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

  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?

  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 ha
ir.

  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.”