Slightly Dangerous (20 page)

C
HRISTINE WAS FEELING
rather warm and flushed after one particular geography lesson. She had taken the children outside the schoolhouse, since it was a very warm day, and their usual game of flying on a magic carpet to the chosen country had taken them on an energetic course about the garden, all their arms flapping to the sides to keep them aloft—including her own. She could hardly be left behind when the carpet embarked on its journey, after all.

They had flown over a wide and blustery Atlantic Ocean, spotting two sailing ships and a large iceberg on the way, and up the St. Lawrence Seaway to Canada, to Montreal, to be more precise, where they had touched down and rolled up the carpet before embarking inland with the colorful French voyageurs in their large canoes to trade for furs in the interior of the continent. They had rowed in near-perfect time with one another after practicing for a while and had braved rapids with noisy exuberance and negotiated rugged portages past the worst of them, the imaginary canoe held upside down over the heads of half of them while the other half staggered beneath the weight of the imaginary cargo. They had sung a rousing French song to keep their spirits high and spur them on their way.

By the time they had stopped to rest at the large trading post of Fort William on Lake Superior, from where they would embark at the beginning of the next lesson, they were all weary and fell back onto the magic carpet—which they had taken with them in the canoe—and crawled or staggered back in the direction of the schoolhouse with a great fuss of moans and groans and limp, flapping arms and giggles and complaints about having to go back inside for arithmetic.

Christine smiled after them until they were safely inside and she was free to return home to change her clothes and cool down in the quiet of the sitting room with some of Mrs. Skinner’s freshly squeezed lemonade. She turned away from the building, the smile still on her face.

There was a man leaning on the fence, she could see. A gentleman, if she was not mistaken. She shaded her eyes with one hand and looked to see if he was someone she knew.

“Mrs. Thompson informed me I would find you here,” the Duke of Bewcastle said. “I came to meet you.”

Gracious heaven! Absurdly—
utterly
absurdly—her first thought was for her flushed cheeks, her damp, rumpled hair beneath her old straw bonnet, her dusty dress and shoes, and her generally bedraggled appearance. Her next thought—just as foolish—was that he must have seen some of that silly lesson—silly, but very effective in helping children learn and remember without their ever realizing that they were doing it. Her third thought was a blank question mark, which seemed to hang invisible in the air over their heads.

Her
feelings
were another matter altogether. She felt rather as if the bottom had fallen out of her stomach—or as if the journey by magic carpet had made her queasy.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him. It was a horribly rude question to ask of a duke, but who could think of good manners at such a moment? What
was
he doing here?

“I came to speak to you,” he said with all the cool hauteur of a man who believed he had every right to speak to anyone he chose at any time he chose.

“Very well, then.” The return flight across the Atlantic had also left her lamentably short of breath, she noticed. “Speak to me.”

“Perhaps,” he said, straightening up from the fence, “we may walk back in the direction of Hyacinth Cottage?”

He had been there already? But he had just said so, had he not? He had spoken with her mother. He had actually walked up the garden path to the cottage and knocked on the door. There was no sign of any servant trotting along in his shadow to perform such menial tasks for him.

She left the schoolhouse garden and fell into step beside him. And lest he get any idea about offering his arm, she clasped her own very firmly behind her back. She must look like a veritable
scarecrow
.

“I thought,” she said, “you left here ten days ago like everyone else.”

She
knew
he had. She had visited Melanie since then.

“You thought correctly,” he said haughtily. “I went to Lindsey Hall. I have come back.”

“Why?” she asked. Anyone would think she had never even
heard
of good manners.

“I needed to talk to you,” he said.

“About what?” It was beginning to strike her fully that the
Duke of Bewcastle
was in the village and walking along the street at her side.

“Were there any consequences?” he asked her.

She felt a rush of heat to her cheeks. There was no misunderstanding his meaning, of course.

“No, of course not,” she said. “As I told you at the time, I am barren. Is
this
why you returned? Do you always show such solicitude for the women with whom you—” Ignominiously, she could not think of a suitably euphemistic word with which to complete the sentence.

“I could have sent my secretary or another servant if that were all I wished to ascertain,” he said. “I noticed a private-looking garden beside your house. Perhaps we may talk there?”

He was going to ask her again, she thought incredulously. How dared he? How
dared
he? And how dared he come back like this to disturb her peace all over again. Determined as she had been not to think of him, her nights were still filled with vivid dreams of him, and even her days were not yet free of unwilling memories that seemed quite beyond her power to banish. She did not
want
this.

Being a duke did
not
give him any right to harass her.

They did not proceed unseen. It was a warm day. Half the villagers—at
least
half—were sitting quietly or standing in gossiping groups outside their cottages. And every last one of them turned to wave a hand or call a greeting to her. And every last one of them gave the duke a good looking-over. Even if some of them did not know who he was, they would soon find out from those who did. It would be the sensation of the hour—of the decade! The Duke of Bewcastle was back and walking along the street and disappearing into the side garden of Hyacinth Cottage with Christine Derrick. Word would get back to Melanie and she would be here at the crack of dawn tomorrow—or as close to dawn as she could rise from her bed and submit to her elaborate toilette—to worm an explanation out of her friend.

Melanie would think she had been right all along. She would think the Duke of Bewcastle was sweet on Christine. But instead he was hot for her and determined to employ her as his mistress.

He did not say another word while they were on the street. Neither did she. She really thought that if he was too arrogant to accept that no meant no this time, she was going to have to slap his face. She had never slapped any man’s face and disapproved of it as a feminine weapon of annoyance, since the man concerned—if he were a gentleman—could not retaliate in kind. But her palm itched with the urge to dole out punishment to the ducal cheek.

She was
not
pleased to see him.

