“Nathan,” she rasped, turning toward him and losing all thought for a moment at his nearness. His raw power overwhelmed her senses. She pressed her fingertips to her temples and inhaled a shaky breath. “Please. It’s not what you think. It never was. If you will just give me the chance to explain.”
His dark, gleaming gaze slid from her face to Mr. Frazier’s, who still stood there like the daft man he obviously must be. Nathan moved his arm in front of her and slid her behind him, as if she were a mere chess piece he moved on a board. The contact of his hot skin to her abdomen almost made her moan. All that effort to forget him had been for naught. She would never forget her love for him, no matter what happened tonight.
He stepped toward Mr. Frazier and said something she could not hear, and Mr. Frazier immediately rushed off without a good-bye. When Nathan turned to face her, his gaze was guarded, his face weary. The thought that she had caused him pain made her ache.
Nervously, she licked her lips. “What did you say to him?”
“I asked him if he preferred to die now or tomorrow. Apparently, he prefers tomorrow,” Nathan drawled in a ruthless tone.
She so desperately wanted to talk to Nathan without such a large barrier between them. She wanted nothing more in this moment than to hear the truth from his lips and tell him the truth in return. As noise and people swirled around her, she swallowed hard. She didn’t care about her pride at all. She would give up her pride and every worldly possession she now owned if it meant the happiness she had glimpsed with Nathan so long ago could be theirs again.
Looking up into his implacable, unrelenting gaze, she flung her pride to the wind. “I never slept with Mr. Frazier.”
His scorching gaze searched her face, and it felt as if he were delving inside of her.
She swallowed her fear and continued. “I’ve never slept with any man but you. I’ve never even kissed another man but you.”
If she’d not been searching for a sign of hope, she wouldn’t have noticed that his eyes widened ever so slightly. She wanted to swoon with relief. She was getting to him. She hoped. “I died inside when I thought you were gone forever, and then later when I learned you had lied to me and betrayed me with that woman Marguerite, I wanted you alive so I could kill you and hurt you as you had hurt me. So I set out to destroy my love for you and the memory of you that was imprinted on my soul.”
He reached out and smoothed back a tendril of her hair that had fallen into her eyes, tucking it behind her ear. The gesture was so intimate, so loving, she could not suppress the cry that escaped her lips. His eyes widened another fraction, and he took her hand in his and peeled her glove off. She trembled as he splayed her fingers out and interlaced his with hers. Her heart exploded as his strong, rough hand curled around hers and he drew her close.
He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “And did you succeed?”
His hot breath fanned over her neck and made goose flesh cover her body. “It’s an impossible task.” Her voice shook as she spoke. “I love you. I didn’t mean what I said before about no longer loving you. I was hurt and angry.”
His lips parted at her statement, and then his eyes, which had been like granite, softened and filled with a glint of wonder. “Are you offering me your love again?” Disbelief filled his voice.
She nodded. “I am. I am offering all I have to give, But only if you love me, too.”
Without saying a word or releasing her hand, he turned on his heel and tugged her up the stairs toward the exit. As they went, several people attempted to talk to Nathan, but he kept on walking as if they did not exist. Unsure what was happening, whether she was being dragged away for love or to be sent packing and back to isolation, she pasted a smile to her lips and mumbled greetings to the people he’d snubbed.
A coachman she didn’t recognize was waiting in front of the home, and he hopped down from his perch and opened the gleaming, lacquered door of Nathan’s carriage.
She pulled back on Nathan’s hand and scanned the carriages for Mr. Burk—the stable master had insisted on staying while she went inside—as he was following Nathan’s order to not let her go anywhere without him. “Mr. Burk brought me.”
“I know,” Nathan replied, his impassive tone not giving the slightest hint to how he was feeling. “I dismissed him.”
She gasped and tugged her hand out of Nathan’s. “You cannot dismiss Mr. Burk!”
