Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,123
of Sussex. His Royal Highness was charged with reporting to his brother the King his impressions of the state of the Duke of Ashmont’s morals as well as any Incidents, explosions, screaming women, visitations of domestic animals, or other untoward events.
The wedding proceeded in the normal way, however, and the breakfast was notable only in the early disappearance of the newlyweds, who had a journey of some three or four hours ahead of them.
Ashmont wanted to spend his wedding night, not in his own house, but at Camberley Place.
“Where I first met you,” he’d told Cassandra.
He’d arranged it all ahead of time, and sent his own servants to prepare part of the house for them, since Lady Charles had left only a small staff.
The newlyweds dined in the house, but when evening fell, he led his duchess not upstairs to their bedchamber but outside, to the fishing house by the river.
“Exactly where I met you the first time,” he said, as they reached the ancient building.
He heard her catch her breath. “You remember.”
“Yes. An elfin girl, turning round and round, looking up into the heavens, her face bathed in starlight.”
“Oh, Lucius,” she said softly.
He took her hand and squeezed it, then looked up at the night sky. “Not sure I can recapture the conditions, though. There are limits, even to what a duke can do. I distinctly remember ordering the Milky Way. Ought to be here by now.”
The day had been cloudy, and the stars twinkled but dimly. Still, what stars there were and the waning moon offered light enough to see her.
“We can pretend,” she said.
He drew her into his arms and kissed her, a long, searching kiss. They’d had almost no privacy in the weeks since she’d sneaked into his house. Three weeks of balked lust, with an intimate interlude in the carriage on the way here. As interludes went, it had been rather chaste. He hadn’t wanted to hurry. He wanted everything to be perfect.
This was their wedding night. They’d never have another. They could take their time.
After a long, sweet time, he gently broke the kiss and drew away. He took her hand and led her a few feet along the level ground by the fishing house. This was the place where he’d found her spinning, arms spread, face to the heavens. This was the place where he’d told the elfin girl stories about the stars.
There was a large basket in the place now. And a bucket filled with ice, holding a bottle of champagne.
“Oh, Lucius,” she said. “You planned this.”
“For my duchess.” He knelt and opened the basket. He took out a rug and spread it on the ground. He patted the rug, and she sat. She drew up her legs and folded her arms on her knees and watched him.
He took out the glasses and laid them on the rug. He drew out the champagne bottle and opened it, and the pop sounded like thunder in the quiet.
The world about them wasn’t utterly still, though. Water burbled over rocks in the river. Leaves fluttered in the light breeze of a late-summer night.
He filled their glasses. “Here I first met you,” he said.
“And soon forgot.”
“Better for you that way.”
“I know that now.” She raised her glass. “I’ll drink to it gladly.”
He drank and the sparkling taste seemed to dance in his mouth.
“And here you shocked me out of my wits by taking my side against another boy,” she said.
“No boy ever defended you before? No, you’re trying to be sweet.”
“I? Sweet?”
“But the odds weren’t right,” he said. “All those boys against one girl.”
“If Alice had been by, there would have been all those boys against two girls. But she was in durance vile. I forget what her crime was.”
“And the other girls?”
“Safer to be neutral. We weren’t proper girls. The others didn’t want to be like us.”
“‘. . . scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety,’” he murmured.
“Say again?”
“Nothing. Thinking. How to seduce you.”
“Yes, that will be terribly difficult.” She drank. “Shall I get tipsy and help you? I might take off all my clothes and dance naked in the moonlight.”
“Do you know, I haven’t the smallest doubt you’ll do it. But you might want to wait for more moonlight.” He looked up. “Damn. It seems this is the best we’re going to get.”
He swallowed the last of his champagne. She did the same. “Such a wonderful drink,” she said. “I always thought that ambrosia, the drink of the gods, must be champagne.”