The Duke's Cinderella Bride (16 page)

A glance across at Whitney showed the indulgent laughter lurking in the other man’s eyes, as he too looked at the spitting little vixen Jane resembled in her outrage.

She really did think that she was stopping the two men from fighting with a paltry hand on their chests. And she ‘absolutely’ forbade them from duelling.

It was too much to endure. For either man.

Jane looked at the two men incredulously as first the Duke and then the Earl burst into deep-throated laughter.

Laughing? After the last few fraught minutes the two men were now actually
laughing
together?

Seconds ago she had been literally terrified—either that the Duke was going to be killed or else put in prison for killing the Earl of Whitney. Both prospects had filled her with dread.

And now, instead of duelling the two men were laughing together. Her own indignant expression seemed only to increase their humour. The Earl was actually bent double, his hands braced on his knees, as he laughed so long and heartily he could barely catch his breath. The Duke fared little better, almost seeming to have tears in his eyes as he openly guffawed.

Jane stood, hands on hips, bristling with indignation at this unwarranted humour. ‘Perhaps when you two gentlemen have ceased this hysteria, one or both of you might care to tell me the source of your amusement?’

‘I am afraid you are, dear Jane.’ The Earl was the first to regain some sort of decorum as he straightened to take a handkerchief from his pocket and dab the moisture from his eyes. ‘Just now, as you stood so bravely between the two of us, you gave every appearance of a bantam hen rebuking her chicks!’ He gave a rueful shake of his head.

‘You were laughing at
me?’
Jane breathed disbelievingly, her eyes wide as she glared first at the Duke and then the Earl.

‘Unforgivable, I know, Jane. But nonetheless true,’ the Earl confirmed, a smile still curving his lips.

Not a good move, as Hawk could have warned the other man—but he chose not to, and two bright spots of temper appeared in Jane’s cheeks.

‘You were laughing at
me?’
she repeated softly. ‘Do you have any idea how ridiculous the two of
you
looked a few minutes ago? How absolutely—’

‘That is enough, Jane,’ Hawk cut in sternly.

‘After your most recent—your absolutely childish behaviour just now, you will not even attempt to tell me what to do, Your Grace!’ She turned on him fierily.

‘She is priceless, Stourbridge,’ Whitney remarked admiringly. ‘Absolutely delicious!’

Hawk’s humour had faded as suddenly as it had occurred, but he sobered completely as he realised he did not care for the other man’s last comment. ‘Now, listen here, Whitney—’

‘Not again!’ Jane burst out exasperatedly, her tiny hands now clenched into fists at her sides. ‘I wish I had let the two of you duel. I wish you had pierced each other through the heart with your swords. I wish—Oh, never mind what I wish!’ she concluded disgustedly. ‘If you two gentlemen will excuse me?’ She turned sharply on her heel—not in the direction of the ballroom, but towards the steps leading down into the moon-shadowed garden.

Hawk’s hand snaked out to grasp her wrist. ‘Where do you think you are going?’

‘I do not
think
I am going anywhere—I
am
going into the garden!’ Her eyes glittered up at him in challenge.

Hawk refused to release her arm. ‘I cannot stand by and let you walk off into the darkness, Jane—’

‘I do not advise you to try and stop me, Your Grace!’

Green eyes battled with gold for several seconds, before Jane lifted her slippered foot and brought the heel down forcefully on top of Hawk’s instep. The unexpectedness of the attack caused him to move sharply backwards and so loosen his grip on her wrist. A lapse in concentration that Jane took full advantage of as, with one last sweeping look of disgust, she turned and marched away.

In the direction of the garden—as she had said she would!

‘Magnificent!’ the Earl murmured wonderingly as he stared after her. ‘Truly magnificent.’

Despite—or because of—the pain in his foot, Hawk bristled angrily. ‘You will stay away from her, Whitney!’

The other man turned to look at him with amused eyes. ‘Will I?’

‘Yes, you damn well will—’

‘Surely that is for the lady to decide?’ Whitney taunted. ‘Unless, as I suggested earlier, you have a prior claim…?’

Hawk drew in a sharp breath. ‘Jane is my ward—’

‘So you have said.’ The other man nodded. ‘But from what I have just witnessed I would say the young lady has a definite mind of her own.’

