I married the wrong man, Part 2

The Accidental Duchess
by Jessica Benson

(Page 2 of 3)

"I cut it," I told him, striving to find some corner of my mind that had not given in entirely to the languorous feeling that was stealing over my body, and could still converse. I should have been terrified by what was about to happen. I knew that. Instead it seemed that I was possessed of a hitherto unsuspected wanton streak, because I quite simply, shockingly, just wanted more. I only wished that I wasn't too shy to touch him as I ached to. "Two years back," I managed to say. "Because it was... ah, the fashion."

"I see," he said gravely. He pushed his hands into my hair and, starting with his fingers at the base of my scalp, lifted it onto the top of my head. He let go, slowly, and it felt as if I could feel each and every strand of hair fall. I wanted to moan aloud. And I was starting to become obsessed by the desire to touch him in return, to feel his body up against mine. He moved my hair so it hung over one shoulder, his fingers brushing the top of my spine as he did so. I shivered.

"But it's not seen mud intimately in many a year," I felt compelled to remind him. "And you, sir, are most unkind to recall it."

"I like it just this length," he said, as he bent so his lips were at the base of my neck. "Just exactly as it is. Unfashionable. With or without the mud." His breath was warm, feather-light, on the back of my neck.

My eyes were closed now. "Thank you," I managed, on a sigh.

"My pleasure." His lips moved over the place where my neck met my collarbone.

I was beginning to worry in some corner of my mind, that far from being an appropriately blushing maiden, stricken by bride nerves, I was going to prove a shockingly willing wife. Possibly, even scandalously so.

His hand strayed to my top button, at the nape of my neck. With the barest movement of his fingers, the little pearl fastening slipped free. My breath caught. He was undressing me!

I should speak. Object. This was not at all the way it should be done! Not here, like this, standing in the sitting room. Surely the supper would be here soon! But no words came. And when he ran his finger lightly up and down the half inch of skin that his action had bared, I had to forcibly restrain myself from purring like a cat. I was holding my breath, halfway between fearing and anticipating the release of the next button.

"Are you afraid, Gwen?" he murmured, his lips warm against my skin.

Since my eagerness to find out what would come next was positively unseemly, afraid somehow didn't seem quite the right word. My gaze met his in the window once again, and I found I could not dissemble. "Not half so afraid as I should be," I said.

He laughed aloud. "Good," he said. "A terrified bride would doubtless be the undoing of me." His lips again brushed the back of my neck, making my knees soft, as his hand came to rest on my waist. He held it there for a moment, and as I watched, he moved it slowly and deliberately upward until he was just barely touching my breast. I felt the contact with a jolt through the silk of my gown. I could see his hand, reflected in the window, big and sure over the fabric, and knowing that if I were to look down I could see the same thing in reality made my breath come faster.

His fingers moved, and when the fire crackled in the grate behind us, I felt the resulting shower of sparks in my stomach. An odd, strangled little noise came out of my throat. Our gazes met again. His eyes were dark and wild; my own looked oddly unfocused. His hair was falling over his forehead. And he was watching me watch him.

His hand cupped my breast, and this time, I moaned. He closed his eyes for a second, and I could feel him draw in a long breath. I knew it wasn't ladylike, or anything that was proper, but I was helpless not to; I leaned back against him, and let my head fall back on his chest. He shuddered, behind me.

I was behaving like the veriest wanton — pushing my body against him, watching his hand on my breast. And I simply didn't care. I pressed back harder. He held my gaze and that hand hardly moved as we both watched it, yet its very presence seemed to make me boneless.

He turned me around then, and pulled me roughly into his arms so I was up against the heavenly, terrifying, length of him. "Oh God, Gwen," he said, and the timbre, the roughness of his voice, seemed to actually touch my skin. He covered my mouth with his, hard this time.

"Bertie," I said, against his mouth, and I could hear that my voice held the same urgency as his had.

And then he let go of me and abruptly took a step back.

I blinked, wanting to say, No! Please! Don't stop now. My arms went out instinctively, to pull him back, but something in his face made my hands fall to my sides as well.

"What did you say?" His face was taut.

I tried not to let my puzzlement show as I reached around in the recesses of my drugged mind, trying to figure out what had upset him, and to recall what I had said, even. What on earth had I said? "Bertie?" I ventured, frowning up at him. "Bertie?" Not the most original thing to say in the situation, I supposed, but it had at the time seemed a fitting enough response to Oh God, Gwen.

I tried to read the expression in his eyes. Could it be that I had been too seduced by the surprising ease between us, and by the... well, seduction? Did he prefer that I address him by his title even when we were private? That would be the usual way of things, it was true, but still, it rankled me that I had been in his arms losing myself in the most shocking manner, and he was quibbling over forms of address. The silence stretched on between us. "Do you prefer Milburn?" I asked, finally. "Or Lord Bertie?"

"Not when we are private," he said. "Of course not."

I hoped I didn't look as befuddled as I felt. Not Bertie, not Milburn. What, then? I'd had a few nicknames for him in our youth, but in our current circumstances, both Puddle-Drawers and Spawn of Satan seemed singularly unsuitable.

He took my hand, and answered my unvoiced question. "When it's us, just us — " he gestured around at the intimate room — "do you think you could call me Harry, or Cambourne at the least?"

Which was, well, to put it bluntly, one of the most — no, the most — bizarre request I'd ever heard. I disengaged my hand from his. "You would like to be called Harry," I said. "I see" — although I did not see. "But why?"

"Gwen," he said in reasonable enough tones, "surely no man wants to be called by his brother's name in an... intimate situation?"

I took a step back as I began to absorb what he had said.

"It is necessary elsewhere, but surely not here, like this — "

I simply could not believe what I was hearing. "You," I managed to say. "You are..." And that was as much as my mind seemed able to come up with.

"Gwen?" He looked confused as he took a step toward me.

I took a corresponding step back. "You — You're Cambourne?" I was finally able to articulate.

He looked wary. "Yes."

"But you can't be Cambourne. I would have — " And then I stopped, and stared at him. He was watching me carefully. Would I really have known? And then, just like that, with an almost audible click of my brain, everything, the entire day, slid into place and I understood.

And I could see, reflected on his face, the exact moment that he read my thoughts. "Oh my Lord," he said, bleakly. "You didn't know! They didn't tell you."

I just stared. "No."

"You thought I was Milburn! You really thought I was Milburn?" There was something in his tone that made me understand that he thought if he said it enough times, he might believe it. One of us might believe it.

I nodded as I looked, despite myself, at the pile of discarded hairpins on the windowsill. I had behaved like a light-skirt with Milburn's brother! I closed my eyes for a moment.

And I suspect he was having much the same thought, because when I opened my eyes, he took a step back. "All this time," he said, sounding stricken, "all this time you thought I was Milburn? Bertie? When we — "

He dropped to a chair and put his head in his hands. I stood, still rooted to the spot by the window. "I thought you knew," he said, looking down at the carpet. "I thought you had agreed."

He looked so utterly miserable that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But somehow the fact that I had been more or less panting in his arms a few moments ago was adding an edge of an entirely different emotion. "Agreed? Knew? That you — that you are Cambourne?" I said.

He nodded. "That I was only pretending to be Milburn."

Copyright © 2004 by Jessica Benson

About the Author

Jessica Benson is the RITA award-winning author of Lord Stanhope's Proposal and Much Obliged. She lives in New York with her husband — who is of course very much like a Regency duke would be if he were a commercial litigator — and two very noisy young sons, neither of whom seem to be able to recall where the laundry hamper is located.