An American Duchess (32 page)

“I realized it was Private Long. He was twenty, and before he volunteered, he helped in his father’s green-grocer business. He had lost his mind, and I went out to him to haul him to the ground and get him to crawl back. Then he was hit, so I scrambled to get to him. The next shell exploded close to me, threw my body back twenty feet—that gave me the scars I have on my face. I crawled back toward Long again. I was bloody fed up and willing to risk my own life—no one else’s, just mine—for Long. But one of my other young men, an eighteen-year-old named Archie Cromwell, came out to help me. He was shot to pieces by machine-gun fire. He lingered in the mud for minutes, screaming in agony. I survived, but he died because I decided to do something bloody stupid. I went out to Long because I didn’t care if I died—” He stopped and shook his head, as if he could shake off the emotions gripping him.

He had to go on. He had one more thing to tell her. “I don’t know if I truly welcomed death, but I kept thinking it wouldn’t be so bad. It would have to be quiet, for one thing. I wouldn’t hear any more screams. After the executions of my boys, that’s what I dreamed of every night. Their pleas and their screams. When I crawled out to Long, I was damned tired of worrying about survival, and I thought getting death over with might not be so bad.”

He stopped. No doubt, she thought him insane.

Her voice came to him—soft, rich, filled with sorrow. “Nigel, you did what you could! You tried to stop the insanity of shooting frightened young men. You did not intend to hurt Cromwell. You must stop punishing yourself.”

She still didn’t understand. “When Will died from influenza,” he said, “I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I
should have died, not him. I would have given anything to silence the voices in my head. The frightened young men pleading for their lives, terrified. Archie’s screams. And then your brother and my friend Rupert...and our unborn children... Why in God’s name were so many innocent lives taken?”

He broke then. He’d fought so long to be stoic. To keep it inside. He’d fought the shaking and the panic. He’d desperately fought the damn tears.

They came now. He stood there, not acting like a duke, not acting like a gentleman whom others could depend on. He cried. Like a child. His shoulders shook with it. His chest ached. His throat rasped down breaths—it felt as if he was pouring fire down his throat.

God, she would be horrified. Disgusted. She admired aviators, successful oilmen, film producers and brash painters. Obviously she liked brave and daring men—

Her arms came around him. And she held him.

“You must despise me,” he growled.

“Despise you? Nigel, I love you.”

He wrapped his arms around her slender body. His lips brushed her forehead. “Let me take you to bed. Zoe, I want to spend tonight with you—all night. I want to sleep with you and hold you in my arms. I don’t know if I can do this, but I have to try. If I can’t, I’ll give you your freedom.”

 24 

GOING HOME

Zoe peeled out of the mansion’s circular drive and sped along the winding road that hugged the rocky coastline. They passed mansions that overlooked the beach. Here and there, the road almost seemed to hang out over the ocean, and if you looked down, you looked right at the rolling silver-tipped waves of the vast, dark Pacific. The breeze flowed over them, chilling her bare arms and her slender chest beneath her damp, thin dress.

“Stop here,” Nigel said abruptly. “You’re cold.”

She pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road. Here was a long distance between the houses. On one side—where she’d carefully parked—was a drop-off, which fell several yards to the beach and the dark, crashing ocean. On the other side were tree-dotted hills and rocky outcroppings. The movie business had left New York to capture good weather and cheap land, and only a few yards from palatial houses, she could hear howling coyotes.

Nigel took his jacket, which was dry since he had stripped it off to dance in the fountain. He draped it over her shoulders.

It smelled of him—of masculinity and sandalwood. And sexual promise.

“You opened your heart to me, Nigel. How could you have ever thought I would despise you for it? If you’d told me a year ago, I could have shared it with you. I could have told you that I just see you as the noblest, most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”

“I’m not a flying ace or a self-made millionaire or an artist—”

“You are a hero and an English duke.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.

And kissed him.

She stopped only to breathe, “I intend to take you to my bed. And you’re going to stay there.” Then a wild thought came to her. “Do you remember the night when we necked in my car?”

“I remember every single moment I’ve spent with you. Each and every moment was unforgettable.”

Her heart soared, and he asked, “Do you know what I would like to do?”

She shook her head.

“Make love to you on the hood of this car. I’ve heard one of the benefits of automobiles is that they are a convenient place for ravishing.”

Next thing she knew, Nigel had sat her bottom on the smooth, silver-blue hood of her flashy, brand-new Chrysler. Wrapped in his coat, she was warm, and she
ached
with desire. As a car whizzed by, illuminating them with headlight beams, Nigel nuzzled her neck, her jaw, kissed his way to the sensitive place at the base of her ear.

Someone hollered at them, but Nigel didn’t stop.

Zoe leaned back, pulling her husband with her by his broad shoulders. She drew her short skirt up. Nigel didn’t require much persuasion. He positioned his hips between her spread legs, kissing her intensely. He slid his hand under her bottom, lifting her to him. He pushed down her panties while she fumbled with the buttons of his trousers. She drew her silk underpants off and tossed them behind her into the open car.

