Scandal And The Duchess (MacKenzies & McBrides #6.5)(14)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Rose walked through the house without worry, looking over everything her husband must have shown her, without guilt. Whoever had been to blame for the duke’s demise, it hadn’t been Rose.

They went through room after lofty room, Rose knowing her way around perfectly. Steven enjoyed imagining her leading him until he had no idea where he was, and then telling him she’d take him back out for a price of a kiss or two. For more than kisses. She’d smile when she said it, her eyes sparkling.

No, that would never happen. Rose wasn’t the sort of woman who went in for naughty games. In spite of the scandal sheets, she was a gentleman’s daughter, raised to the straight and narrow. More’s the pity.

Rose turned around so suddenly that Steven almost ran into her. Reminded him of their first meeting, he falling onto her bosom, then sliding down her welcoming body.

“I’ve thought of something,” she said.

Steven had thought of something too . . . she under him on white sheets, her golden hair trickling through his hands.

He tried to shake off the vision, but it wouldn’t leave him. Rose languid against the pillow, her fingers drifting over Steven’s skin, both of them sleek with sweat. They’d be joined, the heat between them overwhelming the winter’s chill . . .

“Did you hear me?” Rose asked, peering at him. “Are you certain you’re all right, Captain McBride?”

No, and he never would be again.

“What?” Steven managed to say. The hangover was making him be in two different places at once—in this chill, square house in reality and the curved, soft bed of his imagination. The true Rose existed in this cold, dull place, instead of in the fantasy in his head. Unfair.

“This way,” she was saying. “There was a cabinet I always loved, always raved about. Charles had promised to have it moved into my bedchamber, but he never had the chance.”

Her words ended in a sad note, echoed by the quiet swish of her dress as she walked away from him.

Steven caught up to her in the wide hallway. “I’m sorry, love,” he said. “What happened to you, I mean.”

Rose turned to him, her green eyes softening in the gloom. “You know, you are the only person who hasn’t immediately believed his death was my fault.” She paused. “Or do you?”

“No.” Steven rubbed his hand through his hair to keep himself from reaching for her. “I don’t.”

“They say I deliberately married a man with a weak heart,” Rose said. “And then . . . proved to be too much for him.” Her color heightened.

Steven knew exactly why they’d imagined that—beautiful, young Rose would throw any middle-aged man into palpitations. The journalists saw her lush body and red lips and extrapolated that her physical presence had caused the man’s death. Steven couldn’t blame them for thinking so—wasn’t he still fantasizing about having her in his bed?

But they hadn’t asked her, or the duke’s physician, for the true story. The newspapers had simply declared it, loving the scandal of the young second wife doing in the husband and sweeping up the spoils.

Only Rose had been kept from her spoils.

They entered a room that was little more than a cluster of furniture. At one time, it had been a sitting room of some sort, but now appeared to be a place to store things that didn’t fit in the other rooms.

Rose moved unwaveringly to the end of the room, two large windows letting in light there. Her skirts billowed as she knelt before a cabinet and gestured to it. “This.”

The cabinet was about three feet long and two and a half high and as wide, inlaid with satinwood and other exotic woods Steven couldn’t identify. Rose opened the cabinet’s double doors to reveal a stack of shallow drawers.

Steven saw the cleverness of it as Rose pulled out the entire bottom half of the cabinet, drawers and all, on hidden rollers. The top drawers, which were shallower still, stayed in place.

The entire piece, with its burnished wood—deep golds and ambers with a touch of red—seemed to light up the corner it stood in.

It certainly lighted Rose’s face, or maybe that was her flush of joy. “I always loved this piece. It’s a collection cabinet—for medals or coins, or whatnot.” She opened a drawer in the top section, which was empty. “No one’s used it for years, but I liked it. I was going to keep ribbons and things in it.”

Steven touched the top where a strip of ebony inlay alternated with lighter satinwood to create a chevron pattern.

“It’s lovely,” he said with sincerity. “Old, I take it?”

“About seventy years old. George Bullock was the maker—very famous in his day, I believe.”

Steven liked the feel of the wood under his fingertips. Care had been put into the making of this cabinet, even love.

“This is your choice?” he asked.

“Yes.” She pursed her lips in a moue, and Steven’s heart hammered again. She really should not do that, shaping her mouth in the perfect form to be kissed. “Now to see if Albert will let it out of his sight.”

“Bugger Albert,” Steven said. He grimaced. “On second thought, I won’t. We have a cart waiting outside, and servants to help move it. I say you take it and to hell with Albert. What about the second piece?”

Rose remained on the floor. “Have you abandoned the idea that Charles might have left me something inside the furniture? That it might hold the key to something else?”

Steven had—it was far-fetched. The duke had been a doting, but not very intelligent man, as far as Steven could tell. He’d probably trusted that his son would feel an obligation to take care of Rose and hadn’t worried—reasoned he’d live a long while and buy her plenty of things along the way. He’d likely had no idea his son was a turd.

Steven shrugged. “Let us look.”

He sank down next to Rose, breathing in the scent of her. He needed her—her body around his, the taste of her in his mouth. Her breast had fit well into his large hand, but he’d felt more cushion of it to explore when she was unfettered. A lush woman, barely contained by her stays. Naked, she must be heaven.

Steven didn’t truly believe there was anything in the cabinet, but he couldn’t bear to disappoint her. He started pulling out drawers.

They found nothing. After about half an hour of examining the insides and undersides of the many drawers, nothing turned up. Not a cache of diamonds or other costly jewelry or a small painting by an ancient master worth thousands of guineas. The cabinet had been thoroughly cleaned out.