Page 42 of Unraveled by the Duke (Scandalous Duchesses #1)

A lexander entered the tavern, which was located just off the Strand. A woman stood on a table and sang to the tune of a fiddle and a drum being played by two men who stood on either side. People sang along in a dozen different tunes and with as many different melodies.

The air smelled of ale and straw, with an undercurrent of peat and tobacco. He glanced at the woman and shook his head. Celia could not sing.

He moved through the common room, a tankard of warm, foaming ale in his hand, barely touched. The customers of the Worship’s Boot were a mixture of sailors, dock workers, and gentlemen like him.

He sat at a table where a card game was underway. The players were all men hiding from their wives and their ages, reveling in the reckless pastimes of youth. Maxwell’s hand thundered down on his shoulder.

“It is good to see you, my fine, married friend. And in such a place! I had despaired of ever seeing you anywhere but ballrooms and Vauxhall Gardens!”

Alexander sipped from the tankard before putting it down. He could tell that his friend had already imbibed more than one—could smell it on him.

“Turney, how goes the night with you?” he asked.

“Better for the return of my friend. Has married life finally lost its luster?” Maxwell asked, indicating to the dealer across from them that they both be dealt into the game.

“Never. I am here for an altogether different purpose.”

“And what is that? To increase the fame of this already famous establishment with your presence?” Maxwell drawled, turning his cards over by the corners.

“And how should I do that, exactly?” Alexander asked, casting his eyes around the table at his fellow players.

Two wore army officer uniforms. One was a rotund man with thick whiskers and a red face. The other was a young man with thick spectacles and long, dark hair that hung over his face.

“You must know. The most famous duke in London. Business partner of the Duke of Westminster. Philanthropist. And the only man to get the better of Sir Nathaniel Grimaire at court. Midas himself! You are celebrated, my friend. I do not know what has happened these last six months.”

“Marriage made me, old friend,” Alexander admitted, watching the next cards dealt and making his wager.

Maxwell looked again at his own cards and grimaced, turning them over. “Fold,” he said.

The young man and one of the officers, as well as the rotund man, made wagers. Alexander raised.

“Indeed? Marriage? To Celia? What was her name?”

“Frid. Daughter of the Earl of Scovell. And yes, I am aware it began as a marriage of convenience. But it has since become something more.”

Maxwell took a long swallow of ale. “Everyone knows the story, old chap. It was circulated by the gutter press. I have never seen the scandal sheets championing someone, let alone a duke! They are damnably revolutionary at times. However did you get them on your side?”

“Through my friendship with the Dowager Countess of Cleland,” Alexander said, raising again after another betting round.

Only he and the young man were still in the game. He watched him carefully, thinking that there was some familiarity in his dark eyes.

A very good disguise, but I see through you, Celia. The glasses are just enough to break up the shape of the face and distort the eyes. Makeup to change the curve of the cheeks and make the nose look bigger. Quite remarkable.

“It did not hurt that she became firm friends with my wife from their first meeting. She went beyond the call of duty after that.”

He called, and the young man revealed a hand that was superior to his. Alexander smiled, raising his tankard in salute.

He opened his mouth to speak when his eyes were drawn to a figure beyond the young man, sitting at another table and engrossed in a glass of wine and a game of chess. Engrossed except for the surreptitious glances he cast at Alexander.

A shock of brown hair was combed low over his face. A floppy brown hat covered one side of his face while baggy clothes disguised his figure.

Alexander colored as he realized his mistake.

Celia winked from beneath her disguise, moving a queen and declaring checkmate against her opponent. The man threw down his purse and raised his glass to her. She scooped it up and executed a courtly bow before she took her leave.

Alexander got up to follow, ignoring his friend’s protests. But by the time he had reached the door, Celia was nowhere to be seen.

He strode out to the middle of the Strand, turning slowly. A shadow flitted between two buildings, heading toward the river. Alexander gave chase.

He reached the steps leading down to the river in time to see Celia pushing a boat from the shore and into the river.

“I win!” she called out.

Alexander looked up and down the river but could see no other boats.

He certainly wasn’t prepared to swim in the Thames.

Then, he spotted a wooden derrick that hung out into the river, a wooden tackle and rope dangling from it.

If he missed his timing, he would look foolish, swinging back and forth while his wife sailed away.