She’d never dreamed he would actually
do
this.

She wrapped her arms around him, lifting herself to him.

“Zoe, you are so beautiful.”

“So are you,” she added. She knew to say it was to challenge him, but she wanted him to know it was true.

He paused a moment. Behind her, she heard the thunder of the waves on the sand, the murmur of the wind through palm trees, the erotic, harsh breathing of her husband, the soft little moans she made. She waited for him to argue. Or to look away and touch his scars.

He didn’t. Instead, he held her gaze, the moonlight making his eyes pale blue. He just made love to her more fiercely. The hood of the car flexed beneath her; the body of it rocked on its springs.

A delicious look of agony captured his gorgeous face. Oh, yes—

She exploded. Her legs wrapped right around his hips; her fingernails drove into his shoulders. She burst like Chinatown on their New Year’s celebrations.

Zoe moaned, gasped, laughed with pure joy.

She liked him wild, rough and as much unlike a restrained duke as he could be.

When it was over, he lifted her off the hood. She didn’t quite know what to say. She was still feeling her way. “I like you when you want to make love on cars, not when you’re grumpy and austere.”

“Unfortunately, British men are a blend of both,” he said softly. “We have dirty minds, but we believe a great deal in guilt, duty and torturing ourselves.”

“So I’ve learned about you.” Bundled in Nigel’s coat, she looked up at him in the dark. The thrill of making love had filled her. But she wondered—what would they do next? What did he really want? What did she? “Thank you for telling me what happened to you in the War. Thank you for revealing that to me.”

The beam of her headlights cast cool light over his face. The bliss of making love had faded from his expression and he looked grim again. But he forced a smile for her, as he held out his hand. “Let me drive.”

“It’s my car, but all right.”

She tossed him the keys, opened the door to the driver’s side and slid across. Carefully, Nigel drove off the shoulder—no mean feat since the sand was soft and the wheels had sunk in. Once they were back on the paved portion of the road, she gave directions and he floored the gas pedal.

Zoe gripped her door, and Nigel took the curves like a racing driver. He took his gaze from the road for one second. “I’ve been practicing over the past four months,” he said. “I wanted you to have the experience of having your heart in your throat.”

“Well, you do keep putting it there,” she drawled.

What would happen tonight? Could they really sleep together as husband and wife? Would he leave if he couldn’t?

Last time, he’d let her go. This time, would she let
him
go?

* * *

They reached her house. Nigel turned to her and she couldn’t help it. She lunged and captured his mouth in a kiss again. With lips locked, they slid out of the car.

Kissing, they stumbled up the white stone steps to her house. Nigel rapped on the door, and Zoe saw it open and a maid stand holding it, with her mouth gaping open.

She and her husband kissed their way up the stairs, clothes dropping on the marble foyer, the priceless rugs, the gleaming wood stairs. All the way up the stairs, they devoured each other.

“I’ve missed you for four months. I have a lot of wasted time to make up for,” he murmured.

“You could have come at any time.”

“I was too stupid to understand that,” he said.

She was shocked. “The Duke of Langford just called himself stupid?”

“The Duke of Langford is smart enough to know when he is an idiot.” He lifted her right off her feet.

He carried her to her bedroom, and they both tumbled onto her white, oval bed. She sat up and pulled her dress off, sent it to land in a wet heap on the floor. Then she got to work on Nigel. She loved helping him undress. She wanted to tear his elegant clothes off him. She’d just made love with him on her car, but she wanted him again.

She loved him, and loving him meant she hungered to be intimate with him.

He made love to her for literally hours. Until they were both gasping for breath, laughing with delight.

“I love making whoopee with you,” Zoe whispered, and he laughed.

Stretched out on her silvery satin sheets, she ran her hand over Nigel’s bare chest. “I never really thought you would come after me.”

“You didn’t? You were wrong, Zoe.” His blue eyes lost their post-sex haze and grew serious. “Are you sure you want me to share your bed for the whole night?”

“I’m not afraid if you have nightmares. I want to be with you to soothe you, to make them go away.”

“I’d like to try.”

She leaned up on her elbow. The haunted look was still there on his face—also guilt. “Have you told me everything, Nigel?”

“No. There is something I didn’t tell you. About the young woman who wrote letters to me. It was not her letter that you saw me reading. It was a letter from her mother—the young woman had gone missing. Her mother assumed she ran away with a lover. In the spring, this young woman went to see the man who was my commanding officer, now Lord Durham. She shot him and escaped.”

“Oh, my God.” Her heart twisted. Now she understood the depth of his guilt. “You were worrying about this over Christmas—the girl going missing. And when I had the crash... That was when your former commander was shot. No wonder you were so deeply troubled. I wish—I just wish you had told me.”

“I wish that, too. That’s why I am telling you everything now. I have tried to find the girl. Lily Bell is her name. I’ve hired investigators and they searched all over the country for her with no success. She’s disappeared without a trace.”

