The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke Read online

  “It’s only for two days,” Emma murmured. “Good heavens, if I can tame the lionesses I should be more than able to take care of one wounded gentleman.”

  Adrian pretended to be asleep the three times Heath Boscastle crept into the bedchamber to check on him. He suspected that his light snores did not deceive Heath for a moment, but he had a splitting pain in his skull and was in no temper for conversation.

  He was almost asleep when Heath’s wife Julia tiptoed in with an older maidservant to place a fresh poultice on his scalp. And after that, with the warm herbal unguent dripping down his neck, he could not sleep at all. Disgruntled, he flung off the covers, found flint and tinder to light a candle, and noticed the leather-bound lady’s journal on the chest of drawers opposite the bed.

  “Well, well,” he muttered. “All I need is a lacy nightcap and pair of dentures and I could pass as my own grandmother.”

  He opened the book, yawning, and settled back into bed to read. He could have told the old saw-bones Scot that it would take an entire bottle of laudanum to knock out a man of Adrian’s size. Not that he’d needed a sedative, anyway. There was nothing wrong with his head but a deep bruise. He’d suffered worse.

  He started to read. It was a handwritten journal penned in tidy, feminine script, the subject being—

  He blinked. The words jumped about the page before he could see them properly. Ah.

  Winter 1815

  The gypsy fortune-teller at the ball tonight predicted I would meet my true love within the year. Of course, she wasn’t a genuine Romany. It was only Miranda Forester dressed in disguise again, and I doubt she could predict my next dance, let alone whom I shall love.

  But I predict that it is dear Emma who shall be wed ere the year’s end—I have seen the way she dotes on Grayson’s baby and remember how once she dreamed of her own children—

  The dressing room door that led to the bedchamber opened. By damn, if it was Heath acting mother hen again, and he caught Adrian reading a young girl’s love secrets, he would never hear the end of it. He leapt up from the bed, sending the rosette-embroidered coverlet flying in the air.

  With only a moment to spare he vaulted over a footstool and wedged the journal between the other books piled upon the chest of drawers. Then, schooling his face into an expression of startled innocence, he faced the figure who hesitated on the threshold behind him. For an instant neither said a word. He merely savored the unfamiliar thrill that chased down his spine.

  It was her. At last. He gazed into her eyes, waiting in anticipation. His little caretaker, in a high-buttoned blue-gray dressing gown, but with her hair cascading about her shoulders in an apricot gold cloud like a heavenly halo.

  Or was it two haloes? he wondered. Suddenly it appeared that his angel of mercy had sprouted another head. Another face. Yet even though his vision was blurred, there was no mistaking the concerned frown on her fine-boned face.

  Nor the warm familiarity of her voice, the cultured notes penetrating into the deepest recesses of his pounding skull. “Lord Wolverton, what folly is this?” she asked in exasperation. “What were you doing? You may not walk about in your condition.”

  “I was”—he glanced guiltily at the journal that protruded from the stack of ill-heaped books where he’d stuck it—“searching for the chamberpot.”

  “We certainly do not keep it upon the bureau.” She marched into the room, her finger pointing at the four-poster. “Get back into bed so that I may summon a footman to assist you in your private needs.”

  Well, that was an embarrassment. “I can help myself,” he said, then swayed forward several feet, whereby he was forced to grab the bedpost to steady himself.

  “You most assuredly cannot.” She hurried to his side, offering her shoulder for support. “You’re flapping about like a wounded butterfly.”

  “A butterfly?” he asked, snorting.

  “And with a candle lit,” she scolded him. “In your condition. Do you wish to set the house on fire?”

  She guided him to the side of the bed, a humiliation he endured only because it gave him another chance to be closer to her. He did, however, refuse to sit at her urging. He was a fully grown man, not a bloody butterfly. He had not personally answered to anyone in years. He had no intention of allowing this bit of silk and satin, even if she was a Boscastle, to give him orders.

