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“But I am not a guest. I have been carried here against my will.” Dazzled by eiderdown and silken robes that smelled as enticing as the duke himself, she forced herself to remember that she had been stolen from atonball and spirited into the depths of Surrey. Why should a peer of the realm kidnap a woman to wife? Someone as stunningly attractive as he ought not need to resort to larceny to procure a duchess. Gossip had likely broken out like a riot in the Seven Dials the minute it became apparent that she and the duke were not going to reappear from behind the palms. And Rollo had surely been watching her like a hawk, ready to carry the tale to her uncle.
Well, she wasn’t going to hang about like a milk-and-water miss! Never mind that she was being attended like a queen. She would write to Jemima and let her know that she was alive and well. She doubted that her friend could mount a rescue party; her movements were severely circumscribed by her draconian aunt, by whom Felicity had not been received. In the light of day, her uncle would do nothing to aid her. Rollo would be enraged by the possibility that he may be tarnished by her infamy. Dare she write to Cecil? He might be her only hope. She could call upon their childhood friendship and ask that they put the recent past behind them. All she needed was someone to come and fetch her away from this place, as she doubted the duke, having gone to absurd lengths to bring her here, would blithely turn over a coach for her disposal… But Cecil was such a ditherer, he might leave her here until she’d turned old and gray and presented the duke with heir, spare, and who knows how many children. Even if her cousin bestirred himself to liberate her from Lowell Hall, she’d still be ruined. She doubted he would wish to align himself to a scandal.
“Kidnapped. It’s so romantic.” Mary’s enraptured voice echoed out from the bathing chamber.
Felicity turned to yet another window and found the view from the side restricted by an enormous box hedge that ranged uninterrupted toward a wood. She had expected to see an ornamental pergola, perhaps, and instead it was as though she was looking at a barrier. Located as they were at a height, despite the masses of shrubbery, she saw the sparkle of a river or brook and also spied the barn, set well away from the house.
“I’ll want to visit the stables,” she mused aloud. “The duke was hard on his cattle last night.”
The little maid popped her head around the doorframe. “Oh, Yer Grace, O’Mara would have sorted them out right and tight—”
“Mary!” At Mrs. Birks’s reprimand, back Mary popped, and the sound of rushing water ceased. Mrs. Birks gestured to the door of the bathing chamber, and Felicity went in. It was glorious, covered from floor to ceiling in colorful painted tiles, and the water smelled of—“Vanilla and rosemary,” Felicity exclaimed. “My favorite scents.”
“His Grace told Mr. Bates, I heard ’im say it was like to your scent—”
“Mary!” roared the housekeeper from across the suite.
“—like to the perfume you were wearing, like, and so I thought of this all myself.” Mary’s face flushed bright pink from the thrill of her own initiative as well as the rebuke from Mrs. Birks. “And I pinched some o’ them Epsom salts from the stillroom. You’ll never have such a bath in all your born days.”
“Thank you, Mary, you’ve done so well.”
Mary beamed like the sun and began to bob up and down in an endless curtsy. “My pleasure, Your Grace. Thank you, Your Grace.”
“I am not Your Grace,” Felicity said gently. Duchess though she may not be, there was no need to be ungracious. Mary rolled her eyes and tested the water one last time.
“There you are, mum, there you are…” Mrs. Birks set out several towels that looked to be the length and breadth of the bedsheets and fussed with soaps and hand cloths. “I’ll have a root ’round the attics for an article more feminine for you to wear.”
“Pity you can’t wear that banyan,” Mary offered. “It’s only doing wonderful things for your figure. I do be wondering why the ladies go about in them dresses that cover up everything but the bosoms, not that your bosoms should be hidden away at all—”
“Mary! I apologize, mum, she’s only green, and she does like having opinions.”
“That is quite all right, I prefer opinions to pelisses.” Felicity looked at the water, at the depth of the bath, and the spaciousness of the room and suspected she was purposefully being beguiled by luxury. She dug deep for fortitude. “Mrs. Birks, if you would be so good as to fetch me paper, pen, and ink. If I am to be imprisoned in this house, then I must insist I be given leave to tend to my correspondence.”
