“How long have you been watching me?” she demanded, hands on her hips.
“Since the moment you came in.”
She made a small, reproachful sound and shook her hand. “I suppose you were just going to let me fend for myself against your butler?”
“A bear is no match against Grayson,” he drawled.
She gave him a peeved looked but said nothing further on the topic featuring Rhys’s ornery butler. “Are you going to invite me in or must I just make myself at home?” she asked him irritably.
“You were quite happy to make yourself at home all the other times you’ve trespassed and not until you tell me what had you so worried when you came in.”
Dani sighed impatiently and crossed her arms under her breasts. “Nothing of import,” she told him. “One of your many callers.”
“Ah.” Having placed himself on the bottom stair during their brief conversation, Rhys now took the required steps to close the distance between them. “Then I’m sure a tour of the gallery will improve your mood.”
She gave him a brilliant smile that made his gut clench with longing. She should not look at him like that. “What mood? I am quite well, I assure you.”
He deigned to remain silent and began to walk towards the wing of the castle where the gallery was nestled, Dani silently falling into step beside him. The halls were dark and quiet as they went, the only light emitted from interspersed, ornately arched windows. The tapestries along the walls were archaic and faded, having not been well tended to, and depicted long-past scenes of battle and chivalry in illustrative detail. Dani absorbed it all silently and wonderingly, occasionally having to be reminded to continue walking.
“You must love living here,” she breathed, craning her neck to examine the tapestry solely depicting a knight wearing bright, liveried armour. He didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, his thoughts awash in the wonder on her face, the utter contentment at just staring at a piece of art. Rhys suddenly knew that Dani could be happy at Falmouth. It was obvious, blatantly so. But was that enough?
When he was silent too long, she turned to him. “Don’t you?”
“At times.”
Her head bent towards the tapestry for one last perusal before she began to walk again. “I would love it,” she sighed blissfully. “It’s so… full of character and history.”
“And history interests you?”
She nodded her head emphatically. “Absolutely. Could there be anything as wonderful as understanding how our ancestors lived?” Dani gestured with a wide arc the tapestries surrounding them up and down the passage. “These are how your ancestors lived.”
Rhys frowned. He didn’t like to consider the Ashcroft name part of his history, but the girl did have a point. Just because his father was a downright ass, didn’t mean the rest of his lineage were too.
“Couldn’t you just spend all day looking at these, wondering what your great-great-great grandfather must have been like during these times?” she sighed adoringly, her eyes harbouring a far-away look. “Or what your great-great-great-”
“I get it, Danielle.”
Her look was sharp but the corners of her mouth were bent in such a way that Rhys could tell she was suppressing a smile. “Well, I think it’s fantastic.”
He thought that she was fantastic but he wasn’t about to say so. Her absolute adoration with literature and history made her intelligent and witty, a rarity among a society of nitwits. The innocence and enthusiasm she consistently expressed, especially with the castle, was phenomenally refreshing compared to Rhys’s jaded perspective of the world at large.
Unable to restrain himself, he reached for her arm and slipped it into his. The look she gave him he endeavoured to ignore.
They reached a fork between two passages and Rhys swerved to the left without haltering, drawing to a slow stop before two elaborate wooden doors which he pushed open.
They led into the lengthy wing of the gallery, portraits and paintings adorning the walls on either side of them, broken by large, paned windows. The wing was placed as such so that it received an abundance of golden sunlight during the peak of the day and into the afternoon, illuminating the chamber in an ethereal, almost dream-like haze. Although today was slightly overcast, a dim light from outside streamed in and hinted at the same effect.
It was no wonder that Dani gasped from beside him.
It didn’t come as any surprise that her feet rooted themselves to the spot and she was unable to move for several moments due to the sheer awe that riveted through her at the sight.
At that moment, at that place, Rhys knew he had to have her. It rippled through his veins, reverberating through his bones, that everything about her was perfect and his body, his soul, were screaming for him to need her, to take the chance she had offered him. It was sheer torment this wanting, this incessant and unrelenting need.
“It’s amazing!” she breathed reverently, slowly walking towards the nearest painting. Her skirts rustled softly against her legs as she did so, the sway of her hips drawing Rhys’s eyes involuntarily.
Adoringly, she extended a slender finger and traced the gilt-edged frame of the piece she was admiring; her chin tilted towards the life-sized portrait of his uncle.
“Friend of yours?” she asked with a jaunty smile, not looking at him.
“My uncle, Frederick Ashcroft. My father inherited the title when he passed away, or so I’m told.”
She gave him a curious look before transferring her stare to her left at the portrait next to the one she stood before. “Is that…?”
“My father,” Rhys finished for her flatly, following her gaze to the reason why he never visited the wing more often.
It was a realistic representation, almost exactly what Rhys had imagined him to look like- stern and implacable.
“Do you look like him?” she asked inquisitively, squinting up at the man Rhys loathed with every ounce of his person and his soul.
The resemblance was uncanny. “No,” he growled.
Dani gave him a dry look over her shoulder. “Don’t lie,” she drawled, “I saw a bit of you at the ball, remember? You also have dark hair… in fact, the entire face is similar.”
