Page 7 of The Duke’s Only Desire (The Dukes of Darkness #3)

S ophie stood in front of the drawing room window and watched as Shay galloped away from the house, his black gelding kicking up billows of white snow beneath his ebony hooves.

“No, you’re not gone from me,” she whispered after him. “I saw the old you—I felt you.”

Her belly tightened fiercely at the memory of his kisses. No monster could have kissed her like that, so tenderly and with so much affection, no matter what the fire had done to him, no matter how severe the scars. When she had been in his arms, she recognized the familiar pang inside her chest—

It was the overwhelming desire to be loved by him.

He did love her, she could feel it. Well, he desired her at least. She recognized that much in the kisses he allowed to venture just to the edge of passion and no further.

Yet he was keeping himself from her, and not just physically. Every time they began to laugh together, to tease or share their thoughts, as they had once done together, he pulled back.

“But you won’t be able to keep me at arm’s length forever,” she told his vanishing figure as he rode toward the woods at the foot of the hills. “We will have a proper marriage.” Her lips twisted at the warning he’d given her and repeated, “The sooner you accept that, the happier we’ll both be.”

The best way she could do that was to accept her new role as Ravenscroft Manor’s mistress. So she pulled her cashmere shawl tighter around her shoulders, straightened her spine, and headed down through the house toward the kitchens. It was time she took charge.

Ravenscroft Manor was a grand house, built to resemble a French chateau, and it spread out across a steep hill in such a way that the three floors of living areas rose up from the approaching drive in front, while another two floors seemed to cascade down the side of the hill behind. The kitchens, cellars, and workrooms were located there, with a wall of windows to let in enough light to work by yet tucked out of sight of family and guests so nothing unpleasant would be visible during the grand parties the house was designed to host. But, as Sophie knew, no parties had been held here since the last duchess ran away…during one of those same very grand parties. So many guests, servants, and musicians had been crammed into the rooms, in fact, that no one realized she was gone until the following afternoon. Not even her own family.

“Perhaps that can change now,” she murmured to herself as she descended the main staircase that spiraled down to the ground floor, from where the reception rooms spilled out invitingly. A grand entry hall, two adjoining drawing rooms, a loggia that ran along the length of the house and gave gorgeous views of the hills undulating across the horizon, a spectacular octagonal winter garden room at the center of the house that should have been filled with exotic plants but now sat empty…and beyond those lay a music room, a billiards room, the wonderful library she’d seen the first time she’d been here, and the gentleman’s room, tucked off the library where she’d first glimpsed Shay.

And now she was supposed to oversee all of it. Good heavens. The Granville estate was little more than a country box compared to Ravenscroft, and being mistress there hadn’t prepared her at all for this place. Even when she’d been engaged to John, the thought of living here had always been some sort of abstract dream. Now, though, it was real, and she would rise to the challenge.

She bit her bottom lip. Somehow.

Tucked into a corner turret off the stairs hall, the servants’ stairs snaked down into the kitchens below, and she descended, hoping she didn’t look as out of place as she felt. After all, she would be expected to oversee the kitchens and workrooms—or at least, supervise the people who would do the actual overseeing—and so needed to acquaint herself with them. No better time to start than the present.

When she stepped into the main kitchen, all the servants froze, their eyes widening. Then they all bobbed uncomfortable curtsies and mumbled their greetings beneath their breaths.

“Your Grace!” A portly woman with flame-red hair sticking out from beneath her white cap scurried around the massive work table dominating the room and hurried toward Sophie. She gestured over her shoulder at a young maid who ran from the room as if her life depended upon it, leaving Sophie to blink in bewilderment after her. The woman lowered herself into a teetering curtsey so low that Sophie feared she might have to grab for the woman’s arm to keep her from toppling over. “We weren’t told ye were comin’ down,” she said in a faint Scottish brogue. “We dinna expect ye.”

Sophie smiled warmly to put the woman at ease. “I hope you don’t mind the interruption. I thought I would come down to introduce myself.” The woman’s face paled at the many breeches of protocol accompanying that simple statement. Sophie didn’t care. This would be her home for the rest of her life, and she wanted it to be comfortable for everyone, right down to the scullery maids. “And you are…?”

“Mrs. Latimer, ma’am.” She bobbed another curtsey, and Sophie fought to keep from rolling her eyes. That would be the first new household rule. No more curtsies. “The cook.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you.” She swept her eyes around the kitchen, noting everything from the rows of shining copper pots and pans all neatly stacked on the long shelves to the large clock ticking away over the doorway…to the shocked expressions of the rest of the staff as they continued to stare at her as if she were a carnival bear on display. “My! What a fine kitchen you keep. I can tell already that Ravenscroft Manor is in good hands.”

