Not that duke, p.25
Not That Duke, page 25
“She would.” Silvester groaned and sprawled onto his back beside her, one arm falling above his head. “It’s not a question of vocabulary.”
Now that she was sitting up, her stomach overlapped in a way that would horrify her aunt. Not that it horrified Silvester, proven by the fact he wound his arm around her waist and hauled her against his hip.
She leaned over him and kissed his nose. “Then why don’t you understand me? I assure you that I strive for clarity.”
“‘Pirate me’?” Silvester said, not opening his eyes. “Who knows what you mean by that?”
“Mmmm,” Stella replied, dropping a kiss on his lips. “The pirate side of you illicitly buys gold.”
His eyes popped open. “Oh, God, I’m going to have to run my investment decisions by you, aren’t I?”
Stella hadn’t considered it before, but . . .
“Absolutely.”
He shut his eyes again. “Bloody hell.”
“I don’t have to be prissy, you know,” Stella said, tracing his temples with her fingers. “I can learn to walk on the wrong side of the law. I’ll be your partner in crime.”
“I told you, no law forbade my purchases.”
“On the wrong side of ethics, then,” she amended. “Why not? Perhaps we could rob the rich to give to the poor, like that old story.”
“I don’t rob people,” Silvester objected. “Are you always this chatty after an orgasm?”
“No,” Stella said brightly. “But I find that the orgasms I gave myself and those you gave me don’t deserve the same name.”
“Where did you get your dildo anyway?” Silvester said, his eyes opening again.
“The Pantheon Bazaar,” Stella said.
“I don’t suppose you were shopping with your aunt at the time.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I asked a shopkeeper for a dildo. That was somewhat embarrassing, but he was most helpful.”
“Enterprising,” Silvester murmured.
“It was practical, honestly. There was pleasure to be had, it seemed, and I could not count on receiving it from a husband, if I ever had one. Just look at my aunt and uncle. They prefer not to live in the same county, let alone share a bedchamber.”
“That will never be your fate.”
“It could have been,” Stella pointed out. “I’ve been courted by loads of men this Season who would describe me as freckled and fat.”
His eyes snapped open. “Who?”
“No one,” she said hastily—and untruthfully, since she’d overheard just that unkind phrase from a disgruntled suitor.
The pirate was in full ascendance, and she didn’t want to visit her new husband behind bars. “My point was that back in the 1600s, Thomas Nashe said that a woman couldn’t count on a man for her pleasure, and I believed him. As soon as we moved to London for the Season, I visited the Pantheon. It only took one discreet question before I was directed to the right shop.”
“Excellent,” Silvester murmured, closing his eyes again. “I will do my best to satisfy you, just so you know. But if I happen to be away from home, I’m happy to know that you will be satisfied in my absence.”
Stella was rather surprised to see that his tool had lengthened and thickened again. She slid down to lie beside him and then allowed Silvester to pull her partly on top of him.
“I like the parts of your body that society dislikes,” she told him, satisfaction leaking into her voice. “Your nose.” She kissed it. “Your ungentlemanly chest.” She wiggled downward and kissed it. “Arm muscles.”
“Biceps,” he murmured.
He sounded uncaring, but she knew him. To him, this mattered, more than the easy deceptive charm he wore like armor. His muscles were her freckles.
“I like these parts best,” she whispered, running her fingers over his waist, lean hips, powerful cock that rose to her hand. “So soon?” she asked huskily.
“Is your source of information the lamentable Thomas Nashe?” Silvester inquired, his eyes glinting at her under heavy lids. “The man was clearly not at his best.”
Stella tightened her hand and rolled her wrist experimentally. Silvester made a ragged sound in the back of his throat but didn’t move, letting her play. She pulled herself to a seated position, her bottom settling onto his legs, and enjoyed herself, tracing the iron-hard slabs that covered his chest, the way he trembled when she lightly scored her nails down his arms.