“Eh, now, ma’am, that wouldn’t be in my bailiwick, no it wouldn’t,” the housekeeper said. “That would fall to our butler, Mr. Coburn, and it wouldn’t be proper for him to wait upon you, in your dishabille and all.”
“O’Mara can bring them right along,” Mary said and earned a vicious snarl from Mrs. Birks.
“How handy it is to have a female chamberlain about the place,” Felicity replied and, to placate the housekeeper, added, “I must not waste the lovely bath you’ve both gone to such trouble to prepare for me.”
“Now!” A relieved Mrs. Birks scooted Mary out the door. “That there spigot is for the hot water, and that is for the cold. We’ll leave you to your privacy for there’s no need for a maid laying on the water. Just pull the bell if you need anything, anything at all.”
“You are most kind, Mrs. Birks, and run a flawless household.”
The good lady gasped and dashed out the door with a loud sniff, as though she were about to cry.
Felicity had heard of Epsom and their famous salts; was the market town near to the duke’s holdings? Closing the door behind her, she decadently let the dressing gown drop to the floor, her chemise following hard upon it, and eased herself into the tub, a full-length affair she’d never imagined could exist. She sighed as the soothing scents teased her senses, and the salts softened the water until it was as luxurious as her pillowslip. For a moment, she betrayed herself in her mind, certain she could become accustomed to such sumptuousness, but then sternly turned her thoughts to escaping.
Or tried to. Where was His Grace? Not that she wanted him walking in the door at that precise moment. She sank down in the bath, mortified. Had she been ruined without beingruinedand then abandoned? If so, she’d find a way back to Finsbury Square, and with bowed head, she would throw herself on the mercy of Uncle Ezra until such time as the will came good and she would be free. She could face down the whole world once she had her inheritance. The niggle of worry that it all was too good to be true reared its ugly head. She must hold fast and trust, somehow, in a father who had proven so untrustworthy in the last years of his life. And write yet another letter to that law firm.
But until then, what harm was there in indulging in a heavenly bath and dreaming of an alluring, if larcenous, man? A daydream was not capitulation; it was not an acceptance of a yet-to-be-proffered proposal. Would he actually propose, like in a novel, on one knee? Why should he, when he’d simply taken her? Why had he takenher, of all the women on the Marriage Mart, in society—in the world? She moaned, and the sound echoed off the tiles. How could this be happening to her, she who had never acquired a suitor, or even one bouquet, in five years?
She curled up on her side, luxuriating in the warmth of the water. In the absence of the duke, his domicile was doing its part in seducing her. The length of the tub was unlike anything she’d ever thought possible, allowing her to recline fully and submerge herself. It was so deep that the water came up to her chin, uniformly hot to the absolutely perfect degree, and the salts had a calming, relaxing effect upon her person.
Her attention drifted not to the perfidy of the duke but the duke himself. And That Chest. And voice. His prowess in the waltz. The way he’d run his nose over her cheek. How could he not have kissed her then, out on the terrace? Did she still want to be kissed by him? She snorted, then laughed at the sound echoing around the room. She did want to be kissed by him, abduction or no. The very notion that he’d carried her into the Hall and up the stairs to the state bedchamber was enough to make her swoon. She rolled onto her back and ran her hands down her body, closing her eyes as though it might help her pretend she wasn’t going to do what she was about to do. Her skin had never been so soft, and emboldened by the privacy, the buoyancy, the warmth, her hand found her most sensitive place. She tipped her head to the side and leaned it against the lip of the tub, her body arching, recalling the heat of the hand that stroked her back during that waltz, the tickle of breath on her cheek, the strength of the arm that carried her through the Livingstons’ garden. She sighed and sank a little deeper in the water as her legs parted, moaned as the water lapped around her, adding to the sensual pleasure as she built and built toward her release—
* * *
The bouquet Alfred had assembled with his own two hands trembled in his grasp. All that time wasted perusing the offerings of his conservatory when he could have been enjoying his mate enjoying her bath. Prepared to commence courting, he had arrived despite being told Miss Templeton was at her ablutions. Had he hoped that he might catch her, awash in bubbles, soaping one of her long legs? Did he imagine that she would gasp, then smile at him seductively and invite him to join her? When had he become so adept at deluding himself?
