Page 20 of His Arranged Duchess (Regency Wedding Crashers #5)

M y dear Benjamin, I am excessively grateful for your invitation to join you at your club tonight.

Unfortunately, I am unable to attend. And before you try, I must tell you that your ‘temptation’ of Mrs. Black’s presence was, if anything, a deterrent.

However, I do hope you’ll visit me soon, perhaps tomorrow.

We have a great deal to catch up on. Yours Affectionately, Lucien

Lucien signed off the note with a flourish and handed it to Gray.

“I’ll have it delivered at once, Your Grace,” Gray said, bowing. “Shall I have tea sent up to the study?”

“No, thank you. I think I’ll just finish off my work here and take myself to bed.”

If Gray was surprised that Lucien had chosen a dull evening of work in his study instead of attending a club, he did not let on.

“Very good, Your Grace,” he answered smoothly, making a neat bow.

“Is her Grace in the drawing room?”

Lucien tried to ask the question coolly, as if it did not much matter. Even so, he was sure he caught a quick, knowing glance from Gray.

“Her Grace has gone up to bed, I believe. Do you wish to summon her?”

Lucien flinched. “Summon her? Heavens, no. She’d be furious. She wouldn’t come at any rate.”

Gray smiled agreeably. “I think you might be surprised, Your Grace.”

Before Lucien could demand to know just what he meant by that, Gray bowed again and shuffled out of the study. Sighing, Lucien leaned back in his seat and eyed the piles of work before him.

It was going to be a long night. Getting to his feet, he shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his shirt-sleeves to his elbows. His hair had come free of its careful brushing hours ago and hung untidily over his forehead. He didn’t much care; nobody would see him at this hour.

He hadn’t seen Frances at all that day, after their return from the Park. Perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps—and this was more likely—she was avoiding him.

How on earth am I to extricate myself from this? What did I say incorrectly? What have I done to alienate her further?

Time was running out. If a positive breach opened between them, he would likely never get the heir he needed.

And that is all I care about. I’m fond of the girl, of course, but the arrangement has always been very clear. Too clear, perhaps.

Would it have been the worst thing in the world to leave a little ambiguity? To let their relationship develop as it would?

Giving himself a mental shake, Lucien moved over to the sideboard, where a decanter of good whiskey waited.

He’d already taken one glass and liberally filled another.

The clock read five minutes to midnight, and the house was silent.

Doubtless, Gray was the last servant still awake, and soon only Lucien would be out of bed, going about his work with a grim determination.

Just as he lifted the glass to his lips, a tremendous crash echoed through the study.

He flinched, the glass of whiskey falling from his fingers.

The glass bounced on the thick carpeting, mercifully not shattering, but the whiskey spilled out and soaked away at once.

Lucien stared down at the mess, then glanced over at the door.

Another muffled crash echoed through the house.

Cursing to himself, he pushed open the door and stepped out into the darkness beyond.

The house was entirely silent and mostly dark, with the exception of a few isolated candles set here and there. Lucien was crossing the Great Hall when he stopped dead, suddenly struck by a feeling of wrongness.

He glanced around, his mouth drying. Could it be an intruder? If so, Lucien was confident that he could find his way around his house in the dark better than any stranger. He could dispatch any unlucky would-be thief in a couple of moments.

Then he saw it, the wrongness.

The door to the East Tower was open.

Lucien felt as though his feet had been frozen to the floor beneath him.

He stared at the dark, yawning opening. Ridiculous notions of ghosts and unsettled spirits fled through his head.

He forced himself to take a step closer, then another, then another, until his eyes began to adjust to the darkness within.

He spotted a flash of movement, a swathe of ghostly white. Lucien’s heart hammered.

Then there was a groan from within the room, followed by a muffled curse.

At once, he recognized the voice, and any residual fear fled. Clenching his teeth together, Lucien strode forward into the darkness.

“You little wretch,” he exploded. “I told you in no uncertain terms to stay out of this tower.”

Frances glanced mournfully up at him. “I didn’t know the stairs were so rotten. I thought they would be made of stone, not wood.”

She had been ascending the stairs, it was clear, and the fourth step had splintered under her weight. Her leg had gone straight through, and she appeared to be stuck.