She returned again and again to his staff, as Thomas Nashe called it. Each time she touched him, encircled him, Silvester’s hips arched into the air as if he couldn’t control the tiny movement, even pinned down by her weight.
She loved it. “I am not as was Hercules the Stout,” she murmured, “That to the seventh journey could hold out.”
Silvester’s eyes glittered at her. “More Nashe? Seven journeys? Try me.”
Abruptly, Stella realized that she’d set the rules of a game, and Silvester had to win, but this kind of winning . . .
He beat Hercules, naturally enough.
Chapter Thirty
Stella’s maid didn’t arrive at The Swan until the morning, at which point Silvester reluctantly strolled into the adjoining bedchamber so his wife could have a bath.
But when he stopped hearing splashing noises, he walked back into the room, banished her maid, and carried Stella over to the bed, pulling the toweling from her body as he went.
“What are you doing?” Stella asked. “Shall I give Specs to my maid?”
Silvester glanced over his shoulder. “She’s crawling into my boot.”
He was flooded by need, a primitive, base lust. “You must be sore,” he said, kissing Stella’s throat. Her skin was the color of milk.
Stella ran her hands down his back. “No, I am not,” she whispered, arching up so she bumped against him.
He slid a hand between their bodies and sank his fingers into the slick heat between her legs.
“I thought about you during the bath,” his wife admitted, dragging him into another kiss.
Silvester sank into her slowly, instructing himself to let her body adjust. But his body moved without permission, responding to her heavy eyelids and the way she sucked in air.
He braced his elbows on either side of her, so they could keep kissing. Words kept tumbling out of his mouth, words he never thought he’d say to anyone, let alone to his wry, funny wife.
He wasn’t supposed to feel this way. Their marriage was . . .
It was about passion, physical passion.
Not muttering words that tumbled over on each other, “perfect,” “soft,” “perfect,” “mine.”
Ridiculous drivel that didn’t feel ridiculous, but necessary, as if the words were spilling from his heart, a thought so absurd that he recoiled and briefly came back to logic. Just long enough for pleasure to wash over him again, reducing him to an animal who only spoke in single words. They finished in slow silence, eyes clinging to each other.
Silvester left the bed, legs feeling oddly shaky. Specs strolled out of his boot and jumped in his place, giving him a glowering look.
After he dressed, the words that spilled from his mouth when he stamped into his boot, discovering that the leather was warmly wet, albeit rapidly cooling?
Blasphemous.
But then he saw his wife sitting on the bed, having pulled on a wrapper. She had her legs crossed, red hair tumbling over her shoulders. Specs was in her arms, cradled like a furry baby.
He dropped onto a chair. “That bloody cat peed in my boot.”
“What did you say?”
Stella looked up at him. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, a flush still high on her cheeks. He knew that between her legs, she was wet for him, wet from him, and the feeling that overpowered him didn’t allow for irritation.
“Specs,” he said. “Peed in my boot.”
“I suppose she was angry at being left behind.” Stella looked at the cat, who batted her nose with a paw. “You mustn’t pee in people’s boots, Specs. It’s like leaving a mouse on a pillow. Just not done, especially to such a high-and-mighty personage as the Duke of Huntington.”
Specs batted her nose again. Stella rubbed her lush lips over the forehead of the kitten, whose purring could be heard across the room.
If he knew how to purr, he’d be doing it, wouldn’t he?
Instead of purring, Silvester got another erection, which made him glad that he didn’t have a valet any longer.
A man didn’t care to lose control like this under a valet’s watchful eye.
Chapter Thirty-One
Once in the carriage, Stella fended off her husband’s inappropriate caresses, which meant she was looking out the window when the carriage bowled through a set of tall iron gates and set off down a hill, giving an excellent view of the ducal estate.
If Silvester’s townhouse was impressive, this was . . .
Not.
The word that came to mind was “ridiculous.” Also: “Absurd.”
