The Ice Duchess: Prequel to the Duchess Society Series Read online

  Some would be surprised to find the Marquess of Westfield loved Derbyshire more than any place he’d ever been, and he’d been many places. The rolling hills and hamlets, limestone caverns, and broad rushing rivers. The northeast quadrant where Markham Manor resided was gently mountainous, abundant in all the wondrous things that held his supreme interest. Coal, iron ore, lead, zinc, manganese, barytes. Caves layered in marble and fluorite, littered with fossils and minerals.

  He couldn’t imagine growing up anywhere else. With anyone else.

  Which brought his mind back to Georgie.

  He tapped his knuckle to the chilled windowpane. Those glorious cobalt eyes, the dimples that flared to life when she smiled, had led him on a merry dance this eve. He laughed and shook his head. Still susceptible to her charms. Before, she’d been too young and he a foolish boy who wasn’t sure what he wanted, what he needed. He’d had much to prove, many people to disprove. He’d done exactly what he’d said he would, made a living, a remarkably sound one, off the hunks of sediment his father claimed would be the ruin of a five-hundred-year-old duchy, when Dex was the most proficient mining surveyor in England, his inane knowledge of rocks coveted by those willing to pay and pay well.

  But ambition had exacted a personal cost, no doubt about it. Cost her, too, he was coming to suspect.

  Bracing his arm on the wall alongside the velvet drape, he drew a breath smelling faintly of vinegar and decay. He’d never wanted to marry anyone. Truthfully, because he could be truthful in his dying father’s dank bedchamber when there was no one, not even the dying father, to listen—he’d never wanted to marry anyone but her.

  The dilemma? He wanted a wife when Georgie quite adamantly didn’t want a husband.

  “Impulsive fool,” he whispered and bumped his forehead to the glass. How had he imagined making a reckless wager would ease the burden of seeing Georgie again, touching her again, and realizing he’d indeed made a grave mistake leaving her behind?

  Now, she wanted adventure.

  Dex glanced to the turbulent storm raging outside the window, a world of flawless, fluttering white. How to provide an adventure when the roads would be inches deep in mud and ice come morning? Travel of more than a mile or two a nightmare. If he could have taken her to the limestone caverns in Chinley, the ones they’d explored as children, shown her everything he hadn’t known to show her before, things he hadn’t known how to show her before, that would have been a start. Surely, passionate kisses surrounded by thousand-year-old quartz was an adequate quest.

  A petite adventure, a beginning.

  He lifted his head from the frigid pane. A beginning, not a spot mired in the middle of life, which was what his conversation with Georgie at Buxton’s gathering had felt like. An unsullied start was what they needed, with no repulsive earls who’d turned out to be atrocious husbands or indecisive, inexperienced future dukes mucking it up. Dex had until Twelfth Night to give his father an answer. A ticking clock, as it were. Which he would do because denying a dying man’s wish was an act Dex couldn’t stomach.

  And, frankly, he worked well under pressure.

  His mind shifted to the wooden crates stacked in the Oak Room, ones he’d shipped from all over the globe the past three years. He grinned and shoved his hair from his eyes. There were adventures aplenty in those boxes if the right person was there to unpack them.

  His spontaneous wager was set to put Georgie’s disdain for marriage to the test.

  Because he planned to tell her what he wanted in a wife, what he wanted in life, what he could give of his heart, mind, and soul, which was substantial. He would cheerfully review her list of suitables while he went about convincing her she was his only suitable.

  Very politely, he would consider each one, without considering any at all.

  In the process, he’d get to know her again. And she him.

  Then, on Twelfth Night, Dex would find out if Georgie meant to keep him.

  Chapter 4

  Giving away her coat the following morning was an easy decision to make.

  Georgiana pressed the length of woven wool into Jane Fletcher’s trembling hand, her own hand trembling though she tried to hide it. “Please take it. I have another at home,” she said, although she didn’t. But Georgiana had been unable to ignore the comments made at the Buxton’s party about a family in the village with a new baby, little warm clothing, and meager supplies for the season. When she’d gone to find them, it had turned out to be a family she’d known for most of her life.

