His azure eyes suddenly dropped to pin her, hard and merciless, and she lost her breath as she fell into his predator’s stare. It was like looking into the eyes of something inhuman, almost otherworldly. Her chest ached as she stared at him, the air still locked within her, but at the same time the place between her legs ached as well. She was suddenly made very aware that beneath the starch of her apron, the wool of her dress, and the bone of her stays, she had soft nipples that had tightened into points.
Then she inhaled, filling her lungs with sweet air, as he watched her still, his eyes half-lidded, and she felt an odd exhilaration, as if a gauntlet had been thrown down. As if they were adversaries, equal on the field.
Which was completely ridiculous.
Possibly she shouldn’t have indulged in that third cup of tea this morning.
“I wonder whom you work for, Mrs. Crumb?” he whispered.
“Why, for you, Your Grace,” she replied, holding his gaze.
He snorted.
She felt a bead of perspiration trail down her spine.
“Now away with you, my temptations!” the duke cried, suddenly animated.
He leaped from the bed and, catching up a purse lying carelessly on a table, poured a shocking amount of gold into the giggling women’s hands. He bundled them, still nude and laughing, clutching their clothes and shoes, out the door.
Bridget quietly stepped to the door and beckoned to a wide-eyed footman. She gave the man—Bob again—instructions to escort the women to the servants’ door when they were properly attired.
When she returned to the duke’s bedroom he was watching her, an ironic light in his eyes. “What an officious woman you are, Mrs. Crumb.”
“You’ll thank me when none of your possessions go missing, Your Grace,” she replied.
“Will I, though?” He strode, nude, to his desk, and, bending over it, afforded her a quite scandalous view of his muscular bottom. He seemed to have a dark mark of some kind on the left cheek. Good God, it looked like a tattoo. What—? “I have the most lamentable taste sometimes. It probably would be better if a few of my things disappeared. Why, Mrs. Crumb,” he drawled, and she snapped her gaze belatedly up to find that he’d turned back to her—damn it! “Were you ogling my arse?”
She opened her mouth and then wasn’t sure, exactly, what to say. Was he about to dismiss her or not? “I… I—”
“Ye-es?” He took one long stride toward her.
She was suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of what she’d until now successfully ignored: He. Was. Nude.
His shoulders were wide, his chest highlighted by pale-pink nipples drawn tight, with but a few curling golden hairs between. His torso narrowed in a perfect V to a slim waist and a shallow belly button. A thin line of slightly darker hair led to his genitals.
During his supposed absence Bridget had had plenty of time to study the life-size nude portrait of the duke hanging next to his bed. She’d long thought the dimensions of his manhood exaggerated.
They were not.
His cock swayed, ruddy and healthy, between muscled thighs. His testicles were lightly furred and comely—if such things could be called comely—and his legs were downright beautiful. Even his feet—his feet—were oddly lovely, long-toed and high-arched.
Those toes brushed her skirts and she hastily glanced up to find him standing far too close to her, a wicked smile playing about his mouth.
“Oh, Mrs. Crumb, such a look,” he murmured, his voice a deep purr, his bare chest brushing against her snowy white apron. “Why, I don’t know whether to guard my bollocks…”—his gaze dropped to her mouth—“or to kiss you.”
“You mustn’t embrace me,” she said quickly, her voice far more breathless than it should be.
His head cocked, his dark eyebrows rose, a corner of his mouth curled teasingly, and he leaned closer still as if considering the idea. “Mustn’t I?”
His hot breath whispered across her lips and she realized that she’d closed her eyes. Oh, God, she—
Someone squeaked, and Bridget was almost certain it wasn’t she.
Bridget opened her eyes, scurrying backward in a sadly undignified manner.
A slender youth stood in the doorway. He wore a proper brown coat, waistcoat, and breeches, but he had a red-and-yellow printed cloth wrapped about his head.
“Ah, Mehmed, there you are,” the duke said, as if he were used to being disturbed nearly embracing a woman while nude and—Good God—in a state of excitement.