  “I don’t want to get into bed again.”

  “Get into that bed,” she said.

  “I shall do so only when and if I please.”

  Emma steeled her spine. She knew what he was about. Charming when he chose, belligerent when he didn’t get his own way. To think he would represent the aristocracy as a peer of the realm, for no matter what the circumstances of his return, he was by law a duke’s firstborn and would inherit.

  “Physical and emotional strain will not heal your head wound,” she said briskly. “Get under those covers right now.”

  He stood his ground, smiling at her in challenge. The woman thought to master him? “Did you hear what I just said?” he asked her.

  “It is difficult not to when you are growling in my face,” she replied evenly.

  He reclined suddenly on the bed. Not because this deceptively demure-looking gentlewoman so ordered him, but because he was overcome by an unexpected wave of dizziness.

  “Growling?” He frowned darkly at her. “I’m barely talking above a whisper. If I really wanted to growl, I could bring down the walls.”

  “I have no doubt of that.” She snapped the coverlet over his shoulders, apparently not intimidated by his assertion. “But what would you prove by such an ill-mannered display? You’d only end up making your head ache all the more. It’s not me you’ll punish but yourself.”

  He wasn’t sure how it happened, but suddenly he found himself tucked back into bed, with Emma standing at his side, looking uncharitably satisfied and all the more irresistible for what she’d accomplished. The most puzzling, if not humiliating, part of the situation was that he half enjoyed how she fussed over him. It wasn’t the usual attention he drew from a woman, but it pleased him, nonetheless. Naturally, it also led his mind to consider what other pleasures she might offer to console him.

  “Why do you and your brother insist on waking me up every hour?” he asked, studying her closely.

  “The physician instructed us to keep watch over you.”

  “Why?” he asked in a surly voice, curious to see whether he could unnerve her. The few ladies he’d encountered in London who weren’t afraid to associate with him seemed intrigued by his past, not to mention his inheritance.

  Emma was a more difficult one to decipher. “We’re checking you for confusion,” she replied. “Changes in temperament and so on.”

  He grunted. “Really. And how the devil would you know, may I ask?”

  She plumped the pillows up behind his shoulders. He’d be spoon-fed next and taken out in a chair to the garden. “How would I know what?”

  “Whether my temperament has changed or not.” He burrowed his shoulders deeper into the pillows, forcing her to work harder to arrange them. He didn’t fool her, either. She gave him a quick, cross look before she leaned against his chest to finish. He drew a breath and felt his damned cock growing hard at her nearness. He’d not had sex with a woman, let alone found one attractive, for so long, he’d begun to wonder if something was wrong with him. Emma Boscastle, bless her, quite pleasantly disabused him of that disturbing concern.

  She forced her voice into a patient tone even though she was clenching her teeth. “For one thing, you seemed quite reasonable today before your foolhardy act of bravery. I expect you’re regretting the impulse now.”

  “On the contrary. I only wish I’d hit the other man before he got away.”

  “You shouldn’t work yourself into a state.”

  “I shall work myself into whatever state I feel like, and you’re not going to stop me.”

  Her pretty mouth firmed. “The physician said you would be
restrained if you did not rest.”

  “It would take more than that bearded bag of oats to keep me down.”

  “I do have brothers,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  That gave him pause.

  But not for long. He was not a man to dwell upon his obstacles, only their overcoming.

  “Have you ever restrained a man before?” he asked, dubiously eyeing her slight figure.

  “Yes. Those brothers I just mentioned.”

  “Recently?”

  “Don’t be silly. They are all grown men, even if they don’t always act it.” Her gaze met his. He glimpsed a spirit quite ruthless indeed beneath her ladylike appearance. “Your famly is still in England?” she asked unexpectedly.

  He thought of the journal entry he had just read. She had wanted a family of her own, it said. “Yes.”

  She waited. “Well, is there anyone I should contact about your condition?”

