She pulled the folded paper from her bodice and sat with it on her palm for a long while. Apprehension swept through her, and excitement, and— Flooded with all the possible things the note might contain, both good and bad, her mind bounded from one idea to the next and her pulse began to flutter to keep up with its frantic pace.
“Oh, just read it.” Her voice, loud in the quiet room and slightly breathless, cut through the clutter of her thoughts.
Rising, she approached the desk, unfolded the note, and laid it flat in the lantern’s light. The decisive strokes of Tristan’s pen leaped to life and danced across the page. Why, it wasn’t written in English! What on earth…?
Then she remembered he’d described it as a coded message. And she recognized the code. Her code. How quickly he’d mastered it. In the upper right-hand corner of the little square of paper, he’d drawn a circle and filled in half of it. A half-completed task. And beneath that, he had written a line that might have appeared on a certain list in her journal…if she’d dared.
For defiance, an hour in the conservatory with Dk of R—
A tremor of excitement passed through her. Surely, though, after all that had happened, he didn’t mean tonight?
But she’d seen his burning eyes, knew that strange energy when a discovery drove sleep away. And when she recollected the circumstances under which the note had been given, those moments in the darkness, the touch of his hand and his whisper against her lips…
She folded the note again and, as Mr. Remington had done, opened the lantern to expose the flame and set the paper alight. When that single, scandalous line was reduced to ash on the hearth, she picked up the lantern and made her way to the conservatory.
Chapter 19
When Tristan looked through the small window in the door of the conservatory and saw Erica, calm eased into his veins, the first calm he had experienced in hours. She’d come. She’d stayed.
She was striding between the rows of tables and talking animatedly as she did so. Occasionally, she would pause, gesticulate with her hands, then shake her head. Quickly, he scanned the room for the person to whom she spoke. Mr. Sturgess, perhaps, though the hour was late. But he saw no one else. As he watched for a moment longer, he could draw no other conclusion than that she was talking to the plants.
At the sound of the door opening, she stopped and looked up at him. He gave her a wry smile. “Do they make any answer?”
For a moment, she looked bewildered at his question. Her lips formed the word who? before lapsing into an echoing smile of chagrin as she glanced about her. “None that I have been able to make out.”
He took a step closer. “That’s probably for the best.”
She made no move to close the remaining gap between them, and he did not press her. “I was debating with myself whether I ought to return to my chamber,” she said quietly. “Whether you would come.”
“I said I would.”
“But you didn’t say when. I’ve been telling myself it was only my foolish hope that you meant tonight…” She trailed her fingertips through a mound of glossy green leaves and set them trembling. “You must be exhausted.”
“Yes.”
“Furious.”
He considered for a moment, wary as always about admitting that heated emotion. “Frustrated, I should call it. I blame myself for not assessing the situation more carefully. But when I think about what Pilkington did, what he might have done…” He nodded. “Yes. Furious.”
At last she ventured closer, though still separated from him by the breadth of one plant-covered table. “I can wait. This”—she flicked one wrist, gesturing from herself to him, unwilling to assign a label to whatever stood between them—“can wait.”
“I cannot.”
Something flared in her eyes—surprise? excitement? trepidation? What an astonishing variety of emotions he had seen written there this past week, both light and dark.
Surrounded by greenery, her coppery curls springing free in the warm, damp air, she was like a wild thing in her element…and yet, not. For when all was said and done, the conservatory was only a simulacrum of nature. He remembered once, when he was a very small boy, a bird had found its way inside that pristine garden and then been unable to find its way out, trapped by glass walls that offered only the illusion of freedom.
“Will you sit?” he asked, tipping his chin in the direction of the orange trees. A genuine question. He knew she too was tired, yet she radiated that peculiar energy that had driven her through the storm the afternoon they’d met. The last thing he wanted to do was try to contain it. Try to contain her. But he was dangerously close to vaulting across the table, gathering her into his arms, and spouting poetry—flower poetry, if that was what it took to win her.
With a nod, she turned and made her way toward the iron benches. He followed and seated himself beside her, determined to keep a proper distance between them.
To his surprise, however, her hand crossed that divide and reached for his. Her fingers were cold despite the warmth of the room.
“You forgot frightened,” he said after a moment. “In your list of the things I have been feeling tonight. I have never been so frightened in all my life.”
She studied him with curious, luminous eyes. “For your sister?”
“Yes. If I—if we had not been there, God knows what Pilkington might have resorted to when Vivi refused him.” A shiver passed between them, and whether it had started in Erica’s spine or his own, he couldn’t entirely be sure. “Frightened too for my fellow intelligence officers,” he went on. “Men who perform delicate work by taking enormous risks, risks that my carelessness has made greater still. The coded letter of which she spoke was a cypher—an old one, it is true, but still of some value. I shall never forgive myself.”
