Four Nights With the Duke Page 5

  ~ Count Frederic—side of the ballroom—longs for her hand.

  ~ Frederic and Flora dance once, twice. Ballroom sighs at sight of his celestial beauty, dark locks next to yellow, & etc.

  ~ Yet even in the scene of mirthful festivity, Flora aware of an unaccountable feeling of Apprehension . . .

  Vander had ignored the question of marriage all day, working in his stables from five in the morning to evening. A stallion that he’d bought from Africa, chosen due to his bloodlines, had been delivered that morning. The young horse, Jafeer, had turned out to be both ferocious and completely unnerved by his new residence, and Vander had spent most of the afternoon trying to settle him.

  His stable master was convinced that a good night’s sleep would make all the difference to Jafeer’s temperament. Vander wasn’t quite as certain. There was a wild tone to the Arabian’s whinny that suggested true distress.

  Marvelous. He’d had the stallion shipped all the way to England . . . and now it was showing every sign of being difficult, if not impossible, to train.

  He walked into his study and caught sight of an untouched letter: Mia’s supposed requirements for marriage. Rage ran up his spine like a flame. The woman actually thought that she could dictate the terms of their marriage?

  She was blackmailing him into making her a duchess, and on top of that, insisting on her own terms as well? The hell with that. A man is the master of his wife. Once Mia and he married, he would be in control.

  She might be able to buy his title, but nothing else. With a sudden jerky movement, he crumpled the sheet and hurled it into the fire. It fell against the logs and within seconds was consumed by flames.

  He had never deluded himself about his intimidating size and rough demeanor. He knew he was the least sophisticated duke in the land. But Mia hadn’t shown any fear in response to his explosion of anger, though grown men had trembled in his presence.

  Her infatuation was that powerful.

  She must have made up her mind as a girl, biding her time until precisely a year after the death of his mother. He balled his fist and tapped it against the mantelpiece, thinking. There was something deeply unsettling about the idea that she wanted him so much, even after all this time, that she was willing to blackmail him.

  By all rights, he should feel revolted at the idea of bedding her. But fool that he was, despite his outrage, he still liked her voluptuous figure.

  He dropped his hand and turned away, walking back to his desk. She would probably attempt to use his desire to tame him. Every fiber of his being rejected that notion.

  It might be time to let the dukedom go.

  But . . . he was the duke. It was everything he was, and everything he had. The bones of the house were his. The portraits of his ancestors which lined the walls, the crypt full of those ancestors’ bones . . . the coffin where his mother was interred, his father’s beside her, an ironic pairing, under the circumstances.

  No.

  He couldn’t let all that history fall into a stranger’s hands over something as trivial as marriage. He wanted to keep the title for his own children, even if those children came from Mia Carrington’s womb.

  Something barbaric stirred in him. Her curves, plump mouth, golden hair: it would all be his. He hardened even more at the thought.

  Revulsion followed that wave of lust. She was incredibly short-sighted. What if he locked her in the garret? Starved her? Killed her? He had the feeling that a jury of his noble peers would refuse to convict him of murder, if it came to trial and the sordid facts of their marriage emerged.

  Not that he would actually harm her; thoughts were one thing, actions entirely another. But she could damn well accept his terms for this marriage, and the hell with whatever demands she’d made on that sheet he’d consigned to the fire.

  He dropped into his chair, took up a sheet of engraved stationery, scrawled a letter, and signed it with his full name.

  Miss Carrington:

  You will find below the parameters of this marriage. Without your express consent to my terms, I will not marry you and the dukedom can go to hell.

  Evander Septimus Brody

  4th Duke of Pindar

  Viscount Brody

  Baron Drummond

  He folded it, took out the sealing wax he never used, and busied himself with lighting a candle, melting the wax, and all the rest of the rigmarole involved in stamping the letter with the ducal seal in dark crimson.

  A grim smile curled the edges of his mouth as he rang the bell.

  When a footman arrived, he handed over the letter. “Send that to the Carrington estate in the morning. Inform Miss Carrington that the groom will wait for her reply.”

  Chapter Six

  From Miss Emilia Carrington to William Bucknell, Esq.

  Mssrs. Brandy, Bucknell & Bendal, Publishers

  September 6, 1800

  Dear Mr. Bucknell,

  I assure you that I am writing as quickly as I possibly can, given the fact that I am scarcely out of my blacks. And I was jilted

  I have been making excellent progress on An Angel’s Form and a Devil’s Heart and indeed, I have nearly fifty one hundred pages written.

  I have made some salutary adjustments to the plot, and I believe this will be a most original and fresh novel. My heroine, Flora, is jilted at the altar by the hero, much to her consternation. However, this indignity will not go unrevenged. unavenged.

  She also nearly dies of hunger, and barely escapes the evil Lord Plum with her virtue intact, until she is finally reunited with Count Frederic, who saves her from a runaway horse.

  I believe my readers will find the plot quite enjoyable.

