A Duke in Disguise Read online

  “Because it’ll give me ideas,” he admitted, trying to keep his tone detached.

  “Ha! Ideas. You. Stuff and nonsense. If you were prone to ideas, you would have had them already. That is how ideas work.” She spoke with an air of grave authority that was at odds with her slightly slurred speech.

  “How do you know I haven’t?” he answered, his voice laced with something like anger. Ash didn’t know what got into him, what gave him the courage or foolishness to speak those words aloud. Maybe it was the punch, or the fact that they could hardly see one another through the fog and the dark. Maybe because their voices seemed muffled and remote, belonging to the night rather than to themselves, he could pretend it wasn’t himself speaking, but some utter idiot who wanted to be viciously embarrassed for the rest of his life.

  “As if a man could keep such a thing to himself,” she said with scorn.

  He could hardly argue with her without telling her far more than was good for either of them, so he steered the conversation to more anodyne topics. They made idle chatter for the remainder of the walk, the sort of go-nowhere conversation that people can share when they’ve been in one another’s lives for nearly as long as either can remember.

  “Do you think Nate will return tonight?” Verity asked as they turned onto Longacre. The execution took place a few days earlier. The Prince Regent had commuted the sentences to hanging, followed by beheading, so at least the nation was to be spared the spectacle of those young men being drawn and quartered.

  “More likely tomorrow.” Ash was certain Verity wouldn’t know a moment’s peace until her brother was safely home and she could be confident that he hadn’t incited any riots during his time in the north.

  By the time they got home, Verity’s teeth were chattering. Last winter had been bitterly cold and it already looked like this year would be no better. It was barely November and they had already needed fires several days running. Verity said her fingers were stiff, so Ash unlocked the door and they entered the dark cold house.

  “I want to see your new sketches,” Verity said.

  He had done two more, each of increasing explicitness. He could have brought them to her in her bedroom, when she was snugly tucked beneath layers of quilts, warmed by a roaring fire. The previous week in that bed, her body had curled against his like a kitten, almost pliant. They could spend their time in one another’s arms as easily as they could in conversation. Tonight he could show her the sketches, sit on the edge of her bed and—

  “I’ll lay the fire in your study,” he said quickly.

  “All right. But I’ll lay the fire,” Verity said. “You get the sketches. And if you have a bottle of wine in your room, bring that too. That’ll warm us up. Otherwise we’ll have to make do with the gin Nate keeps under the counter in the shop.”

  When he entered the study, a bottle of wine under one arm and his drawings in his hand, Verity already had the fire crackling. He paused in the doorway for a moment to admire her as she knelt before the hearth. Her dress was thin and worn and decidedly out of fashion, if it ever had precisely been in fashion in the first place, which very plain garments seldom were. Her figure wasn’t statuesque, like Portia Allenby, or elegantly wispy like the women in the fashion plates he drew. She was, however, perfect. When he saw her, he felt something like relief, as if the sight of her had quenched a thirst he hardly knew he had.

  He had known for what seemed like forever that his feelings for Verity Plum were on the knife’s edge between friendship and something infinitely more perilous, and he had done a damned lot of work keeping them there. But watching her lay the fire with deft and competent hands, he realized that in working so hard not to let his warmer feelings for her tip over into lust, he had let in a tide of other feelings that weren’t so easy to tame. She was necessary to him, and he thought he might be necessary to her. They knew one another so damned well it was almost intrusively intimate. How did two people negotiate attraction when their lives were already entangled? He was certain the only answer was to avoid the matter entirely, and equally certain this was a solution that wouldn’t last forever.

  Verity turned towards him when he uncorked the bottle. Her gaze flicked up and down his body before darting hastily away. She produced two glasses from a desk drawer, but instead of sitting behind her desk, she sat beside him on the sofa.

  “Are you going to show me your pictures?” she asked after he filled both glasses with wine.

  “Or we could wait until we’re less, ah, foxed.”

