The Spring Duchess (A Duchess for All Seasons Book 2) Read online

  Red-faced and perspiring, Eleanor dabbed at her forehead with a handkerchief as she walked swiftly down a carpeted hallway and into an empty parlor. The fireplace was dormant and only a single candle glowed in the window, making it the perfect shadowy hideout. The faint scent of cigar smoke lingered in the air, revealing she hadn’t been the first person to find a quiet reprieve in the room, but that did not matter as long as she was the last. Exhaling a long, deep breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding, she sat down on a plush velvet settee and, after a bit of coaxing, managed to draw a rather disgruntled Henny back out into the open.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized as she sat the hedgehog on her lap. “I know you don’t like loud noises, but I was afraid to leave you in my room. Not with that mean old tomcat lurking about.”

  Eleanor and her mother were currently guests of Lord and Lady Hanover at their estate just outside of London. They’d arrived two days ago with plans to stay for a fortnight, but once Henny’s presence became widely known Eleanor would not be surprised if their invitation was revoked before the night was out.

  “Blast and damn,” she muttered, borrowing one of her father’s favorite curses. As ill at ease with social gatherings as his daughter, Lord Ward had remained at home, citing ‘business meetings’ that he needed to attend. Which was complete balderdash, of course, but since he was a man – and head of the household – he got to do what he wished while she, a lowly woman and daughter, had to obey whatever directive she was given.

  It simply wasn’t fair. But then nothing ever was, particularly if you were female.

  “I don’t understand why the lot of us don’t revolt, Henny.” Absently stroking a hand down the hedgehog’s prickly back – being mindful to pat in the direction of the quills – she stared hard at a painting above the mantle. “We bear the children, don’t we? Without us men would quite literally be nonexistent. And yet they control the money, and the politics, and the titles, and the laws. It’s absurd. Don’t you think?”

  It was impossible to decipher the mind of a hedgehog, of course, but she took Henny’s quiet snuffle as a sign of concurrence.

  “I knew you would agree with me. No one else does. They think I’m strange and my ideas eccentric.” Her gaze fell to her lap as an odd tightness overcame her throat. “And Mother wonders why no one has offered for my hand,” she muttered.

  This time Henny purred, and the contented sound made Eleanor smile. No matter what the circumstances, her animals could always be counted on to lift her spirits. Which was why she planned to take the entire lot of them and move to the country when her third Season came to the same disappointing conclusion as all the rest.

  She’d recently struck up a correspondence with an elderly aunt in Hampshire whose husband had passed over the winter. Aunt Biddy was in desperate need of a strong, able-bodied person to help care for her cottage and the surrounding land. Lady Ward had been trying to coax Aunt Biddy to London, but the old woman was stubborn and set in her ways. She refused to leave the place she’d called home for nearly six decades, and eventually Lady Ward had thrown up her hands.

  ‘If she won’t come to us, then there’s nothing else we can do’.

  But that wasn’t precisely true, was it? As it turned out, Aunt Biddy’s stubbornness wasn’t the only trait she and her niece had in common. They both loved animals, and Aunt Biddy had agreed to house Eleanor and her menagerie in exchange for help around the farm. It would be hard work, she’d warned, but Eleanor wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. What scared her more was keeping them pristinely clean.

  All she needed to do was get through one more Season with her sanity intact. If the little incident with Lord Stanhope was any indication it was going to be a challenge, but with an end in sight Eleanor was more than ready to rise to the occasion.

  “I’ll be a spinster living in the country,” she told Henny happily. “Can you think of anything more divine?” For most women a reclusive life far from the glittering ballrooms of London would have been their worst nightmare, but for Eleanor it was a dream come true.

  Now the only thing she needed to do was tell her mother.

  “But that can wait, can’t it?” Setting Henny down on the sofa when the little hedgehog began to wiggle, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, a light smile gracing her lips as she imagined all of the ways her life would change for the better once she was free from the constraints of High Society.

