Page 24 of A Duke to Undo her (The Husband Hunt #1)
Chapter Seventeen
Josephine tossed and turned in her bed that night, her body and mind both far from sleep, one aching and the other spinning.
She had learned in recent weeks that the real world could be stranger, deeper and more exciting than any storybook fantasy, but it was also more disturbing because it never stopped so neatly. There were no clear chapters, obvious answers or large print denoting “The End.”
There was no way to switch off or resolve her increasing perplexity over her relationships with both Benedict Emerton and Cassius Emerton. Relationships between men and women were turning out to be far more confusing than Josephine had ever imagined.
If she were Lady Jane Tremayne or some other heroine in a romantic novel, she would fall in love with one perfect man and marry him at the end of the story.
In Josephine’s life, all her faith in such certainties had been shaken up.
The man she had determined to love, she liked but found easy to forget.
The man she thought she hated, she now desired with a physical intensity that defied all logic.
Marriage, the central goal of her life, and that of other young ladies, seemed almost incidental and irrelevant to current proceedings.
Deciding that she’d had enough of reality for one day, Josephine swung her legs out of bed and decided to go downstairs to the library.
She doubted somehow that the Duke of Ashbourne would have any taste for the kind of books that included heroes like Sir Edmund Venner and heroines like Lady Jane Tremayne, but surely there would be novels or poetry of some sort.
Tying her dressing gown and taking up her candle, she crept out of her room and down the stairs. The whole house seemed to be asleep and the only sounds Josephine heard were the soft tread of her own feet and the creaking of old wooden bannisters, floorboards and beams.
The library lay further along the corridor where the duke’s study was situated and she closed her eyes with the shimmering memory of that particular encounter as she passed it.
Josephine’s mind told her that she must never be alone with the Duke of Ashbourne again.
Her body told her that nothing in the world mattered more than being in his arms.
Lighting a few more candles in the library, Josephine set about her browsing.
Despite earlier fears that the library in such a house might be old and fusty, full of only worthy books and highbrow literature, there was a good stock of modern and less serious works on one set of shelves, perhaps intended for guests to peruse.
The works of Lord Byron sat alongside the novels of Jane Austen and a novel called Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a few pages of which made Josephine shiver and decide it was best read in daylight.
Candide and Les Liaisons Dangereuses offered diversion for readers of French, while Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill, tucked away slightly behind other books on a higher shelf, contained the most astonishingly indecent illustrations.
Gasping at one of these pictures that actually showed a man’s head between a woman’s thighs, Josephine knocked The History of Tom Jones to the floor. The noise sounded loudly to her but she doubted it would have been heard by anyone beyond the ground floor.
She was surprised therefore, and dropped another book, when the door to the library swung open a few minutes later and the Duke of Ashbourne marched in, looking rather fierce and holding a walking stick.
“Who is there?” he demanded.
A little sheepishly, Josephine stepped out from the shelves she had been browsing and looked at him.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she explained. “I came downstairs to find a book. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
It was then that she realized the duke was still fully dressed, or at least clad in his shirt sleeves, trousers and shoes. He had likely had been downstairs all the time, maybe even in the study as she passed.
“Good God, Lady Josephine, I thought you might be a burglar!” he exclaimed and laid down the stick, his eyes looking her up and down in her nightclothes. “How do you always manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Something in these words cut Josephine deeply, touching as they did upon her deepest insecurities that she could never quite do anything as other young ladies did. It hurt her all the more now because this message came from this particular man.
“Why are you even here?” she threw back at him rather irrationally. “Why don’t you go away and leave me alone?”
“I live here,” he pointed out with a frown.
Knowing that she had spoken like a foolish child, tears came to Josephine’s eyes and she rushed towards the door, only wanting to escape back upstairs.
But Cassius Emerton was too quick for her, stepping in front of her and taking her hand in his.
“What is wrong, Josephine?” he asked. “I seem to have said something to upset you.”
“I’m just so tired of people looking at me like I’m wrong, telling me I’m wrong, telling me I need to be different,” she blurted out.
“Why can’t anyone ever let me just be myself?
I might be in the wrong place at the wrong time but I can’t help it.
It just happens, no matter how much anyone disapproves, even you, Your Grace. ”
“Cassius,” he said. “My name is Cassius. You called me that in the study and in the forest. I liked it. I also don’t disapprove of you, Josephine. There’s nothing wrong with you at all.”
“I want to believe you, Cassius,” Josephine told him and he squeezed her hand as he had done on the sofa as the chamber music played. “But it isn’t easy. Whatever I do, I know I can never be perfect like my sisters, or Lady Belinda or every other young lady of the ton.”
“Do you know what I see when I look at you, Josephine?” the Duke of Ashbourne asked her.
“I mean, apart from your physical beauty which distracts me immensely at every turn. I see a young woman with more zest for life than anyone I’ve ever met, with enough determination to see through any hardship and with enough courage to challenge a duke, even in his own home. ”
As they talked, Cassius Emerton led her back towards the candles and books Josephine had abandoned.
“Not everyone thinks those are positive qualities, especially in a woman,” she told him sadly.
“Well, I do. You should already know that I love being challenged, by a worthy opponent.”
“Am I a worthy opponent?” she asked.
“Can you doubt it?” the duke answered with a grin that let the world settle again into untroubled night. “Now, what have you been reading tonight, Lady Josephine?”
His eyes quickly scanned the selection, an amused eyebrow rising at the sight of the lewder works, one still open on the plate that had so surprised Josephine.