Eleanor was in the sitting room window, peering over the tops of her spectacles, but she disappeared when Christine glared at her. Mrs. Skinner opened the front door unbidden but closed it again when Christine glared at
her
. She could only imagine the excitement and speculation going on within.

She led the way through the low garden gate, diagonally across the front garden, which was ablaze with the colors of numberless flowers, and up the stone steps and through the trellised arch into the square side garden, which tall trees partially secluded from both the house and the street and flower borders made lovely and fragrant. She went to stand behind a wooden seat and set one hand on its back. She leveled a gaze on the Duke of Bewcastle. Dressed in a charcoal gray coat and paler pantaloons and white-topped Hessian boots, he looked quite overwhelmingly male. Not many men came into this garden.

“Mrs. Derrick,” he said, removing his hat and holding it at his side while the sunshine tangled in his dark hair. His voice was haughty and abrupt. “I wonder if you will do me the honor of marrying me.”

Christine gawked. Thinking back afterward, she was sure she had not just stared in genteel surprise—she had gawked.

“What?” she said.

“I find myself unable to stop thinking about you,” he said. “I have asked myself why I offered to make you my mistress rather than my wife and can find no satisfactory answer. There is no law to state that my position demands I marry a virgin or a lady who has not been previously married. There is no law that states I must marry my social equal. And if your childless state after a marriage of several years denotes an inability to conceive, then that is no prohibitive impediment either. I have three younger brothers to succeed me, and one of them already has a son of his own. I choose to have you as my wife. I beg you to accept me.”

She stared at him, speechless for several moments. She gripped the back of the seat with both hands. Her head always seemed to fill with the most ridiculously absurd thoughts at the most serious of moments. This occasion was no exception.

She could be the
Duchess of Bewcastle,
she thought. She could wear ermine and a tiara. At least she thought she could. She had never really investigated the privileges of being a duchess, having never expected to be offered the role.

And then she found herself being restored to cold sanity as some of his words fell into place in her mind.

. . . a virgin . . . my social equal . . . your childless state . . . an inability to conceive. I choose to have you.

She gripped the back of the seat more tightly as anger welled in her and almost broke free.

“I am honored, your grace,” she said, her nostrils flaring. “But, no. I decline.”

He looked arrested, surprised. His eyebrows arced upward. She expected his infernal quizzing glass to materialize in his hand—and
that
would have made her temper finally snap—but he appeared not to have it about his person today.

“Ah,” he said. “I daresay I offended you when I offered you something less than matrimony.”

“You did,” she said.

“And when I allowed you to believe after we had coupled that it was the same offer I was about to make,” he said.

Her brows snapped together. It had not been? He had been about to offer her marriage then? She did not believe it. A man did not propose marriage to a woman who had just freely given him everything he wanted of her. But why had he come back now to do just that?

“You offended me,” she said.

He looked at her with what appeared to be cold disdain. “And an apology will not suffice to soothe your wounded pride, ma’am?” he asked. “You are resolved to reject my marriage offer because you cannot forgive me for the other? I
do
apologize. I did not mean to offend.”

“No,” she said, moving around the seat to sit on it before her legs gave way under her and she sank to the ground in an ignominious heap from which he would have to rescue her again. “No, I suppose you did not. It is a marked distinction to be offered the position of mistress to the Duke of Bewcastle.”

His eyes pierced through her own to the back of her skull.

“I have already begged your pardon,” he said.

“I could do another woman a great favor,” she said. “I could be your wife and leave the position of mistress vacant for someone else.”

She was being worse than ill-mannered. She was being
vulgar
. But she was only just getting launched.

. . . a virgin . . . my social equal . . . your childless state . . . an inability to conceive. I choose to have you.

His eyes hardened, if that were possible.

“I believe in fidelity within marriage, Mrs. Derrick,” he said. “If I ever take a wife, she will be the only woman to occupy my bed for as long as we both live.”

She was glad she was sitting then. Her knees became boneless.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But she will not be me.”

She had nothing but ancient, faded, and patched clothes to wear, she had scarcely two ha’pennies to rub together, she was almost totally dependent upon her mother, she lived a rather tedious life, she had no dreams left to dream—and yet here she sat refusing the chance to be a
duchess
. Did she have a whole arsenal of windmills in her head?

He turned as if to leave. But then he paused and looked back at her over his shoulder.

“I did not think you indifferent to me,” he said. “And contrary to popular belief, one coupling does not kill physical attraction. Your prospects of living a fulfilled life here seem slender. Life as my duchess would offer you infinitely more. Do you say no, Mrs. Derrick, only to punish me? Will you perhaps punish yourself too in the process? I can offer you everything you can ever have dreamed of.”

The fact that she was tempted—drat her, she was
tempted
—fanned the flames of her anger.

“Can you?” she asked sharply. “A husband with a warm personality and human kindness and a sense of humor? Someone who loves people and children and frolicking and absurdity? Someone who is not obsessed with himself and his own consequence? Someone who is not ice to the very core? Someone with a heart? Someone to be a companion and friend and lover?
This
is everything I have ever dreamed of, your grace. Can you offer it all to me? Or any of it? Any one thing?”

He pierced her with those eyes of his for so long that she had to exert great control over herself to stop from squirming.

“Someone with a heart,”
he said very softly then. “No, perhaps you are right, Mrs. Derrick. Perhaps I do not possess one. And, if I do not, then I lack everything of which you dream, do I not? I beg your pardon for taking your time and for offending you yet again.”

And this time when he turned away he kept going—beneath the trellis, down the steps, out through the garden gate, which he closed quietly and precisely behind him, and down the street, presumably to the inn, where he had probably left his carriage. She doubted he would stay somewhere so humble.