All of that was true. But there was also him.
Teo, whom she had never managed to get over. Or past. Even the exorcism she’d thought she’d performed so brilliantly hadn’t worked—even before she’d learned she was pregnant. She’d still woken up in the night, longing for him so hard she worried it might have physical repercussions. She’d wondered if her “stomach bug” was actually an extended reaction to having him and walking away from him.
She’d begun to think that she’d imprinted on him at too young of an age. That he’d stamped his mark on her, even though he hadn’t liked her at all, and she was stuck with it.
Amelia certainly wouldn’t want a lifetime of performing menial tasks and acting like a servant. But this felt...different. Like a gift, somehow. And she knew it wasn’t the scrubbing. The polishing of this or that, however mindlessly meditative the task.
It was him.
It was breathing his air. It was looking up to find that gaze of his on her, because these days, he didn’t look at her the way he had when she was a teenager. As if he couldn’t fathom what such a lowly creature was doing in his life, invading his family. That was gone now. In this cabin, he looked at her the way a man looked at a woman.
That look heated her. Beguiled her. It made her head go funny and her legs feel wobbly, and she tried to pretend none of that was happening even as she tucked it away like a bit of treasure to hoard. Because there had been many years where all she’d ever wanted was Teo to see her. Really, truly see her, as a woman. And here, now, finally, he did.
And it only occurred to her while the question she’d asked him hung in the air that perhaps she was a little too invested in what Teo was getting out of this arrangement.
Amelia was old enough to know that a wise woman didn’t go asking questions when she already knew that the answers could very well break her heart.
Or at least bruise it, significantly.
For the first time in almost ten full days, she found herself holding her breath.
“I enjoy my solitude,” he said, and she got the impression that he chose those words carefully. Too carefully.
There was something in the way he sat there that was different, suddenly. Too tight, maybe. Coiled.
“How can it be solitude?” She tried to sound light and airy and wasn’t at all sure she hit the mark. “You’re not alone.”
“Downgrading from a staff of hundreds to one is the next best thing,” Teo said drily.
Amelia found herself studying her hands, but not looking at him didn’t exactly help her. She could see him perfectly no matter if she was looking at him or not. He was like a brand on the inside of her eyelids. She felt like those kittens she’d read about in college, who spent their early lives behind bars, then saw bars forever whether they were caged or not.
And surely, if she was normal in any regard, she wouldn’t find the notion of being caged by this man forever to be so...comforting.
He hated her. He might have been playing a waiting game here, but it was just another game. Why couldn’t she remember that the way she should? He wanted to marry her and claim his child, but she would be very foolish indeed if she imagined that had anything to do with her. She knew better.
There was no reason at all that Teo de Luz should make her feel safe.
Especially not when he’d kidnapped her for the express purpose of bending her to his will—and she knew it. He’d been open about it.
“I’m delighted I make you feel like you’re alone,” she said, making her voice wry. Amused.
“On the contrary,” he murmured, an edge she didn’t quite understand in his voice. “I find it difficult to remember a time when you were not here.”
“Did you come here often with your father?”
She blurted that out. Because there was that gleam in his gaze and a shuddering in response, deep inside her. And she could tell herself any number of truths, or try. But that was very different from telling them to him.
Teo’s sensual lips twitched. “My father and I were not friends, Amelia. He did not encourage intimacies of that kind.”
She nodded, too eagerly. “My mother always said that the tragedy of your father was that he wanted to feel, but couldn’t.”
Teo’s gaze cooled dramatically, and Amelia froze, in direct response.
“Did she indeed? What other insights did your mother have to share about her blessedly brief time as the Duchess of Marinceli, pray tell?”
And frozen or not, there would never be a better opportunity for her to say things to him that she had never dared speak aloud when she was younger. Things she hadn’t even said when she’d come to find him in that palace of his.
Things she knew he had no interest in hearing. Ever.
“You’ve never understood my mother,” she said, briskly. “All you see is the surface. Too blonde. Too comfortable showing off her body. All flash, no substance. Though I’m certain you use different words.”
“I prefer not to discuss your mother at all.”
“It’s easier to talk about her than it is to understand her,” Amelia said, staunchly. “She’d be the first person to say that it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one, but the key point is, she actually does fall in love.”
For a moment it was as if the storm outside had breached the walls, the howling was so intense. But in the next moment she realized that was nothing more than the noise inside her.
Teo looked about as approachable as a slab of granite. “If you are about to launch into some kind of poetic rhapsody about the depths of your mother’s heart, Amelia, I would beg you to rethink.”
“It doesn’t last, perhaps, but when she commits, she means it. She loved your father.”
“She conned him,” Teo said, his words distinct and a kick of menace beneath them. “He made a fool of himself over that woman.”
“She has that effect,” Amelia said softly. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. It was. I understand that all you can see is what it meant to your bloodline. Your title. Your—”
“My family, Amelia,” he belted at her. “My bloody family.”
