The way his eyes roamed over her made a new frisson steal through her.
“I like seeing you this way,” he said. “Naked and flushed in my bed, my seed on your skin.”
His admission was wicked and raw. She should be shocked.
“I like it too,” she said, realizing she did.
Nothing could be the same now, and she knew that, too. But she kept that particular realization to herself as he left the bed and then returned moments later with a wet cloth he used to clean her despite her protestations she could tend to herself just as well. When she would have gone from his bed, he held her against him, his arms wrapping around her.
“Stay with me,” he said into her ear, pressing a kiss to her neck.
How could she deny him? How could she not want to linger with this man?
“For a little while longer,” she conceded, even though she knew it was foolish and futile. Even though she knew the longer she remained in his presence and in his bed, the more she would never want to leave.
But the dawn would come soon enough, and with it a return to responsibility. And for now, she had the steady, reassuring thump of Lucien’s heart pressed against her back and the warmth of his mouth on her skin.
Chapter Twelve
Lucien waited for Hazel to join him in his study, doing his damnedest not to look at the small parcel sitting upon his desk, elegantly wrapped and tied with a sleek bow. He had risen in the midst of the night to find himself alone, nothing, other than the faint scent of Hazel and their lovemaking in his sheets, to remind him he had been inside her hours before. His cock had gone instantly rigid at the memories, and denied what he truly wanted, he had taken himself in hand.
By dawn, he had been awake again, trying to put a name upon the sensation of restlessness inside him. The urge to see her had been almost insurmountable, and he wanted nothing more than to let himself into her bedchamber and awaken her with his kisses. And later, with his tongue.
But he had agreed to one night, and she had left him in the darkness, which surely meant she intended to remain stern in her resolve. Instead, he had dressed himself, ringing for his valet, only for a shave. He had breakfasted alone, then had gone for a ride, attempting to clear his mind. His mind, however, would not be cleared of Hazel Montgomery. Nor could his body be freed from the need to have her, not just once, but again and again.
Instead of returning home following his ride, he found himself at a shop, which had just opened. He had not known precisely what he was searching for, until he had seen it, and he had brought it back home for her.
A gift.
She had been nowhere to be found upon his arrival, and he had attempted to busy himself with other matters, but the correspondence awaiting him did not interest him nearly as much as the prospect of watching Hazel open her gift did. Would she like it? Would she accept it? Had he been wrong to buy her something?
It did rather smack of a gesture one would make toward a mistress, and Hazel was most certainly not his mistress. She was…
Well, damn it, he did not know. There was not a word which could define her. The English language did not contain a means of conveying her spirit and her brash ways, the complex combination that made her who she was. Nor could it adequately describe what she was to him, the way she made him feel.
As no other woman before her ever had.
As he was beginning to suspect no woman after her ever would.
He rose, hands clasped behind his back, deciding he could no longer remain seated, staring at the bloody gift he had bought her. He rang for his butler, and almost instantly, Reynolds appeared, his face an expressionless mask.
“Has Miss Montgomery breakfasted yet?” he asked, attempting to allow only a note of cool disinterest to enter his voice.
Whatever happened between himself and Hazel, he would not have her the focus of belowstairs gossip. Her presence here at his home as an unmarried woman, even with Aunt Hortense as chaperone, was scandalous enough. He did not wish to add to the sordid mix.
“I believe she is breakfasting now, Your Grace,” his butler informed him.
It was nearly half past eleven, and Hazel ordinarily took her morning repast nearly as early as he did. He hoped she had been merely tired, and not feeling ill-used. She had repeatedly assured him he had not hurt her, but when he thought of how unprepared he had been for the barrier he had ruthlessly breached, he knew an arrow of shame.
“Very good, Reynolds,” he forced himself to say, as if he could scarcely care what his guest was about. “When she is finished, would you tell her I require her presence in my study?”
“As Your Grace wishes.” Reynolds bowed, then was gone.
Lucien distracted himself with more pacing. He straightened a picture on the wall. He gazed out the window. He picked up the parcel, imagined stuffing it somewhere, perhaps in one of the locked drawers on his desk. Hiding it, and never giving it to Hazel at all.
He worried it was too much, too soon, and too maudlin.
Far too sentimental.
Lucien did not believe in finer emotions between a man and a woman. He believed in physical needs being met. The gift in his hand seemed to suddenly be his albatross. It burned his hand, and he wondered why he had even bought it in the first place. What had he been thinking, buying Hazel Montgomery a gift, as if he were courting her?
He stalked back to his desk, the gift in hand, when a subtle knock sounded upon the door. He stopped, for he knew who it was. He recognized the sound from last night. He cleared his throat.
“Enter,” he bid her.
The door opened, and she hesitated at the threshold. There was color in her cheeks, he noted, and she wore a gown instead of her trousers. Her dark hair was pulled into a Grecian braid, coiled heavily, a few wisps framing her lovely face. The sight of her hit him like a fist to the gut.
“Good morning,” she told him, in her sweet drawl.
