Dukes Do It Better, page 4
“Our encounter in Olread Cove was…”
He waited, but she didn’t seem inclined to finish the sentence. The heat of her so close to him sent tingles of awareness up his leg as if his skin could feel the silky smoothness of her gown beneath him.
The gold and yellow furnishings in the room seemed designed to complement her elegance and coloring. Like living inside a Fabergé egg. The perfection of it all made him want to muss her a bit. See if that passionate woman who laughed a little too loud was still in there somewhere behind the polished exterior.
Malachi crossed one ankle over his knee and teased, “Exciting? Enticing? Entertaining? Enthralling? Erotic? Our encounter in the village was erotic as hell.”
So erotic she’d haunted him for months. The ink on the lease to his new house was still wet, but his bedchamber was now miles away from his family home and, more importantly, his mother. Malachi finally had the privacy to pursue more than a single night with Emma.
Either Emma was open to an affair, and he could burn this attraction out of his system, or she would reject him, and he could cling to that instead of her sweet kiss goodbye, and the memory of watching her get dressed in the faint morning light.
A blush spread across her chest as she met his eyes with the boldness he remembered. “It was erotic.”
“I’m happy to see you again, Emma. Even if it is a surprise.”
“A pleasant surprise, milord.” With one finger, light as a feather, she traced the line where her skirt disappeared under his thigh and sent him a sly smile.
Mal hoped the smile was intended to be encouragement, because that’s how he was taking it. “If you’re amenable to the idea, perhaps we could see more of each other while we’re in London.” He shifted slightly, canting his body toward hers to rest an arm across the back of the sofa. For a moment, he lost his point when her tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip. Sweet heaven, he missed those lips. In October, she’d tasted like wine and happiness and passion, and he wondered if this polished version of her would taste the same.
“Let me make my intentions clear. I want you in my bed again,” he said, voice rough.
“We agreed to one night.” Negating her own words, Emma reached out and smoothed her fingertips down his bearded cheek. Neither rejection, nor agreement.
“And it was spectacular.” He turned to kiss her palm. Her breath caught, making him smile. Yes, that crackle of interest they’d experienced to explosive consequences at the assembly room ball was alive and well. What a relief to know she felt it too.
Heat sparked in her eyes. “I’ve thought about you,” she confessed.
“I’ve thought of you often.” An understatement. He’d thought of her lips and the husky laugh he’d teased out of her, more times than he could count. Those memories kept him warm on frigid nights bobbing in the Baltic. The journal he’d found had entertained his brain, but mental images of Emma brought him to pleasure, alone in his cabin, so often his fantasies always began now with dark eyes and gold hair.
“How long are you in London?” she asked.
Malachi sighed, some of the budding arousal leaching from him at the question. “I’d love to know the answer to that as well. A few weeks, probably. My mother bewitched someone in the Admiralty and pulled me home, but I’m handling it.”
Her finger brushed the black ribbon around his biceps. “I’m sorry for your loss. My father died several months ago. The family recently came out of mourning.”
“My condolences.” The polite words were automatic, but not insincere. A low current of grief over George swept away the lingering attraction he’d been enjoying.
“You are moving about in society, though, correct?” he asked.
“Yes, but I’m picking and choosing events. My departure date isn’t set in stone as of yet, but I doubt I’ll be in London for much longer, Lord Trenton.”
The title should have made him flinch, but her tone, low and intimately teasing, brought back a simmering shock of heat to his belly. Malachi leaned forward, until their faces were close enough to smell the bergamot on her breath from the pot of tea cooling on the table nearby. “I like it better when you call me Mal,” he said, angling his mouth to steal a kiss.
She lifted her chin to meet him, dark lashes already swooping down.
“Em, have you seen today’s edition of the Times? I set it aside at breakfast and it seems to have disappeared.” A blond man wandered into the room as he spoke.