Hawk could not deny that. Nor could he deny that, if anything, he admired that trait in Jane even more than Whitney did.

He
knew
her to be priceless. And delicious. And magnificent…!

‘Yes, she does,’ he confirmed tightly. ‘But I can assure you that she is also one hundred per cent of sound mind!’

The Earl quirked blond brows. ‘I trust, Stroubridge,
that you are not implying that she would have to be
out
of her mind to be attracted to me?’

‘And if I were?’

The older man shrugged. ‘I have already told you I will be more than happy to meet you at a time and place of your choosing…’

Yes, he had. But Hawk knew, despite what Jane had said minutes ago, that she would never forgive him if he should enter into a duel with the Earl of Whitney with her at the centre of it.

That he was even thinking of doing so told Hawk just how ludicrous this situation had become.

He was the Duke of Stourbridge. The formidably correct Duke of Stourbridge. A man with a deliberately spotless reputation. A man he had heard his peers hold up to their children as an example of one of the finest members of the aristocracy, for them to emulate.

And yet here he was, on the terrace of his own family seat, contemplating challenging another man to a duel over a young woman who had already told him how much she deplored such behaviour.

‘I do not believe Jane would approve,’ he said flatly.

The Earl arched mocking brows. ‘And that concerns you?’

‘That surprises you?’ Hawk grated.

Whitney gave a derisive smile. ‘You know, Hawk, I still remember you when you were the disreputable Marquis of Mulberry. Before you became every inch the superior Duke of Stourbridge.’

Hawk stiffened. ‘Meaning?’

The older man shrugged. ‘Meaning you might do well to remember it too sometimes.’

Hawk shook his head. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

But he did know.

Life had been much simpler ten years ago. Hawk had been a different person then. As Marquis of Mulberry he had only been
heir
to the Dukedom, and as such able to be as riotously devil-may-care as he knew Sebastian now was.

But that had been in a different life. And he a different man. He was the Duke of Stourbridge now, with all the responsibility that title implied. He could no longer do what he wanted without thought to the consequences.

‘In my opinion, your Jane Smith is unique, Stourbridge.’ The Earl nodded towards the direction Jane had taken when she had left them so abruptly.

‘A young woman to be priced above—I believe Jane is wearing pearls this evening, Stourbridge? Your mother’s pearls, are they not…?’ he taunted softly.

Hawk stiffened. ‘What if they are?’

‘Idle curiosity on my part. That is all.’ The Earl shrugged uninterestedly. ‘But be assured, Hawk, that if you do not care to claim Jane for your own, then some other lucky man soon will.’

Hawk’s jaw clenched. ‘Not you!’

The Earl gave a humourless smile. ‘No, not me,’ he conceded wryly. ‘Although I am sure that not even the estimable Jane would dismiss the idea of becoming the Countess of Whitney.’

Hawk eyed the other man scornfully. ‘And we all know how devoted you were to your last Countess!’

‘Have a care, Stourbridge,’ Whitney grated harshly, all humour gone as his eyes glittered dangerously in
the darkness. ‘Just because I did not love my wife, it does not mean that I am incapable of understanding the emotion—’

‘Understanding it, perhaps,’ Hawk conceded derisively. ‘But feeling it? Somehow I do not think so.’

‘I have loved, Stourbridge,’ the other man bit out coldly. ‘Too much to ever feel the emotion for another woman! I—’

‘Ah, there you are, Hawk,’ Arabella greeted him brightly as she came out onto the terrace. ‘And the Earl of Whitney, too,’ she recognised happily. ‘The absence of two such eligible gentlemen has left some of the ladies in desperate need of dancing partners for the next set,’ she added, with a playful tap of her fan on the Earl’s arm.

The last thing Hawk felt like doing at the moment was playing the polite host to Arabella guests—male or female. In fact, he had never felt less polite in his life!

‘As long as you will promise to be my partner, I will indeed return to the ballroom, Lady Arabella,’ the Earl drawled in reply to her rebuke.

‘Hawk…?’

‘Oh, I believe your brother has…some urgent business about the estate he has to take care of before he is free to rejoin us,’ the Earl dismissed lightly as he drew Arabella’s hand into the crook of his arm. ‘Is that not so, Stourbridge?’ he added, with a challenging glance in Hawk’s direction.

