The Duke of Paris (Tales from the Grand Tour Book 1) Read online

“I have no enemies that I know of,” Marshall quickly defended himself.

  “Don’t you, Duke of Paris?” Asher asked, still angry. “That scandal rag hinted that you’ve been making the rounds with more women than just my cousin lately.”

  The words struck him like a shameful blow. He bowed his head slightly, no longer wishing to defend his actions. “There is nothing I can say but that I have limited my wicked ways to ladies of a certain caliber.”

  “And you consider my cousin to also be of that low caliber?” Asher asked, looking as though he were primed to continue the fight.

  “It was my mistake as much as his,” Dorothy said, raising her voice to a firm level at last. She stared hard at Asher. “I walked into the situation willingly, and even though the outcome was unexpected, I welcomed it with open arms. And open legs, if you must know,” she added, returning to charming sheepishness. Marshall’s heart flipped in his chest.

  “You aren’t responsible,” Asher tried to argue.

  “Oh, really, Asher,” Dorothy huffed. “I am terribly sorry to ruin your carefully constructed image of how pure and sweet all of your female cousins are, but women have desires as well. Marshall is a fit and handsome man, one I enjoyed very much. And if you think I am the last of us who will disappoint you on this tour by proving we have blood as red as any of our male cousins, then perhaps you should return to London with Miss Sewett and be done with it.”

  Asher answered her speech with a flapping jaw and bulging eyes. His surprise was almost enough to tempt Marshall into laughter. And it made his admiration for Dorothy, and desire to marry her, double.

  “Who else was at the palace last night who might have reason to blackmail us?” Marshall said in an attempt to refocus their group.

  A puzzled moment of silence followed as all five of them wracked their brains for answers.

  “Could whoever it was still be there?” Dorothy asked, glancing to Marshall in a way that suddenly made him feel tall and responsible again.

  “Why not?” He shrugged. “Their identity hasn’t been discovered. They may think they can extort more money if others misbehave as well.”

  Asher didn’t look at all pleased by the statement, but he didn’t dispute it. “We shall all have to keep our eyes open,” he growled, then glanced to Dorothy and added, “And other things closed.”

  Dorothy sucked in a breath and turned her deepest shade of red yet. Marshall wanted to throttle Asher for the comment, but Dorothy merely nodded as though she’d had it coming. “Vigilance,” she said, summing everything up in one word. “We will all have to be on our best behavior in order to catch whomever is doing this to us.”

  “Agreed,” Damien said, reaching for his sister’s hand.

  He sent a look to Sebastian that made Marshall want to roll his eyes. That sort of mischief was the last thing they all needed. Then again, he had a feeling he would have just as hard a time keeping himself in check where Dorothy was concerned. Unlike every other woman he’d ever misbehaved with, now that he’d had her, his interest in her was growing by leaps and bounds.

  Chapter 6

  Embarrassment was not a new emotion for Dorothy. Skating along the fine edge of scandal wasn’t completely unfamiliar to her either. It had been impossible for her to grow up and set out in the world without the constant presence of scandal and humiliation looming behind her when her father was from the insignificant end of such a large and colorful family and when he had lost what little money he’d had in well-intentioned but ultimately bad investments. And with Damien as a brother—a man who knew who he was and accepted himself, but whom society abhorred—she was well aware of the lengths she had to go to not to draw notice from the wrong people.

  Which was why walking through the Louvre at the back of her pack of cousins, Marshall insisting on escorting her, had every last one of her nerves on end.

  “There is no need for you to hover over me like a mother hen,” she whispered as they passed a group of well-dressed but somber patrons who stared at the two of them.

  “There is every need if you are my fiancée,” Marshall replied in a deep murmur. He did have a lovely voice, rich and sonorous and perfect for whispering sweet nothings in the middle of the night. But that was the last thing Dorothy needed to think about. Marshall went on with, “Are you my fiancée?”

  She pressed her lips together and peeked up at him. “I have yet to make up my mind.”