“I am nothing like him.”
She ignored the harshness of his tone and turned back to examining the portrait of the earl. Black hair, strange, amber-coloured eyes, implacable jaw… she remembered all of these features so painfully well on Rhys the night of the ball. There were also the strong, wide shoulders, passed down by many generations of Ashcroft, and an unrelenting hardness about the eyes.
“I didn’t say you were,” she murmured as her eyes trailed to the open space of wall next to the portrait where Rhys’s own likeness was supposed to hang. “You haven’t had yours done yet.”
“It’s not going to be done.”
Perturbed, she spun around to face him and crossed her arms, giving him a very dry look. “You’re scared of the scars,” she accused.
“Scared?”
“You should definitely let me paint you then,” Dani continued heatedly. “You’d be so unrecognisable by my hand, people wouldn’t even notice.”
“Danielle-”
She held up a hand to stop him, frowning. “I know, I know,” she sighed. “You’re not going to take the hood off. You can save your breath.”
Rhys had to repress a patient smile. Obstinate little thing was she. “Do you remember what you agreed to if I removed the hood?” he asked wryly.
Dani stilled, her mouth dropped open as she dared herself not to believe, to put too much hope into his words. Unfortunately, the only coherent thought flying frantically around her mind was oh my God!
“Danielle?”
She snapped her mouth shut and hastily nodded her head, beginning to come towards him with slow, even steps. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I’m not sure.”
Stopping close to him, Danielle could not resist smiling tentatively int
o the shadows of his face, her heart beating so fast she thought it might hammer right out of her chest. “You’re not sure?” she asked hesitantly. “I think that means that you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do.”
“Danielle…”
“Dani,” she corrected him and shyly reached up to his face, her fingers stretching for the edges of his hood that was pulled low. His hands moved sharply and then stopped, as if he were about to yank her arms away from him. Dani paused, studying him intently, until his hands dropped back to his sides. He didn’t say anything though, and Dani couldn’t even hear him breathe he was so still.
Taking that as all the incentive she needed, her fingertips traced the edges of the cloak, explorative and reverent. She caught her breath, excitement and longing swirling and coalescing vividly inside her. Time seemed to stand still in the dim sunlit room, the two of them a pinnacle of mesmerizingly silent reverence. There was nothing more important than this moment, the two of them, right here, in this room, at this time.
And then, because she simply couldn’t wait any longer, Dani hooked the material between her fingers and slowly pushed it back over his head, and, oh, those eyes!
It was the first thing she noticed- his eyes. Startling, mesmeric, eyes harbouring an intensity and insecurity that made her heart clamp tightly. They were beautiful, those eyes, and staring at her unblinkingly, relentlessly, watching her every reaction and nuance that crossed her face. The rest of his face came into focus and Dani admired the strength in his jaw, the aristocratically straight nose… a face that had been moulded with the sole intention of making women yearn.
She saw the scars then, covering the left side of his face. A large line of puckered skin marred the length of his face, from temple down to jaw before disappearing beneath his loosely-tied cravat. A myriad of littler, marring scars criss-crossed against his skin- one near the corner of his mouth, a few across his unshaven cheek, but if it weren’t for the big one, these would be largely insignificant against his skin.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off her during her close examination of his face and Dani thought that he hadn’t even chanced a blink. Knowing the significance of her reaction to him now, that whatever she chose to say or do at this moment would map the rest of, and continuation of, their relationship, she knew that she would have to choose her words wisely.
Rhys had never felt so nervous in his entire life. It might have actually been close to fear that he was feeling but he would be the last person to admit it, even to himself. He found himself hoping and wanting and regretting all in one terrifying, monumental moment. He couldn’t face her rejection but knew it was imminent and hoped that it wasn’t. So he studied her studying him, fastidiously, unblinkingly, searching her face as her eyes drifted to the scars.
For the first time, Rhys couldn’t read her. He couldn’t sense what she was feeling or how she would react. Her eyes were calm and assessing rather than repulsed and when the hood had fallen from his face, there was even a flash of wonder across her face. But she had quickly recovered and went about her examination expressionlessly.
It was the longest minute of his life.
But then, to his disbelief, she frowned and pursed her lips, looking annoyed. “Really?” she asked, her eyes rising to meet his again. “This is what all the fuss is about?”
She was telling him off?
Not waiting for a response, she continued, “Honestly, Rhys, if I had known that a few scratches had been the cause of all this nonsense, I would have pushed you into the fireplace long ago.”
“You-” he couldn’t manage more than that, so shocked was he by her reaction. He was used to the pity, the revulsion… but this? He’d never been teased for his insecurities, or reprimanded for them. The little wench.
“In fact,” she continued happily, “show me to the rest of your cloaks. We’ll start now. To the fireplace with them!” She enunciated her sentence with a fist pump and Rhys effortlessly caught her arm and dragged her to him, abruptly closing the narrow space that separated their bodies.
“Not,” he said implacably, “until you settle your debts.”
