“You do not trust me enough to tell me the truth, and yet you expect me to trust you?” She shook her head slowly, locks of her chestnut mane falling in long, damp, luscious tendrils around her face. “Why are you even here, Kit? What do you want from me?”
He raked his gaze back down to the water for a beat, before shame reminded him that he ought not to gawp at her as if he’d never before witnessed a nude woman. He had, though admittedly, the League had become his mistress in more ways than one in recent years. He had not bedded a woman since long before his wedding day. But nevertheless, he had just seen and enjoyed every inch of his wife’s luscious breasts eleven days ago. Surely he ought to be immune to their charms. Surely he ought to be capable of meeting her gaze as any gentleman should. But no, he could not seem to stop staring.
Look away from her breasts, Kit. You’ve seen nipples aplenty in your lifetime, hers included. Gather your wits, man.
Why did she have to be so damned enticing?
“I am here because you’ve been avoiding me for almost a fortnight,” he growled, perturbed by both her and himself in equal measures. “And what I want from you is you, Georgie. Your body, your mind, your time, your trust. All of you.”
Your heart.
But no, he would not say that aloud. Not just yet.
“I have not given you leave to call me Georgie,” she said, her expression turning stricken. “You scarcely know me, and I cannot even begin to know you.”
“Give me the chance you would grant any stray.” His eyes burned into hers with intent, longing, naked desire. “Let me know you. Let me in, Georgie. It begins with coming to this side of the tub and allowing me to finish shampooing your hair. The decision is yours. If you say the word, I will leave and never again presume to enter your bathing chamber.”
Even as he said the words, he wished he could recall them. It was a leap of faith to suppose she would not banish him forever. But then his fierce little American duchess did the strangest, most surprising thing.
She nodded. “Very well. I can give you that.” And then she turned her back to him and glided across the tub, once more within his reach.
Relief crashed over him like an ocean wave, and in its wake, he felt buoyant, as though the heaviest weight he’d ever known had been lifted from his chest. He sank his fingers into her hair, overcome, and pressed his lips to the part on the crown of her head, breathing deeply of her damp scent. “Thank you, Georgie.”
“Do not make me regret it,” she cautioned.
Her warning wrung another smile from him as he soaped her hair, fingers working over her scalp, gratitude humming through him. “I shall endeavor not to, my dear.”
He’d never imagined that something so intimate yet so simple could make his insides feel so damned odd. She made a noncommittal sound, but she did not move away from him, allowing him to wash her hair before she ordered him from the chamber so that she could finish her bath in peace. He did as she bid, feeling that he had won this battle between them. Next, the war.
eorgie.
Ridiculous that the abridging of her name ought to make her feel such a spark of longing. That it should resonate in improper places. Or cause a tingling in her nether regions. Or increase the deep and complex feelings she had for him a hundredfold. The man was horrid.
Irredeemable.
Had he not lied to her? Left her for months? Did he not return with a vicious personality and the mouth of a sailor?
Yes to all of those queries.
And yet, when he said her name, she went weak. And yet, her foolish heart still insisted upon beating like a butterfly’s wings whenever she was in his presence. The unwanted emotion lodged in her breast, part pain and part all-consuming wonder, refused to go away. Love. Of all the men in the world she could have fallen for, why did it have to be him?
“Georgie!”
The angry bellow reached her seconds before her chamber door flew open. She jolted from her woolgathering at the commotion, the response she’d been writing to Daisy’s dinner invitation flying to the floor. Sir Nutkin, who had been curled up in the makeshift bed she’d made for him, peacefully dozing, roused and leapt to his hind legs. An alarmed chattering expelled from his small body, and his fluffy tail twitched in his agitation.
“Hush, little fellow,” she murmured, running a calming hand over his downy fur.
Leeds stalked into the chamber, his limp less pronounced than ever as the door slammed closed behind him. His handsome face sported a thunderous expression. His jaw was clenched, eyes glittering with outrage. “Would you care to explain the mouse that is currently making its home in my chamber, madam?”
Oh dear. So that was where her missing Lilliputian had scampered off to. Of all the places in Leeds House, why did the miscreant have to choose her surly husband’s chamber?
She frowned and scooped Sir Nutkin into her arms before rising from her chair. “There is no need to shout. How can you be certain there is a mouse in your chamber? And if there is indeed a mouse, how do you know it is mine?”
“Bloody hell, Georgie.” He stopped when he was near enough that his delicious male scent drifted to her, his horrified gaze dipping to Sir Nutkin. “What the devil is that?”
“He is not a that.” She raised a brow and gave him her most admonishing look. “He is Sir Nutkin.”
“Madam, I do not understand your predilection for rodents.” A note of disbelief tinged his deep baritone.
Truly, she needn’t explain herself to this vexing, arrogant man. But since he had interrupted her solitude, she would deign to elaborate. “Sir Nutkin is a squirrel who fell from his mama’s nest and required nurturing. He is not a rodent.”
“You cannot mean to keep it. The thing belongs out of doors. In trees.” His brows raised to underscore his perplexity.
She shielded Sir Nutkin with a hand, as if Leeds intended to snatch him from her bosom. “He doesn’t require trees when he has me.”
