

“I have much more sense than anyone gives me credit for.”

“And what about my charming Adonis of a brother? You haven’t considered him?”

“He’s a darling as well, I quite adore Penhallow, but . . . well . . . there’s something missing . . .”

“A dukedom, perhaps?”

She snapped her fingers. “Oh yes, of course! That’s it.” The buttons of his waistcoat lay beneath her hand, smooth and covered with cloth. She touched one gently, circled it with her finger. “Besides, my cousin Lilibet owns him, body and soul.”

“I fear you’re right.”

The water lapped against the nearby shore. Outside the circle of their arms, the breeze was picking up, chilled and restless. It was late, midnight at least, but Abigail didn’t want to move, did not want to budge a fraction of an inch away from this spot and this man.

She inhaled deeply.

“Wallingford, I want you to call off the wager.”

He didn’t move. She held her breath, waiting.

“Hmm,” he said at last.

She drew back and tried to look up at his face, but his arms wouldn’t loosen around her, and she only bumped her nose against the bottom of his jaw. “I mean it. It’s pointless, can’t you see? Nobody wants to leave the castle, there’s room for everyone. And what possible harm does it do, letting people fall in love with one another, as they were meant to do?”

The instant she said the words, a flush began to spread up from her heart and into her face, until her cheeks absolutely burned with self-consciousness.
Say something
, she thought frantically, while the word
love
dangled like a pendulum between them, in rhythm with the slow, deliberate beat of Wallingford’s heart beneath her hands.

“I suppose,” he said, like a magistrate delivering a verdict, “if we were to let the matter drop, without saying anything . . .”

She flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, thank you! Thank you. Just think what
fun
it will be, without this dreadful sentence hanging over us. What
friends
we will all be.”

Wallingford reached back, caught her hands, and brought them between his chest and hers. “Friends, Abigail?” He was looking at her now, his expression soft and serious, the moonlight glinting against the tiny droplets that still clung to his eyelashes.

Abigail was glad for the darkness, because it hid her blushes. Blushes!
Her!
Abigail had scarcely blushed in her life, and now here she stood, flushing and trembling like some silly debutante in a London ballroom, exactly the sort of girl she’d sworn never to become. And yet, the sensation was not altogether unpleasant. She felt rather . . . thrilled. As if one of her long shots, galloping along hopelessly at the rear of the pack, had turned for home and put on a dazzling kick of speed, hurtling past all the others, with the finish pole beckoning ahead.

That sort of dizzy elation, only better. As if she were the horse herself.

“Yes, friends,” she warbled. “Men and women can be friends. We can study together, every afternoon. You’re an expert in Latin; I heard you at lunch. We’ll work our way through . . .”

“Abigail.” He stopped her mouth with the gentlest of kisses. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s a very long distance from embracing passionately in a stable to becoming friends.”

Her eyes rounded with astonishment. Wallingford looked down at her, perfectly serious, almost stern, except for a minute fleck of muscle at the corner of his mouth.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Oh! How I adore you!” She flung her hands back around his neck, laughing, feeling with ecstasy the shaking of his chest as he laughed, too. He lifted her from the ground, and something pressed against her hair, and she knew he was kissing her.

“Listen to me,” he said at last, “we must get you back. It’s late and you’re chilled, and everyone will wonder . . .”

“No one will wonder. They’ll think I’m in my room.”

“Abigail.” He brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. “We’re not going to do this, do you understand me? I may be a brute and a scoundrel, but I’m not in the habit of seducing virgins, even one for whom I . . .”

“Yes?”

He kissed her forehead. “Never mind. Come along.”

He made no move to disengage, and neither did she.

“I don’t want to go,” she said. “Please. Just a little longer. I don’t want to let it go.”

He hesitated. “You’ll be chilled.”

His voice was impossibly gentle, an entirely different Wallingford, some true and hidden Wallingford. She wanted to capture it somehow, the way Mr. Burke might capture a sample of air in his scientific beakers.

Abigail drew back. “Wait here a moment,” she said, and hurried across the damp rocks to the boathouse.

When she returned, arms laden with blankets, he was still standing there on the rocks, barefoot, arms crossed. “What the devil?” he asked, eyebrows high.

“I keep them in the boathouse, in case of picnics,” Abigail said breezily. She laid a blanket about his shoulders and wrapped the other around hers.

“Picnics.” He pulled her against him. “You mad girl.” He kissed her hair. “My mad girl.”

She drew him against a boulder and sank to the ground. “Just for a few minutes.” His hand remained in hers, doubtful; she gave it a little shake. “Come along. I’m sure your reputation can withstand the scandal.”

“It looks dashed uncomfortable down there.”

“You can rest your head on my lap.”

“God help us.” He settled down next to her with a resigned sigh of theatrical proportions. Almost gingerly he put his arm around her and urged her head into the blanketed nook of his shoulder. “You’re warm enough?”