  With all respect,

  Miss Carrington

  P.S. Please send me all of Miss Julia Quiplet’s novels by return post. I very much enjoyed reading the book you sent. For many reasons, it has been a vexing few days, but I was much comforted by the novel. In fact, I was unable to sleep last night until I turned the last page of The Lost Duke of Windhower.

  Carrington House,

  Estate of Master Charles Wallace Carrington

  Residence of Miss Emilia Carrington

  (And, for that matter, Miss Lucibella Delicosa)

  Mia had been at her desk since five that morning, agonizing over her impossibly late manuscript, which translated to trying—with little to show for it—to write the first chapter. If she and Charlie had to escape to Bavaria, they would need her writing income.

  She had only reached the stage of writing notes about the plot and trying out scraps of dialogue, which she was capable of doing for weeks before actually sitting down to write a novel.

  Perhaps Flora could knock down the devilish scoundrel, Count Frederic, with her mother’s prayer book (a nice touch), after which he would bleat pitifully, “But I love you . . .”

  Flora would snap back, “I don’t know why you’re crying, Count. I lost closer friends than you when I was deloused!”

  Mia had read that insult somewhere.

  Alas, there was no point in even considering a heroine who had been inflicted with lice. A Lucibella heroine would never find herself infested by vermin. Her heroines were always being chased into ravines or threatened with ravishment. But they knew nothing of lice, menstruation, or even rotten teeth. Boils. Smallpox. Syphilis.

  A Lucibella heroine would faint or possibly even die if she was diagnosed with a disfiguring infection.

  What’s more, every gentleman who met a Lucibella heroine instinctively genuflected. It hardly needed to be said that no man would ever whip open his breeches and display his private parts.

  That just brought Mia around to thinking about Vander again, though to be honest, she hadn’t stopped thinking of him.

  She had a fair understanding of the mechanics of the marital act. But that—that part of a man was much larger and more vital than she had imagined.

  Because she had imagined it. Roughly the size of a quill, she had thought. Or a pencil.


  She had been badly mistaken, clearly.

  Unless it was just Vander who was outsized.

  After all, everything about him seemed bigger than other men. His chest was wider, his shoulders were wider. It stood to reason that the other parts of him were congruous.

  He probably had a huge big toe. Enormous kneecaps.

  Humiliation was warring with . . . with mortification. She swallowed hard. It was one thing to deduce that most men’s dismissive attitudes meant that they found her unattractive. But it was another to have heard it all confirmed. Vander found her fat and short and embarrassing. And tarred her with her father’s brush, obviously.

  Mia had been horrified when she first realized Lord Carrington’s adulterous activities . . . but at the heart she was a romantic. Her father had loved the duchess so much that he never re-married. Whenever the duke was released from the asylum and returned to Rutherford Park, her father would worry himself ill.

  He would walk around and around his library, muttering to himself. In a week or two, something would happen at the duchy—Mia was never quite certain what—and a note would arrive, summoning Lord Carrington.

  The duke would be locked up again; her father would resume his place at the duchess’ side. Mia had learned from her father that love was more important than wedding vows. Love was everything.

  Not that any of her characters were adulterous, because Mia had a clear understanding of her readers’ requirements. At the mere mention of adultery, Flora would have fainted. “Orgy” would have made her squeak and run from the room, though Mia couldn’t stop finding new and interesting uses for it—an orgy of crows, for example, or an orgy of sweets.

  An orgy of Vander.

  The memory of Vander caressing himself made her heart quicken again. Lucibella heroes weren’t lustful. They were principled and sincere in their declarations of love, without a grain of lust. What’s more, they maintained calm even in the face of Mortal Peril.

  Vander was not calm. He burned with passion and fury. When he lost his temper, it was as if a lion were raging around the room.

  Perhaps the reason she was having trouble with this novel was that her hero felt so ineffectual and insipid by comparison to Vander.

  Mia gave herself a mental shake. It was time to stop shilly-shallying and determine the broad outlines of the plot. After writing six novels, she knew that once she had the plot, she could write the book fairly quickly.

  She picked up her quill again: Frederic plans to humiliate Flora at the altar, but Flora detects his nefarious plan. Finally understanding where his true emotions lie (but too late), he abases himself at Flora’s feet.

  The count waited on his knees, his elegant head bent, his eyes searching the dust for the answer he sought.

  But unfortunately for the arrogant, supercilious nobleman, Flora saw through the Trappings of Title, and mere Circumstances of Birth. The count was not a good man.

  Mr. Wolfington was a far, far better man, though he wasn’t a peer.

  Life in a hovel with him would be preferable to life in a palazzo with the despicable count.

  Mia paused. Her readers would be surprised by this sentiment, since Lucibella’s previous novels had concluded with heroines in command of many servants, not to mention diamond necklaces. In fact, she had a strong feeling that many of her readers would not share Flora’s ideas about the pleasures of life in a hovel.

  She shrugged. The hero could dig up the floor of his hut and find a bag of gold.

  The door opened. “Yes?” Her eyes fell to the silver salver in her butler’s hand. On it lay a letter: rich creamy paper folded and sealed with red wax as if it had been sent by the Emperor Charlemagne.

