Page 17 of Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone (Dukes in Disguise #2)

Chapter Seventeen

For the next week, night after night, Nathaniel fought to win her.

He took on all comers, anyone who would challenge him in the ring, and beat them down for the chance to spend the rest of the night in Bess’s arms.

They didn’t always fall straight into bed; sometimes Bess asked Madame Leda to send up supper, and she would sit on Nathaniel’s lap and feed him from her own hand until he could not hold himself back from having her for dinner instead.

Sometimes they talked, carefully vague stories about their pasts that nevertheless made Nathaniel feel as if he knew her, and was known by her, better than anyone in his entire life.

The night before, after they’d burned through the initial clash of mouths and tongues and grappling, hungry bodies, Nathaniel had put his pants back on and Bess had donned his white shirt. She wore that and her mask, and nothing else. He’d taught her to spar, the basics of a fighting stance and how to hold her hands so she wouldn’t break her thumbs with the first hit, and how to throw a punch.

She’d taken to it surprisingly well, until the sight and feel of her wearing his clothes sent Nathaniel’s brain—and cock—surging down a possessive pathway that led them back to the bed.

Afterward, as the sweat cooled on their bodies and they curled together for warmth and closeness, Bess had asked about how he learned to fight the way he did.

“I know we’re not supposed to reveal anything about ourselves,” she’d said, “but you’ll forgive me if I have deduced, using the most basic of observations, that you are a gentleman. Fair?”

“An astute assessment,” Nathaniel had replied, amused. “What gave me away?”

“Everything,” she’d told him, her nose mere inches from his own. Her eyes laughed at him from across the pillow they shared. “But what I want to know is, how did a fine gentleman like yourself learn to brawl like a back-alley bruiser?”

He’d turned on his back to stare up at the canopy over the bed. He kept his voice light but he wasn’t sure what his face might do when he said, “When you’re the smallest boy at boarding school, about four years younger than the next youngest student, you learn quick enough.”

Tensing a bit—he’d told her some of this before, as himself. Would she draw a line between The Berserker and the duke?

Bess shifted to prop her head up on one hand. With her other hand, she traced a single finger along the sloping muscle of his shoulder, around the curve of his bicep and down his arm until she could clasp his hand.

He let out the breath he’d been holding. Let her tangle their fingers together and didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t holding on tightly.

“What sorts of things do boys get up to at those schools?” she asked. Her voice was as light as his, studiously so, but Nathaniel caught the slight tremor running under it.

She feared what he might say but wanted to give him the chance to talk about it if he wished.

“Nothing so very dire,” he said gently. “Made me offer my pudding up as tribute to the older boys, confiscated my sheets, stole my clothes and dunked them in the washbasin so I had nothing dry to wear. Silly pranks, for the most part.”

He didn’t mention that the pudding had been the least of it—that he’d spent the first two years at school subsisting on the crusts from others’ plates, a constant, gnawing pit of hunger in his belly. Or that missing bed linens in winter had meant a lot of shivering, sleepless nights on a bare mattress, and the pilfered clothes had resulted in harsh punishments from the schoolmasters for uniform infractions.

Somehow, from the fierce way she kissed his shoulder and said against his prickling skin, “But you fought back,” Nathaniel worried that she’d heard everything he didn’t say.

She was always far too perceptive for his peace of mind.

“I fought. Eventually, I won. Misery is a good teacher.”

She turned her head to press her cheek to his shoulder.

“I suppose I ought to say that those other boys were probably miserable too, in their turn. I ought to feel empathy for them. But I don’t. I hope you bloodied every nose in the school, or worse, and they all learned to keep well away from you.”

His avenging angel. Nathaniel liked it. “That is essentially what happened. And of course, I grew. By the time I left school, there was no one to challenge me. I had to look elsewhere to find a good fight.”

She’d hummed thoughtfully then, her body going lax and heavy against his side. The last thing she’d said before falling asleep was, “I wish I’d been there with you. I wish you weren’t alone.”