“Good morning,” he forced himself to say, as if she did not steal the very breath from his lungs.
She entered the study at last, the door closing at her back, but immediately stopped just inside and remained where she was, almost as if she feared the need to make a hasty escape. “Mr. Reynolds told me you were inquiring after me.”
He did not bother to correct the manner in which she referred to his butler. There was no point. “Yes, I was. Are you… That is to say, how do you feel this morning?”
It occurred to him he was inquiring as to just how much of a brute he had been the night before. His ears went hot.
Her lush lips curved into a smile. “I am well, Lucien.”
He was not yet returned to Arden, so there was that, at least. Except, he stared at her, and he knew not what he ought to say. He had been bold with her last night, because he had thought her experienced after the manner in which she had invited him to make love to her. And then, he had discovered, too late, she was not. He had taken her maidenhead, and this morning, he had bought her a bloody gift, as if any object he purchased with coin could compare to the priceless treasure she had given him.
He stood before her in the midst of his study after having summoned her, feeling a cad and a fool.
“Good,” was all he managed. A single-word response. His grip on the gift tightened. He was sure his knuckles had gone white with the strain.
She swept toward him, and he noticed her hair was still slightly damp as she grew nearer. The scent of her soap hit him. Such a luxury he had been afforded yesterday, to touch her freely. To make her his.
His eyes could not stop roaming over every bit of her creamy skin. Her throat, so elegant. Her hands, the fine-boned fingers. Precious little was actually visible, in truth. Most of her was hidden from him today. He wondered if it had been intentional on her part. Her gown was a polonaise of deep burgundy. Ecru lace adorned the high neck and fell over her wrists. A tempting line of buttons ran down the front of her bodice.
Her lips parted, and for a heavy moment, she simply stared back at him, her
head cocked as if she were studying him. “I think I must apologize for misleading you yesterday,” she said at last.
He could have swallowed his tongue. “Misleading me how?” he queried with deceptive calm when he had regained his voice.
She swallowed, then fiddled with her hair for a moment, as if she were discomfited. “You were not expecting a virgin. I am not mistaken in that, am I?”
No, he had not been. He had bungled that matter very badly. It occurred to him now, quite belatedly and much to his everlasting disappointment in himself, that as a gentleman, he ought to offer for her. He had taken her innocence, without a thought for consequence. And this morning he had bought her a frivolity and summoned her to his study, as if she were a servant he could order about, instead of attending to his duty.
“I meant you no insult,” he said, but it was no explanation, and neither was it an apology, and he knew it.
She smiled at him again, but this time, he was near enough to see the smile was on her lips, though not in her eyes. “You paid me none. I have lived a great deal in my twenty-eight years. I am by no means an innocent. And there was someone once, a man I loved, who I…” Her flush deepened.
“You need not explain,” he interjected, not to spare her. To spare himself. Selfish reasons only. The thought of Hazel loving someone else made him want to smash his fist into the plaster of his study wall. It made him grind his teeth and clench his jaw, and clasp the symbol of his stupidity with such force, that had it been capable of breaking, it would have already snapped in two.
Fortunately for him, and the object in question both, it could not.
“It does not matter now,” she agreed. “All I mean to say is, you need not feel a moment of guilt, Lucien. I am a woman with her own mind, and I knew what I wanted. My only regret is that I feel certain you would not have allowed yourself to indulge in what we shared had you known the truth. I suspect your sense of honor would not have allowed it.”
She was right. Perhaps part of him had been eager to believe her experienced, for it made making love to her a feat infinitely more attainable. He had never dallied with innocents. His past lovers had all been skilled and seasoned.
“I have dishonored you,” he found himself saying.
It was the truth, after all. The stupid gift in his hands could do nothing to expiate his sins. What manner of man defiled a woman he was meant to protect? Him, that was who. And for a man who had made so very many mistakes in his lifetime, this one somehow stung more than all the rest.
He had failed his mother.
He had attempted to do what was best for his sister, but had wound up driving her away from him instead.
He had accused another League member of treason, believing the lies of a man he had trusted with his life, a man who had deceived him with such treachery, it still left Lucien reeling to think of it, even though the perpetrator was dead.
“You have not dishonored me,” Hazel said then, interrupting his turbulent musings.
He realized she had moved closer still. Close enough to touch. He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to haul her against him, bury his face in her neck. And yes, he wanted to raise her skirts and sink inside her once more, but bedding her was not the strongest need coursing through him. Simply touching her was.
Lucien recalled the gift clenched in his hands, and he offered it to her. “I saw this, and I wanted you to have it.”
Her brow wrinkled in adorable befuddlement as she looked at the neatly wrapped, perfectly rectangular parcel. “I do not require gifts, Lucien.”
“It is not…” He paused, struggling with his thoughts, a rarity for him. “I did not buy you a gift because of last night. I bought it for you because you make me happy, and I have not been happy in a very long time, and I wanted to return the favor, in a small way. A very small way, of course.”