  She made a rude noise and held out her hand with a grabbing gesture. He handed her the first sketch and studied her face as she examined it. Lit only by flickering firelight, she was made of nothing but uncompromising hard lines softened only by shadow. He found he was holding his breath.

  In the illustration she was examining, Catherine straddled her husband’s lap, and he had his head lowered to her bosom. Because of the arrangement of her dressing gown and the angle of perspective, the only exposed part of her body was a single breast. Without the benefit of a model, he had spent an afternoon in the British Museum examining a Renaissance Madonna to ensure sure he got that breast right.

  “Ah,” she said.

  “It’s only an—”

  “It’s perfect. Although I don’t think they wore top boots in 1480.”

  “I decided that if I put Perkin Warbeck in doublet and hose he’d look like a stage jester.” He had regarded the fifteenth-century portraits at the museum in some dismay, not sure how such outlandish garments could be rendered either suitably erotic or in line with his own aesthetic. “Consider it poetic license. But I can change it if you prefer.”

  “No, it’s quite, ah, appealing.” She tucked her feet beneath her in a way that brought her markedly closer to him, but her gaze remained on the drawing. “I love how his hand is on her waist. You can see the marks each finger is making on her skin, through the dressing gown. Will that be apparent after the engraving?”

  “Certainly it will. All the detail you see will render perfectly.” As if he didn’t know his craft. Roger had taught him well, and he wished he could see his former master’s face when he learned Ash was using his skills to such an end.

  “Very well, Ash.” She elbowed him gently in the side. “I didn’t mean to besmirch your talents.”

  God, she was close now. Too close and not nearly close enough. He took hold of her arm before she could pull it away. “I told you—” he said from between gritted teeth.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, sitting up straight. “I’m quite forgetting myself this evening.”

  “No, for heaven’s sake, that’s not what I meant.” It had been exactly what he meant, but Verity close to him was better than Verity far away, no matter what havoc it wreaked with his mind. So he put his arm around her waist and pulled her close so they were sitting shoulder to shoulder.

  “Here’s the other one,” he said, producing the second sketch. This one depicted Catherine leaning against a wall, one leg wrapped around Perkin’s waist. Their robes were a tangle of light and shadow, doing more to emphasize their undress rather than to obscure it. The focus of the picture was one of Perkin’s arms, braced against the wall. But as he looked at it, he couldn’t help but notice that he had drawn Catherine to resemble Verity. It was all there, in the jaw and the wild hair. He hadn’t meant to—not precisely—but any woman he drew turned into Verity. He’d have to alter the sketch before doing the etching.

  Verity took the paper from his hand and held it at arm’s length. She fumbled in her pocket and came up with a pair of spectacles that she slipped crookedly onto her nose. “Hmm,” she said, and shifted her gaze to his face. For a moment he thought she might suspect the truth, that she might see in the drawing what she saw in the looking glass. He became very conscious of the arm that was still wrapped around her.

  “All right then,” he said, striving for a normal tone, as if he weren’t thinking only of all the places their bodies touched. “I’ll
carry on doing illustrations for the rest of the volume. A total of four, is that right?”

  She nodded. “Four for each volume,” she said, yawning and settling her head against his shoulder. “What I like about the book, and about your drawings, is that they both seem to be enjoying each other. I don’t know what it’s like to be with a man, but it can’t be so fundamentally different than being with a woman, which I quite enjoyed. Have you ever thought about how funny it is that people go to bed with people of a different gender?”

  Ash blinked. “I do believe most people’s preferences run that way,” he said, amused.

  “Do you? I rather thought everybody was like me.” She raised a hand to her mouth to cover a yawn.

  “Which is to say . . .” he prompted, unsure of what she meant.

  “Desirous of all manner of people. Like Perkin Warbeck,” she said without a hint of irony, and he realized that for Verity, this novel had supplanted any history she had previously read on the topic. Perkin Warbeck was now the lover of the doomed Earl of Warwick, and there was no going back.

