Page 88 of The Duke of a Thousand Desires

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Simon tendedto relax his guard a day or two after returning to his country villa. Caverley House was not as fortified as a medieval castle, but it did claim a position of strategical hauteur upon a heavily wooded hill. He had always known that one day he would come home to live out his life and fulfill his ducal obligations. He would rest easier with Ravenna safeguarded inside its walls.

He wanted to cast off the cloud that hung over his childhood memories.

He imagined his sister fidgeting in the hall where his family had gathered for their official portrait. He heard her piping voice in the old nursery he and Ravenna visited by candlelight. A puppet sat on the bare floor. He picked it up, untangling the cobwebbed strings, and placed it on a shelf.

“She was a quiet girl,” he said. “She rarely fussed and yet she wept her heart out the day I told her she was to marry Bruxton. She swore she’d rather be a spinster. I’d believed until then that she approved of him. I assumed she was nervous and would recover in a week or so.”

“She had good manners,” Ravenna said. “She was brought up to obey. So was I. But I haven’t always done what I was ordered.”

“Thank God,” he muttered, and closed the nursery door. He smiled at her as around them servants hastened to light pewter wall-torches to dispel the darkness. “I wish we’d arrived in the daylight. Tomorrow I’ll show you the parkland. Radnor will welcome his new home.”

She accompanied him down the spiral stairwell to their bedchamber on the next floor. “We shall make happy memories here, Simon. Your sister won’t be forgotten.”

“You haven’t seen the bedchamber yet,” he said, grinning up at her from the landing. “We’ll make a memory or two there, I promise.”

A chambermaid giggled from an alcove where she stood in attendance. Ravenna shook her head at Simon in affectionate dismay. He wanted to tell her that she had saved him from his bitterness, that she had already given him his most cherished memories. But they had an audience, even here in the country. And for the moment he would contain his desire for her until they were behind closed doors.

A tangy woodfire scented with rosemary sprigs welcomed them. Ravenna delighted in the warmth of the room as she admired the escritoire that covered one entire wall. On the desktop sat a box of ink bottles, a seal, numerous pens, and a supply of foolscap. She could write hundreds of letters to her female cousins chronicling country life. She could even start a scandalous diary of her own.

But it was the behemoth two-poster bedstead that held her eye,drapedwith turquoise silk curtains that billowed to the floor like waves. It was quite a bed, a statement of noble dominance. She might have been daunted by its size alone. But it suited the house, as did her husband.

One would not expect a duke to sleep in a cot.

“That bed served as a pirate ship when we were small,” Simon said as she removed her half-boots. “My siblings and I played buccaneers of the Spanish Main until one day the tester broke and our father banished us outside to the ruins to wage our wars.”

“I suppose you’ve been taking prisoners under the covers ever since,” she said with her lips pursed.

He grinned, sliding his hands around her shoulders to unfasten her cloak. “I have never brought a woman to this house.”

She climbed up the steps to the bed and reclined against the tasseled pillows in contentment. “It is a magnificent home.” She would likely conceive their children in this bed, and once they started a family, the house would not seem quite as large or quiet.

She sat up slowly. Simon had removed his coat and taken a chair across the room at a table supplied with clean glasses and a bottle of port.

“We’ll ride out early to meet the tenantry,” he said, pouring their evening drinks. “The neighbors will call in the afternoon. You’ll have a chance to charm in one of your new bonnets.”

“The neighbors are in for a shock if any of them met Isolde and Timpkins during our ‘honeymoon.’”

“Timpkins is well-enough known in the village that he wouldn’t have risked a detailed inspection. I believe they stayed behind the gates.” He rose to pull out a chair for her. “Sit with me.”

She had just reached the table when the report of a gun jarred the idyllic stillness of the estate.

They shared a look; neither panicked. He set her glass back on the table, untouched. Ravenna slipped on her boots. Simon opened his traveling case and removed three pistols. He placed one inside his coat, the other his boot. The third was the Manton that Heath had recommended for Ravenna. He handed her the weapon and drew her from the leaded-window where she stood peering through the curtains into a bank of fog.

“All I can see is the chapel spire,” she said.

“That’s part of the Gothic ruins I mentioned a moment ago.” He turned her firmly back into the room toward the fireplace. “I’ll send Timpkins and Isolde up before I warn the rest of the staff. There’s a passage next to the mantelpiece. I’ll open the panel and leave you to decide whether you need to hide. There should be flint and tinder at the end of the tunnel. Do not light a candle unless you feel you will die in the dark.”

“I don’t mind dark tunnels,” she said as he ran his hand under the mantelpiece. “But I would rather you take Timpkins than leave him here.”

The panel swung open. A moldy odor wafted into the room. “Dammit,” he said. “I should not have insisted Rhys wait a day to join us. Was Bruxton right? Was I too stubborn to listen to him?”

“We don’t know anything yet, Simon.”

“I know that whatever happens I am all the better because of you. You are a practical duchess.”

“And you?”