The Ice Duchess by Tracy Sumner
Chapter 5
Friend.
Dex rolled on to his back before the hearth, the glass of whiskey he’d devoured during his late luncheon with Georgie—and the second he was diligently consuming—giving him a lovely internal glow. He steadied the tumbler on his belly and turned his head toward the brocade settee where she lay sleeping.
Her flaxen hair had come loose from its mooring and was scattered about her face. Her hand was curled in a tight fist, her cheek resting atop it. Lips, very tempting ones he’d spent much of the morning staring at, parted with the lightest, most delicate breaths slipping free. Her breasts had done a suggestive gravitational shift against her rounded bodice, bringing a new level of discomfort to the afternoon, evidence of which he’d struggled to hide from the serving maid, Gertrude, who sat snoring in an armchair in the corner. A nod to decorum his majordomo, Wilkes, on staff since Dex was a boy, had insisted upon with an impermeable scowl.
When Wilkes looked at Georgie, he saw the girl with a ragged hem and skinned elbows who’d requested he not tell her father she’d been climbing the elm out back or wading through water in a limestone cave or riding a horse astride.
Dex saw her in that way, too. In part. At times.
But mostly this day, he’d seen a woman looking back at him with the girl’s eyes. The worst possible mix. The girl he’d loved and the woman he wanted.
The worst possible mix was going to be furious.
Because he didn’t play fair.
He’d plied her with wine while explaining the stratification of igneous rock, sending her into a dispassionate, foxed trance. Because he’d known if he waited another hour, maybe two, they couldn’t safely travel the roads. The snowstorm beyond the library window was positively ferocious.
She was here to stay at least until tomorrow.
His time was running out, therefore he’d had to make a move, and Dexter Munro didn’t fear making moves.
Georgie wanted to host a dinner party to help him find a duchess.
Tomorrow.
Which left one day to either change her mind or change his.
Propping his arm beneath his head, he took a measured sip as the candlelight shifted and washed over her. Even with the lure of a dukedom, a pleasing face, a fast wit, and a sly charm, he wasn’t especially adept with women. With relationships. He was skilled in bed; he appreciated the mechanics of the act. He was a man of detail, after all. And concern with detail was what it took to be competent, a technique he assumed most men ignored. From the comments from his former lovers, was sure they ignored.
Sex was one thing.
Talking and laughing and remembering like he’d done with Georgie today, as she made notes in his folio, dripping ink on the rug and asking probing, wide-eyed questions, her gaze lighting him up and then dancing off, was nothing he’d ever experienced. He was used to conversation with an end goal. A game being played, a transaction being enacted.
This had been conversation held simply to enhance their understanding of each other.
It had made him feel vulnerable, naked, panicked.
He liked her. He’d always liked her. She was intelligent. Beautiful. Spirited. She quarreled with him without worrying about her disagreement hurting his feelings or her chances. He believed her. She was sincere. She told him when he was daft or arrogant or obnoxious, which he often was.
But he’d boxed himself in with this suitables agreement, a dare made in haste and one he wished to retract. Impulsivity had brought him low before. This wouldn’t be the first time. He couldn’t very well say, I love you and I always have. And not in the courteous way you’ve outlined for us. Friends. With a sneer, he threw back the rest of his whiskey.
The admission sounded crass, too sudden. Reckless. She wouldn’t believe it—and who could blame her? He’d have to go through with this farce to find a duchess to make the woman he wanted to be his duchess realize she had feelings for him, too. That she wanted him more than her damned freedom, which he had no urge, no intention, of taking from her. His only chance to secure her love was to make her jealous of the plan she’d put in motion.
In essence, having her sabotage her own creation.
If he followed through on his impulse to touch her, it might go badly. Cause her to push him away. Forever away. Opposite of future-duchess away.
He could always be honest and court her. Tenderly, for months if necessary. Tell his father by Twelfth Night that he’d proposed, and they would marry when Georgie was ready to marry. But instinct, a gift that rarely failed him, told Dex her issues were more profound than merely losing her independence. His fingers clenched around the glass as he released a tense breath. The notion sent a flood of rage through him, but he suspected Georgie’s marriage had broken her. Leaving Dex to tame a hesitant filly when horses didn’t particularly fancy him.
When patience wasn’t his strong suit.
Placing his tumbler aside, he rolled to his feet and quietly approached the settee. Went down on one knee next to Georgie, close enough to catch the scent of lavender and nutmeg on her skin. Close enough to see the line of freckles scattered like stars across the bridge of her nose, the smudge of ink on her jaw. Suddenly, he wondered what she thought of him. Because her feelings weren’t obvious. He’d always known before, but the Ice Countess had become adept at concealment.
He wondered if her heart raced when he touched her. If her mind emptied when he smiled. If she wanted him in the core of her being, an inexplicable ache.
But most of all, he wondered if she remembered their kiss.
He scrubbed his hand over his jaw, stubble pricking his fingertips. Drawing a breath filled with her, he closed his eyes to the memory. It was years ago, seven or eight now that he tried to place it. He’d been in his father’s study packing papers for his first geological assignment after finishing Cambridge, an archaeological dig in Italy. He was coming off a violent confrontation with the duke about, well, everything when Georgie had stumbled in.
Dex had been a churn of emotion. Tangled up. Exposed. Infuriated and eager and bloody scared. Then she’d been standing before him, her face flushed, her eyes shimmering. He hadn’t told her he was leaving, but Anthony must have. The next moments were hazy. He couldn’t recall what they’d said to each other. What she’d done to make him reach for her, drag her up on her toes and against his body.
But the kiss, oh, how he remembered the kiss.
Nothing transactional about it. Pure, sweet, flawless. Innocent for all the heat it had sent through him. An awakening, even if he still walked away from her, from Derbyshire, the next morning.