As unthinkable as it was to imagine lovely, loyal Bess in that cesspit of humanity masquerading as an educational institution, Nathaniel had found himself warmed by her reaction nevertheless.

Bess saw through to the heart of people, he thought.

The experience of being seen in that way—even though she didn’t know his true name—was thoroughly addictive. He would do anything to keep it. To keep her.

For the first time in his life, Nathaniel thought he could understand his own father. If this was how he’d felt around Henrietta…

Somehow, it had never previously occurred to Nathaniel that in order to do what his father had done, he must have felt something extraordinary.

Or if it had, he had discounted the idea that any mere emotion could be worth what his father had given up to have his happy life with Henrietta.

It no longer seemed such a terrible bargain.

Uneasy with the direction of his thoughts and the newfound stirrings of empathy for his father, Nathaniel had focused instead on the woman in his arms. He’d taken a deep breath of Bess’s hair, the sugared almond scent that followed her everywhere.

Bess tried to tell me , he’d mused. That night in the drawing room.

She’d said the late duke must have loved Henrietta a great deal. She’d seen directly to the heart of the matter, as she was wont to do.

She’d certainly seen more deeply into Nathaniel than he’d allowed anyone in his entire life—and she hadn’t turned away yet.

She kept coming back. For the past six nights, he’d had her. And it still wasn’t enough.

Today, Nathaniel had spent all afternoon running Lord Rumby to ground in his club, cornering the man and finally talking him round to voting for Nathaniel’s bill to fund the Foundling Hospital.

Thank God for work, or he’d be doing nothing but dwelling on the information Bess had shared about her past.

Bess was no widow. She’d never been married, though she had lost someone when they were young. Someone important to her.

On the way to White’s today, during the time he’d allotted himself to think about Bess, Nathaniel had decided it didn’t really matter whether she’d said vows in a church before losing that first love.

He could even understand why she would travel under the name Mrs. Pickford, for the protection afforded married women in the eyes of society. Even for the added respectability, when it came to passing herself off as Lucy’s chaperone.

It didn’t mean she’d misled him about anything else, necessarily. But it was certainly intriguing. Intriguing enough that he’d had to forcibly turn his mind away from the puzzle of Elizabeth Pickford to concentrate on his work.

Nothing less than the furthering of his most cherished goal would have sufficed to distract him from her. And if he’d spent any time in her company that day, it would have been all over.

Fortunately for Nathaniel’s sanity, Bess and Lucy had been busy with their own plans all week. Today, they had been engaged to attend a lecture followed by a supper in honor of a mathematician who had discovered some new realm of numbers—an event for which Nathaniel’s presence was neither required nor requested.

Right now, through the low-hanging haze of tobacco smoke and with the hum of the crowd in his ears, was the first time he’d seen Bess today.

It took everything he had not to stride across the ring to grab her and taste her lips. But instead they shared nothing more than a smoldering look before he applied himself to the business of knocking out Georgie “The Lad” Miller in three rounds.

Miller, a workmanlike but damned tenacious brawler, did not cooperate. It was nine brutal, exhausting rounds before Nathaniel managed to wear the man down enough to knock him to his knees. When Miller finally toppled over like a sack of spilled grain, Nathaniel blinked the stinging sweat from his eyes and touched his tongue to the copper taste of blood at the corner of his split lip.

Nothing hurt; the fight was still too near for that, but he knew that soon his hands would swell and throb. His shoulders would ache and burn. His legs would shake, especially the right knee where Miller had landed a vicious kick in the fifth.

But he had time. And she was here.

Or was she?

The place where she’d stood, head held high watching the fight, like a beacon in Nathaniel’s peripheral vision—was empty. Nathaniel scanned the crowd and found her speaking with Leda and Rufus by the back stairs.

As though she felt his eyes on her, Bess—or, Elizabeth, he should think of her that way to keep from slipping—looked up. He nodded at her, feeling strangely wrong-footed at this deviation from their usual routine.

Even the idea that they had a “usual routine” after only a week spent together. But what a week it had been.