Malachi jerked back, clambering to his feet like a child caught stealing sweets. A glance down showed Emma biting her lip, blinking as if waking from a daydream. There was no doubt she’d been ready for his kiss, with her pink cheeks and rosy flush peeking from her fichu. Emma recovered quickly, straightening her shoulders as she raised a brow as if to say don’t just stand there, then nodded toward a nearby chair.
“Phee had it last. Calvin, would you like to meet my guest? Calvin, Marquess of Eastly, may I introduce Malachi Harlow, Duke of Trenton. This is my brother, Your Grace.”
Malachi cocked his head. He’d always had a memory for faces, and he was certain he’d met her brother before now. It was only a matter of placing where he knew him from.
The blond man froze for a second before his darker brows met into a solid line across his forehead. “The pirate captain is a duke?”
Emma jerked her head to look at Malachi. “Pirate?”
“Captain, yes. Pirate, no.” Malachi shook his head toward her, but eyed the man.
Like a puzzle coming together, pieces of memory clicked into place. They’d done business several years before, while Malachi had been running convicts to the penal colonies. Where had he picked up the prisoner? Scotland? Yes, the Solway Firth. He and the man she called Calvin had struck an under-the-table deal to transport someone with forged papers. It hadn’t been the first time he’d supplemented his crew’s income with creative transactions.
He offered the newcomer a handshake. “A pleasure to see you again, milord.”
The man stalked across the room to stand between Malachi and Emma, ignoring the proffered greeting. “What the hell are you doing with my sister?”
“How do you two know each other?” Emma rose to her feet, eyeing Malachi and her brother with suspicion.
Malachi asked Calvin, “Would you like to tell your sister what this is about, or should I?”
As quickly as he’d marched over, full of protective indignation, Calvin deflated, slumping into a chair by Emma’s side of the sofa. “My sins have come home to roost, I suppose.”
Emma put her hands on her hips and studied the two of them. Although her face was composed, her mouth was hard, daring the men to attempt a lie so she could squash them like a bug.
Another current of desire flared. Before now, Malachi hadn’t realized this combination of strong and adorable would shoot straight to his groin, but here he was. Silently counting backward from fifty, he willed his body not to betray him.
When Emma turned that expression on Malachi, he shifted from one foot to the other. No matter how much he’d prefer to take a seat for whatever lecture was imminent, he wouldn’t sit while Emma stood. He shot her brother a condemning look, although the man ignored him.
“It seems to me, whatever sins Cal refers to are shared by the two of you. Now somebody had better explain.”
Calvin stared at the toes of his boots but didn’t offer words right away.
Malachi shrugged. There wasn’t anything to hide. While not technically legal, he’d provided a service, which he’d been paid for. Nothing too sinister there.
“A few years ago, your brother had a problem. I helped solve it in the form of taking a bad man off his hands and delivering said bad man to the penal colonies in Australia. Simple as that.”
Calvin glanced at Malachi with a look he couldn’t define. Relief? Puzzlement?
“Who was the man? Cal, why haven’t I heard of this before now?” Emma’s attention focused on her brother, eyebrows meeting over the bridge of her fine nose.
It was almost comical when her brother was the one being interrogated. After all, Malachi hadn’t paid to have a man shipped off to the end of the world. He’d only been the one to take out the trash, so to speak.
Calvin’s heavy sigh echoed in the room. “It was the year before your debut, Em. It’s not as if I deliberately hid it from you.” He waved a hand at her. “Sit down. Stop looming like you’re going to take a switch to my hide.”
Emma sat, folding her hands in her lap primly. Malachi took his seat, observing the exchange between the siblings. He and George had never been so relaxed, yet confrontational, with one another. As children, they’d been playmates until their mother drove them apart with cruel favoritism. As adults, they’d been polite. These two? They were friends.
“The man was a horrible person who hurt a friend, and I took care of the situation to make sure he couldn’t hurt her or anyone else again,” Calvin said.
Emma cocked her head. “Does Phee know about this?”
Calvin frowned. “Of course she does. If I kept secrets from my wife, she’d murder me in my sleep.”
