Never Deceive a Duke (9 page)

“Antonia.” He set both hands firmly on her shoulders now. “Antonia, why are you lying?”

Her eyes shied away. He gave her a gentle shake. “Antonia, there was something between us last night.” His voice was oddly hoarse; not his own. “How can you say this? How can you just pretend it didn’t happen?”

She shook her head and said nothing.

“Antonia, we made love,” he went on. “It was wild and it was passionate—and yes, it was madness, too—but it was not remotely forgettable. Don’t lie to me about this. It is too important.”

“I’m sorry.” The words came out throaty and a little tremulous. “I cannot talk about this.”

Without realizing it, he had backed her up against the wall by the window. “Why? Does it scare you that much? Well, by God it scared me. No one can deny that sort of passion.”

“You just said it was a dreadful mistake,” she choked. “How…How can it be if I do not remember? How can it be? Please, Your Grace, just
leave me alone
. I don’t want passion. Can’t you understand?”

“No, by God, I cannot.” And then, somehow, he was kissing her, his hands still braced on her shoulders. He took her mouth roughly, only half-aware of what he meant to do. Antonia set her hands flat against his chest and pushed, but he ignored her, deepening the kiss. She made a strange sound; a sob or a sigh of surrender, then opened her mouth to his. On a rush of triumph, he let himself surge into her mouth, ravenous and desperate. Like molten silk, their tongues entwined in a heated dance of passion. Her hands curled into the soft wool of his coat at last, her face lifted to his in submission.

“There, Antonia,” he rasped when their lips finally parted. “That is what runs so hot and fierce between us. Passion. Madness. You don’t for one moment deceive me.”

Still trying to catch her breath, she tore her gaze from his and set her hands flat against the wall behind her. He sensed her drawing back inside herself, shutting him out. It was as if she’d ripped his heart from his chest again.

“Is it me, Antonia?” he demanded. “Is that it? You want me—but I’m not good enough? Then by God, just say it!”

“You won’t believe anything I say,” she answered, refusing to look at him. “Why should I say anything? You have had your way with me, Your Grace. You have made me…respond to your caresses. May we not end this charade?”

Her words were like a thinly veiled slap. She desired him. But she would not stoop to have him. “Yes, I suppose we may,” he retorted. “And I hope you enjoyed it—because it will be a cold day in hell before I warm your bed again.”

It was only as he strode toward the door that he recalled that there had been no bed involved, and precious little warmth. No, he had backed Antonia up against a cold, damp wall and taken her like some Covent Garden tart. And now she did not want to remember. Rather than ponder the meaning of that, however, it was easier to just throw open the door and storm out. To his chagrin, a pair of housemaids went skittering off into the shadows, and he caught the tail end of what looked like a footman vanishing round one corner.

Perfect
. Now the servants would have something to gossip about besides his mongrel bloodlines and whether or not their mistress was a murderess. Gareth held up his head despite his anger, and set off in the direction of his study. He needed a place of solitude in which to lick his wounds.

But his solitude was not long-lived. After wearing a tread into the carpet, he had just decided on a tentative course of action when an ill wind burst into the room in the form of the duchess’s ruddy-faced maid. He pushed away the paper he’d been scratching on, then stood, though why the devil he should have done that was beyond him.

“Now you see here, sir,” said the maid, marching up to the desk. “I want to know what you’ve done to her ladyship, and I want to know now.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Gareth. “
You
wish
what?
”

The maid had two beefy hands set high on her hips. “You got no cause wheresoever to go about bullying and sharp-talking her ladyship, sir,” she went on. “You’re neither her husband—”

“Thank God for that small mercy.”

“—nor her father, and you have no right, do you hear?”

“Madam, what, pray, is your name?”

That caught her up short for an instant. “Nellie Waters.”

“Miss Waters, do you value your employment?” he snapped. “I will have you dismissed for your insolence.”

“It’s
Mrs
. Waters, Your Grace, and I do not work for you,” said the woman. “I work for Her Grace, as I did for her mother before her, and her aunt before that—and I will thank you to leave that poor, sad woman alone. Hasn’t she suffered enough but what you must come in here talking ugly to her and making her cry?”