Bridget hastily averted her gaze from the duke’s endowment, which had chosen to flaunt itself. Her face was hot and she clasped her hands before her to keep herself from pressing the backs of her fingers to her cheeks.
The boy at the door looked as embarrassed as she felt. He held a steaming pitcher of water, but he began to back out again. “You with whore, Duke. I go.”
Behind the boy, the duke’s valet, Attwell, appeared, looking not a little startled.
The Duke of Montgomery—the only person not embarrassed—burst out laughing. “No, no, Mehmed. Whores—at least mine—wear much more ornamental clothing than this.”
And he waved rather insultingly at Bridget’s dress.
Her lips pursed as her brain once again was engaged. “Who is this?”
“Mehmed, as I said.” Both Mehmed and Attwell entered the bedroom. The boy carefully set down his pitcher of water and Attwell crossed to the dressing room. “Mehmed is a follower of the prophet Mohammed and no doubt destined for hell, if the Christian philosophers are to be believed. Of course his people think that we’ll all end in hell, so I suppose in the end everyone will meet in a jolly sort of molten Babel. I ordered both Mehmed and Attwell to come to Hermes House from the inn they’ve been staying at.”
“But…” Bridget frowned. She’d met Attwell before, and indeed had seen him just this morning in the kitchen.
The duke glanced at her and then glanced again, a slow smile forming on his lips—a smile she did not like. “You didn’t realize Mehmed was in the house, did you?”
“I—”
“And you don’t like not knowing.” He grinned as he casually held out an arm and Attwell—at last, thank God—helped him into a garish purple silk banyan with a gold-and-green embroidered dragon on the back.
“It’s my job to be apprised of all that goes on within Hermes House,” Bridget replied. “Your Grace.”
“But you didn’t know he was here, did you?” the duke said in a very grating singsong voice. “Do you know, you’ve never told me your Christian name.”
“No, I haven’t,” she said, rallying. The man was the Devil in the flesh, but she wasn’t known as the best housekeeper in London for nothing. “When did you take Mehmed on?”
“He came with me when I returned to England from my travels abroad last year,” the duke said carelessly. “But then he was taken ill crossing the Channel, so I left him at my house in Bath to convalesce. Attwell fetched him to London in September.”
Bridget pursed her lips. The boy looked healthy enough now. “Will Mehmed be living at Hermes House, Your Grace?”
“Oh, I think so,” the duke said, widening his eyes in pretend innocence. “How else will he serve as my catamite?”
Attwell, arranging the duke’s apparel for the day on a chair, choked.
Bridget could not blame the valet. She herself merely narrowed her eyes at the duke.
He smiled at her angelically.
“What is catamite?” Mehmed asked. He was a very lovely boy with a dewy complexion, large brown eyes, and white teeth. At the moment he was busy assembling the tools for shaving on a small table.
“A person who likes cats,” Montgomery replied, drawing out a chair and seating himself in the middle of the room.
“I like cats,” Mehmed said promptly.
He poured hot water from the pitcher into a basin, wet a cloth, wrung it, and tenderly draped it over the lower half of the duke’s face.
Bridget cleared her throat. She had no
idea why the duke had originally asked her here—if not to let her go—but she had work to do. “Mehmed, I am Mrs. Crumb, the housekeeper. When you are—”
“How do you do!” She was interrupted by Mehmed stepping smartly forward and bowing, his upper body completely parallel to the floor, his arms plastered to his sides.
“Erm.” Bridget blinked as he straightened, smiling at her. “Yes. How do you do. I—”
“I am good!” Mehmed said, very loudly, and Bridget couldn’t help noticing that the duke appeared to be laughing under his damp cloth.
Attwell, for his part, was ignoring the proceedings. She’d found the duke’s valet an exceedingly phlegmatic man.
“I’m glad,” she said gently, but firmly. “When you are done helping the duke dress, please come to the kitchens and I will discuss with you your place in this house.”
She turned to go.
“Not so fast, Mrs. Crumb,” her blasted employer said, having snatched the cloth from his face. “I’m not done with you yet.”