She smiled, a burst of sunshine across the crowded tavern, and nodded back before disappearing up the stairs with Madame Leda. Nathaniel ducked under the rough rope that marked the outside of the ring and made to follow, but Rufus intercepted him with a slap on the back.

Impatient, Nathaniel barely spared him a glance, but Rufus blocked his route to the stairs with a cheerful forearm across his chest. Glaring down at the man, Nathaniel growled, “What?”

“Congratulations on the fight,” Rufus said jovially. “That uppercut in the third was a thing of beauty.”

“Get out of my way.” Nathaniel paused. “Unless…you know something I don’t.”

She was here. She’d gone upstairs. But perhaps she’d changed her mind.

“Ah, what could an old tar like me know that you don’t, guv? But you might like to give the ladies a moment. You know how they can be when a man blunders in and scuppers their plans.”

Nathaniel felt a bit of tension slide out of his shoulders. She still wanted him. It wasn’t over yet.

But now he had to wait.

Rufus handed him the shirt Nathaniel had stripped off before entering the ring, and Nathaniel shrugged it on.

“Come on, Berserker. I’ll stand you a drink.”

Nathaniel sighed and followed him to the bar. Patience had never felt so far from his reach. At least Rufus had a bottle of decent scotch whiskey he kept behind the bar for himself, to be shared only with the winners.

He dragged it out as far as he could stand to, but exactly fifteen minutes later, Nathaniel set his empty glass on the bar.

Rufus, who had left him severely alone once his first couple of attempts at conversation were met with one-word replies, looked up from the glass he was polishing and said, “Go ahead. She should be ready by now.”

Curiosity and impatience pounded in the back of Nathaniel’s skull as he took the stairs two at a time. It was strange to be the one knocking upon the familiar door this time. Anticipation made it a sharp, staccato rap.

He opened the door to find their room slightly less dimly lit than usual, by the light of not only their usual candle by the bed, but another on a small, spindly-legged table in the opposite corner that was set up next to an enormous copper bathtub.

Elizabeth stood beside the full tub, radiant in the steam curling up from the water. She looked well pleased with herself.

It was an expression Nathaniel particularly enjoyed seeing on her pretty face. He stepped further into the room.

“What’s all this?”

“It’s for you.” She hurried forward, hands outstretched like she intended to help him disrobe immediately. Though she put up no resistance when Nathaniel caught her to him for a kiss, instead melting very gratifyingly into his embrace.

“I thought you might like to bathe,” she continued breathlessly when he lifted his head. “The fight tonight went on so long and you worked so hard.”

“Mm.” He nuzzled into the fragrant coil of her honey-blond hair, tucking his face behind her ear and breathing in deep. “You must be tired of lying down with a man stinking of sweat and dirt from the ring.”

“Oh.” She gave a little shiver; Nathaniel smiled into her hair. “I like the way you smell. I mean, it doesn’t bother me. That’s not why I asked Madame Leda to arrange a bath. I just thought it would be nice.”

He relented, straightening and letting her go. “It would. Thank you.”

She assumed the sort of brisk, business-like air she’d had the night she wrapped his wound in the kitchen. “Let me help. Here, take off that shirt and I’ll see if Madame Leda can find something else for you to put on when you get out, so you don’t have to put back on dirty clothes.”

“Am I getting dressed again, after the bath?” he inquired mildly.

He loved the way she flushed but also held his gaze. “Eventually, I’m sure.”

That was enough, along with her proximity, to have his cock fattening between his legs as he stepped into the water. She noted it, if her small, almost feline smile was any indication, but they both ignored it for the moment.

She’d gone to all this trouble, arranging things for him. Nathaniel wouldn’t allow anything to ruin her plans. Not even his own desperate desire to get his hands on her.

Besides, he couldn’t deny that it was decadent to lower his body into the hot bathwater. It felt almost too good; Nathaniel found himself tensing up.

“Lie back,” she encouraged him, kneeling eagerly beside the tub and tugging at his hand until he leaned against the side of the tub and laid his arms along the sides. “There! Isn’t that nice?”

