When You Give a Duke a Diamond Page 16

  She was tight around him, and he fought hard to control the urge to plunge into her hard and fast. Finally, she sheathed him to the hilt. She waited a moment, until he opened his eyes and met her gaze.

  Those eyes. Those cool, clear eyes. He would never forget them as long as he lived. She moved, and he moved with her—as one. He was part of her and she of him, and he could all but read her mind, know when she wanted more pressure or less, and she seemed to know when she should move faster or slower. He caressed her, memorizing every slope of her body, marking it as his, taking note of her every reaction.

  And then her head fell back, her hair brushing his calves, and her hips began to move furiously. Will could stand it no longer.

  He grasped her waist, and without breaking contact, flipped her over. Fast and hard, he plunged into her. Every thrust slaked him of his need and seemed to double it, as well. She was calling out his name and meeting him thrust for thrust. His hands were shaking, his hair falling in his eyes, but he opened them and stared at her as he came, hard and completely. She clenched around him and shuddered. Her arms came up, her hands cupped the back of his neck, and he lowered his forehead to hers.

  She kissed him, softly, sweetly, as he emptied himself into her. And then, as one, they rolled to the side and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  ***

  Pelham woke some time later—hours or minutes, he wasn’t certain. He was alone in the bed and heard the sound of someone moving. He rose on one elbow and peered into the darkness of the unfamiliar room. “Juliette?”

  “I’m here.” There was enough light from the fire for him to see her outline. She had stepped behind a screen in the corner.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Washing. We didn’t take any precautions to prevent a child. I don’t think simply washing will help, but I didn’t think it could hurt.”

  Pelham lay back on the pillows and put an arm over his eyes. He’d never even thought about the possibility Juliette would conceive a child, his son or daughter.

  What an entanglement that would be. He could imagine Juliette’s sweet body heavy with his child. She would be beautiful—even more than she was now.

  But he didn’t want her to carry his child. A courtesan would not be the mother of the seventh Duke of Pelham. How would he even be certain he was the father?

  He heard something rustle and moved his arm to see her standing beside the bed. She was wearing a white dressing gown and looked almost virginal.

  “You don’t have to worry. I don’t think it’s the right time for me to conceive. Or perhaps I’m unable. I was never able to conceive with Oliver.”

  “What precautions do you take with your… protectors?”

  She gave him a blank look and then seemed to remember herself. “Oh! I…” She trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words. “I don’t want to talk about that.” She slid into bed beside him. “I don’t want to think of other men.”

  But the spell—and it must have been a spell for him to act as he had—was broken. He could not stop thinking of the other men she’d been with. Was he just another in a long line?

  He slid out the other side of the bed, and she frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” But everything was wrong. He’d been intimate with a courtesan! He’d known he had a weakness for her, and he’d allowed himself to succumb.

  And the worst of it was—He turned his back to her and tugged on his trousers, which were still wet and uncomfortable—another transgression he could blame on her. But he wasn’t really angry about the trousers. He was angry because what they’d shared had meant something to him. For that brief time when he’d been kissing her, touching her, moving inside her, he’d forgotten he was a duke, forgotten he was a member of the House of Lords, forgotten he had a dead fiancée and stolen diamonds to find, and he’d just been Will. He hadn’t thought about what time it was or if he was missing dinner or how the rain had thrown off his schedule. He had thought only of Juliette—her scent, her taste, the feel of her hair running through his hands.

  He’d never lost himself like that before. Never. Every action he took, every step he made, every single thought was analyzed and justified and considered. His father had drilled method and precision into him. Routine. Punctuality. Dignity.

  Pelham swore he could still hear his father’s voice when he slept. He dreamed of the sadistic old man.

  But just for a moment, in Juliette’s arms, he’d been someone outside the man his father had made him. He’d been his own man with his own desires and needs and preferences. His father, that skeleton he carried with him always, had been vanquished.

  But now the former duke was back, and he was weighty. Pelham couldn’t stand to look at Juliette and think of what a disappointment he’d be if his father was alive to see him today.

  “Will?” she said quietly.

  He pulled his shirt over his head. It, too, was wet, but he didn’t want to take the time to find dry clothing. He shoved his feet into his boots, which, thankfully, had escaped the tub.

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I need some air.” He started for the door without looking at her.

  “Is it something I said?”

  He’d seen her out of the corner of his eye and cursed himself. She was on her knees, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, the white of her dressing gown and the sheets pooled around her, making her look like an angel.

  She was no angel.

  “Will?”

  He opened the door.

  “It’s storming out—”

  He closed the door on her words, cutting her off. There was pain in her voice. He’d heard it. He’d caused it.

  He was no better than her Oliver.

  He was no better than his father.

  Fifteen

  The next day dawned clear and cold, the weather chilly even for this time of the year. It was equally frosty inside the carriage, as Will had neither looked at her nor said a word to her in the two hours they’d been en route to his home in Yorkshire.