He stopped talking, lest he say anything more foolish than what he had already done. In truth, he did not recall a time in his life when he had ever been happy. But this, the rush going through him, the pulse of life beating inside him, the voracious, wild need he felt for her—it was different than anything he had known.
His childhood had been tumultuous and uncertain, his parents forever at each other’s throats, his mother plagued by wildly vacillating moods until the day she had taken her own life. His youth had been spent attempting to shield his younger sister from the wrath of it all. And though he loved her and had strived to do his utmost to see Lettie settled and happy, he had driven her from him.
Hazel took the gift from him now, holding it in her small hands. The hands that had caressed him last night. The hands that had raked his scalp and explored his back. The hands that had been all over his body. How strange it was to think he could not freely touch these hands by the grim morning light. Not unless she invited him to do so.
“You make me happy as well, Lucien,” she said quietly, her head bowed over the gift he had given her. “It pleases me to know I make you happy, too. That is the best gift of all. I think you are a man who needs a reason to smile.”
He had to swallow down a lump that had risen in his throat. “Open it, Hazel. Please.”
Strange, how he had been tormented, part of him wanting to hide it away, part of him longing to give it to her, and now he could not wait until she tore open the wrapping and revealed it. He watched as she carefully untied the bow, sliding the ribbon away in a long, silky strand she kept clutched in one hand. With her other, she tore the paper open, revealing a journal.
Bound in the finest leather, it boasted mother of pearl and gold inlays on its cover and gilt on the edges of all its pages. The interior was lined and fashioned of fine, thick creamy sheaves of paper. Nothing but the best. It had cost him an exorbitant fee. But it had been worth it. She was worth it.
“Oh, Lucien,” she crooned, lovingly stroking the cover. “It is beautiful.”
She was beautiful.
And he was unaccountably nervous. He wanted, with a desperation as alarming as it was embarrassing, to meet with her approval. To please her. To be the reason she smiled.
“This journal is for you,” he said needlessly, attempting to explain himself. “For your private thoughts. I have enjoyed reading your notes, which are not at all like notes, but rather stories in themselves. And I thought it would be lovely if you had something of your own, somewhere you could share your thoughts and have it be yours alone.”
She was silent, staring down at the journal, sifting through its pages, running her fingers over the fine paper. And when she looked up, her eyes were glistening. A tear rolled down her cheek, then another, and another. She sniffed, then laughed, catching a fat droplet on the fleshy pad of her forefinger as she gazed at him.
“What are these tears?” he asked. “Have I made you sad?”
He would not forgive himself if he had. Making her sad had never been his intention, even if he could not be entirely certain what his intentions toward Hazel Montgomery were.
“Not sad,” she said with another sniffle, before offering him that blinding smile of hers once again. “Honored. No one has ever given me a gift before, and this one is so unbearably lovely. I will treasure it always, Lucien. Thank you.”
“You are most welcome, Hazel.”
But he heard the words she left unspoken, and he knew she meant she would treasure the journal even after she had gone and they were no longer partners, no longer sharing the same roof and the same common goal. The time would inevitably come when they would part ways.
The knowledge left him cold.
The knowledge made him want to do everything in his power to change it.
But reality intruded, and he reminded himself they were here, sharing the same space, breathing the same air, for a reason. And it was decidedly not so he could woo her. Or lure her back to his bed for another night. Nor was it so he could ply her with gifts.
Neither of them could forget the lethal seriousness of the burdens upon their collective shoulders. But he also susp
ected neither of them would be capable of forgetting what had happened the night before. Regardless, he would do his utmost to pretend.
Hazel spent the remainder of the morning pretending the Duke of Arden’s omnipresence at her side meant less than nothing to her. She pretended the gift he had given her had not made her weep. She pretended being in such proximity to him, without touching him intimately, did not affect her at all.
She pretended she did not want to kiss him.
That she did not remember the wicked wonders his tongue could work upon her flesh.
That she did not want to make love with him again.
After all, she was the one who had set the rules for their impromptu liaison, had she not? One night only. One night, and nothing more. One night, then back to focusing upon the incredibly difficult task of capturing the criminals responsible for the bombings on the railway.
She had thought it would be easy.
She had thought she could hunker over Arden’s desk, examining a map of the railways, without wanting him to press himself against her from behind. She had thought, after she had gone to bed with him, she would no longer want him.
And she realized she had been wholly, thoroughly wrong.
As wrong as could be.
Her longing for him had only grown, compounded by his unexpected gift and equally unexpected admission that she made him happy. When had anyone ever said something more profound to her?
She could not recall, as she sat across from him in the dining room, where they were being served luncheon. Lady Beaufort was feeling bilious today and suffering from an unfortunate attack of arthritis, which she blamed upon the cool, rainy weather, leaving Hazel and Lucien alone.
Like every dish set before her at Lark House, lunch was presented upon delicate china. Cold chicken and ham, curried eggs, and freshly baked bread, along with a jam tartlet and lemonade, which she was sure Arden had requested for her benefit. Her stomach growled in most unladylike fashion, and she surreptitiously pressed her palm over it, willing the most disagreeable and demanding part of her to quiet.
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