The Tattooed Duke (12 page)

Chapter 22

In Which a Housemaid Finds Herself in Trouble

The study at Wycliff House

“Y
ou called for me, Your Grace?” Eliza asked meekly. She stood before his desk nervously smoothing out the aprons on her skirts. All he could think of was lifting those skirts, exploring, bringing her to unfathomable pleasure . . .

Focus, man,
he commanded himself. Mrs. Buxby should have been reprimanding this errant housemaid, not he. But the housekeeper was deep in her teacups and wouldn’t suitably impress the seriousness of the situation concerning Eliza. Mrs. Buxby also would not dig for information and then remember to relate it to him afterward.

And because he had been bewitched by the girl, Wycliff took every advantage to be in her company.

Eliza stood before him expectantly. He pushed his fingers through his hair and tried to recall his father for some guidance on how to act ducal, but he could only remember the occasion—he must have been only ten—when he burst into the study and found one of the housemaids giggling and perched on his father’s knee. She then gained weight in her belly, and left to visit her family in Shropshire shortly thereafter. Many a maid had suffered the same condition.

Wycliff cleared his throat. He was born to act like a bloody lord and master, and many a man and woman had told him he knew perfectly well how to do so. If he wanted to lead an expedition he would have to deal with insubordination properly.

Starting with Eliza.

Whom he wanted to ravish.

On his desk.

“It has come to my attention that you took leave of your duties yesterday afternoon. Without permission.” He summoned the voice he used with recalcitrant animals and potentially hostile tribes. The tone itself was effective at crossing language barriers.

She said nothing, as she was deeply fascinated by an invisible spot on the carpet. In her silence, he wondered: Was he asking as her lord and master who expected her at his beck and call at all hours? Or as a would-be lover or jealous rival for her affections?

“You do not deny it,” he stated. Where the devil had she gone? And with whom? Why did the ignorance and curiosity burn in his gut? Had it been Jenny in her place—he couldn’t have cared less. But Eliza . . .

“I am sincerely sorry, Your Grace,” Eliza burst out. “My mother had taken ill and I had gone to visit her.”

Bollocks, he thought. More hand-wringing. He’d wager an elephant that her mother was right as rain.

“I’m deeply sorry to hear that,” he said consolingly, and all the more intrigued. Was she with a lover? Was she in trouble? He had to ask: “What ails your mother?”

“Consumption. It’s very tragic.” Eliza batted her long lashes. He nearly groaned. She was spinning falsehoods like a practiced stage actress—fine. But did she need to look so bloody adorable as she did?

“Will you need more time away to spend with her?” he asked. When she seemed surprised at the offer, he carried on, “I’m not an ogre, Eliza. I may be unconventional, but I am human and I do care for my fellow man. And woman,” And then he smiled and went in for the kill. “That is why I was so glad to learn you had chaperones for your return journey.”

Her head snapped up, eyes blazing. He smiled like a cat with a mouse. She, brazenly, smiled in return.

“Brothers?” he inquired politely.

“Cousins,” she corrected. The audacity. Lying through her teeth, too. And then she had the nerve to smile again.

Funny, that. Because the gossip said that one of the men accompanying her had been unusually large. Wycliff’s mind wandered to the giant guarding the door at
The London Weekly.
A coincidence? He did not believe in coincidences. But he also believed in evidence and proof, not gossip.

His heart began to pound, and this annoyed him.

Wycliff drummed his fingers on his desk and looked her over well and good. Silky jet black hair pulled back in a tight, spinsterish bun. Made him want to give a little tug and watch it tumble down.

She wore a plain gray dress with a white apron pinned to the front reminding him of her place in his world. A maid. Naught but a maid.
Or . . . ?

Her hands, clasped sweetly in front of her, were telling. They were rough and red; they were the hands of a woman who worked. More telling they were
not
covered in ink stains. And she could not read or write. He’d seen her blush of mortification when he had asked her to. He still felt like an ass about that.

She smiled sweetly at him.

But she could be an informant for a
Weekly
writer? A few extra coins each week to supplement the meager wages he could afford to pay her . . . it was possible.

It would behoove him to tread delicately. Observe. Test.

“While I am greatly sympathetic to your consumptive mother, I do need to make an example of you for the other staff,” he told her.

“Are you going to sack me?” she asked breathlessly, and it was nearly his undoing. Her eyes widened with terror, her skin paled, and the hand-wringing intensified. This anguish struck him as actually genuine.

The urge to consol her was great, as was the urge to take her in his arms and . . . Thank God the desk hid his lap from her view. It wouldn’t do to let her know the power she held over him because of this illicit, constant attraction.

His Wycliff blood ran true. There was no denying it.

“No. However, there will be some form of punishment,” he said smoothly, letting his voice drop a register, just to watch her eyes widen and her lips part. Did she think he was going to beat her? Or enact some deviant sexual act upon her unwilling person? Good Lord. He had something much less dangerous and more bizarre in mind.

