Desire was there. Crackling between them despite his annoyance at being seen at this vulnerable place and her refusal to surrender the prize he desired.
“You want to know if Graham is aware that you and I made a show out of him fucking his wife?” he clarified, enjoying how she blushed dark before she turned her face at his crude description. “Or that you rode my tongue to completion afterward?”
She caught her breath. Her gaze refused to return to him. “I suppose yes to both. My reputation relies on some secrecy being maintained about what we…shared.”
He shook his head. Her reputation. Her bloody reputation. Fuck, his reputation. He was tired about talking about any of it.
“You’ll be pleased to know that you did not even come up in conversation, my lady. Nor did our little observation party in the parlor last night.” He sighed. “Graham wanted to talk to me about what a disappointment I am. Which has been true since long before you returned to Society.”
As soon as he said the words, he wished he could take them back. They were laced with a pain he’d always kept private. A fear he didn’t reveal to anyone and only allowed himself to feel in the most private of circumstances.
Now he had laid it bare, and from the way her expression shifted, she understood what he meant. Understood what was beneath his words. He felt more stripped naked than he ever had with any lover. Revealed on a core level that could never be unseen.
“Oh,” she said, the pepper gone from her tone now. Replaced by something softer.
“Is that all then?” he asked, turning away from her and picking up another rock. He pitched it and it sank like all the others. Somehow that made this worse.
She cleared her throat. “I’m—I’m sorry if you quarreled with your friend. I can imagine that is difficult, considering how close everyone knows you are.”
He squeezed his eyes shut at that observation. “They are close to each other,” he muttered. “They tolerate me.”
She caught her breath, and suddenly her hand closed around his arm. He opened his eyes and glanced down, staring at the fingers that now clenched his forearm, denting the line of his jacket. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to her face and found an expression he’d never seen on her face. At least not when she looked at him. There was no disdain. There was no wall there between them.
There was only empathy. As if she could understand being cut away, feeling like an outsider with the only people he’d ever considered family.
“I’m certain that is not true,” she said, her voice soft in the quiet by the lake. “Roseford, every person in your circle who has spoken to me about you has done so with great love. You must know that and not feel that whatever upset they may be experiencing about you now and again is not a permanent affliction.”
He hated how those words soothed him, hated that a little peace entered his wild heart when she touched him as she was now.
As if she sensed that, she pulled her hand away and he was briefly bereft.
She bent and picked up one of the rocks by the shore. He stared as she threw it and it skipped once, twice, three times before sinking beneath the surface.
She glanced over to find him staring and shrugged one shoulder. “My cousins taught me when I was a girl.”
He arched a brow. “Perhaps Emma could arrange a rock skipping contest. We’d enter you as a ringer.”
She bent her head with a laugh and he tensed at the way that sound settled him even further. He didn’t want that. Not with her. Not with anyone. If she could give peace, that meant she could take it away. Not a risk he wanted to take, because he knew how badly that could all end.
He folded his arms and hardened his heart and his tone in equal measure. “But I don’t think probing into my personal life or skipping rocks is why you hustled after me this afternoon, angling to get me alone.”
The smile on her face, that first one that hit him in the gut like a sledgehammer, fell away and a flash of hurt replaced it before she hardened herself as he had. The walls between them returned, erected by them both.
“I didn’t angle to get you alone,” she said, her tone sharp again. “You are wrong to suggest otherwise.”
He tilted his head. “You followed me down a hill away from the others. What would you call it?”
Her lips pressed hard together and she shook her head. “I only wanted to speak to you. Don’t you think we must after what happened between us? We will be here together for more than a week. We cannot simply stay in opposite corners, can we? Clearing the air is the…the only option.”
“Not the only one,” he growled. “And not the one you actually came here to pursue.”
“You think you know my mind?” she asked, laughing again but this time with no pleasure. “Do edify me.”
“You followed me here to wave your arms around and preach to me about reputation and propriety. You came to pretend that you didn’t want last night, just as you did immediately after your orgasm faded. You came to order me not to do anything like that ever again, even as you stare across the bowling green at me like I was some sweet treat you wanted to…” He leaned in and took a whiff of her spicy scent. “Lick.”
The wall she had built a moment ago crumbled as he said that. The desire she felt flared high, mixed with that contempt that crossed her face whenever she looked at him. Her breath caught and she shook her head. “You couldn’t be more wrong, Your Grace.”
He lifted his brows. “No. Did you come to rut with me by the lake, then?”
“No,” she said. “Last night I did tell you what we did could never be repeated. I believed it at the time. But the more I have…” She trailed off with a blush.
“Don’t stop now,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Do continue.”
“The more I pondered what we did, how it made me feel, the more I have wondered if it is something I could experience again. With you. No matter how wrong that desire might be.”