  “But the ride back without a coat…” Jane gestured to the window and the angry swirl, a lank of dull brown hair dancing across her cheek with the movement.

  Georgiana glanced at the bread, eggs, mutton, and vegetables sitting on the Fletcher’s nicked wooden table, her bounty after a thorough raid of her manor’s provisions. Knitted socks, a scarf, books, a length of chalk, a square of slate. She’d even found two apples tucked on a low pantry shelf, a surprise delighting the Fletcher children to no end. “I have a riding blanket in the carriage. A heated brick. And less than two miles to travel.” She appealed again, presenting the coat. She was not leaving with it warming her shoulders. “I insist. My goodness, Jane, I’ve known you since we were children. Anthony was quite friendly with your brother, Edwin, if you recall. Oh, the trouble they used to get into!”

  Jane cradled her newborn son against her chest, the babe swaddled in a faded slip of cotton, his cheeks mercifully plump and rosy with good health. Finally, with a sigh, she took the coat from Georgiana, pressed her nose into the lapel, and inhaled softly, then lovingly draped it over the chair at her side. “We miss you, my lady, we do. There’s never anyone from your estate who comes to the village. Since your father died, not a word from the house on the hill. Things have fallen off the edge of a cliff, they have. The church roof is leaking, the roads pitted and unsafe. A fire at the mercantile last month, necessities for the winter dwindling.”

  Georgiana tied her satin bonnet strings beneath her chin. “I’m off to Markham Manor if my coachman can navigate the main road. The marquess has returned from the continent, and I’ve promised to visit. Perhaps I can speak to him. The duke is unwell, or surely he would have taken greater care in the village. His tenants have always spoken highly of him.”

  Jane’s smile was beatific, a reminder of all Georgiana loved about Derbyshire and its people. She was home, even if returning felt a bit like stuffing yourself into a piece of clothing you’d long outgrown. But Sussex and London didn’t fit, either.

  The knock on the door had them turning in bewilderment.

  “Who could that be in this tempest?” Jane asked, crossing to the cottage’s modest foyer, her oldest child clutching her skirt and trailing behind.

  When Jane opened the door and Georgiana saw Dex standing beneath the ramshackle portico, snow a feral flurry around him, his arms loaded with foodstuff and supplies, her breath jumped out like she’d taken a fierce thump to the back. The lapis stone he’d given her seemed to heat up from its spot in her concealed bodice pocket as if it recognized its true owner.

  Georgiana stepped back as Dex stepped inside. His gaze snagged hers before circling the room and settling on Jane. Chauncey, Dex’s valet since he was a boy, stumbled in behind him, his arms filled with all manner of jars and tins.

  Dex delivered his donations—flour, sugar, jam, cider, ale—and gestured to the carriage parked outside. “The footman is unloading more; what I was able to gather quickly. Blankets, clothing, candles, coal, wood. Please distribute to those in need.” Glancing around, he fidgeted adorably, recognizing every morsel of attention in the room was fixed on him. A flush swept his cheeks and Georgiana’s body heated in response, her reaction thankfully hidden beneath layers of cotton and wool. “My majordomo was notified about an overturned coach on the main road. The countess’s staff mentioned she was delivering much-needed supplies to the village when I arrived at her home. So I circled back and ransacked Markham’s cupboards.” He f
rowned and tugged a rather abused top hat from his head, his gaze drifting away as he slapped it against his thigh.

  A ghost of a smile crept over Georgiana’s face. Dex had been worried. An overturned carriage his concern when she’d been set to arrive at Markham Manor. So worried he’d come after her when the plan had been for her to go to him.

  “My coachman is experienced with icy roadways,” she murmured, just for him. “Quite knowledgeable. Lovely handle of the reins. A regular whip.”

  He grunted, throwing her a look both amused and discomfited. She’d never, not once in her life, seen the like with this man. Without trying, she’d knocked Dexter Munro on his muscular backside.

  She wished she knew how she’d done it so she could do it again.

  With a gentle nudge from Georgiana, Jane explained the dire situation in the village; Dex promised to assist, with apologies for his family’s unwitting disregard. Jane was grateful, asking with genuine concern about the duke’s condition, which Dex told her remained unchanged. Once the pleasantries were concluded, he bowed, popped his hat on his head, and tightened his scarf, a length of deep emerald knit exactly matching his eyes. “I must be off. I have an appointment.”