“She hadn’t shed so much as a tear when last I saw her,” he snarled across his desk.

“Why, she’s beside herself!” charged the maid, who had begun to wring her hands most affectedly. “Can’t get a straight word out o’ her—”

“Nor could I,” he said.

“—and her just lying there across the bed sobbing like her heart be broken all over again. And for what? So you can let off a little temper? I hope it was worth it to you, sir, I truly do.”

“You know nothing of it,” he snapped. “Furthermore, it is none of your business. Your mistress seems a stranger to the truth,
Mrs
. Waters.”

“The
truth
?” demanded the maid. “What’s that to do with anything? Do you think this is easy for her, sir? To have people whispering that she’s mad, per’aps even a murderess? To have to live here in what was once her home, under your thumb—a man she does not even know?”
And does not wish to know,
Gareth mentally added.

“She’s buried two husbands, Your Grace, and it goes hard on a woman, I’ll tell you it does. A man just picks up and marries him another, and what’s the difference? Not much. But a woman—it’s not like that.”

But Gareth was so enraged that he was barely listening. “You don’t know a damned thing about it,” he retorted. “Ask your mistress what the trouble is when her tantrum is done. And don’t be so quick to paint every man with your broad brush. She’s enough to drive a good man mad.”

The woman’s face fell like soft dough. “But she’s never had a good man, Your Grace.” Her voice had gone quiet now. “Wouldn’t know one from a dead trout, I daresay. Me, I had a good husband. The kind a woman don’t have but once—and I’ll never have another. But she can’t make that choice. She can’t make any choice, she’s so locked up with fear inside.”

Gareth did not wish to feel one iota of sympathy for Antonia—and he very much suspected he knew the cause of her tears. It was shame, and something a good deal worse—outright bigotry. He thrust his finger at the door. “Get out, madam,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I cannot fire you, but I can bloody well have you thrown out of my house.”

“Aye, that you can do,” she agreed. “But if I go, she’ll go, for she don’t know what else to do, sir. And I think you don’t want that—do you? No, don’t answer me. Time will tell it, one way or t’other.”

Gareth balled his fists at his sides. Damn her.
Damn her.
He’d never had an employee he couldn’t dismiss on the spot—and he’d cheerfully let a few go, too. But he really didn’t know if the insolent hag was paid out of the duchess’s funds or his. Worse, she was right on the second point, too, damn her to hell.

“Get out.” His voice was quiet with fury. “Just get out, Waters, and never let me lay eyes on you again.”

With one last cutting glance, the woman left.

Antonia dragged herself up off the bed and dashed a hand beneath her eyes. For once Nellie had surprised her by doing as she’d asked and left her alone with her misery. At last Antonia had cried herself out. Her sobs had stilled, and now she was merely sniveling. That, apparently, was how she measured progress nowadays.

Dear God, what had she been thinking to lie to the duke? And she had lied; both of them had known it. But after years of being told what she
should
think and how she
should
feel, and how so much of what she believed and felt was just the result of her overwrought imagination, it had seemed so easy to simply…well, to imagine nothing had happened. To pretend that she had not made a moon-calf fool of herself, throwing herself at a man she did not know. A man who, in no small part, held her future in his hands.

In truth, there was much she did not remember, though it happened far less often than it once had. Certainly she did not remember getting out of bed, or going up onto the rampart in the rain. Indeed, she was not sure how she’d managed to get the heavy wooden door open, much less end up in the duke’s arms. Dr. Osborne called it sleepwalking, but most doctors had been less charitable.

The physician whose services her father had retained had termed it acute female hysteria. Antonia had been kept under lock and key in his isolated country house in the months after her first husband, Eric, had had his accident; a house so deep in the vales that no one heard her screams. The doctor’s treatment had consisted of a regimen of ice baths, physical restraints, purges, and druginduced stupors, most of which had been administered by a brutal staff. One soon learned not to cry or to show distress of any sort. One learned to be numb.

Antonia’s reward for her good behavior had been the Duke of Warneham, who had needed another pretty young wife—this time one who’d been
proven
to be fertile. But Antonia had possessed yet another desirable trait: she’d come unencumbered by another man’s children. A history of madness, Warneham had apparently decided, had been no great obstacle. His new duchess had needed to do only one thing with competence. Otherwise, she could have locked herself in the chapel to pray and to mourn until hell froze over.

