“The household’s all in a frenzy because they don’t know whether the duchess will leave the duke or not.” Shark shook his head. “Powerful shock for a lady, to find herself married to a pirate. By all accounts, she thought he was five fathoms deep and gone forever. She fainted dead away at the sight of him, that’s what they’re saying downstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if your wife does the same. Or maybe she’ll just bar the door. After all, you’ve been gone longer than the duke has.”
“Shut your trap,” Griffin growled. “Get someone to help you with the bags and we’ll be out the door in five minutes.” He grabbed his cane and started for the hallway, only to pause and deal his thigh a resounding whack. For some reason, slamming the muscles with a fist seemed to loosen them, so that walking was easier.
Not easy, but easier.
“Yer doing the right thing,” Shark said irrepressibly. “Run off to yer missus and tell her yerself before she finds out the worst in the papers.”
“Summon the carriage,” Griffin said, ignoring Shark’s nonsense. That was the trouble with turning a sailor into a manservant. Shark didn’t have the proper attitude.
A moment later, he was pausing on the threshold of the library. Over the years, he and James had been entertained several times by no less than the King of Sicily, but even so, Griffin was impressed by the room’s grandeur. It resembled rooms at Versailles, painted with delicate blue and white designs, heavy silk hanging at every window.
Unfortunately, James didn’t suit the decor. He sat at his desk, sleeves rolled up, no coat or neck cloth in evidence. Like Griffin, he was bronzed from the sun, his body powerful and large, his face tattooed.
“This is remarkably elegant,” Griffin observed, wandering into the room. “I’ve ruined you, that’s clear. I never saw a man who looked less like a nobleman. You’re not living up to all this ducal elegance.”
James snorted, not looking up from the page he was writing. “I’ve just had word that the pardons will be delivered tomorrow.”
“Send mine after me,” Griffin said, leaning on his cane. “I have to find my wife before she reads about my occupation in the papers. In order to win our bet, you understand,” he went on to say. He truly felt a bit ashamed of the wager he and James had placed; one ought not place bets regarding one’s wife.
James rose and came around from behind his desk. Griffin hadn’t paid attention to his cousin’s appearance in years, but there was no getting around the fact that the tight pantaloons he wore now weren’t the same as the rough breeches they had worn aboard ship. You could make out every muscle on James’s leg, and he had the limbs of a dockworker.
“Remember the first time I saw you?” Griffin asked, pointing his cane in James’s direction. “You had a wig plopped sideways on your head, and an embroidered coat thrown on any which way. You were skinny as a reed, barely out of your nappies. Most ship captains looked terrified when my men poured over the rail, but you looked eager.”
James laughed. “I was so bloody grateful when I realized the pirate ship following us was manned by my own flesh and blood.”
“How in the hell are you ever going to fit in among the ton?”
“What, you don’t think they’ll like my tattoo?” James laughed again, as fearless now as when he first faced Griffin and his horde of pirates. “I’ll just point to Viscount Moncrieff if anyone looks at me askance. Maybe between the two of us we’ll start a fashion.”
“My father’s still alive,” Griffin said, wondering whether he should go through the trouble of collapsing into a chair. It was damnably hard to get upright again. “I’m no viscount,” he added.
“His lordship won’t live forever. Someday we’ll find ourselves old, gray, and tattooed, battling it out in the House of Lords over a corn bill.”
Griffin uttered a blasphemy and turned toward the door. If his cousin wanted to pretend that it was going to be easy to return to civilization, let him revel. The days of being each other’s right hand, boon companion, blood brother, were over.
“Coz.” James spoke from just behind him, having moved with that uncanny silent grace that served him so well during skirmishes at sea. “When will I see you again?”
Griffin shrugged. “Could be next week. I’m not sure my wife will let me in the front door. Yours has already declared she’s leaving. We might both be busy finding new housing, not to mention new spouses.”
James grinned. “Feeling daunted, are you? The captain of the Flying Poppy, the scourge of the seven seas, fearful of a wife he barely knows?”
“Funny how I was the captain on the seas,” Griffin said, ignoring him, “but now you’re the duke and I’m a mere baronet.”
“Rubbish. I was the captain of the Poppy Two, by far the better vessel. You were always my subordinate.”
Griffin gave him a thump on the back, and a little silence fell. Male friendship was such an odd thing. They followed each other into danger because bravado doubled with company: side by side, recklessness squared. Now…
“Her Grace will presumably be coming down for dinner soon,” Griffin said, looking his cousin up and down. “You should dress like a duke. Put on that coat you had made in Paris. Surprise her. You look like a savage.”
