A Duke Never Yields (6 page)

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment, in fact.”

“Oh, Your Grace.” She turned and placed a kiss on Lucifer’s broad nose. “You have so much to learn about women.”

He felt affronted. “I know all I need to know, as it happens. I know, for example, that you’ve no business skulking about unchaperoned in Italian stableyards in the middle of the night, and ought to be making your way back to your room this instant.”

“I can’t do that.” She tilted her head a fraction and looked up at him from the corner of her eye, and Wallingford was lost,
lost
, the entire world dissolving around him and leaving only this beautiful and bewitching creature with her turned-up sherry gold eyes, regarding him as if she knew his every secret.

“Why not?” he gasped.

“Because you haven’t kissed me yet.” She turned slowly to face him. “Unless you don’t mean to kiss me at all, of course.”

A wave of rain passed over the stable roof, a distant rumble of thunder. The lantern wavered; the entire building seemed to groan around them. Lucifer shifted his feet, turned his long neck, and trained his pointed ears in Wallingford’s direction.

As if to say,
Well, old chap?

There was no question, was there? He had no choice at all. Not from the moment Miss Abigail Harewood had first danced into the shelter of the inn, shaking the rain from her hat in a halo of sparkles.

He took a step forward. “Has no one ever told you, Miss Harewood,” he said, in a growl, “you must be very careful what you wish for?”

She tilted her head back. “Oh,” she said, faintly, rapturously, and put her palms against his chest. “Bergamot.”

“Bergamot?”

“You smell of bergamot. I’m absolutely
mad
for bergamot.”

For an instant, he gazed down at her face, almost dizzy at the way she strained upward in delight and anticipation. When was the last time a lady had looked at him like that, so natural and unfeigned? He loved her face; he loved her expression. He lifted his hands and cradled her head, his palms holding the curve of her jaw and his fingers reaching up into her hair.

He bent down and kissed her mouth, and quite without warning he—
he,
the stately Duke of Wallingford—was fifteen again, and the sun warmed the back of his head, and the summer-ripened grass tickled his face with its sweetness, and a girl’s full lips moved ardently against his as if he were an object of priceless value, as if she never meant to stop. As if kissing were all that existed in the world.

But
these
lips tasted of wine and dessert,
this
skin smelled of wool and soap instead of cow dung and sour milk. This was Abigail Harewood, enchanted little elf, shimmering with life and youth and imagination enough for both of them, and she pressed herself into his chest, wavering slightly, as if she were standing on her toes in an effort to close the gap between them.

Wallingford lifted his head. “Miss Harewood,” he whispered.

“Abigail,” she said.

He brought his hands to her waist, lifted her, and carried her a few tottering steps to the wall next to Lucifer’s stall. She felt light and supple in his arms, her bones fine and strong beneath her coat and dress and petticoats. He let her slide gently down the wall as he kissed her again, passionately now, running his tongue along the crease of her lips.

“Oh,” she breathed out, and in the opening of her mouth he deepened the kiss.

She lay flat against the wall now, her feet resting on the floor. He brought his forearms on either side of her face, bracing himself as he kissed her, because she met him with such eagerness he could not hold himself steady. Her arms reached up around his neck; her mouth opened up and shivered at the intrusion of his tongue. His legs were planted on either side of hers, and she twined one booted foot around his calf, linking them together at every point.

Dimly, Wallingford heard Lucifer snort in disgust.

“Bugger off,” he said, from the corner of his mouth.

“What’s that?” gasped Miss Harewood.

Lucifer’s nose shoved at his arm.

“I said,
bugger off
,” growled Wallingford; then to Abigail, “Nothing, darling,” and he set back to work, immersing himself in the caramel sweetness of her mouth, the tender give-and-take of her tongue and lips. At the back of his brain, an alarm was beginning to pound out, that Miss Abigail Harewood was no dairymaid, no restless wife of a foreign diplomat, and he had better obey the sage advice of his own horse and cease this nonsense directly.

But the back of his brain was very, very far away.

“Oh,” said Miss Harewood, pulling her lips away a fraction. “Oh, Wallingford.” The words brushed his mouth, absorbed into his skin. “Oh, that was lovely. Thanks ever so much.”

