by Amy Sandas
After another long moment, Leander took a deep, bracing inhale and gazed out over the moorlands. She watched as his expression grew dark and heavy.
And she waited.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally.
Desdemona’s heart skipped. “For what?”
He looked at her with a hint of surprise in his eyes. “For all of that,” he replied with a sweep of his arm toward the manor. “For your brother’s lack of protection, for my stepsister’s greed and perfidy.” The muscles of his jaw clenched as he glanced outward again. “For the way Rutledge and the others disrespected you.”
“You are not responsible for their behavior.”
He swallowed hard as his gaze bored into hers. “I’m sorry for not protecting you as I should have.”
“But you did,” she argued, wondering how he didn’t see it. “You stood beside me against Rutledge. You shielded me from your stepsister’s wrath.”
He shook his head. “I should have protected you from me.”
He lowered his gaze, as though unable to keep looking at her. “I’ve lived a wicked life, tesoro mio. My youth was wasted in efforts to gain attention from a harsh, disinterested father and a mother more devoted to pleasing herself than coddling a needy child. When we came to England after my father’s death and my mother remarried, I’d hoped...” He shook his head. “But I was foolish and Isabelle used my weaknesses against me at every opportunity. I decided that when I became a man, I would allow no one to see inside me again. I’d give no one the power to withhold their affection or reject my love. I used people before they could use me. I indulged every desire. If there was anything I wanted, I found a way to get it. I denied myself nothing.”
Desdemona could see the regret in his eyes, could hear the unspoken emptiness and loneliness in the description of his past.
“Do you see, amore mio, why I should not have touched you? Why I should have stayed far away from you?”
“No,” she replied simply. “I don’t.”
His sigh was heavy and weary, his voice raw. “Tesoro...”
Desdemona stepped toward him, not stopping until he was forced to meet her gaze. “I know what you are trying to say—that you are somehow unworthy—but I disagree.” She frowned. “In fact, I find that notion ridiculous.”
He pushed his hand back through his hair and tipped his face up toward the sky as he took a breath. “You’d be shocked to know all the things I’ve done, all the beds I’ve traipsed through, the people I’ve used and discarded.”
Desdemona considered that for a moment. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Those experiences are a part of who you are. You would not be the same man without them. You might never have found reason to come to Staffordshire and to me.” She laid her hand against the side of his face, warming his skin with her palm as she offered a gentle smile. “I’m grateful for the life you’ve lived just as I’m grateful for my own since our pasts brought us to this moment. Here and now.”
His eyes searched hers, as though he were afraid to trust her words and needed further assurance. Then, slowly, his lips curved as he lifted his hand to brush flying tendrils of hair back from her face. “I should have known you’d see things in an utterly unique and unexpected way.”
Desdemona’s smile widened. “It’s because I’m rather odd, if you hadn’t noticed.”
He chuckled. “You’re oddly perfect.”
“Of course I am. As are you.” She took his hand and pressed his palm to her cheek. “I’d like to kiss you now.”
His smile turned instantly wicked in that delicious, dangerous way that increased her heart rate and made her insides melt. “Would you?” he teased as he slid his other hand around her waist and pulled her into the solid warmth of his body.
“Yes,” she whispered, slipping her hand around his neck to tangle her fingers in the thick curls at his nape, “very much.”
“If I kiss you, I will not want to stop. I will want more.”
She looked into his eyes and saw something there that rose above even the intense light of desire. It was soft and tender and strong and she instantly knew it for what it was. “How much more?” she asked anyway.
“Everything,” he replied. “Forever.”
“Forever isn’t possible,” she noted, though a quirk of amusement lifted the corner of her mouth. “Human beings have a finite lifespan.”
He laughed and lowered his head until his lips were a breath away from hers. “For the rest of our finite lives then.”
Desdemona pulled back from his lips, needing clarification. “Are you saying you want to marry me?”
“I’m saying I love you, tesoro mio, and I desire nothing more than to devote myself to you and your happiness as a husband should.”
Desdemona’s heart raced wildly as she imagined a life with him, day in and day out. “Will we live here?”
He smiled and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “If that is your wish.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit London. Perhaps we could live there some of the time, at least?”
He kissed the curve of her jaw. Chills coursed over her skin. “Of course. Does that mean you’ll be my wife?” he murmured against the outer shell of her ear.
Desdemona brought her hands up to frame his face, lifting his head from where he was placing lovely little kisses down her throat. Though he made a sound of protest, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. Smoldering heat and a barely noticeable vulnerability swirled in the depths of his eyes. “I can think of nothing more perfect than spending my life with you.”
He doubled his arms around her and whispered impassioned words in Italian into her hair, holding her so tight she lost her breath.
But she didn’t mind.
***
Not much later, the two of them snuck quietly up to Desdemona’s private rooms, carefully avoiding the turmoil of the rest of the house as servants rushed to see the guests packed and on their way despite the late hour.
Hand in hand, Leander and Desdemona crossed her sitting room and study. Then with a smile of subtle expectation, she led Leander to the door tucked behind her desk.
Her bedroom was far larger than what he’d expected to find past the modest little door—large enough for a huge and ancient four-poster bed. The walls were covered in a creamy damask while the drapes pulled back from the nearly floor to ceiling windows and drawn back around the bed were all in a dark rose color. A settee sat before a broad stone fireplace. A red woolen blanket, frayed along the edges, was thrown over the back.
It was not an overly feminine room. It was soft and strong, warm and unfussy.
While her hounds trotted to their beds beside the hearth, Desdemona continued to the center of the room, where a Persian rug in rich red, pink, green, and bronze was laid out over the floor.
When she turned back to face him, his stomach clenched in dread at the frown of consternation that marred her brow and pulled down at the corners of her mouth.