An honest mistake. Young and foolish, he hadn’t known.
He’d let the only woman he’d ever want, ever love, marry someone else.
“Dex.”
He opened his eyes to find Georgie blinking sleepily. She yawned behind her hand, giving him a pointed look. “You mustn’t mix discussions of igneous rock and wine. It’s a disastrous combination.”
Dipping his head as he laughed, he braced his hands on his knees to keep from touching her. Measured steps, Dex, my boy, measured steps. “Duly noted.”
She elbowed to a sit, smoothing her bodice and her skirt while he glanced away to give her privacy. “Did you do this on purpose? Provide spirits and deadly conversation.” She nodded to the window and the snowdrift climbing past the bottom panes. “I’m stuck here, aren’t I?”
The delicate hollow of her throat was within reach should he follow through on the desire to press his lips to it. Which, as he was unsure of himself and her, he wouldn’t. “My father’s sleeping and the doctor doesn’t expect him to wake,” he shocked the hell out of himself by admitting. “I suppose…I suppose I didn’t want to spend the day alone.”
“The unfair play continues,” she whispered and worked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, “as I can say nothing to that.”
“You have a chaperone,” he reminded her with a nod to Gertrude, who’d been equally felled by the stratification discussion and slept as soundly as a babe. “A houseful of servants. Wilkes has popped his head in every half-hour since you arrived. I don’t know what he thinks I’m doing to you in here. Each time, he seems surprised to find out, nothing.”
A devilish spark lit her eyes, reminding him of the indigo of the Indian Ocean. There were leagues of mysteries in her gaze. Couldn’t he be the one allowed to explore them? “What trouble can two old friends get into surrounded by a slumbering chaperone, an aging butler, and twenty crates of rocks?” She clicked her tongue against her teeth and glanced about the room. “A note for the future wooing of your duchess: fossils aren’t romantic. Fascinating but not romantic.”
A burst of well-concealed frustration vibrated through him. What trouble indeed. He could think of lots. “I agree with your earlier suggestion. Let’s start tomorrow. Here. The suitables. I’ll host the dinner party. There’s no time like the present, and even with scant notice and snow a sodding foot deep, no one will refuse an almost-duke. Or the chance to be an almost-duchess. I’ll send my best carriage for them and pray the roads are passable. Formal livery, every opportunity to impress. Even such a simple gesture, your assisting me with this endeavor, will be a boon for the Duchess Society, am I correct?”
She looked back, surprised, conceivably a bit stunned.
It wasn’t jealousy, but it was a start.
“Twelfth Night, Georgie, remember? I made a promise to my father, and I mean to keep it.” He tapped the timepiece lodged in his waistcoat pocket. “Tick, tick, tick.”
She dragged her thumbnail over her bottom lip, and memories of their long-ago kiss roared through his mind. Helping to relieve his pent-up frustration, she was not.
“No time like the present,” she echoed. “They’re lovely, the two young ladies I hope to introduce you to. Accomplished. Demure. Entirely appropriate.”
“Listed in Debrett’s.”
She cocked her head, trying to decipher his tone. “Well, yes, of course. As we are. You say it like it’s a stain.” Irritation crossed her lovely face. “You sound less than enthusiastic when this was your idea. I’m helping because you need it.”
With a sigh, he rose to his feet. “Darling Georgie, I sound resigned.”
“Rocks and resignation aren’t going to secure a duchess, Dex.”
“How about my charming personality? Will that do it?”
She tapped her boot heel against the settee in serious consideration, as if this wasn’t likely to secure any duchesses either.
He frowned, stung. “I can be charming, you know. And if I can’t, the title will secure any knot I chose to tie. It holds the allure I lack.”
“When surrounded by mounds of dirt and pickaxes, I’m sure you can be charming.”
“Are you saying I’ve lost my Town bronze? That’s a bloody compliment.”
She stood, her gaze locked on his. Petite, which he’d forgotten over time, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder. He wanted to tuck her against his body and never let her go. Protect them both from the coming storm. “Your rough edges make you interesting, Dex, in a sea of people who aren’t. They always have. The goal is to find the woman who will appreciate them.”
Okay. His shoulders relaxed, a quick gust of air leaving his lips. Georgie liked his rough edges, which at this point were there to stay. “Then you’ll help me find her?”
Her finger charted the line of her jaw, her cheek, as she swept a lock of hair behind her ear. He followed the motion, enthralled, certain he’d not desired a woman more in his entire bloody life. “I’ll help you find her.”
Dex crossed to the window to hide his body’s ferocious reaction. The stretch of Derbyshire he viewed from the window was an ivory blanket unfurling to the horizon, broken only by a pointed mountain peak piercing the low-hanging mist. Nothing was more beautiful than winter here, nothing except the woman standing across the room from him, caught as he was between friendship and regret. He’d made a hash of things for years, and it seemed unlikely anyone would grant him a Christmas miracle.
For his father, for Georgie.
He’d been given no advice and certainly had no wisdom concerning love. His father had been a harsh taskmaster, reserved and unreachable, his mother deceased by his fifth birthday, his childhood, except for Anthony and Georgie, solitary. Science had been the center of his universe, and he’d clung to it gratefully.
Love, he knew nothing about.
In any case, why wish for a miracle when he wasn’t sure he believed in them?
Behind him, Dex heard Georgie unpacking another crate as she hummed quietly beneath her breath, an action he wasn’t even sure she realized she was doing. She was a competent assistant, shaving hours off the tedious administrative work that was a large part of his research. They worked well together, which meant something, didn’t it?
He tapped the frigid windowpane with a tender smile as he contemplated miracles. Being with Georgie for another day was a minor one now, wasn’t it?