  Marshall scowled, his jaw going tight.

  Dorothy couldn’t blame him. It was absurd for a woman in her position—both financially and with the impending scandal of the gossip rag and its filthy picture hanging over her—not to jump at the chance to engage herself to a duke. Marshall was a thousand times beyond any expectation she ever could have had for a husband after the position her father had left her in. But the thought of how she’d secured a proposal made her a little woozy.

  “Where are the famous paintings?” Cousin Hattie asked from the center of the McGovern mass. “I want to see all the Leonardos.”

  “Shouldn’t you be calling him DaVinci?” Cousin Evangeline asked, looping her arm through Hattie’s.

  “Why?” Hattie asked, batting her eyes coquettishly. “Is that his proper form of address? I do believe you’re turning into Wendine Sewett.”

  Miss Sewett, who walked not far from Dorothy and Marshall at the back of the pack, apparently lecturing Solange on the proper way to serve as a ladies’ companion for cousin Roselyn, jerked her head up at the mention of her name. Evangeline and Hattie snapped their heads forward, though their furious giggling was a dead giveaway that they had been making mischief.

  “I do believe my guiding hand is needed elsewhere,” Miss Sewett said, breaking away from Solange. “You are doing well enough, Miss Lafarge, but you will never be truly accomplished until you do things the way I tell you. And frankly, I don’t think I will spare my time for you in future.”

  As she marched up to Evangeline and Hattie, pushing aside some of the lesser cousins and companions as she went, Dorothy raised her brow and gaped. Solange caught the expression and answered it with an exhausted shrug. But then she bit her lip and glanced around, her expression suddenly tense, as though she didn’t want to be there.

  “You don’t think,” Marshall began. Instead of finishing his sentence, he blew out a breath and shook his head.

  “I don’t think what?” Dorothy asked, frowning.

  Marshall pressed his lips together and knit his brow, studying Solange with a hard stare as she hung back to admire a dark and gloomy painting. They passed her, and Marshall lowered his voice to a hum. “You don’t think Miss Lafarge was the one who took the photograph and sold it to the gossip rag.”

  Dorothy’s mouth dropped open in offense. She stopped, yanking her arm out of Marshall’s. “How dare you?”

  Marshall’s expression went flat. He leaned closer to her to say, “She’s not a member of the family, after all. Perhaps she’s attached to the lot of you so that she can make money by exploiting the McGovern family’s questionable reputation. And besides—” He glanced to Solange, who had moved on to look at a different painting farther away from the main group. “How much do you really know about her background? Solange Lafarge is a French name, not an English one. And she’s black.”

  Dorothy sucked in a breath of rage, balling her hands into fists at her sides. “Solange is lovely, sweet, and intelligent. Her people are what we would consider nobility in Côte d'Ivoire. Her father is a wealthy merchant. How dare you make assumptions based on her appearance and her position?”

  She marched on, but Marshall quickly caught up with her, grabbing her arm. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  That was as far as he got. From the center of the McGoverns, Asher glanced their way. The moment he noticed Dorothy and Marshall standing close together, his expression hardened to iron. He stepped away from the others, marching straight for them.

  “The two of you have been keeping close company since we arrived,” he hissed without preamble. “It better be because you have come to a mutually beneficial agreement.”

  Dorothy opened her mouth to tell her cousin she hadn’t decided yet but instantly thought better of it. There was no point in digging her grave any deeper where Asher was concerned. As head of their family, she depended on him in more ways than she wanted to count.

  Asher turned to Marshall. “Kindly escort my cousin like a gentleman should instead of manhandling her.”

  “Of course,” Marshall said, taking Dorothy’s hand and moving it to the crook of his elbow. In an instant, they presented the perfect picture of amiable grace and propriety. She didn’t dare pull away, not with Asher glaring at her.

  “Good,” Asher said. He nodded sharply, then pivoted to return to the group, holding Marshall’s eyes for longer than was necessary before facing the rest of the cousins entirely.

