It's Hard Out Here for a Duke Read online

  She could only ask the question that begged to be asked.

  “What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know,” James admitted as he stepped back from her and buttoned his breeches. His shirt was rumpled, his hair tousled, and his cravat in a state of disrepair.

  “You don’t know,” she repeated.

  “I don’t know. I lose my mind around you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her lips. But he was distracted now, and she felt it. Because this meant something, but neither of them knew what. “But everything will be fine. I swear to it.”

  “We shouldn’t have let this happen.”

  “But it happened.”

  It certainly had happened. Her heart was still pounding. Her breath hadn’t quite returned to normal. She was sitting on the ducal desk with her legs wantonly spread apart. Hastily, she adjusted her skirts and slid to her feet.

  “It happened,” James confirmed. Then he pushed his fingers through his hair, mussing it up even more. “I’ll figure something out.”

  She started trying to smooth her skirts, as if wrinkles in silk were the worst of her problems right now. Lifting a hand to her head, she realized her coiffure was beyond repair. And her brooch . . .

  Her heart sank. She suddenly felt ill. The brooch was gone.

  “I will take care of this, Meredith. I will take care of you.”

  She glanced at him, now more panicked about the loss of a piece of jewelry than what had just transpired. How could she lose such a precious heirloom? And what if it were found here, in the duke’s study? How would she explain it?

  “My brooch. I lost my brooch.”

  “I’ll help you look,” James said, fumbling for another candle.

  The sound of a door clicking open . . .

  They were in a state of semi-disarray and panic, searching for the missing brooch, when a maid pushed open the door to the study.

  “Your Grace?” She bobbed into a curtsy. But Meredith saw her eyes widen as she took in the duke with his hair and cravat askew, as well as her own disheveled appearance. The maid was young, but she was no fool.

  Oh, God. Oh, damn.

  “Your Grace, the duchess is inquiring as to your whereabouts. She would like to do a toast at the ball.”

  Oh, God. Oh, bloody hell. The duchess had noticed he was missing. And presumably Meredith, too. What, oh, what, had she been thinking?

  She hadn’t been thinking. And now . . . she did not know what now.

  James glanced at her, looking for guidance as to what to do—stay with her or return to his guests.

  “You should go,” she said. It was the right thing to do. People were waiting upon His Grace, the Duke of Durham. And far be it for her, a mere Miss, to keep him from them.

  “This is not over,” he vowed. And then he followed the maid and the door clicked shut behind him. She was alone.

  This is not over, James had said. But what did that mean?

  Later that night, Meredith fell asleep with the question dancing circles in her head, his taste still on her lips, the feeling of his touch still warm on her skin. She spent the night in a hazy, fevered sleep, reliving those glorious moments when nothing mattered but her skin against his. And yet it was always, always followed by the question, what did it mean? What would happen now?

  Would they wed?

  Would she have to leave?

  Would she be content as his mistress if he took a proper wife?

  Meredith woke up with the question still stuck in her head and still unanswered. James had some choices to make, but so did she.

  Chapter 16

  A duke mustn’t make promises that he cannot keep.

  —The Rules for Dukes

  The next morning, Meredith encountered James in the corridor as they made their way down to breakfast. The timing was so perfect she wondered if he had been listening and waiting for her. Perhaps his night had been as sleepless as hers.

  They had to talk.

  They approached the grand staircase in the foyer, where footmen and the butler stood at attention and maids bustled about. This was not the place for a private conversation.

  “Meredith, wait.” He fell in step beside her.

  “We’ll be late for breakfast.”

  “This will only take a moment.”

  “If we are late, people may notice something is amiss. There will be questions. And I don’t know how to answer them. I have spent a sleepless night thinking of how to answer them, and I still am not prepared to do so.”

  “Leave that to me,” he said confidently. Ducally.

  Leave it to me.

  She couldn’t just leave her entire future to him to figure out over breakfast, especially when she suspected that he didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to manage it all so that no one was hurt. He could hardly have given the matter more thought than she.

  Then again, maybe he knew.

  “All right.” She paused on a step halfway down and turned to face him. In a hushed whisper, she asked, “What does it all mean? Has last night changed anything?”

  “Yes. No.” He glanced at the servants in the foyer and, in a low voice, murmured, “You know that I still have to be mindful of my sisters, and their reputations. Their prospects.”

  “But not of mine.”

  “I’ll find a way for us to be together, Mer, I promise you.” He reached for her hand, giving it a quick squeeze that was hidden by the volume of her skirts. She found it only mildly reassuring because her future with the duke—or without him—was not the only trouble weighing heavily on her mind.

  “I have more pressing concerns at the moment. The brooch the duchess lent me is missing.”

  The diamond and emerald brooch that she could never afford to replace, which did not even matter, given that its sentimental value made it irreplaceable to the duchess. Meredith was heartsick just thinking about telling her.

  “I will find it,” James said confidently, easily, like some fairy-tale prince who would handily fix every little thing. “If not, I’ll buy another.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I’m a simple man. You’ll have to explain this to me.”