He had a moment to enjoy the look of startled surprise in her wide blue eyes before he tilted her face up in his hands and lowered his mouth to her lips.
She gasped once before her body melted against his, seductively moulding to all the right places as if she had been made for him. Her mouth parted beneath his, submitting to his ardour and artless need for her while his fingers buried in the thick silken mass of her hair, disturbing the carefully laid pins that had been holding a coiffure neatly in place. His mouth plundered wantonly, taking all that she was giving him, tasting her sweetness and surrender with a fiery heat of uncontrolled passion.
God, she was sweet and lovely in his arms. His body was on fire, burning for her, needing her with an intensity that overwhelmed and finally delighted him, knowing that she, at last, was his. He groaned when she timidly lifted her arms and clung to his neck, her body arching into his deliciously. How much more torture he could take, Rhys wasn’t sure, and his hand seemed to drop to her breast of its own accord, shuddering with her gasp of pleasure.
He was losing himself in the goodness of her, the euphoria of finally claiming her after yearning relentlessly for so long. It would be so easy to lay her down, her body awash in the dim sunlight streaming in from the room, making her glow, beautiful- his body convulsed with the thought, the need-
“Well,” Victoria Sinclair said smugly from the entrance, “you’re going to have to marry her now, Rhys.”
Chapter 18
“Oh.”
Dani stiffened in his arms and belatedly realised his hand was engulfing her breast. Already enflamed, heat poured through her as she hastily and clumsily swiped his hand away. This… this was too much for her. She had hardly ever thought about something promiscuous in all her three and twenty years and now here she was, lustfully embracing a man while her best friend happened upon them in a magical, enchanting gallery.
Absurd, that’s what it was.
Immediately upon Victoria’s announcement, Rhys had stopped kissing her and buried his head in the hair coming loose and falling across the side of her face, groaning inarticulately, and all Dani could do was stand there, in his arms, humiliatingly dumbstruck.
Oh, it was mortifying.
“Of course I will marry her,” Rhys mumbled from the recesses of her neck, his lips brushing against the sensitive, heated skin of her temple.
Victoria looked like she wanted to burst out laughing. “Good,” she told them. “I never had a doubt that you wouldn’t.”
Finally, Dani’s passion-dazed trance shattered and she said, “Wait. What?”
Nimbly, she extricated herself from Rhys’s arms and glared at both of them. “Victoria, are you mad?” she demanded, finding that every limb in her body was shaking in the aftermath of Rhys’s torturous caresses. She was certainly in no state of mind to have her best friend demand such a thing and from a man who had made it transparently clear that the last thing he wanted to do was drag her, Danielle Carmichael, to the altar.
The raven-haired woman raised a haughty brow at that. “Dani, I only think it’s the necessary thing left to do,” she explained dryly, “especially after what I’ve just witnessed.”
Victoria? Being proper? That was like a chicken trying to grow fins and live underwater. “You can’t expect him to marry me,” Dani retorted. “And since when have you ever been prone to chivalry? You and Gab-”
“You know that this is for the best,” Victoria stated a bit more implacably. “You have been running around this castle by yourself for about two weeks. Honestly, Danielle, it was going to happen eventually. You should be grateful that it is me who is demanding it and not somebody else.”
“She’s right, Dani,” Rhys said gravelly from beside her, causing Dani to whirl around and glare at him furiously.
“I’ll not be subjected to your pity!” she snapped. “You said that
you didn’t want to marry, that you would never marry me. I’d rather be labelled a-a harlot than allow you to marry me because of propriety!”
“Dani, be reasonable,” Rhys urged softly.
She turned to him and her heart lurched painfully. His golden eyes were boring into her penetratingly, silently imploring, and she felt her resolve crumbling just by looking at him. She wanted to marry him, didn’t she? She couldn’t ask to have anything happier happen to her… but she couldn’t live with the knowledge that he had only married her because he had to. It would be utter agony having to endure a husband that didn’t love her. Oh, she knew that the Quality hardly ever married for love but wasn’t she allowed to hold out a little hope that she might find a love-match? It was not such a far-fetched notion and she only had to think of Victoria and Gabriel to know that it existed, and that she could dream of a man who loved her beyond all else.
“I’ll not!” she snapped, irrationally and then, childishly: “You can’t make me!”
Rhys turned to Victoria, who looked on the verge of hysterics, and raised a brow. “Will you give us a moment?”
Vicky sobered and hesitated.
“The damage is done,” Rhys practically snarled. “Remove your person. I give you my word that I won’t compromise her more than she already is.”
Loathing being spoken about as if she wasn’t in the room, Dani watched her friend leave and quietly shut the door behind her. She had to swallow her embarrassment, her hurt, before she looked at Rhys again and the sight of his face sent agony riveting through her. Despite how much she wanted to be his forever, she knew that he did not share her sentiments. And she could not, would not, allow anyone to force him to marry her.
“You don’t have to marry me,” she murmured, feeling tears prick her eyes as she stared up at him widely.
Rhys smiled slightly and raised his hand, gently brushing her cheek. “I do,” he said simply.
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