He dashed along a jetty, grabbed the rope, and leaped out over the water. When he passed over the boat, he dropped, landing with a thump onto the gunwale. Celia was laughing as he pushed himself up. She tossed aside her wig and the coat she was wearing.

“I had you, admit it. I said you would not know I was there,” she crowed, sitting as Alexander loomed above her, causing the boat to rock from side to side.

“Briefly. But I recognized you at the end, though I doubt anyone else did,” Alexander countered.

Celia grinned, kicking off her boots and tugging the shirt she wore from beneath her breeches. She pushed herself off the seat and into the bow of the boat, its sides hiding her from the view of anyone watching from the riverbank. Alexander stepped closer, a titan straddling her where she lay.

She was now unbuttoning her breeches and slowly sliding them down her hips.

“I have not stood by and watched another man undress before,” Alexander admitted.

“I have much experience in undressing a man. My husband can attest to it.”

“And what would he think of us bobbing on the river, alone?”

“Bobbing? Is that what you call it?” Celia teased.

Alexander drank her in. She wore just a shirt now.

It hid her shape but stopped just below her hips, revealing everything now that her breeches were gone.

Alexander let his coat fall from his shoulders, then stripped out of his waistcoat.

He pulled his shirt up over his head, standing over his half-naked wife like a colossus, his hands on his hips.

She could see his manhood through the fabric of his breeches. See its fullness and size. See how the sight of her in a man’s shirt engorged it beyond what might pass for normal desire.

Celia smiled, slowly pulling her shirt over her waist. Her womanhood was revealed, dark between milky white thighs.

Then her flat stomach. Then her round, pert breasts.

As Alexander stooped to help pull the shirt over her head, she stopped him with a foot to his chest. She kicked him back, shocking him.

He stood, at bay for the moment at least, breathing hard and waiting.

Her foot ran down his stomach to his bulging manhood. Alexander bit back a groan as she rubbed back and forth, eventually bringing her other foot into play, his member between them.

Finally, the teasing became too much. He seized an ankle in each hand and forced her legs apart.

In the narrow space of the rowboat, Celia’s feet hung over the gunwales. She panted like a feral creature, her desire plain in the tight expression on her face.

“It is a full moon tonight,” she breathed.

Alexander looked up, seeing the bright white circle where it stood proud between clouds. “And?”

“For our pagan ancestors, this would be deemed a good time to conceive,” she said in a husky voice.

Alexander knelt, running his hands down the smooth inside of her thighs. She squirmed at his touch, moaning and biting her lower lip.

As he reached her sex, his hands reversed their direction, moving upwards and coaxing a gasp of disappointment. Down, and she arched her back, attempting to sit up so that she could reach for him.

Alexander pushed her back and then grabbed the rope, which lay in loose coils at the bottom of the boat. He looped it around her wrists, lashing them to the prow. Then, he lowered his head to her sex, peppering it with worshipful kisses.

Celia writhed and kicked, moaned and gasped, whispered his name, and finally, gloriously cried out. There were no words in that final cry, just unadulterated joy.

When Alexander looked up, she nodded fervently. “Now, Alexander. Now!”

The moment, when it came, was ecstatic. Such was the force of Celia’s climax that she ripped the rope free of its mooring, wrapping her arms around her lover, raking her nails down his back. She clung to him with her legs, dug her heels in to hold herself firmly beneath his bucking hips.

Afterward, they drifted on the tide. The night air caressed their naked skin. Starlight cloaked them, and the moon watched over them.

Celia felt safe in her husband’s arms. She thought of the guilt that had once been her constant companion. Guilt at what she had put her family through, at the disgrace she had brought to their door.

She no longer felt that guilt. She thought of her belief that she would never find love and did not need it.

How wrong I was!

And she thought of the man she loved more than anyone in the world. And would soon love second in the world. Second to the child that a deep instinct told her she would soon be carrying. A man who had set himself against love, seen it as weakness that he did not want.

How wrong he was!

Alexander shifted in his sleep, turning onto his back and causing the boat to rock gently in the water. The clouds had parted, and the moon rode alone in the sky.

Carefully, so as not to wake him, Celia took the cloth-wrapped bundle from beneath the seat, the bundle she had placed there earlier in the evening. Unwrapping it revealed paper, pencils, and charcoal.

This is how we began, husband: with me sketching something I should not and being caught. That was the first step on the road that led to you.

She smiled, studying her husband’s noble profile, and began to draw.

The End?