The Ice Duchess by Tracy Sumner
Chapter 6
As conversation traversed the softly lit dining room, none of the participants suspected Georgiana had stayed the previous night in a guest bedchamber three doors down from the Duke of Markham’s heir. A luxurious space she’d roamed until dawn for reasons more troubling than the game Dex was playing.
Three doors between her and the man she was trying diligently if halfheartedly to find a proper duchess for.
Georgiana glanced at Dex from the corner of her eye, wondering at his mood. Sardonic charm on display, not exactly what he’d promised. Except for a blinding white cravat that only served to highlight his sun-kissed skin, he was dressed in formal obscurity from head to toe. A look both careless and cavalier. Thankfully, the clack of silver against china and an abundance of wine had polished the rough edges off the evening if not the man. The setting was lovely, befitting a marquess-cum-duke. Cinnamon, clove, and ginger lingered delightfully in the air, the table was awash in candlelight spilling over ropes of holly, a feast of food, merriment, drink. Servants scurried and bowed, giggling and a little haphazard, again making Georgie think firm guidance at Markham Manor would benefit everyone.
Due to the weather, they’d only been able to secure the attendance of one family this eve, news Dex had taken without glancing away from his fossils, making Georgiana question if she worried more about finding a duchess than he did.
“Westfield, you must tell us about your adventures. I hear you spent time in India. Always wanted to go myself,” James Hightower, the Earl of Atherton said around a burp he tried politely to cloak. He was in the process of bartering his eldest daughter to temper his graceless business decisions, and Georgiana was having trouble overlooking this fact. Sophia Hightower was another helpless young woman placed in a precarious position by someone who should have sought only to protect her. The need for a sudden influx of capital brought about reckless decision-making. Georgiana should know, as she’d once been a pawn in a brutal arrangement. She understood she’d never be able to accept these situations less than personally, which was a weakness of character but critical for heartfelt management of the Duchess Society.
“Bombay the most recent. India is…” Dex’s reckoning gaze circled the room and landed on her. “Intoxicating. An explosion of color and scent. And taste. Extreme poverty and glorious wealth an amalgam on every street until you’re dazed from walking them. It’s exhausting and magnificent. A place in the world one should experience.”
Georgiana glanced down, moving peas in a circle on her plate. Forget Dex’s passionate words. His eyes held reflective meaning, sizzling with emotion and eager appeal, nothing he directed toward the eligible woman sitting two seats away from him. No, he wasn’t going to make it that easy. He’d been tossing Georgiana hot looks all night; her stomach was tangled in a knot from trying to ignore them.
“You’ll leave the geology nonsense behind when you gain the dukedom, am I right? Take up hunting or horse racing. Carriage driving seems a fine sport, very fine. No need to go haring back to Asia or some such,” the earl said with a pat to his round belly, as if Dex’s work was less than trivial. “Not when London, and secondly, Derbyshire, are enough, more than, for any man.”
“Hmm, give up my rocks…” Dex took a languid sip, and her heart thumped to note his eyes gleaming a feral lime green, a color that had signaled a brewing battle when they were children. “What do you think, Lady Sophia, about a man abandoning his profession? His lone fixation since he found his first fossil, oh, at seven or eight years of age. His obsession, as it were, in a world where many stumble through life without one.”
Georgiana raised her wineglass to her lips, the sip more a gulp and vastly essential to her surviving this dinner. Dear God, Dex was a caged tiger set loose on society. She should have recalled his obstinacy, his unyielding view of life, and his purpose within it.
Sophia, all of nineteen and preparing for her first Season, blinked while adjusting her spectacles, which were charming but regrettable if she truly needed them. “If I had such a pursuit, my lord, one near to my heart, I wouldn’t forsake it for anything,” she said with only a faint tremor. Then she promptly sent her gaze to her plate of roast goose as if it was the most interesting thing in the room.
The smile Dex bestowed, not one of his fakes, took Georgiana’s breath away though it had little effect on Sophia when the girl glanced up and found it.
