She held her gaze on him a long moment and he could see her mind turning. She was judging him, analyzing his every move. He couldn’t help but wonder what decisions she was coming to.
“Very well,” she said at last, then lifted to her tiptoes to kiss him and slipped into the bedroom.
When the door was closed, he took a long breath. Just being near Meg set him on his head. Made him dizzy. She always had. It seemed she always would. And today had repaired some of the damage he’d caused between them. They had been friends today, as well as lovers. When they talked it wasn’t just about their marriage or their past, it had been easy and comfortable.
All that gave him hope, but not enough. There was more work to do to prove that he wouldn’t fall back into old habits, that he wouldn’t push her away out of some sense of fear or honor or self-punishment.
He moved about the room, lighting candles and lamps, stoking the fire, and then he carefully prepared their food for the night. When it was all finished, he moved to the bedroom door and knocked gently.
“Come in,” she called out.
He stepped inside and caught his breath. The fire burned bright in this room too and Meg had lit the candles, as well. The big tub was pulled right in front of the fire and the light spilled over her. She had pulled her damp hair up into a loose bun on top of her head, and her long neck and high cheekbones were accentuated beautifully.
The water was cloudy from soap, but he still caught glimpses of pink flesh that drove him mad. “You do tempt a man,” he murmured as he sank down on his knees beside the tub, resting his arms on the edge.
She smiled, but there was fire in her eyes. That fire he’d always been drawn to like a moth. “Tempt you enough to join me?” she whispered, leaning forward. The tops of her breasts bobbed out of the water, giving him a peekaboo glimpse of hard nipples, and he groaned.
“Next time,” he promised. “Next time I will join you.”
She smiled and leaned up, dampening his shirt as she kissed him. “If you say so.” She sighed and leaned back. “This was wonderful, thank you.”
“You deserved it,” he said softly, rolling up his sleeves as he spoke. “You deserve so much more than I’ve given.”
Her expression softened, even as he dipped his hand beneath the water and stroked his fingers back and forth over her knee.
“Simon, you judge yourself so harshly. Have there been mistakes made? Yes. But that is being human. To expect you’d go through life without ever making the wrong move is to hold yourself to a high standard that is unattainable.”
He met her stare, stilling his fingers in their movement. “But I’ve hurt you.”
She nodded. “You have. But I’ve never thought you did it with malice or intent or forethought.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his heart hurting.
“Yes, it does,” she whispered. “If I thought you’d meant to hurt me or taken pleasure in that act, I would have asked you to leave instead of joined you today. I grew up with a man who enjoyed hurting those around him, who did things on purpose to break us down. Whatever you’ve done, I know you are not that man.”
His eyes fluttered shut and he let out a long breath as pain overwhelmed him. “You overcame just as much as I did from your childhood, but you are so much better, Meg. So much stronger.”
She moved forward again, cupping his cheeks gently. “I had James as my support,” she reminded him. “You were alone until you met Graham and James when you were, what, thirteen? And even then, it wasn’t as if you always had them at your side. You are exactly who you are, Simon. I wouldn’t want any other man, any other way.”
He met her eyes, he saw the truth in her words, and the love he felt for her washed over him. He leaned in and kissed her, drawing her almost out of the tub as he crushed her against him and reveled in her warmth and her acceptance, things he had shied away from since their marriage because, in truth, he hadn’t believed he deserved them. Or that they were real. Or that they could last.
Now he was beginning to believe. To see the future she had described so many times. The one he had nearly destroyed out of fear and distrust that love could be true.
He drew away, shaking from the power of his emotions. “I’m sorry.”
She laughed as she stood up, a goddess clad only in rivulets of streaming water. “Never apologize for kissing your wife thoroughly, Simon.”
He grabbed for one of the thick towels the servants had brought to the cottage earlier in the day. She wrapped herself in it, drying off slowly as she smiled at him, well-aware of the show she was performing. And every part of his body was on high alert as she did so.
Somehow, though, he resisted her temptations and took the robe that lay across the bed. “Your Grace.”
She shrugged into it, and followed him into the main room of the cottage. He offered her a seat at the table and she stared down at the place he’d set for her. When she smiled, he tilted his head. “What?”
She laughed as she switched the knives and forks around. “You set it all backward.”
He grinned. “How am I to know?”
“You don’t pay attention when you sit down to eat?” she giggled.
He shrugged. “It seems I don’t. Perhaps I am too caught up in the company I keep to know which side is for knives and which for forks.”
“Of course. That must be it.”
He set food on her plate and his own, then sat down across from her. The table was so small that it was an intimate setting, and for a while they ate in companionable silence.
But as time ticked by, Simon knew he couldn’t put off the inevitable for long. At last, he set his napkin on the table and met her gaze.
“I’ve avoided your questions and your concerns these past few weeks,” he said. “And tonight I want to address them. So if you have something you want to ask, if you have something you need to know…I’m here to answer.”