“Do you mean to say you allow that little furred menace to climb you? Good God, you truly are daft, woman. If I harbored any doubts as to your sanity, they are officially dispelled. You’re a bloody lunatic.” He glowered at first her, then Sir Nutkin, as if he expected the squirrel to attack.
While he was so much easier to resist when he was scowling and berating her about her animals, she rather wished in that moment that he had flown into her chamber bent upon seduction instead.
She banished the unworthy thought immediately. “Sir Nutkin does not climb me, Leeds. Nor are my wits addled.”
“I beg to bloody differ. Do you, or do you not, currently sustain a mouse family named after the characters in Gulliver’s Travels?” He paused for emphasis before verbally plowing onward. “And did not one of the miserable little pests escape, during which time you kept silent about its mysterious whereabouts while the thing shit in one of my shoes and chewed up my correspondence?”
Sir Nutkin let out a string of chirps just then.
Georgiana soothed him with a pat. “Do not fear the angry man, darling. I won’t let him hurt you.”
His lip curled. “That thing does not understand you any more than the mouse using my shoe as its cesspool does.”
“Do you have anything else you wish to say to me that doesn’t involve insults, condescension, or disparagement?” She returned his glare with one of her own. How could she possibly love this man? What was wrong with her? How had she allowed the fleeting glimpse of his vulnerability yesterday to convince her that there was a softer, gentler side to him that needed only to be nurtured?
He closed his eyes for a moment. “Georgie, has it never occurred to you that you cannot simply take in every creature that comes across your path? Eventually, the house will be overrun and no one—not even the bloody maids—will have a place to sleep at night.”
His tone had gentled. He closed the distance between them. Sighed.
“Who will take them in if I do not?” The question that dogged her left her lips before she could thin
k better of it.
“Someone. No one. I do not know.” He sighed a second time, the sound both weary and exasperated. “Why do you do it, Georgie? Why do you take in so many broken creatures and attempt to save them?”
It was not a question she wished to answer, for doing so would require introspection, and introspection would lead to dredging up painful memories she would rather forget. “Because I care.”
He shook his head, reaching out to tip up her chin with a gentle nudge of his forefinger. “It is more than that.”
The place where his bare skin touched hers felt as if it would ignite. She ran her tongue over lips that had gone dry. “Do not analyze me, Leeds. I am not part of your spying mission.”
“I no longer have a mission.” His voice was hollow, the admission sounding torn from him against his will.
His acknowledgment that she had not been wrong about his covert activities, that Ludlow had been truthful when he said that Leeds was a spy, settled into her with a kiss of warmth. At last. She found herself leaning toward him, into his large, strong body and intense presence. He was like a fire, and she was cold to the bone, hungry to be as near to him as she could to heat herself.
Warnings sounded in her mind.
But he is still a beastly man. You must not allow yourself to weaken for him. You must never let him know he owns your heart.
“You regret what happened in New York,” she said, able to read him now after finally having spent some time in his presence.
“I devoted half my life to service.” He inclined his head in grim recognition. “Having it abruptly torn asunder has been…difficult. I have not adapted well, I am afraid.”
As he spoke, his touch remained upon her. He opened his hand, cupping her jaw, his strong, thick fingers splaying over her throat. She resisted a shiver of awareness that longed to shake free.
What had this sudden, gentle impostor done with the real Duke of Leeds, the man who had swept into this chamber in maelstrom fashion, blustering and cursing and glowering? Where was the Duke of Leeds she had grown accustomed to, the one she loved because her foolish heart could not resist the broken and the needy and the ones no one else would love?
His abrupt tenderness undid her far more than his bluster ever could, though it would seem she loved his bark just as much as his purr.
“Why did you do it?” she asked him then, before her mind could wander any further afield than it had. “Why take on something so dangerous, when you are a duke and have all of London at your fingertips?”
“I wasn’t always a duke.” A self-deprecating smile curved his beautiful lips. “I was the spare. The dreaded second son. My father detested me and my mother died birthing me. I existed for no purpose other than to be my brother’s replacement should the need ever arise. My work for the Home Office became the purpose I longed for.”
He had revealed a part of himself, an important, heretofore unknown shred of his past to her just now, and she did not miss it. They shared some similarities, it would seem, as her father spared no love for her either, and her mother too was long gone.
Her heart ached to think of the lonely child he must have been, raised in the shadow of his brother the future duke, his forbidding father refusing to show him the love that any child needed. Little wonder he was so cold and unrelenting as a man.
“And now you have no purpose?” She frowned, trying to understand the complexity that was her husband.
“Now I have you.” His thumb traced a path over her lower lip.
She swallowed, shaken more than she would have preferred by that lone sentence. “You have always had me. I have been here, Kit, all along.”
It was a bitter reminder that he had never taken the time to know her. To woo her. He had never cared for her at all. And he had treated her no differently than her father, as if she were an object he could use or discard at will, depending upon the moment and whether or not she served his purpose.
“I’m beginning to understand that.” His expression had turned so hard that he could have been honed from marble as his gaze plumbed hers. “I am sorry for the way our marriage began. I cannot undo what has come to pass between us. But I can begin again, from this moment forward.”