“You don’t mean that dearest,” Countess Atherton murmured from across the table.
“I do,” Sophia answered in a dogged tone Georgiana was beginning to believe spelled trouble. “You know I do.”
The earl set his glass on the table with a thunk. “We talked about this. It’s preposterous.”
Dex caught Georgiana’s eye. Brilliant, he mouthed, the effort to repress his smile nearly cracking his cheeks.
With a sigh, Georgiana polished off her wine, tempted to smash her glass over his head.
Sophia turned to Dex and gave her spectacles another shove. “My lord, may I be so bold as to admit I cannot yet marry, should this be the reason for this agreeable banquet. I need more life experience for the page. Like Miss Austen, I’m compelled to write.” With an edgy exhalation, she rushed to add, “Composing stories is my passion. My only passion.”
“I never mentioned passion,” Dex whispered for Georgiana alone. She could only think that when this dinner party was over, she might strangle him.
In the end, the evening was a congenial disaster, the earl and countess making every attempt to confirm they’d had an enjoyable time and would love to entertain when they were next in Derbyshire. Atherton pulled Dex aside, and Georgiana imagined he was making a plea to keep his daughter’s unconventional comments forever within the confines of Markham Manor. The countess pulled Georgiana aside and petitioned for her daughter’s acceptance into the Duchess Society, which Georgiana, after getting a first-hand look at Sophia’s mettle and naïve charm, agreed to secure.
A beautiful, young bluestocking? Georgiana wasn’t about to see such a spirited independent thrown to the wolves.
“I’m sorry your dinner didn’t go as planned,” Dex said when he returned from escorting his guests out to find Georgiana slumped on the bottom step of the sweeping central staircase, her head in her hands. “Although it was more entertaining than Drury Lane, regretful to admit. The last play I attended there was ghastly. Tonight, I actually had a pleasant evening.”
“If you laugh right now, Dexter Munro, I can’t account for what I may do.”
“I’m not going to laugh,” he murmured and sat on the stair above her, on the opposite side, out of reach, out of touch. But she felt him as if he wore a hearthfire like a cloak.
She rolled her head to look at him. “If you need this, Dex, a duchess by Twelfth Night, why aren’t you taking it seriously? Why don’t you seem to care?”
Shrugging from his coat, he folded it in a neat bundle and laid it over the glossy walnut handrail. Bracing his elbows on his knees, he bowed his head. Georgiana brought her hands into fists to keep from brushing his hair from his brow. Sweeping the tousled strands aside, pressing her lips to the tantalizing curve between neck and shoulder. He looked like he’d set himself on an island far from everyone, although he looked comfortable, as if his aloneness were a familiar companion. “I’m having trouble”—he linked his hands, those slim, elegant fingers curling in on each other—“connecting this life to the other. The bloody title, nothing effortless about the duty imposed, and the universal expectation I should feel emotionally attached to it. Instantly and without dispute. Instead, I feel…” He shrugged one broad shoulder. “Detached from even my dying father sleeping in his bedchamber a floor above. Nostalgia has a bite, capable of injury, I’m finding. When I was here before, I suppressed my desires to manage expectations and now find I can’t articulate who I truly am.”
“Wreckage,” she whispered, and his gaze jumped to hers, his expression fierce. She knew what it was to close oneself off only to find you’d become the closed-off person. “You could wait to uphold your promise to your father. The Season will provide every opportunity to find her.”
“I don’t want to wait,” he snapped, staring at his hands.
Georgiana exhaled softly, realizing she was dealing with tender feelings, gratified Dex was showing them to her even if he wished he hadn’t. “Care to tell me what’s bothering you?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
Georgiana traced the toe of her boot along a nick on the stair. “I’m sorry about Lady Sophia. I don’t know her well as there wasn’t time for a thorough interview, something I always conduct. This issue, her chosen profession, would have surfaced during our discussion, I feel sure.”