She caught her breath, a sharp intake of air that told him she was surprised by his openness. She set her own napkin away and leaned back in her chair. “You are truly dedicated to this, aren’t you?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Yes, I am. The moment James told me you’d left, I realized that was like my own heart being torn from my chest. I was late in recognizing that losing you would be the closest thing to death, but I see it now and I will do anything to keep it from happening.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Very well, then I open the floor to the same openness from my end. If you have any questions for me, I shall answer them with the same spirit of honesty that you have given.”
He drew back, for he hadn’t considered that as an option. He realized he did, indeed, have questions for Meg. But he wanted to clear her mind before he addressed his own. “You first.”
She ducked her head and a dark blush colored her cheeks. The unexpected reaction surprised him.
“What is it?”
“I’m trying to find a way to phrase my question,” she admitted. “Er, the morning James and Graham found us here, the morning everything…changed, I overheard you and my brother talking.”
Simon thought back to that morning that felt like a lifetime ago. “Go on.”
“He said that you…you and Roseford had…”
She trailed off, her cheeks going even darker, and Simon flinched as he recalled his conversation with James that morning. He cleared his throat. “You heard James say that Roseford and I had shared women in the past. And that I whored my way through London for years.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “In fact, I have sometimes wondered if that was part of your hesitation about…us. Although I have very much enjoyed the education you’ve given me since our engagement, I know I am an innocent when it comes to pleasures of the flesh. Perhaps I am not enough for you.”
His eyes went wide at that thought. “No!” he cried. “No, Meg, that isn’t it at all.” He pushed to his feet and paced away, runn
ing a hand through his hair. He had no idea how to explain what he’d done to her. How to make her understand. In the end, he settled on the truth. “I sowed my wild oats like many a young man,” he said. “Pleasure is…well, pleasure helps one forget pain, even if only for a moment.”
She nodded as if she understood that, and perhaps she did, considering their volatile relationship these last few weeks and the passions they had explored together. “And the sharing part?”
Simon swallowed. “After you were engaged to Graham, I was lost. Yes, I spiraled into debauchery for a while, hoping that a woman or five women or ten would make me forget the only one I truly wanted. Roseford and I shared a woman a few times, and I won’t deny that it was pleasurable. But it was empty. No one was you. And you were all I wanted. In truth, in the last few years I have hardly touched another woman. I had no stomach for it anymore.”
Her eyes were wide when he dared to look at her again. “So…wait, are you saying you were trying to…”
“Forget that it was you I wanted,” he answered with a nod. “Yes.”
Her expression softened. “And you don’t want that sort of thing now?”
He shook his head. “All I want is you and the thought of some other man touching you, even if I were in the room with you helping you find pleasure, makes me want to punch the wall.”
Relief flooded her features. “I’m so glad. The idea I wouldn’t be enough for you—”
“Meg, I want to make it clear,” he said. “Whether you accept me back into your life as your husband again or not. Whatever happens to us in the future, I will never touch another woman again as long as I live. You are and always have been, more than enough for me.”
She blinked. “You would not touch another woman, even I refused you?”
“I recognize it doesn’t seem like I’ve taken our vows very seriously, but I do. You are my wife and my love and I will never betray you.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears and emotions. She rose and moved closer to him. “And now I think it’s your turn to ask me a question.”
He hesitated for a long moment, and then he said, “You wept the night you and Graham announced the date for your wedding. And you’ve told me many times that you didn’t want to marry him. We’ve discussed why I never intervened, but why—” He cut himself off, not wanting to make an accusation toward her.
She leaned closer. “Why?” she encouraged.
He sucked in a deep breath and met her eyes. “Why didn’t you stop it? If you didn’t want to marry Graham, why didn’t you tell James no?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Meg caught her breath at the direct question. Simon didn’t ask it with malice or accusation in his tone, but he also didn’t move his gaze from hers. And she knew why. He had taken the blame all this time for the situation they found themselves in.
The moment had finally come for her to accept her own share.
“James went through so much at the hands of our father,” she began with a shake of her head.
“You both did.”
She smiled at his gentle defense of her. “Yes, but I didn’t have the weight of inheritance on my shoulders like my brother did. The weight of what he thought would be failure. It was hard for him to carry.”
Simon nodded. “I remember those dark days.”
“When James announced that I would marry Graham, he was so happy. He thought he was doing the right thing, that he’d made his first act as duke the best one possible. I had no idea how to respond. My ears were ringing, my hands were shaking. I looked at you across the room, because I thought perhaps you liked me as much as I did you.”
His face fell. “And I offered no resistance, thanks to my own shock about what was happening.”
Pain flooded her at the memory, but she understood so much more now. About him. About herself. “I was very young, you know. I had no experience, I thought perhaps I had misread the situation. That you truly only did want to be a friend to me. If that were true, there would be no point in shattering James’s hopes. So I convinced myself that you didn’t want me and that I could get over wanting you.”
“But you didn’t,” he said softly.