“I will require assistance cataloguing some of the insect specimens from my travels. It is immensely tedious work. You will suffer through it, under my supervision.”

He would get to be near her. Just to torture himself.

Feed her details he’d like made known to London, just in case she was an informant.

And perhaps he might emerge wiser. More tempted and tortured but wiser. And the insect catalogue would be finished faster.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she all but whispered.

“We’ll begin later this afternoon,” he said, and by way of ending this torturous meeting, started shuffling the papers on his desk. She bobbed a little curtsey and sauntered out. Wycliff watched the sway of her hips and his breeches tightened in response.

When she was gone, he returned his attention to the papers spread out before him. In his shuffles he had unearthed a letter from Lady Althea that arrived days ago and that he had not yet responded to. The lure of Shackley money called like a siren song. She had asked for him to pay a call upon her; there was a personal matter to be discussed in person that could not be committed to print.

Chapter 23

In Which Cataloguing Insects Is a Romantic Endeavor. Yes, Really.

Later that day

I
n truth, Wycliff could not wait another moment to be
near
Eliza. Lately it seemed he lived only for the moments that she was in his proximity. He yanked hard on the bellpull. While he waited, his thoughts strayed to another troubling female . . . Lady Althea. And her letter. He couldn’t decide if he would pay her a visit or avoid her.

Eliza finally arrived.

“Insects,” he said gruffly, because he was glad to see her, more than was respectable. And Lady Althea . . . Maddening females. He took one look at Eliza’s ocean blue eyes and pink mouth and was irritated all over again. Just in a different way.

“Yes, Your Grace.” She was meek because he had to punish her, or make some ridiculous show of pretending to. He hoped she got over that deference soon.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked. She was just standing there, timidlike, as if waiting for him to ravish her. Or was he just suffering from wishful thinking?

“I am awaiting direction, Your Grace. I have never catalogued insects before. Usually, I just kill them.” Spoken like a city girl, he thought.

“Well these are already dead. Please don’t squash them. It would be a tremendous loss to science if you did.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” He scowled. There was nothing quite so irritating as an excessively agreeable female. Especially when he was in a mood for sparring.

“We’ll need paper. And pens. And there are boxes labeled ‘Insects’ over there that need to be brought to the table. Do not drop them or you’ll be sacked.”

“You have made great improvements in your ducal demeanor,” she said, finally showing some backbone.

“Are you saying that I’m being overbearing, tyrannical, and generally disagreeable?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said, this time with a smirk.

“That’s what I thought,” he replied, and a smirk to match hers tugged at his mouth.

He watched as she crossed the room purposefully. And then she stopped. There were many boxes. Some were labeled
Insects
and some were not.

She hesitated. So did he.

There were two sides warring within him: end this awkward moment and tell her what was what, or wait and somehow prove that she was a spy for
The Weekly
because she guessed which box said
Insects.
He was ridiculous. She was a lovely chit, a tempting minx, and really, what grounds did he have to suspect this illiterate and beautiful woman of such treachery?

With a sigh, he said, “The ones on the top, to the left.”

Then she began to move boxes and he collected paper and quills, and the moment had passed. But he felt bad to doubt her. It felt wrong to test her thus. She’d been a damn fine confidante, and he lusted after her tremendously. Yet a part of him suspected her of a massive betrayal.

The tyrannical, ducal demeanor would have to smooth over the rough moment.

“Start unpacking the boxes. It’s full of glass jars. Kindly refrain from breaking them.”

“I have experience sweeping broken glass, Your Grace.” It was marvelous, really, how calmly she said things like that. But nevertheless he gave her a look of shock, simply
shock
that she dare refer to the brash introduction of the whiskey bottle and the wall.

If she were an informant . . . she’d be clinging to this position and not risking a firing by leaving for hours, unexplained, or speaking so freely with him. This logic satisfied him.

“And I can give you more experience, but not with these things that I’ve hauled halfway around the world.” Wycliff towered over her to supervise the removal of glass jars from the box onto the tabletop, as if his proximity and generally overbearing demeanor would keep his treasures safe, when he knew perfectly well it was more likely to rattle her. She was steady. Quite steady. Admirable.

“Why did you haul them halfway around the world?” she asked.

“Contrary to popular belief, I was not whoring and slaughtering my way across nations. I like to observe the natural order and immerse myself in other cultures.”

“Like the tattooing.”

“It’s the obvious, painful example, yes. The scandalous thing, really, is that I do not believe the English are the most superior beings to ever breathe air. Do not dare repeat that to anyone or they’ll revoke my title and execute me for treason.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

He wanted to bet the house that he would see those words in
The London Weekly
come Saturday’s issue.

“And stop saying that. I told you to call me Sebastian when we were in private.”

“Is that a family name?” she inquired.

