The Rusticated Duchess (18 page)

At Clare’s end of the gallery, facing the harbour entrance, things were much simpler. The suite Gloria now occupied had once been the residence of the household’s priest. One section of the wall in her chamber matched perfectly the pattern of the wainscoting on the walls and hid in plain sight. But it also levered forwards and backward without doorknobs or keys. Once through that door and into Clare’s bedchamber, a trapdoor in the floor of the window seat dropped refugees into a dark, narrow corridor built on the lower level. The servants used it now, but in ages past it had been a secret way to reach the stairs to the basements and to the dungeons, with exits to the small dock inside the castle walls at the lower level and access to the tunnel that ran from the keep to the gatehouses.

As an escape route it was infinitely more dangerous than the duke’s, but also much more convenient for his present requirements. Gloria, he was certain, would have no idea that Clare could walk up to the wall between their apartments, press his hand firmly against the wall, and slide it into Gloria’s chamber.

Clare considered what he would say, even as he stripped down and donned trousers, slippers and a belt, then pulled on his wine-stained but perfectly ironed shirt and tied a wine-stained but stiff cravat around his neck. He added a morning coat for good measure, then thought about what he was about to do.

He had promised her that she could always tell him no. Clare could not break that promise. But neither would he permit her to use Colman and the lock on her door to avoid the inevitable confrontation they must have. Gloria’s maid would arrive in a few hours with Gloria’s trunks, and her chambers would be reliably busy until Gloria went to bed. The maid would unpack her trunks, Gloria would dress for dinner and so on. Clare knew Gloria would never agree to attend him in his chambers, even if they confined themselves to the sitting room.

Clare wouldn’t have ordered her to the study for a king’s ransom. She’d no doubt interpret that as a command for an encore of their earlier experience there and simply refuse. And how could he confront her, other than bodily carting her from her chambers?

No, he would face her. Here.

With the decision in mind, Clare stood before the secret panel and pushed the decorative rosette that engaged the sliders to move the panel forwards into her bedchamber. He stepped through, expecting a scream of indignation and outrage, but saw and heard nothing.

Quickly he closed the panel behind him, wondering if he’d have the chance to use it again, then checked her dressing room and bathing chamber before strolling into her sitting room.

He found her, there, asleep on the chaise. Her hair was unpinned and flowed in long tresses over her shoulders and arms and breasts. Her cheeks were flushed from the consumption of rich wine. Clare wanted, suddenly and desperately, to see her asleep with her hair spread like that over his pillows, her body nude and gleaming pale in faint sunlight. As a fantasy, it was decidedly more tame than his usual dreams, where Gloria was exotically sensual and tempted him to outrageous behaviour.

Clare circled her, his attention caught by the letter she’d been composing on the escritoire near the wall. He stopped and glanced at it, shifting guiltily when he saw it was addressed to His Grace, the Duke of Lennox. She was informing him that they had retreated from Blessing Cottage and were taking temporary refuge in the Castle. She did not know when they would leave for Italy.

Guiltily, Clare stepped away and returned to stare at her before sitting at her side. Bound by his own word to always give her the right to refuse, he neither touched her intimately nor undressed her. Of course he wished to do both, but instead he turned and shifted until her head rested on his thigh and he could stroke her hair away from her face and gently graze her temples with the pads of his fingers.

It was a simple caress but enough to wake her after a few moments. Her eyes fluttered open and Clare soaked up the confusion in them before she remembered, realised and reacted.

She sat up faster than she should have and was immediately nauseous. A shocked look passed her face, and Gloria’s hand flew to her mouth. She fled.

Unhesitating and still silent, Clare followed her into the bathing chamber and behind the screen to the necessary. She didn’t even argue when he pulled her hair back from her cheeks.

“Why are you so bloody
generous
?” she gasped finally, sitting up. Clare pulled a towel from the stack below the wash basin and watched carefully as she wiped around her mouth. “You ought to be irritated by the upheaval I’ve made in your life.”