Katherine shifted as Robert stared at her in utter silence. She thought it might be shocked silence, and that was something she couldn’t help but be proud of. Roseford was jaded, everyone knew that. He practically wore it as a badge of honor. A cloak of protection. But in that moment, she had shocked him into silence.
He overcame it at last and said, “I want to be clear on this. Are you saying you would consider trysting with me again?”
She drew a long breath. Her mind took her back, to her father, who had cursed what he called her nature. To her husband, who had used that same nature for what he desired, but never given much in return. To her aunt, who had just hours before given her a sort of twisted permission to take what she wanted, just this one blessed time.
And she thought of the ripples of pleasure this man had drawn from her. Almost effortlessly and without demanding she give him something first or in return. Even now that wasn’t what he taunted her with or asked her for.
Her pleasure hadn’t come with a price, despite the bargain she knew he’d made. Or at least it hadn’t yet.
“Yes,” she said, answering his question at last.
He blinked at her and his expression of confusion would have made her smile if she weren’t shaking so hard in pure terror at what she had just admitted. To this man, of all men. Even knowing what he wanted from her, even knowing why.
She still said yes because there was no other word to say.
“What?” he asked.
She placed her hands on her hips. “Of course you would make me spell it out. Very well. I want something. Something just for me. But I’m not certain you would honor that, nor allow it.”
“Something just for you,” he repeated slowly. “You are talking about your pleasure given without mine taken.”
She nodded, shocked that he would even say those words. “Yes. Something that is all for me. And yet I doubt that I can trust you with that need. You would demand. Take.”
He arched a brow. “You mean like I did last night?”
&
nbsp; She flinched at the sarcasm that dripped from his tone. The vulnerability and warmth she had sensed in him when she asked him about his friends was gone. Back was the hard man. A man she realized was pulsing with emotion just beneath the surface.
But that didn’t matter to her. He couldn’t matter.
“Are you saying you would even consider entering an affair with me that wouldn’t involve…full completion for you?” she asked.
His eyes widened, and there was no denying the concern that flashed over his face. And yet he didn’t deny her out of hand, which meant he was contemplating her outrageous demand. Despite the bet he had made to have her fully. One he couldn’t win under her terms.
And that would be a little punishment alongside her own pleasure. Yet she couldn’t smile about that fact.
“I could consider it,” he said. “If I would be allowed to try to convince you otherwise.”
“Force, or convince?” she asked, setting her feet wider, as if she might have to fight. It felt like she did.
He shook his head. “Convince,” he repeated. “Great God, Katherine, whatever monster you have built me to be, know that I have never and would never, never force you or any other woman to do anything she did not wish to do. Any man who does that is a craven coward who deserves the most brutal of punishments.”
She drew back at the flash of fire in his dark stare. The anger that bubbled up past the carefree exterior, just as his pain had earlier. She wondered where it all came from, those emotions he was usually so capable of controlling.
“Very well,” she said. “In truth, I’ve never heard anything untoward about your behavior with any woman. That has never been your reputation, nor has it been what I’ve observed myself.”
“Observing me, were you?” he asked, giving her another of those cocky smiles. When she glared at him, he laughed. He seemed to like sparring with her. And some small part of her liked it, too. “What you’ve asked leaves me a great deal to consider.”
She swallowed. “Yes. Despite it being my suggestion, it is not a decision easily come to. If we were to enter into some kind of…arrangement, there are risks, more for me than for you I think.”
“Then perhaps we should take the rest of today to consider those risks, and the benefits.” He stepped toward her. “Come to my chamber tonight, after you’ve thought about it.” He winked. “Or should I come to you?”
She set her jaw. “For all the world to see and for you to crow about?”
“You truly despise me.”
“You make it easy to do so.”
She waited for him to argue with her or try to excuse himself from his behavior. Instead, he reached out a hand and traced the line of her jaw with his fingertips. She shivered at the touch, so gentle and yet so heated as he held her gaze with his dark one.
“That must create quite a conflict in you, my lady,” he whispered. “To want what you hate. In truth, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. Passion is passion, and what you feel could make things all the more…intense. If that helps you make your decision.”
She wrinkled her brow. He wasn’t even trying to make her like him. He wasn’t defending the indefensible or telling her some story to get what he wanted. There was an honesty to his interaction with her. A space for her to feel whatever she felt without judgment.
She wasn’t certain anyone else in her life had ever given that. And it felt so dangerous now, because she wanted to lean into it, give herself over to it. Forget everything she’d experienced with this man, everything she knew about his motives, and just…bathe in his experience and his passion.
She stepped away from him and from that wild desire. “If I want this, I’ll come to you,” she said.
She turned on her heel and walked away from him. And just like he had the night before, he let her go without comment or attempt to control what she would do. He just watched her go.
She crested the hill so she was out of his sight and saw the party just ahead. She had to gather herself now, forget the conflict that Roseford had stoked in her, at least for a while.