“Of course. I was named after the previous duke, who was named after the previous duke, etcetera, etcetera. And yours?” he asked. From his travels, he learned what significance and meaning went into a name.

“My father named me after Eliza Hayward. She wrote novels and edited a newspaper. He’s a playwright.”

“Do you go to the theater, then?” It was pleasing, this working side by side, conversing freely. But it was so dangerous to learn her, to know her. Egad, next he would see her as a woman with hopes, and dreams, and
feelings,
and go right on and fall headlong in love with her.

Housemaid,
he told himself.
Housemaid. Housemaid. Housemaid.

Wycliff focused on the task at hand so he might keep himself under control. He would not ravish her here, now. They might damage the specimens that he had hauled halfway around the world.

“When I am able to, which isn’t often,” she answered. Her housemaidness hung awkwardly in the air between them. This was why one just romped with the servants and didn’t try to engage them in conversation. But he
liked
talking to Eliza. It wasn’t like Althea, which had him feeling like he was crossing fiery hot coals, and was a very good reason to ignore the summons she had sent. Or like other women, who were content with inane chatter about nothing in particular.

“The theater is one thing I did miss while abroad,” he said. “Although, stories told around campfires out in the bush can be just as captivating.” He missed those stories of local gods and goddesses, and mythical explanations for the natural phenomena or historical battles.

Eliza glanced up at him, smiling shyly, and it just did something to the region of his heart.

“All the jars are unpacked,” she said. An array of insects and butterflies were spread before them, along with paper and quill.

“Can you write?” he asked, because still, he needed to test her. He needed to because he could, quite possibly, experience a prolonged state of intense attraction and emotional attachment for her. Some might call it love. But not he.

When Eliza hesitated yet again, he wanted to kick himself. She was a housemaid, for heaven’s sake. Of course she could not read or write. Last time he checked, most daughters of the peerage could barely sign their names on their calling cards. And here he thought some lower class girl was a writer for a newspaper in 1825. It was ludicrous.

“My apologies. That is insensitive and idiotic of me. Just hand them to me and describe them, and I’ll write the name and some notes and then they all go back in the box for some exhibit I may or may not present to the world. If my reputation doesn’t scare everyone off.”

They worked in a pleasant, easy rhythm. Eliza would pick up a jar and describe the creature in it—blue wings with an iridescent sheen, shiny brown with hundreds of legs—and it made sense to him that she had been raised in the theater. She had a way with words. He wrote down everything.

Their hands kept touching as she handed the jars to him. Her hands were not those perfectly butter soft hands of a lady. Hell, his hands were rough, too. They worked, he and Eliza.

He was nagged by the urge to set her up so she didn’t have to work, other than cataloguing insects with him. But that would make her his mistress . . .

And the problem with that was . . . what? He didn’t have the funds, for one thing. And that reminded him, again, of Lady Althea’s letter. The damned thing kept intruding. He would have to visit her and put this matter to rest.

“There, that is the last of them,” Wycliff said, for they had finished up with this batch. The work had gone quickly and pleasantly with her company. “You were a good assistant,” he told her.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Eliza replied cheekily. She glanced up at him with a sparkle in her eyes, like sunlight on a calm sea. His heart tightened hard in his chest. For a second he couldn’t breathe.

“What did I tell you about that . . . ?” he asked in a pretend growl that broke into a grin and then devolved into a kiss. He caught her off guard. She was still smiling when his lips touched hers. For one scorching second she returned his passion in spades. For one brilliant moment in time all was deeply and unshakably right.

And then, glory to the gods, one second turned into another. The kiss deepened. Her tongue tangled with his, in a devastating combination of innocence and pure passion. Wycliff cradled her cheeks in his palms; they were warm to the touch.

She ran her fingers through his hair. His heart began to thud, hard and heavy like a tribal drum. He kissed her more, savoring her sweet taste. If his life had depended upon it, he couldn’t have stopped.

He wanted to explore her, to know more of her. Slowly he slid his hands lower, to her breasts. Eliza gasped and arched her back. Minx. His groin tightened and he closed the last little distance between them.

“Sebastian,” she whispered.

“Mmm . . .” It was imperative that he feel the warm, bare skin of her breasts. He wanted to take her in his mouth and lavish attention on her breasts until she was gasping with pleasure. The duke did just that.

“Sebastian,” she said in breathless whisper. His mouth closed down upon hers. He was aware, dimly, that she was trying to tell him something. But talking meant not kissing, and in the moment not kissing was akin to death. And then she slid her arms under his shirt, pressing her small palms against the naked skin of his chest.

If that small touch gave him so much pleasure, he would likely explode were they to be utterly nude, together. In that instant he wished for that intimacy with her more than he’d ever wanted anything. More than Timbuktu.

He broke the kiss, shocked by that thought, unbidden.

Her mouth was gorgeously swollen from his kisses. Her eyes were dark in an immensely seductive way. Her attire was a bit askew.

More than Timbuktu . . .