Val dismounted, his boots splashing in a puddle, and reached up and lifted Séraphine down. He picked her up, cradling her in his arms like a babe, and started walking toward the doors.
She stiffened immediately. “Put me down,” she hissed in his ear, her hands hovering in the air before her as if she didn’t know where to put them.
“No,” he said. “You might take a mind to scamper off.” He smiled slowly down at her wet face, absolutely delighted by a sudden thought. “You’ve never been carried in a man’s arms before, have you?”
“No,” she said, glaring quite fiercely at him through clumped eyelashes. “Why would I?”
“Hmm.” He wasn’t going to answer that—not at the moment anyway. “Well, here’s a hint: relax a little. If you don’t, I might very well drop you and wouldn’t that be embarrassing for us both?”
“Oh, God,” she moaned as the doors to the castle opened and the tall gangly butler’s mouth dropped open at the sight of them.
“Good evening,” Val said to him as they passed. “Dinner for two in my rooms. Please.”
She did relax a little as he stepped inside, softening against him rather nicely. Unfortunately, as the light hit them Val got his first real look at the coat she was wearing.
He groaned. “Did it have to be the purple velvet?” he asked. “It’s almost as if you don’t like me.”
She folded her arms across her bosom as he mounted the stairs, drawing his eye to that sadly shrouded area. “I don’t.” Her proud poise was marred by a sudden violent shiver.
“Liar,” he said absently, “and not a very good one at that. I suppose I could give you lessons, but then I’d lose what advantage I have.”
She sighed as they neared his room. “What about Miss Royle?”
He glanced at her, puzzled. “What about her?”
“Why are you here with me instead of out looking for the woman you say you want to marry?”
He smiled just to irritate her and shouldered open the doors to his room. “Jealous? You needn’t be. I’ve most of my men out searching the moors with the dogs. They’ll find her safe and sound before morning.”
Her little dog came racing toward them, barking like a demon, and Mehmed turned from where he’d been placing drying cloths near the bath. “Mrs. Crumb! Duke find you. I am so glad! We worry, Pip and I, that you become lost on moors and turn into ghost that haunt Duke all his days forever and ever.”
“I’m quite crushed by your lack of faith in me, Mehmed,” Val murmured. “Now take that mongrel and go to the kitchens and see if they’ve made our supper yet, please.”
The boy grinned like the imp he was. “Yes, Duke!”
He was out the door with the dog in a trice.
Val set Séraphine before the roaring fire, but kept his hands on her because he’d learned his lesson well… and also because he liked his hands upon her.
She glanced at the steaming bath and suppressed another shiver. “I should leave if you’re about to take a bath.”
“Why?” he asked as he slipped his sadly ruined purple velvet coat from her shoulders. It had cost more than she’d probably make in a lifetime and now stank of bacon and horses, thanks to her. He threw the sodden thing in the corner.
“You’ll want your privacy,” she replied nonsensically.
He looked into her dark eyes, amused, as he unhooked her chatelaine and laid it on a table. “When have I ever wanted privacy?”
She glanced away. “Perhaps I wish for you to have your privacy?”
“More likely,” he agreed. “But if you’d wanted me to acquiesce to your wishes, you really oughtn’t have run from me. Rather burned your bridges there, Séraphine, haven’t you?”
He smiled and pulled the ugly white fichu from her neck.
She blinked and looked down at the simple, square neckline of her bodice as if she’d never seen it. Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she dressed in the dark like a nun. “What are you doing?”
He sighed. “I confess, I find your naïveté perplexing. How have you arrived at the advanced age of six and twenty without having anyone attempt seduction upon yourself? I’m of two minds on the matter: One, utter astonishment at my sex and their deaf disregard for your siren call. Two, glee at the thought that your innocence might signal that you are indeed innocent. Why this should excite me so, I don’t know—virginity has never before been a particular whim of mine. I think perhaps it’s the setting. Who knows how many virgins were deflowered here by my lusty ancestors? Or,” he said as he deftly unpinned and tossed aside her apron, “maybe it’s simply you.”
