“You’ll be after my curtains next,” he said. “And you’ve started Lucy on this habit of decorating every fabric in sight.”
“Greendale allowed it,” she said. “He thought a woman with her head bowed over her hoop was a pleasing sight.” To take what her late husband had permitted and make it an excess had been a form of revenge.
Sharing herself with Christian was more of that same revenge, at least in part, and Gilly hated herself for that.
Christian crossed his arms.
She rose and drew him forward by the wrist. “Whatever it is, say it.”
“I’d prefer you were bowed over my sated and prostrate form.” He pulled the door shut behind him and let her tug him into the room.
“We shall not be indiscreet here in the broad light of day,” she said, but she’d left a question in the words when she’d intended a stern admonition.
He smiled down at her. “Someday, Gillian, I will have you writhing and moaning in the broad light of day. Outdoors even.”
“You’d get leaves in my hair.” She could afford the humor, because he was behaving.
“Among other places, but then I’d help you remove them.”
“You are so naughty.”
“Do you mind?” He kissed her ear and rested his chin on her crown.
“You cannot spend your entire day seeing to my safety. I ought to leave,” she said, genuinely sorry to bring this up again when his mood was so winsome.
“Not without me. We’ve had no word of the girl who prepared your lunch basket with the poisoned tea, and inquiries at the Lion and Cock yield only the information that she began to work there last winter and hailed from the West Riding.”
“If she could get to my food, anybody can.” Or they could get to his.
“No, they can’t.” His eyes were very sober, his hands on her shoulders steady. “I’ve sent everybody from the house staff whom I can’t vouch for personally off to visit family, which is common enough between haying and harvest. Your footmen or I attend you wherever you go, and the entire staff has been warned to watch for strangers.”
“They’ve been…protective,” Gilly said. “Discreet, but protective.”
“You’re surprised?”
“I left my slippers in your bedroom that first night.”
“So?”
The great lout was genuinely perplexed. “Below stairs, they know.”
“That we share a bed? If you say so.”
“I don’t like that they know.” She hated that they knew, hated that they might think her guilty of every weak, wanton behavior Greendale had accused her of.
Christian’s gaze narrowed, more closely approximating the ducal sphinx Gilly had barged in on weeks ago in London. “Will you pretend you don’t like what we do?”
She would have moved out from under his hands, but he only let her turn, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “The question is sincere, my lady. I would not for the world impose on you.”
The wretch, saying such things out loud.
“I like what we do.”
“Then is it me? Perhaps you’d rather disport with a different partner?”
And behind the arrogance of the question, Gilly heard a hint, a well-hidden, ducally disregarded hint of vulnerability. She turned in his arms and pressed her face against his chest. She had licked, kissed, and nuzzled her way over most of this chest and had found it delicious.
“I will never disport thus with another. I promise myself every morning I will not disport thus with you again, at least not until matters are settled between us.”
His hold on her loosened. “I do not understand your dilemma. I have determined you need time to sort it out yourself, and this sits ill with me, but as a measure of my regard for you, I do not force the matter.”
“Oh, no, you do not force the argument, you merely—”
“Yes?” He slipped his hands down and cupped her bottom, which meant she took notice of his male flesh growing hard between them.
“Even arguing arouses you.”
“Everything about you arouses me.” And oh, he sounded so smug, so pleased. “Though sometimes to protectiveness or humor or admiration in addition to desire.”
“Lust, simple lust from too many months soldiering.”
“You are an intelligent woman,” he said, the smugness turning to perplexity. “Frightfully so, in fact. Why do you delude yourself with such patent tripe?”
“Stop.” He was about to launch into his I-care-for-you/Greendale-is-holding-your-future-hostage speech, one he’d come up with by their second night together. “None of your campaigning. It’s entirely possible I have brought danger to your household, and marrying me is the last thing you should do.”
He enfolded her in his arms, using his most devastating tactic, meeting her protestations and common sense with this endless, boundless, silent affection. He was affectionate in and out of bed, as if all those months in France he’d been storing up a need to touch, to tease, to be tender, and now it poured out of him at the sight of her. His affection dizzied her and broke her heart and made untangling her wants from his best interests so much harder.
“You are not safe on your own,” he said. “Lucy needs you, and I need you. Recite your reasons and arguments, Gilly, but please don’t go. Before I’ll let you leave me, I will take myself off, though I will despise doing it. In my absence, the staff will watch your every move and taste everything you eat or drink before you touch it.”
“I am not banishing the Duke of Mercia from his own family seat.”
“Not yet,” he said, though his tone suggested he was willing to be banished if it would please her. “Now let us put aside this bickering you insist on. The morning is advanced, and Lucy will be wroth if we neglect her.”
Gilly conceded the point, because she did bicker, and the contention reassured her of her position for form’s sake, but it did nothing to put her resolve into action.
