by Tessa Dare
His back was a display of raw power and masculinity, all corded muscles and strength, with a proudly erect spine. He was such a study in contoured, chiseled perfection that an artist would ache to memorialize him in stone.
Crispin stretched his arms out before him and, gripping his bicep, drew that olive-hued limb toward his opposite shoulder.
Oh, my goodness, she silently mouthed.
No man, nay, no person had a right to be in possession of such beauty that it made mere mortals weep and stare. And there could be no doubting that, with her slender hips and even more slender waist and bosom-less frame, she epitomized the words common and unremarkable in every way.
While Crispin was… clear?
Elizabeth stared unblinkingly at the shadows dancing along his back.
He was too clear.
Bloody damn.
Holding her breath so tight her chest ached, Elizabeth inched one hand up slowly. Not taking her eyes from Crispin, she plucked the damning glasses from her nose and…
She angled her head, staring with blurred horror at the wire-rimmed spectacles.
Now, what was she to do with them?
And he’s already seen you sleeping here, ninny.
Mayhap he’d not noticed her. Elizabeth jammed her glasses into place, and the bed squealed at the abrupt movement.
She rolled onto her side and drew in a false, shuddery snort. Silence fell, safe and reassuring, and she counted the passing seconds.
The wide-plank floorboards groaned, indicating Crispin had moved.
Do not be silly. He’s hardly paying any attention to you sleeping here—albeit pretend sleeping.
And why should he? When she’d left him, the buxom beauty had been making eyes at him, one of the scandalous sorts his name had been tangled with through the years. With her back to him, Elizabeth abandoned her pretense of sleep and stared blankly at the shadows dancing on the walls. She had left him and had no right to any resentment—or any feelings, really—about the manner of women he kept company with.
And yet, she hated that a man who’d reveled in books and higher learning had filled his days and evenings with empty pursuits.
What would you have rather it been? That he’d found another peculiar bluestocking with whom he shared something even more meaningful?
She caught her lower lip.
She was as selfish as the day at Mrs. Belden’s was long. For she wished there’d never been anything between him and… any woman. She wished there hadn’t been roguish friends for him to keep company with in depravity and that he’d missed Elizabeth as much as she’d missed him.
And that isn’t your only wish. Scandalously, you yearn to know him in the same way those faceless beauties have.
The urge to flip over and steal another peek at his masculine physique gripped her.
Of course, why shouldn’t she casually roll over onto her opposite side? It would only make the illusion of her slumbering state all the more real. Concentrating on drawing in steady breaths, Elizabeth turned over.
She snored lightly.
Through her lashes, she peeked over. Seated on the oak bench, Crispin tugged off a black boot trimmed in a chestnut leather; the pair of them worth more than all the shoes she’d ever pulled onto her feet at Mrs. Belden’s.
He set the boot parallel to the bench and then reached for his other foot.
She let her eyes open, and wistfully, Elizabeth studied him as he bent his head over his task.
All the ladies at Mrs. Belden’s had tossed their garments or articles haphazardly about their chambers. They’d littered the floors and left the tidying to the respective maids. And if the chambers weren’t set to rights in a manner to please the impossible headmistress, it hadn’t been the young ladies who’d been chastised, but the servants. Too many of them had paid the price with the loss of their position.
Because that had been the world Mrs. Belden had striven to maintain, one where lords and ladies didn’t even have the responsibility of looking after their own garments.
Crispin removed his other boot and rested it neatly beside its mate.
Just then, he glanced up.
Heart racing, Elizabeth slammed her eyes closed.
And snored.
Chapter 10
She snored.
Crispin compressed his lips into a line to keep from giving in to the smile tugging at the corners.
Elizabeth sucked in a shuddery, bleating breath through her nose.
And she pretended—poorly. She’d never been one to put on an act, though.
Unlike the ladies of Polite Society whose company he’d suffered through these years, who’d manufactured everything from their smiles to their seductive come-hither stares, Elizabeth had lacked artifice. And until he’d entered this hired chamber and spied her with her glasses on, staring at him from between her crimson lashes, he’d forgotten just how much he’d missed that candor.
Shoving to his feet, Crispin angled his neck first left and then right, stretching muscles stiff from a long day of riding. He stared contemplatively at the weak fire in the stone hearth. “Fire’s dying,” he muttered.
Crossing over to his trunk, he lifted the unlatched hood and drew out a handful of books. Crispin tucked them under his arm and carried the small pile across the room.
He drew his arm back and made to toss one forward.
