Page 14 of While the Duke Was Sleeping (England’s Sweethearts #1)
Rhett sat on the floor of his bedroom, his back against his bed, his shoulder resting against the bedside table, the light from the lamp above illuminating the pages of the book he was reading… kind of reading. Not really. He’d get halfway through a page and catch his mind wandering—to his brother, who had shown no signs of waking despite their best efforts; to Meg, who was keeping a midnight vigil; to Jac and Winnie, who were in bed when he last checked on them. It was nearing two in the morning, and he should sleep, but when he closed his eyes, images of a strawberry-blonde conundrum appeared, with soft lips and a hard shell he was determined to crack.
Normally, he would have delighted in such images. His imagination was a constant, reliable source of pleasure that he appreciated, but not now. Not tonight. Not when his imagination seemed fixed on a woman Rhett could not even entertain the idea of having. If Della was an unmarried lady of the ton , however delightfully she might curse, that immediately put her out of contention for one of his dalliances. That she was Peter’s fiancée added another layer of impossibility.
Whatever his feelings for his brother, Rhett would not betray him. Besides, what woman would break off an engagement with the duke for Rhett—a second son with nothing to his name other than a series of rollicking good stories and a sense of humor?
No, he needed to put Della firmly out of his mind, so he turned back to the novel, looked for the last thing that felt familiar, and sighed when he realized nothing did, before beginning to read from the top of the page again.
Was it his inattention or something else that dragged his gaze from the blur of words in front of him to the door? It wasn’t a sound; the room and the corridor beyond were silent, but the crack beneath the door shone yellow, the shadows on the wooden floor shifting with the rhythm of footsteps.
The servants had no reason to be in the family wing at this hour, and none of his sisters were capable of moving so silently, which left one person. With equal stealth, he climbed to his feet and took hold of the lamp, turning it down until it gave only the barest hint of light, enough to see if you knew where you were going, but not enough to attract attention, hopefully .
The sliver of light had vanished. He crept to the door and slowly, quietly cracked it open.
Della was moving swiftly, faster than he’d expected. He was still half convinced she wasn’t who she claimed to be. Granted, the discovery of Peter’s journals had given him pause. It had been there on the page in his brother’s handwriting—he was proposing marriage to Lady Cordelia Highwater, whose blue eyes and red hair would look regal on a future heir, whose hips promised satisfactory childbearing potential, and who appeared of relatively sound mind and sharp wit.
Sound mind and sharp wit, indeed. Della had proven intelligent and resourceful. He had a great deal of admiration for a woman who could so quickly turn to a solution rather than dissolving into her emotions. But despite his brother’s words, Rhett could not reconcile the woman he’d seen glimpses of—kissing him in a dockside tavern, swearing in multiple languages, proposing audacious plans to wake Peter—with his knowledge of young debutantes.
And now she was creeping through the house for no good reason. In one hand, she held a lamp, in the other, a small basket that barely swung as she moved. The woman was a bloody ghost. Perhaps she was a ballet dancer, though she seemed too well endowed for that.
Whatever experience caused it, the way she glided silently was one more example that she was not what she said she was.
Snuffing his flame entirely and relying on only the wall sconces and the leftover glow from her moving lamp, he followed her, slowly gaining ground as she turned corners, descended stairs, and strode quickly through the foyer with furtive glances. Every time her head flicked over her shoulder, he flattened himself against the wall. Thank God for the charcoal-colored bed clothes he wore. In the shadows, he was almost imperceptible.
When she crossed the foyer, he expected her to head down the east wing to his brother’s study. He’d interrupted her earlier; that much was clear. Perhaps she was off to finish what she’d started. Which was what, exactly? Marriage machinations of young ladies of the ton rarely involved creeping through their target’s home in the middle of the night, unless it was to force a scandal, and Cordelia did not need to do that if Peter had already proposed.
She had been at Peter’s desk. Perhaps she worked for one of Peter’s business competitors, and she was scouting for inside information. Perhaps she was a spy working for a foreign state. Peter was one of the most powerful men in England, and she was abnormally good with languages. She might not be English at all.
While he was trying to determine what she wanted from Peter’s study, Della turned in the opposite direction, downstairs.
Blast. What the devil was she doing?
