Tall, Dark & Notorious: The Duke's Cinderella Bride

To Hawk’s way of thinking Jane had no right to look so happy when she had thrown his own normally peaceful existence into such disarray!

Her earlier remark about the weather being warm had been accompanied by the removal of her travelling cloak. A move that had revealed she wore a pale green gown beneath that lent her skin a creamy hue while at the same time intensifying the colour of the fiery red curls piled upon her head. Her explanation that the gown had been a gift from Sir Barnaby had at least restored Hawk’s faith in his own judgement of the older man; it seemed that Sir Barnaby’s only lapse in good taste had occurred twenty-five years ago, when it had come to the choosing of his wife!

But as Jane sat opposite Hawk, looking so relaxed and beautiful, it was impossible for him not to notice that the gown also revealed the bare expanse of her breasts. That creamy swell moved enticingly every time his coach ran over a rut in the road, causing Hawk to shift uncomfortably in his seat as his body hardened in awareness.

Hawk knew that his tailor in London took great delight in fitting his clothes precisely to the muscled width of his shoulders, his tapered waist and powerful thighs—but at this particular moment Hawk could have wished that the man had allowed him a little more room for manoeuvre in the cut of his breeches!

Jane, still an innocent despite her claim of being two and twenty, remained completely oblivious as to the reason for his discomfort.

Hawk scowled anew. ‘You dare to rebuke me for my silence, Jane?’

The colour warmed Jane’s cheeks as she guessed the reason for his accusation. The Duke had tried repeatedly during dinner yesterday evening to encourage Jane to tell him of her reasons for leaving Markham Park so abruptly had been, and of exactly what she intended doing once she reached London. It had been encouragement Jane had very firmly resisted.

For how could she possibly tell the Duke of Stourbridge—a man who no doubt knew each and every one of his antecedents, reaching back several centuries at least—that her only reason for going to London had been to find further transport to Somerset, all with the intention of discovering who her real father might be?

Jane simply could not tell him that. Not only would the Duke question the wisdom of even associating with one such as her, but it would also be disloyal to the mother Jane had never known, who had married a man she did not love in order to give her daughter a name.

And so, much to the Duke’s obvious chagrin, Jane had remained stubbornly silent concerning her reasons for travelling to London.

It was a silence that obviously still displeased him.

‘I did not rebuke you,Your Grace.’Jane chose to ignore his impatient snort. ‘I merely remarked upon the fact that you seem unusually uncommunicative this morning.’

‘Unlike some people, Jane, I do not feel the need to spend my every waking moment prattling on about innocuous or—even worse—irrelevant subjects.’

She drew in a sharp breath at his deliberately insulting tone. ‘In that case, Your Grace, I will allow you to return to your solitude.’ She turned away from him to stare sightlessly out of the window beside her, blinking back unexpected tears as she did so.

Was she wrong not to confide in him?

If he had been just Hawk St Claire, the man Jane had talked to amongst the sand dunes two evenings ago, perhaps she might have felt able to talk to him about such a personal matter. But it was impossible to forget he was also the Duke of Stourbridge, a rich and powerful peer of the realm, a man Jane simply could not tell of her mother’s relationship with a married man which had resulted in her own birth.

No matter how much it displeased the Duke, she simply could not!

Hawk’s heart clenched in his chest as he saw Jane blink back the tears obviously caused by his impatient anger.

Since the death of his mother ten years ago the only female to have been a constant in his life had been his young sister, Arabella. As a child, Arabella had been engagingly charming, but during the last few months spent at her first London Season she had shown herself to be as wilfully determined to have her own way as her two older brothers, causing Lady Hammond, their amenable aunt and Arabella’s patroness, to pronounce her completely unmanageable. Which meant that Arabella was currently unchaperoned, his aunt having taken to her bed in her London home to recover from the rigours of chaperoning a young girl through the Season.

Jane, as Hawk knew from the fact that she was here in his coach with him at all, could be equally stubborn when the occasion warranted. She just went about achieving her objective without his sibling’s penchant for confrontation. No doubt her years of being subjugated at every turn by the sharp-tongued Lady Sulby were responsible for her more restrained defiance. At best she had been treated as a poor relation in the Sulby household. At worst—as Hawk had disapprovingly witnessed for himself on the day he’d arrived at Markham Park—as little more than a servant.

