An Ideal Duchess (35 page)

             
“Where is Wilcox?”

             
She heard the bedclothes shift with Malvern’s movement and the soft thump of the book being set on the small table beside the bed. “I dismissed her for the night. She is likely visiting her brother in the motor stable.”

             
“How kind,” Amanda said neutrally, turning to face him.

             
He looked sardonic, his face half-shadowed as he turned partially away from the lamplight, whose pink lampshade cast a warm pink glow across the bedroom. She stilled when he slid from the bed and walked towards her, his expression unreadable. It took all she had in her not to flinch when his hands cupped her tulle-covered shoulders; he turned her around.

             
“Allow me to play lady’s maid.”

             
“Thank you,” She was grateful for the coolness in her tone, and worked her gloves from her fingers, carefully sliding them from her arms so as not to stretch them from their shape.

             
The bodice of her evening gown was fastened at her left side, and she shifted her arm to allow him access to the tapes, lifting them both in the air as he tugged the bodice up and over her head.

             
“I can undo my skirt,” She moved away and nimbly unfastened the tapes at her waist.

             
She pushed the skirt down and over her hips, stepped out of the fabric nimbus, and gathered it to her chest. He handed the bodice to her when she held her hand out to him, and she put them neatly into the wardrobe. Well, not as neatly as Maggie would have, she supposed, but it would do for now. She closed the doors and became suddenly aware of the charged silence as she stared at him over her shoulder, clad in only her corset, combinations, and stockings. She closed her eyes at his approach, both fearing and anticipating the distraction of their coming together. They might not fare well in the harsh light of day, but on this subject, they remained on one accord.

             
He apparently felt it too, his breath shallow and warm on her neck and his fingers fumbling, trembling as he ripped the laces from the metal grommets of her corset curving against her spine and backside. The breath she took, though long accustomed to the confinement of her corset, was deep and heady, sending a rush of blood to her head. He gripped her hips and pulled her back, forcing her to brace her hands on the wardrobe for balance. She jumped at the touch of his warm hand against her inner thigh through her open drawers, and automatically pressed her thighs closed against this unusual intrusion.

             
“Bron, stop,” She gasped, squirming when his fingers wriggled in their fleshly trap, tickling her skin.

             
“Do you really want me to?” He swept his free hand up her body to rest on her partially-corseted breast. “Do you want to stop?”

             
She gritted her teeth when he shifted his fingers higher between her legs, uncomfortable and overwhelmed by the sensations.

             
“Trust me,” He breathed against her shoulder.

             
“I-I can’t,” She stammered, frightened by her inexperience and inability to follow his next move. “Don’t do it this way.”

             
He froze against her and then removed his hands from her body. She flushed with embarrassment in the ensuing silence, lowering her hands from the wardrobe to remove her corset, which had crookedly slipped down her body. She awkwardly stepped out of its boned shape, and stared down at it in her hands. He touched her again, but this time to turn her around; her eyes rested on the open neck of his shirt, and she dropped the corset on the floor between them to rise on her toes, hands fisted in his shirt, to kiss him.

             
He was unresponsive, his mouth soft and lax beneath hers, and she lowered herself to the floor, stung by his rejection. His eyes were closed tightly, the thick fringe of brown lashes casting shadows over his high cheekbones, and his mouth flattened into a grim line. When she began to uncurl her fingers from his shirt, he gathered her to him and swept her over to the bed.

             
She wanted to look away, to hide from him when arched over her, but his heated, impassive stare held her gaze as surely as his hips moving firmly and evenly between her legs, pinned her to the bed. A dull flush crept up his skin, from the partially unbuttoned shirt twisted around his shoulder to his cheeks, and when she followed its trail with her fingers, he gasped and shuddered, finally closing his eyes. She, however, kept hers open, fascinated by the expressions crossing his face.

             
He grimaced, lips peeled away from his clenched teeth when she squeezed her thighs around his hips. He panted, the cords in his throat straining against his neck when she dug her fingers into his back. He groaned, mouth open and arms trembling when she moved with his thrusts. She felt some of her earlier tension, her fright actually, begin to drain away, and gave into the intensity of the moment, which had nothing to do with trust and everything to do with being able to forget she could not trust him even though she desperately wanted to do so.

*          *          *

              “Hell,” He muttered thickly, collapsing bonelessly over Amanda’s warm and sweaty body.

             
She lowered one of her hands from his back and he lifted his head at the small click, only to meet darkness. She had turned out the light. He lifted away from her, frowning slightly in confusion, and then in wariness. She was silent, the only sound emanating from her being the shushing of the sheets as she moved away from him, allowing him to lie fully on the bed. He rolled onto his back and belatedly remembered to straighten his clothing, and tuck his flaccid penis into the now-dampened placket of his trousers. He hadn’t removed his shoes, he thought distantly, unsettled by the fact that he had allowed his desire for his wife to overcome his anger with her.

             
No…he swallowed painfully…it hadn’t. He rubbed his face, shamed that he had wanted to take her like some experienced, hardened demimonde—that he wanted to push her beyond the bounds of common decency between a man and his wife, in order to punish her.

             
“Why did you come, Malvern?” Her voice was low and dull, forcing him to turn his head to face her.

             
“Are you disappointed it wasn’t Anthony Challoner?” He felt himself choke a little in bitterness and jealousy as he said that name.