  There would be no more balls. Or ball gowns, for that matter. No more dancing. No more struggling to make polite conversation when all she wanted to do was discuss Sir William Horrocks’ latest invention, a variable speed batton that was going to revolutionize the power loom. No more hiding Henny in her pocket. Speaking of which…

  “Ouch!” she exclaimed when she felt a sharp tug at the top of her head. Blindly reaching up to her hair, she gave a very unladylike curse when her fingers accidentally brushed against Henny’s prickly quills. With an alarmed squeal the hedgehog scurried down the side of the sofa and plopped onto the floor.

  A beam of moonlight reflected off the shiny object Henny carried in her mouth as she scooted under a table and disappeared from sight. A shiny object that looked suspiciously like one of Eleanor’s diamond encrusted hairpins.

  “Not another one!” she moaned. If she lost one more hairpin her mother would never let her go live with Aunt Biddy. “Henny, you damned thief, get back here this instant!”

  Dropping to her hands and knees she tried to follow the hedgehog under the table, but of course she didn’t fit. Derriere in the air and face pressed to the ground, she squinted one eye closed as she searched for Henny underneath a chaise longue. The parlor was well appointed and there were dozens of places a hedgehog could hide, which meant if she was going to retrieve her beloved pet she needed to do it quickly. Once Henny found a soft place to burrow into there was no telling when she would come out. Last year at Lady Markham’s dinner party she’d disappeared for nearly five hours!

  Lady Ward had been thrilled when Eleanor had requested to stay longer. She’d thought her daughter wanted to spend more time with a viscount, but in reality Eleanor had needed the extra time to look for Henny. She’d eventually found her in the kitchens stuffed inside a bread box happily munching on day old crumpets, but there was no telling where she’d gotten off to this time.

  “Henny! Oh Henny, please come back. I’m not cross with you. I promise.” Eleanor started to back out from underneath the table, but with a gasp of dismay she realized her dress was caught. She pulled a bit harder and was met with a sharp tearing sound. Oh dear. A lost hairpin was nothing compared to a ruined gown, particularly one that had cost as much as this.

  Balancing crookedly on one elbow, she tried to peer behind her to see what she was snagged on, but her awkward position made it impossible to see past her voluminous skirts. Suffice it to say she was stuck. Stuck with her rump up in the air and her head under a table.

  “Well this is a fine pickle. Henny, I’ve changed my mind. I am cross with you. Very cross.” But if the mischievous hedgehog heard – or cared – she gave no indication, and Eleanor struck her fist against the floor in frustration.

  What was she going to do? Wait until someone found her, she supposed. And pray that someone was a maid and not a gossipy old hen who would gleefully spread the news of her embarrassing predicament far and wide. There was always the possibility her mother would come looking for her. All things considered, that was probably the best scenario. At least she knew Lady Ward would never whisper a word of this to anyone. In fact, she would probably demand the entire thing be stricken from both of their memories, just like the time Eleanor had jumped into a pond at Hyde Park in an attempt to rescue a floundering gosling.

  ‘We will never speak of this again,’ Lady Ward had furiously hissed as she’d draped her cloak around her daughter’s shoulders before quickly ushering her into their carriage.

  And they hadn’t.

  But it wasn’t Lad
y Ward who stepped into the parlor.

  Nor was it Lady Ward’s voice that sent shivers of alarm rippling down Eleanor’s spine.

  “Well, well, well,” a deep, husky masculine tone drawled. “What do we have here?”

  Chapter Two

  Derek despised balls.

  Not his own, of course. He was quite fond of his own. But the balls that required a man to truss himself up like a stuffed goose and parade about the room like a preening peacock looking for a mate…those he hated. Which begged the question why the devil he was standing in the middle of a ball room. But as the answer was too convoluted to dissect without an entire bottle of brandy at the ready – and sadly no such brandy was available – he was instead possessed of a single-minded focus to do his duty and get the hell out as quickly as possible.