Hawk met the other man’s gaze in a silent battle of wills, knowing Jane to be the ‘urgent business’ Whitney referred to.

‘Hawk…?’ Arabella said uncertainly as the silence
stretched between the two men. ‘Surely whatever it is it can wait until morning…?’

‘Doubtful, hmm, Stourbridge?’ the Earl drawled mockingly.

Hawk gave the other man one last narrow-eyed glance before turning to his sister. ‘I will rejoin you as soon as I am free to do so, Arabella.’ He could not, after all, simply return to the ballroom when he knew Jane was alone somewhere out in the garden.

‘Oh, very well,’ his sister accepted, with an impatient flick of her fan.

‘Our dance, I believe, Lady Arabella?’ the Earl prompted smilingly, as the sound of the quartet of musicians hired for the evening could be heard once more.

Hawk waited until his sister and the Earl had returned to the ballroom before turning his narrowed gaze in the direction of the garden. But he could detect no sign of movement either on the lawns or along the hedges to indicate Jane’s presence.

Where could Jane have disappeared to so completely? The stables once again? Or somewhere else?

J
ane sensed rather than heard the Duke’s presence behind her in the darkness of the summerhouse to which she had fled so angrily such a short time ago.

Angrily? She had been more than angry; she had been incensed.

‘Have you come to once again laugh at my fears?’ she demanded, without turning.

‘Fears, Jane…?’ he echoed softly.

Jane had not lit the lamps when she entered the summerhouse, preferring to hide her blushing cheeks in the darkness as she acknowledged how close she had come to revealing her feelings for the Duke—both to Hawk himself and to cynical the Earl of Whitney.

She turned now, her chin stubbornly high as she stared across the distance that separated her from the Duke as he stood silhouetted in the doorway.

Arabella had shown Jane the summerhouse yesterday afternoon, and the two women had lingered to enjoy a glass of lemonade on the veranda surrounding it in the heat of the afternoon.

But the single room that had seemed so bright and airy during the day was full of shadows this evening, and the Duke appeared very tall and imposing in the darkness, the haughty arrogance of his face all sharply etched angles.

Jane made a brief movement of her shoulders. ‘I would not like to see you imprisoned, or more likely hanged, for killing another man.’

His teeth glinted white in the gloom as he drawled. ‘That is always supposing, Jane, that it was not I who was killed.’

That had been her real fear, of course. The fear Jane had almost revealed, and along with it her newly discovered love for this man. The same fear she dared not reveal now, for that very same reason.

‘Was that ever a possibility?’

He shrugged. ‘Whitney has something of a reputation as a swordsman.’

Jane repressed the shiver than ran through her. ‘Then you were doubly foolish to have challenged him in that way.’ She snapped her impatience with his recklessness.

‘Was I, Jane?’ He moved farther into the summerhouse to close the door softly behind him.

Jane resisted the impulse to take a step backwards, determined that she would not reveal how much being alone here with him like this disturbed her. Even if it did. Very much so. ‘Very foolish, indeed, Your Grace.’ She nodded abruptly.

‘Are you not cold in here, Jane?’ he prompted huskily, instead of responding to her rebuke.

‘Perhaps a little,’ she acknowledged frowningly. ‘But it was not my intention to remain here for long…’ Her voice dwindled off as the Duke went down on his
haunches by the fireplace and put a flame to the kindling already laid there. The yellow-orange flames that instantly flared into life illuminated his sharply etched profile.

‘There.’ He rose slowly back to his feet before turning to look at her. ‘Is that not better, Jane?’

It was certainly warmer. Cosier. More intimate. None of which was in the least ‘better’ after what had happened the last time she and the Duke had been so alone together.

‘Jane?’ he prompted huskily, those gold-coloured eyes warmly searching on her upraised face.

The warm flames now crackling in the hearth were as nothing compared to the flames leaping inside Jane as she stared up at the Duke. Her pulse was beating erratically. Her heart thumping so loudly she thought he must hear it. Her palms were slightly damp. Her breathing shallow.

She nodded abruptly. ‘Much better, Your Grace.’