Each night, she grew closer to Christian; each night he asked for and won more of her trust until Gilly herself had to admit that her reservations were crumbling and her fate becoming inevitable—provided she had the courage to seize it.
***
They’d had their argument for the morning, which brought the total for the day to two, because they must also have an argument upon rising, sometimes even while Christian was making love to his Gilly.
Delicate and spicy business that, arguing with a woman while plundering her treasures. It left Christian off balance, and yet Gilly was passion itself in his arms.
Another tiff would ensue over tea, and the end of the day would include sleepy mutterings. And all the while, Gilly stole his heart, tied him in knots, and tossed his most tender sentiments aside so she could find her benighted embroidery hoop.
In some peculiar way, sparring with her and making love with her both honed the craving for revenge Christian nursed to more thriving health by the day. Odd, that loving a woman and pursuing violent resolution of the threats to a shared future with her should entwine thus.
“Your girth is repaired,” Christian said as he and his lady reached the second-floor landing. “We might go for another ride one of these fine summer days.”
“Autumn will soon be here. Will you go up to Town for the next session of the Lords?”
Ghastly thought, though his letters had finally yielded some interesting rumors regarding the whereabouts of one Robert Girard, weasel at large.
Half-English weasel, of all things, and successor to a baronial title, which was doomed, alas, to die out with him. Prinny would likely even shed a tear or two before seizing the weasel’s assets.
Did Girard have any vestiges of Englishness left that could regret the lapse of a title? Christian shied off the notion, for such sentiments would give him something in common with his tormentor—his soon to
be late tormenter.
“Would you like me to take you and Lucy up to Town?” Not that he’d allow his womenfolk anywhere near Girard or his reported whereabouts.
Gilly marched up the stairs toward the third floor. “Lucy might enjoy such a visit, for she needs her papa, but you need not drag me up there.”
“You don’t think the Town staff as loyal as the Severn staff?” Christian asked as he followed. “You don’t think I will need a hostess in Town? You have to know anybody in my employ who disparages you will be turned off without a character.”
She paused at the top of the steps, her skirts swishing about her half boots. “If somebody repeats the truth, they aren’t disparaging my character.”
“I weary of this topic, Gillian. You will either make an honest duke of me and accept my suit or content yourself with my affections on terms more acceptable to you. Those are your options, my lady.”
She fell silent, her eyes pained despite her serene expression. His next tactics were reconnaissance and subterfuge—the distasteful and ungentlemanly business of spying—to determine what, exactly, made marriage to him so repugnant to her.
He stopped her headlong march in the middle of the empty third-floor corridor.
“Do you fear I would treat you as Greendale did? Deny you the gardens, expect you to embroider my stockings, head bent by the hour?”
“You’re weary of the topic, if you’ll recall.” She fired off that retort, and he let her, because his question had been at least close to the mark. Gilly’s marriage had left her afraid, though of exactly whom and what, Christian could not fathom—yet.
He was loath to admit his instincts as an interrogator owed something to Girard’s example.
Six steps in the direction of the nursery suite, Gilly stopped again abruptly.
“What?”
She put a finger to her lips, and Christian fell silent. A sound drifted down the corridor, one he hadn’t heard for some time: a child singing.
“That’s Lucy,” Gilly said, steps quickening. “Oh, thank God, that’s our Lucy, and if she can sing, she can…”
Our Lucy. And she was his Gilly, whether she knew it or not. Christian gently hauled her back by the wrist. “The child will fall silent as soon as she senses we’re here.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Gilly said, wrenching from his grasp.
“She talks in her sleep.”
They conducted this exchange in fierce whispers. “How do you know that?”
Gilly had her routine for the end of the day, and he had his. A patrol of the garrison, so to speak. Before she could argue with him further, Christian addressed her again, loudly enough to be heard in all directions.
“You may not embroider my handkerchiefs with flowers, Countess. Anything other than the family crest or my initials would be unfitting to the dignity of a duke.”
The singing stopped, and Gilly’s eyes, so full of hope, filled with tears.
“None of that,” he said softly. “She can’t know we were eavesdropping. Argue with me, Gilly. You excel at it.”
She blinked back the tears and stood inches taller. “I will decorate where I please, as I please, Your Grace. Even my own papa allowed embroidery on his handkerchiefs, and he was every bit as high in the instep as you.”
“I’m not high in the instep, I’m a duke. You will note the difference.”
“And being a duke is somehow the better of the two?”
He winked at her and let the question go unanswered as they reached the nursery door.
“Good day, Harris,” he said. “Is Lucy free to entertain callers?”
“She finished her sums early today, Your Grace. You should have passed her. She’s down the corridor, in the small playroom with the dogs.”
“Countess, you’ll join me?” He winged his arm at Gilly, and she took it. When they were alone, she hissed and arched her back, and spat and carried on verbally, but she never under any circumstances denied him the opportunity to touch her, and for that, among many other traits, he treasured her.
