‘Yes.’
‘How many times?’
‘Three in the last year—and, no, that does not mean that Clara Stanley must be the one responsible.’ She glared her annoyance. ‘Will you not leave that poor woman alone? Has she not suffered enough?’
Again, strange sentiments from the woman who was supposedly responsible for causing most, if not all, of Clara Stanley’s suffering …
There was so much here which did not add up. So many questions that Rupert instinctively knew Pandora would not answer as yet. Truthfully, at least. Not that he had any reason to believe she had ever answered him untruthfully, she just had a way of avoiding the truth when it suited her to do so.
Rupert had heard the gentlemen in his clubs discussing the beauty of Pandora Maybury during the past four years, of her infidelity during her marriage, and it had been impossible not to learn of the gossip of the scandal surrounding the death of both her husband and the man accused of being her lover. But there had been little gossip of note about her since that scandal. No mention of her having taken a new lover. Or lovers. No gentlemen at his clubs having boasted of bedding the beautiful but deadly Duchess.
Of course it could just be that she was too scandalous, too notorious, for any of those gentlemen to wish to become involved with her, even privately, but somehow Rupert didn’t think so; Sugdon, for one, had certainly not seemed to suffer from any such reluctance to bed her!
Rupert’s mouth tightened, nostrils flaring, just at the memory of the scene he had interrupted the previous evening, of Pandora’s gown ripped, her breasts all but visible through the thin material of her chemise. ‘Is there anything missing that you can tell?’
She gave a shake of her head. ‘Obviously I won’t be able to say exactly until after things have been put back to rights, but I don’t think so, no.’
Rupert’s eyes narrowed. ‘Was anything taken those other three times?’
‘Not that I’m aware, no.’
‘Not that you are aware? How can you not know for sure?’
Pandora sighed at his obvious incredulity. ‘My marriage contract stated that if Barnaby should die before me and our marriage was childless, I should be left a house of my own in which to live and funds to support myself. This house was never a part of the Wyndwood estate; in fact, I had no knowledge of its existence until Barnaby bequeathed it to me in his will. It came to me already furnished and I’ve changed very little since I moved here a year ago. But I believe all the furnishings are the same, and that the original paintings still hang upon the walls.’
In Rupert’s experience there was usually only one reason for a gentleman to own a property in London of which his wife had no knowledge. Was it possible that, before his untimely death, Barnaby Maybury had kept a mistress here, in the very same house he had bequeathed to his wife in his will? If that was indeed the case, then Rupert could imagine no greater insult to that wife. However, the clearness of Pandora’s gaze and expression would seem to imply she remained totally in ignorance of the insult …
Yet another indication—if Rupert had needed one—that she wasn’t at all the sophisticated and experienced woman the gossips expected her to be. Indeed, her soft-heartedness, even with regard to the employment of her household servants, gave every impression she was anything but those two things!
Could it be that Maybury’s mistress had since returned to this house three—no, four times, in order to try to retrieve something of hers she had inadvertently left behind when she no doubt hastily removed her things from the premises? It was certainly one explanation, and one that Rupert intended to privately pursue.
If Pandora was in ignorance as to her husband’s use for this house, then it was perhaps best, for the moment, if she remained that way.
Only the vulnerability of her nape and the back of her shoulders was now visible to him as she once again busied herself tidying the things upon her dressing table. A vulnerability which stirred Rupert’s protective feelings in spite of himself.
He carefully stepped over the silk undergarments scattered upon the floor as he silently crossed the bedchamber to stand behind her. ‘Pandora—what have you done?’ he prompted sharply as she gave a gasp at the same time as she swiftly drew back her gloved hand from arranging the things on the dressing table.
‘A sliver of glass just pierced my finger.’ Pandora kept her face averted as she now held her injured hand against her breasts, fully aware that it was the realisation of Rupert’s close proximity which had startled her, as much as the sudden pain of the glass entering her finger.
The more so, because until that moment, having been preoccupied in her own thoughts concerning all the events of this evening, she had been totally unaware of his disturbing presence standing so close behind her …
‘Let me see.’
Pandora’s back stiffened instinctively as he took a firm hold of her bare shoulders before turning her to face him, that golden head now bent as he took a gentle hold of her injured hand with the obvious intention of inspecting the damage.
‘As there is blood oozing all over your glove you’ll need to remove it,’ he advised gruffly.
Pandora, having been staring, mesmerized, at that bent golden head, now gave a startled glance down at her hand, surprised to see there was indeed blood seeping through the lace. ‘Oh, dear!’ She freed her hand to peel the glove down her arm before carefully removing it. ‘It doesn’t look so bad …’ There appeared to be only the smallest of puncture wounds in the soft pad of her index finger.
‘Let me see.’ The Duke once again took a firm grasp of her hand, frowning darkly as he looked down intently at the blood still oozing from the wound. ‘Is the glass still inside?’
‘I don’t think so, no.’ Pandora was no longer bothered quite so much by the shock of the accident as she was by having Rupert cradling her hand in his much larger one. Her breath hitched in her throat, her senses alert to every nuance of the touch of those long, slender fingers that so gently cupped her own.
‘Perhaps it would be as well if I …’ He did not finish his sentence as he raised her hand to his parted lips to take her injured finger into the moist heat of his mouth.
‘What are you doing?’ Pandora gasped at the intimacy of such an action, the cut to her finger completely forgotten as she felt the moist lap of his tongue against her flesh before he began to suck upon it gently. ‘Rupert!’ she exclaimed, her breathing becoming shallow.
Long golden lashes rose until that glittering silver gaze met and held hers even as he continued his tender ministrations.
Pandora ceased to breathe at all, totally ensnared, both by those mesmerising eyes gazing so deeply into her own, and the shocking intimacy of feeling what he was doing to her finger. It felt so … sensuous, forbidden and of such intimacy that she was helplessly aware of her breasts swelling beneath her gown, the tips hardening, and causing an aching warmth between her thighs. She felt herself totally unable to find the strength to look away from the perfectly chiselled lips around her finger.
It was, at one and the same time, the most caring, and yet erotically charged, moment of her life, that gentle suckling of her flesh causing the tips of her breasts to tingle, as if the softness of Rupert’s lips were touching her there rather than her finger. The heat increased inside her core, dampening the delicacy of her folds and making her press her trembling thighs together in a vain attempt to suppress it.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ There was a shocked gasp from across the bedchamber as Henley entered the room without warning. ‘I had no idea! I would not have— I believed his Grace to have already left …’ She trailed off awkwardly.
Rupert