Chapter Twenty-four
Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
To Harriet
The sunlight stung her eyes. She lifted her arm to her face and thought of Griffin, surprised she hadn’t dreamed of him again during the night. She rolled over, wondering how she would be able to look at him without thinking of what they had done. And where she had left the purse that had been so rudely given her last night.
An irate voice from outside the door blasted her right out of bed. “Are you still asleep, Harriet? I’ve been calling you for ages. We are supposed to spend the day shopping with Lady Dalrymple, and I cannot find my hat.”
“Coming,” she muttered. “Hold on to your garters, madam.”
She dressed and left her room at the precise moment the duke emerged from his. She nodded uncertainly, examining his elegant serge-lined cape and buff trousers with a suspicious eye. And just when he appeared to be on the verge of breaking the silence between them, a maidservant came clumping up the stairs with her ladyship’s morning tea.
“Good luck to you on your shopping expedition,” he murmured as he hastened to escape.
“And the same-” No. She would not wish him luck searching for a wife. “Will his grace be home in time for supper?” she called after him in a piqued voice.
He glanced back with a wry grin. “I think I might.”
She bit her lip. She shouldn’t give him any further encouragement. It was clear that he would break her heart. She ran impulsively to the top of the stairs, wanting to hail curses on whatever courtship he might enter in the course of the afternoon. But it wasn’t her place.
Lady Powlis, recognizing no such limitations, stuck her head out of her door. “Remind my nephew that he has promised to play noughts and crosses with me tonight.”
“Her ladyship-”
He paused at the front door, so indecently handsome that it grieved her to look at him. “I heard quite clearly.”
“Fine, then,” Harriet said, suddenly infuriated with herself. “We shall expect you home at-a decent hour.”
It rained for three days straight. The duke spent long hours in his library, and while Harriet sensed that he was up to something, she could not feel regret for the night he had tutored her in pleasure. She wondered what he’d been like before his brother’s death. From what Lady Powlis had revealed, he had not always been the man who fascinated and frustrated Harriet in equal measures. But she was pleased that he never mentioned another woman when he came home in the afternoon for tea or again at night when he sat with her and his aunt for the obligatory hour.
And then one evening over her nightly brandy, while Harriet was pretending to read, Lady Powlis said quite out of the blue, “You will never get married at this rate, Griffin. And I am longing to go home.”
He looked up unexpectedly at Harriet, with an intensity that gripped her in both horror and hope.
That night she was so restless that she left her bed and wandered about the house. In the old days she could steal like air through a room. She could see like a cat in the dark and sense when a person was about to wake up and wonder whether the servants had remembered to lock all the doors.
She’d once stuffed an entire silver service into her gown and walked from Grosvenor Square back to St. Giles like a knight in stolen armor. Fortunately she hadn’t been forced to run from the peelers or fend off a street predator with a knife or fork before she reached home.
She had depended on her instincts in those days. But life had been uncomplicated when only survival counted. She hadn’t cared what anyone thought of her. And she had never walked into a man’s library alone and stood before him in a thin muslin nightrail that offered no protection at all from the desire in his eyes.
“Is something the matter?” he asked, rising from his desk.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Then-”
“And I can’t eat.”
“Or read,” he said in resignation.
“Or pay attention to anything your aunt tells me.”
“Or to the hand of cards you are dealt at the club.”
“Furthermore,” she said, “you, if not the entire Boscastle family, are to blame. I don’t belong here at all. And-”
Her voice broke. He stepped around the desk, nodding as if anything she’d said made the least bit of sense.
“And furthermore,” she whispered, staring into his eyes, “I have decided that because of this I cannot serve another day in your house.”
“This?” he queried softly, taking another step toward her.
Her lips parted. “I’m giving you notice, your grace. And I mean it.”
His gaze flickered over her. “In your nightwear?” He reached out to trace his finger down her throat to the knotted drawstring above her breasts. “And at this ungodly hour? I’m afraid I cannot allow it.”
“Well, you can’t stop me this time.”
“I understand.”
“Then-”
“The situation cannot go on this way,” he said gravely. “I will find another position for you before the end of the week.”
He led her across the room and drew her down onto the carpet. For several moments they knelt, sharing feverish kisses and caressing each other through their clothes. Soon Harriet was clinging to his aroused body with a desperation that she couldn’t hide. It seemed not only natural but essential to offer herself to him. She might have existed for him to pet and stroke and pleasure. His hands roamed down her back and derriere, stealing the strength from her bones. If she could bestir herself from his spell, she would touch him everywhere, too.
“Harriet,” he murmured in his lilting baritone voice that mesmerized her. “Do you know I sit at my desk every night and think of being with you like this?”
She shivered. His fingers found and tenderly probed the vulnerable places of her body. Her head swam in delight. She swayed against his hard chest. She kissed his shoulder, smiling to herself. “I know you’ve kept those lewd pictures on purpose.”
He stroked the crease of her bottom, his fingers descending in a forbidden quest that quickened her blood. When suddenly he leaned over her, she fell back onto the carpet with a moan. He bent over her pliant form. His mouth took hers in a hard kiss that left her breathless and craving more. His unremorseful gaze acknowledged her response. “I don’t need those prints anymore, do I?” he asked, his hand pressing against her mound. “Besides, they hardly did you justice. Why anyone would depict this perfect body with thighs inflated like balloons is past imagining.”
“And I don’t have three of them, either,” she said, indignant at the unfairness of how she had been portrayed for posterity.
He looked utterly blank for a moment. And then an insulting grin lifted the corners of his mouth. “That wasn’t a third thigh, you milkmaid. It was the part of me that’s meant to go inside you.”
She levered up on one elbow, curiosity enabling her to overlook his mockery. Harriet considered herself to be anything but ignorant in the ways of the world. Her half brothers had not bothered to spare her any embarrassment when it came to the differences of their sex. That she had retained her virtue, and a certain modesty concerning earthly affairs, was no minor accomplishment. Had the duke been the devilish rake that gossip would make him, she would never have found him irresistible, let alone considered surrendering her maidenly innocence. It was, in fact, his protective nature and dedication to his aunt and niece that had captured her affection. But it was obvious that he had more experiences in carnality than she had.