Nathan cracked the first smile she had seen since he had risen from the dead. “I didn’t dismiss Burk. I sent him home for the night. I knew you would be leaving with me.” He held out his hand to her. “Now that we have settled that, please get in.” Though there was no mistaking that he was commanding and not really asking, a subtle softness that she had not heard in over a year underlay his steely tone.
Her heart constricted with hope. Once they were settled inside the carriage and Nathan instructed the coachman to take them to the Mayfair townhome, she breathed a little easier knowing at least Nathan wasn’t forcing the man to drive to St. Ives tonight.
For the first few minutes that the carriage was rolling through the starlit night, Nathan looked out the window and didn’t speak. She began to worry that maybe he was never going to talk when he finally turned and looked at her. The light in the carriage was just enough that she could see that his lips were pressed into a grim line, and the little bit of hope that had wiggled back into her heart faded.
She struggled to fight her tears as he yanked on the cravat he wore and finally succeeded in pulling it all the way off. He tugged at his shirt until the front hung open, and then he offered her a rueful smile. “After a year of not wearing a shirt, I can hardly stand this thing against my skin.” He held up an arm. “Let alone the damn cravat, which I hated well before I was enslaved. Now the material wound tightly around my neck reminds me of the manacles that bound my legs and ankles.”
She held her breath for a moment, afraid to say anything. He was sharing how he felt with her! He was showing her a weakness in his unshakeable strength, which was so unlike him.
He tugged a hand through his hair. “When I was first kidnapped, all I could think about was you and what you might think when I didn’t come back to you. I knew there was no way you could know I loved you, because I had never told you.”
She fisted the material of her gown in her hands to try to stop herself from crying out her joy at his admission. He needed to talk and she was going to let him, even if it drove her mad. What she couldn’t hold back were the tears of happiness. They ran down her face in warm tracks, and she watched him as he stared at her.
“Later, when I awoke from the first beating, all I could think was that I’d been such a coward not to take the love you had offered me.” He didn’t blink or break his eye contact with her. “I’d been so afraid, you see, that you would take back that love once you knew the real me.”
“Never,” she promised and bit her lip on the realization that she had tried to do exactly that.
He arched a sardonic eyebrow, as if his thoughts echoed hers. “I can only imagine that gossip brought you to the conclusion that I betrayed you with Marguerite, and based on some rather odd things Amelia said to me tonight, is it safe to conclude you believed I had planned to keep Marguerite as my paramour in London?”
Sophia nodded. “Except it wasn’t gossip. Marguerite told Ellison you had slept with her the night you went to see her in Lincolnshire and that you told her your relationship with her would continue as always so she should go back to the townhome in London.”
“And why, pray tell, did Ellison impart these lies to you?”
His voice sounded as though it could be used as a sword to lop off a man’s head. Not that she felt overly fond of Ellison at the moment, but she did believe he had been simply trying to help her. However, he could have picked a much better time than her birthday dinner to tell her that Marguerite said Nathan had slept with her.
“Don’t be angry with him, Nathan. He didn’t know Marguerite had lied
to him, and he thought he was helping me. He was afraid I would go out amongst the ton and continue to drone on about how honorable, and true, and wonderful you were. He said he did not want people laughing at me.”
Oh dear! That did not sound good at all.
“It’s good to know Ellison thinks so highly of me. How did you come to believe in me and not the lies? This seems a change from our previous reunion.”
She averted her eyes for a moment, shamed to her toes that she hadn’t had enough faith in him, but then she forced herself to gaze at him once more. “I ran into Marguerite earlier outside of the townhome you apparently just kicked her out of...again. Things she said made me realize she’d lied about the two of you.”
Nathan was visibly shaking as he looked at her. “Never mind. I don’t give a damn how you came to believe it,” he said in a choked voice.
Sophia’s heart splintered in a way she had not thought it had the capacity to do anymore. She gripped her chest at the pain. “Nathan, please...”
