“What?”
“Tell me what you want. I’m waiting. Tell me.”
He sucked in a breath, wholly unprepared to name anything he wanted—not from her, not from anyone. He’d learned long ago that what he wanted did not matter so much as keeping ahead of what he did not want. And he did not want to hurt her, or frighten her, or lose her.
“Wait, let me guess,” she said, sliding from the window. “You want to buy me a diamond ring in exchange for our lovemaking. You want to be my chaste bosom friend and never allude to or repeat what just happened. You want to leave Belgravia and buy a villa in Portugal and sail away.”
He wanted none of those things—unless they were what she wanted. But she did not like him to assume what she wanted. He lit on the last suggestion and said, “The attempt on my life has cast a stain on the notion of living in Portugal,” he said.
She frowned. “Well. You cannot live in Portugal because someone tried to kill you. And you cannot make love to your wife because—”
“Don’t say it, Sabine,” he said tiredly. “Whatever it was, don’t say it. You cannot possibly know. I don’t want you to know.” He stooped to pick up her shoe.
She huffed out a breath and dropped her face in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I fantasized about this moment since . . . well, since our first kiss, and no part of the fantasy was to convince you afterward that no crime had been committed. You are only trying to protect me. I know this. But I have told you on more than one occasion that you may not decide things for me. If I tell you I am displeased, you may believe it. If I tell you I want more, wilder, harder—”
His head snapped up.
She shrugged. “Then you may be certain that more, wilder, harder is what I want.”
He walked to the bed and dropped the shoes. He sat, holding his head in his hands.
“The question of what you want,” she said, crossing to him, “is valid and perhaps what remains unanswered. If you have no desire to toss me down and have your way with me, I cannot compel you to do it.”
He laughed a miserable laugh, squeezing handfuls of hair in his hands. It was, of course, the only thing he wanted. But he could not bring himself to say the words. He’d spent a lifetime trying never to admit it. She was asking him to undo years of restraint. His notion of himself as a—well, if not a gentleman, then a decent man, was so very imbedded in the idea that restraint was the thing that separated him from his mother’s lovers and the men from whom he’d stolen away countless abused girls.
And now to have the most beautiful woman, with the highest spirit and the cleverest mind, the woman he desired most of all, ask him to let it all go?
There was too much at stake.
They sat on the bed, not touching, side by side. The room was almost entirely dark. A chill set in, and she pulled his coat about her, snuggling. She reached for her shoes and slipped them on.
“How will we leave here?” she asked, ever practical. “Do you think the ball has ended?”
“Who can say? Obviously, we cannot go down. You are only half-dressed and I cannot run the risk of colliding with the duke.”
“What will you do about him?”
“I don’t know. My investigator should arrive within the week. Before I knew he was my bloody father, I’d hoped to make a charge to the police and walk away. But now—? It’s something to sort out, isn’t it?”
“Do you still believe you are in no danger?”
“No. But now that he knows I am in possession of a wife—”
“I believe the term he used was doxie.”
“A name by which you will never be called. I’ll kill him myself, if he insults you again. Now that he knows about you, I should like some security detail with you at all times, Sabine.”
“Not when I’m working on the smuggling investigation, surely?”
“Sabine—” he sighed.
“No.” She stood up. “Why should he send someone to kill me? Honestly? I’m not one of the richest men in England.”
“We will . . . come to some accord. Together. We will compromise.”
“No security,” she stated.
“That is not how compromise works.”
“Perhaps we can arrange some barter, then,” she said suggestively, and he raised his head. She was padding across the room to the door, her long hair swaying down the back of his coat. He watched her move in the dark through narrowed eyes. A small pulse of fresh desire flickered in his belly, as he knew it would. He was afraid. Hope always made him afraid.
She unlocked the door and cracked it, peering out. “I hear music,” she said. “Perhaps we can slip down the servants’ stairs?”
“I don’t want anyone to see you, including servants.”
“Do you want to see me?” she asked.
Always, he thought. He said, “You think I’m a prude,” and barked an ironic laugh.
“I think you aspire to prudishness.”
“Bloody hell, Sabine. You shock me with the things you say. Sometimes you are very wise. But sometimes—? You have no idea.”
“If you are not an aspirational prude, then take me out the window of this room,” she said.
“What?”
She walked to the window and shoved the drapes aside. Moonlight flooded the room. She squinted in the silvery light and peered out. The sight of her there, draped in his coat, with her hair down and the remains of her dress hanging about her, took his breath away. A wave of lust surged inside him. She glanced away from the window and caught him in the hot look. She smiled and swept her hair over her shoulder. She raised her chin.
“It’s only the alley below,” she said levelly. “We can steal away under the cover of darkness and send a boy from the mews for your carriage.”
“I’m not taking you out the window,” he said.
“Because your ribs are hurting?” She made a weak imitation of concern.
“Because I’m not stealing my half-dressed wife down the side of a house at midnight and hustling her through a sodden alley.”
“Because you are a prude.”
“Sabine,” he warned.