  “I have come closer to death’s door than a dozen men,” he said dryly. “The incident today does not merit alarm.”

  “Your family might not agree.”

  “I have a brother and sister in Berkshire,” he offered with a thin smile.

  She waited again, aware he had deliberately evaded a complete answer. What little gossip she knew of him was that he had been estranged some years ago from his father, the Duke of Scarfield, who had mistakenly believed Adrian to be the result of his young wife’s adulterous love affair. Now, apparently, the duke had admitted he misjudged his late wife and had asked his son to come home.

  Adrian’s return after an adventurous stint as an officer for the East India Company and other private irregular armies had been assumed by Society to be a sign of reconciliation.

  His manner hinted otherwise.

  “I think I should leave you to rest, my lord.”

  “No.” His voice was imperious, but his eyes darkened as if to reveal a vulnerability.

  She shook her head in bemusement. “You did get the sense knocked out of you today.”

  He stared at her.

  He had never before wanted to undress a woman more than he wanted to undress Emma Boscastle. Strip her naked from her graceful white neck to small feet. Give her a genuine reason to bemoan his lack of manners.

  “If you think I’m lying abed for two days, then you have another thing coming,” he added.

  “Gentlemen seldom suffer their indispositions with good humor.”

  “Do I have to suffer alone?” he asked in a low, sensual voice.

  “Would you like Devon and Drake to sleep beside you?” She stared back at him with a straight face. “I’m sure it could be arranged if you don’t wish to be alone.”

  His mouth curled into a beguiling grin. “I had another arrangement in mind. Kiss me before you go.”

  “For heaven’s sake!”

  “You’re tempted. I can tell.”

  She lowered her face to his. “And you’re delirious. At least that is the excuse I am using for your behavior.”

  He regardly her calmly. “I’m a very accepting man, Emma.”

  She drew her breath at his astounding confidence. “Then accept this—you are staying in bed. Alone.”

  “A shame.”

  Their gazes locked a silent battle of wills until Emma realized how absurd it was to allow him to unnerve her. He had been born with a duke’s arrogance whether, as rumor went, he accepted the responsibility of his title or not. Well, Emma was the eldest daughter of a no-less-arrogant marquess. If she could hold her own with the Boscastles, she would remain steady on her feet before their friend.

  One also had to make allowances for his head injury. Perhaps it would help to think of Lord Wolverton as one of her charges, a person of unrealized potential who needed but a rigorous polishing to shine.

  “Now,” she said, sternly but not unkindly, “I want you to stay under these covers and have a nice rest. Everything will look better in the morning.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  She sighed. “Then it won’t.”

  “What if I should require your assistance during the night?”

  “It seems quite unlikely. There is, however, a bell on the nightstand for you to summon help.”

  He reached up and caught her under the elbows. “Now what are you doing?” she asked indignantly.

  “Summoning your help.”

  He drew her down to lie beside him on the bed, testing the very limits of her patience. For a mortifying interval she found herself too overwhelmed by the unexpected intimacy of his hard, lithe-muscled body against hers to do anything but breathe. “What are you doing?” she asked again.

  His mouth pressed against her ear.

  “I thought you were going to fall,” he said in an undertone, shifting his steely frame to settle her onto the side of the bed.

  “Yes. Right from the pot into the fire.”

  His eyes glittered at her in the candlelight. From fever? From pain? Or from something that she’d do best not to identify?

  “Lord Wolverton,” she said with a sigh. “You are making this difficult.”

  “That man was wrong today,” he said quietly.

  Her heart beat in fierce reaction against her ribs. The emotion in his eyes disarmed her. With the exception of her brothers, the men she knew rarely revealed themselves with such candor. “I don’t know what you’re taking about. I don’t think I want to know. That blow on the head—”

  “You aren’t cold at all.” His knowing gaze flickered over her. “There are secret fires inside you, Emma.”

  She blushed at this foolishness. “Don’t be—”

  “—honest?” He leaned forward to capture her face in his hands. “Kiss me once and I shall prove it. Humor me if nothing else.”