  Marshall took a few stiff steps forward as their group moved to the next room. Dorothy didn’t say anything. She knew the look of a man whose pride had been offended and was loath to intrude on that sort of moping. Instead, she glanced behind her to Solange. Solange met her gaze and smiled. Dorothy returned the smile.

  But as she glanced forward again, only pretending to admire the artwork, her smile faded. Marshall did have half a point, even if he’d shared it in the most offensive way possible. Whoever took the scandalous photograph of the two of them had to be someone closer to the McGoverns than was comfortable. No one else would have had the opportunity. But the jolly assortment of ladies’ maids and companions her female cousins had brought with them on the tour didn’t seem as though they were capable of that kind of deceit. Miss Sewett was capable of gross deceit and more, but as much as Dorothy would have loved for her to turn out to be a villain of the worst s
ort, she seemed far more likely to torment the family with lectures and rudeness than outright blackmail.

  She was pulled out of her thoughts as Marshall stopped to study a painting of a weeping man draped over a somber grave. The quality of the work was exquisite, but it was the pain in Marshall’s expression that grabbed the bulk of her attention. All at once, she was reminded that Marshall was still grieving his father.

  “Art is a window to our own soul and emotions,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

  Marshall only grunted and dragged his eyes away from the painting. He suddenly looked older.

  “You loved your father very much, didn’t you?” she asked, wondering if he would open up to her.

  Marshall was silent for a long time, his gaze fixed on the floor. “I did,” he said at last, his voice gruff. “He was the very best of men.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Dorothy adjusted her hand in his arm, inching closer to him. The mass of McGoverns began to outpace them as they studied the paintings in the long gallery.

  “He was always kind,” Marshall went on. “He never judged us, which is more than most men of the aristocracy can say of their fathers.”

  A wistful smile flickered across his face, and he seemed to dive into his thoughts and memories. Dorothy remained silent, waiting for him to speak or not speak on his own time.

  “He loved our mother, you know,” he went on eventually. “That’s also something that many of us can’t say. He was devastated when she died in childbirth with what would have been our second younger sister.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Dorothy squeezed his arm.

  Marshall smiled sadly. “Father did an amazing job of raising the three of us, me, Sebastian, and Mary. He was so loving and so protective. He badgered every man who came to court Mary, weeding out the tares, as he called it. When Jonathan came along and he actually approved of him, we all knew Mary had made a good match and would be happy in her marriage.”

  He paused, gazing off into space for a moment. Dorothy noted her cousins moving on but didn’t rush him to follow.

  “He was so understanding of Sebastian as well,” Marshall continued, his voice rough with emotion. “Most fathers I know would have disowned a man like Sebastian, stricken him from the family Bible and everything. But Father tried his damnedest to be understanding. He warned Sebastian about the importance of hiding who he was, and even though Sebastian didn’t listen and ended up in serious trouble for it, Father stood by him stalwartly. I’m reasonably certain he was the one who saved Sebastian from spending time in jail, though there was help from a solicitor. He even came with Sebastian here to Paris, to help him set up his new life.”

  “How wonderful,” Dorothy said. She instantly loved the man she’d never met. “Damien always hid who he was from our father. Papa died without knowing, which, I must admit, I am grateful for. I know how difficult it is to support someone you love when they are so different and reckless.”

  Marshall turned to her, his gaze focusing. He smiled. “Yes, I believe you do know.” His brow knit into a puzzled look for a moment and a slight flush came to his cheeks. “I can count the number of people I’ve met who understand and maintain that sort of compassion on one hand, without using my thumb.”

  Dorothy huffed a wry laugh. “As can I.”

  They started forward again, and Marshall fell into a melancholy mood once again.