Lucien folded his arms. “Of course they’re rotten. My father put in a wooden staircase, of all things, when he was repairing some of the old lower steps. They haven’t been maintained in about a decade, like the rest of this wretched place. I’m frankly surprised you made it this far.”

Frances, he noticed at last, was in her night things.

She wore a long, billowing nightgown, which was currently mostly tucked up around her hips.

She had chosen a red robe over her nightgown, but the robe was practically falling over her shoulders, and did nothing to disguise the long, pale curve of her bare leg, the one not hip-deep in the broken stair.

Lucien couldn't help it. In the darkness, her pale skin seemed to glow. He longed to put a hand to the round softness of her thighs and squeeze, ever so gently.

Swallowing hard, he realized that silence had fallen between them, and that Frances was looking up at him with a strange, unreadable expression.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I was just so curious, and I thought… Well, never mind what I thought. I should not have come here, and I’m sorry.”

He folded his arms tightly. “Breaking another rule already? My, my. It would seem that you want to get punished.”

She flinched. “Punished? Whatever do you mean? Oh, do you really intend to leave me here all night?”

Lucien shook his head, chuckling. “My dear, I’m wicked but not evil . Here, let me help you. I’d ring for the servants, but I’m not sure you’d want them to see you in such a state.”

She glanced at her own bare legs, and flushed a vivid red.

“It was research,” she murmured. “For… For a book I am writing. A story, rather. I thought I might find inspiration in the East Tower, what with it being so forbidden.”

“I see,” he responded. “And will your midnight heroine find herself in just such a position as this?”

Frances bit her lip. “N-No, I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps not. Here, let me help you.”

He crouched beside her, peering at the splintered boards. It seemed that none of the shards had pierced her skin, which was remarkably lucky. Almost without thinking, Lucien placed a palm on her bare thigh to steady himself, letting it rest on the outside of her leg.

At once, Frances’s skin shivered underneath his touch. He glanced up, meeting her wide-eyed gaze for just an instant before she averted it.

Slowly, carefully, as if he were moving without thinking, Lucien let his touch trail downwards, light as a feather, until he could curl his fingers over the back of her knee.

“Does it hurt?” he murmured, voice soft. He tried to catch her gaze, but Frances seemed just as keen to avoid it and kept looking away.

“No, nothing much.”

He pushed his hand upwards, inch by tentative inch, until his palm cupped the curve of her hip. It occurred to him then that Frances, as was the custom, was not wearing underthings beneath her nightgown.

His blood pounded in his veins, hot arousal thrumming just underneath his skin. In the darkness, he was sure that Frances’s chest was heaving with deep, silent breaths, her skin shivering beneath his touch.

I want her more than I could ever have imagined.

Abruptly, Lucien removed his hand and stood, a little shakily. He was coming too close to losing control, and that would do neither of them any good.

“I shall have to lift you up,” he explained briskly, willing his arousal to fade away. “You must tell me if I hurt you.”

“Yes,” Frances managed, her voice tight and breathy. “I will.”

Bending down, he wrapped one arm around her waist and the other beneath her free leg.

She clutched at his shoulders to steady herself, and Lucien lifted her up, slowly and carefully, and bit by bit her leg was extricated from the hole.

When she was entirely free, Lucien did not set her down on her feet.

Instead, he hoisted her more fully into his arms.

“You’re lucky not to have been more badly hurt,” he said shortly, peering down at the spiked, ragged lip of the hole.

Frances said nothing. She did not ask to be put down or wriggle to be free. Without saying another word, Lucien turned and strode out of the Tower with her in his arms and made his way towards the bedrooms.

A candelabra burned in Frances’s room, and her bed was untidy, showing clearly where she’d lain in it.

As he set her down on the mattress, Lucien noticed an open notebook, full of scrawled, tight-packed writing.

There was a lingering warmth in the room, a stark contrast to the stale, icy air of the East Tower.

Lucien felt as though the stink of the place had clung to him and that he’d brought dead air out of the place.

I haven’t entered that room since the day my father died. And now here I am, entering it again, for the sake of this silly, silly little duchess of mine.

He cut off that thought, straightening up and peering down at Frances. She had pulled her nightgown down to cover her legs, wrapping her robe demurely around herself.

“Thank you for helping me,” she muttered at last, not looking him in the eye.