“No,” she agreed. “I never did, no matter how I tried. And I never loved Graham, no matter how much I wished I could. Perhaps I should have said something as the years stretched out. There were times I thought I might. But it felt more and more impossible to do that as Society became more invested in my nuptials with Graham. The scandal if I broke it off—”
“Yes, I understand,” he said, letting out a long sigh of regret. “It kept me silent, as well.”
She shook her head slowly. “In a way, Simon, we are so alike. Both wanting to please those around us, never wanting to disappoint or hurt them. And in the end, it made both of us cowards. It made both of us turn away from the future we wanted.”
“I suppose it did. For a while. But now we’re here. And I hope that we can overcome our mistakes of the past. I want to.”
She believed him. It was impossible not to when he was so sincere and so honest about their past. But she still wasn’t quite ready to give in to what he offered. To give the heart that he had crushed a few days before.
He examined her closely. “You’re still not certain. Does that mean you have another question for me?”
“I-I do.” She felt the lump in her throat, the pain that spread through her as she stared at this man, her husband, her love. There was only one more thing that she carried with her now. But it was the biggest heartache of her life. The one fact that would keep her from fully trusting this man. “Would you have truly left with Roseford? Would you have walked away and let me marry another?”
His face twitched, pain slashing across it. The moment seemed to stretch out forever, an eternity of struggle for them both as he searched for whatever words he was going to say. “Why do you think I followed you that afternoon when we were trapped together?”
She shrugged. “We were friends and you saw me struggling. You—”
“No,” he interrupted.
She blinked at the forcefulness of his tone. “No?”
“No,” he said, softer this time. “I knew I shouldn’t, Meg. I knew I should get James or Graham to go after you. I followed you because I…I knew in some part of me that doing so would seal my fate. I told Roseford I wanted to leave, I told myself I would step aside as I always had and allow your future to unfold without me. But I followed you here, Meg. And I let us get caught in a storm.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
“I was following you for an hour before I stopped you. Don’t you think I noticed the gathering clouds? Don’t you think I knew exactly what might happen if I didn’t steer you home before they opened up a torrent?” He paced a moment. “Once we were trapped, I still had options that would keep the scandal at a minimum. But I stayed in this cottage with you. And I kissed you at last. And I did all of it so the decision would be removed from my hands. So I could take you from Graham without having to be man enough to admit it was what I wanted all along.”
His face was bright with emotion now, his blue eyes stormy and filled with many things, not one of which was regret.
“You’re saying you manipulated what happened?”
“Perhaps I didn’t allow myself to know that at the time, but…yes,” he whispered. “The fact is, Meg, I can say that I wouldn’t have walked away, because I didn’t. I didn’t walk away. And I know that it is hard to believe based on my past, based on what I’ve done before and since we wed, but I’m telling you right now I will never walk away again. I will never give you another reason to believe you must. I will fight for you, Meg. From this day until the day I draw my last breath. I will fight for you because you are all I have ever wanted, all I have ever needed and all I shall ever desire.”
She stared at him, stunned both by his words and the strength with which he said them. For the f
irst time in years, he looked at her with clear eyes, with his intentions written across his handsome face, with all his love out in the open for her to see and embrace and adore.
And in that moment, it was enough. More than enough. It was everything.
She moved toward him, tears beginning to sting her eyes, and caught his hands. “I love you, Simon. I love you.”
He didn’t answer her with words, but drew her against him, dropping his mouth to hers for a kiss. For the first time, there was no desperation to the kiss. No feeling that it might be their last. There was only tenderness, desire and love. She melted against him, hardly noticing as he steered her into the bedroom, untying her robe as they stumbled together.
He stripped the fabric away and tossed it aside. When his hands trembled, she smiled. “It isn’t as if you haven’t seen me like this before.”
He nodded. “I have. But until this moment, I’ve never fully accepted that you were mine.”
She caught her breath. “Well, I am yours. And you are mine.”
“Forever,” he whispered, that word a vow to her that meant more than any they had said in the chapel. Tonight it was a surrender, a gift of faith, a promise of a future.
And she reached for him, tangling her arms around his neck as she lifted her mouth to his and returned that promise with her body. With her everything.
He helped her onto the bed and quickly stripped out of his clothing. She opened her arms to him as he joined her on the bed, his heated gaze branding her in a way it never had before. This was full surrender and she bathed in the glow of it.
His mouth came down on her throat, and he began to slowly kiss and caress his way along the length of her body. She gasped as he pleasured her tight nipples, sucking hard and laving each with his tongue until her vision blurred and wet heat soaked the inside of her thighs.
Then he dragged his mouth lower, licking her stomach, her hip, and finally he settled between her legs, opening her wide so that he could lavish her sex with long strokes of his tongue. She rose up against him, thrashing her head against the pillows as pleasure arced from and spread through every nerve in her body. She fisted the coverlet, gasping out his name as she reached for release.
Her Favorite Duke Page 20