The plump cook blushed at the compliment. “Thank you, ma’am. An’ it’s a right good pleasure to meet you.” When Sophie didn’t move to return to the family’s upstairs domain and leave the servants to theirs, she dared to ask, “What else can I do fer ye, ma’am?”

“I…that is, I…” Words failed her. Clearly, the servants didn’t need her to oversee them. She’d been daft to think they did. After all, they’d been running the house without a mistress for almost twenty years and didn’t need a stranger to tell them how to manage. In fact, she was an inconvenience for them.

“Now, Mrs. Latimer,” another woman called out as she hurried into the room, with the kitchen maid who had darted out at Sophie’s arrival scurrying closely behind. “You know why Her Grace is here.”

The cook blinked. “I do?”

The other woman, dressed in the dark gray of a housekeeper’s uniform, sent Mrs. Latimer a chastising glance. “She wants to discuss the menus and housekeeping details.” Then she gave Sophie a welcoming smile and bobbed a shallow curtsey. “Forgive us, Your Grace. We haven’t had a mistress here for so long that we’ve grown out of certain habits.”

Sophie’s shoulders lowered with relief at being saved. “And you are?”

“Mrs. Sexton, the housekeeper. I regret I wasn’t able to properly welcome you upon your arrival last night, ma’am, and introduce you to the staff.”

She was being saved from that, too. “Perfectly understandable. We arrived late and without sending word ahead.”

“If you would like, ma’am, I can accompany you to one of the drawing rooms, and we can go over the menus there.”

“That would be lovely, thank you.”

Mrs. Sexton gave her own smile of relief and turned toward Mrs. Latimer. “Would you make up a tray of tea and refreshments and have it taken up to the Italian sitting room for Her Grace?”

The cook nodded and hurried to do as asked.

Mrs. Sexton gestured back toward the hallway and the stairs. “This way, Your Grace.”

As Sophie left the basement, she could feel a wave of relief pass over the servants. Oh, they were all very kind and pleasant, nodding at her when she left. But it would take a while, she knew, before they were all comfortable living under the same roof.

Mrs. Sexton guided Sophie into the main drawing room on the ground floor. It had once undoubtedly been a room of pride, given the Italianate decorations, the fine Chippendale furniture, and the long sweep of floral damask that billowed across the ceiling from the picture railing to the tall wooden beams two stories overhead. It gave her the feeling of having fallen into a giant Mediterranean canopy bed.

“I remember this room from my previous visit,” Sophie murmured, tilting back her head to look up at it. “I was twelve at the time, and I had no idea why anyone would drape a canopy over a ceiling.”

With a faint chuckle, the housekeeper explained, “His Grace’s grandfather had it built to resemble a palazzo he’d seen in Venice when he’d been on his Grand Tour. It is odd, I suppose, to have an Italian room in a French chateau,” she mused. “But everyone seems to like it.”

Sophie nodded. As with the rest of the house, though, this room had also been allowed to languish. Oh, it was spotlessly clean; the servants had done their jobs well in keeping it. But the fabric canopy was sun-faded, and the furniture needed to be recovered. Time and attention would bring it back to its former glory, she suspected. Just as she hoped she could do with Shay.

The tea tray arrived nearly on their heels, delivered by a footman who was barely more than five feet tall when footmen were usually over six feet. Mrs. Sexton gestured for him to set it down on the low tea table in the first grouping of settees and winged back chairs that once served as conversation areas when the room had been in use. The young man quickly left.

Sophie took a seat at the settee and leaned toward the tray. Little sandwiches and cakes filled a small plate, along with more precious strawberries that made her long to visit the estate’s greenhouses. Black tea steeped in the steaming pot. “Mrs. Latimer took no time in putting this together.”

“I suspect she had it waiting for you, ma’am, in case you didn’t like your breakfast and wanted something else.”

Guilt pricked her as she lifted the lid and glanced into the pot. The tea had already steeped. As soon as she outlawed curtsies, she’d make certain they knew she didn’t expect special treatment like this, either. “My breakfast was delicious.” She glanced around the room. “Everything here seems extremely well-maintained and respectfully tended.”

“We’re all very proud to work in this house, ma’am.”

Sophie leveled a hard look on the housekeeper. “If we’re to bump along well, Mrs. Sexton, then I need you to tell me the truth.” She ignored the woman’s surprised expression and poured a cup of tea. “I know the history of this house, and I know there’s a reason why we have a Scottish cook instead of a French chef, short footmen, and maids who can’t discern shifts from petticoats. It isn’t because a stream of servants with letters of recommendation are beating down the door to ask to work here.”