“Mmm.” She closed her eyes. “You’re not a brute, nor a scoundrel, Wallingford. Why do you pretend to be?”

His hand drew long lines up and down her arm. “It’s not a pretense. It’s a part of me. It’s you who insist on pretending otherwise.”

“That’s rot. Of course we all have baser urges. I daresay even Lilibet has them, from time to time.”

“Yes, but I give in to them, far too often. My grandfather has often remarked on it. He believes it’s because I’ve lived a life of unbridled privilege, denied nothing from the instant of my birth.”

Abigail sat in awe, savoring the stroke of his hand, the warmth of his body, the astonishing intimacy of his words. He had probably never said as much to anyone before. Why her? She snuggled closer. “Is that why you’re here? To prove you can exist without your dukedom?”

Wallingford’s body went still. Even his heartbeat seemed to suspend in his chest, for just an instant. “What a mad girl you are, Miss Harewood.”

“You really must decide what to call me, Wallingford. Either it’s Abigail or it’s not.”

“Abigail, then.” He kissed the crown of her head, where it rested beneath his chin. “Since you allow me the privilege.”

She sat there quietly, listening to the slap of water, to the rustling of leaves. To the sound of Wallingford’s breath, stirring her hair.

“If you were really a scoundrel, you’d ravish me now.”

“Perhaps you’ve changed me altogether.”

“No. I don’t believe people can be changed, not in the essentials. You are simply as you are; it’s only a matter of what you choose to do about it.”

“Free will?”

“Yes, I suppose. If you want to call it that.” She looked at her hand, which had nestled inside Wallingford’s blanket to lie once more atop the hard buttons of his waistcoat. What would he do if she unbuttoned them? “Look at you. There’s so much goodness in you, and you won’t show it to anyone, you hide it away in that tender heart of yours.”

“Tender
heart
?” he said, as he might say
tender boiled kitten
.

She patted it. “The tenderest I’ve ever known. Except tender hearts aren’t allowed in almighty dukes, are they?”

“The practice is generally discouraged.”

She was wrapped in warmth, wrapped in Wallingford. She had forgotten all about the curse, all about faithful love and faithless English lords; she simply existed in this state of perfect bliss, disconnected from everything else.

The moon shone down on the two of them, curled together by the lakeshore, breathing each other in, joined in peace at last. Her mouth stretched into an enormous yawn. “Well, you needn’t hide it from me. I shall take the gentlest care of it.”

“Will you, now?”

“I promise.”

Her head felt heavy. She let Wallingford’s chest take its full weight. Beneath the blankets, she drew up her knees to rest against his leg. His thick arm held her in place, as securely as . . . as a . . . as one of those . . . when one was . . .

She opened her eyes, because she was moving along in a carriage, and yet unlike any carriage she had ever known. For one thing, it was comfortable; for another, it was warm and rather muscular and possessed a distinct heartbeat, which thudded like a bass drum into her ear.

“Where are we going?” she murmured.

“To your room.”

“Oh! That sounds lovely.”

He laughed softly. They were outdoors somewhere; she thought she could smell the peach blossoms again. “
You’re
going to your room, darling. To sleep.”

At the word
sleep
, she must have dozed off again, because next he was laying her on a bed, drawing down her dress, loosening her stays.

“Take them off,” she murmured. “Wretched things.”

“I don’t dare.” But he did anyway, with shameful expertise, and her petticoat, too. He tucked her under the covers in her chemise and drawers.

“Wallingford,” she whispered, just as he pulled away, “what’s changed? Why now?”

His hand cupped her cheek: “I don’t know. I suppose . . . I suppose you wore me down, the lot of you, all against me.
Especially
you, Miss Abigail Harewood: You who never give up on anything.”

“Never.” She covered his hand. “What do we do in the morning, then?”

“God knows. Good night, Abigail.”

“Good night, Wallingford.”

He kissed her forehead and stole away into the blackness.

TWELVE

Midsummer’s Eve

T
he Duke of Wallingford stretched one booted foot to nudge Abigail’s hip. “You’re falling asleep again,” he said.

She started beautifully. Her chestnut hair, loosened from its pins, fell against her cheek. “No, I’m not. We were right . . . right . . .” She tucked her hair behind her ear and flipped over a page in the volume of Plutarch that lay in her lap.

“Never mind.”

“I’ve got it right here. Just a moment.” She picked up the bread lying on the blanket beside her and tore off an absent hunk.

“Why the devil are you so sleepy this morning? Haven’t got yourself a lover, have you?”

She tilted her head and looked at him sideways, through her upturned fairy eye. “And if I have?”

“I’d punch his lights out, of course.” He took the loaf from her fingers and tore off a piece for himself. They were sitting in the shade, shielded from the sun, except for a single piece of morning sunlight, no larger than a sovereign, that landed on Abigail’s chestnut hair and turned it a bright golden red.