“Helpful?” he asked, standing and pouring a bit of water from the pitcher at the basin into the cup that resided there. She accepted the drink gratefully. “Next time,” Clare advised her brusquely, unhappy that her complexion was pale and her eyes watery, “have one or two glasses. Not the entire bottle.”

“I’ve never been drunk before,” she mumbled, sipping at the water and wincing. “And I’m not impressed. What did he see in this state?”

“Oblivion,” Clare said, his words clipped and tinged with his frustration. “At first.”

Gloria looked at him then, actually looked at him, and her eyes widened. “You thought I would throw it at you again,” she mocked.

He lifted a brow. “The thought did cross my mind that you perhaps had not imbibed the entire bottle in one meal,” Clare returned dryly.

Her jaw tightening, Gloria grimaced. “You are wrong to just assume authority, as though you have the right to do so,” she insisted, but without the emotional outrage she’d thrown at him earlier. “But I, I will admit that I shouldn’t be so quick to put Colman and Brody and the Pitchers and Mrs Sinclair at risk of imprisonment and violence—even temporarily—for the sake of my pride.”

“Your pride would be intact if you’d actually stopped to listen to me and them last week,” he argued. “And Eynon is unquestionably safer here.”

Her eyes closed so that he couldn’t see how she felt, but she did not object. Instead, she moved on. “I am still not sharing your bed.”

Clare smiled crookedly. “I shall be grateful to simply get through the day without ruining any more clothing—yours or mine.”

Gloria stared at him for a long moment but then nodded. “What now, then? Am I your prisoner?”

His lower lip quirked. “Would you like to be?” he asked, then realised what he’d done. Clare blushed, relaxing only once Gloria’s eyes widened with shock and crinkled with delayed understanding and sensual awareness. He cleared his throat. “Would it be easier for you to accept, if you were
confined
here?”

“No dungeons.” Gloria stood quickly, the teasing effect of her words lost as she swayed from side to side.

Clare grabbed her by the waist, steadying her.

The minutes that followed were revealing to Clare, though he knew without a doubt that Gloria found them profoundly humiliating. She vomited again, this time not reaching the necessary in time. In the end, Clare stripped her outer gown to rid her of the smell, then left her on the floor of the dressing room to fetch one of his dressing gowns. When he returned and helped her into it, he washed her face and the locks of her hair that required freshening. From his own rooms, he ordered a tea cart, then pushed it through to her room and prepared a cup for her while Gloria sat, still shaky, in a chair near the fireplace.

She raised a brow as the secret entry in the wall was revealed, so he explained coolly—adding that it worked equally well in each direction, should she need him.

Gloria sipped the tea and listened as he explained about the trap door into the servants’ corridor, and how to get to the basement steps, so Clare went on, and instructed her on where to hide in the massive wine cellars and pantries if the need arose.

Eventually, his explanation finished, they subsided into a quiet companionship. Clare knew perfectly well that she hadn’t forgiven him his high-handedness. He could tell she didn’t feel herself, though her colour was improving. But he was also determined to make his point—separating herself from him would do her no good either.

At last, after a long period of silence, Gloria spoke quietly. “You have no intention of permitting me to remain in my rooms or the nursery, do you?”

Clare shook his head. “I expect you to join me for dinner tonight. If you do not, I shall bring dinner to you and share a tray here in your rooms, thus advertising further the degree of intimacy we share to our servants. I will not force you into my bed, and you have made it clear you will not indulge in that delight with me at the moment. I will not argue the point at this time. Those matters are between you and I and have no bearing on anyone else. I say only that I want you in my bed and will take you there the moment you change your mind. But yes, I have a key to your apartment and I will come in and hound you if you try to hide here.”

“Why?” she asked.

Clare frowned. His pride, he acknowledged. “You will not pretend to be a prisoner when you are a guest. Insulting me before our servants by refusing my company is petty and childish. It is my castle, after all, and there are many more rooms than these in it. You do not have to be in the same one I am in.”

He stood and gathered the teacups, then faced her, still in the chair. “Your maid and belongings should be here shortly. I’m certain you want to visit with Eynon but after that, you can send for me, or find me in the study, if you have need or desire for my company.”