  “You thought it a baffling coincidence that most people confined their amorous activities to one gender?” Ash tried to keep a straight face.

  “Not a coincidence, but a constraint put on them by the law and fear of judgment. Which is quite understandable, of course.” She frowned, as if items were slotting into place in her mind. “But if you’re saying it’s more of an inborn preference, then I feel quite silly.”

  “Not silly.” He kissed the top of her head. A terrible idea, but he had the sense that he’d fling himself headfirst towards any bad idea that brought him closer to Verity. He sat up straight and tried to clear his head. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you who the author is. I didn’t recognize the handwriting or the style.” The love scenes, which had clearly been added after the body of the text was complete, were written in a messier penmanship, but that could have to do with the haste of the insertion rather than an indication that two separate authors were at work.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t give a name or an address, but requested that I direct correspondence to the Fox and Hound in Leicester Square.”

  Ash’s stomach clenched in fear. “Let me understand,” he said, trying to sound calm. “When this book goes to press, no matter how clandestinely you mean to advertise it, there is at least one stranger who knows that you’re the publisher.”

  “True, but it’s in her best interest to keep mum, otherwise she could be in hot water.”

  “No,” Ash said patiently, “she will not be. Because you don’t know who she is. This is unwise, Verity.” She looked up sharply at his use of her first name.

  “I’ve already paid her, and now I can’t afford not to go to press with the book.”

  “Just like your brother,” he said. “I don’t know why my two closest friends need to play fast and loose with their safety like this. I’ve come to expect as much from Nate, but I hoped you knew better.” The thought of losing them the way he had lost everyone else made his blood chill and he couldn’t stand the thought of it for one moment longer. He rose to his feet, needing to get out of this room. “Good night, Plum.” He made his way towards the door and glanced at her over his shoulder. “I trust you’re sober enough to make it up the stairs on your own?”

  She nodded but said nothing, only looking up at him with wide eyes. In the shadows, he could see an expression of confused hurt on her face. That wouldn’t do.

  “Oh, damn it, Plum. Come here.” But even as he spoke, he was already crossing the room, going to her, taking her hand, pulling her to her feet. He couldn’t say that he had a plan. He knew only that he couldn’t part from her with anything like coldness or resentment between them. He squeezed her hands. “I just . . . I can’t lose you, Plum.”

  He must have said the wrong words, or the right ones, because she was on her toes, her lips brushing over his, her hands on his shoulders. His hands somehow found the small of her back, the nape of her neck. Ash tried to act like a man who had some semblance of sangfroid, rather than one who was being offered a ladle of water after crossing an endless desert. Or maybe he was being offered a lit fuse, an unexploded mortar shell, a disaster waiting to happen. One or the other. His mind was too consumed with the feel of Verity’s mouth moving against his to figure it out. She tasted of wine and smelled of hair soap and ink, and her lips were soft and searching.

  Her kisses changed from exploratory assays into something downright purposeful as she licked along his bottom lip. He clamped his hands onto her hips, feeling the sharpness of her hipbone and the softness beyond. She was kissing him in earnest now, kissing him as comprehensively and unyieldingly as she did everything else in life. She steered him towards the sofa and pushed him down. He went willingly—was there a word that meant more than willingly? He did not know and his mind wasn’t forming thoughts now anyway—and she straddled his lap.

  They fit together as if this were not their first kiss but their hundredth, their thousandth, as if they had been doing this all along. As if they were gears from the same clock, coming together finally, finally. As if this was what they were meant to do. This was what he had wanted for years, what he had dreaded too. This was it, the end of their precarious balancing act, the beginning of his losing her.

  He moved a hand to her cheek and pulled back. “Wait.”

  “Why?” she asked, her eyes unfocused.

  “I need a moment to get my bearings.”

  She smiled, a lazy twist of one side of her mouth. “You’re on my sofa, between my thighs.”

  She was wrong. He was in a new world, an uncharted sea where Verity Plum said that sort of thing to him. “I can’t. We know how this will end, and I can’t stand the thought of it.”

