Confessions of a Duchess

“Of course you had,” Laura said. He saw a faint bitter smile touch her lips. “Men always do.”

Well, no doubt she knew the truth of that with her experience. Dexter tried not to care. He wrenched open the garden gate and marched up the path.

The grounds at The Old Palace were empty and overgrown. The house seemed shuttered and still. Dexter looked around. “Where are your servants?”

Laura seemed discomfited. “I do not have a large staff. They are probably busy about the house somewhere and my daughter is out in the village with her nursery maid, so no one will be about.”

Dexter had yet to meet a duchess who had less than a regiment of servants. They seemed to think that being waited upon hand and foot was their inalienable right. But perhaps Charles Cole had left Laura without a feather to fly and no means to support her young daughter. The new duke held the title now and there was apparently no love lost between Henry Cole and his cousin’s widow, so he would not be financing her, either. At any rate, no one answered the door to Dexter’s increasingly forthright knocking.

“Oh, put me down!” Laura said, clearly losing patience and slipping from his arms before Dexter could stop her. “I can open a door for myself and I am chilled to the bone, dripping here.” She looked at him. “You are very damp, as well, Mr. Anstruther. Do you require a change of clothing? I do believe there are some old clothes of my grandfather’s somewhere about the place should you need them.”

“Thank you, your grace,” Dexter said, with a slight bow, “but I shall collect my fishing gear and walk back to the inn as I am.”

Laura looked at the pool of water that was dripping steadily from his shirt onto the slate of the path. “Surely that will cause conjecture if anyone sees you?”

“Not as much as the sight of me walking back to the Morris Clown Inn dressed in your grandfather’s Georgian fashions, I imagine,” Dexter said.

“My grandfather was quite the beau,” Laura said. “You might find that you start a new style. Not that that is likely to appeal to you, I suppose, Mr. Anstruther. Fashion is far too shallow an interest for one of your serious nature, is it not? Or have you changed in that respect, as well?”

Dexter was almost drawn into replying to that. He admitted ruefully to himself that he was finding it hard to resist Laura’s provocation. She had a way of getting under his skin unmatched by anyone else he had ever met.

She looked exquisite, he thought, standing there in damp disarray. Others overlooked Laura because her beauty was not of the obvious variety that society admired. Her appeal for him lay in the fine, direct gaze of those hazel eyes and the rich creaminess of a skin that was sprinkled with endearing freckles. It was in the soft curl of that honey-chestnut-colored hair and the upward turn of her lips, as though she was always on the edge of a smile. The fact that she was not in the first flush of youth and had a tracery of fine lines about her eyes only enhanced her beauty for him because it added character…Dexter caught himself up before he got too carried away. There was no point in standing here catching a chill whilst he rhapsodized about Laura’s outward beauty. It was not a fair guide to the woman beneath, whom he had discovered was actually a calculating and manipulative whore.

“On second thoughts, I will accept your offer of a change of clothing, thank you,” he said, following her into the stone flagged hallway of The Old Palace. “The breeze is chilly today and there is no sense in taking cold. One must be practical.”

“Of course,” Laura said. “I know that you pride yourself on your practicality, Mr. Anstruther.”

The house was silent, the floors muffled in ancient rugs, the walls smothered in equally dark and old tapestries on which were depicted a variety of bloodthirsty war and hunting scenes. A huge suit of medieval armor dominated one corner. From the wall above the fireplace glared a bad-tempered stag’s head whilst a moth-eaten stuffed fox prowled the stone windowsill. There was a child’s rocking horse in one corner and a rather beautiful porcelain-faced doll sitting in a small chair.

“I see that your grandfather had martial tastes as well as sartorial ones,” Dexter said, looking at the shields hanging rather precariously from the walls.

Laura shook her head. “No, that was my grandmother. She rode to hounds every day and could shoot a longbow. She said that one of them had to think about more than the cut of their clothes.” She pointed to two portraits hanging on the far wall. “There they are.”

The late Lord Asthall looked every inch the eighteenth-century dandy, Dexter thought. He had hazel eyes and black hair, a pronounced nose and strong chin, and his expression was arrogant and amoral. His features were also vaguely familiar. Dexter’s paternal family had come from Yorkshire several generations back and there had been a rumor in the family that there was bastard Asthall blood in the line somewhere. Certainly Dexter’s brother Roly and his father’s so-called “ward” Caro had the same coloring. Dexter reflected ruefully that that was probably where his father had got his libertine tendencies from, as well. Lord Asthall looked a complete cad. Still, Lady Asthall was, quite frankly, a fearsome Amazon of a woman in her archery dress, so perhaps they had been well matched.

“Were they happy together?” he asked.

“I do not believe so. My grandfather was a terrible rake,” Laura said, confirming Dexter’s suspicions. “I am surprised that Grandmama did not shoot him with her bow and arrow.”

“And does your daughter inherit the same sporting prowess as her great-grandmother?” Dexter asked.

Laura paused. There was a rather odd silence. Looking at her, Dexter thought she looked pinched and cold, as though he were trespassing on a subject she did not want to discuss.

“Hattie is still very young.” Laura spoke stiffly. “She can sit a small pony if I walk beside her and she loves her rocking horse, so perhaps one day she will be a rider.”