“Hmm. Of course you wish to begin now, and not when you first entered my chamber, bellowing at me about my mice and Sir Nutkin.” She gave him an arch look.
My heavens, was she teasing the Duke of Leeds? The most surly, blistering curmudgeon she knew? The man who had married and left her in the span of one day?
Yes. She was.
And he was smiling at her, a true smile, one that transformed his handsome face into something…softer. Boyish, almost. Unexpected. When he smiled at her in that easy, intimate way, the breath fled her lungs, and her heart thumped in her breast. A strange, pleasant tingling radiated from between her thighs.
“I do not bellow, madam.”
“Call me Georgie,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
His smile deepened, turning knowing. “Georgie. You see? It does suit you.”
Perhaps I want to become the man who knows what suits you.
Yes, Georgie did suit her. He did, rather. In spite of their inauspicious beginning, something about this man called to her in a primitive, unexpected way.
But that didn’t mean she wanted him to know it. She shrugged. “Mayhap it does.”
His thumb trailed over her cheekbone now in a long, slow caress. “The animals, Georgie. Why do you think you can save them all?”
“Because I know what it is like to have no one who cares.” There it was, the awful truth, and how she wished she could recall it, so that he could never understand how bitter and lonely her life had been until she had realized the unfettered love an animal could give her.
“No one cared for you?” He clenched his jaw, his thumb stilling on her cheek.
Too late to dissemble now. She’d revealed far too much. “My mother did, until she died. My uncle, of course, though my father came between us. I was the daughter Uncle George had never had, and he was the father I’d wished for instead of mine.”
His touch achingly gentle, he trailed his caress back down her throat. “You see yourself in the animals, don’t you, love?”
Was it the term of endearment he uttered with such fluency that once again stole her breath, or was it the unexpected compassion glinting in his gaze? The reverence of his fingers trailing over her bare skin? Or worse, was it that he could see her, read her, understand her, better than she understood herself?
That he was capable of such understanding should not surprise her. He was a spy. Studying the world and people around him would be second nature.
She swallowed, realizing the veracity of it. “I see lonely creatures in need of love and a home, both of which I can provide. Why withhold it?”
“You cannot save them all, you know.” His touch left her then, and she looked down to see his hand slowly approached Sir Nutkin, who cuddled against her with dark, watchful eyes.
“I can try,” she told him.
He patted the squirrel’s head gently, and Sir Nutkin made a happy chirp. Traitor. She pursed her lips, studying her rescue, watching as Kit gently stroked the fur of the very animal he had so recently referred to as a “that.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that this beast may be happier outside where he belongs than trapped here within plaster and wood?” Kit asked, his eyes intent upon her.
Yes, of course it had. She had known that she could not keep Sir Nutkin forever, but she had grown rather fond of him.
She frowned. “No.”
“There is a tree beyond that window.” He gestured toward the large window to her right, which faced the courtyard and gardens of Leeds House. “Large, old, strong. He can reach the branch from here if we open the window for him. Let’s take him there, open the window, allow him to decide for himself.”
Georgiana shook her head. “No. He is perfectly content here with me. Can you not see?”
<
br /> “Give him the choice, Georgie.” His tone was soft, cajoling. The gentleness he exuded after so much bite and bristle undid her.
“Very well.” She would play along, for she knew what Sir Nutkin would choose. Didn’t she?
“Come.” He surprised her by wrapping a possessive arm around her waist and guiding her to the window.
In a handful of steps, they had crossed the small chamber. Kit opened the window, thrusting it wide. Beyond, the old, wizened branches of the tree in question pointed upward, adorned in a froth of green leaves. Sir Nutkin made a flurry of sounds and squirmed in her arms.
“Here now.” Kit took the squirrel from her slowly. “There’s a fellow. How would you like to live in this lovely tree?”
She swallowed against the sudden sting in her eyes and throat. The Duke of Leeds was talking to her squirrel as if they had just sat down for tea. And he had apologized for leaving her on the day of their wedding. Fancy that rarity! An apology from Leeds—why, it almost wasn’t to be believed.
She was sure her eyes and ears deceived her. Against her will, she had to admit that perhaps Sir Nutkin had indeed outgrown his need for her. He was not a defenseless baby any longer. What if Kit was right?
The branches of the massive tree reached near enough to the window that Kit could lean his tall body through the opening and place the squirrel on a particularly large limb. Sir Nutkin made his happy sound, flicked his tail, and scampered into the tree without a backward glance.
Her heart gave a pang as she watched the squirrel she’d nurtured for the last few weeks disappear amidst the leafy boughs. Well. There was that, then. Her husband had been correct after all, though it much aggrieved her to even think the thought. Under no circumstances would she lower herself to admitting it aloud. She could only imagine the way it would swell his considerable arrogance.
“I suppose he is gone.” She couldn’t quite keep the note of dejection from her voice as Leeds closed the window.
“He is where he belongs.” He turned back to her, his gaze impenetrable as his countenance. “The little blighter appeared rather pleased, did he not?”
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 21