He shortened the gap between them to not get turned around. She found her way to the kitchen easily. Too easily. As if navigating belowstairs was second nature to her. No young lady of the ton was that comfortable. Upon reaching the kitchen, she hefted the basket she’d been carrying onto the long workbench that ran almost the entire length of the room. The moment she turned, she would see him.
He stepped into the light before he could be caught, swinging the belt of his banyan. “Hungry?”
As she swung to face him, her fists balled. Proper fists. Thumb on the outside, half raised, the right hand pulled close to her chest as though ready to strike.
“Whoa,” he said, holding his hands up. “I was simply inquiring about your midnight cravings.”
“Rhett.” Her shoulders eased, the crease between her brows softened, and she let out a whoosh of breath. “Why are you creeping around the house at two in the morning? Explain yourself.”
Explain myself? “Funny thing, that. I was in pursuit of a woman who was creeping around my brother’s house at two in the morning. Such suspicious behavior, don’t you think? What reason could there be for it?”
Della colored, her hand traveling to the basket beside her. For a moment, he thought she’d take it and flee. Instead, she flipped open the lid. Her nose wrinkled in a charming expression. Charming until the scent of what was inside wafted to him.
He clasped a hand over his mouth. “What the devil is that?” It smelled like horseshit and rotten eggs.
“It’s my new plan.”
“Plan for what? Gods, woman. Who are you? And what did my brother’s servants do to deserve such a prank?”
A muscle ticked along her jaw. “It isn’t a prank.”
“Is it revenge? An assassination attempt?” He swayed away from her as the implication hit him. “What are your intentions?” All this time, he’d thought she was trying to ensnare Peter, or take advantage of him—steal from him, perhaps. As he held back a gag, the idea that she could actually mean his brother harm hit as hard as the nauseating package she possessed.
He rolled his shoulders and set his feet. If she meant to hurt his family, she’d discover that he was not above hitting a woman. His stomach churned. At least, he was not above manhandling one. He could detain her without landing a blow.
“I plan to wake the duke. It is time. I just need to add some vinegar and boil it.”
“Like smelling salts?” Now that his senses had adjusted to the rancid odor, he realized her idea made far more sense than a murder attempt. “Like vile, putrid, I-want-to-vomit smelling salts.”
“Actual smelling salts didn’t work,” she said, pulling out wrapped packages from the basket and setting them down. “His nose did twitch, though, which gives me hope that if the concoction is vile enough, he will wake.”
It was genius. A horrible, mad genius, but still genius. “You plan to boil that here in the kitchens? In one of the cook’s saucepans, I imagine.”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“Oh, the cook is going to hate you. Every meal you eat from here on out will be a gamble.”
The grimace she gave suggested that the thought had occurred to her as well. “Perhaps you would volunteer to taste test my meals for me for the duration of my stay?”
“Like the queen’s bodyguards? Hardly likely.”
“But you will not stop me?”
“No.” It might work. The gods knew that smell could make even a skunk retch. It reeked worse than the time he’d been spat on by a llama in Greece. He’d been unable to find a bed that night. No one would even let him sleep in the stables.
If there was even a chance her plan might work, he had to take it. Peter needed to wake. “No, I will not stop you. In fact, I’ll even help.”
He would have been well within his rights to turn on his heel and leave her to it. To escape from it. From her. But there was something about the way her braid hung over her shoulder—raw, innocent, undone—that hooked across his heart and snagged. That was how she wore her hair at night. If they married, that strawberry-blonde braid with its green ribbon and curl at the end would lie on the pillow next to him for the rest of his life.
For some reason that was not reason at all but madness, he wanted that. He yearned for it. For the first time in his life, the thought of going to bed with one woman forever was a vision he wanted to hold on to. And not any woman. This one, who swore like a sailor and smelled like lemon, when she wasn’t holding an infernal concoction at least.
She smiled and his heart did somersaults. “If you would be so good as to fetch that saucepan, it would be much appreciated.” She gestured to the pan tucked away in the corner on the highest shelf. Smart. It was dull and battered and clearly rarely used. The cook might not even notice it was missing.
She frowned as she took it from him. “We need a damn llama,” she muttered.
“Excuse me, what?” This was the most blatant example yet of her reading his mind. Perhaps she was a psychic.