“Yes.” He grimaced at his own taciturn grunt. “It feels good. Thank you.”

She went pink and pleased but shook her head. “You don’t need to keep thanking me. Just enjoy.”

Nathaniel swallowed and tried to relax. He concentrated on each sore, aching muscle and thought about how the warmth of the water seeping into it would help it release.

He didn’t realize he was frowning until her voice came from beside him, small and disheartened. “You hate this. I can leave you alone to wash and get out, if you prefer.”

“No!” Damnation, he was ruining everything. “I swear, Elizabeth, I’m not unhappy.”

She gave him a narrow look from behind her mask. “Then why are you scowling so ferociously? You look more like you’re braced for torture than enjoying a lovely bathe.”

Nathaniel searched for words. “I’m not used to…when a fight is over, I simply go home. Alone. Before you, there was none of this. Softness. Warmth. I’m afraid I’m not suited for it.”

Afraid of how much colder and darker his life would be when she left and took the warmth with her.

“Don’t waste your kindness on me.” Nathaniel tried to smile, to take the harsh edge off his tone, but he could tell he wasn’t terribly successful by the consternation on her face.

“Kindness is never wasted,” she said, with a simplicity that made something lodge tightly in his throat.

He was still working to swallow it down when she abruptly stood and began to unbutton the back of her gown. She stripped herself with that same brisk efficiency, no coy teasing for Bess, and in seconds, she was raising one slim, smooth leg to step into the tub. He thought she planned to sit opposite him but?—

“Budge over,” she said, prodding him in the shoulder with her bare toes.

Bemused, Nathaniel made room for her to settle in behind him. She hummed at the heat, shivering slightly, which he felt as a quiver in her breasts where they brushed his back. His cockstand raged instantly to full mast. The water swirling against his hyper-sensitive skin was a seductive tease.

Her long, slim legs lay along the outsides of his. If he shifted, he could feel against his back the gentle prickle of the dark blond hair that covered her sex.

Nathaniel had his doubts about how much more relaxing this configuration might be, but when Bess’s arms came around him, coaxing him to lie against her with his head on her shoulder, he found himself sighing into it.

“I said I’d help, didn’t I?” She picked up the linen cloth from the side of the tub and stroked it down his neck and across his chest under the water. The edge of the fabric scraped gently across his nipple, sending a ripple of sensation down to his cock.

There was no sound in the room apart from the gentle lap of water and the near-silent swish of cloth over his skin. Nathaniel felt her steady heartbeat thudding into his back; his own heart slowed to match it, beating together in time.

Bess washed as far as she could reach, down his chest and over the ridged muscles of his abdomen, around the sides of his ribcage to swirl lazy circles over his hips.

His cock flexed hopefully, untouched yet so near to her hand. His hips wanted to lift, to move, but he held perfectly still in the clasp of her arms and legs and her whole, lovely body.

He would’ve died before he moved and risked her letting go.

She rewarded him by gliding the cloth over his red, straining erection. Gasping out a groan, Nathaniel gripped the curled edges of the copper tub tightly, bracing himself.

But she didn’t tease. She washed him gently, thoroughly, then dropped the cloth and got her hand on him.

Pumping slowly and firmly, she drew the pleasure up and out of him in a jerky, shaking, teeth-clenching rush.

She twisted her unaccountably strong fingers round the head on the upstroke, her thumb teasing at the sensitive slit, and he grunted and came with a force that curled his toes under the water.

Before he’d even caught his breath, before the pearly white drops of his spend could even disperse in the bathwater, he’d twisted to haul her into his lap.

* * *

Water sloshed out of the tub and Bess yelped in surprise before he settled her, legs splayed around his hips.

“This was for you,” she protested with a breathless laugh. “I can wait.”

“I can’t,” he growled, his fingers digging into the softness of her buttocks and dragging her sex against the hard ridge of his pubic bone above his still half-hard prick.