“I don’t…” Her words trailed off and then, interestingly, she blushed a deep rose. Well. That question settled, then. His little maiden was really a maiden. “What?”
“I think it’s you,” he confided, pulling the strings tying her hideous mobcap beneath her chin.
She made a wild grab for it, but he was faster, snatching the bloody thing off—finally, and with a great deal of satisfaction. She might’ve deprived him of a wife that it’d taken him half a year and a rather large sum of money to entangle, but by God, he’d taken off her awful cap.
And underneath…
“Oh, Séraphine,” he breathed, enchanted, for her hair was as black as coal, as black as night, as black as his own soul, save for one white streak just over her left eye. But she’d twisted and braided and tortured the strands, binding them tight to her head, and his fingers itched to let them free.
“Don’t!” she said, as if she knew what he wanted, her hands flying up to cover her hair.
He batted them aside, laughing, pulling a pin here, a pin there, dropping them carelessly to the carpet as she squealed like a little girl and backed away from him, trying frantically to ward off his fingers.
He might’ve taken pity on her had he not just spent an hour on a freezing moor, wondering if he was going to find her dead, neck broken, at the bottom of a hill.
Her hair came down all at once, a tumbling mass, tousled and heavy and nearly down to her waist.
“Wonderful,” he murmured, taking it in both hands and lifting it.
She was backed against the wall near the hearth, panting, red-faced, eyeing him wildly. “It’s oily. I need to wash it.”
He smiled kindly at her. Did she think him so easily dissuaded? “I know. Why did you think I had the bath ready?”
She glanced at the bath, her eyes widening, then back to him.
He nodded. “It’s for you. The moor is cold this time of year—even without the help of a storm—and I knew you’d need it. Now let’s get the rest off you before the water grows tepid.”
He began on the hidden hooks to her bodice as she stood still, her breasts rising and falling tremblingly beneath his fingers. It was like undressing a wild animal. Or an angel who had consented to stand still for a moment. Any false move on his part might startle her into flight.
He smiled into her eyes, aware that his cock pressed hard and hot against the placket of his breeches. Her hair had smelled of earth and her. He was almost loath to replace her essential scent with perfumes.
But she was freezing. He’d felt it in the ice of her fingers, in the chill of her cheeks. He wanted her warm.
He couldn’t let his burning angel’s fire go out.
The bodice gave and he opened it wide, baring her plain, sensible stays, and stripped it down her arms. He untied her skirts and petticoats with a flick of his fingers and helped her step out of them. He knelt at her feet—he a duke, she a housekeeper—and took off mud-clotted buckle shoes and woolen stockings. Then he stood and reached for the laces to her extremely practical stays and noted that her breath seemed to quicken, for he could actually see the tops of her breasts now, full and mounded above her chemise. Pale ivory in contrast to the ebony of her hair.
He loosened her stays and drew them off over her head and she stood in her worn chemise, a small, neat patch on the left shoulder. He could see her nipples, peaked and dark with cold, through the
thin material, and the sight was, perhaps, the most erotic he’d ever seen in his debauched life.
He had his hand on her upper arm, just in case, but she didn’t bolt. She raised her chin and met his eyes and he felt his lips curve.
His cock pulse.
He might have to reassess what he meant to do. For bedding a martyr, an inquisitor, a fiery archangel, even if a virgin… well, that might be a bit out of the ordinary, surely?
Might a man find himself somehow changed after such an event?
What an odd thought.
He grinned, wide and hungry, to clear the thought from his mind, and whipped the chemise over her head.
She stood naked: soft white belly exposed, ruby nipples peaked on plump breasts, a black bush at the top of curved, pale thighs. She was without chatelaine, without mobcap helmet, without any armor at all, and she refused to cover herself.
Instead she threw her shoulders back and met his gaze with defiance.