“Good day, Lucy.” Christian bowed to his daughter to make her smile and saw the countess suck in a breath. Gilly wanted to force the issue of the singing, and he didn’t blame her. “Shall you stroll with us in the garden, Lucy, and bring those two reprobates whom you have ensorcelled here in your tower?”
Her brows twitched down.
Gillian took Lucy’s hand. “He means you charm those dogs into doing your bidding when they ignore everybody else.”
Lucy’s smile grew broader.
“I know,” Christian said, taking her other hand. “You play with them, and thus are endeared to them. I donate my favorite pair of slippers to their evil ends, and yet they ignore me unless I threaten them with death by rolled-up newspaper.”
He went on in that fashion, teasing, grousing, being more papa than duke, because the gruffness was needed to keep Gilly from bawling, and the teasing was needed to charm his daughter.
And both—Gilly and Lucy—were somehow becoming necessary to him if his life was to have any meaning at all. That he would have to leave them for a time to dispatch Girard did not sit well, particularly not with Gilly having so nearly come to harm.
And yet, Girard—canny bastard—was likely the author of that harm, intending that it force a reckoning between them.
He and Gilly played with Lucy and the dogs, visited the stables, and returned the child to her nursery. The afternoon stretched before them long and lazy, and Christian spun mental strategies about how he’d put the hours to their best use with his countess.
“I am a trifle fatigued,” she said, and Christian’s mood improved to hear it.
“You haven’t been sleeping well of late. I delight in comforting you in your restless slumbers.”
“Maybe you’re the cause of my restless slumbers.”
“You don’t like it when I rub your back, Countess? When I make those circles on your nape, slower and slower until the arms of Morpheus beckon?” He delighted in that ritual, for it relaxed him and pleased him to be of service to her.
She kept her powder dry until they were approaching the house. “I really do need a nap, Christian.”
Christian. Her version of wheedling, and damnably effective. “Then so do I.”
“No, you do not. You need to ride out. You’ve foregone that pleasure to tarry with me for the past few mornings, and dear Chessie will pine for you.”
“The way he pined while I was in the hands of the French? The brute was eating out of Easterbrook’s hand by the time I stumbled back to life.”
The observation held genuine annoyance, because the familiar mental tickle was back. Something to do with the horse.
“I’m sure in his way, Chesterton was praying for your safe return. Now, shoo.”
“I’ll walk you upstairs, Gilly.”
She huffed out a breath. “Christian…”
Even in that sniffy, huffy tone, he loved to hear her say his name. “Either you take my arm, or it’s George and John.”
She took his arm, and they progressed through the house in silence. When they reached her door, she tried to close the thing in his face, but he slipped through and turned her by the shoulders.
“None of that,” she said.
“You are ever eager to relieve me of my clothes, Gilly, but you’ve yet to allow me the same pleasure.”
“And I’m not about to allow it now.”
“So modest.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind, because when they were married, surely, she’d trust him with her nudity. “Will you dream of me?”
“I cannot know such a thing.”
“I know you have nightmares.”
She walked out of his embrace and sat at her vanity, removing pins from her hair as if they—or something—had been irritating her.
; “I know,” he went on, letting her put some distance between them. “I have them too, and you soothe and comfort me. I’m aware of your kindnesses, Gilly. I’m grateful for them.”
“You say I have nightmares too.”
He watched her, watched the nervous twitching of her fingers, and knew he was probing close to her wounds. “Your nightmares pass. I hold you, speak a few words, and you become quiet.”
“I don’t…” She regarded herself in the mirror, her expression wary as a thick blond braid came unraveled down her back. “I don’t talk in my sleep?”
“You do not.” Though if she did, it would clearly bother her tremendously. “But you know, Gilly, if you have some dire secret, I would keep it for you. If you put a period to old Greendale’s existence, the man would probably thank you himself were he able. From what I’ve gleaned, at the end, he wasn’t able to chew his food or tend to his bodily functions. An old codger like that would likely rather be dead than so helpless.”
He kept his eyes on her, watching for any sign he’d guessed a truth.
His Gilly, taking another life? He could not picture it, not even in kindness, not even if Greendale had ordered her to do it. She’d probably object to Christian exterminating even the likes of Girard.
The thought gave him pause—uncomfortable pause.
Gilly twitched a few more pins from her hair. “You wouldn’t be nervous to think I killed my husband? Wouldn’t retract your proposal lest you end up in the family plot? You’d endorse such violence despite all biblical admonitions to the contrary?”
“Gilly…” He shifted to stand behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, which revealed her to be as tense as a fiddle string. He spoke quietly near her ear.
“In France, I went a little mad, sometimes more than a little. I sustained myself on fantasies of the havoc I could wreak when I got free, the blood I would spill, the tortures I would devise for Girard and his corporals and lieutenants and superiors.”
“They wanted you driven mad.” She kissed his forearm where it lay along her collarbone. “They did not succeed.”
The Captive Page 24