“An agreement with Atherton would have been a fine business arrangement,” he said in a jagged tone. “A unique girl beneath the stammering blushes, which is unfortunately what no man in the ton wants. I admire her audacity, but I can’t imagine, not for one moment, kissing her. Laying a finger on her person. Isn’t gaining an heir a major objective in this muddle?”
Georgiana closed her eyes, took a shallow breath. “Most marriages are not built or based on…” She fluttered her hand helplessly.
“Desire. Is that the word you’re looking for?”
She opened her eyes to find his gaze fixed on her, a challenge in their hazel depths. “Intimacy, Dex. Attraction. It isn’t as if those typically arrive with the marital contract. You know this. Part of my mission with the society is to prepare women for this deficiency. Create a protected situation within what is nothing more than, yes, a business arrangement, where both parties have enough knowledge to run the business. We don’t talk about passion.” Her unease, her sense of quickly losing her footing, drew her lips down. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a love match represented. Only in fairy tales.”
He moved quietly, deliberately, sliding across the stair until he reached her. One hand framed her face, then the other as he brought her lips to his. Soft, gentle, a whisper when other men shouted. With a silky murmur, their kiss from years ago blended with this one until she was unable to separate them. When she melted into him, her lips parting, tasting mint and wine, he pulled back, this movement not measured.
Embarrassed, she glanced away, wondering if she’d done something wrong. When, obviously, she’d done something wrong. Arthur had said her skills were sadly lacking, and she’d believed him.
That’s why he’d had to resort to other measures.
“Look at me, Georgie,” Dex said in a hard voice, though he didn’t try to touch her again.
After a long, searching moment, she did. His cheeks were flushed, his breath ragged. Had she done that to him? Was it possible he wanted her as much as she wanted him?
“I realize there wasn’t love involved, but did Arthur not pleasure you?”
What to say, her brain screamed? What to admit?
“He was cruel. I was untried. Amateurish. And then uninterested,” she whispered even as heat began to pool between her thighs. She’d never experienced this warmth before, never imagined its existence. But Dex’s fevered gaze was ripping her apart, bringing all kinds of unwanted sensations. He was ruining her with that look. “I didn’t know, I couldn’t make—”
He leaned and placed his lips to the base of her throat, blew a warm breath over moist skin. Delicate, like a butterfly’s wings as he moved to a spot below her ear, drawing her skin between his teeth, rougher contact. Her head fell back, her lids drifting low. He charted a gradual course up her spine, his touch imprinted on each peak and hollow, a scalding press ending when he curled his hand around the nape of her neck and tangled his fingers in her hair.
Arousing beyond measure when he’d yet to truly kiss her.
The discreet cough came from the depths of the shadowed entranceway, where Georgiana spotted a footman rocking from side to side and wringing his hands, likely having stumbled on a situation he’d not before encountered, in this house at least. A draft of glacial air had come in with the boy to swirl around their feet. “Countess Winterbourne’s carriage is ready, my lord,” he stammered before slipping out the door into the welcoming winter.
Dex cursed, sliding back to the other side of the step, each point of contact on her body he’d breached alive with a thrumming pulse. “If I admitted you have me trapped in the palm of your hand…” Yanking his through his hair and sending it into further disarray, he blew a scornful breath through his nose. “That you could make a list of what you want to know, what you want to do, how to touch me, how I should touch you, and I’ll eagerly strike off each until this deficiency you feel you have, which was a deficiency on Arthur’s part I must tell you, is a memory of the past, what would you say?”
She stared sightlessly at her feet, leaned to polish a scuff on her boot, his words tumbling like water over a cliff inside her. “I’d say you should remember your Twelfth Night promise to your father.” When Dex reached for her, she rose unsteadily to her feet. “I don’t want to be a duchess,” she whispered in a raw voice. A panicked admission, discourteous and hurtful, one she wished she could recant but it was too late.
Too late for a lot of things.