She reached out and jostled the latch on the window. It separated with a small creak. She pressed her fingertips against the glass, testing the give. It swung open.
“But perhaps you can no longer manage it,” she said, kneeing onto the window seat. “Because you gave up rescuing girls when you married me.”
“I cannot be manipulated in this way,” he informed her.
“Elisabeth said you’d never come and gone from Denby House by way of the door until now.”
He watched her plant her hands on the sill and lean out, examining the side of the house. “Oh, but there is a trellis. You needn’t steal me away,” she said. “I can climb.”
He watched her sit squarely in the window seat, whipping the tails of his coat out of her way. He waited, determined to call her bluff. When she lifted her legs to swing out her feet, he swore and strode to her.
“Don’t,” he dared her.
“We cannot hide in this room all night.” She began buttoning his jacket over her corset. “You’ve already said you will not subject Elisabeth to my depravity.”
“You are not depraved,” he said.
“Should I climb down facing the trellis or with my back to the trellis?” She scooted toward the sill.
Stoker made a growling noise and scooped her up. Every nerve ending in his body tingling at the feel of her in his arms again.
“Careful,” he said, the only warning, and summarily pitched her, belly down, over his shoulder.
Sabine made an amused yelp and grabbed for his middle. She grazed his scar and he grunted.
“Sorry,” she called. “Am I too heavy?”
“No,” he said. She was too much of so many things, none of which prevented him from hauling her out this widow. He looped a hand around the backs of her knees.
“Hold still,” he said, biting down against the pain in his ribs.
Sabine made an excited sound of laughter and anticipation and wiggled.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Perry and Bridget were waiting up for them when Sabine and Stoker reached Belgrave Square. Although Sabine had draped herself almost in Stoker’s lap in the carriage, they’d ridden in sleepy silence. The dog’s barking and Perry’s horror over her loose hair and ruined dress were both jarring and unwelcome. Sabine scooped up the excited dog and thrust her at Perry, hoping the two would cancel each other out.
In the end she was given no choice but to allow Perry to attend her in her upstairs bedroom. She could not navigate the ripped dress or mangled corset alone, and she had ivy in her hair. For once the maid did not drill her with questions. She chatted pleasantly and helped her from the dress, agreeing it could not be mended. She brushed out Sabine’s hair and plaited it in a single fat braid down her back. After she helped Sabine into a nightgown, Perry moved to turn down the bed.
“Don’t bother,” Sabine said. “I will sleep downstairs tonight.”
“In the study, miss?” asked Perry.
“No,” said Sabine simply. She handed the dog to her a second time with an imploring look.
“Very good, miss,” said Perry and she bustled away. Sabine drew a deep breath, took up a candle, and descended the stairs to her old bedroom.
Stoker was in bed, reading correspondence. He looked up, his gaze capturing her eyes for a moment, then dropping to her thin white nightgown, her bare feet, and up again. His expression could not have been more alarmed if an elk had walked into the room.
Sabine had already made up her mind not to discuss her intrusion in favor of simply doing it. They’d already discussed too much, for too long, with too little progress. She’d been unforgivably rude, heartless, really, not to mention brazen and demanding. If he had deserved it, well, it did not mean he enjoyed it.
She approached the bed and blew out the candle. The room fell to half-light. She settled the candle on the floor and regarded the bed. He was situated dead in the center, frozen in place, gaping at her. He wore a dressing gown open at the throat, and spectacles.
“I did not know you wore spectacles,” she said. She drew back the covers. If he did not move, she would have only a sliver of space.
Can you scoot? The words were on the tip of her tongue, but—less talking. She was determined. When it came right down to it, she was certain he would make room rather than bump up against her.
She turned to sit on the mattress, her intention clear.
“You mean to kill me?” he rasped. “After I survived the morgue and the stabbing?”
She swung her legs beneath the covers and fell back on the pillow. She squinted at the letters in his hand. It was the report from Portugal by his investigator. “You will not die,” she said.
“I am already dead,” he mumbled, dropping the letters and spectacles on the nightstand. He turned on his side, facing her.
She had prepared a brief speech. She turned her head on the pillow. “I’ve not asked you how long you will stay here.”
“You ask me every day if I am preparing to go.”
“Perhaps, but I’ve not asked you how long you will stay,” she repeated. To her horror, a lump was forming in her throat. She coughed. “I’ve asked many other things of you, but pride and the value I put on my own independence prevents me from asking this. As long as you remain, this is what I want. To share your bed. Even if it’s only for a time. You said that the nature of our marriage would change if we made love. That has happened, and I agree. And I should like this to be part of the change. Do you mind so terribly?”
Her heart pounded. She was certain that he did not mind; yet it was one thing to be overcome by passion and quite another to deliberately slide into bed with some measure of calm.
She’d vowed she would not launch into a lecture if he began down the road of wanting her too much or not trusting himself, etcetera, etcetera. She would not indulge him, but she was weary of all of the talking.
He stared at her, saying nothing, and the thought I have no idea what I’m doing flashed in her brain. Thank God she’d fallen in love with a man whose footing was as uncertain as her own.