That sliced through Amelia like the vicious winter wind outside. She lost her breath, staring across at him while an expression she’d never before seen on his face twisted him up.
His eyes blazed. But this time with a kind of torment.
“My parents used to tell me stories about their great luck,” Teo bit out, still lounging there, though there wasn’t a single part of him that wasn’t tense and coiled to spring. She could see it with her own eyes. “Because their marriage, while not technically arranged, might as well have been. Their parents chose them for one another when they were small. But they were lucky, they said, because they liked each other. Loved each other, even. And in a family like mine, that is never a prerequisite for a long marriage.”
Suddenly, this cage of hers seemed tighter all around her. But Teo was still talking.
“When she died, I expected my father to mourn. Instead, he dated.” And the way he said that word was like a slap. “I understand a man has needs, even if I would prefer not to think of my father’s. And I resigned myself to these things because it was his personal business. Not mine. Who cared how many women he squired about? He had been married for a long time. The line of succession was secured. Why shouldn’t he sow some oats, if he was so inclined?”
Amelia didn’t really think that was a question. Certainly not one that required an answer from her. Especially not when his expression was so harsh.
“But then he met your mother,” Teo said darkly. “And he was not content with sowing, or squiring. He fell in love.”
“A fate worse than death,” Amelia murmured.
His gaze seemed to blaze even hotter when that should not have been possible. “He loved her. And she left him. And he grieved your
mother, not mine. He engaged on a downward spiral of inappropriate lovers, drink and despair. I believe that led to his death five years ago. And no, I do not forgive her.”
Amelia told herself to bite her tongue. She meant to. But she couldn’t.
“I think you mean you couldn’t forgive him,” she said softly.
And she watched Teo...implode.
He didn’t move. He didn’t shake or roll his eyes in the back of his head, or anything so dramatic. But still, she could see it. The bomb, the burn.
His eyes blazed. And then he seemed nothing so much as haunted.
And she felt her heart lurch painfully in her chest.
For a long, endless sort of moment that could have been years, ages, millennia, she stayed where she was. Suspended in Teo’s gaze, where ghosts lurked, and beneath it, she saw a different version of the ruthless, uncompromising Duke.
A son who had lost a mother, then a father—the latter some time before his death.
Amelia had wanted so badly for Teo to see her all these years. Why hadn’t she realized how little she saw him?
The wind howled outside. A log collapsed in the fire.
“I suggest you clean up,” he said, his voice too quiet. It rang in her like condemnation, making her fight to restrain a sob. “And you should know that you have ash on your face. Soot, perhaps.”
And at another time, maybe, that would have embarrassed her. How long had it been there? Had he ever planned to tell her? But tonight those questions hardly seemed to matter. Amelia lifted her hand and rubbed at her cheek, not surprised when her fingers came away smudged black.
“Better soot than sorrow,” she replied.
And she didn’t see him move. It was a kind of blur of ferocity and grief, a new take on that same old hunger they’d been dancing around for too long now.
One moment he was sitting opposite her. The next, he was hauling her up to her feet and then holding her there, his big hands wrapped around her shoulders.
“My servants do not talk to me of sorrow,” he gritted out at her. “And they do not presume to mention my esteemed, late and much lamented father. Do you understand me? Either know your place or change it, Amelia. Those are your only choices.”
His hands clenched tighter, digging into her skin—but in a way that made her whole body ignite. The fire in the grate paled next to the flames that danced between them, brighter and hotter by the second.
And she was sure that he would pull her close, then take her mouth—
But he didn’t.
Teo let her go. Then he turned on his heel and strode from the room.
Leaving her there alone as the winter wind battered at the walls.
Amelia told herself she’d won. She was the victor. But she looked down at her hand, and wondered why she felt as if all of her was ash, instead.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AMELIA STOOD WHERE he’d left her for a long while.
Slowly, she sank back down onto the sofa behind her, not sure whether she chose to sit or was forced to because her knees no longer functioned properly.
She kept staring at her hand and without entirely meaning to, found herself rubbing her fingers together, transferring the dark soot from one finger to the next. From one hand to the next.
And no matter how long she sat there, no matter how still she held herself, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
She felt all the usual things she always did when she was in the presence of Teo. Frustrated desire, as ever. The driving need to impress him, somehow. That greedy, voracious thing in her that wanted—wanted anything he would give her and hundreds of things he never had. Not entirely.
But underneath it all, she felt a funny, new knot in her gut that she was terribly afraid was shame.
Because through all of this, since she was a teenager and on into her adulthood, she’d thought about Teo far too much. She’d thought about him. Dreamed about him. Found him unaccountably stuck between her and any attempt she made to transfer this hunger to someone else. She’d raged about him. Cried about him. Made vows to stop fixating on him and then, finally, she’d come up with a plan to exorcise him.
