With surprise, she raised her head. She’d been so lost in Kylemore’s embrace that she hadn’t even heard the horse approach.
The older man had dismounted and stood several feet away, watching them. She couldn’t mistake the relief in his lined face.
“Och, thanks be tae the Lord. You’ve found her.”
“Yes, Hamish.”
She waited for Kylemore to say more, perhaps boast of his heroics. Only his valor, strength and cleverness had saved her.
But he merely said, “Find the others. I’ll bring madame. We can all go home.”
Home, yes. The isolated house did feel like home now. How easy everything became once she ceased to struggle against the inevitable. She could float calmly and joyfully to her doom.
Gently, Kylemore untangled himself from her and stood up. It was just another sign of her ruin that she missed his warmth the moment he left her. The world seemed a cold place when she didn’t rest in his arms.
He spoke softly from his great height down to where she knelt before him like a supplicant. “I know you’re frightened of horses, Verity. But if I take you up before me, I promise no harm will come to you.”
Oh, if only it were true, she thought painfully.
She accepted his hand and rose stiffly to her feet. Her body hurt in a thousand places, and she couldn’t suppress a deep groan. She was battered and bruised and still humiliatingly teary.
Her silent docility must have worried him, because he looked at her searchingly. “Are you injured, Verity?”
“No.”
She was shaking and felt alarmingly light-headed. She began to sway.
Stupid, really. She had more self-control than this. But she couldn’t stop the way everything around her approached, then receded, in bleary waves.
From far away, she heard Kylemore swear softly and savagely. Then he snatched her up in his arms and carried her across to the huge thoroughbred he always rode. She was too distraught even to protest at getting on the beast. In a daze, she felt Kylemore pass her across to Hamish.
“Whisht, lassie. We’ll soon have ye home.”
She suddenly welcomed Hamish’s lilting Scottish burr. She’d always found it dauntingly alien before.
Vaguely, she was aware that the duke reassembled the saddle and placed it on Tannasg’s back. Then, very carefully, Hamish handed her up to Kylemore. Tenderly he tucked her in front of him on the massive horse. His arms encircled her with a confidence that promised to keep all hazards at bay.
Poor, foolish Verity to credit such sentimental pap, she thought without any great emotion.
Silently, they made their way back to the house she thought she’d left behind forever.
Verity propped herself up against the pillows in the large bed where she’d fought so many skirmishes with the Duke of Kylemore. Skirmishes she’d invariably lost. A fire blazed in the grate, banishing any chill from the room.
Everyone had treated her with exaggerated care since their return. A long, hot bath perfumed with rose oil had eased her strained muscles. Then Morag and Kirsty had helped her change into a plain white nightgown; the scandalous creations Kylemore had ordered still lay unworn in the armoire against the wall. Exclaiming their sympathy in musical Gaelic, the maids had salved her scratches and bandaged her torn hands before leaving her to sleep off her ordeal.
What Verity would have liked most of all was one of Kylemore’s massages, but she hadn’t seen him since he’d carried her up the stairs and set her on the bed so gently that she’d felt like a fragile princess.
Now, and with a heart lighter than she’d ever expected, she admitted defeat. When the duke came to her tonight, he wouldn’t find her defiant or unwilling. The woman who had fought his every caress was lost somewhere in the mountains.
Verity had changed. She was no longer Kylemore’s intransigent captive. Or even the complacent mistress he’d kept in such style in London.
She wished she knew what was left.
Was anything left?
Her nervous fingers pleated the sheet over her knees. Kylemore had been concerned and considerate after he saved her life. But now he’d had time to remember that she’d run away yet again.
Was his temper seething? Heaven help her, the last time she’d deserted him, he’d kidnapped her, brought her to this hideaway and forced his way into her bed.
Oh, Verity, that can’t be a tiny thrill at the idea of him forcing his way into your bed once again, can it?
The door opened, saving her from examining this unwelcome thought too closely. Kylemore stood in the entrance, wearing his customary wardrobe of white shirt and breeches.
He paused, studying her. Trying to contain his rage, she supposed. Her gaze fluttered downward, then some force stronger than her apprehension made her raise her eyes.
It was as if she’d never really seen him before.
Hungrily, she traced the straight shoulders. The lean, beautiful body. The narrow hips. The long, powerful legs.
He was truly a man to take a woman’s breath away.
Her gaze moved across his chest and up the strong neck to his face. Shadows still lingered there. Her attention sharpened on the strikingly autocratic features.
Tonight, perhaps because her own barriers were so perilously low, she saw more than just the endless drive to dominate and possess.
She read the signs of old wretchedness. He might hide his torments from the daytime world, but they emerged in the screaming nightmares that shattered his sleep. She read pride and intelligence. She read the passion that made him, as much as her, its victim.
Strangely, she could find no anger in his face. She wondered why.
He sighed heavily and came into the room. “Are you all right?” His dark blue eyes searched her face. “Kate tells me there’s no fever.”
“I’m fine. I’m never sick.” Her sturdy Yorkshire forebears had gifted her with an iron constitution. Her eyes sharpened on the duke. He looked strained and unhappy. “How are you?”