In a blur, he was across the carriage, scooped her into his arms, and deposited her on his lap. He cradled her against him. “No, darling, shh.” He brushed his lips to the hollow space between her collarbones, where her pulse was hammering. “You misunderstand me. I love you, too, and I don’t care how you came to believe in me again, only that you do.”
She moaned in response, and he brushed his lips to hers once more. “I am not good, but I vow, God as my witness, I am true and I do try to be honorable. And I never slept with Marguerite after I met you, nor did I have any desire to do so. Marguerite is a vindictive witch who likely was still angry with me, even when she thought I was dead, that I had ended our relationship, something I should have done long ago. I think I stayed with her because I thought a man like me deserved no better than a woman like her.”
“Oh, Nathan!” Sophia pressed her lips to his, savoring his warmth, his taste, and the promise of his love. “I believe you! I believe you were true to me. And I’m sorry I ever doubted it. I’m sorry I tried to hurt you by saying those awful things the night you came home, and I’m sorry I tried to take back my love.”
He cupped her face and kissed her forehead, her nose, and then her lips. “I’m glad you didn’t manage it, but I want to tell you now of my past so you will know the worst of me.”
“You don’t need to do that!” she exclaimed.
His gaze locked with hers. “I do need to, Sophia. I need to know that you can hear all the terrible choices I have made and still love me. Still want me.”
She nodded and laid her head against his chest. He talked while stroking her back.
As the carriage rumbled toward the townhome, then eventually arrived, the carriage door was opened and then discreetly shut with a look from Nathan to the coachman. And during that time, Nathan told her of his addiction to laudanum that started with his accident with his parents and ended with waking up in Marguerite’s bed with the taste of laudanum in his mouth, and her smiling and telling him he had drank it off her. He told Sophia of being a member of the Order of the Dark Lords and of the learning that his onetime friend, Ravensdale, was robbing people in their carriages. He told her of turning Ravensdale in, quitting the Dark Lords, and trying to pick up the pieces of the life that had been shattered long ago by his mother’s cruelty and his father’s desire to avoid conflict.
After he told her all his sins, he finally told her again the one thing, the only thing she really wanted to hear. “I love you, Sophia. It was my love for you and the promise of the life and happiness we could share that kept me alive this past year. You saved me the day I met you. And then you saved me again every day that I was held prisoner. If you still want me, I’m yours, bruised body and battered soul.”
“You are all I ever wanted,” she said. “Even before I knew it. Now, come, let’s go upstairs and have a proper welcome home.”
As they alighted from the carriage and walked hand in hand up the stairs and to his bedchamber, her heart expanded and filled with exquisite happiness. Once he undressed her with care, she started to undress him but he stilled her hands. “One moment.” He bent down, fumbled near his ankle, and came up with a dagger. “I never go anywhere without this now. I didn’t want you to be surprised.”
Her heart ached for the ordeal he had been through. She understood all too well the need to feel protected. Once they were both undressed and standing face-to-face in his bedchamber, Nathan asked her to stand still so he could look at her. She agreed, though she felt a burning shyness that he, so beautiful even with his scars, was examining her, who paled so in comparison.
He traced his fingers like a feather over her breasts, her belly, her hips, and down her legs. He kneeled before her and ran his hands up her calves, her thighs, and over the rounded curve of her bottom. Then his hands clasped on to her flesh and his fingers curled into her skin as he tugged her to him and kissed her stomach and then lower still to the secret space only he had ever been.
The pleasure he brought her was so intense that it danced on that razor-sharp edge of torment and delight. Between long, lavish strokes of his tongue to her sensitive bud, she lost her ability to stand, but he caught her as she crumpled and lowered her gently to the ground. He gave no quarter to her need and brought her all the way to the pinnacle of desire until she screamed her demands that he take her. And this time, though the savage still dwelled within him, all his touches, kisses, and strokes in and out of her were filled with tender love that made tears come to her eyes.