Hawk watched the movement of her tiny pink tongue as it moved moistly across her lips, her throat moving convulsively as she swallowed, and the soft swell of her breasts slowly rising and falling as she breathed softly.

It had taken him several long, anxious minutes to locate Jane here in the darkness of the summerhouse, but now that he had found her he questioned the wisdom of being alone with her like this.

The summerhouse was situated in a copse of trees at the far end of the spacious gardens that surrounded Mulberry Hall, well away from the main house, and was the place that he and his siblings had disappeared to as children, when they had wanted to escape the restraining company of adults.

As he and Jane had now escaped the restraining company of other adults…

A move, he now realised, not without its own dangers.

‘Did it not excite you earlier, Jane, to have two men challenging each other to a duel over you?’ he prompted huskily.

She arched auburn brows. ‘Over me, Your Grace?’

Hawk frowned darkly. ‘Who else, Jane?’

She gave a derisive shake of her head. ‘Perhaps some other lady of your mutual acquaintance? This Countess, for example?’

Hawk’s eyes widened at the directness of her attack. Although he should perhaps have expected nothing less from a young woman who was never less than forthright.

She gave a knowing smile. ‘Ah, I note by your scowling silence that my surmise is possibly the correct one. The Countess was your mistress as well as the Earl’s?’

Hawk stiffened. ‘I do not believe this to be a suitable subject for discussion between us, Jane—’

‘Why?’ Her eyes were curiously wide. ‘Or is it that the Countess is a married lady?’

He frowned darkly. ‘She is widowed.’

Jane frowned her puzzlement. ‘The Earl has informed me he is also widowed. And you are a single gentleman.’ She shrugged. ‘I do not see where the problem lies…?’

Hawk looked at her in exasperation. ‘The problem lies, Jane, with the fact that a single young lady such as yourself does not discuss a man’s mistress—ex-mistress!—with him.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it simply is not
done,
Jane!’

She gave a derisive smile. ‘Perhaps in the polite company that you keep, Your Grace, for which the Earl voices such contempt.’ She nodded. ‘But, young as I was, for lack of anyone else in whom to confide my father occasionally discussed such matters with me when it involved one of his parishioners.’

‘I am not one of your father’s parishioners, Jane!’ Hawk muttered irritably.

Inwardly, he was wishing that he had never met the Countess of Morefield—let alone so briefly and, as it had transpired, so unsatisfactorily shared her bed!

He had no doubt that it was because of that brief dalliance that Whitney was behaving so provokingly this evening, in monopolising the company of both Jane and Arabella. The other man had made it obvious at the time that he had taken exception to Hawk’s interest in the Countess, which had resulted in her changing from sharing her bed with an Earl to a Duke.

‘No, you are not,’ Jane acknowledged ruefully, staring into the flames of the fire as she wondered what her father would have made of a man such as Hawk St Claire, the forceful Duke of Stourbridge.

Her father—her adopted father—had not been a man of the world, but a simple country parson. Nevertheless, in the boundaries of his parish there had existed avarice, jealousy, incest, adultery and even murder. Perhaps not, as the Duke had said, subjects for a young girl’s ears, but in the absence of a wife to share his worries Jane’s father had sometimes talked to her about such matters.

‘What manner of man was your father, Jane?’

She looked up sharply at the softly spoken query. ‘He
was a good man,’ she stated defensively. ‘A good, kind and loving man.’

The Duke’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘All things I am sure you believe me not to be!’

‘Untrue, Your Grace!’ Jane gasped.

He looked grim. ‘Was it a kind man who refused to let you continue on your journey as you wished and instead brought you here, Jane? Was it a kind or loving man who only days ago took advantage of your lack of a protector?’ He shook his head self-disgustedly. ‘In the six days of our acquaintance, Jane, it seems to me I have shown you I am not any of the things you so admired in your father!’

They were two very different men, yes. But these last three days, as Jane had watched the Duke work so tirelessly about his estate, he had shown himself to be just as good a master to the people who lived on his estate as her father had been minister to his parishioners.

Besides, her feelings towards the Duke—the wild, soaring love she felt just looking into that aristocratically handsome face—bore absolutely no resemblance to the sweet, uncomplicated love she’d had for her adopted father!