  “I have to confess that his death has affected me far more deeply than I care to admit,” he said softly. “I didn’t know grief like this was possible.” His voice cracked slightly. Dorothy reached to hold his arm with both hands, squeezing. “I was foolish to try to drown that grief in bad behavior,” he went on, shaking his head. “I can only pray that my reputation isn’t completely in tatters now. If that blasted Les Ragots prints the photo with our faces revealed, I will be irredeemably disgraced.”

  Dorothy let out a hard laugh before she could stop herself. When Marshall looked questioningly at her, she said, “Your reputation will be fine. Men who overindulge in the pleasures of the flesh are hailed as heroes by a certain segment of society. You will have as many, if not more, invitations to gatherings and social circles as ever.”

  “Not the ones I would care to associate with,” Marshall said.

  “As for me,” she continued, noting that the last of her band of cousins had turned the corner into the next gallery. “My reputation will be utterly ruined. Men can go as far astray as they’d like. When women step one toe out of line, they are branded harlots and either banished to some dreary cottage in the countryside with a maiden aunt or coaxed into becoming a courtesan, doomed to spread their favors so thin that they die diseased and impoverished.”

  Marshall started as he watched her. “Why, Miss McGovern, what a black and tragic picture you paint.”

  “I only paint it because it’s the truth,” Dorothy told him. In spite of the gloom of their conversation, there was a warm light in his eyes as he looked at her. “And I have more than just my own fortunes to watch out for,” she went on. “I have Damien to think about too.”

  “Your brother?” He blinked in confusion.

  “Some men like him may be able to subvert who they are in order to marry and appear just as society needs them to be,” she said, “but not Damien. Which means he will never be able to marry money to improve our situation. No, that burden falls squarely on my shoulders. And believe me, I have felt its weight for most of my adult life.”

  “But you don’t have to worry about money,” he insisted. “Not if you marry me.”

  Dorothy frowned as she stared up at him. “I refuse to be one of those women who uses a man for his money.”

  Marshall’s brow lifted. “You are concerned about using me?” He laughed, his smile growing, as he inched closer to her. “I’m surprised that you don’t think I used you for what I wanted.”

  “I—” Dorothy had no reply to that. He had a point.

  He also had a mischievous spark in his eyes that grew as he straightened and glanced around. He seemed to find what he was looking for and let go of her arm so that he could take her hand. Without a word, he tugged her off to one side of the gallery.

  Solange was still lingering at the back of the gallery, studying paintings. She glanced Dorothy’s way, her expression questioning, as Dorothy and Marshall raced past. Dorothy shrugged and shook her head as if to say she didn’t know what Marshall was doing.

  She learned what he had in mind as soon as he led her back into the main hall, then across to a sheltered alcove. As soon as they were more or less hidden from view, he swept her into his arms, cradled the side of her face with one hand, and kissed her with a burst of ardor that left her head spinning.

  She gasped, but that only enabled him to thrust his tongue along hers, drawing her even deeper into the unexpected bliss of his kiss. Her body tingled with excitement, much of it swirling like magic through the part of her he’d filled so deliciously that fateful night. She slipped her arms around his back, humming softly and leaning into him. It was utter madness, but she didn’t mind being mad. In fact, it was the only thing she wanted to be. She kissed him back, trying to learn as quickly as she could how to give him as much pleasure as he gave her. The way he brushed his hand along her side, cradling her breast through the layers of her blouse and corset was wonderful.

  “Marry me,” he murmured between kisses.

  “We hardly know each other,” she sighed in return, wishing for more kissing and less talking.

  “I know everything I need to know about you,” he said, pulling her flush against his hot body. “I know that you are kind and understanding and passionate. You are everything.”

  He may have intended to say more, but his mouth closed over hers, tasting her with a deep groan that left Dorothy’s insides buzzing. She would have gladly lifted her skirts and let him take her up against the wall, if not for the awkward realization that they were not particularly well-concealed in one of the busiest museums in Europe.

  That thought cooled her ardor and pulled her out of the moment just in time to catch a flash of movement sailing past their concealed position. She sucked in a breath and pulled away from Marshall, certain of what she’d seen.