Her booted foot unwrapped itself from around his leg.

“Thanks?” he repeated stupidly. His brain whirled in an eager spiral of desire and bliss.

“That was quite the nicest kiss yet.” She slipped her hands from the nape of his neck and patted one cheek, as she might reassure a lapdog. “You will do splendidly.”

“Do . . .
splendidly
?”

Wallingford’s arms were still braced against the wall. In a graceful movement, she ducked beneath them and slipped her shawl over her head. Her eyes, he noted without thought, sparkled beautifully beneath the shifting glow of the stable lantern.

“Yes. But I must fly, before the others wonder where I’ve gone. It’s very useful to have a reputation for absconding, but even Alexandra’s patience has its limits.” She gave his cheek another pat. “Dear me, you look quite dumbfounded.”

“I am not . . . I am . . . What the devil?” he said helplessly.

She smiled. “Never fear. I’m quite sure we shall find each other again soon. I’m a great believer in fate, and why else should our paths have crossed? You
shall
be my first lover. I’m certain of it. Oh dear! Half past ten already! I must fly.”

“Look here . . .”

But she was already kissing his cheek, already securing her coat collar about her neck. She dropped a kiss on Lucifer’s nose and bent to pick something up from the doorway: an umbrella, large and practical.

“Miss Harewood!”

She turned and put her finger to her mouth. “Don’t follow me! What if someone should see us?”

And she was gone.

Wallingford sagged back against the wall, every muscle slack and stunned. Lucifer pushed against his arm, gentler now. The horse’s large brown eye regarded him with liquid sympathy.

“Don’t even think it,” said Wallingford. “Nothing’s changed. I did not flee a thousand miles from one scheming young lady only to fall victim to another.”

Lucifer blinked his large eye.

“After all, she’s not duchess material. Not at all.”

Lucifer reached for his net of hay and snagged a few stalks. Wallingford lay breathing against the wooden boards, gazing at a point just to the left of the lantern.

“I don’t know what came over me. Lost my head entirely.”

Lucifer made no answer. He was entirely absorbed in his hay.

Wallingford straightened and drew a deep breath. “In any case, that’s that. I shall never see her again, or at least not for years, when we’re all back in London and married off and all that. Shall be quite happy to be her first lover
then
, ha-ha.” His hat had fallen from his head; he fished around on the ground and replaced it on his head, pulling the woolen brim snugly down his forehead. “Mad as a hatter, that one.”

Lucifer lipped his hay ruminatively.

“That’s that,” he said again, and started forward through the stable door. His muscles, he found, had a rather curious feel: almost like jelly. And his lips seemed burned, swollen, impossibly sensitive.

The rain pattered down against his back; the inn loomed like a black shadow across the yard. He shoved his hands in his pockets and hurried forward, looking down to avoid the puddles, and collided with a resounding thump against the familiar brown wool chest of his brother.

“What ho!” said Lord Roland. “Out for a walk?”

Wallingford’s swollen lips opened and closed. “Yes, a walk,” he said. “Fresh air.”

“Fresh air, that’s the thing,” said Lord Roland, as the rain poured off the brim of his woolen cap.

They stared at each other.

“Well, I’m off,” said Wallingford, dodging to Roland’s right.

“Right-ho!” said Roland, dodging left.

In the common room, there was no sign of her. Not that he was looking, really; one’s eyes naturally searched about a room, on entering. One’s ears naturally tuned for the sound of a human voice. It didn’t mean one was looking, or listening, for any person in particular.

Heavens, no.

The landlord and his wife were bustling about in the corner, setting up straw pallets and spreading wool blankets. Wallingford gazed in dawning horror.

His
straw pallet.
His
wool blanket.

A few men still huddled about one of the trestle tables, muttering and laughing. At another, Phineas Burke sat by himself, flaming ginger head in his hands, staring at a glass of grappa as if he expected it to shake itself off and perform a jig.

Wallingford sat down next to him with a rainy plop.

“You’re wet,” said Burke, without looking up.

“I daresay.”

The bottle sat next to Burke’s left elbow. Wallingford eyed it, picked it up, sloshed it about. Not much left. He tipped it up and drained the last drop. The wine tingled against his kiss-swollen lips.