She shook her head. ‘I do not think of you in that way, Your Grace.’

Hawk looked down at her searchingly. ‘Then how
do
you think of me, Jane…?’

That pink tongue ran once more over the softness of her parted lips. ‘I—I see you as a man. A strong, arrogant, forceful man who expects—demands—to be obeyed without question.’

Hawk smiled ruefully at her description. ‘
You
do not obey me, Jane.’

She gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Perhaps that is why you are here with me rather than with the Countess…?’

Hawk found his breath catching in his throat. That was exactly the reason he was here with Jane rather than any other woman. Jane challenged him. Thwarted him. Disobeyed him. Aroused him.

As he gazed into the beauty of Jane’s face, as he looked at her softly parted lips and into the unfathomable depths of her eyes, as he felt the fierce desire that ripped through him, he knew that it had been a mistake to follow her here. That being alone here with Jane like this, desiring her as he did, was the last thing he should have allowed to happen.

‘Jane…’ He was not aware of having made a step towards her, or of her making one towards him, but knew that he—that she—must have done so. His arms moved about her and he drew her fiercely against him as his mouth claimed hers.

She was all softness and the sweet perfume that was uniquely Jane, her lips parting willingly beneath his as Hawk deepened the kiss, feeling his desire raging hotly out of control as her slender fingers threaded into his hair and her ample breasts and slender hips curved invitingly against his own chest and thighs.

Hawk had never known such fierce desire. The need to possess. To own. His thighs pulsed with that need, and the hardness of his arousal moved restlessly against her as he strained to draw Jane even closer.

There were too many clothes between them. Too many layers of fabric between Jane’s body and his own. Between the feel, the sensation, of her silken nakedness pressed against his.

Hawk groaned low in his throat as her own actions seemed to echo his need, her hands trailing down his throat to splay against his chest as her fingers dealt deftly, quickly, with the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt before she touched his burning flesh and those fingers became entangled in the silky hair beneath.

Her touch was too much. Jane was too much. Hawk deepened the kiss hungrily, devouringly, drinking in her sweetness as his tongue plunged hotly, ravenously, into the heat of her mouth.

Seeking. Capturing. Claiming her for his own.

For Jane was his.

His.

She belonged to this man, Jane acknowledged feverishly, clinging to his shoulders. Hawk was continuing to kiss her even as he swung her up into his arms to carry her across to a chaise, laying her gently down upon it before quickly joining her there, the hard length of his body pressing her down amongst the cushions as his lips and tongue continued to plunder her own.

At that moment Jane cared for nothing else—needed nothing else but Hawk’s lips and hands upon her. She arched her back as he reached to release the fastening of her gown and slide it down the length of her body. She was wearing only her stockings and chemise now, and closed her eyes in ecstasy as she felt the caress of his tongue across her silk-covered breast before he suckled her deep inside his mouth, drawing on her greedily, hungrily, even as his tongue continued that wild caress across the hardened tip.

But she wanted—needed—to touch him too, and slid the jacket from his shoulders, the waistcoat quickly fol
lowing, then his shirt, until Jane knew the sheer pleasure of touching his naked flesh. Her fingers were caressing as they glided over the hardness of his muscled chest, tangling in the silky hair that covered him, before she touched him, her nails scraping accidentally against one of the hardened nubs that nestled there.

His sharply indrawn breath was enough to tell Jane that the caress gave Hawk pleasure too, making her bolder still as she touched him deliberately now, and felt him quiver, shudder in uncontrollable response.

Before Hawk, she had never caressed a man’s naked body before, but now, as she began to experiment with what gave Hawk pleasure, Jane felt a sense of her own power over the flesh that hardened and quivered at her slightest touch.

Hawk fell back with a gasp as he felt Jane’s hands upon him, his groan one of aching longing as he lay on his back and felt the lap of her tongue against him. Her hands were running the length of his chest now, his muscles quivering, tensing at her slightest touch. A touch that was all the more arousing because of her lack of experience or artifice.

Hawk looked down at her in the firelight, at the play of flames against her hair as it fell free of its confining pins onto his bared chest. His hand shook slightly as he raised it to touch that brightness, his fingers tangling convulsively in its silkiness as her kisses followed the line of hair that moved from his chest down to his navel.