She held out the cup and saucer toward the housekeeper, then nodded toward the chair across the table for her.

A chagrinned expression crossed Mrs. Sexton’s face as she accepted the tea and took her seat. “Duly noted, ma’am.”

Sophie offered her a selection from the plate of goodies, but the woman politely declined. “Please. I want you to join me.” When the housekeeper hesitated, Sophie added, “I know I’m breaking all kinds of protocols, but I’m not an ordinary duchess and Ravenscroft Manor certainly isn’t an ordinary house. I’d like it to be a comfortable place for all of us to live together. Besides, it’s only tea. I’ve never understood why all those fine ladies think taking tea with their servants is anathema, as if sharing somehow poisons the pot.”

When she saw Mrs. Sexton’s eyes sparkle with amusement, she knew she was winning the woman over.

“I want to be a good duchess,” she confided, “and create a warm, loving home here for His Grace and the children we’ll have, but I don’t know the first thing about how to begin. Will you help me?”

“I would like nothing more, Your Grace.”

“Good. And I have a lot of questions about the house and how it’s run, so you’re going to be here with me for a very long time.” Sophie held out the plate again. “You might need nourishment.”

In truth, although she did need to know about the house, Sophie simply wanted the company. More—she wanted an ally.

The woman stifled a soft laugh and selected a lavender biscuit and a little cake with lemon-yellow frosting. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Sophie poured a second cup for herself and settled in for a long and pleasant conversation.

Finally, she began to feel hopeful at turning this place from a house into a home.

*

That hope all but vanished a few hours later at dinner.

Dressed in the best gown she had brought with her, Sophie waited for the clock to strike eight, then made her way downstairs to the dining hall. Hall, not room , because every inch of it resembled a medieval banquet hall, from the towering wooden beams on the ceiling three stories above the long table that she guessed could have comfortably seated one hundred guests to the massive stone fireplace taking up the entire end wall. Every inch of it was made to impress. And intimidate.

“It’s certainly impressing me,” she mumbled to herself as she stopped in the wide double-doorway. Her eyes swept from the suits of armor, across the intricate geometric displays of weapons of all kinds on the walls, to the large banners hanging from the rafters. “And intimidating.”

The butler was making last minute adjustments to a single place setting at the head of the enormous table. He saw her and snapped straight, giving her an incline of his head in greeting.

She smiled and entered the hall. “You must be Mr. Henley, the butler.”

He nodded. “Yes, Your Grace. Welcome to Ravenscroft Manor.”

Mrs. Sexton had told her all about the man, who had been away in the village most of the day tending to last minute details of his master’s arrival home, with an unexpected new duchess in tow. Their sudden wedding had upended the entire household, apparently.

“When I was here before, there was a very nice butler named Baines who served the late duke.”

“Ah, yes, Baines.” Henley folded his hands behind his back. “He was pensioned several years ago and moved into a cottage in the village with his brother.”

Happiness warmed her at hearing that. “Is he still there?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sophie hid a delighted smile. Only Baines and Shay had made her feel welcome here all those years ago. Already, she was planning on visiting the retired butler and thanking him. If only she could convince Shay to come with her.

“Dinner is ready, Your Grace.” Henley gestured toward the solitary place setting.

She knew the answer already, yet something dark inside her made her ask, “Where will Malvern be sitting?”

“His Grace sent word that he had been detained and that—”

“And that I should plan on dining alone,” she repeated Shay’s words from his study. No, not words—a warning.

So she took her place, helped into her chair by Henley. He went to the chafing dishes on the buffet table at the side of the room and returned with plates for her piled high with trout, duck, and all kinds of aromatic side dishes. Two wine glasses sat ready at her place, along with a plate of desserts to choose from when the main courses were finished.

She couldn’t bear to touch any of it, her appetite suddenly leaving her. But she also didn’t want to upset Mrs. Latimer and the kitchen staff after they’d put so much thought into preparing what were usually her favorite dishes, so she took her fork and simply pushed the food around to make it look as if she’d eaten. The large room was painfully silent except for the snapping and popping of the wood fire and the soft scrape of her fork against the plate.

When she’d decided that a proper amount of time for dinner had passed, she thanked Henley and asked him to send her gratitude to Mrs. Latimer, then excused herself. It was all she could do to keep the stinging tears at bay as she made her way to her bedroom.