  Eyes narrowed, she got to her feet and glared down at him. She wasn’t angry, just vexed and working herself up to a lather; this was a look he knew well. He had the wonderful feeling that she was about to dress him down and explain why he was being an idiot. He’d agree, and then they’d ruin everything that mattered to him. He would know with every kiss and every caress that he was one step closer to losing her, one step closer to being utterly adrift in the world.

  Chapter Six

  They were interrupted by the sound of the front door swinging open.

  “Good God,” came Nate’s voice, nearly a shout. “What the devil happened in this shop?”

  Ash watched the relief wash over Verity’s face at the realization that her brother had returned safely. He got to his feet and squeezed her hand. “And why the hell is that cat in the house?” Nate shouted.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said. “But hold still.” Her hair had come loose when he had touched her. “Hold still.” He lifted the errant lock and tried to coax it in the general direction of the rest of Verity’s coiffure, fastening it with a hairpin that he fished out of his pocket. “There,” he said, surveying his handiwork. She no longer looked like he had been pawing at her, at least. Her cheeks flushed, as if she knew the direction of his thoughts, and she looked hastily away.

  Nate and Charlie were in the shop, a single satchel on the floor between them. Charlie looked merely tired while Nate had the look of a man who hadn’t slept in days.

  “What happened here?” Nate asked, gesturing at the shelves Ash and Verity had spent several mornings setting to rights.

  “The redcoats tossed the place and we put everything back as best as we could,” Verity said tersely.

  Charlie groaned and buried his face in his hands, but Nate seemed unsurprised. “Well, I suppose it was bound to happen. Sorry it was when I wasn’t here to help, Verity.”

  Ash watched Verity. She opened her mouth and snapped it shut.

  “I’m going to find something to eat,” Charlie cut in. “We can quarrel in the kitchen as well as we can in the shop.”

  They settled around the plain deal table that had been in the kitchen since long before Ash first set foot in the place. Charlie ducked into th
e larder, emerging with his arms full of bread, cheese, and apples. He placed half the food in front of Nate. “Eat.”

  From his seat beside Verity, Ash could see her twist the fabric of her skirt in her hands. “I think you’ve got to go to America,” she blurted out.

  “Not happening,” Nate said, breaking a piece of bread into crumbs. “We’re close to a victory. You should have seen them. It wasn’t your ordinary hanging. The crowd wasn’t for it. There was no cheering after the hangman showed Brandreth’s head to the crowd. People aren’t going to take this sitting down.”

  “Eat that piece of bread, will you,” Charlie muttered. “Maybe you’ll think straight with some food in you.”

  “The government can’t keep executing everyone who rises up,” Nate protested.

  “Like hell they can’t,” Verity responded, at the same moment Ash said, “Would you wager your life on that?”

  Nate glared at all of them.

  “I just don’t want you to die,” Verity said, the words coming out quick, running together, as if she were ashamed. “You’re my brother and I don’t want you to die.”

  Good Christ, she really was ashamed. Ash didn’t think he had ever seen that look on Verity’s face before. Ashamed to be asking for something? He wasn’t certain. Under the table, he took her hand, running his thumbs over her knuckles. She squeezed back, then took a deep breath.

  “I’ve been thinking all week,” she said. “There’s a ship leaving for New York next week. I have enough saved for your passage. And Ash has enough saved to set you up as a jobbing printer, if you’d like. Or you could write. It’s up to you.”

  “Like hell it is. What if I don’t agree?” Nate shot back. “Would you have me kidnapped by pirates like you advised your letter writer to do to her bigamous husband?”

  A silence stretched out. “Then I’ll go to America on my own.”

  “What?” the three men asked at once.

  “I’ll use the money I’ve saved and book my own passage to America,” Verity said, her gaze skittering away from Ash’s, her cheeks reddening, and Ash wondered if she had come up with this scheme to ensure that Ash not be left alone—no matter what, one of the Plums would remain in England.