  Chapter Four

  Secret fires, indeed. A kiss to humor him. That horrible insult today. It was more than enough for a day. Yet as his calloused thumbs sculpted her cheekbones, then traced the shape of her jaw, the flames to which he alluded rose steadily inside her. Her body burned. Her nipples contracted, and a pleasing vulnerability pervaded her limbs.

  “Warm,” he said, lowering his hard, unsmiling face to hers. “And warmer still. If you turned to ice when he tried to touch you, then the fault is in him, not you.”

  How did he know? How could he dare? She dropped her gaze, held her breath, and waited. Aching in shame, in surprise, in hungry anticipation. At any moment this would end. She would tear herself from this beautiful temptation. It surprised her how Sir William’s cutting remark had hurt her. She did not wish to be thought of as cold, and yet she knew it was often how she appeared.

  But secret fires—oh, why did women enjoy such flattery? Why did something in her respond to this man?

  “You look even more like an angel with your hair let down,” he mused. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you at the wedding.”

  She swallowed, her throat aching. “I look…untidy now.”

  “You made me—” He hesitated.

  “I made you what?” she whispered.

  “You made me laugh today,” he said quietly.

  “I did what?” she asked, her voice startled.

  “I meant that you put me at ease and I enjoyed your company.”

  His answer soothed as well as surprised her.

  “I was merely being polite.”

  “You stole three comfits from a wedding cake,” he reminded her, smiling.

  “Don’t you dare tell my family. I’m…I’m the good one.”

  “Are you?”

  His strong fingers sifted through the pale hair that framed her face. The gentle seduction of this simple act mesmerized her. She was not a woman easily, if ever, tempted by the sensual. She would allow this novel pleasure to continue for only a moment more. Yet how good his touch felt, how it lowered her guard.

  “There’s even fire in your hair,” he said, his breath warming her lips. “It’s like gold silk. And deep inside, I’ve always been attracted to fire. Are you a dangerous
woman, Emma Boscastle?” he asked lazily.

  “Lord Wolverton,” she said with a sigh. Wolf.

  “Stay with me awhile,” he said, his gaze holding hers.

  “I can’t. We both know that.”

  “Only a few moments more. I detest this inactivity. I detest being alone. That’s all I ask.”

  He reached behind him and snuffed out the candle between his thumb and forefinger. Emma breathed in the pleasingly mingled scent of his cologne and the tang of smoke that wafted toward the bed.

  Terrifying. Thrilling. The ordinary act of extinguishing a candle, performed as if he had done so a hundred times in a similar scenario. But so effective. Shadows engulfed them. She sensed him relax, his powerful muscles untensing. Felt his masculine hands close around her waist. Her breath hitched. Pure male. Mystery, strength, and temptation. He was afraid of being alone.

  The sudden darkness lowered inhibitions. How many times had Emma warned others to sidestep shadows, and the men who dwelled, beckoned therein? She hovered now, on the verge herself. And if her principles were being put to the test?

  “You were married,” he said quietly. His hand idly stroked her arm, his fingers possessive, knowing.

  His firm lips teased hers, captured her sigh. “Yes.”

  Slowly he brought his other hand up her side to the silken undercurve of her breast. She quivered, went still, prepared to resist. The hollow between her thighs began to throb. “How long has it been?” he whispered in a gentle voice.

  “Are you asking me—”

  “Yes.”

  She arched her neck, afraid her nerves would shatter. No one else in the world had ever asked, would have dared to ask a question that intimate of her. She did not understand why his curiosity was not offensive. It seemed natural. Again she blamed the dark of the night, his indisposition.

  “My husband died almost five years ago,” she answered against the warm hollow of his neck.

  His other arm tightened around her waist in a possessive male gesture that sent a shiver of longing through the depths of her body.

  “Five years,” he murmured. “And no one’s touched you since? How can that be?”