Everything he had.
It was as if he’d struck his head, and opened his eyes to find that he was blind. Blind to everything but his body’s shuddering ecstasy.
When he finally lifted his face from her hair, he discovered gratefully he was still braced on his elbows—at least he hadn’t collapsed onto her like a water buffalo.
Would Merry have noticed that his mind had cracked? That he had bellowed like a madman?
What they had done together bore no relation to the purposeful, genial intercourse he’d shared with mistresses. His mind shied away from the memories. The women were in the past.
He withdrew carefully and slipped to the side, pulling her head onto his arm, willing her to open her eyes and say . . . something. Tell him that she wasn’t disgusted by the sweat that had rolled off him onto her. By the way he’d grunted, and lost himself. By the way his breath still sawed in his chest.
She didn’t say a word, and when he looked down, he discovered she was cuddled against his shoulder, fast asleep. Not so overcome that she couldn’t find words . . .
Peacefully asleep, fingers spread across his chest. Her hair was damp and as his heartbeat slowed, he heard the echo of her voice calling his name.
She woke as he gently washed her, but went straight back to sleep. And she didn’t stir when he decided that her bed was too narrow for both of them, gathered her up, and carried her to his chamber.
That night Trent lay awake for hours, looking at the delicate filigree of Merry’s hair, the strength of her jaw, the curve of her earlobe. The plump contour of her breast.
Around him, the world turned, but his internal world turned as well.
Everything shifted places.
He had cared for the dukedom because it was his duty. It was the birthright that he had won from his brother by rushing into the world. It was a prize—everyone told him it was a prize.
It had never felt like a prize. It felt that the thing that made his mother and his brother loathe him. Nothing was worth that.
Tracing swirls on his wife’s smooth shoulder, he discovered that Merry now stood at the center of his world, and the dukedom to one side.
When he finally drifted off to sleep, the world was in a new order.
Chapter Twenty-five
Merry woke the next morning feeling she’d forgotten something. She stretched, her mind hazy, body sore . . . body sore?
And she remembered. Jack. Trent. Husband. That . . . whatever that was called, what they did last night.
She turned her head . . .
Nothing but an expanse of linen sheet beside her. She was no longer in her own bed.
The ducal bedchamber was deeply masculine, with dark curtains tied to the four bedposts, heavy curtains at the windows, a crimson rug on the floor.
Then, with a thump of her heart, she saw, off to the side and one step up, an alcove, large enough to hold a desk and chair.
And Jack.
Merry sat up slowly, pulling the sheet to cover her breasts. Her husband was seated in profile to her, intent on whatever he was writing, wearing nothing more than a pair of smalls. His shoulders shifted fluidly as he wrote, hardly stopping to dip his quill in ink.
Every once in a while he would pick up one of the sheets of foolscap, consult it, and return to his writing.
“Jack,” she said softly.
He didn’t turn. She’d never seen such concentration. He thrummed with life and determination.
When he didn’t answer, she shifted to the edge of the bed and slid off, bringing the sheet with her. He raised his head only when she stepped up into the alcove, trailing the sheet like an echo of her wedding train.
Stared at her.
“I’m your duchess,” Merry prompted, grinning at the confused look in his eyes. “Remember me?”
Trent surged from the chair and before she took another breath, she was off her feet and on her back on the bed.
“My goodness!” she squeaked.
“Have you any soreness?” he demanded.
“No,” she breathed. It wasn’t entirely true, but that didn’t matter, not when her blood was suddenly heated and she felt empty with longing.
He bent his head and kissed her fiercely. “Nothing matters that came before this,” he said a while later. “Do you hear me, Merry?”
“Yes,” she gasped, arching her throat so that he could kiss her again.
“I’m going to take you now.” His voice was dark and low but there was a question there.
“Please,” she begged. Her breasts ached for his touch.
As if he knew her thought, one hand cupped her right breast and the other pushed her thighs apart.
“You’re wet with my seed,” he murmured in her ear. His fingers slid between her folds, sending jolts of feeling through her body.
“I should bathe,” Merry gasped, self-consciousness streaking through her.
“Later,” her husband said, a casual command. The broad head of his cock breached her, and she went rigid.
Part of her wanted to pull away, to run to the other room. The other side ordered her to wrap her legs around him.
A cry involuntarily burst from her as he thrust into tender territory.
His lips nuzzled her ear. “I love the way you respond to me,” he said.
Merry was responding, all right. Every inch of warmth in her body had fled and she was hanging on to him from pure instinct, her arms and legs tight. She had to tell him the truth. It hurt.
“Bloody hell,” he groaned. “You’re so hot and tight.”
She buried her face in his shoulder. She opened her mouth to tell him, but his hand was on her breast, and somehow that pleasure outweighed the pain. Trent moved to kiss her, and without thinking, her spine arched so that he slipped deeper inside her.
“That’s it,” he said, reaching down with one hand and pulling her leg higher around his hip.
He pushed forward and there was something about that angle that changed everything.
The harsh sting drained away. Her hands slid down his back, rounding his arse and hanging on. She felt surrounded by him, his scent, his growl, the strength of his arms and legs.