She took a deep breath. Then another.
And another.
Then she turned with a small, polite smile pasted quite firmly to her face. “How might I help you, Your Grace?”
“Take a look at those,” said the maddening man, pointing straight-armed at his desk.
Bridget looked and noticed for the first time—well, there had been quite a bit of male nudity about previously—that there was a pile of jewels on his desk. She shot a questioning glance at the duke, now being lathered by Mehmed.
His blue eyes glittered back at her. “Go on. They won’t bite, I assure you.”
She humphed under her breath and stalked over to the desk. There were two necklaces lying there, both incredibly opulent. They were things that a duchess or princess or queen would wear. A lady’s maid might touch a necklace like one of these to put it around her mistress’s neck, but otherwise someone of Bridget’s station would never in a thousand years have cause to handle such wondrous things. The first necklace was made of diamonds and sapphires, tangled in a heap. The other seemed to be of rubies and huge, baroque pearls, interlaced with opals and other, smaller gemstones. She stared at them, wondering rather whimsically where the stones had come from. Far-off India? Some Persian mine? And the pearls? What exotic seas had they seen? Had pirates fought for them?
“Which do you like better?” came the duke’s voice from behind her, interrupting her silly musings. “I ask because I’m to present one to my fiancée.”
She looked up at that. “You’re to be married?”
He’d had his eyes closed as Mehmed carefully shaved him, but he opened them now. “Oh, yes.”
“But to whom?” she blurted.
What sort of woman would he chose as his consort? An aristocrat, obviously, but beyond that? She couldn’t imagine. Would he want a lady easily led? A woman renowned for her beauty or her wit? Or did he not care about such things at all?
“Now, now, I haven’t informed the bride yet and I do think she should know before my housekeeper, don’t you?”
Was he teasing her? He must be. No one, not even mad aristocrats, conducted his affairs in this manner.
“Well?” He was still watching her, lazily, like a well-fed cat, too sleepy to bat a mouse.
She blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Which do you like, Mrs. Crumb?” he said slowly—as if she were the one who was acting odd here.
Bridget could’ve said that it was quite inappropriate for a housekeeper to be picking out a duchess’s jewelry—if he was indeed speaking the truth—but what would be the point?
Instead she bent closer, carefully examining the pieces.
“You can touch them,” he said. “Hold them up, if you wish.”
She ignored him, but straightened each necklace. The ruby one was much gaudier, with several tiers of pearls and jewels.
She picked up the slightly more sedate sapphires. “These.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll have the sapphires returned to the jewelers right away and keep the rubies for my future wife.”
She stared at him.
He waited, smiling, but she’d learned patience and to bite her tongue—hard—from an early age.
Slowly she put the necklace back on the desk. “If that is all, Your Grace?”
“Oh, fine. Run and scrub the front steps or whatever it is you do.”
She swallowed an irrationally irritated retort—he was not good for her self-possession—and turned. The chatelaine at her waist made a faint tinkle.
“Was it a lover?”
She stopped and looked at him—very, very careful to keep still.
He nodded at the chatelaine. “The one who gave you that incredibly practical piece of ornamentation? Couldn’t he at least have afforded a ring or a locket to hang between your breasts? I’d wager you have lovely breasts under all that wool and boning.”
She stared down at her chatelaine. It was made of sturdy steel, but the central piece was a pretty blue-and-red-enameled disk. From it hung four chains, each with smaller enameled disks matching the main one. Suspended on the chains were a ring of keys, a tiny pair of scissors, a very small, very sharp folding knife, and her watch. Not all housekeepers had chatelaines, but many did. Though few had one as pretty as hers.
And he was right: it had been a gift.
She met his gaze, her own, she hoped, showing nothing. “If that is all, Your Grace? I’m afraid I must be about my work.”
Behind her the door opened. “Your Grace, a letter.”
Bob hurried past her with the letter, which the duke immediately tore open.
And then he said something in another language that made Mehmed jump back from him.
The duke looked up, though he did not seem to see her or anyone else in the room. “My sister is marrying a bloody, goddamned commoner.”
VAL PULLED HIS tricorne lower as the sedan chair jolted and swayed through the London streets. A risk to be on the streets in broad daylight before the King had submitted to his terms, but needs must. He simply couldn’t let darling Eve marry Asa Makepeace. The man was a mountebank, the owner of Harte’s Folly, a pleasure garden that Val had chosen to underwrite for reasons of his own, and of all ghastly things, a beer brewer’s son.
Val had put his half sister, Eve, in charge of the finances when he’d supposedly left town.
In hindsight that had been an obvious mistake.
Eve was a shy woman. A woman who had spent years hidden away from the world, traumatized by their shared past. True, she was also stubborn as a mule when she wanted to be, but he never should’ve put her in the position of facing off against Makepeace. He’d obviously proved too overwhelming for her. God only knew what the pleasure garden owner had done to Eve to make her agree to marry him.
Val growled under his breath as his chairmen turned into a quiet street and then down the side of a house. He climbed out of the chair and rapped smartly at a side door with his cane.
A tall man of African descent, wearing livery and a snowy-white wig, answered it. His name was Jean-Marie Pépin and he’d been hired by Val himself to guard Eve.
“Your Grace,” Jean-Marie intoned in a bass voice, his face curiously expressionless. For a moment Val had the oddest feeling that Jean-Marie wasn’t going to let him in the house.
He raised a ducal eyebrow.
The footman bowed his head and silently backed in, opening the door. “She is in ’er sitting room.”
Val nodded curtly and bounded up the stairs, bursting through the door and into Eve’s inner sanctum as he said, “Whatever possessed you, dear girl to—bloody hell, what is that?”
For on his entrance a massive—and massively ugly—dog had risen to its feet in a not entirely welcoming manner.
“That’s my dog, Henry,” said Eve from behind her desk, as blithely as if she were announcing that it was a sunny day.
Val glared at her. The last he’d heard she’d been deathly afraid of dogs. “You don’t
have a dog.”
Eve raised her eyebrows. Despite their blood relation and their father’s golden hair and blue eyes, she was a plain woman, her face dominated by her mother’s overlong nose. “I do now.”
He stepped around the beast, keeping his eye on it. “And that’s not all you have—or so I’ve heard.”
She looked wary. “When did you return from the Continent, Val? I had no word that you intended to return. In fact, I thought to journey there myself to find you.”
“Before or after you married Asa Makepeace?” Val shot back.
“After, actually.”
He stared at her. She didn’t act like a damsel bullied into marriage by a rogue gold digger, but he knew his sister’s history. Eve simply wouldn’t willingly marry a man as randy as Makepeace.
“Is he forcing you?”
She actually looked shocked. “No, of course not. Why would you think such a thing?”
“Because you’re the daughter of a duke—even if a bastard—and he’s a common ruffian.” Val flung out his palm. “If marriage is what you want, darling, I can find you someone much better. Someone titled at the very least.”
“I don’t want someone whom you consider better,” Eve said, and her voice actually rose. Her cheeks had bloomed pink as well. Perhaps Makepeace had drugged her in some way? Val had heard in his travels to the Levant tales of drugs that could be used to persuade. “Val! Are you even listening to me?”
“Yes, yes,” he said distractedly. “Where is this paragon of a pleasure garden owner?”
“Here.”
Val swung around at the male voice.
Asa Makepeace stood in the doorway, big and burly, in breeches and shirt, but not waistcoat, coat, shoes, or stockings. He’d quite obviously come from bed.
Eve’s bed.
Val saw red.
He had his left hand inside his waistcoat, his right one raised, gripping his cane, and was advancing toward Makepeace when he felt a small palm on his breast.
He looked down.
Eve peered up at him. “Whatever you were about to do, don’t.”
He stared into her eyes—the same blue eyes as his own—watching, searching. “He was in your bed.”
“Yes,” she said, unwavering, though that blush bloomed again. “He was. But he didn’t hurt me. He never hurt me, Val.” She took a breath. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”