“No!” Elizabeth cried, exploding from the bed. Her feet hit the floor with a noisy thump. The white bedsheets tangled around her long limbs, tripping her up. She cursed and pitched forward before quickly catching herself on the edge of the mattress. Frantically ripping the blanketing from her legs, Elizabeth surged across the room and planted herself before him. “I said ‘no,’” she repeated. She glowered up at him with a stare belonging to a woman who’d been born to the role of duchess. “What do you think you are doing?” she cried, settling her hands on her hips, the subtle movement accentuating the slight curve to them, stalling his mind, and stealing his words.
Planted as she was before the fire, the soft glow pierced the fabric of her night shift, and through that thin, cotton fabric, he caught the dusky hue of her—
Elizabeth plucked the book from his hands and then made quick work of taking the others from him.
“The fire is dying,” she muttered to herself, giving her head a hard shake. She stole the last volume from Crispin and grunted under the added burden.
Crispin folded his arms at his chest. “Sleeping, were you?”
Elizabeth went owl-eyed and held the pile protectively close.
He winked once more. “You make it entirely too easy, love.”
Her mouth worked, and then with a toss of her wet curls, she stepped around him. “You are insufferable,” she muttered, returning to the trunk. Lowering herself awkwardly to her knees, she restacked the coveted leather volumes with such tenderness, he scowled.
Who would believe it possible that a man could be envious of a damned book? With feigned disinterest, Crispin dropped an elbow atop the mantel. “You were awake,” he said into the quiet, as a reminder that the moment he’d stepped into the room, she’d been as attuned to his presence as he was to hers.
She’d followed him with her eyes, surreptitiously taking in his every movement. Had it been her natural curiosity that had kept her gaze on him? Or was it something… more?
There was a slight pause before Elizabeth set the last volume down in his trunk. “I could not sleep.”
What accounted for her restlessness? Was he the reason? As soon as the wondering slipped in, he squashed it. What a pathetic fool he proved himself still to be that he wanted that to be the truth.
Elizabeth caught the sides of the lid in her long-fingered grip and made to lower it into place.
“You forgot one,” he said solemnly, briefly halting her efforts before she completed the movement and closed the trunk. Crispin pushed away from the mantel and strode across the room.
She faced him, watching him with guarded eyes.
He stopped at the bed she’d hastily abandoned. Not taking his gaze from hers, he reached for the pillow and removed it.
The small children’s book lay there, the faded crimson cover vividly bright against the white sheets.
Her fingers tangled with the fabric of her night shift.
Crispin rescued the book from the bed and stared at the familiar cover of a book he’d taken out countless times through the years just so he could feel closer to her. Mindful of the worn binding, he opened the small book. “Nothing to say?” He directed that at the interior page where her name had been memorialized in her child’s hand, with his below it.
“You kept it,” she whispered.
“I’m not spitting in your hand, Crispin. Nor am I cutting my palm to make myself bleed. Here, take my book…”
He glanced up and held her stare. “Did you think it didn’t matter to me?” It had been a gift from her. The first she’d given him. “You mattered to me.” And she’d left without a by your leave.
That statement sucked the air from the room and laid bare the unspoken words that had needed to be spoken for years.
Setting the book down, he took a step toward her. “And you abandoned”—me—“our friendship,” he substituted, “to serve in that place. You deserved better than that through the years, Elizabeth.” How he hated that she’d chosen that.
“You would disparage the life I’ve made for myself?” she demanded. “The work I’ve done?”
“I would,” he said automatically, without inflection. Whipping around, he stormed over to the oak bedside table and grabbed the neat pile of books set out. “Decorum for Dancing Debutantes?” He tossed the small leather volume back down.
“Stop it,” she gritted out, stalking over. “I’m not having this discussion with you. Not again.”
“We didn’t have a discussion,” he went on relentlessly. “Curtsying for a Queen… and Other Ceremonious Expressions of Greeting for the Peerage.” He tossed the next book onto the table. He made to hurl the last book and then stopped, studying the tome. Proper Rules of Proper Behavior and Proper Decorum. Crispin lifted it, turning the cover out so the title stared damningly back. “This isn’t the life you wanted,” he said softly to himself as he lay the last incriminating title atop the others.
She compressed her lips into a hard line.
“You don’t deny it.”
“What do you want from me?” she entreated, turning her palms up.
“More than you want for yourself.” He wanted her to engage in the scientific pursuits she so loved and engage in discourse with those who appreciated her mind and the depth of her spirit.
Elizabeth angled away from him, presenting her heart-shaped face in profile as she stared at the door.
Crispin closed the small space between them, and stopping before her, he brushed his knuckles along her jaw, forcing her eyes back. “Don’t,” she begged, but as he dusted his fingers over her silken skin, her eyes briefly closed.
Crispin, however, had waited years to say his piece, words that had shifted when he learned where she’d been and how she’d spent her life without him. “You were the one girl in Oxfordshire who lived life unapologetically, Elizabeth Ferguson.”