“Me?” He was clearly surprised at her inquiry.
It struck her he was a man who never expected anything as commonplace as kindness.
“Yes,” she said steadily. “You were out in the elements too.”
The wry smile that somewhere in the last days she’d learned to treasure flickered and died. “The recollection of my sins kept me warm.”
With apparent reluctance, he stepped forward to the bedside and ran his hand down the shining braid of hair that fell over her shoulder and across her breast. The gesture conveyed a rare tenderness. Even so, her heart began to race with excitement and her nipples tightened under their chaste cotton covering. He was close enough for her to hear his breath catch at the swift response.
He stepped away, and the warmth of his touch went with him. “Sleep now.”
Shock silenced her for the few seconds it took him to reach the door. “Your Grace?”
He didn’t turn. “Good night.”
Good night?
Clumsily, she scrambled out of the bed, ignoring the screaming protest of her aching muscles. “Wait, Your Grace.”
He looked back at her, his eyes opaque.
“Yes, what is it?” He sounded calm, uninvolved, neutral.
What was happening? She’d braced herself to meet rage, disdain, insult, vengeance. But this indifference bewildered her.
In her head, she’d played out many scenes of what might happen tonight. None had included having to coax him into her bed. Good Lord, hadn’t she spent the last days battling without surcease to keep him out of it?
“Aren’t you…aren’t you going to stay?” she asked awkwardly.
Soraya would have come up with something alluring to say. Verity, however, was at a loss.
He shook his head, although at least he didn’t leave. “No.”
No?
She must be going mad. Did her insatiable lover deny her?
On trembling legs, she went after him and put her hand on his arm. She had a mom
ent to register the tension in his muscles before he shook himself free.
“Your Grace?” she asked softly.
“Madam, I am weary,” he said in a cold voice. Still he didn’t look at her.
Unbelievably, he rejected her. And it hurt. How it hurt.
Had she hurt him like this each time she’d denied him? No, of course not. He wasn’t vulnerable to her the way she was vulnerable to him. How could he be? She’d merely been a challenge to his pride. Now she wasn’t even that much.
“I see,” she said slowly, fighting desperately to conceal her pain. “I ask your pardon for detaining you, then.”
“Christ give me strength!” he bit out under his breath. “You’ll catch pneumonia, woman!”
He swept her up into his arms and strode back to the bed. She had a moment to register his heat and scent before he tucked her safely under the covers and returned to the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said without looking at her.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, pushing herself up into a sitting position.
“Devil take this,” he muttered under his breath as he whirled around to face her. “What the hell do you want, Verity?”
She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought that what she wanted mattered to him. It certainly hadn’t up until now.
“I imagined you’d be angry with me for leaving you again,” she said uncertainly.
“I know why you ran away,” he said flatly. “It was my fault, not yours. Hell, this entire damnable mess is my fault.”
None of this made sense. “So you’re not angry with me?”
“No, I’m not angry with you. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She didn’t want to talk in the morning. She didn’t want to talk at all.
Dredging up the right words to seduce her previously demanding paramour shouldn’t have been so difficult. Hadn’t she shared her body with this man for over a year?
But her voice cracked as she spoke. “Your Grace, it’s all right if you…I mean, I…I won’t object if you want to—”
“No.” He spoke firmly, as though argument would never change his mind.
The pillar supporting the structure of her life collapsed into rubble with a mighty crash. Ruins lay all around her.
Of course, she’d known this day would come. No man made a lifetime commitment to his mistress, after all.
Yesterday, he’d wanted her. Today, he didn’t.
The transition was too abrupt. She hadn’t prepared herself to meet her dismissal with pride-salving coolness or self-possession.
“Is it over, then?” she asked starkly.
A muscle jerked in his cheek. He sounded so certain when he repudiated her, but that tiny, betraying movement told a different story. “Isn’t that what you’d prefer?”
A fraught question she had no intention of answering. “So you no longer desire me?”
His short laugh was bitter. “Madam, there hasn’t been a second since the day I met you when I haven’t desired you.”
She tried to interpret his expression. The only word that came to mind was hunted.
Continuing this inquisition took every shred of her courage. With her bandaged hands, she clutched at the blanket he’d pulled over her with such care.
“But that’s changed?”
A spasm of strong emotion crossed his face and made him look almost savage. “For God’s sake, woman, of course that hasn’t changed.”
“But I’m inviting you into my bed,” she said helplessly, wondering why she wasn’t dancing around the room in relief.
He bowed in her direction, momentarily reminding her of the formality that had prevailed between them in London. “I thank you for the offer, but regretfully, I must decline.”
She spoke after him as he started to go. “Are you releasing me, then, Your Grace?”
The hand he’d placed on the door bunched into a fist against the wooden frame. “I don’t know. I should. I will.” She watched his shoulders tense as if he braced himself to meet a powerful foe. “I will. Just not tonight.”
She frowned at the stiff line of his back.