The triumphant look Emma shot them sparked an alarm in Malachi’s head. “So it wasn’t Phee the man hurt. Has to be Lottie, then. That’s the only other woman for whom you’d dispose of a whole man in her defense. And you’d do anything for Ethan.”
Malachi swiveled his head to watch Calvin’s reaction to her deductive reasoning, then returned to the much more pleasurable option of staring at Emma. Seeing her ferret out the information was appealing to him on a level beyond his fascination with the plump mouth he’d nearly kissed again a moment ago. Emma was clever, and the longer Malachi sat in this Fabergé egg of a room, the more he enjoyed her company beyond the possibility of ending up in bed together.
Emma pressed, “Did you and Ethan hatch this plan together, or was this a solution you came to on your own? No, he has to know. I can’t imagine you keeping a secret from your best friend. You and Ethan are so inseparable you practically share a brain—tiny as it sometimes appears to be.”
Calvin’s cheek worked, and Malachi suspected the man was literally biting his tongue.
“If you don’t tell me, I can always shout out the window and ask.” Emma turned to Malachi. “Their drawing room window mirrors ours. Lord and Lady Amesbury live next door when they aren’t in Kent. Their knocker is hung, so I know they’re home.”
Calvin pressed his palms over his face, and a pang of sympathy tugged at Malachi. Any hope of Calvin keeping the truth to himself died as they watched. Her brother leaned back and sighed, giving in to the inevitable.
“No need to shout across the lane like a hoyden. Ethan knew.” Calvin said the words with clear reluctance.
Emma clapped. “Ha! I knew it!” She turned the whole of her attention on Malachi. “Don’t look so smug, Captain. Or Your Grace. Whatever you are.” She wagged an admonishing finger at him, but her eyes sparkled with mirth. “He called you a pirate, and you somehow made an entire man disappear at my brother’s request.”
“A bad man,” Malachi and Calvin said in unison, then exchanged a surprised look.
Emma rolled her eyes, and Malachi glimpsed how she might have been as a young girl. This woman must have run circles around her brother with her wickedly quick mind.
“Fine. A bad man. The fact remains, you made someone disappear. What’d you do with him?” She straightened on the sofa and turned to her brother. “Is he dead? Calvin, did you pay a pirate to kill a man?”
“Again, not a pirate,” Malachi protested, a thread of amusement threatening to make him laugh inappropriately. “And I didn’t kill him. He survived the voyage.”
“Did he?” Calvin asked. “Pity.”
“Taking money to make someone disappear sounds distinctly piratical to me,” Emma said with a teasing grin.
“I was stuck with the prisoner route because I’d annoyed someone at the Admiralty. England wasn’t at war, so His Majesty wasn’t compelled to pay the sailors under my command. I was on half-pay, which is bad enough, but my men often went without wages altogether. Under those circumstances, one must get creative to see one’s crew compensated for their labor. Such as doing paid favors for people like your brother. See? Nothing piratical.” Malachi spread his hands in a gesture of innocence.
Emma again swiveled her head between Malachi and her brother.
Calvin threw his hands in the air with a short laugh. “Imagine walking up to all…that…in a gloomy pub in Scotland, then handing over a bag of gold for a shady favor.”
Emma’s gaze turned speculative, and by reflex Malachi glanced down at himself. Breeches, polished boots, a coat over a patterned waistcoat. The only remarkable thing was that he’d managed not to spill breakfast down the front of himself this morning, so his cravat wasn’t spoiled by even one drop of coffee. Before calling on the pretty widow, he’d made an extra effort with his dress to appear as respectable as possible. Possibly to balance out the unrespectable thoughts she inspired. “I see nothing amiss.”
“I don’t think he’s talking about your clothes, Mal,” she said. “You are rather a lot to take in. Which is a compliment.”
The clock on the mantel chimed. Calvin said, “Is your call over yet, Sir Pirate? I still need to find the Times, and the way you two look at each other is distressing me.”
Emma stood, shaking out her skirts. “I’m a grown woman and a widow, Calvin. I may look at Lord Trenton however I choose.”
Her brother rose with Malachi. “You mean you really are the new Duke of Trenton?”
