Page 36 of The Heiress Gets a Duke
Chapter 11
Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.
Edmund Spenser
August sat at her dressing table staring at herself in the mirror. She had allowed Mary, her startled maid, to stay only long enough to strip her of her ball gown and help her into her nightgown and wrapper before bidding her a good night, preferring to unpin her hair herself. However, she couldn’t concentrate on the chore because oddities in her reflection kept distracting her. First it was the color high in her cheeks that wouldn’t seem to leave. Then it was the way her eyes shone. They seemed almost vivacious in the muted tones of the oil lamp. Now, while it seemed unlikely, her lips appeared to be still swollen from his kisses.
Pausing in her task, she dropped the hairpins into their dish and touched her mouth. Yes, they were definitely fuller than usual. Her fingertips drifted down to the small bit of skin exposed above the high neck of her nightgown. The touch ignited an ember slumbering in her belly. It was a faint echo of the flame Rothschild had brought to life in her. Moving her hand down lower, she tentatively touched the nipple he had stroked. It stood up beneath her touch, round like a gumdrop caught beneath the linen.
Before Rothschild, she had kissed precisely three men in her entire life, not counting the chaste kisses on her forehead given by her father or Maxwell. The first had been a hastily stolen kiss at a dance when she was eighteen. The man, a son of her mother’s friend, had pressed his lips to her cheek and turned seven shades of red when she had pushed him away. The next kiss had happened a year later at a summer party at the cottage in Newport. More curious about kissing at the worldly age of nineteen, she had encouraged a childhood friend to kiss her on the mouth. His lips had been dry when they had brushed hers and had left her feeling awkward and relieved when it was over.
The third kiss had been a couple of years later. Also in Newport over the summer, this one had been by a son of Papa’s business associate. The family had visited from Chicago, and August had liked him right away. Handsome and intelligent, he had been the first man she had ever tentatively begun to imagine a future with. Uninvited, he had kissed her rather roughly on the beach one night. She had been both stunned and appalled. When she had managed to push him away, he had sneered and said that it was a good thing her family had money because she was too cold for any man to want.
To her everlasting shame, the words had cut deeply. Everyone knew that Violet was the desirable one, while August was the bluestocking. The one who, while pretty enough, would only marry when she found a man who could overlook her many shortcomings. She was too opinionated. Too intelligent. Too mannish.
Too cold.
It was the last one that had haunted her most. What if she was too cold for any man to want?
The puckered nipple reflected in the mirror seemed to suggest otherwise. She moved her hand to her other breast and cupped the small mound, allowing her thumb to play over her nipple as Rothschild’s had done. It tightened under her touch, and if she kept her eyes closed tightly, she could almost imagine that it was him touching her. A dart of pleasure moved from her nipple to her belly, burrowing sodeeply that she had to press her thighs together. She pinched the little nub of flesh as he had done and was gratified when another pulse of desire shifted through her. She remembered how he had whispered her name, and the thrillingly rough sound he had made deep in his throat.
Flattening her hand to her pounding heart, she opened her eyes to her reflection. With her hair in careless waves around her and eyes wild with arousal, she almost didn’t recognize herself. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh, but she was anything but cold now. He had proven it. If nothing else, she could thank him for that.
No, that wasn’t true. He had given her something else. When he could have had Violet—Hadn’t he said that his mother had chosen her? Hadn’t her own parents offered Violet up on a silver platter?—he hadchosenAugust.
I would have one thing that is mine. I would choose my own wife. I choose you.
The memory made a smile curve her lips. The words were so simple, but they had settled down inside her like warm whisky and softened her hard edges. Almost no one had ever wanted her for her. Her mother wanted her to be more like Violet, and her father—while encouraging her business-minded pursuits—had marveled at her, like an eccentric he didn’t quite understand but was willing to humor. Was it possible that this man, thisduke, was willing and able to see her and accept who she was?
Charlatan. Trickster. Fortune hunter. All of those could be applied to him. She understood that it was in his best interest to get her on his side, and he’d likely say anything to make that happen... but what if... what if he meant it?
Shaking her head, she reminded herself that whether he meant the words or not, he only wanted to marry her because of the money that came along with her. He was an impoverished nobleman who had figured out that marrying an heiress would solve all his problems, and he wasn’t above seduction to get what he wanted. It would serve her best to simply focus on the physical. His kisses might have been tinged with coercion, but the thick length of manhood swelling against her thigh had been genuine desire, if theanatomy books she had devoured as an adolescent had been correct.
It was a small victory, but it proved that she was neither cold nor unable to stir a man. She would take that victory and still figure out a way to beat Rothschild at his own game, because shewasopinionated and intelligent, too.
***
The next morning, needing to savor her time alone before dealing with the almost certain ambush of her parents as soon as she stepped out of her room, August slept late. After a distressing night of tossing and turning, the extra sleep that morning was just the thing to set her to rights again. She awoke feeling refreshed and eager to take on the challenge of thwarting a fortune-hunting duke.
It wasn’t until Mary brought her a breakfast tray that she realized things were odd. For one, her maid seemed far more devoted to her duty than normal. A pretty woman only a few years older than her mistress, Mary tucked August’s napkin across her lap and added two lumps to her coffee as if she were taking care of a most treasured child. Her dedication, combined with her knowing glances, were undeniably more than her usual need to please.
“Thank you, Mary.”
Mary curtsied and mumbled, “Yes, miss.”
It seemed that news of her waltz with the duke and its significance must have made the rounds downstairs. Fine. Gossip was inevitable, and she was prepared to ignore it. Things would die down when she made it clear that his interest was not returned.
Next, the distant peal of the doorbell kept ringing through the house. It happened once while August was eating and scanning a contract from Papa’s secretary that had arrived yesterday, and two more times as Mary helped her into her corset and then while pinning her hair. Papa had a meeting that afternoon that she planned to attend. There were hours yet before the meeting, and no one would call before three in the afternoon. Would they? Suddenly afraidthat she had missed something important, she hurried through the rest of her toilet and out her door.
The doorbell had gone silent, leaving the corridor quiet. Too quiet. Usually, her mother would be up and ordering the maids to make some last-minute alteration to Violet’s planned costume for the evening. Had Mother gone out this early in the day?
Rare sunbeams cast golden rays on the carpet through the panes of leaded glass at the end of the corridor. Perhaps the sun had lured her mother outside into the garden. Giving the maid polishing a brass lighting fixture a smile and a nod as she passed, August glanced out the window to find the garden empty.
“Pardon me, but have you seen my mother?” she turned to ask the maid.
The girl nearly fell over herself in her haste to straighten her skirts and bob a curtsy. “Yes, miss. Mrs. Crenshaw is taking breakfast in the garden parlor with Miss Violet, miss.” She curtsied again at the end for emphasis.
The Crenshaws tended to run a more casual household than their English counterparts, or so August had been led to assume when the maids and footmen had all shown extreme reverence to the family the first several days after they took up residence in the townhome off Grosvenor Square. The reverence could have been because August had insisted the family pay higher wages to compensate for the positions being of a temporary nature. After a few gentle dissuasions, the servants had treated them with slightly less formality, and everything had settled to rights. Strange that the overly abundant display of deference had returned. August stared a moment at the top of the maid’s lowered head before muttering, “Thank you.”