“I hate—”
Griffin cut him off. “Doesn’t matter. Ladies don’t like the unkempt look. Shark has been chatting with the household. Did you know that your wife is famous throughout London and Paris for her elegance?”
“That doesn’t surprise me. She always had a mania for that sort of thing.”
“Stands to reason Her Grace won’t want to see you looking like a shiftless gardener at the dining table. Though why I’m giving you advice, I don’t know. I stand to lose—what do I stand to lose? We made the bet, but we never established the forfeit.”
James’s jaw set. “We shouldn’t have done it.” Their eyes met, acknowledging the fact that they were easing from blood brothers to something else. From men whose deepest allegiance was to each other to men who owed their wives something. Not everything, perhaps, given the years that had passed, but dignity, at least. A modicum of loyalty.
“Too late now,” Griffin said, feeling a bit more cheerful now that he knew James felt the same twinge of shame. “Frankly, I doubt either of us will win. English ladies don’t want anything to do with pirates. We’ll never get them in bed.”
“I shouldn’t have agreed to it.”
“Damned if you don’t look a proper duke with your mouth all pursed up like that. Well, there it stands. The last huzzah of our piratical, vulgar selves. You can’t back out of it now.”
James growled.
Shark poked his head in the library door. “We’re all packed, milord.”
For a moment they just looked at each other: two men who’d come home to a place where they didn’t belong and likely would never fit in.
“Christmas?” James asked, his eyebrow cocked. “In the country.”
Griffin thought that over. Spending Christmas at the seat of the duchy would mean acknowledging that James was like a brother. They’d find themselves telling stories about times they had nearly died protecting each other, rather than putting it all behind them and pretending the last years were some sort of dream.
James moved his shoulder, a twitch more eloquent than a shrug. “I’d like to know there’s something pleasant in my future.”
The duke didn’t want to be a duke. Griffin didn’t want to be a baronet, let alone a viscount, so they were paired in that.
“It’s as if Jason—or the Minotaur, for that matter—returned home,” Griffin remarked. “I’ve got this bum leg, you sound like gravel on the bottom of a wheel, and no one will know what to make of us.”
James snorted. “Actually, that makes us Odysseus: didn’t Homer have it that no one recognized Odysseus but the family dog? I don’t give a damn what anyone makes of us. Christmas?” he repeated.
If Griffin said yes, he would be declaring himself a duke’s intimate friend, going to a house party for the holiday, acknowledging a closeness to power that his father had always lusted after.
He had thought becoming a pirate was the ultimate way to thwart his father’s ambitions.
It seemed fate had something else in mind.
“I wish you weren’t a duke,” he said, to fill the silence as much as anything.
“So do I.” James’s eyes were clear. Honest.
“Very well, Christmas,” Griffin said, giving in to the inevitable. “Likely you’ll still be trying to bed your wife, so I can give you a hint or two.”
A rough embrace, and he walked out without another word, because there wasn’t need for one.
Now he merely had to face his family: His father. His wife.
Wife.
About the Author
A New York Times bestselling author, ELOISA JAMES is a professor of English literature who lives with her family in New York, but who can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. (Her husband is an honest-to-goodness Italian knight!) Eloisa’s website offers short stories, extra chapters, and even a guide to shopping in Florence. Visit her at www.eloisajames.com.
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By Eloisa James
SEDUCED BY A PIRATE (A NOVELLA)
THE UGLY DUCHESS
THE DUKE IS MINE
WINNING THE WALLFLOWER (A NOVELLA)
A FOOL AGAIN (A NOVELLA)
WHEN BEAUTY TAMED THE BEAST
STORMING THE CASTLE (A NOVELLA)
A KISS AT MIDNIGHT
A DUKE OF HER OWN
THIS DUCHESS OF MINE
WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS
DUCHESS BY NIGHT
AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS
DESPERATE DUCHESSES
PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
THE TAMING OF THE DUKE
KISS ME, ANNABEL
MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU
YOUR WICKED WAYS
A WILD PURSUIT
FOOL FOR LOVE
DUCHESS IN LOVE
Coming Soon
ONCE UPON A TOWER
Copyright
“With This Kiss: Part Three” was originally published in As You Wish in April 2013 by Avon Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpt from The Ugly Duchess copyright © 2012 by Eloisa James.
Excerpt from “Seduced by a Pirate” copyright © 2012 by Eloisa James.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WITH THIS KISS: PART THREE. Copyright © 2013 by Eloisa James. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780062276957
Version 03222013
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Table of Contents
Contents
Author’s Note
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Epilogue
Announcement Page
An Excerpt from The Ugly Duchess
One
Two
An Excerpt from “Seduced by a Pirate”
One
About the Author
By Eloisa James
Copyright
About the Publisher