He might have made some excuse for having allowed the pages to make their way into his things as he packed for a journey no man wanted to take. He could still see the news of his father and brother’s deaths, written in Guin’s shaking hand. Or perhaps it had been his own hand that had shook as he read her words, accompanied by a trenchant order, scrawled onto the sheet that enclosed her letter. Colonel Scott had anticipated Tristan’s reluctance, his divided sense of duty. Go anyway, he had written. And so, after a few ineffectual protests, Tristan had agreed to come home. In a fit of frustration, he had thrown his things into a trunk and sent it on ahead. And at its arrival, his eager sister had seen to its unpacking…
“And frightened for you,” he continued after a moment, cupping one hand beneath her jaw and tilting her face to his. “You who insisted on inserting yourself into the fray, though I distinctly remembering telling you, ‘Absolutely not.’”
“I suppose that was the defiance to which your note referred?” She met his eyes readily, and the familiar sparkle lit hers. “Well, I think you were frightened for yourself. Because you are terrified at the thought of surrendering even a little bit of control.”
Oh, yes. She knew him. Too well, perhaps.
“But I did it anyway,” he said, and found his breathing curiously labored, fighting its way past some obstruction in his chest. “I let myself fall in love with you.”
“Tristan.”
There was wonder in the sound of his name on her lips. And pleasure. And resistance too. As he had expected. He met them all with a whisper of kiss, imagining her unready to make any other reply, or perhaps unready himself to hear the reply she would make.
When he drew back, he let his hand slip from her cheek. “I came here feeling that Hawesdale Chase had less claim on me, less use for me than the British Army. And I think it’s time I explained why.” He paused, uncertain despite his determination. So many years he’d spent learning how to make others divulge their secrets, how to keep his own. But the gentle pressure of her fingers, tangled with his atop the seat of the iron bench, gave him the strength to continue.
“I grew up knowing it was possible—likely—that my father was not the Duke of Raynham, but rather a man with whom my mother had indulged in a liaison. The head gardener, in fact.”
He saw, rather than heard, her sharp intake of breath. “Mr. Sturgess?”
“No, the man who held the post thirty years ago. In whose cottage you found me…hiding. The fact that the cottage has remained uninhabited all this time always struck me as confirmation of the truth of the tale. And because the rumor has never been far from my thoughts,” he went on, “I chose to believe it must have a similar prominence in others’ memory. I read Davies’s careful respect as reluctance. I saw impertinence in a servant’s momentary indecision. And worst of all, I refused to recognize what was real.” He tightened his grip on her fingers. “After tonight, though, I see that I am needed here. For the sake of the tenants whose livelihood has been threatened by this storm. And for my sister most of all.”
She took in all of it with remarkable calm. “When my mother married an Irishman,” she said after a moment, “her father, the late Earl of Merrick, refused to see her again. He went to his grave believing that the circumstances of a man’s birth mattered more than anything else he did with his life. You are a good man. A good brother. And you will be a good duke.”
God, he hoped she was right. “You’re forgetting one thing, though,” he reminded her. “My colonel’s letter.”
“The one you told Remington to burn. What was in it?”
“A dismissal, of sorts. After reviewing the information about my work that had been stolen and sold—by Pilkington, as we now know—it was his assessment that it would be too risky for me to return to France and resume my post there.” At her quick intake of breath, as if she sensed his disappointment, he hurried to add, “His letter also acknowledged that I had no doubt discovered myself glad to be home, despite my initial reluctance to return, and therefore tempted to stay.”
This time, she was not so quick to react, though at last she ventured a cautious nod of agreement. “But…?” she prompted.
“But the letter also contained an offer, if I might be willing to consider it. An assignment of a temporary nature, to begin in six months and last roughly a year. Training new agents.”
“Where?”
“In the West Indies.”
For a moment, her eyes lost focus, and he wondered if she were thinking of that exquisitely drawn map in her journal. “And what have you decided?” she asked at last.
“It is, of course, a complicated situation. Even now, after all that has happened, I have been trying to imagine a way in which I might have both—have everything I want, in fact.”
“What do you want, Tristan?” she whispered.
The answer was clear—had been clear for quite some time, if he had not been too blind to see it.
“Come with me. See the places and the plants I know you’ve dreamed of seeing. Make a brilliant discovery—a dozen discoveries—a hundred. And then come home. Help me make Hawesdale the very best it can be. Teach my sister whatever she wants to learn. We’ll go to London, hear lectures—no. No, you’ll give the lectures. Any dream of yours…every dream of yours…let me help you make it real.”
She drew three careful breaths, in through her nose and out through her lips. He’d watched her do it before, but he had no idea what it presaged, what words she might speak when she was done. Once more she was opaque.
“And your dreams?” she asked at last.
“They’ve all become dreams of you.”
“Oh, Tristan,” she said, choking his name past something that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Those do sound like lovely dreams. But you must know I’d make a terrible duchess.”
“I’m not asking you to be my duchess, love…”
Every muscle in her body, even the blood in her veins, appeared to have turned solid as mortification overspread her face.
Hurriedly, he finished his sentence. “I’m asking you to be my wife.”
