“Spank my bottom?” Harry repeated, outraged. “How dare you even suggest such a thing? I will not allow…” The rest of what she would “not allow” was replaced by a squeak of surprise as she found herself thrown over one of Gideon’s wide shoulders.
“Direct me to your bedchamber,” he instructed. He held her in place as he walked up the stairs.
“I will not—”
“It is the third bedchamber on the left along the hallway at the top of the stairs,” her father called from down below.
“My compliments, Dunhill,” Gideon acknowledged grimly.
“Papa!” Harry raised her head to glare at him as Gideon reached the top of the staircase.
Her father shrugged. “I will see you both for dinner this evening. And, Oxford…”
Harry found herself turned in a circle as Gideon swung round to look down at her father. “Yes?” he prompted.
“It seems I was mistaken in the reason for your visit.” There was a question in his voice.
“I am sorry for that. Do I have your permission to proceed, sir?”
Amusement twinkled in her father’s eyes. “You do.”
“Papa—” Her words came to an abrupt halt as a hand landed on her bottom. Not because the smack was painful, the skirts of her gown and her drawers acting as a buffer. It was more of a shock. “You are a barbarian.” She hit her fists against Gideon’s back. “A monster. A savage—”
“We will discuss my shortcomings after we have dealt with yours,” Gideon told her grimly as he pushed open the door to her bedchamber and stepped inside before firmly closing and locking the door behind him.
“I do not have any short—” Harry was robbed of words again as Gideon sat on the side of her bed and she found herself thrown over his thighs. She let out an indignant scream as Gideon, as he had said he would, began to spank her.
“I have been looking forward to seeing you again for weeks,” he gritted after landing the first smack. “I did not expect to be verbally attacked by you the moment I entered your father’s house.” He gave her another painful smack. “You are an undisciplined hellion.” Another. “A hoyden, sent to try me.” And another. “All I want to do is hold you and kiss you, and instead, I am berated and upbraided the moment—”
“You want to hold me and kiss me?” Harry arched her back as she turned to look at him over her shoulder.
He nodded. “I have thought of doing little else since I last saw you.”
Harry studied him properly for the first time since his arrival, easily noting there were more lines bracketing his eyes and mouth, and that he had dark shadows under those same eyes. His face also looked thinner, as if he had been too busy in recent weeks to have ensured he ate regularly.
She swallowed. “I have wanted that too,” she admitted huskily.
Gideon stilled. “You have?”
She nodded. “More than anything.”
Gideon helped her to first stand and then pulled her to sit on his thighs. “I love you, Henrietta Church.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders as she stared at him in awe. “You do?”
He nodded. “I do. Very much. Would you please grant me the honor of agreeing to become my wife?”
Harry was shocked into silence, unable to believe Gideon wished to marry her.
“Are you sure you wish to take me on as your duchess?” she prompted shyly once she was able to speak. “I am nothing like the other ladies of Society.”
“Thank God,” he murmured his relief.
“But won’t your friends be disappointed in your choice?”
He chuckled. “Ask me that again when you have met their wives.”
Implying, Harry hoped, that those other ladies could occasionally behave as scandalously as she often did. If so, the future promised to be—
“Is it too much to expect that you might…return my feelings?” Gideon prompted hopefully.
“Well, of course I return them,” she chided. “Why else would I have been so angry with you when you arrived all these weeks later without sending me a single word of your health or whereabouts since we were last together?” she reproved. “I have been—”
“Harry.”
“—worried constantly—”
“Harry.”
“—as to how you—"
“Harry!”
She startled at the sharpness of his tone. “Yes?”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I do. Very much,” she assured fiercely.
“Enough to marry me.”
“Oh yes.”
“Now kiss me,” Gideon groaned. “Just kiss me, and we will take care of any other of your admonishments later.”
“Gladly,” she assured before lowering her head to press her lips softly against Gideon’s.
A softness that quickly became harder and hotter as the two of them kissed away the frustration of being apart for the last three weeks.
“Now I am finally able to breathe again,” Gideon murmured with satisfaction a long time later as he lay on the bed, Harry beside him. His arm was about her waist as she lay with her head on his shoulder and one of her arms draped across his chest. “These three weeks without you have seemed endless,” he owned.
“For me too.” She raised her head. “I do love you, Gideon. So very much.”
His heart was filled with the emotion. “I have never loved before, nor will I ever love again. You are my forever, Harry. The one and only woman I shall ever love.”
Tears of happiness glistened in her eyes even as she smiled at him. “I know for certain that I feel, and shall continue to feel, exactly the same devotion to you.”
“Then you really will marry me?”