“I daresay the women are setting up quite comfortably upstairs,” Wallingford said.

“No doubt.”

“No straw pallets for their ladyships’ precious backsides.”

“No, indeed.”

Wallingford set his wet hat down on the table before him and gazed at the woolen houndstooth. “Well, it’s just one night, I suppose,” he said. “We’ll be on our way tomorrow, and won’t have anything more to do with them, praise God.”

“Except for the wager.” Burke drank the rest of his wine and set down the glass with a precise and deliberate stroke of his wrist. “The wager you proposed with Lady Morley, over dessert.”

There was something accusing about Burke’s tone, something foreboding. Wallingford staggered backward in his mind to dessert, only a couple of hours ago, at this very table. Miss Harewood and Lady Somerton had retired with the boy, leaving him oddly out of sorts. Lady Morley had been as baiting as ever and he—as ever—had risen to the bait. It seemed like another age, another Wallingford. “Now, look here,” he said, feeling defensive. “You had something to do with that wager, remember? You proposed the stakes.”

“So I did.” Burke stood abruptly, swinging his long legs over the bench, and picked up his hat.

“Where are you going?” Wallingford demanded.

Burke settled the hat firmly on his forehead. His face was grim, his green eyes dark with determination. In fact, exactly the way he looked when Wallingford was foolish enough to interrupt him in his mechanical experiments.

“Out,” Burke said, in a voice as grim as his face. “For a walk.”

Wallingford drew a long sigh. “In that case, I’d suggest an umbrella.”

THREE

P
eople, Abigail knew, were rather like horses. Some were mudders, and some were not.

Her sister Alexandra was decidedly
not
a mudder.

Abigail—who prided herself on a cheerful willingness to plow through whatever weather was thrown in her direction—endeavored simply to ignore both the rain and Alexandra’s complaints, and took refuge in warming thoughts. Specifically, the warming thought of the Duke of Wallingford kissing her in the stables last night.

She hoped he hadn’t noticed how flustered she was. Flustered? She’d been in a transport, shocked and shimmering, her entire body overturned by the mere action of his mouth on hers, by the way his long and immense body had flattened her against the stable wall, by the scent of bergamot from his skin and the taste of wine on his lips. She tried, now, to remember exactly what had happened—which parts of her had tingled, where she had ached and melted—but the sensations defied description.

She had simply been alive.

Alive
.

And now?

Well, a little numbness, a little anticlimax, was only to be expected.

Abigail trudged on into the dank Tuscan morning. Her boots sucked valiantly against the mud. The rain was letting up, a mere drizzle now, but the mud remained: heavy and viscous, snatching greedily at her feet with every stride. Before her, the baggage cart slowed. The horses, poor beasts, were straining into their harness. Somewhere ahead of them, the Castel sant’Agata rose up from the remote and rocky hills, refuge and sanctuary, their home for the next year. Untroubled, so the plan went, by visitors of any sort, and by lovers most particularly.

What now, then? She had slipped away in the nick of time last night, flushing and trembling, throwing her scarf up around her head so he wouldn’t see how thoroughly his kiss had affected her. The Duke of Wallingford had probably kissed dozens of women, if not more. He would laugh if he knew what effect he’d had on Abigail’s inexperienced lips. No, far better to leave and recompose herself. It would never do to let such a man gain the upper hand.

It would never do to let
any
man gain the upper hand.

But in fleeing, had she not given up her last opportunity? Last night, with Wallingford so warm and real beside her, their next meeting had felt so inevitable, the logical act of a fate desperate to bring them together. Here, amid the wet rocks and cold mud, the drizzle and the mist and the laboring horses, the Duke of Wallingford and his iron arms and his mad ardent kisses seemed as distant as the other side of the world.

As distant as the sun itself.

What on earth had she been thinking, running away like that, expecting him to . . .
what
? To pop on over to the Castel sant’Agata next week? Rap on the door and drag her to some convenient tapestry-draped bedroom and complete his seduction?

What a fool. What a silly, frightened fool she’d been. Now, she might wait for another year before such an opportunity arose again.