Warily, she unbent the tiniest degree. “But you’re a duke. Which means your wife will be…”
“You, I hope. Just as you are.” Her lips quivered at that, and the pink came back into her cheeks. “I cannot blame you for not wanting to be the Duchess of Raynham,” he said, “for I certainly never wanted to be the Duke. But these last few months—no, this week has reminded me how little of the world I really control, whether as a duke, a major, or simply a man. And when I think of all your supposed ‘flaws,’ well… It seems to me you’re far better prepared for this messy, uncertain life than I am.” He brought his hand to her face again, stroked his thumb along her cheekbone. “Will you share the ups and downs of this journey with me, love?”
She hesitated. “What will your colonel say about you marrying an Irish rebel?”
“He might just consider you an asset,” he answered with a teasing half smile. But her expression did not soften and he realized the question had been sincere. And something in the nature of a confession? Perhaps Whitby’s suspicions about her family hadn’t been wrong after all. Damn. Releasing her other hand, Tristan pinned her face between his palms, so that she could not avoid his eyes. “He’ll come around. Because you’re not just any Irish rebel. You’re mine.”
She melted then, into his arms, into him, her hands sliding up his shirtfront and wrapping around his neck, while her lips traced a fiery path along his jaw to his ear, all the time whispering, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
He tried unsuccessfully to shift and gather her into his arms, but the bench was narrow and unforgiving. “I wish now I’d given in to temptation in the library. That’s the softest carpet in the house.”
“Hardly a proper place for you to punish my defiance, Your Grace.” Her laugh tickled against his throat, where her tongue was doing marvelously naughty things.
Ah, yes. The note. “I was thinking of it more in the nature of a reward.”
“The floor in here is warm,” she suggested.
“But deuced…hard.” The groan slipped from his lips as one of her hands made its teasing way to his lap.
Once before in this room, he had wondered what it would be like to find himself the sole focus of her attention. Now he knew. Her curious fingers lightly traced his erection through the woolen breeches; he made no attempt to deter her when, some minutes later, she sought the buttons of his fall and slipped them free, one by one. Then it was more of the same pleasant torture through the thin barriers of his shirttail and his drawers, her light touch learning him with slow deliberation. It would, at this rate, be another hour before she ventured beneath the linen. Anything like gratification hovered far in the distance, almost a mirage. He gritted his teeth and let her play.
His turn would come.
In assessing that he had more patience than she, he was correct. He underestimated her persistence, though, and very nearly to his peril. He had not anticipated that her mischievous exploration would bring him almost to the point of pain, so near crisis that his body trembled with the effort of holding it at bay. His breath was ragged when he told her to stop. Or at least, those were the words he had meant to say. What passed his lips was something closer to a curse, a plea, garbled and desperate for release, and he caught her wrists and pulled her hands away a moment before he embarrassed himself.
Lifting those wicked hands to his lips, he kissed each finger, and each brush of his lips produced a corresponding catch of breath. Ten times he watched her eyes widen, her gaze darken a fraction more, until he held her spellbound. With deceptive lightness, he laid her hands down, one on either side of her hips, palms flat against the bench. Obligingly, she curled her fingers into the iron scrollwork and left them there as his mouth came to meet hers and his hands settled elsewhere, one against her waist, the other cupping the curve of her breast. So many layers between his touch and her skin, yet he could feel her impatience, the rise and fall of her rib
cage and the flutter of her heart.
Her kiss, too, was eager and openmouthed. Deliberately, he denied her at first, tracing the very edge of her lips with his own, eluding the darting tip of her tongue. But only at first. Desire could be kept at a simmer for only so long before it began to burn.
Still, for a time he contented himself with kisses, her soft mouth so inviting, the taste of her so sweet. Then he let his lips drift to her throat, the wings of her collarbone, pausing to give a gentle nip to the slope of her breast where it rose above the edge of her dress, pushed to prominence by her corset. He could sense how desperately she wanted to be free of it, bare to his touch as she’d been the night before.
“We’re in the glasshouse,” he reminded her. “And we’ve left the lantern burning. Anyone might see us.”
A tremor passed through her. “Let them see.”
My God. Her reckless passion would be his undoing. And he would have no regrets.
But he didn’t undress her. He made do with sliding one hand beneath her skirts, over her knees, to the hot silk of her thighs. When her legs parted, he traveled higher, inch by careful inch. Her crisp curls were damp already, and she hissed with pleasure when he drew his fingers lightly through them, once, then twice.
“You’re going to make me sorry for teasing you, aren’t you?” she cried softly.
“Yes.” He slipped one finger deeper, just brushing her bud. “And no.”
What he really wanted was to set his mouth to her there, taste the dew that coated his fingers, feel her tremble against his tongue. But there would be a time for that, and a place more comfortable than this. Here, on this unrelenting iron bench and behind these glass walls, she was a prisoner of a different sort. Tonight, he wanted to be able to watch her face, as she had no doubt watched his. See the flush, the glitter of perspiration rise to her skin, the desperate agony of pleasure as he touched her, bringing her again and again to the very brink of release.
He would teach her something about patience.
The Duke's Suspicion (Rogues and Rebels) Page 24