“Sabine, I have wanted you in this bed every night that you occupied the chair instead.”
“Well, then, we’re in perfect accord.”
“We are not in perfect accord.”
“But we are in bed,” she said.
“Where else am I to go?”
To the Courtlands’. To your own suite of rooms in Regent Street. To Cassin in Yorkshire. To Joseph in County Durham. To anywhere your ship will sail you.
There were so many places for him to go, but he remained and it felt significant, just as Mary Boyd had said.
“Did you discover anything new,” she asked, “rereading your investigators’ letters now that you know about the duke?” Her leg slid against his beneath the covers, and she was intrigued by the feel of hair and skin and tight muscle.
He cleared his throat.
“May I read them again?”
He handed them to her, the movement jostling them closer in the bed.
After a moment he said, “I cannot determine what Wrest thought to gain from having me killed. I’d not acknowledged the claim of his solicitor that he was my father. I’d not even written the man back. I never corroborated his claim, even verbally, and certainly not in some document he could show at the reading of my will. I thought he was a charlatan—you saw my shock when I realized that he was likely my actual father. He had no proof. There is no record of my birth. I don’t even know my birthday.”
Sabine gasped and set down the letters. “You don’t,” she said.
He shrugged.
“We shall pick a day. What day would you like?”
“I have survived this long without a birthday. I see no direct need to fabricate one at this late date.”
“Think on it,” she said, taking the letters up again. She began to read. She could feel him watching her. She raised a few questions, asking about details that confused her, and they discussed the duke’s motive until his bedside candle was nearly gutted. It was the same discussion they might have had if he’d been in the bed and she curled up in the chair; only now they enjoyed the intimacy of entangled legs and shared warmth.
He was tenser than normal. He paused before answering her questions, speaking haltingly as if they held the conversation underwater or on the moon—somewhere requiring careful balance and no guarantee of the next breath.
When she tossed the letters onto the floor and yawned, he said, “I’m careful not to drop my correspondence in piles around the room, if you don’t mind.”
She yawned again. “It will still be there in the morning, I assure you, and you may whisk it away to your fastidiously filed order.” She turned to face him. “You may kiss me good-night.”
“You are killing me,” he said gravely, all trace of teasing gone. He sounded as if he truly believed she was doing him harm.
She ignored the agony in his voice, ignored the pang of guilt in her own chest, and leaned in to kiss a playful nip on his lips. He clamped a hand down on her waist, and Sabine felt a jolt of anticipation. But he merely tipped her forward to meet his lips and kissed her again, a more thorough, closed-eye kiss, and he rolled her back. He released her and blew out the struggling candle on the table beside the bed. The room went dark.
“Good-night,” she whispered.
Stoker let out a belabored sigh as if she’d said, “Enjoy the dungeon.”
Some hours later, the dawn sky just pinkening through the break in the curtain, Sabine awakened to Stoker’s hand rubbing up and down her arm. She blinked at the ceiling and turned on the pillow.
“I’ve awakened you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“What’s happened? Is your wound—?”
He laughed a wicked sort of laugh. She squinted at him. “Did you sleep?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Why
not?”
“Because I have you in my bed.”
“It is still a bed, despite my presence.”
“Sabine?” he breathed. A question.
“Oh,” she said, her heart rate picking up.
She felt for his hand between them and took it up.
He said, “In view of what we discussed after we—”
He swore.
He started again. “What we discussed after, I should like to have another go. That is, I can only guess you would not have crawled into this bed if you were not amenable to—”
“I am amenable, Stoker.” She slid her leg over the top of his, tracing his calf with the arch of her foot. It was an unbelievable luxury. She should have gotten into bed with him weeks ago.
“I have given it hours of thought,” he said, “and I am going to endeavor to approach it from a less raw, more measured sort of way.”
“Oh,” she said, her foot going still. This did not sound like any fun at all.
“I think I shall feel less conflicted about it, if I try to be . . . refined.”
Sabine tried to think of any “refined” element of Stoker’s character that she found explicitly arousing. He was very well spoken and well-read, which she liked. He looked rather adorable in the spectacles. He had been handsome in the suit he’d worn to the ball, although she far preferred it when his jacket was on the floor and his trousers had been around his hips.
She cleared her throat. He was awaiting some response. Already, this disappointed her. It was less exciting for him to wait.
“Whatever you wish,” she whispered.
He moved in to kiss her then, one slow, soft kiss. He pulled back and looked down at her expectantly. Survived it! she wanted to say, but he descended again. Another slow soft kiss. This melded into more kisses, still slow but less soft, and she had the thought that this might be rather nice. It was nice in the way that plum-bolster pudding was nice after spicy soup. Or a rainy day when you were too tired to go out.
She reached for him, hoping to recapture some of the ardor of the ball, but he caught her hands and pressed them to his chest, holding them there as if she was taking his pulse.
And then he touched her. His free hand descended onto her face in the way a widow may grievingly touch a corpse in a casket one final time.
You May Kiss the Duke Page 24