  “We have both betrayed her trust,” she said. “She trusted me with a family heirloom. And then she trusted me to help polish you into a duke. And now I have lost the brooch, and while you look the part, you are still entertaining very un-ducal ideas of running off with the penniless companion and threatening to expose the family to scandal? Or you are not entertaining such thoughts and I shall be heartbroken when you marry Lady Jemma. There is no way out of this without someone getting hurt.”

  That is what had kept her up all night. It wasn’t new, but it felt more raw after she lost her head last night . . . lost her wits, her sanity, and a little more of her heart. She had wondered if perhaps they could not even be together under the same roof, whether or not they were together, for it was too much temptation for one pair to fight and she was so, so tired.

  “I lose my head around you,” he murmured.

  “And I, you.”

  It was a simple truth, and Meredith was beginning to see what she needed to do.

  A duke’s duty is to the dukedom—not his heart.

  —The Rules for Dukes

  A short while later

  The drawing room

  There was no way around it: James lost his head around her. He lost his wits, his reason, and his sense of duty. Meredith turned him into nothing more than a single-minded man, consumed with lust, driven only to please her and to love her at the expense of everything else in his life, even the things that truly mattered.

  Oh, he put up a good fight.

  Every minute he didn’t glance her way, every day he didn’t steal a kiss and every night that he didn’t make love to her could be considered a triumph.

  But after last night, James was forced to consider whether fighting his feelings for Meredith might, just might, be a losing battle.

  Surrendering could fee
l like winning, because he would then be with her. He felt deep in his bones that he could survive anything, as long as he had Meredith by his side to give him strength and to show him what needed to be done in this mad new role of his.

  Maybe he didn’t see how he would survive it and thrive in it without her.

  James drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. Today. He would say something to the duchess today. Something like, Josie, I’ve fallen in love with Meredith and need to make her my duchess and I know it will be a scandal but we’ll just have to make things work.

  Probably.

  It was the terms of surrender that gave him pause and stopped him from waving the white flag.

  And those terms of surrender were made clear to him as the duchess continued her reading of the gossip columns to the family, as they all lounged about the drawing room, moods muted from the party the night before.

  Frankly, he didn’t think those news rags were good for anything, not even lining horses’ stalls. James’s opinion was not revised when he heard what those hack reporters wrote about his family now.

  “The London Weekly is reporting that Amelia was seen quaffing an excess of champagne,” Josephine said with a frown. “When she wasn’t quaffing champagne,” the duchess read, “she was seen shooting daggers with her eyes at Mr. Alistair Finlay-Jones, the vaguely disreputable heir to Baron Wrotham.”

  His littlest sister certainly did look like she was suffering from the aftereffects of too much champagne.

  When, he idly wondered, had she become a woman who drank champagne and shot daggers with her eyes at a man at a London ball? In his mind, she was still ten and stealing a sip of his ale before spitting it out all over the floor and declaring it revolting.

  And for that matter, who was this Mr. Alistair Finlay-Jones, presumably wounded by Amelia’s eye-daggers? Was he a prospect, or a rogue? Were they newly introduced or was he a previous acquaintance? Was she lovesick, too, or was this bloke a good-for-nothing scoundrel?

  James had no idea, either because he’d been too consumed with his own affairs, or because it had something to do with Amelia’s Great Escape, which she still did not speak of. But the bottom line was plain: she was changing and growing up and might need him. He had been too distracted of late to know any of these things. This was not the sort of older brother he imagined himself being.

  This truth felt like a door slamming shut on his future dreams with Meredith.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Amelia muttered.

  “It’s not I that am talking about it, but rather The London Weekly and thus the entire town. My only consolation is that they are not speaking about your mysterious illness.”

  “The Morning Post is,” Claire said. “The Man About Town says that Lady Amelia appears to have made a remarkable recovery from her grave and sudden illness.” Then she read from the column. “In fact, the lady looked as if she had spent a day out of doors rather than a day on her deathbed.”

  Oh, damn. James pushed his fingers through his hair. This is what they had been afraid of. Rumors. Discovery. Being caught in a lie.

  Another door slammed shut.

  He felt the walls closing in.

  James glanced at Meredith, who concentrated very carefully on her embroidery.

  “If only they could see you now,” Bridget teased. “You look incredibly ill.”

  Amelia halfheartedly swatted at her.

  “Sisters,” James lamented dryly, but lovingly. “What did I ever do to deserve three sisters?”

  More to the point, why did he have to care so much about their happiness, especially at the expense of his own? His intentions to declare his love for Meredith and insist on marrying her were fading away in the face of his sisters’ happiness being compromised by too much champagne and eye-daggered scoundrels. To say nothing of whatever was going on with Claire and her Lord Fox or Bridget and that Darcy fellow. James was afraid to ask.

  “Oh, you are not off the hook. Your Grace,” Claire said, smiling devilishly. James scowled as she read aloud from one of the papers. “His Grace crushed the hopes of many a young maiden by waltzing twice with Miss Meredith Green, companion to the duchess, while eligible young ladies languished on the sidelines.”