She doubled her efforts to do that as Meg came racing down from the bowling green, with a wide smile on her face. “There you are! James was about to send out a search party rather than forfeit. Your next round is about to begin.”
She forced a smile. “Excellent, and I am ready.”
Ready to play games. But not the ones Emma had set up for the party’s enjoyment. If she understood anything now it was that she was about to enter a very dangerous game with the Duke of Roseford.
One she had to win.
Chapter Eleven
Robert entered the dining room at the end of the group of his friends and scanned the table for the arrangement. He smiled as he saw his name card and stepped over to stand just beside Katherine.
She jolted as he caught the back of her chair and gently slid it out for her. “My lady.”
For a moment her lips pursed, and then she actually smiled as she took the place he offered and watched him settle in beside her. “Your Grace. Not that I am complaining, but I find myself a little surprised that you and I would be seated together, considering we were each invited here in an attempt to avoid the other.”
“I will tell you a little secret,” he said, leaning in close to her ear and just controlling himself from pressing a kiss there. “I moved the arrangements so we would be placed together.”
She pulled away and stared at him. “You did not!”
“It’s why poor Emma is glaring daggers at me at the end of the table,” he said, and leaned around Katherine to wave at their hostess. Emma shook her head, but there was undeniable mirth to her expression. “She tolerates me.”
Katherine placed her napkin in her lap. “I suppose every court needs its jester.”
He snorted out a laugh of surprise at her cheeky retort. “You think that is what I am?”
She shrugged. “You are entertaining, that is certain.”
“I can be,” he said, arching a brow toward her. She blushed, as he hoped she would.
Her gaze dropped to her empty plate. “I may regret asking this, but is this your version of allowing me space to consider our arrangement?”
He frowned at the lilt of desperation that was in her tone. He’d heard it earlier, too, when she talked about being controlled or forced. He could imagine there had been little choice in her life. That was the way for ladies in any rank. He had watched it many a time, sometimes far too closely.
“We spent an afternoon in opposite corners,” he said. “Though I did heartily applaud your win with James in the bowling tournament.”
She laughed again and her face relaxed. “Thank you. I think the mantle of champion may be a hard one to bear, though. Graham and Meg have already challenged us to a rematch, claiming the windy weather was the reason for their failure.”
He nodded with false solemnity. “Yes, I can see that. They’re both rather competitive souls. I assume we will witness a battle royale over the next week or so.”
“So you think an afternoon is enough space?” she asked, returning to the subject she had broached earlier.
He turned a little to look at her more directly. “Katherine, everything doesn’t have to be about some arrangement. You and I are two of the only people at this party who are not married. And I happen to find you very charming. As I know you find me, else you wouldn’t despise me so much.”
She drew a breath. “Is that your logic? What does that even mean?”
He smiled at the laughter in her tone. “Finding me so utterly delightful is what makes many a person hate me. The emotion is just too intense.”
Her smile fell a little and she turned her face. He watched her. That had struck a nerve, even if he’d meant it as a foolish statement. So, whatever she felt or desired was too intense for her. It frightened her.
At least they were the same when it came to that. The intensity with which he wanted this woman wa
s not easy for him, either.
“Let us put it this way,” he said gently. “Why don’t we try to be friends, no matter what we decide to arrange outside of the public eye?”
She hesitated a moment, worrying her napkin in her lap as she pondered that suggestion. Before she could respond, the Duke of Tyndale, who was seated across the table with Isabel at his side, leaned closer.
“I’m sorry, my lady, is this gentleman bothering you?” He said it with a wink, a tease, and Robert smiled at him. The two of them had shared that terrible little exchange before they left London, but Matthew was not one to hold grudges. He’d accepted Robert’s written apology and his gaze held no inkling that he was still upset.
That was a relief, at least.
Isabel shot Robert an uncertain glance, but she didn’t seem angry either.
Katherine laughed. “Only in the slightest way, Your Grace, I assure you. I was just telling him what an entertaining gentleman he was. I assume you must have stories to prove that point.”
Matthew arched a brow and his expression grew wicked. “Stories about Roseford? Oh, there are dozens of those. Let me think of the one that will humiliate him most.”
“When he lost his clothing at your father’s ball,” Charlotte offered from down the table with a sly look at Robert. “That is my favorite. I think it is Ewan’s, as well.”
The Duke of Donburrow grinned and nodded, signing a few words. Charlotte took a breath to translate, but Robert lifted his hand. “I’m certain I know exactly what my friend was going to say. No need to translate.”
Charlotte laughed and the rest of the table now joined in. Robert shook his head. These were the moments when he felt so at home with his friends, his family. At a time when he was alone, frightened, uncertain, heartbroken, they had loved him despite all his faults. And their shared memories of their youth buoyed him on days when everything just felt…heavy.
“Well, do tell the story,” Katherine encouraged as their first course was laid out by the servants. “It sounds the perfect way to bring the duke down a notch or two.”
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