  Catching Georgiana’s gaze, he mouthed, with you.

  After wishing everyone a happy approaching Christmas, she and Dex stepped outside and were immediately sucked into a blinding snowstorm. Chauncey staggered to her carriage and, with a thump on the trap, set off down the lane, leaving her standing in ankle-deep slush beside Dex’s luxurious conveyance.

  “My coachman also has a lovely handle on the reins. And a warmer brick than yours, I’m guessing,” Dex shouted over the gusts ripping between them. She shivered, unbelievably more from his penetrating regard than the storm. With a low sound of impatience, he shrugged out of his coat and slipped it on her shoulders. A multi-caped greatcoat tailored for a man of impressive size, it hung nearly to her feet.

  Time suspended, heat from the worsted wool stealing through her body. Closing her eyes, she drew in his scent: leather, bergamot, man. Bringing herself back, she blinked to find his head cocked in deliberation, snowflakes sticking to his dark lashes, to the curved brim of his hat. “What’s that look for?”

  He released a furtive smile and assisted her into the carriage. “Nothing much. I simply think it looks better on you.”

  As they rolled away from the Fletcher’s cottage, the wheel hit an icy patch, and Georgiana gripped the ceiling strap with a whispered oath. “Is this to be my adventure, Dex? Overturning in a Derbyshire ditch?”

  He glanced over from his position across from her, shifted his long legs, the heel of his boot neatly trapping the hem of her soiled skirt. “You’re the only person to call me that. I think of myself that way, too, which is odd, I suppose. And when I’m here, I feel like Dex Munro.” He looked to the window, brow creasing as he retreated to his own space. “Strange when I’m not sure I know him well.”

  “Who do you feel like away from here?” she whispered, caught in the intimacy of the carriage’s shadowy interior, the landscape of barren, milky white they traversed, the wind a shrieking moan against the sides of the conveyance. Hushed breaths and the scent of buckskin and frost, smoke from the Fletcher’s hearthfire, mint, cinnamon, soap.

  He didn’t answer; she didn’t press. Only huddled into the fragrant folds of his coat and let the motion of the carriage soothe her. They lumbered over the stone bridge crossing the River Derwent, closing in on Markham Manor. Even amid the fierce storm, she easily located the imposing dwelling nestled among vast woodlands, the rocky hills and heather moorland land she’d once known as well as her face in a mirror.

  This quiet ease was one of the things she remembered about Dex’s friendship, their ability to simply be. They’d been able to spend time together but apart, no false effort to construct a house of words. Dex with his rocks, she with her books, Anthony with his drawings. She’d never been comfortable exposing her true self in the presence of anyone else.

  She sat back against the velvet squabs with an inward, private sigh, her gaze touching on Dex as he stared out the window, love and dread and regret lingering in his eyes. Heartbreaking to realize this moment was more intimate than any she’d ever shared with her deceased husband.

  Markham Manor was haunting and magnificent. A chaotic blend of Tudor and Jacobean architectural styles, the enchanting house enthralled but did not charm—much like Dex.

  With a dying duke in residence, the staff hadn’t made any effort to decorate for the holiday. Servants were scarce, the hallways chilled and cheerless as if the dwelling was already in mourning. Wilkes, the butler for as long as Georgiana could remember, escorted her to the Oak Room, the oldest in the house, while Dex went to check on his father. The ever-efficient servant had tea and biscuits delivered, the fire stoked, candelabra lit, Dex’s coat taken from her and hung to dry, leaving her to roam the vast space with her mood falling between anxious and eager. She gazed at the carved oak lining the walls, remembering Dex had once told her the first duke purchased the paneling from a German monastery in the 1500s.

  The weight of time and age and experience hung heavy in the room. She tucked her finger in a sculpted nook, wondering what it must feel like to shoulder responsibility for this home and everyone serving it, every tenant living off the land, the village inhabitants. Quite a burden, she imagined while studying the four-hundred-year-old panels.