“You’re astonishing,” Trent murmured in her ear. He began thrusting faster and it hurt and didn’t. It burned and yet it was bliss. A shudder started somewhere deep in Merry’s body.
A sob broke from her throat, an undignified sound, but his big hand landed on her hip, caressing it, hauling her a little higher so that he created yet another kind of pressure . . .
Heat shot down her spine. But at the same time, it hurt. Her mind veered one way and then the other.
His fingers tightened on her hips, so much that they might leave bruises, and somehow that tiny pain assuaged the soreness, allowing pleasure to flood in.
Her body flushed suddenly, from her cheeks down to her toes, and she cried, “Jack!” startled, shocked by the joy of it.
Her husband’s chest heaved as a bellow ripped from his lips.
“Ow,” Merry whispered to herself a moment later, too softly to be heard. When he withdrew, tears sprang to her eyes. It stung like the devil.
“What’s the matter?” Trent whispered, his thumbs smoothing away the tears that had escaped down her cheeks.
“I’m a bit tender,” she confessed.
He frowned at her. “You should have told me.”
Merry felt that pink climbing her cheeks. “I didn’t want you to stop.” She wasn’t certain how to meet his eyes. Even thinking of the noises she had made turned her face hot.
Trent seemed not to notice. He wrapped her in his arms, nuzzling her neck. “I’ll ring for the bath to be filled, shall I?”
A moment later, she once again wrapped herself in the sheet and made her way stiffly toward her own room. Shortly thereafter Lucy appeared, and after her, footmen with buckets of steaming water.
An hour later, Merry felt much better. Lucy had discreetly poured salts into the bath water and she had soaked for a lo
ng time, thinking over the night. She was no longer the same person she had been the day before; everything was different.
Her aunt had maintained that intimate marital acts were pleasurable, and she had been right.
But marriage wasn’t merely about bedding. Though the truth was that she’d like to walk back into the bedchamber and catch her husband in his bath, water sluicing off all those muscles . . .
Right there, sitting at her dressing table, she felt herself blush. Luckily Lucy didn’t notice. Of course, she wasn’t going to look for Trent in his bath, not that he would even be in his bath. Almost certainly, he was already working.
She would go downstairs and meet the household, and then she would begin to explore the gardens. Getting to know the grounds thoroughly would take days; in fact, the very idea of nineteen acres to work with made her smile.
Days? It would take years!
She stood with sudden resolution and informed Lucy that she wished to wear a pair of sturdy walking shoes under her yellow morning gown, not the silk slippers that Lucy had laid out.
Once dressed, she was on the verge of leaving her chamber when she heard the clicking of toenails and George scampered in from the corridor, promptly lost his grip on the floor, and slid into the wall with a thump.
She’d actually forgotten all about George last night. How could she? “Hello, sweetheart!” she cried, leaning down to pick him up. “Where’s Snowdrop?”
“In the duke’s study,” Lucy replied. “His Grace called for a footman to take her away, but she scratched at the door until she was allowed back in.”
“Oh no,” Merry said, chortling with laughter. “I’m afraid that the duke doesn’t care for dogs, or at least, not for Snowdrop.”
Downstairs, Merry bade Oswald a good morning and allowed the butler to escort her into the breakfast room. It took a few minutes, but she managed to pry from him that he’d served the dukes of Trent in one position or another his entire life.
“My husband is extraordinarily fortunate to have you,” she said, finally. “And I am very grateful that you are here to ease my way into being a duchess.” She smiled at him.
Oswald bowed. “It will be my pleasure, Your Grace.” He hesitated. “Will you dine in the breakfast room daily, Your Grace? The former duchess took a light repast in bed in the morning.”
“I don’t care to eat in bed,” Merry said, looking at the eggs, sausages, toast, and blood pudding laid out on the sideboard. “If you’d be so kind, Oswald, I would like some eggs, a tomato, one of those sausages, and a piece of cheese.”
Then she seated herself, smiling her thanks when Oswald brought her a plate. “Mrs. Honeydukes is wondering if she might attend you after your meal,” the butler said.
“With a good housekeeper,” Aunt Bess had told Merry once, “one can survive even an act of God.” And then, at Merry’s inquiring look, “Oh, you know what I mean. Swarms of locusts. Rivers of blood . . . I can’t remember the rest.”
Oswald bowed and withdrew, leaving a young footman named Peter, who quickly overcame his reticence and began chattering about the local village, Aylesbury. He was describing the village baker—who wore a canary-yellow waistcoat and had ambitions to be an actor—when a scrape at the door interrupted him.
Peter abandoned his sentence mid-word and snapped against the wall as still as a statue. Mrs. Honeydukes entered the room silently. She was perhaps fifty, with an inherent severity wrought into the very bones of her face.
Merry came to her feet and walked around the table. “Good morning,” she said, offering her hand.
The housekeeper looked doubtful, but took Merry’s hand and shook it at the same moment that she bobbed a curtsy. “Good morning, Your Grace. I should like to offer the felicitations of the household.”
“Thank you,” Merry said. “I shall look forward to meeting everyone in the next few days, but in the meantime I would be grateful if you could extend my thanks. But for the moment, Mrs. Honeydukes, I presume you have many things to teach me about the house, and we shall spend a part of every day together. Won’t you please have a seat?”