His gaze when it found hers, because she looked back and let herself be found, was a scorching, emotional blend. “That works because I don’t want to be a bloody duke.” He boosted himself from the step, yanked his coat from the banister, and dropped it to her shoulders with more purpose than care. “I’ll see you out.”
“You’re vexed with me,” she said, tugging the lapels close to her cheek. The deep breath to capture the masculine scent hidden in the woolen folds was unnecessary as it lived in her memory alongside the second kiss in her life he’d gifted her. She would take the last twenty-four hours to her grave, an experience to top all others. Tears pricked her eyes to imagine anything better than being with Dex again, the brief return of her childhood. Only Anthony sharing this time with them could have increased its appeal.
Dex opened the door and waited wearily for her to step through it. “I’m vexed with the world, Georgie. But never fear, I’ll get over it.”
He didn’t try to stop her as she made her way down the stone steps, assisting with a light grip on her elbow to keep her from slipping, his touch restrained, his manner polite but distant. He’d gone back to his island, and she might not see him leave it. She turned as she was climbing into the carriage. “Dex, the other young lady I planned to introduce you to…”
His gaze shot to a window high above them. His father’s bedchamber, she assumed. Stepping back, his hands dove into his trouser pockets as his lips flattened. “Send me a note with the date and time, and I’ll be there. Looking very ducal and pretending to feel happy about this process. No one will have any clue it’s you I want.”
With this astounding statement released to the cosmos, he slapped the roof of the carriage and turned without another word, leaving her staring out into the starlit nightfall, her wishes, her feelings, in utter disarray.
* * *
His rash declaration a short hour ago rolled through his mind.
That you could make a list of what you want to know, what you want to do, how to touch me, how I should touch you, and I’ll eagerly strike each off…
He lifted the glass to his lips, certain his decision to dive into a brandy bottle following Georgie’s departure would solve no problems, although it was taking the sting out of the evening’s closure. In the distance, thunder rumbled, and the acrid scent of an approaching storm churned and sizzled. He smelled burning pine and, somehow, her. Which was impossible as he sat on Markham Manor’s stone steps in a puddle of slush that had chilled until he could no longer feel his buttocks.
He wanted to be nothing but part of the night, silent from the roar in his mind, the ache in his heart. He wanted neither dukedom nor love, messy entanglements, childhood affection traps, eyes the color of lapis, the tug of slim fingers through his hair, lips that felt familiar but should not, or the weight of despair over a pledge he should have made years ago and hadn’t the courage to.
He’d mucked up everything.
He’d known Georgie had an attachment to him when they were children, though he’d considered it infatuation. Charming, until he started to return the sentiment.
And now…she didn’t want a husband, feared taking a lover.
Did he want to be simply an experience even if he persuaded her? Her teacher in lovemaking but nothing more, which did make his cock twitch to envision, he wasn’t denying.
He shuddered, the glass quaking in his hands. One more minute of this excruciating bliss, then he’d return to the house before he expired from the cold. Check on his father, whisper words of encouragement and promise, lay his hand on an unresponsive brow, and question why he didn’t feel more for the man when the man had never endeavored to feel more for him.
Dex smiled without joy, brandy a lingering burn. Maybe he’d threaten to marry the next suitable, no matter how repellant she or her family. Put Georgie to the test. A dare like none he’d placed before her. A true wager.
Her heart for his soul.
What would she do if he asked another woman to marry him while knowing he wanted her?
What would she do?
Nothing was a strong possibility.
He huddled into his coat, not his best, it had gone with Georgie, but good enough to keep out the worst of the foul weather.
He didn’t want her gratitude or her compliance. He didn’t want her to come to him because she’d decided she might like to be a duchess, a title he gave two figs about himself. Or because she was curious about what he could show her about the physical side of life, which from her stunned expression after he’d kissed her, was likely a lot.
He wanted her to come to him because she trusted him in the way she once had. Like a close friend she also happened to be frantically in love with.
The truth was, he wanted her to bet on him even if she believed she shouldn’t.