  A long, heavy silence descended upon the drawing room.

  Should he say something? Was this his moment to declare his love for her?

  James glanced at Meredith, who concentrated very hard on her sewing, keeping her head down and attention focused on every perfectly tight little stitch.

  “I wanted Miss Green to have a pleasant evening,” James said blandly.

  His sisters didn’t bother to reply, as if they all knew his words were simply a pathetic attempt to hide the truth of his feelings. He even caught his sisters exchanging glances to the effect of are you going to say something? Shall I?

  “That is very admirable and I share your sentiment. But might I remind you that you have one job, Duke,” Josephine said sharply. “In fact, all of you have one task. To marry and marry well.”

  More than one Cavendish sibling rolled their eyes heavenward, because Lord knew they’d heard that a hundred thousand times before.

  He knew this, they all knew it, and yet the duchess kept saying it . . . as if she were still waiting for it to sink in, waiting for him to follow the command. That she was still saying it suggested that she would not be amenable to the declaration he had half planned.

  I intend to marry your lowborn companion.

  No, that was not marrying well. It was not what the duchess would approve of. James felt another door slamming shut, the walls closing in.

  “Well, perhaps Lady Bridget might do us proud,” Claire said. Then she continued reading from the paper. “Lady Bridget was seen waltzing with Lord Darcy. It would be an excellent match for her, and . . . oh.”

  “What does it say?”

  Claire closed the sheet. “Nothing.”

  “Liar.”

  “It says it would be an excellent match for you and a surprising choice for him.”

  “She is the sister to a duke. It wouldn’t be surprising at all,” Josephine said flatly.

  “Does it say why?” Bridget asked suspiciously.

  “It just says that it would be surprising if one of England’s most refined gentlemen wed the girl who fell,” Claire said with an apologetic smile.

  And then there was that. Bridget was trying so hard—more than anyone in the family—and yet she was constantly dogged by her one misstep. Literally. It seemed that nothing she could do—not dozens of perfectly well-mannered appearances at balls, or snagging a suitor like this Darcy fellow—could make the ton forget about the one time she slipped and fell on her backside at their debut ball.

  What happened when there was a greater scandal?

  Like, say, the duke eloping with the companion? The family might never live it down. It would be whispered about for years. Their children would have to grow up in the shadow of such gossip. Could he do that to all those unborn Cavendish brats?

  Ah, yes, the doors were slamming, the walls were closing in, the windows were shutting on his hopes and dreams.

  “Your Grace,” the butler intoned from the doorway. “A caller.”

  It was Mr. Collins, their “cousin” and James’s heir. At first James was relieved when the odious man requested an audience alone with Bridget—the less he had to suffer through the man’s insufferable company, the better—but it was only a hot second before James realized why and what for.

  “No, wait—”

  “Come along, Duke.” The duchess ushered him out. “Lady Amelia and Lady Claire, I insist you come, too.”

  Meredith didn’t need to be told twice; she had already set aside her sewing and made her way to the foyer. The duchess shut the drawing room doors all the way.

  “Josephine . . .” James warned.

  “Shhh. We cannot hear when you are talking.”

  They could hardly hear through the thick oak door
s anyway. They being the duchess, Amelia, Claire, Meredith, a downstairs maid, and one footman. But it was unnecessary, for they all had a good idea what transpired on the other side. Mr. Collins was proposing, and, James prayed to God, Bridget was refusing him without a second of hesitation.

  If she threw her life away on that odious and small-minded worm because of some notion of duty to the family, he’d never forgive himself.

  Pendleton returned with a bottle of champagne. James was about to order it away when suddenly, the doors burst open, and Mr. Collins burst out, clearly in an agitated state. Bridget followed behind. It was clear what had happened: Mr. Collins had proposed, Bridget refused him, and the duchess expected to celebrate a betrothal.

  “Mr. Collins was just taking leave of us,” Bridget said firmly.

  The butler had to hand over a bottle of champagne to the footman in order to hand Mr. Collins his hat and cane. Everyone watched in awkward silence as the man, red in the face, took his leave.

  The door shut behind him.

  “Don’t bother to open the champagne, Pendleton,” the duchess said with a disapproving frown. “It is clear we have nothing to celebrate.”

  “Did you honestly think that we would?” Bridget asked incredulously.

  “You must marry. You must all marry!” For once, the duchess actually raised her voice.

  “I do not think we are opposed to marriage,” James said evenly.

  “We are just opposed to pledging our troths to morons,” Bridget said.

  “Well if you continue to flout society, you may only have the likes of Mr. Collins to choose from!” the duchess cried. “And he is not the worst possible person. At least the dukedom would stay in the family. You would be provided for. What if your brother dies and you are all unwed? How will you support yourselves? Who will marry you then, when you have no dowries because everything has gone to Mr. Collins?”

  “James won’t die,” Amelia protested.

  “People die, Amelia. Look at our parents,” Claire said softly.