The manor was an ill-designed, shabby pile of stone, one chimney tilting at an angle that suggested imminent collapse, the turret missing stones so that it resembled a mouth that had lost a few teeth, the lawns segmented by strange black lines.
“The Grange is . . . large,” Stella observed.
Silvester glanced out the window. “Ugly, isn’t it? All the parts are grafted together, more or less, though the roof leaks where the newer parts join the original castle. It was damaged by Cromwell, but rather than tear it down, the family just built on, everything from crenellations to lancet windows.”
Stella nodded.
“If you look closely, you’ll see a few gargoyles. There was a spire, but it snapped off in a storm and wiped out the priest’s house, which dated back to the 1200s. Luckily, my father believed too much religion is bad for the brain, so the house was unoccupied at the time.”
She could just make out the medieval castle in the center of the Grange. Successive dukes had slapped on new wings, and outbuildings sprouted haphazardly to the left and right.
Just as startling, there was a locomotive parked before the front door. “Does that machine include your mother’s chimney?” she asked.
Silvester didn’t bother to look. “All the locomotives have her chimneys. In fact, that is true across England. Hers is the chimney with a bend in it, at the front.”
“What does this particular locomotive do?”
“It runs around the property on cast-iron rails.”
“Like the Oystermouth Railway?”
“No, that is drawn by horses,” Silvester said. “Ours can take a few passengers around the estate. It is actually the first passenger railway drawn by a locomotive.”
Stella had seen drawings of locomotives in the London Times, but the machine was larger and fiercer than she had imagined. It had a round cylinder for a body and a chimney that curved from one end and jutted into the air, with three wheels per side and some rods sticking out here and there.
“Does it traverse the entire estate?”
Silvester nodded. “Huntington Grange is three hundred acres and, yes, it goes through most of it. We’ll go for a ride tomorrow.”
“I believe that Scotland will authorize a passenger railroad next year, possibly the year after,” Stella said. “That would be a better investment than ill-gotten gold.”
“My mother would like that,” Silvester said amiably.
“A tribute to her chimney.”
Her husband lounged opposite her, still all pirate. Since he had no valet, the clothing he’d changed into that morning was unremarkable. Unducal. Just a plain coat, breeches, boots that suited the challenging look in his eyes.
A gleaming, hungry challenge that suggested two bouts before breakfast had not been enough.
Stella’s heart ricocheted around her rib cage. “I don’t know how to be a duchess,” she blurted out. The carriage was slowing down.
“There’s not much to know,” Silvester said, that wicked smile curling one side of his mouth. “In the normal course of things, servants would line up outside the front door, ready to curtsy.”
“But you sent them all to London.”
“Hawtree, our country butler, was needed there, to replace the butler I fired. We do have a maid or two, enough to light fires in the morning. A few grooms who will act as footmen. The people who work in the buttery, the stables, and the ironworks are still here, but without a butler, they won’t assemble for the new duchess’s inspection.”
The coach pulled to a halt, a spray of gravel striking the undercarriage.
Silvester shoved open the door and jumped out, reaching back and lifting her out of the carriage. “Welcome to the Grange.” His smile was rueful.
Stella stood beside him, looking in silence from the deformed turret to the mismatched wings. Off to the side was a gothic ruin that was obviously only a few decades old because it looked as fake as her Egyptian crown.
Even the grass wasn’t velvety green, like that at the London townhouse. Where it wasn’t weedy, it had been cut through by the iron tracks laid for the railroad. A sharp odor of burning coal and smoky oil hung in the air.
Silvester caught up her hand. “I might as well warn you that my mother has no interest in domestic matters. One year we discovered the drawing room draperies were rotten when they crashed to the floor in a cloud of dust, feathers, and an ancient bird’s nest.”
Stella raised an eyebrow.
“Birds do tend to make their way in because the front doors are so large. We hadn’t realized that a pair nested there. Presumably they raised their children and the family flew out a window with no one noticing.”
