Page 52 of Better Than a Duke
She could pretend he was too old for pleasures of the flesh,but she’d noticed him speaking to her bosom. She shuddered, the last bits of foolish arousal she’d felt at Beckett’s touch fleeing into the night. The only question remaining was whether being pawed at by an old skeleton would be compensated for by the security she would be gaining for Edmund.
As she walked back to the house, the sound of laughter caught her attention. Good heavens, were they doing something fun? Saying amusing, clever things? Rushing her steps a little, she returned to the drawing room.
“Where have you been?” Trent demanded. “I told Henry you were taller than he is, so any son I got on you would be taller than him. Henry’s mother was tiny. A breeze could blow her over.”
Iris dipped a curtsy and pasted on a smile. “I beg your pardon. I needed a breath of air.”
“Night air. Putrid, if you ask me. Come stand next to Henry.”
The duke’s second son frowned. “I don’t need to be measured, Father. My height is what it is. Doreen doesn’t mind it.”
His wife giggled. “You are tall compared to me, my dear.”
“Stand next to each other!”
Carefully keeping her hands open and thinking about Edmund becoming an architect or a solicitor, Iris walked over beside Lord Henry. Though he was the younger of the two Howard brothers, he was still a good eighteen years her senior. She was nearer in age to Henry’s seventeen-year-old daughter than she was to Henry.
“There,” the duke declared, pointing. “She’s a good inch taller than you, Henry, but she’s still short enough to make me look grand. Are you wearing boots, Henry? What about you, girl? Bare feet. Both of you.”
“I am wearing walking shoes,” Iris stated, not moving.
“I’m not taking off my boots. It’s impolite,” Lord Henry seconded.
“Bah. Anyway, I had an eye on that Violet Desmond chit, but she’s too damned tall, and she went and got herself engaged yesterday. Took her right out of the race before she even knew it was being run. Marrying a mister, when she might have been a duchess. You’re smarter than that, aren’t you, Mrs. Silbern?”
Oh, she didn’t want to be. Iris took a slow breath.This was for Edmund. “Call me Iris, Your Grace,” she said, smiling.
“Ha! Proved my point, you did. I imagine you’ll do, but I have to see Lord and Lady Reggins about their youngest first. They’re friends of mine; can’t say no without setting eyes on the girl. She’s only seventeen, though, so I don’t know how well she’ll show in Society.” He eyed Iris. “Better than you have been, I wager.”
“I heard Mrs. Silbern here bloodied Michael Agnew’s nose the other night, Father. You want the Howard name associated with that sort of hoydenish behavior? Because I do not.”
“Oh, she did no such thing,” Aunt Margaret broke in, grabbing the edge of a low table to roll herself into the middle of the drawing room, where she came to a stop. “He hit his nose on her shoulder. Because she’s precisely the perfect height, don’t you know.”
“I don’t mind a bit of spirit and wiggling in a chit,” Trent commented, still eyeing Iris. “Makes things livelier.”
That answered that. He did mean to have her share his bed. Iris looked at him again. In his youth he’d been pleasant-featured enough, she supposed, though now age had thinned his cheeks and rounded his jowls and pushed his hair halfway back up his skull, giving him the appearance of having nothing between his outside and his skeleton but a very thin layer of skin.
Beckett, on the other hand, was a delirious mix of muscle and lean, with keen, amused gray eyes. And kissing him nearly made her skirt fly up over her hips of its own accord. If everyone, including Aunt Margaret, hadn’t been wagering on the date hewould propose to Lady Pauline, if she had had her finances in order and was only waiting until the end of the Season to depart London, he would have been just the sort of friend a widowed mother would have wanted to come calling on her in the evenings. Just the sort of friendshewould have wanted.
And even without the prospect of sex between them, she liked spending time in his—and Rebecca’s—company. She liked that Edmund was smiling and excited and happy. She liked the way heat swirled down her spine when Beckett looked at her, or smiled, or said… anything at all, really. It was trouble, of course, because she wasn’t spending as much time as she should have at Aunt Margaret’s side—or back, rather. Edmund continued to neglect his lessons. And somewhere in the middle of all this, she’d stepped into a competition for a duke’s hand.
She knew better. For heaven’s sake, she’d had to navigate her way between poverty and excess for eight years with Thomas dragging their finances in every direction imaginable. And the four years that followed had been a matter of selling what she could of their household items, taking in mending, relying on some very kind donations from the church, and avoiding notice. Perhaps it had made her bitter, though she preferred to think of it as becoming wiser, and less naïve about the time, attention, and money that friends and relations were willing to lend a widow with a young son.
And then she’d stormed into the home of Beckett Raines, and everyone, her especially, had lost their minds. Perhaps that idiot Michael Agnew had had the right of it after all; not that she was quaking with the need for physical release, but that she’d missed human, adult contact more than she’d realized. And she and Beckett had things in common. And he was kind, witty, and evidently had the same weakness for… companionship that she did.
Perhaps they should have fallen naked to the ground together, because afterward she would have been able to pull her thoughts and feelings back into order, make logical decisions about whether the repulsion she felt for the Duke of Trent was balanced by what she would gain in marrying him, and stop thinking about her neighbor and those vague, pleasant daydreams about impossible things that had plagued her since she’d threatened to hit him with a shovel.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You’re here, you’re here!” Becks exclaimed, dancing about in front of the stable. Edmund could see why Lord Hentrose called her Cricket; she never took a step when a jump would do.
“Remember,” her father cautioned, rising from his seat on the bench next to the stable door, “be slow and smooth. Quick movements spook horses.”
Immediately Becks froze, then began stepping forward slower than a turtle. “I remember. Eddie and his mama won’t spook, though. Just the horses.”
Edmund grinned. “No, you’ve spooked me, too,” he commented, offering his hand to the marquis. “Good morning, Lord Hentrose.”
They shook hands like gentlemen did. “Good morning, Edmund, Iris.”