She writhed a bit to feel it more, the way the crisp hair there abraded her most sensitive parts and made her want to grind down on him. With his hands, he encouraged her to move. Bess was vividly aware of the press of his fingers and the way they pulled her buttocks apart, ever so slightly, just enough to let the warm water lap against a secret part of her that sent sensation quaking through all her limbs.

She wriggled hard enough to slip one of her legs between his and suddenly, his thick, muscled thigh was pressed right where she needed it.

All of that, combined with the rapt expression on his masked face as he stared up at her dripping wet breasts and flushed cheeks had Bess stirring her hips in a wanton frenzy of motion that built and built until she shuddered into ecstasy and collapsed against his chest, still twitching.

When Bess’s spine had regained enough structural integrity that she could sit up again, she retrieved the cloth from the bottom of the tub.

They washed each other with languid sweeps of hands and a tiny sliver of soap that smelled of attar of roses.

The water had gone stone cold by the time they dragged themselves from it, shivering and holding onto each other for balance on the slick floor.

“Get into bed,” she told him, already looking for something to wipe up their spilled bathwater with.

“Leave it,” he said, pulling at her hand, his quicksilver eyes on her warming Bess through better than the bath had.

“I can’t do that! Someone might slip.”

“It’s only us here,” he pointed out, cocking his head to study her closely.

Bess shifted her weight, suddenly aware of her nudity in a way she’d hadn’t been even sprawled atop him in the bath.

“It will only take me a moment,” she said stubbornly, and he watched for a heartbeat longer before nodding once, decisively.

Turning to the bed, Nathaniel dragged the quilt up and dropped it onto the wet floorboards, mopping it about with his bare feet. “There. Now come to bed.”

Bess shut her mouth and went.

It wasn’t until much later, after he’d licked his way into her again and sent her flying apart, her breath coming in sobs and her heart thundering in her ears—after he’d surged up and covered her while she was still coming, the deep, thick intrusion of his prick spinning her higher and making it last and last—that he pulled her close and kissed her.

Bess was struggling to stay awake long enough to return the kiss when he said, “You don’t always have to be the one to take care of everything. To smooth things over, do what’s expected, to make things nice and tidy for everyone else. You can be a mess, sometimes.”

Her eyes popped open. The darkness of the room wavered before her, close and intimate. A space where she could say anything. Hear anything. From this man who didn’t know her at all, and yet knew her better than anyone else alive.

Bess’s eyes burned, but he wasn’t done.

“I’d still want you if you were a mess,” he said slowly, devastatingly. “If the entire rest of the world burned down, I’d still want you.”

Bess let out a shaky breath and clung to him, more tightly than she usually allowed herself.

It was too much. She couldn’t be expected to bear it.

This man. This duke. What was he doing to her? Did he even know?

Did she?

“That’s easy enough to say, here and now,” she croaked, her heart strangling in her chest. “In this private room set apart from the rest of the world. But if you knew who I really am? You’d never touch me again.”

His arms tightened around her as though he wanted to argue, to tell her she was wrong, but Bess kissed him quiet and settled back against his chest. She didn’t want to hear it.

Because he didn’t know. He couldn’t ever know.

What he said could not be the truth. It was purest fantasy, and Bess…Bess had never had the luxury of living in a fantasyland. It was reality she had to contend with.

And her reality was that her entire life was based upon doing what was expected. What was needed. By others.

If she let herself believe she could have more than that, she risked losing everything she did have. And what would be left? A few stolen nights of passion, nothing more.

Because this could never, ever be anything more than the briefest—the sweetest—of fantasies.

She fell asleep in his arms, with silent tears on her cheeks and a sharp awareness of the danger she was in stabbing at her heart.

The next night…she didn’t go back to The Nemesis.

The adventure was over, Bess told herself, lying alone in her bed at Ashbourn House. It had to end here, before she was lost so deep in the woods that she could never find her way home.

And if the word home no longer conjured up an image of the thriving little coaching inn back in her tiny Wiltshire village, but instead the precise angle and scent of the hollow of a certain duke’s throat, well. At least Bess would always have her memories.

Too bad it felt, for the first time, like memories wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm.