The Scandalous Love of a Duke

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Katherine spun about to face Hetty, certain she was entirely pink. “Take this up to my room please, and would you fetch my spencer and bonnet, and my gloves.”

“No,” John interrupted.

Katherine turned.

“Hetty, is it? Your mistress needs none of that, it is cooler today, she need not fear the sun.”

“I have a fair complexion, Your Grace.” His boorishness annoyed her.

“Then a parasol will suffice.” His pale eyes glowed, daring her to challenge him.

She did not, and once the maid had gone, he whispered, “I want to touch your skin.”

Was this the price of her bonnet?

Her heartbeat thundered, as she realised she wished to be touched. She had always known she was base and sinful and weak, John was only proving what she knew, and if any man were to touch her, then let it be John.

Hetty was back in a moment, bearing the promised parasol, and Katherine accepted it with a brief thank you, realising her hands shook when she did so.

John smiled when she turned. His eyes said he needed her.

Her bare arm trembled when he took it.

He opened the French door and together they stepped outside. His grip was gentle. She felt cared for.

There was a little wilderness of wild flowers to the right of the garden, and he led her there as she opened her parasol and rested it on her shoulder. The chill summer breeze caught at her skirt and wrapped it against John’s leg.

He let go of her arm and instead raised his so she could lay her fingers on it. She felt firm muscle beneath the cloth of his morning coat. There was strength, security and support.

“You say you wish for freedom,” she said quietly, “but I still do not understand what you mean, John.” She was being gauche and provincial again.

“Just your company, Katherine, and perhaps your kisses.” His other hand covered hers as it lay on his arm. “We will be discreet.”

Discreet? Was she agreeing to an assignation then? “You make it sound as though you wish for an affair.”

He stopped and looked down at her, vulnerability and need burning in his eyes again. “An affair of sorts, an intrigue. But I shall not take your innocence. I’ll not hurt you.”

His gaze said, please do not deny me.

A rush of yearning swamped her heart.

He began walking again, looking ahead and not at her.

Oh John. John! She remembered that day long ago when she had watched him in the lake and felt desperate to touch him. If she did this, she could touch him and she could kiss him. If she did it, the pain buried in her soul for years would have ease.

John! She ached for him. How could she say no? She had always known he could never offer her marriage, but he could offer her this andshe could take it.It was what she’d longed for. Why say no?

As they neared an ancient oak, John’s arm slipped from beneath her hand and then he caught a hold of her arm again and drew her behind the broad trunk, then pressed her back against it.

Her parasol fell and tumbled across the lawn, blown on the wind, as his lips covered hers, gently at first, but then the kiss became more insistent.

His body was barely an inch from hers.

One of his long-fingered hands braced against her cheek.

John!

She kissed him back, her tongue dancing with his, learning from his.

His other hand pressed against her lower back. While hers gripped his morning coat, clinging to him.

The storm of emotion she could feel in him was bitter need.

His mouth left hers and he began nipping beneath her chin in soft little bites. “I want you Katherine.” His breath was hot. “I can show and teach you things you will enjoy, but I swear I shall not take your virginity. I know you want me, too.”

I do!

His hand cupped her breast through her bodice, kneading it gently. It ached for him.

“Say yes, Katherine,” he whispered urgently.

His lips nipped at her neck and his hand rubbed her breast while his hips pressed against hers.

She wanted him, there, between her legs, she wanted to do the indecent things her mother had done to beget her. He was the only thing she had ever really wanted. Why hold back?

Her breath was shallow, and his hard and rasping.

His hand left her breast and moved to the place where she wanted him to be.

John!

He pressed her through the layers of her gown and petticoats, and her arms rose to his neck as he kissed her lips again, more passionately.

“Katherine,” he said into her mouth, sounding as breathless and desperate as her as his fingers rubbed her intimately between her legs through the layers of clothing.

She was so in need. This is what she had spent so many years craving. It was just the two of them in the world. It was wrong, she knew it was, but it felt so right and she did not care. She was like her mother. She had always been told it. This had been inevitable since her birth. The sins of the parent visited on the child.

Her body pressed against his, arching with its need.

It was so perfect what he did, how could it be wrong?

The feelings inside her whirled in a spiral of heated delight, rising up and overwhelming her, and then they seemed to break on a high tide that swept through her body, leaving her panting and weak-limbed.

His fingers braced against her cheek again as he kissed her more urgently for a moment.

She could no longer kiss him back.

Then he ceased, and when she opened her eyes he was looking into them, beautiful and all John.

He sighed, appearing to look right into her soul, the pale blue in his eyes glittering like melting ice.

Her fingers stroked through his soft, dark hair.

“That is what I can give you, Katherine,” he said quietly, as if that was everything. It was his love she wished for. “Will you meet me in my grandfather’s tower tomorrow at two?”

“Yes,”her answer was caught on the breeze and swept away. Yes.

Chapter Six (#ucb57aeeb-b2b1-5405-a5a6-1667894ed489)

Thoughts of Katherine hovering in his mind, John strode along the bare flagstone of the servants’ hall, ready to ride out to meet her. The image of her had hung in his mind since yesterday, along with a subconscious feeling of companionship.

The beauty of her submission had been a revelation.

She’d ceased fighting her desire yesterday, giving him her trust, and a hundred times last night he’d vowed to honour it.

He was so hungry for her he’d hardly slept, burning with restless frustration. He itched to have her, but he had made her a promise. He would temper his lust. Yet there were many things a man could do without taking a woman’s virginity and his mind had dwelled on all of them last night. He was impatient to see her.

He’d visited tenants earlier, alone, and then returned to look at the ledgers again over luncheon. There was still nothing there. Now he was searching for Wareham, who apparently kept the key to the folly. John had come himself because it gave him another opportunity to try and discover what Wareham was up to.

The office door was shut. John gripped the handle and turned it without knocking. It was locked.

Ill temper flared. John was too tired and impatient. He rapped on the door harshly, angry at being excluded from a room in his own property.

A chair scraped within, and a moment later the lock turned. Then the door opened.

Wareham’s expression was insolent – antagonising. Like the other day, there was no deference.

John had an urge to grip the man by the throat and shove him up against a wall. “Must I remind you of your place again…”

Wareham turned his back and crossed the room, returning to his desk. “You need not remind me. I am well aware of it.”

John wished to hold him with one fist and punch him with the other. He’d not used John’s title, again.

Wareham looked at John and barely bent his head, as though that would suffice. “Your Grace, pray, to what do I owe this honour?” Then he sat.

It was insupportable for him to do so. John’s servants should always be standing in his presence. Wareham was deliberately insulting. His entire manner expressed rebellion, and his expression said he wished to make John angry. He had. Was John a damned bull to be pulled by a nose ring?

“I have come for the key to the tower.” John held out his hand. Let the man bring it to him.

“And why would you want that, Your Grace?”

“That is none of your business. The key, Wareham.”

The man rose again and moved to fetch it from a tall narrow cupboard.

John waited, but when Wareham held the large iron key out and came towards John, when John reached for it, Wareham pulled it back.

John’s façade of calm evaporated. “Give me the key and stop these games!” His loss of control made him even angrier.

“Games, Your Grace?” Wareham taunted with a gleam in eyes. “I am a bit old for games. It is not a game I am playing.”

“The key, Wareham.” John’s voice was bitterly hard, his patience having fled. Blast the missing money, he wasn’t short of that. Let Wareham have it. He would rather be rid of this problem and rid of Wareham.

Wareham lifted the key and John snatched it from his hand.

“Did you truly think I would tolerate these insults?” John was calmer now, back under control. His voice was no longer angry. This would be an end to it. “You are dismissed. You will leave immediately.I will have you escorted.”

For a moment, Wareham just stared at John. There was not a single flicker of emotion which showed in his eyes or on his face. He was far better at holding his emotion in than John.

“Now,” John pressed.

“Do you think I wish to serve you?”

“You need not. Go.”

“While you have idled abroad, I have built up these estates.” Wareham sounded as though he thought he had a right over John.

John glanced back towards the hall and yelled. “Finch!” He had seen the butler a moment ago.

“Your Grace?” He was there in an instant.

“Mr Wareham is leaving. Immediately. I wish him escorted from the grounds. You may pack his things and send them on, but he is to take nothing which belongs to my estates. Have some of the grooms escort him.”

John looked at Wareham. “You may send Finch your address when you have found somewhere to stay.” Then John turned away and left the room.

The key cut into his palm as his fist clenched, while the maids and footmen bowed and curtsied as he walked along the corridor. John would be known as a tyrant now, for dismissing his steward simply because it took too long to find a key. John felt his prison cell slam shut. He was trapped in this life, he had not chosen it. Darkness and isolation engulfed him as he stepped into the courtyard and felt sunshine on his skin.

I want Katherine.

At least he could have her, and she was his choice.

~

John was breathless with exhilaration when he reached the tower, having ridden hard to get there.

It was a square, red-bricked building, which stood in a clearing, on the brow of a shallow hill, and it reached fifty feet upwards, stretching towards the sky like the tower of Babel.

He’d come here often as a child, though he was sworn never to play in it. He’d stolen the key to come in secret and be alone. He would climb up to the square room at the very top and look down onto the world like God, imagining what he would do if he could rule and order it as he wished: he’d turn back time and know his mother from his birth, he’d long to change fate and stop his father dying. No one had known he’d come here, not even Phillip; he’d never shared this space.