  Juliette was a reasonable woman. She’d lived with an unreasonable man for almost three years and then been tutored in the ways of men by the Countess of Sinclair for another year. And then she’d spent the last six years in London, fending off the advances of scores of men and playing the part of a glamorous courtesan.

  She understood men.

  She understood Will wanted her but was not prepared to admit he wanted her, because he was A Duke. She understood what had passed between them last night had shaken him, because it had shaken her as well. And she was smart enough to know something else was bothering him, but she didn’t know what it was.

  Perhaps he wasn’t ready to share it yet, but the time for politeness and consideration—not that either of them had been particularly polite or considerate until now—had passed. It had fallen to the floor with the last of her soggy clothing in the inn chamber last night.

  Juliette had no illusions that she and Will had any future together, but she did think she was owed some kind of explanation for the way he’d behaved last night after he’d made love to her. She did think she was owed a few words the morning after, so she would not feel as though she were a common whore.

  But of course Will probably thought of her that way, while she… she was half in love with him. And she was a monumental fool for allowing this to happen with a man like Pelham. She wanted a husband and a family, not a lover. Clearly, Will was prepared to be neither to her.

  “I don’t mean to intrude on your brooding silence,” she said, her voice splitting the tense stillness, “but I do think you owe me a few words this morning.”

  He glanced up at her, his eyes shuttered and wary. What did he think she was going to do to him? Attack him? Seduce him? Neither and both sounded agreeable.


  “Good morning, madam.” He had a copy of the Times in his hand, and he pretended to read it again. She knew he pretended, because he hadn’t turned the page in half an hour.

  “Ah, so I’m madam again. What happened to Juliette?”

  He glanced back up at her and steeled his features. “I’m sorry to say I believe last night—”

  “—was a mistake,” she finished for him. “I knew you were going to say that.”

  “You agree, do you not?”

  “No.”

  He frowned. “No?”

  “No. The mistake was in you leaving my bed and spending the night in the stable—at least I assume that’s where you slept, as you smell suspiciously of horse and leather.”

  He bristled. “If I have offended your sensibilities, madam, I—”

  “Oh, stubble it. I don’t want your perfunctory apologies.”

  His eyes went hard. “Stubble it? I am a—”

  “—duke. Yes, I know, and I’m sure you know what you’re about in affairs of the House of Lords or matters dealing with… dukely things.” She waved a hand to indicate whatever those dukely things might be.

  “Ducal matters is the term you’re seeking,” he corrected.

  “Precisely. You see, you know all about dukes and ducal things, but you don’t know anything about relationships. You don’t know anything about emotions, and, if I may be so bold as to say it, you don’t know yourself.”

  “And you do?” His tone was icy.

  “No! But I want to.” She crossed the divide between them and sat beside him. He pushed himself into the corner. “Don’t you see, Will? I want to know you. Not The Duke. I want to know Will, but every time I get close, you push me away.”

  He looked away. “There’s nothing to know. I am the duke.”

  “You’re pushing me again.”

  “What happened last night was a mistake,” he argued.

  “You’ve already said that, and it’s a futile effort to push me away.”

  He lifted his paper again. No, no. She was not going to allow him to shut her out.

  “Will, why was last night a mistake?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Because you enjoyed yourself? Because you took pleasure from and gave pleasure to a—” She gasped. “Courtesan?”

  He cut her a glance, and she grabbed his hand, forcing the paper down.

  “Because for one instant, you forgot you were a duke and could just be a man?”

  “Madam—”

  “Juliette. Call me Juliette. You don’t have to be the duke with me. You can simply be the man.”

  “Madam—Juliette, I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Why? Because I’m correct?”

  “Yes!” He all but yelled the word. Juliette almost flinched but resolutely held his hand. He was not Oliver.

  “You are correct. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “I want you to be honest with me.”

  “Honest? Fine. Bedding you last night was a mistake because I am the Duke of Pelham. I cannot afford to forget who I am. I cannot make the mistakes others do.”

  “Why not? Are you not human?”

  He shook his head as if to say this was not the point. “Of course, but my behavior was… not acceptable. I must be better than everyone else.”

  “Because you’re a duke?”

  “No, because I’m William Henry Charles Arthur Cavington, Viscount Southerby, Marquess of Rothingham, and Duke of Pelham. From birth, I have been tutored in three fundamental tenets—dignity, decorum, and honor.”

  “Don’t forget a tedious routine and an obsession with punctuality,” she mumbled.

  He ignored her. “I violated all three of those tenets last night with you.”

  “You certainly know how to flatter a woman, and I would be deeply offended if it wasn’t all complete rubbish.” And if I wasn’t falling in love with you.

  “Rubbish?” His mouth gaped open. Clearly, no one had ever spoken to him thus.