“Llamas. They are just… foul. Don’t get sucked in by their cute faces. I make it a rule not to get within a hundred feet of one. Not since—” She shuddered. “Just trust me on this.”
And in that moment, he did trust her. Whatever, whoever she was, this moment wasn’t faked. Like her earlier admission that she had been lonely, this was the genuine Cordelia. Perhaps the Duke of Thirwhestle bred llamas on one of his estates. Perhaps she’d experienced the horror of the llama at a country fair. Both explanations were just as plausible as his being spat on by the beasts at a market that ran alongside the Greek port of Piraeus.
The stove was already lit, coals burning low, ready for the kitchen maid to add fuel to it first thing in the morning. Della ducked out the door that led to the kitchen gardens and returned a moment later with kindling and logs. It took her mere seconds to get the stove firing.
“You know how to do that well.”
She arched a brow. “You don’t know how to stoke a fire?”
“I—” Damn. “I do, actually.”
“Then why are you surprised that I’m also in possession of basic living skills? Is it so impossible for a woman?”
Impossible? No. Unlikely? Yes. “I traveled the continent without a valet for years. Self-sufficiency was a necessity if I wanted to stay warm. Where did you learn such a skill?”
She smiled tightly. It didn’t touch her eyes. “A housemaid stokes the fire in my chambers every morning. One only needs to watch a handful of times to learn the basic principles.”
That was true. If he dragged Jac downstairs and asked her to do the same, she’d do it. She’d complain at him the entire time, but she’d be able to get the stove roiling.
He tried to shake off his suspicions and focus on the task at hand. “What is our first step? Boiling water?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to dilute it.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“I thought we’d add vinegar and then set that to boil. You check the pantry while I combine the rest.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust but got to work.
As Rhett checked the labels of the pretty glass bottles in the pantry, he realized that this was perhaps the most interesting thing he’d done with a woman. When he’d seen Della on the docks, he’d thought her beautiful, a goddess, a creature of sublime perfection. When she’d kissed him in the tavern, he’d thought her captivating, spellbinding, a woman unlike any he’d ever met. Tonight, she was all of these, but also intriguing, capable, and unexpected. She still might be an assassin, but she was a beguiling assassin.
“Thank you,” she said as he handed her the vinegar.
She placed it on the counter, away from the edge, leaning toward him as she did so. Somehow, bizarrely, underneath the layers of rotten egg and excrement, the fresh scent of earthy lemon hit him. It warmed his breath and pooled in his belly. He caught himself drifting closer to her.
Was it his imagination, or did she drift toward him as well?
She straightened and poured the vinegar into the doomed saucepan, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to her.
“Truth. How do you know to do this?”
“Boil vinegar?”
“Any of it. From the beginning, you’ve had a plan for every setback.”
A single shoulder hitched, and she did not meet his gaze. “One could argue that since the duke is yet to wake, I don’t know what I’m doing at all.”
He edged closer to her without planning to do so. It was just an inch. It was only an inch. Gods. “You got him hydrated this afternoon. Even the doctor hadn’t done that, and you’ve had plenty of ideas with solid foundations. How?”
Wrinkling her nose, Della reached for the bowl in which she’d added the rest of the concoction. “Honestly, I practice a lot of things in my head. In fact, I probably spend far too much time thinking about what I might do if certain situations arise.”
“Like an unconscious duke.”
She snickered at that, and he felt absurdly pleased to have made her laugh. “Exactly, although perhaps not precisely that.”
He looked around the room for a wooden spoon, spying them in a jug on the bench next to the saucepans. “Have any of these practiced scenarios ever come to pass?” he asked as he fetched one.
“Well, no. But it’s good to be prepared in case they do.” There was a hint of embarrassment in her tone. There shouldn’t be. It was actually quite adorable.
“Give me an example scenario, so I know during what emergencies I should follow your lead.”
She held out her hand, and he gave her the spoon. “Earthquakes.”
It was his turn to snicker. “Because England is beset with earthquakes.”
The vinegar was boiling now, and her brows were knitted in concentration as she poured the contents of the bowl into the saucepan. That was why she didn’t notice his visible jolt as she said, “I might not always be in England.”
He swallowed hard. “Truly, you would consider traveling?” Gods, there were so many places he could take her.
She gently stirred the concoction. “I want my own home. I want somewhere I can stay for as long as I want to. But yes, I can see myself traveling.”