And at that moment something squeezed within him.
“Oh, Séraphine,” he crooned to her, picking her up in his arms, feeling all that soft, white skin, “how I shall fuck you tonight.”
“My name is Bridget,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
King Heartless narrowed his eyes. Many, many wizards and doctors and seers had tried to find his heart, remake his heart, or gift him with a heart. All had failed.
“Very well,” said the king in a low voice that made the courtiers step back. “If you find my heart I’ll let you and your daughter go. If you don’t, I’ll have both your heads chopped off and set on the castle gates.”…
—From King Heartless
“Bridget?” Val said, aghast, some five minutes later.
It was the third or fourth time he’d said it, each time sounding a little more horrified.
Bridget had decided to ignore him. A bath, in a real copper bathtub that came up to her shoulders when she sat in it, and that was filled with steaming-hot water, was a luxury. She wasn’t going to let it go to waste just because Val was having some sort of problem with her first name.
“But Bridget,” he appealed to her. He’d shrugged off his coat and pulled up a chair to sit by the bathtub, clad in a full-sleeved, lace-trimmed fine linen shirt and a gold-embroidered waistcoat in cerulean blue. She would’ve been much more self-conscious had he not been so preoccupied with her name. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes.” She sank a little lower in the tub, letting the warm water lap over her upper arms. This really was Heaven. No wonder he was always calling for a bath at odd hours. She’d have one every day if she could.
“But it’s an Irish name,” he said. “And you told me you came from the North of England—practically Scotland—if—”
She tilted her head back and sank beneath the water, and his words were muffled as the water blocked her ears.
She emerged to him saying, “—unless you’re Irish. Are you Irish?”
“No.” She reached for the lovely milled soap, and then recollected her shadowy footman father and added, “At least, not to my knowledge.”
“It’s such a dissonant name. Brid-get. Brid-get. Brigitbrigitbrigit. It almost sounds like a birdcall. One of those irritating birds that live in bushes and chirp repetitiously and ruin one’s picnic. Not that I go on many picnics. Brigitbrigitbrigit.”
The soap smelled of roses and was smooth and creamy in her hands. She rubbed it through her hair, almost moaning at the lovely feeling after the dirt and cold and fear of the day. She closed her eyes and let the scent of the soap and his drawling voice roll over her as she massaged her scalp with the tips of her fingers.
It was really rather lovely.
But when she opened her eyes she found that Val had stopped complaining about her name. Instead his gaze was fixed on her, his eyes slowly trailing down her arms to her neck and farther, to where her breasts just touched the water. For a long moment he simply looked at her breasts, and she was aware of the pulse of her heart, of the drip of the water from her arm, and of her nipples, tightening in the cool air.
Then his azure gaze rose to meet hers, shining and intent, and she remembered his words. How I shall fuck you tonight.
Her lips parted as her heart began to thunder.
“Let me help you rinse your hair.”
His voice had deepened and it made a shock go through her, low in her belly. He rose and crossed to where a pitcher stood on the hearth. She didn’t turn, but she could hear him moving behind her, and it struck her that she’d seldom been waited upon before in her life—and never by a gentleman.
“Sit a little forward.” He was suddenly close. “Close your eyes and tilt your head back.”
The water flowed over her scalp, warm and soothing, but her skin was prickled with goose bumps nonetheless.
“Once more, I think,” he said, his voice so near, his hands large and sure, and he poured again. “There.”
She sat back, wringing the water from her hair with fingers that trembled. She could hear him setting down the pitcher and she wasn’t sure what to do. This was so far outside any experience she’d ever before had or imagined…
Bridget cleared her throat, but her voice was husky when she spoke. “Can you hand me a cloth for my hair?”
“Let me.” He expertly wrapped a cloth around her head, keeping her clean hair out of the water. “Now you look like an Ottoman sultana.” His fingers lingered on the back of her neck, stroking.