His brow furrowed as he pulled her to him. “What is it, tesoro mio? What is bothering you?”
At his words, her expression shifted. “Why do you call me that? It means my treasure, does it not?”
Leander smiled. “You know Italian?”
“Some.”
“I call you that because I knew from the moment I met you that you were something special and precious.”
Her frown deepened. “No, I’m not. I’m horridly single-minded and I often get lost in my work for hours or sometimes days at a time. Even now that this project is nearly finished, I doubt it will be long before something else consumes my attention. How do you know you won’t become bored with me? Or annoyed with my oddities? I’m not sophisticated or elegant. I guarantee I’ll make huge social blunders over and over.” She stopped and looked at him with a pained expression. “I haven’t even told you I love you, which I do. After your wonderful words beneath the moon, I failed to reply in kind. You must think me so unfeeling.”
Leander’s heart clenched
for her vulnerability and her willingness to share it with him.
He shook his head and stepped toward her to take both of her hands in his. Bringing them to his lips one after the other, he pressed his mouth firmly to the center of each palm. “You have your own way. It’s beautiful and pure and it’s yours. And I adore it.”
He paused as a painful ache clogged his throat. He hadn’t experienced the feeling since he’d been young, before he’d learned to rely on no one but himself and want for nothing he couldn’t claim with a wink and a sinful smile.
The words rising from his heart could not be held back. “I am brought to my knees by the things I feel for you. I never expected to love someone so much—to desire someone as I desire you.” He met her dark, intelligent gaze and felt an overwhelming sense of completion. “I cannot explain what it means to me to feel like I can trust you with everything I am—my past and my future, my very soul, my darkest secrets...”
Her brows arched curiously as she asked in a husky whisper, “Your darkest secrets?”
He swallowed hard past the thickness in his throat as a vision came to mind that filled him with lustful anticipation. “Indeed,” he said in a heavy murmur as he pressed one of her hands to his chest where his heart had begun to race. Tilting his head beside hers, he lowered his voice even more. “There is something...a secret fantasy I’ve never wanted to share with anyone else. I find myself desperate to experience it with you.”
She slid her lips along the curve of his ear. “Tell me,” she whispered.
Her quietly firm command caused a wave of heat to roll over his skin and sink sweetly into his blood. She was so damned perfect.
He lifted his head to look into her eyes. “Do you recall talking about one of Lady Anne’s particular pleasures?”
Her eyes darkened and her lips parted on a swift inhale. He could see that she knew exactly what he was referencing. “Are you saying you’d like to tie me up?”
Desire seared through him. “Not exactly.”
The pulse at the base of her throat quickened. “You want me to tie you up,” she murmured huskily.
“I would be completely at your mercy,” he replied, feeling the raw nature of his own voice.
“Where?”
“Wherever you wish.”
A smile crept over her lovely lips and Leander knew she understood him as no one else ever had. Desire and love and trust overwhelmed him, nearly dropping him to his knees right there.
“On the bed,” she demanded softly. “Now.”
Epilogue
Eventually, Leander and Desdemona did make their way to London, where they arranged a quick wedding within the first few days of their arrival. Of course, the news of their relationship had already been the scandal of town for weeks (thanks to Isabelle), but that didn’t stop the invitations from rolling in.
Everyone wanted to meet the odd provincial girl who’d claimed the heart of one of the wildest rakes London had seen in decades.
On the night before the ceremony, Leander’s closest friends insisted on taking him out to one of their favorite spots for drinks and cigars. They requested their regular room at Pendragon’s, and for the first time in many years, they requested that they not be disturbed.
“Are you sure you aren’t being coerced, blackmailed, threatened into this marriage?” the Duke of Melbourne asked—only half joking—from where he stood stiffly in front of the fireplace.
Leander laughed and gave his oldest friend a wide grin over the rim of his wineglass. “Bewitched, maybe.”
“It seems our vow meant nothing,” Melbourne noted dryly.
“It was more than six years ago,” Lord Allerton noted with a shrug. He had been the first of the four friends to marry. “Things change.”
The duke shook his head before his expression shifted into a grin as he flashed his infamous dimple. “I suppose I shall just have to make the most of being the last infamous rogue left in London.”
Allerton laughed. “I’m sure it won’t be a hardship. With Vittori off the streets, there is likely to be a wealth of new opportunities.”
The comment brought Melbourne’s attention back to Leander. “Think of all you’ll be missing.”
“I won’t miss a thing,” Leander replied with a sly smile as he lounged back in one of the plush chairs set around the gaming table. “I’ve claimed a treasure beyond imagining. Everything else pales in comparison.”
The duke could only shake his head in dramatic dismay and partially stunned amusement.
“Perhaps all it takes is the right woman,” noted the typically sardonic Marquess of Granville. It appeared his new bride’s optimistic nature was rubbing off on him. Lifting a dark slashing brow, he suggested cryptically, “Your day may come, Melbourne.”
Leander, who knew of the duke’s most protected secret, held his tongue. But he saw how Granville’s words sparked a light of brazen rebellion in Melbourne’s eyes though the duke did nothing more than snort in derision before he tossed back his scotch.
Also by Amy Sandas
Reformed Rakes Novella
Wicked (Coming Soon)
Dangerous (Coming Soon)
Regency Rogues
Rogue Countess
Reckless Viscount
Rebel Marquess
Relentless Lord
Watch for more at Amy Sandas’s site.
About the Author
Amy grew up in a small dairy town in northern Wisconsin and after earning a Liberal Arts degree from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, she eventually made her way back to Wisconsin (though to a slightly larger town) and lives there with her husband and three children. She spends her early mornings writing before heading off to her day job. The rest of her time is spent trying to keep up with the kids and squeeze in some stolen moments with her husband.
Read more at Amy Sandas’s site.