Antonia set her palms against her feverish cheeks. What had she been thinking? To jeopardize
this,
the only sanctuary she had ever known? Warneham had been a selfish, soulless man; a man obsessed by the notion of revenge, but he had given her this. A place of peace. A home where, though the servants might whisper behind her back, they at least showed a modicum of respect to her face. And while she had not wanted his children, she would have borne them had God willed it.

But God had not willed it. Now the thing which her husband had most dreaded had happened. Warneham had spent much of his life wishing Gabriel Ventnor to the devil. Perhaps he had done a good deal more than wish. But it had all been for naught. The new duke was here, and Antonia had made the most humiliating mistake imaginable, all for a few moments of comfort. No, of
pleasure
. Exquisite, tormenting pleasure. There had been, just as he had said, an undeniable passion between them—a passion which was now all the more unbearable to recall.

Why, oh why could he not have played along and simply pretended that it had never happened? She had offered them both a way out—she was mad; surely he knew?—but the duke had refused it. Now she looked worse than mad. She looked like a liar. A lonely, desperate liar. And he had looked angry beyond words, like an avenging angel indeed. He would almost certainly send her away now. He might even begin to wonder if she
had
killed Warneham. That was a terrifying thought. Antonia set a hand beneath her breasts and dragged in a ragged, unsteady breath.

No. She would not cry again. She had got herself into this mess, so now she must either get herself out of it again or bear the duke’s punishment with all the grace she could muster.

Just then, Nellie burst back into the room. “Well, lovie, I’ve done it,” she declared, going to the tall mahogany wardrobe and throwing it open. “I hope we don’t have to pack up tonight.”

“What?” Antonia rose from the edge of the bed. “Lud, Nellie. What have you done?”

“Gave that man the razor’s edge of my tongue,” she declared, eyeing Antonia’s heaviest cloak, as if sizing it up for the trunks. “He tried to sack me, o’course. But I told him he couldn’t.”

“Oh, Nellie.” Antonia sank back down onto the mattress. “Oh, this is very bad indeed.”

Nellie must have heard the odd edge in Antonia’s voice, for she came at once to the bed. “There, now, my lady,” she said, taking Antonia’s hand. “We were to leave anyways, weren’t we?”

Antonia found herself biting back tears again. What a watering-pot she was! “Oh, Nellie, I don’t think you understand.”

“Understand what, ma’am?”

“I did something awful, Nellie,” she whispered. “I am so ashamed.”

“Ashamed, my lady?” Nellie gently patted her hand. “You’ve never done a thing in your life to be ashamed of.”

“This is different.”

Nellie settled herself on the edge of the bed. Lips pursed, she let her gaze drift over Antonia’s face. “Dearie me,” she finally said. “I thought something was amiss last night.”

Antonia hung her head.

“Aye, there was a look about you, lovie, that worried me,” she said softly. “So t’was something to do with him, then? Well, he’s handsome enough, Lord knows. And you have been alone an awful long time. Did he try to seduce you?”

“No, I—I just made a mistake,” Antonia confessed. “I used very poor judgment.”

“Aye, and so did I, perhaps,” acknowledged Nellie. “So, what’s the worst he can do now? Put us up at the White Lion?”

“I think you underestimate him, Nellie,” said Antonia warily. “He is a hard man, I fear. I’m not sure he will bother with the niceties.”

Nellie bit her lip a moment. “Aye, you’re right,” she finally admitted. “You’re a lady born and bred, but what will that mean to him? They do say Jews are hardhearted folk—and clutch-fisted, too.”

“Nellie!”

“What?”

“How many Jews are you acquainted with?”

Nellie considered this. “Well, none as I know of.”

“That’s like saying all Irish are lazy, and all Scots are cheap!”

Nellie lifted one shoulder. “Well, Scots
are
cheap,” she countered. “If you don’t believe it, just ask one. Brag about it, they do.”

“Perhaps some are proud of being thrifty,” Antonia conceded. “But don’t say any of it ever again in my hearing, do you understand? Perhaps the new duke is a Jew—I cannot say—but we are still living under his roof.”