Darla was waiting there to undress her. The young maid chatted up a storm about everything from the cold snap of weather to how the village had been decorated last month at Christmastide, and Sophie let her rattle on without interrupting. Darla had no idea how important tonight should have been for her or how to prepare her for it, and Sophie didn’t dare press.

When Darla left, Sophie curled up on a chair in front of her fire, where she had a perfect view of the door connecting her rooms to Shay’s, and waited for him to come to her. Their first night in their home—no longer some rented room in a posting inn, but the place where they would start the rest of their married life together. He no longer had an excuse to avoid their marriage bed.

Hours later, though, when the clock struck midnight, she was still alone. No sound came from his rooms. So she blew out the candle, crawled into bed, and desperately fought not to cry herself to sleep.

*

It was long past midnight when Shay finally returned, the house silent and dark. A single lamp glowed in the grand entry hall, and a small fire still flamed in the fireplace. Good. He strode up to it and held out his hands to its warmth. He was freezing. He’d lingered in the village as long as he’d dared before riding home, and the journey, even as short as it was, had been miserable.

He glanced up as Pearson came to greet him.

“The temperature has plunged,” Shay complained as he stripped off his hat, gloves, and coat and handed them over to Pearson’s waiting hands. “We’ll be lucky if the river doesn’t freeze over.”

“I was wondering if you’d make it back tonight through the weather.”

Shay’s mouth twisted. “Worried about me, were you, Pearson?”

“Worried about my pay, Colonel,” he muttered. “Funds run short quickly when the paymaster is dead. Learned that lesson the hard way after Waterloo.”

“Well, then, thank God you’ve got a new duchess to dispense the blunt if my sorry corpse is found frozen in the lane.”

Pearson gave a gruff chuckle and shook out the greatcoat.

Shay stared down into the fire, all the teasing of moments before vanishing from him. “And where is the duchess?”

“In her rooms, sir. Should I have the kitchen send up a dinner tray for you?”

“No. I ate at the tavern.” Then he’d spent the next four hours drinking so much watery ale that he had suspected he would slosh in the saddle riding home. When he couldn’t find any more men willing to play cards with him, even after he’d thrown game after game so his opponents would win, he’d had no choice but to come home.

“Then perhaps something for Her Grace. Is there anything specific she’d like?”

Shay bit his tongue to keep from cursing. He wasn’t daft, and Pearson wasn’t subtle. “I have no intention of waking the duchess tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” Pearson agreed. But the deflated way the soldier-turned-valet replied didn’t hide his concerns—or that the man had clearly taken sides already in Shay’s new marriage.

He and Pearson had been through hell together, first as comrades-in-arms, then when Shay was promoted to colonel and had Pearson named as his aid-de-camp. Together, they’d seen some of the bloodiest fighting on the Peninsula, only to suffer even more together after the fire. Shay would lay down his life for Pearson, and Pearson for him, but he had no intention of explaining his marriage to the man. It was no one’s damned business but his.

“Go to bed,” Shay ordered as he turned toward the stairs hall. “I’ll undress myself tonight.”

“Would you like to sleep in late in the morning, sir?”

Shay tightened his jaw. That wasn’t at all subtle. “No. I want to be up and dressed by dawn to ride out early.”

Not at all pleased by the confused expression Pearson failed to hide, Shay strode away and took the stairs three at a time to the second floor.

Yet he paused in the wide hall outside Sophie’s door. His chest ached, and he raised his hand, wanting to knock and wake her, if only to see her before he went to sleep in hopes of having pleasant dreams for once.

See her? He nearly laughed. That was a damnable lie. If she opened her door, with her hair loose and sleepy eyes, a soft night gown covering her bare curves beneath, he would do a hell of a lot more than simply look.

Then he would be damned even more than he was now.

He lowered his hand and silently moved on to his own door, doing his best to ignore the ache for her in his gut that went beyond simple physical release. He loved her, damn it. He loved every precious thing about her, from the way she laughed to how she coldly arched a brow when she was furious.

He loved her so much, in fact, that he couldn’t let himself anywhere near her. After all, she was the reason he’d killed his brother, as surely as if he’d shot a pistol ball into John’s chest. Because he’d been jealous. Because he’d wanted her for himself and would have done anything to have her. Including murdering his own brother.

He might have had to marry her to save her from Norton, but that was as far as their marriage vows could ever extend. Even if she didn’t scream in revulsion at the sight of his scarred body, he had no right to love her, and he sure as hell had no right for her to love him.

But he didn’t have to worry about that.

Because if she ever learned the truth of what happened that night, she would hate him for it forever. No matter how scarred he was.