“That would not be my place, Your Grace,” the housekeeper said, clearly shocked to her core.
Merry smiled and said, “Mrs. Honeydukes, do you know anything about me, besides the fact that I am the new Duchess of Trent?”
“No, I do not, madam.”
“The most pertinent fact is that I am American.”
As well as the mistress of the household.
A twenty-year-old duchess was still a duchess, Merry reminded herself.
Mrs. Honeydukes said, “I ascertained as much from your accent, madam.”
“As a nation, we are a plain-speaking people. And unaccustomed to the kind of formality that one finds in an aristocratic English household.”
Silence.
At length, the housekeeper said, “Ah.” She sat.
By a couple of hours later, Merry felt that she had a good sense of the household. Mrs. Honeydukes used words sparingly, “as if they were silver coins,” Aunt Bess would say.
But she seemed to be doing an excellent job as housekeeper and as time went on, she would probably get used to sitting down in Merry’s presence while they discussed the day ahead.
The cook, Mrs. Morresey, had also been with the household her entire life. Merry was beginning to see that English aristocrats had responsibilities more or less unknown in Boston: in short, they employed people whose relatives had been serving the family for generations.
“I’m not knowing how to make American food, Your Grace,” Mrs. Morresey confessed. “I’m not even very good with French, if the truth be told.”
“As long as you can make strong tea and hot crumpets, I’ll be happy,” Merry said. “I discovered crumpets when I came to England a couple of months ago, and I could eat them morning, noon, and night.”
Mrs. Morresey beamed. “My crumpets are as light as the air itself.”
After that, they sat down over a cup of tea and talked about important things, like how quickly the spices lost their freshness, and where in London to procure the best tea. Four crumpets and two pots of tea later, she and Mrs. Morresey were fast friends.
Once Peter had been recruited to ensure that George received regular outings and Oswald informed that no puppies were allowed in the drawing room, Merry felt all was well.
Which meant that she was finally free to explore the gardens.
Chapter Twenty-six
Soon after inheriting his title, Trent recognized that he needed a study large enough to manage the operations attached to the dukedom’s several estates. His father had got around this problem by leaving his secretary to scamper after him, pleading for signatures.
For his part, Trent took over the library, designating one large table for the administration of Hawksmede, another for the London house and parliamentary matters, and a third for the smaller estates and miscellaneous business like the slate mine.
In the last seven years, he’d spent whole weeks in that room, working from morning to evening. Sometime back in the Stuart days, when the family was relatively new, the windows had been hung with green velvet curtains, embroidered around the hem with interlaced small tin medallions.
The morning after his wedding, Trent found himself examining the room with new eyes. The curtains were faded, and the tin medallions were dull. Many of them were missing. He went to a window and cautiously tugged to see whether the curtain would fall, but it held.
Other than Cedric, his relatives rarely acquired new clothing, let alone drapery and furnishings.
As he and his secretary, Brickle, attacked the stack of mail that had accrued since he’d last been in residence, Trent listened to the heavy silence in the house. He’d imagined it would be different once he had a wife, but he couldn’t hear Merry anywhere.
By now she would be finished with her bath. He kept thinking about that, even as he signed contracts and read through a long letter describing a canal that might
make a great deal of money for the duchy—or might not, he decided, putting it to the side.
That afternoon, he was going to find his wife and they would go to bed.
During the day.
As it happened, Trent had never cared to remain through the night after an assignation with one of his mistresses, and he had never invited any of them to his house. Thus he had never made love except in the evening, even though, like any man, he tended to think about it all day long.
It was all different now. He had a wife. Moreover, he had a wife who appeared to have a healthy appreciation for bedtime sport.
He repeatedly lost his concentration, thinking about her, until finally he could bear it no longer. It had to be close to the midday hour.
“What is the time, Brickle?” he asked.
“Nearly eleven o’clock, Your Grace.”
He pushed back his chair. “Right. Time to stop for luncheon. No, let’s stop for the day.”
Brickle’s mouth fell open, but Trent headed for the door before he could offer a reply.
Merry was nowhere to be found. He stalked through the dining room, looking around with a twinge of discontent. The walls were hung with paintings blurred by layers of varnish and candle smoke. A study of two dead pheasants might as easily depict a bunch of feathery flowers.
His wife came from a new country. He had a shrewd notion that Bess and Thaddeus Pelford lived in a large house whose rooms were whitewashed from floor to rafter, and austerely decorated with furnishings that were newly made, not handed down through generations.
If he hadn’t found Merry, at some point he would have entered a ballroom and picked out someone not unlike Lady Caroline, but more tolerable. She would have come from a house just like this, where everything was old and nothing was pristine.
Hawksmede had forty-eight rooms and almost all of them had ceilings so high that they got lost in the gloom on a foggy evening. He turned to enter the drawing room. Looking with newly critical eyes, he noticed that the dark oak chairs lined up along two walls were tired and battered, like a regiment returning from a losing skirmish. Most of them probably dated to the reign of Henry VIII, so they had reason to look worn.