  “Yes. Who told you to follow these tenets? Who made all these rules you adhere to—no, cling to as though they were the last piece of shipwreck debris in shark-infested waters? You keep telling me you’re a duke. Well, act like a duke! Make your own rules.”

  “Act like a—” He stared at her, not blinking, not moving, not breathing. After two minutes she was afraid she had shocked him into some type of coma. And then he reached for her. She drew back, taken off guard, but he pressed a hand to her cheek. “Make my own rules.” His tone was incredulous.

  “That was my suggestion.”

  “Might I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  “Stop blathering and kiss me.”

  Before she could argue that she was not blathering, he cupped her chin and brought her mouth to his. Tenderly, so tenderly she wanted to weep, he kissed her.

  She kissed him back, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him tight against her. Why couldn’t he be this man all the time? Why did he have to retreat back to Pelham and his stupid dukely—or ducal—or dukefied—ways?

  He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers. “It was my father,” he said, his voice so low she almost couldn’t make out his words over the clatter of the carriage wheels. “My father was the man who ingrained these ducal tenets into me from birth.”

  He didn’t apologize, didn’t say she was right—had she really expected him to do so?—but he was making an effort. She didn’t speak, wise enough to know that anything she said now might hinder him from continuing.

  Oh, don’t think, Will. Just speak. Just tell me.

  “The fifth Duke of Pelham was a hard man. Serious. Dignified. Strict.”

  In other words, unapproachable and incapable of love. Juliette’s own father had spoiled her, doted on her. Perhaps she’d been too spoiled. Perhaps that was why her brother hated her and had turned his back on her. Family could be a curse and a blessing.

  “And your mother?” she asked.

  “She died when I was ten,” he said, then clenched his jaw. “No, that’s not true. My father threw her out of the house. I never knew why and never knew what became of her. I heard a few years later she died on the Continent, alone and penniless.”

  “Oh, Will!” She reached for him, but he moved away.

  “She’d been dead inside long before that. My father was like your Oliver in some ways. Things must be done his way or not at all. She disappointed him, and one did not want to disappoint my father. Before me, three children had died at birth or shortly before. She mourned those children, but mostly I think she mourned the girl she had been—beautiful, lively, full of life. I saw paintings of her when they were first married. She was radiant.” He looked at Juliette. “She shone, like you. People told me when she walked into a room the light and sound clustered about her. She was a lodestone. But once my father got his hands on her, secluded her in the country, she withered away.”

  Juliette clutched his shoulders and felt sorrow and pain for the little boy with a mother too dead inside to love him, and a father who did not tolerate even the slightest disappointment. She could barely imagine a childhood like that. Her parents had been so indulgent of their only daughter when she’d been young. If she’d grown up as Will had, would she have realized the way Oliver treated her was wrong? Would she not simply have accepted there was no love in the world, and this was the way life was meant to be?

  “I had a dog,” Will said quietly, leaning his head back against the squabs and closing his eyes. “Like your Brownie, but I called him Hunter. And he was a hunting dog from the best stock.”

  “How old were you?” she whispered, fear coiling in her belly. She knew what was coming. She did not want to hear this, but she had pushed him to reveal his secret
s. She steeled herself and raised her gaze to him.

  With his eyes closed and his head tilted back, she could scrutinize his face. She loved the rich bronze color of his skin, the arrogant set of his mouth, the flat planes of his cheeks, and that classic Roman nose. He had long eyelashes, and they were auburn like the glints in his hair. She remembered he’d had a smattering of auburn hair on his chest, and then she shivered because she remembered the scratchy feel of the hair when it rubbed against her body.

  “I was six. My father gave the dog to me as a gift, and I shouldn’t have trusted him. But bloody hell, I was six!” He opened his eyes and sat forward, anguish in his face. “I wanted something to love me, and that dog was the first thing that did.”

  Juliette wanted to hold him and tell him she loved him. She would love him enough to make up for the little boy who hadn’t known any love. Instead, she asked, “What happened to Hunter?”

  “I was late,” Will said simply, as if this should explain all.

  “Late?”

  “Late to dinner. We always ate at half past six. Always. Not a minute before and not a minute after. I arrived one minute late. My father was furious.”

  Juliette didn’t like the look on Will’s face. She clenched her hands in her lap.

  “He stalked out of the dining room without a word, marched to the kennels, took Hunter by the scruff of the neck, and threw him so hard against the wall it killed him. Then he stomped the dog’s head into the floor with his boot.”

  Juliette wanted to gag. How could anyone do anything so cruel? How could anyone do that to the beloved pet of a little boy? “Oh, Will.” She reached for him. She thought he might refuse her touch again, but he allowed her to hold him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I did everything in my power never to be late again,” he said. “Until I met you.”

  And she hadn’t understood. She’d mocked his reliance on the pocket watch. He looked up at her, and she kissed him gently. “You’re free now. You can make your own rules and set your own time. No one can ever hurt you like that again.”