Malachi blew out a sigh. “I almost prefer being called a pirate to the title.”
Emma dimpled at him and offered her hand. “You’ll get used to it, Your Grace.”
He bowed and gave her fingers a brief squeeze. Her nails were short, filed smooth. A white paste marred the crevice where nail met cuticle, but her fingers were long and tapered. Delicate. There were quite a few delicate parts of her. She was just a little bit of a thing, although the direct speech and healthy laugh he’d witnessed in the village made her seem larger than she was.
Acting on impulse, Malachi brushed a thumb over the white paste. The movement made her chuckle, but the sound held a touch of embarrassment.
“I didn’t realize I had dough on my nails. Flour gets everywhere, doesn’t it?”
When she removed her hand from his clasp, Malachi frowned. Embarrassing her hadn’t been his intention.
Flour. Dough. “You bake?” Malachi stared at the adorable blonde before him. She was the daughter of a marquess. Why the hell was she in the kitchen? The thought wasn’t distasteful—just the opposite. Certainly a surprise.
She picked at the dried dough with her thumbnail, then straightened her shoulders as if admitting to baking was an act of defiance. “I find it relaxing. Not to mention rewarding to eat something you created with your own hands. Pies are my favorite, but I’m proficient in baking most things these days.”
An image arose in his mind of her in a kitchen, rolling out dough, surrounded by the scent of baking sugar. In his fantasy, a dusting of flour—no. Sugar. It should definitely be sugar streaking her smooth cheek, begging his mouth to kiss off the sweetness. If her damned brother wasn’t looming five feet away, he’d have risked bringing her fingers to his mouth for a taste.
“What were you making this morning?” he asked, instead of telling her she was extraordinary.
“Ginger biscuits. They’re Alton’s favorite. Cal finished off the last batch, so I made more to appease the tiny tyrant.” She said it with such a sweet smile, the love she had for her son temporarily stole his breath.
Malachi’s mother had never spoken of him in such a way. And she sure as hell had never baked his favorite biscuit in the massive, ancient kitchens of Stonewill Hall. If pressed, Mother might confess to entering the kitchens on official business a half dozen times over the years. But to actually bake? Preposterous.
Some response seemed called for, as a basic rule of conversation if nothing else, but it took two rough swallows to make room in his throat for words. “You’re a great mother to do so, Emma.”
Going from burgeoning desire to thoughts of his mother within such a short time was a journey he didn’t want to take twice. While he’d arrived with thoughts of seduction—or establishing the opening for it, anyway—now his mind filled with images of her baking biscuits for her son. Merging the two together in his head was a new experience.
“May I call on you again? Or perhaps I’ll see you at an event soon and we can further our acquaintance.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lord Eastly slumped back in his chair.
“I don’t get a voice in this questionable friendship, do I?” Calvin asked, staring up at the ceiling in comedic defeat.
“No,” Malachi and Emma said together, exchanging a grin.
Damn, her dimples could fell a man. Take him out right at the knees if a gent wasn’t careful.
“You’re always welcome to call.” Those dimples deepened; her plump bottom lip was shiny after she swiped her tongue across it, distracting him for a moment. An instant zing under his skin reminded him of why he’d chosen to visit this morning.
Emma was a dangerous beauty in a slightly chaotic package. Alarm bells signaled in his brain like the warning cries of centuries of sailors who’d fallen to sirens before him. With a nod of farewell to the siblings, he left.
Sliding his gloves on, Malachi donned his hat and stepped into the bustle of Hill Street.
A smile slipped over his face as he paused to let a carriage roll past. His personal life was a mess, his professional life was teetering on the brink of extinction, and the blond widow in the house behind him made him smile despite it all.
Emma was temptation personified. And Malachi? Well, he never had been keen on resisting temptation and didn’t see any reason to begin now.
Chapter Four
If you’d told me five years ago my closest friends would be a cook, a maid, a reluctant countess, and a goat, I’d have sent you off to Bedlam. I’m particularly fond of the goat.