  Her estimation of Vander’s character was diminishing by the hour. Not that she was in a position to cast stones. But he appeared to have grown into someone with an overweening sense of his own consequence.

  Commonsense prodded her. What had she expected?

  He was a duke, for goodness’ sake. People probably fawned over him day and night.

  Thank goodness, Vander had no idea that he was marrying someone with an undignified alter ego, to wit, Lucibella. He’d probably give up his dukedom rather than endure the shame. Not only was he marrying a dumpy charity case, but one who had turned her talent for maudlin poetry into a career fashioning disreputable fiction.

  She took the letter and broke the seals. So he’d allow his dukedom to “go to hell” if she didn’t agree with his demands? It didn’t matter what his terms were; she had no choice but accept them. What would be, would be.

  She read the lines below his signature twice and, against all odds, started laughing. She was marrying a madman, so arrogant that he truly believed she was desperately in love with him and would implore him to bed her.

  And he was going to ration her. He would give her four nights.

  Implore him?

  Her smile disappeared. Vander could wait until all of Dante’s hellish circles froze over before she’d beg for a night from him.

  The duke was extraordinarily handsome, no doubt about that, but he was also the most conceited man she’d ever met. By far. She thought back to the moment when he’d unbuttoned his breeches. Was she supposed to be overcome by his magnificence and quiver with fright?

  Presumably, she wasn’t supposed to be gripped by curiosity. (Which she was, shameful and unladylike though it was.)

  Obviously, Vander had thought that she would size him up and flee in the other direction. Her previous knowledge of the male anatomy had been limited to a few marble statues and whatever she could imagine lay behind a largish fig leaf.

  The size of those leaves did suggest he had a point about his grandeur.

  Still, women must have flattered him dreadfully, if he believed one glimpse would terrify her.

  Whatever else one might conclude about Vander’s letter, it was clear that he had ignored her letter, in which she had explained the short span of their marriage. Fine. She merely had to get him to the altar, and Mr. Plummer could take over thereafter.

  She kept her answer brief.

  I agree to your terms for our marriage; to wit, that you and I will be intimate only in the event that I beg you for that privilege, and on no account more than four nights in a year.

  The very idea of intimacy made her fingers shake, leaving a blot after her signature. Vander . . . naked. In bed.

  She would leave Rutherford Park directly after the wedding, making the question irrelevant. The marriage could not be consummated, as that would threaten its annulment, though not, according to Mr. Plummer, Vander’s guardianship of Charlie.

  This marriage wasn’t about pleasure.

  Not four nights . . . not any nights.

  She sealed the letter and sent it back with Vander’s waiting groom. Then she wrote two more sentences and crossed them out, until she decided that what she ought to do was sit down and reread Miss Julia Quiplet’s novel. That would convince her that there were decent gentlemen in the world.

  But first she should see how Charlie was doing. She got up and headed for the nursery. Charlie was far more important than all trivialities such as dukes. Marriage. Wedding nights.

  Her nephew was sitting at the small desk in the corner of the nursery. His eyes brightened the moment she entered. “Aunt Mia! Would you like to read my essay on Aristophanes?”

  “Certainly,” she said, smiling at him. In the year since her brother had died, Sir Richard had dismissed Charlie’s tutor, after which she convinced the vicar to take over her nephew’s education.

  Her brother John would have been appalled. He had been disappointed by his only son’s condition, but he never shirked on his son’s instruction, understanding that Charles Wallace would manage the Carrington estate someday.

  Charlie swung across the room on his pipestem legs, stopping next to the sofa and leaning on his crutch. “What’s the matter?”

  She reached out, pulled him onto her lap, and hugged him. Soon he would be nine years ol
d. Then ten, then twenty . . .

  If she had to marry the devil himself to keep this child happy and secure, she would do it. John’s will required that she be married; luckily it did not specify how long.

  “Nothing’s the matter!” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’m fine. In fact, I want you to be the first to know that I just accepted a proposal of marriage from a duke.” She pushed from her mind the fact that she was the one doing the proposing. Charlie didn’t need to know that. He had far too much worry in his young life as it was. “Just think, darling, I shall be a duchess. That’s much better than marrying Mr. Reeve.”

  “No!” Charlie scowled. “Mr. Reeve will come back; I know he’ll come back! He promised to make me another crutch. He wouldn’t leave without doing that. He promised.”

  Mia sighed. Charlie refused to accept that she had been left at the altar. “Mr. Reeve left a note saying he meant to travel to India, remember?”

  Her former fiancé, Edward, hadn’t bothered to save her the humiliation of waiting for him in church, for which she would never forgive him. Why couldn’t he have made up his mind to flee the night before the wedding?

  That would have been humiliating, but bearable. She would have grieved in private. As it was, the letter was delivered to Sir Richard, who had read it aloud as she was waiting in the vestibule of St. Ninian’s.

  Edward hadn’t even informed his parents of his decision to flee the country; the Earl of Gryffyn and his wife had been in the sanctuary awaiting the ceremony. When she’d seen them later that morning, they’d looked as shocked and distraught as she felt.