“Ah,” he said with a laugh. “I have left your erotic education half complete, haven’t I? You are resorting to books.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Josephine admitted, wondering if she should try to be more ashamed at being found with these books, but feeling no shame whatsoever in reality.
“Do you want to know?” Cassius Emerton asked her, his eyes meeting hers as he unfastened the dressing gown and pushed it from her shoulders.
“Yes,” she breathed, standing before him in the candlelight in only her nightdress. “I do…”
The duke lifted her into his arms and carried her to the richly colored Persian rug by the fireplace, her slippers falling from her feet on the way.
“Irresistible Josephine,” Cassius murmured in her ear as he set her bare feet down on the soft, warm pile. “Would you like me to kiss you now?”
In response, she leaned forward and pulled down his face to hers eagerly, receiving a first soft press of the duke’s lips and teasing flicker of his tongue. His hands were already at the tie of her nightgown and his mouth was smiling as he drew back slightly and unfastened the bow.
“I did not mean kisses on your mouth,” he whispered, pushing the loosened gown easily to Josephine’s shoulders. “Although such kisses are sweet…”
Cassius kissed her mouth again, more deeply, his tongue seeking hers as the fabric began to slip from her shoulders. In the press of their subsequent embrace, the gown slid to her waist and caught there on Josephine’s hips, leaving her half-naked and breathless.
Gazing with longing at this newly revealed expanse of womanly flesh, the duke soon allowed his mouth to roam lower, causing Josephine to moan and squirm in his arms. His touch was so warm, so knowing and so very hungry.
“I did not even mean kisses on your lovely breasts,” the tousle-haired duke continued, his own breathing now distinctly heavier. “Although I could easily spend a whole night enjoying them, Josephine.”
It took only the slightest caress from Cassius’ hand now to send the pool of pale fabric cascading down to the ground and bare Josephine entirely. She knew she was entirely in this man’s power now but it excited rather than frightened her; somehow she trusted him.
The Duke of Ashbourne’s hand stroked the curve of her hip and the roundness of her bottom as he kissed her gasping lips.
“Do you know where I want to kiss you yet?” he asked in a low voice as he lifted and lowered her easily onto the soft rug. “Can you not guess?”
Josephine whimpered slightly in excitement and anticipation as the duke kissed his way down her body, as slowly as if he had all the time in the world.
As he placed himself between her thighs and parted them, the look in his deep blue eyes spoke of far greater urgency within him than he was yet allowing her to see.
She moaned Cassius’ name as he finally kissed the damp triangle of fur, just as he had done so briefly in the forest. Now his kiss was unhurried, luxurious.
When he darted his tongue actually into her slit she made a sound loud enough that he stopped and hushed her, placing a gentle finger on her mouth before returning to his task.
“You must not make too much sound, Josephine,” he warned her, “however much you may want to…”
Then he began to apply his lips and tongue in earnest to her pleasure, stroking, kissing and caressing her most sensitive places until she thought she would go mad, before pulling back slightly, time and time again.
At first, Josephine tried to obey Cassius’ instruction.
Eventually, it was impossible to control anything she uttered and when he tipped her over the edge, her whole being dissolved in moaning ecstasy.
In the still-writhing aftermath of that experience, the duke kissed his way back up her body, panting and lips salty with her excitement.
Josephine seized him and pulled his mouth to hers again, clinging to his strong body as he rose to his knees.
She felt like a wild creature entirely controlled by instinct.
Despite the duke’s initial resistance, her small but determined hands almost tore the shirt from his body so that she could bury her face in his broad, dark-haired chest. The solidity of his manhood between them was not to be ignored, although she did not know what to do about it.
“Cassius,” she cried out. “I want…Oh, I want…”
Josephine sensed rather than saw the dam breaking within the Duke of Ashbourne as he seized her firmly to him, his mouth on hers and her breasts pressing against the hot, damp skin of his torso. When he said her name again it was almost a growl.
“I will try to be…gentle,” Cassius told her as he began to unfasten his trousers.
She lay back on the rug and nodded with eager but nervous excitement, her eyes growing wide as she finally saw the throbbing shaft that she longed for without understanding why. Whatever happened next, would it feel as good as what Cassius had done to her with his tongue?
Did she even dare to touch him there..? Before Josephine had any chance to act on this bold thought, both the face of her lover and the atmosphere in the room abruptly changed. Within moments, the Duke of Ashbourne had refastened his trousers, donned his shirt and was drawing her to her feet.
“You must forgive me, Lady Josephine,” he said, picking up the discarded nightgown and drawing it over her head. “I have taken far greater liberties with your person than a gentleman should.”
“Cassius?” she questioned him, feeling physically bereft and more than a little frightened by the sudden shift. “What is wrong? Why are you saying this? I want you…”
“You do not understand the extent of my transgression, Lady Josephine. The fault is entirely mine. I have trespassed grievously in your life and it must cease. You wished to marry Benedict, I believe. I give you my full blessing to do so.”
Josephine’s stomach dropped as she stood there holding up her nightgown, unable even to make her trembling fingers tie its cord.
Why was Cassius saying these terrible things?
A few moments ago, he seemed to have no doubts about what they were doing.
Now, he was telling her to marry his brother. She could not even form a response.
After presenting her with dressing gown and slippers, the Duke of Ashbourne gave Josephine a formal bow without meeting her eyes and then left her there, standing mute and lost on the Persian rug.
“Don’t go!” she tried to call after him, too late, but he did not turn and closed the library door behind him. “Cassius…”
What could she have done wrong?