Where was the housekeeper? Stella kept that thought to herself.
The front door was massive, clearly dating back hundreds of years. A tarnished brass knocker jutted from the left side. When Silvester hauled on it, the door swung open silently, letting out a puff of musty air.
“You know how archaeologists are rooting around in Egypt, opening up tombs?” Silvester asked.
“Looking for vulture crowns,” Stella confirmed.
“The Grange isn’t quite that old, but there are similarities.” He kicked a stone in place to hold the door open before leading her in.
The echoing entrance hall was more fitted to a castle than a country mansion. The blackened beams of the ceiling were at least twenty feet over their heads, the corners gray with cobwebs. Stella walked over to a stone fireplace, its cavernous opening taller than her head. “Is that moss?”
Silvester joined her, putting a hand on her waist and then most inappropriately letting it slip to her arse. “It appears to be,” he said, poking at the growth with his other hand. “When my sisters and I were growing up, the front doors were always open, even when it rained. One time a wild hog wandered in. The butler cornered it. Since the kitchen fireplace wasn’t large enough, we roasted it here. See, the spit remains.”
“It must have taken several trees to cook such an animal.”
“My parents never bothered to heat the entry, so that was probably the last time this fireplace was used. We invited everyone from the nearby squires to the vicar.”
“Did they all fit in the dining room?” Stella asked. “Did the hog fit on a platter?”
“Most of them didn’t come because they disapproved of my parents,” Silvester said, taking up her hand again. “As for the platter, it arrived in the dining room on a door, held high by four footmen. With a starched ruff around the hog’s neck and a Juliet cap on its head.”
“A Juliet cap?”
“Velvet ornamented with pearls and silver beads, with a tiara perched on top. My mother thought it was frightfully funny.”
“A tiara?”
“The vicar took offense, thinking that my mother was mocking the queen. Which, to do her credit, she wasn’t: my mother just thought the velvet cap and tiara were amusing on a hog’s head. The vicar never deigned to dine with us again. But the leftover hog made enough pork sausages to get the entire village through the winter.”
Stella nodded. She was starting to get a clear idea why Silvester had decided young to become so polished and urbane. “Did your parents mind the vicar’s disapproval?”
“Not at all. They were not particularly devout, and felt his indignity allowed them to stop attending church on Sundays. One of my sisters became convinced that the devil would attend our deathbeds, but luckily her certainty had waned before my father passed away. May I show you a few more rooms?”
Silvester shoved open doors here and there while barking labels. “Map room, Guardroom, Chapel, Garderobe, Solar.”
“Why is there so little furniture?” Stella asked. She was feeling slightly dizzy.
“Most of it was sold in lean times,” Silvester said. “The hog’s tiara is no longer ours, for example. My father’s passion for steam engines was a constant drain on the estate. My mother’s chimney design actually made money, but even so, she has shown little interest in replacing the furniture.”
He pushed open the door to a room that contained nothing more than a sofa minus a leg. The windows were stone-mullioned with pretty lacework, but the glass was covered by ivy, so it was gloomy as well as empty. “The yellow drawing room,” Silvester said.
Stella squinted, trying to see if the walls had once been yellow. They seemed a dingy brown.
“Named after the settee and chairs that used to be here,” he clarified.
He didn’t say anything more, and neither did she. He led her into a newer—but by no means new—area, the North wing, and started opening doors. “Breakfast room, library, my mother’s study, another drawing room, a sewing room. Shall we rest before visiting the other wing, let alone the kitchens? I should warn you that they are best described as medieval.”
“Perhaps we could see the South wing tomorrow,” Stella said, feeling overwhelmed by the pure size of the Grange along with its dirt and shabbiness.
Not to mention the way Silvester’s hand kept slipping down to her rear and squeezing. She could whip around and frown at his impertinence, but every time their eyes met, she was seized by an all-consuming lust for her husband.