Clare looked down on her pensive face, then bent and brushed a kiss over her lips. Her eyes widened but he withdrew, treasuring the instant reaction she had not concealed. Her lovely mouth had softened and begun to part for him.

“Come to me, when you are ready,” he said, and left her there.

It was, he thought, safely in his own apartment a few minutes later, the most difficult exit he’d ever made. But Clare was not after a few tumbles with a willing woman. No, whatever he was after—and even Clare wasn’t confident of his ultimate goal—he wanted much more than that.

* * * *

Gloria stood outside Clare’s closed study door, hesitating. Astrid had brought her gowns, and it had been a relief to slip off Clare’s dressing gown and be attired again in her own clothes. Astrid had shaken her head and muttered at the fumes coming from the old widow’s weeds Gloria walked in daily. She sighed, knowing that she’d never again walk Shore Road without an escort, at least not for a year or more, so she gave in graciously and instructed Astrid to dispose of the old gown rather than clean it.

She’d spent a pleasant few hours with Eynon while Mrs Pitcher, Astrid and the housemaids from the Castle organised and settled their belongings. It had done her soul good, she thought, to cradle and talk to the little man. She hadn’t spent enough time with him since Clare had come into her life, and it was time for that to change.

A niggling voice at the back of her head reminded her of all the night-time hours she could spend with Clare, if she just pushed on the wall between them…

Gloria shook her head. She’d been attracted to him from the first, and he was an honourable, fine man. But their earlier discussion had confused her. He’d teased her a bit, cared for her and walked away without looking back.

It disturbed Gloria in a way she didn’t understand.

Now, though, Eynon slept. Her rooms were a chaotic mess of silks and velvet and slippers and scarves. She’d walked the gallery after sending Colman off to settle his own things with the assurance that she wouldn’t try to leave the keep.

Gloria had stopped and stared at the happy woman with a tiny boy on her lap who hung in a place of honour near the duke’s chambers.

She knew the portrait was Clare’s wife Sarah and their son, because of its similarity to the one in his study. They had been painted about the same time, when Sarah had not been much older than Gloria was now.

Sarah was a pretty woman, but more important to the portrait was Sarah’s contentment. She had been painted with the babe in her lap, and the pair were looking at each other, delighting in what they shared. Of course the artist could have painted Sarah in whatever manner he’d wanted, but there were other duchesses and duchesses-to-be on the walls of the gallery. None had seemed to belong in the Castle garden with the keep looming behind them more than Sarah.

Gloria had never been satisfied with her life, not honestly. Oh, she could make the world think she was carefree, she’d done her share of vivacious flirting. But Gloria was quite sure she’d never actually been happy.

Had Sarah? Or was she dissembling in the portrait? Was any woman ever truly at peace?

Heaving a great sigh, Gloria shrugged. Abigail was happy. Fiona was not. Genevieve was definitely discontented. Her mother? Her mother had always seemed melancholy to Gloria, but then perhaps the tragedies of her lifetime had simply been too much. An affair with Meriden’s grandfather had brought her Fiona. A reunion with a military man she must have loved dearly had brought John and Abigail—but he had died. A blank spot in her mother’s life had brought about Gloria. Whoever her father was, Lennox had known him well enough to permit her father’s bastard son to be raised in Lennox’s own households. Then there was Lennox, whose relationship with her mother had been a terrible secret for years, through the death of her only son, the decline of her husband’s estates, until the scandal of her daughters’ births had become a subject of a Chancery Court suit. But did Lennox make her happy?

Gloria did not know. Her mother did not outwardly appear joyful. She was frequently withdrawn and distant, if gentle with her daughters. Gloria guessed now that Lennox had paid shopping bills and kept them all in silk ballgowns since well before Johna had moved her trunks into Lennox House and stayed there. But financial security was not enough, especially if there was terror behind the bank accounts.

She shook off the shiver of remembered terror that swept over her and pushed open the study door in a feeble attempt to replace that memory with something warmer.

Clare was sitting behind the great mahogany desk, writing in a large book spread out before him. He looked up, his eyes crinkling as he smiled at her, and began to blot the ink.