             
She was silent, which he took for assent, and he wrenched himself from the bed, unable to bear to be near her if she were going to confess that she preferred Bim, or she regretted his coming at all. He bumped into a piece of furniture—a chair, and sat down hard, bending to remove his shoes. If the dark suspicions racing through his mind were true, there was nothing she could do about it, he thought angrily. He undressed and returned bare-assed to the bed; he wasn’t going to open his trunk to find pajamas, though he perversely wanted to unsettle her. 

             
“You wanted to gloat, didn’t you?”

             
Her words, filled with hurt and exasperation, made him pause, mid-climb into the bed. The chilly air made him shiver, and he briefly regretted his stupid impulse to climb beneath cold blankets and cold sheets without any clothing.

             
“You warned me against Sylvia, but I refused to heed your advice, and now I’ve wrecked my reputation.”

             
“That is why I came,” He said flatly. “If I hadn’t, this wretched scandal would spread far and wide before we could contain it in this house. And are you going to explain why you had another man in your bedroom?”

             
“I didn’t invite him.”

             
The bed dipped beneath her as she sat up and she rolled against him. Her skin was warm and flushed, quite a drastic temperature from his chilled flesh, and he clutched her arms to keep her beside him. He realized they were close enough to touch noses, her breath coursing hotly against his chin and throat.

             
“You can’t be this naïve after befriending Sylvia Montague.” He said bitterly. “Lady Rawson’s house parties are notorious for the promiscuity of her guests. The simple matter of your presence was enough to convince one of these blackguards that you were amenable to an affair.”

             
“Why would I know this? You should have told me instead of forbidding me to go.” She struggled against his hold.

             
Bron released her, albeit reluctantly, and she moved her body and her comforting warmth away. He plucked at the downy blankets and shifted them over his body, pulling them to his chin.

             
“You’re right,” He admitted flatly. “My behavior in Bledington was appalling. I realize that it is my own damned fault for concealing things from you, and for that I apologize.”

             
She stiffened beside him, no doubt at his rare apology, and he closed his eyes, rubbing his face as he struggled with putting into words the horror he had held so tightly to his chest for so long.

             
“What are you concealing from me?” She asked softly.

             
He paused, swallowing hard and shook his head as he groped for the words to tell this atrocious story.

             
“It has to do with my brother…with Alex,” He whispered. “And Sylvia.”

             
Her shoulders fell with her deep sigh, but she remained turned away from him. “Go on.”

             
“He was my twin you see, so I knew everything about him, and he me.” He cleared his throat. “So of course I knew when something troubled him.”

             
“My mother merely dislikes Sylvia because she feels Sylvia married above her station, but she would be heartbroken if she had definitive grounds with which to despise Cutty’s wife. You see, Sylvia and my brother…Alex…they were involved.”

             
He laughed mirthlessly. “Euphemisms are rather asinine at a time like this, aren’t they? I shall be frank and say Sylvia and Alex were fucking behind Cutty’s back from the time he was seventeen and fresh out of Eton.”

             
He felt his wife gasp, but continued before she could speak.

             
“I caught them once, fucking in the deer park when she and Cutty had come to hunt, and Alex made me swear never to tell. He was in love, you see. God, we were so stupid—and young. I was loyal enough to agree, and Alex now felt free to carry on with that stupid cow more openly now that he hadn’t anything to hide from me.”

             
Bron scowled at the memory. “But he concealed one thing from me—that he was embezzling money from the rents to give to Sylvia, who has always been hard up for cash. That’s probably why she took to you so avidly. I didn’t realize how much he had stolen until my father died, leaving us with a mountain of debt and death duties to pay on the estate. I was only the second son, so I didn’t pay the income any mind until Alex came sobbing to me, telling me what he’d done after the estate manager began taking him around the estates—we have property in Bedfordshire, Yorkshire, and Worcestershire—and realized how much he and our father had crippled the estate.”

             
“But he continued fucking Sylvia, desperately in love, and as the duke, he could not hide his theft for long. Perhaps I should have been more understanding, or dammit, paid more bloody attention to him…” Bron felt like a hand was squeezing his heart. “But I was too angry with him over his relationship with Sylvia and had…other interests…and did not realize until it was too bloody late.”

             
“He killed himself.” Amanda said softly.

             
Bron stared hollow-eyed into the darkness. There was so much blood. So much of it. His hands would never be clean of it, his skin forever tinged with the mottled brown and crimson red of drying, stinking blood. The stench of cordite was fresh in the air and the copse unnaturally silent as he struggled to lift his brother’s lifeless, almost headless body. The gun blast had distorted Alex’s face, a face so like his own, into a bloody pulp, brains and eyeballs splattered, teeth and bone laid bare, but he hadn’t time to be sick. He had to save his brother, to bring him home, to place him in his bed so that no one would know, no one would ever find out.

             
“Malvern!”

             
He realized Amanda was shaking him by the shoulders, and he shuddered, horrified by the memories he kept locked away.

             
“You poor, poor boy.” She whispered.

             
Bron flinched at the pleading, pitying tone in her voice, but she held him fast, arms tight around his waist and her face pressed against his shoulder, squeezing him, comforting him. He fought the scowl that contorted his face when she leaned close, her unique scent of crisp vetivert and delicate rose curling around him. He supposed this was the unstinting and unaffected intimacy his sons experienced when she held them in her arms, and he grew resentful, jealous that they could give and receive so openly when he was supposed to be cold and distant. She was this unguarded with Bim, he thought darkly, unable to rein in the ugly direction of his thoughts at the memory of their past interactions compounded by her seeking Bim’s help.