“I will,” she vowed.
They kissed for several more long and pleasurable minutes before Harry realized she had not asked him about the reason he had traveled to London three weeks ago.
“Did you learn anything more about the demise of the Duke of Plymouth?” she prompted gently.
Gideon gave a pained grimace. “What we have learned has posed more questions than answers.”
Harry resettled her head on his shoulder. “Tell me.”
Gideon did not know how to tell her of the deep shock all the Ruthless Dukes and Robert Granger had felt once they had entered the Plymouth family crypt.
In truth, Gideon was still having trouble absorbing the full import of that discovery for himself.
He drew in a deep breath before releasing it as he spoke. “The body in the crypt is not Plymouth’s.”
Harry gave a start, glancing up at him. “Then who is it?”
“We have no idea.”
“Then perhaps it is him. He has been dead for over a year—”
“Suffice it to say, without going into too much detail, an embalmed human body when sealed inside a vault does not decay as quickly as one that isn’t.” He swallowed. “The body, which was supposed to be Plymouth’s, although it had been in the crypt for over a year as you have pointed out, was still viable enough to reveal it did not have a birthmark on its left thigh to identify it as being Plymouth.”
He could still clearly recall the stunned silence in the crypt once the body was revealed to them. It had the same glossy dark curls as Plymouth, and the height and build of the body had also been similar. But there was no birthmark on the left thigh. Which all six men standing in the crypt knew Plymouth to possess.
“Surely someone identified the body after the battle?” Harry prompted gently.
“Bristol did. As best he could under the circumstances,” he added heavily. “As I have said, the hair and structure of the body were similar to Plymouth’s, but the face— It was caved in, damaged beyond recognition.”
Harry frowned. “I thought you said he died from a sword being thrust into his chest?”
“He did,” Gideon confirmed. “But there was a charge of horse through those woods before the battle ended, and Bristol assumed the damage to Plymouth’s face was caused by his having been trampled on by a horse’s hoof.”
“You no longer think that?”
“There is no denying that the birthmark is not there.”
“Then where is Plymouth’s body?”
That, Gideon knew, was the question they all wished to find an answer to. “We have spent the past three weeks questioning any of the other members of our regiment who are still alive. All deny having seen anything untoward that day.”
Harry frowned. “You doubt my father saw those two men and the cart?”
“Not for a moment,” he stated unequivocally. “Nor do any of the other Ruthless Dukes or Robert Granger—I still refuse to call him Plymouth,” he acknowledged in a hard voice. “They, along with Granger, have now all traveled to the Continent with their wives to speak to the people living near Waterloo, and see if they remember the events of that day.”
Harry snorted, sure that all the people in the area of that momentous battle would remember how it laid waste to their homes and livelihood.
Even so, she felt sure such a journey would more than likely turn out to be nothing more than a wild-goose chase for those gentlemen and their duchesses. If no one else in the regiment saw anything untoward that day, then she doubted the local people, possibly having chosen to stay as far away from the fighting as possible, would have done so either.
A thought occurred to her. “Should you not have gone with them?”
Some of the tension eased from Gideon’s body. “Possibly, and I will do so. But I could not stay away from you for a day longer,” he admitted huskily. “It has felt as if I were missing an integral part of me these past three weeks. One that is necessary for me to be able to breathe.”
Harry’s heart swelled. “I have been absolutely desolate without you.”
Gideon lifted her chin as he turned to face her, the two of them now gazing into each other’s eyes. “With your permission, I will go downstairs and ask your father for your hand in marriage.”
“We will go down and ask him together,” she decided softly.
One of Gideon’s hands cupped the side of her face. “Do you wish for a big wedding?”
“I wish to accompany you to France.” She had every intention of being at Gideon’s side when he traveled to the Continent to help the other gentlemen and the duchesses search for what had become of their beloved friend and cousin, Plymouth.
Gideon chuckled. “I had thought if you accepted my proposal, that might be the case. Which is why I paid Prinny a visit before leaving London—the Prince Regent,” he explained at her puzzled expression.
“I know who he is,” she teased. “I am merely curious as to why you felt the need to see him before coming here.”
“To ask for a special license so that we can be married immediately and afterward travel to France together.”
“That sounds perfect.” Harry raised her head to kiss Gideon lingeringly on the lips. “You are perfect.”
“I somehow doubt that,” he drawled. “But once you are my wife, I will endeavor to be so.”
“I love you, Gideon.”
“I love you, my darling Harry.”
Harry had no idea what she had done to deserve having a man such as Gideon fall in love with her, but whatever it was she would cherish him, and their marriage, and any children they might have together, for the rest of their lives.