Rhett smiled giddily. “In what other scenarios could I count on you?”
She returned his grin. “If ever there is a herd of stampeding cows, I have a plan.”
This time, it was her who swayed; he was sure of it. The hand that wasn’t stirring the mixture edged toward his until it was less than an inch away.
He couldn’t help himself; he grazed his other hand across her shoulder. She sighed and sank closer to him, making his heart thump wildly.
A pop sounded from the stove, and she jerked upright, wiping a stray hair from her brow and smiling awkwardly.
“The spoon will need to be thrown out too,” she said, turning back to the stove and giving the pungent mixture a stir.
He swallowed hard, trying to push back on the moment. “If this works, perhaps we can gift it to my brother as a memento. I’ll tell him you’d be mortally offended if he didn’t give it pride of place in his study.”
“The stench is never coming out of this.”
Rhett waggled his eyebrows. “I know. It’s such a shame that keeping it will be the only meaningful way he can show you his appreciation.”
Della snorted. “Are you truly the rapscallion you purport to be, or are you playing the part your siblings cast you in?”
“What came first, the chicken or the egg?”
Della frowned. “I—”
He cut her off before she could jab at the truth any further. Those bruises were tender enough without her poking them. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m anything other than what you see before you.”
“An irredeemable, irresponsible rogue… I don’t believe it. You said yourself, you have a hungry soul.”
He would make her believe it. The longer she held on to this positive impression of him, the more disappointed she would be when he failed.
He stepped close to her, close enough to see the slight flush that crept up her neck and the bob of her throat as she swallowed. He was close enough to feel the air heat between them and see her gaze lose focus. He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek. His cock shifted as she turned into him, her eyelashes, long and red and soft, grazed his fingers.
He hooked a finger beneath her chin and nudged until she was looking up at him, eyes wide and sultry, lips parted. Her tongue flicked across them, and his gaze arrested on the pink skin. Gods, what he wouldn’t do to claim those, press them against his, tease them open with his tongue, explore the parts of her she was determined to keep hidden.
Without thinking, caught in the gravitational pull of her heated gaze, he cupped the back of her head, sinking his fingers into the loose braid. For a moment, he stopped breathing completely, his reason utterly turned around by this inexplicable energy that thrummed between them. He lowered his face. Her lips were mere inches from his when her breath hitched, the slight gasp a gut punch significant enough to cause him to step back.
Only an irredeemable, irresponsible rogue took such liberties with his brother’s fiancée.
Then she stepped forward. Damn it. She leaned toward him, a whole body lean that spoke of wanting, needing, yearning. It was a lean that should lead to touching, grazing, kissing. It was a lean that made his cock stand at attention and his heart beat double-time. He flexed his hands, doing his best not to let them drift toward her waist. He had no confidence that if he touched her again now, he’d be able to let her go.
“You’re leaning,” he whispered.
His words broke the spell. She sprang backward. By reflex, he grabbed her arm to prevent her from backing into the hot stove. Her face turned beet red as she shook him off.
“See?” he murmured. “Totally irredeemable.” And it was. He was. He was everything the world thought him to be.
Della dragged a loose hair backward. “I think I’ve had all the help I need. Thank you.” Her voice shook as she spoke and she, usually so fearless and unflappable, eyed him warily.
It was a natural consequence of his actions—overwhelm a young lady with her own, unpracticed senses, and she was bound to want distance from you. It had even been his plan, so why the sudden disappointment? Why the feeling that he’d just scored a goal against himself?
Because you want her. And he did. He wanted her up against him; he wanted her in his bed; he wanted her sitting on the steps of the Colosseum; he wanted her in cramped ship’s quarters; he wanted her in the Uffizi Gallery. Hell, he even wanted her swimming in the filth of the Thames.
And that was terrifying, because she wasn’t his to want.
He gave a jaunty salute, an expression he hoped hid the maelstrom of emotion he was feeling, but the tune he whistled on the way out the door was an up-tempo version of a funeral march, because that’s what each step away from her felt like. He tried hard to not look back. He failed. At the edge of the light that pooled around the kitchen floor, he turned.
His strawberry-blonde assassin was tapping the wooden spoon against her palm, so deep in thought that she was mindless of the muck splattering against her hands.