There was another silence. Dexter could hear the loud hum of a bumblebee trapped against the windowpane and the rush of the river over the weir. He felt a little disquieted to think of Laura rattling around in this ancient place all on her own with her small daughter, but then there did not seem much of value to steal here. It seemed that his speculation about Charles Cole leaving Laura with no money had been close to the mark. She was penniless, alone and unprotected. He was disturbed at how uneasy the thought made him.

The door at the end of the dark corridor opened and a butler shuffled forward into the patch of sunlight that was making patterns through the diamond windowpanes.

“Your grace! I did not hear the bell.”

Dexter was shocked to recognize Carrington, the butler from Cole Court. Four years ago the man had been vigorous and healthy. Now he looked old and broken. He stooped. His hands shook and his voice was a whisper. Dexter doubted that he could hold a tray, let alone announce visitors.

“It does not matter, Carrington,” Laura spoke softly. “Please could you show Mr. Anstruther down to the warming room whilst I find some dry clothing for him? We have had a small mishap.”

The butler’s gaze darted from one to the other like a furtive rabbit. “An accident? Oh, madam—”

“There is nothing to cause distress,” Laura interrupted firmly. “It was no more than a fall in the river. If you would be so good…”

The butler nodded and drew himself up with a sad echo of his former authority. “This way, sir, if you please.”

Chapter Three

DEXTER FOLLOWED the tottering butler down the old stone stair. On more than one occasion he put out a hand to steady the man when it appeared he was about to tumble down the steps to the bottom. He could not believe the change in Carrington and was tempted to ask him what had happened except that the butler seemed confused and did not appear to recognize him at all. He showed Dexter into the little warming room, where a fire burned hot in the grate and the air was scented with lavender from the drying sheets, and promptly disappeared.

Dexter stripped off his sodden shirt with some relief, for little trickles of water were still running down his chest and they felt icy cold. His boots were also full of water and it was one of the most unpleasant things he had ever experienced. He hoped that they were not ruined. They were almost new and he could not afford to buy another pair. He had invested in several new items of clothing to add credence to his role as a fortune hunter since he did not think he could turn up to pay court to an heiress looking like the beggar he was. Lord Liverpool gave such expenses short shrift, so now his wallet was empty.

He heard a knock and a step in the doorway and turned to find Laura there, her arms full of clothes. She was staring at his naked torso and a deep pink color stained her cheeks. There was shock in her eyes. The clothes slipped from her hands and she made a grab for them even whilst her gaze was still riveted on him.

“I’ve brought…Um…Did you…”

Dexter was surprised that she was acting like a startled virgin when she was an experienced woman, a widow with a child. Surely there was no need for any pretense between them after all that had happened? And surely she did not possess an ounce of modesty? In bed with him four years previously she had been open and generous, warm and wanton. Her sweet, seductive shamelessness had been one of the reasons that he had fallen so disastrously in love with her. It had seemed so honest and unguarded at the time.

But she had put him right quickly enough on that score. She had no use for him and his devotion, so she had said. And when she had had him in her bed once it seemed that she had no further use for him in that respect, either.

“It would be best for you to leave now,” she had said in the morning, with a cool, aristocratic disdain that had made him feel utterly insignificant. “I would not wish the servants to find you here…”

Yet now it seemed that she had forgotten her indifference to him, since she was staring like a woman who had never seen a half-naked man before and looking flustered and more than a little intrigued. Her glance stirred something sensual in Dexter, reviving the fire he had only just managed to damp down.

Somewhere at the back of his mind a voice was cautioning him that to take this any further would be dangerous and irresponsible. He ignored it. He wanted to know if what he had experienced before with Laura had been no more than vivid imagining. He needed to know. Once he had exorcised the power she had over him, once he had proved that there was nothing special about Laura at all, he would be free of the past. He was no longer an inexperienced youth. He was at no risk of falling in love with Laura Cole all over again.

Very deliberately he bent down and eased off his boots. When he straightened up Laura was still staring. With calculated intent, he started to unfasten his trousers.

“Did you want me to take these off, as well?” His voice had a rough edge to it now.

Laura’s eyes met his and there was a confused and heated expression in them that made the lust slam through him, tightening its grip on him even as he cautioned himself against it.

“Stop! No!” Laura seemed to wake from a trance. She thrust the pile of clothes down on the table and glared at him. “What are you doing?”

“I am removing my wet clothes,” Dexter said. He allowed his gaze to drift over her appraisingly. “You should do the same, your grace. You look—” his voice dropped “—most disheveled.”

He saw Laura swallow hard. Her hazel eyes darkened further and the unconscious desire in them sent another jolt of lust through him. The warmth of the room, the intimacy of the small space, the heady scent of lavender and his seminakedness were a powerful blend. Dexter took a step toward her.

He had not intended this when first they had met. He had certainly not meant to provoke Laura or tease her or make love to her. Such a course of action was completely irrational. But she was standing there with her hair tumbled about her shoulders and the damned gown still clinging to every curve and he wanted her with all the raw longing he had known four years before. And he wanted to prove that he could master that longing and take one kiss and that it would mean absolutely nothing.

He took another step toward Laura. She took a step back so that she was trapped between his body and the warming room door. She was clutching one of the shirts to her breast now like armor.

“Mr. Anstruther,” Laura said, her voice a thread of sound, “this is most improper.”