  Sweeping his dance partner effortlessly across the marble floor, he turned a deaf ear to her endless prattle – why were women under the impression that waltzing required a steady flow of conversation? – and kept one eye on the massive long-case clock in the corner of the room.

  In just a few short minutes it would strike midnight, and when it did his evening promised to become much more titillating. For somewhere in the Hanover’s massive estate his mistress was waiting…and she wasn’t wearing any drawers.

  Their little game of cat and mouse was one of the only reasons Derek had bothered to attend tonight. Well, that and he needed to keep up the pretense of looking for a wife to satisfy the terms of his grandfather’s last will and testament. The scheming old bastard had enjoyed making his heir jump through hoops when he’d been alive, and nothing had changed after his death. To say their relationship had been tumultuous would have been like saying England had had a tiny little spat with France. In short, they’d despised one another. And the late Duke of Hawkridge had done everything in his power to ensure Derek would be miserable long after he was gone.

  When the music dwindled and the waltz ended, Derek bowed neatly in front of his partner before excusing himself. Ignoring the volley of longing stares aimed at his back, he moved swiftly through the crowd, stopping only to select two glasses of champagne before abandoning the loud, sweltering ball room for the blessed quiet of a long hallway.

  Lord Hanover’s thick browed ancestors peered down at him from gilt framed paintings as he strolled through the palatial estate, occasionally stopping to open a door and peer inside. His anticipation built with every empty room he encountered until his loins were all but throbbing with need, and when he came across a parlor – and the curvy little arse sticking straight up in the air like a red flag in front of a very randy bull – he wasted no time in locking the door behind him and setting the champagne down so he could unbutton his jacket.

  “Well, well, well.” Dropping the jacket onto the back of a chair, he began to loosen his cravat. “What do we have here?”

  The first time he’d seen Lady Vanessa he had been immediately captivated by her beauty. A willowy blonde with ice blue eyes, plump red lips, and features so delicate they might have been spun from glass, she was the epitome of a classic English rose. Yet while her physical appearance was what had initially piqued his interest, it was the seductive gleam of naughtiness in her gaze that kept it.

  Derek had always been a man in possession of…darker appetites. And Vanessa, for all she might have looked and acted like a proper lady when out in public, was only too happy to feed his baser instincts when they were in private.

  Her myriad of talents in the bedroom, coupled with the fact that she was already married and as such had no ridiculous illusions about becoming the next Duchess of Hawkridge, made her the perfect mistress.

  Vanessa gave a tiny, indecipherable squeak of alarm as he approached her from behind and his desire deepened. Of all the roles she’d played a damsel in distresses had never been among them, and he was looking forward to how far she would carry it out. Although he wasn’t quite certain why she was on the floor with her head under a table.

  “I hope you’re not wearing anything under those skirts,” he said silkily as he crouched behind her and began to slide his hand up her calf. “Or else I’m going to have to – bollocks!”

  Without warning Vanessa kicked back with all the strength and temerity of a mule, the heel of her slippered foot striking precariously close to his nether regions. Cursing, he scrambled back onto the sofa, both hands draped protectively over his cock and balls. A few inches higher…

  “If this is some sort of new game, I fail to see the appeal,” he said darkly.

  “Game?” An outraged female voice that was decidedly not Vanessa’s rose up from underneath the table. “This isn’t a game, you overreaching oaf! How dare you touch me in such a familiar manner!”

  “I…” Quick witted with a dagger sharp tongue, Derek rarely found himself at a loss for words. But as he stared down at the shapely derriere that belonged to someone other than his mistress, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “I…I…”

  “I, I, I,” the impertinent voice mocked. “Why not try an apology, or better yet an explanation? Or are you such a rogue and a rake that you greet every woman you come across by running your hand up her leg?”