  She poured tea, then sipped as she walked, noting how Dex had re-engineered the space for his use. Sculptures once scattered about had been relegated to a dark corner. A sketch that looked to be created by a master lay perched against the imposing mahogany desk, in its place on the wall an unframed map was tacked. Crates of varying sizes sat before the east gallery’s shelves, floor to ceiling, obscuring the rows of books though the scent of leather covers and moldy pages lingered. She’d spent much time here as a child, borrowing from the library of her dreams. Running her finger over a cracked spine, she wondered what Dex had planned. The ghastly weather meant their adventure had to be conducted inside the house.

  An adventure of the mind. Her favorite kind.

  She’d only tagged along on the others, racing over boggy moors and exploring damp, often dreary caves, digging up fossil and stone, because Dex had asked it of her. Anthony, too. And she’d have been damned before she let them leave her behind.

  She placed her teacup on the desk and traced a brand burned into one of the crates. Munro Geological. Fierce and unexpected pride swept her. Despite her secretly wishing Dex wouldn’t roam so far from home to fulfill his dreams, he’d fulfilled them and then some.

  He moved behind her before she realized he’d entered the room, and she went from relaxed to aware in one second.

  Reaching around her, he glided his hand over a label glued to the crate. Unexpectedly and with absolute clarity, she imagined his fingers tracing words written on her skin. “We packed this one at the Messel Pit just outside Frankfurt. A bituminous shale mine abundant in fossils. Geologists are called in to safely remove the artifacts, identify and record them, then ship them back to the requested museums. So these are only mine on loan.” He laughed softly, his breath streaking past her cheek, dancing inside her ear. “I try not to pilfer though I’m often tempted.”

  “There’s much work to complete,” she murmured, moving away from Dex and the teasing scent stealing into her nostrils with each breath, his heat branding her as surely as he’d branded the crates housing his artifacts. Moving away from the compulsion to turn and walk into his arms, a heedless action undermining her effort to compile a list of suitables, two names written on a folded sheet and tucked beside the lapis in her bodice pocket.

  Her foolish wager, her promise to help a family friend find his duchess.

  The woman who would warm Dex’s bed, share his laughter and his wisdom, his stubbornness and his joy, have his children, things Georgiana had once wanted. Impossible dreams now. Her shameful marriage had ruined the chance for
her to enter into an agreement like that ever again.

  The Ice Countess had settled into a state of numb comfort. She couldn’t wake herself. Wouldn’t wake herself. Not when it had taken this long to find a glimmer of happiness. When Dexter Munro, heir to the Duke of Markham, by fate and pledge and duty, had no choice in the matter. Marry, he must. Be awake he must, while she would go on sleeping.

  With a grunt, he hefted a crate atop his shoulder, the muscles in his arms, covered in nothing but a layer of fine cotton, flexing. “We’ll start the adventure in Germany before moving to Denmark. For lunch, a winter picnic is called for, I think. Remember when we used to hold those in this very room? Spread out on a blanket before the fire, eating until our bellies ached. Anthony always liked those.”

  A picnic. With Dex. In her favorite room in the house. With her favorite person on the planet. “I’m to help you categorize your pieces then?” she asked breathlessly, turning the conversation to a topic she could manage, her heart plummeting to her knees.

  He paused halfway across the room, tipped a grin at her. “If you wouldn’t mind. I need to note the scientific names for each, but my spelling is appalling. As I recall, you were exceptionally talented in Latin when it was bollocks to me. I’m happy to provide amusing, even embarrassing, tales of how I acquired each piece.”

  She shrugged, dusting her damp boot through the dust on the floor. Markman Manor needed a woman’s touch and better supervision of the servants, she concluded, reminding her of the blasted list in her pocket. Someone experienced in household management mentally added to the future-duchess wish list. “Father was generous in allowing me to sit with Anthony’s language tutor. I can make notes for you. Be your assistant today, should you need one.”

  He wrestled the crate to the floor and dropped to his haunches beside it. “Exactly what I need,” he murmured so quietly she almost missed it. Reaching beneath the desk, he slid a crowbar out. “This spot is the keyhole to the kingdom,” he said and jammed the thin metal edge between a gap in the wood, and with a violent twist, sent the crate’s lid tumbling.