He sighed heavily. ‘I believe I owe you an apology, Jane.’

She turned to give him a surprised look, those suppressed tears giving an extra sheen of brightness to the green of her eyes. ‘An apology, Your Grace?’

He chose to ignore her formal address this time. ‘My mood is—churlish.’ He nodded. ‘But I really should not take out my bad temper on you.’

Jane gave him a rueful smile. ‘Not even if I am the reason for that bad temper?’

‘But you are not. At least, not completely,’ he allowed derisively, as he saw a teasing look of sceptisism enter her eyes. ‘You do not have any siblings of your own, do you, Jane?’

‘I do not, Your Grace,’ she confirmed huskily.

What had he said to make Jane suddenly lower her lashes and clench her hands so tightly together in her lap? He had talked only of siblings, something Jane obviously did not have, and yet curiously the mention had caused her previous air of contentment to fade.

Much as Hawk found it irksome that Jane stubbornly refused to discuss with him her last interview with Lady Sulby, he also found himself most unhappy at being the one to cause her further distress.

He shook his head. ‘Jane, you have no idea how lucky you are to be an only child.’ He watched intently this time for Jane’s reaction—if any—to his remark.

But in the few seconds during which Hawk had noted and questioned her earlier response Jane had somehow drawn upon hidden reserves, and her expression was one of cool interest now. ‘Lucky, Your Grace?’

He grimaced. ‘I have two younger brothers and an even younger sister—all of whom, it seems, are trying to age me before my time!’

Jane smiled at the image his words projected. ‘In what way, Your Grace?’

‘In every way!’ He gave an impatient grimace.

At that moment he had such a look of a man weighed down by his family responsibilities—an expression so at odds with the arrogantly imperious Duke of Stourbridge—that Jane could not help smiling. ‘Tell me about them,’ she invited softly.

He sat back on the seat. ‘Lucian is eight and twenty, and morose and unapproachable since he resigned his commission in the army following Bonaparte’s defeat. Sebastian is six and twenty. He enjoys nothing more than involving himself in every scandal you could think of and some I would rather you could not.’ He grimaced with distaste. ‘As for Arabella…! My sister is eight and ten in years, and recently attended her first London Season.’

There was such a wealth of feeling in his last statement that Jane had no doubt that Lady Arabella’s first Season had not been the success the Duke had hoped it would be.

‘She is still very young, Your Grace. There will be plenty more opportuny, I am sure, to receive the required marriage proposal.’ Jane attempted to placate him, sure that, as the sister of the Duke of Stourbridge, LadyArabella St Claire must be a very eligible young lady indeed.

The Duke’s mouth twisted ruefully. ‘You misunderstand me, Jane,’ he drawled. ‘My sister has received numerous offers of marriage in the past few months—she has steadfastly refused to accept any of them!’ he added hardly.

The fact that the Duke had allowed his sister to do so was very telling indeed, and indicated an indulgence for his younger siblings that had not been apparent in his initial comment about them.

Jane shrugged. ‘Perhaps Lady Arabella felt unable to love any of those men—’

‘Love, Jane?’ he interrupted scornfully. ‘What does love have to do with marriage?’

‘Oh, but—’ Jane broke off her exclamation to bite her bottom lip as she recalled that even her own mother had not married for love but to give her unborn child a name.

Was that really all marriage amounted to? Merely a necessary requirement for the sake of having children, made out of duty rather than love?

Was that what the Duke of Stourbridge would require in his own marriage? A woman to bear him legitimate children, necessary heirs to the dukedom, while he no doubt supported a mistress in town and continued to live his life as he chose?

Was that what all men of the ton required in marriage?

If so, then Jane was glad she had no part of it.

She had already spent too much of her two and twenty years knowing what it was like to be unloved to ever contemplate deliberately committing the rest of her life to such an emotionless state. Better to remain an old maid than to be merely suffered in a loveless marriage.

Besides, who would ever want to marry her now anyway? The daughter of a single woman abandoned in her pregnancy by her married lover!

‘Jane…?’

She had allowed her guard to drop, her thoughts to wander, Jane realized as she looked across at the Duke with a guilty start. And the illustrious Duke of Stourbridge was too astute a man, those strange gold-coloured eyes of his too all-seeing to allow such a lapse to pass unnoticed.