  The chit was in a dark room wedged halfway beneath a table and she wanted an explanation from him? Eyes narrowing, Derek shot to his feet.

  “I do apologize,” he said stiffly. “I…thought you were someone else.”

  “You thought I was someone else?” the voice scoffed. “Pray tell, who else do you know who has her head stuck under a table?”

  “I think the better question is what you are doing with your head stuck under a table.”

  “Clearly I am looking for something.”

  Clearly.

  “And what would that something be?” he asked. “A lost earring? A necklace? Your dignity?”

  “If you must know I am looking for Henny.”

  Confused, his gaze swept the room, but unless there was someone hiding behind the curtains they were the parlor’s only two occupants. “Is Henny a pint-sized elf?”

  “Do not be ridiculous. Henny is a hedgehog.”

  Of course she was. Because the only thing stranger than encountering a woman with her head stuck underneath a table was a woman with her head stuck underneath the table looking for her pet hedgehog.

  “I wish you luck in your search,” he said brusquely before he walked around the sofa and picked up his jacket. He was halfway to the door when the panic in the unknown woman’s voice gave him pause.

  “Wait!” she cried. “You can’t just leave. You have to help me.”

  “Do I?” One dark brow lifted as he turned around. “And why would you require the help of a – what was it? Oh, yes. An ‘overreaching oaf’? Don’t worry, I am not a complete cad. I’ll send for help.”

  “No, you can’t!” She said it so quickly that the corners of his mouth twitched despite his annoyance at having been kicked, mocked, and insulted. In the span of a few seconds his mysterious assailant had done what no other woman – or man, for that matter – had ever dared. He should have left her to her fate without a second thought. And yet…

  With a loud, irritated sigh, he dropped his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “I suppose this can be my good deed for the year. What are you stuck on?”

  “If I knew that then I wouldn’t be stuck now, would I?” she replied tartly.

  Saucy little wench. He was looking forward to hearing her stuttering apology when she realized just whom she’d been speaking to in such a disrespectful manner.

  “Do not kick me again,” he ordered as he crouched beside her and began to feel along the table for any sharp edges her gown could have gotten snagged on.

  “What are you doing?” She craned her head around, offering him a glimpse of wide green eyes and thick curls the color of smoldering fire. He’d never cared for red hair. It was too bold. Too messy. Too temperamental. Vanessa’s cold beauty was much more to his liking.

  “Hold still.” His finge
rs bumped against a piece of scrollwork on the edge of the table. At some point the scrollwork must have come loose for a nail had been used to secure it, and it was the nail head that had caught the woman’s dress. “I’ve almost got it – bollocks,” he cursed under his breath when the fabric slipped from his grasp. “I thought I told you to hold still!”

  “I am holding still.”

  “No,” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re not. This blasted sofa is in the way. I’m going to have to straddle you.”

  “You’re going to have to – what are you doing?” she yelped when he mounted her backside as one would a mare, muscular thighs gently squeezing her slender hips. From this position he was finally able to get a firm grip on the nail...and his grip wasn’t the only thing that was firm. For such a bristly little thing she was certainly soft in all the places that counted.

  He was half-tempted to explore more of those soft places, but not fancying another kick in the groin he ignored his misplaced arousal (for he knew the woman his body really desired was Vanessa), and quickly got to work on the nail. Unfortunately, in a twist of horribly bad timing, no sooner had he pried the dress free than the parlor door suddenly swung open.

  “Eleanor?” a lady’s shrill voice rang out. “Eleanor, are you in – oh! I am so sorry, I did not mean to…Eleanor? Eleanor, is that you?”

  Derek willed the redhead to remain silent. They may have been fully clothed, but their current position didn’t exactly lend itself to innocence. Surely she knew what would happen to her reputation if she was discovered kneeling beneath a man in the dark confines of a parlor. But apparently she either didn’t know, or she didn’t care, and he inwardly cringed when she promptly responded with a cheerful, “Yes Mother! It’s me.”