“Why
are
you trying to find her? So she can face imprisonment?”

“She was angry, upset, and she threatened to make someone pay for her brother’s death. If she is guilty, she will go to prison, but I want to help her as much as I can. And I want to ensure the truth comes out if she’s innocent.”

Her hand brushed over his heart. She felt how fast it pumped. “You don’t think she is guilty?”

“It’s hard to kill someone. Very hard. I don’t know if she had it in her.”

This was the man she truly loved. The one who believed in a young woman’s innocence. “You must find her, then,” Zoe said. “If she’s innocent, that must be proved. Maybe there was someone else who wanted to kill this man.”

“Lily went to his house and shouted at him. That’s why she is the only suspect.”

“Maybe someone else took advantage of that.”

“I didn’t think of that. I was so fixated on finding Lily Bell. If I can prove she is innocent, I will have accomplished something. I will have righted one wrong, at least.”

“You are a noble man,” she said. “It’s late now. We can talk more in the morning. Right now, Your Grace, I want you to wrap your arms around me, sleep next to me.”

She snuggled up to him, letting her fingers play over the bulge of his naked biceps. For an hour, she caressed his hair, stroked his arms and chest. He kissed the top of her head. Eventually she heard his soft, measured breathing.

He was asleep.

She closed her eyes. He would probably shout. Or start thrashing around. She would have to be ready for it.

But when she opened her eyes, sunlight was sneaking in around the blinds, and Nigel still had his arm around her, holding her possessively. And he was still asleep.

Zoe leaned over and kissed her husband’s forehead. Tenderly, she brushed back his now-dry blue-black hair.

When she gently put her lips to his long eyelashes, he woke up. For a moment, he looked shocked. Then his full lips curved into a smile and he rolled her onto her back.

* * *

For the next fortnight, Zoe worked with Nigel, making long-distance telephone calls to the police in London. Sending telegrams.

Zoe came down for breakfast one morning—she and Nigel took the meal outside on her sun-drenched terrace—and Nigel jumped out of his seat. His smile dazzled her.

“You were right.” His voice caught and she had to wait in suspense while he took a breath and continued. “The police have arrested Lord Durham’s secretary for his murder. It turns out the man had been embezzling from my former commander for years. Durham found out and his secretary took advantage of Lily’s visit, setting her up as a scapegoat. None of this would have come out, Zoe, if it had not been for you.”

“What of Lily?”

“Once the story hit the newspapers, she knew she was no longer wanted for arrest. My men put advertisements in the papers, asking her to come forward. She did and has been reunited with her family.”

“We will help them, Nigel. There are so many people who were devastated by the War. I want to help the Lily Bells of the world.”

Nigel came forward, lifted her hand and kissed it gently. “Now I have a surprise for you.”

“What?” she asked.

But Nigel refused to give her a clue.

He drove her to the local aerodrome, where wind socks flapped and snapped the wind. Zoe smelled the grease and oil that came with engines, heard the sputter and roar of airplanes preparing to take flight.

“Why have you brought me here?” After her crash and the miscarriage—and the way Nigel had sold her airplane in secret while she was recovering—she’d never dreamed she would be at his side and near anything with wings again.

He drove across the tarmac and brought her car to a stop beside a deep blue airplane. “I brought you to see this.”

“The airplane?”

“It’s mine,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“I bought it. Admittedly with the profit Brideswell has been making on the investments from your dowry.”

When she’d asked for her divorce, she’d known she was leaving half her money tied up with Brideswell, though she could have demanded money paid for support. But she had her two million well invested and she was quite well-off on her own.

But she didn’t want to be on her own anymore.

“I didn’t buy it for you—I thought you would prefer to find your own.” Nigel reached behind him and plucked a flying helmet and goggles out of the rumble seat. “I want to take you up for a flight. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve taken flying lessons from the ace, Bailey.”

“You learned how to fly?”

“I wanted to share your love. I was wrong to demand that you give up something that matters to you so much.”

“All right, Your Grace. I’d love to fly with you.”

He pulled on his leather flying helmet and did up the strap. He looked very handsome. A little unkempt, she noticed. He hadn’t shaved this morning and he had a growth of stubble that made him look rakish, dangerous, bad.

He pulled down the goggles and drew on gloves. “There’s a hat and goggles for you in the aeroplane,” he said. “I didn’t want to give away the surprise.”

She hadn’t sat in the passenger seat for a long time. Half turning, she watched him at the controls. “Do you love to fly or did you just do this to impress me?”

“It excites me, Zoe. I am falling in love with it. Now I understand why you said you have to grasp life and live it.”

Zoe didn’t say anything. She held her breath as Nigel picked up speed, as he adjusted the wings, and when they just about ran out of runway, he got the airplane off the ground. They flew upward, swaying like puppets suspended from string. Over the metal buildings of the aerodrome. Over trees. Over the white beach and out to the edge of the crashing waves.