She closed her eyes, feeling her nipples throb. Oh, God, he’d barely touched her yet.
She inhaled and tried a smile, but found she was too tense. “Is… is there another cloth with which to dry myself?”
The fingers left as he reseated himself, his cheek propped on his knuckles. “But you haven’t washed yourself, sweet Brid-get.” He snapped off the t of her name with a click of his tongue. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss…” His gaze seemed to penetrate the now-clouded water before rising and meeting her own eyes with a devilish gleam. “Well, everything.”
She felt heat rise from her throat. He meant to watch her—was already watching her—as if she were some sensuous, lovely nymph. A lady of leisure and self-indulgence.
Bridget swallowed. She was used to washing with a pitcher and washbasin. How much more voluptuous to do it in this great bath. He’d led her to this—oh, not the nudity, not what they might do afterward in his bed. No, this right here. This reveling in the pleasure quite literally of the flesh. The pleasure of hot water, of soft soap, of subtle scent, of the feel of her own skin, of her hair down and clean.
Could she truly be bought for so little?
And yet it wasn’t little. Not this. She served others who thought it so. Who regarded a tub full to the brim with hot water as nothing unusual because they’d never had to haul the water, make the fire, fill the pitchers, and carry them up the stairs one after another, bloody, backbreaking work.
She stood in between.
She saw both sides: the life of luxury, summoned at the snap of one’s fingers, and the toil and sweat and work that made it possible.
Besides. She wasn’t selling herself. She knew that. He knew that. Even if others might think money was what lay between them, she knew it was far more complicated than that.
So, having come to that conclusion, she stretched her arms above her head, reveling in the steam, in the rose scent surrounding her, and met his satyr’s gaze frankly.
And smiled.
His exotic azure eyes widened and his eyebrows arched as he murmured, “Oh, Séraphine, you are magnificent.”
Her smile lingered as she picked up the washcloth and wet it, passing it over the lovely, lovely soap again before rubbing it on her neck.
Heaven.
“Is there more clean water?” she asked.
“I can ring for more,” he replied, his voice husky.
“Please.”
He got up and went to the door, opening it only far enough to talk to someone out
side, presumably one of the footmen. For a moment she wondered what the other servants would think, and then she shrugged.
That she knew already.
He came back with a tray of food.
“It seems I must play footman since I’m too jealous to let any other man in here.”
She glanced up, somewhat surprised. He’d never been worried over his own nudity. “Thank you.”
He resettled in the chair, lounging back this time, eyes half-closed, legs sprawled apart. “You’re welcome.”
There was a thickness in his breeches. For a moment she stared witlessly.
Then her gaze rose to meet his.
His face was side-lit by the fire, beautiful and otherworldly, like a fairy prince’s, and his lips curved as his eyes seemed to glow. He waved his left hand indolently. “Please. Continue.”
She took her washcloth and wet it again, trailing warm water over her collarbone. The scent of roses enveloped her, heady, almost overwhelming.
She could hear his breathing deepen, but she dared not look at him.
The soapy water streamed between her breasts and she followed it down with the washcloth, rubbing gently, sweeping under each breast and then under her arms. She let the washcloth soak in the water and then wrung it out. She lifted her arm to wash it.
Her skin seemed to gleam golden in the firelight.
A knock came at the door and Val swore foully under his breath.
She smiled secretly to herself when he jumped up to get the door. This was an odd sort of excitement that she’d never thought to find within herself. To hold the Duke of Montgomery enthralled while she bathed.
She was washing her other arm when he set the pitcher of hot water down and resumed his seat. She saw him wince and farther widen his legs as if seeking comfort, and that made her duck her chin and smile again. Oh, she was very wicked, but he had only himself to blame for luring her into a world of decadence. For stripping her housekeeperly trappings from her. For revealing the woman beneath.
For revealing what she was to him.
She rinsed the washcloth and then soaped it well before propping her foot on the edge of the bathtub and thoroughly scrubbing her toes.
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