More was happening here than the careless discarding of a mistress who had outstayed her welcome. She could smell the lust on him. That at least hadn’t changed.
So why didn’t he tumble her without delay in the bed that had been their battleground?
“Please tell me what this is about, Your Grace,” she said calmly.
“Jesus, Verity!” He whipped around to confront her again, and she saw she’d finally awakened the anger she’d feared earlier. “My name is Justin. Kylemore, if you must. Stop bloody Your Gracing me into the ground. You don’t need to hammer the message home.”
“What message?” she asked, confused but strangely undaunted.
His long mouth flattened in self-derision. “I want you. You don’t want me. But you’ve accepted that escape is impossible so you’re making the best of a bad situation by humoring me. I can’t blame you. It’s the sensible choice. Perhaps if I were a sensible man, it would be enough for me too.”
“You think I’m being pragmatic?”
“Aren’t you?” His remarkable eyes were haunted as they settled on her.
At last she thought she understood. “You want Soraya back. I’m not enough for you,” she said sadly.
He inhaled deeply, audibly. “Yes, I want Soraya back. But I also want Verity. They’re both the same person, you bloody little fool.”
Suddenly under attack from an unexpected quarter, she flinched back against the pillows. “No, they’re not,” she said sharply.
His eyes burned into hers. “Yes, they are. You created Soraya because you wanted someone to blame for everything you’ve done, everything pious little Verity can’t countenance in herself. Soraya sold her body. Soraya enjoyed sex. Soraya wasn’t afraid.”
He took another deep breath, and his gaze didn’t waver from hers. “Well, here’s a revelation, Verity Ashton. Soraya is you. Soraya’s innate sensuality and sense of adventure are also yours. Verity is sweet and virtuous and Soraya is a woman who goes after what she wants without regret or fear. Those two women unite in you. Until you recognize that, you’re no use to me or to yourself.” He turned once more to go.
“What do you want, Kylemore?” she asked unsteadily to his back. His accusations charred a path through her mind. Was he right? And if he was right, what could she do about it?
He didn’t look at her as he spoke very slowly and clearly. “I want you to want me the way I want you. I want you to come to me and tell me that. Then I want you to show me it’s true.”
She’d been prepared to surrender so much tonight, but never had she thought she risked this final bastion of her soul. He was too demanding, too greedy.
“You ask too much,” she whispered, shocked.
“Yes, I do,” he said, and the sorrow in his voice lingered in her ears as he left her alone in the firelit room.
Chapter 17
Verity still pondered the duke’s extraordinary parting lines—how could she not?—the next afternoon as she sat in the sunlit garden. The rain that had made her escape so wretched had relented for the moment. She ached all over from her ordeal in the mountains, and she was tired after a troubled night.
Kylemore had been gone all day. Which, she told herself, was a blessing.
What could she say to him? Especially now, when he wanted more than her simple physical surrender. Instead, he wanted everything—her heart, her soul, her body. More than Verity had ever been capable of giving.
He saw too clearly, damn him. Somehow, he comprehended the games she’d played for her sanity’s sake.
At fifteen, she’d created a being called Soraya who could commit any sin, break any rule. Verity, the core of who she was, remained as pure and untouched as she’d been when she’d sat in chapel with her Methodist parents.
The fiction was fragile. But it had helped her survive.
Now Kylemore wanted to meld
the two halves of her nature into one. More, he wanted her to present that unified whole unconditionally to him.
Was all this just one more twist to his revenge?
If she gave him everything he wanted and he spurned her, he’d destroy her. She knew that in her bones.
His rejection would cut to her soul because she no longer had Soraya to hide behind. She risked her real, vulnerable self.
Her hatred had retreated impossibly far, considering how she’d raged when he’d kidnapped her, dragged her to Scotland, forced himself upon her.
She’d lost Soraya. She’d lost her sustaining resentment against him. She’d lost her longing for freedom.
What was left? She hardly dared to find out.
Somewhere in the last days she’d forgiven him. Perhaps when he’d wept in her arms. Or when he’d listened to her sorry history without judging her.
Or perhaps she’d finally forgiven him during that desolate moment in the kitchen before she’d escaped. The moment she’d admitted he and she shared much more than just carnal passion.
Certainly, by the time he’d been so furiously intent on saving her life yesterday, she hadn’t hated him.
How could she hate a man who acted as though, without her, he lost every hope of happiness? For one strange second on that cliff face, she’d recognized that he would have gladly changed places with her if it meant she stayed safe.
Oh, why did she even think about this? Hadn’t she wanted him to keep away from her? And at last she’d managed to coax him into a halfhearted agreement to let her go.
But she couldn’t forget how he’d looked as he’d left last night.
He’d been a man at the limits of his endurance. She’d seen him in the grip of physical desire, but this was something else, something infinitely more powerful.
Not for the first time, she wondered if they’d end up annihilating each other before this contest played out.
“Och, lassie, it’s too bright a day tae look so fashed.” Hamish came around the corner of the house.
The giants were nowhere to be seen. Clearly, Kylemore thought he’d vanquished her impulse to run off. Why not? He had.
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