But had she ever really thought of him as a man? A whole person?
She knew she hadn’t. He was her stepbrother. The Duke’s son. Then the Duke himself. He was a hundred titles and had a thousand names, many she’d made up purely to entertain herself, especially when she’d been sixteen.
But she’d never thought of him as just a man back then. Or since. As a complicated, layered person.
In her fantasies, whether he’d been good or evil or something altogether else, she had never thought of him like that.
Like her.
The reason she’d concealed her appearance at the Masquerade wasn’t because she’d worried that sleeping with her would cause him to have any kind of feelings. It had never occurred to her that Teo had any feelings. Not really. Not unless they were acrid and accusatory, or tangled up somehow in his title.
She’d told herself it was because he wouldn’t let her close to him if he knew who she was. And that was a part of it, certainly.
But she’d always imagined that if anyone could see her, truly, it would be Teo. And when it came down to it, she’d wanted to make sure he didn’t.
Just as he hadn’t wished her to see the real part of him tonight.
Almost as if they were similar, after all.
And it was a strange and comprehensive sort of shattering, then, that took her over. That broke her apart into shards of guilt and shame alike, and something else. Something that she couldn’t quite name, but knew had to do with the things they had in common.
Far more than the enormous gulf between a commoner and a duke.
Because the notion that Teo might be no more than flesh and blood, perfectly capable of feeling every last thing that she did made her...hurt.
More than simply hurt.
It pounded in her temples and turned her stomach like too much wine. It tangled around itself, like a thick and braided thing.
And still, that scalding heat seemed to lick her, head to toe.
She rose again, and she didn’t bother to wash the ash and soot from her hands. She’d crossed this room a thousand times since they’d arrived, but tonight it seemed to take on marathon proportions. Miles upon miles, she was sure, and then she was at the door to the bedroom.
She pushed it open, her hand flat against the door, dimly aware that she was leaving her handprint behind—one more thing it would fall to her to clean in the morning. Her throat was so dry she was surprised it didn’t turn into its own kindling, and her eyes were glassy, almost foggy.
But that didn’t in any way prevent her gaze from cutting straight to Teo.
And staying there while her heart leaped.
The bedroom was deceptively simple because it was dominated by the bed at the far wall that offered a stunning view out over the Pyrenees. She had cleaned in here defiantly, certain that he expected her to balk, and she’d been unable to avoid thinking about what it would look like from the bed. A person could wake up of a morning and watch that very sunrise that she stepped outside to look at every day.
Or a person could concentrate on what was in the bed, instead.
Teo was sprawled there as if he’d seen all those dreams she kept having after all, and was trying to reenact them in the soft light from the lanterns. His dark gaze was unreadable, and stormier than usual. And it was something, wasn’t it, to know that she was responsible for introducing all that thunder to his gaze tonight.
She wanted to feel that as a victory, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.
And Amelia couldn’t keep her eyes on his face. Not when he had bared the whole of his chest to her view, which should have made him seem smaller, like any naked thing.
But Teo looked...bigger. An i
mmensity in human form, as if the trappings of his title and general magnificence were mere props to distract the unwary from the truth of him. He was golden and beautiful, like the sort of sculpture he would collect to display in his gallery and scholars would flock to, to fawn over.
She felt a bit like fawning herself, and all he was doing was sitting up against the headboard, a book at his side that he’d clearly tossed aside when the door had opened.
And even at the Masquerade, she had only seen him clothed. She had never gotten to look at all his smooth, toned flesh stretched across muscle and bone.
It was like staring into the sun.
She was afraid that if she kept it up, she would go blind.
And yet she couldn’t seem to make herself stop.
“Let me guess what I’ve done to merit a personal visit,” Teo said, and his voice held all that thunder, all the storms she could see with her own eyes. “Have you had an attack of conscience, Amelia?”
“Of course not,” she said, trying to sound certain as she stood there, half in and half out of the bedroom. “The truth might be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t require the intervention of conscience...depending on your truth, I suppose.”
“Are we telling truths tonight?” And there was a warning in that voice of his. Something dangerous wrapped up in silk and heat. A wise woman would walk away. Amelia stayed where she was. “Perhaps you can explain to me why you’ve taken so easily to a life of drudgery.”
She swallowed, because that cut a bit. It stung. “Not a life. Just a little while. You can do anything if it’s temporary.”
An odd look moved over his beautiful face. “I wouldn’t know.”
And he wouldn’t. Of course he wouldn’t. There wasn’t a single thing about the life of a member of the de Luz family that was temporary. Everything was stone and consequence, handed down throughout time and stretching far off into the future.
A prison is a prison, he’d told her. It is up to you how you would like to serve your time.
Why had she never stopped to think how those words applied to him, too?
Secrets 0f His Forbidden Cinderella (One Night With Consequences) Page 10