Together, they climbed toward the happiness that had almost eluded them, and as his mouth worshipped hers and his body rocked in time with hers, she clung to him with shaking limbs and savored his strength while offering him her softness. When he withdrew almost to his tip, his eyes locked with hers just before he drove back inside her, and sparks of ecstasy spiraled from her core to every space in her body. She clenched around him with her own release as he stilled, crying out his, and then, utterly exhausted and satisfied, they lay on the floor, wrapped in each other’s arms and slept.
Hours later, she awoke and stared at her sleeping husband. He was perfectly naked and perfectly beautiful, inside and out. As she was gazing at him, his eyes opened, and he turned his head to look at her.
She rested her chin on his chest and smiled. “Did I wake you?”
“No. I think it’s the floor. I’ve been unable to sleep in a real bed since returning, but suddenly I find that I want only soft things in my life.” He traced a finger over her breast and circled it around her nipple with a lascivious smile on his lips. “I want a soft bed and my soft wife, and I think I’d like to stay there for several uninterrupted days.”
“Then we shall!”
Giggling, she scrambled up and into the bed where he joined her. And for two days they got out of bed only to take long baths and eat the hearty meals that the blushing maid served them.
During that time, the news of the Duke of Scarsdale’s rise from the dead spread like wildfire through London. During their self-imposed exile from everyday life, hoards of visitors and well-wishers came to the townhome until Nathan, finally, on the third day, dragged himself out of his wife’s arms and their warm bed and set about putting his affairs in order so they could retire to Whitecliffe, where they both agreed they very much wanted to live year-round.
For an entire day, Nathan was holed up in his study with his solicitor, Aversley, and Harthorne as he made decisions about different business happenings that had transpired while he was away. That night, Sophia and Nathan dined casually together and then tired each other out with their lovemaking.
When she awoke the next morning, she was blissfully happy, except for one thing. Ellison had been notably absent yesterday, and when she had broached the subject with Nathan he had admitted he was putting off seeing his cousin because taking everything that went along with the dukedom away from Ellison made Nathan feel awful. She didn’t want the sole person in his family who Nathan had cared about to slip away from
him, but she was unsure what to do.
As she was sitting there thinking on the matter, the butler brought her a note with nothing but her name written on the outside of it. For a moment, she wondered if Mr. Frazier was so daft as to write to her, but she quickly discarded the idea and unfolded the note, scanning first to the bottom where she saw Ellison’s signature.
She drew her gaze up to the top and read the short note:
Please come to see me but don’t tell Scarsdale. I’m in a very bad way and truly feel awful about my part in unknowingly hurting you. I’d like to beg your forgiveness and seek your advice on what I should do with my life. The thought of being dependent on Scarsdale’s charity once again is intolerable to me. I’ve rented some rooms one block from the two of you, as I want to stand on my own two feet. Here is the street and number if you decide to come see me.
Sophia folded the letter and pondered what to do. She should tell Nathan, but then again, he was in meetings and would probably be in them all day. She could easily walk to the address Ellison had jotted down. She’d seen that street yesterday on the way here.
Her heart wrenched a bit for Ellison and how he must feel, must have always felt, rather unimportant next to Nathan, though she knew that was not because of anything Nathan had intentionally done. It was simply fate. Nathan was the duke. He was handsome, magnetic, and sophisticated in contrast to Ellison’s dull looks, rather listless charms, and stilted, often almost-bumbling personality. She knew what it was to feel inadequate.
She’d go to him and see if she could help him while also helping to mend the fracture she saw developing between him and Nathan.
It was easy enough to slip out unnoticed. The servants were busy packing the trunks and preparing for her and Nathan’s departure for Whitecliffe tomorrow. The walk was quick, and she had no trouble finding the place Ellison had rented. She knocked on the door, and when Ellison answered it himself, she hid her shock with a smile.
My Seductive Innocent Page 35