She shook her head. “My name—”
“Is Ferguson,” he supplied. For whatever regrets she carried, they were and would be husband and wife, until death did part them. How was it possible for two names to be paired so perfectly together, and yet the owners of them were forever divided? “You were learned and well-read, and you didn’t give a jot about”—he slashed a hand at the cluttered table—“balls and soirees.” All those affairs that were so important to his mother and the harpies she called friends. “And for you”—he roved his gaze over her face—“to simply leave me and our friendship and the life we might have known…” Crispin clenched his jaw. “I thought our friendship was greater than that.”
A sad smile curved her lips. “It was always about friendship.”
“Of course it was,” he shot back. “And you squandered it.”
“We should have never married,” she whispered, and his body jerked. She might as well have run him through.
Ice dusted his spine, and he clung to the far safer fury. “It is too late for those regrets, madam.”
“Yes.” Elizabeth jutted her chin up. “We were doomed the moment we crossed into Wiltshire and said ‘I do’ before a drunken vicar.” The hasty ceremony had been over so quick, he hadn’t even known it had officially begun.
“You are wrong,” he sneered. “We were doomed the day you left, Duchess. You destroyed the friendship,” he charged. “Not me.”
Her throat worked. When she spoke, her words barely reached his ears, and yet, attuned as he’d always been to Elizabeth Brightly, he heard them anyway. “You were better off, Crispin.”
He drew back. “I was better off?” he repeated, shock pulling the query from him. Without her in his life? “That is what you believe?” In her leaving, the one happiness he’d known had been yanked from him.
All earlier hint of fragility lifted, leaving in its place a tensely proud Elizabeth. “It’s what I know.”
It’s what I know.
Warning bells rang in his mind. Faint, but there and refusing to be ignored.
Elizabeth’s lower lip trembled, and she forced her gaze away from his, belying her aloofness.
“Why did you leave?” He drew his arms back, flexing his fingers, more than half fearing her answer, but at last he had spoken the words he’d uttered to himself alone in the privacy of his rooms when the rest of the world slept. Now, he voiced them to the one who’d left a ripped, ragged hole in his heart.
“Oh, come, Crispin,” she said quietly. “You can be bitter and resentful, but at least be honest. Do not pretend my leaving mattered to you.” She made to step around him, but he slid himself in front of her, blocking her escape.
“How can you even say that?” he whispered. “You were my best friend, Elizabeth. You were my wife.”
With a soft cry, she tossed her hands up. “I was the wife you never wanted.” Her voice pinged around the rooms, robbing him of his indignation. Several night birds slumbering in the oak outside went into panicky flight, abandoning their nests in favor of the night sky.
“What?” He stared at her, trying to make sense of that statement. How could she think—?
“You didn’t want me,” she charged, hurt dripping from her tone.
Crispin scoffed. “Of course I wanted you.” She was the only person he’d truly yearned for in his life.
She laughed, the sound pitched and devoid of mirth. Warning bells went off; filling him with unease. “‘I know it was a mistake, Father,’” she tossed back.
His breath lodged in his chest as understanding dawned at last.
Just like that, the past came whirring back in a rush of sound in his ears. His own carelessness was now laid before him as a sin. Elizabeth, the woman he’d held to blame all these years, was exonerated, and he was left the guilty party, deserving of her rage. My God. He scraped a shaky hand through his hair.
“It is done, Father. And regardless of how you feel about her or our marriage, it will not… It cannot be changed.”
Crispin’s stomach lurched. Those had been words meant to appease his furious father and godfather. There’d never been even a hint of truth buried in them. “I didn’t mean,” he began hoarsely. “I didn’t,” he tried again.
“‘I know she’s not the ideal bride,’” she went on, relentless. “‘That I’d be better served by a match with Lady Dorinda.’” He flinched. With every word she repeated, he stared down his own treachery. Telling her they’d been empty assurances meant to appease two powerful dukes ready to come to blows over Crispin’s decision would change nothing. They only marked him for the coward who’d sought peace at all costs—including at the cost of his friendship. “‘There can be no undoing it.’” Elizabeth’s voice faltered, and she breathed into existence th
e hated words he’d uttered long ago. “‘It is done.’”
He shook his head, his lips moved, but no words came out. “I didn’t… I don’t…” He stretched a hand toward her, but then let it fall to his side. “How…?” What was there to say? That he’d merely sought to preserve peace between his family and the Duke of Hardwicke? Neither had been more important than she was, but he’d allowed her to believe as much.
Elizabeth hugged herself in a lonely embrace. “I heard you,” she said tiredly. “So do not pretend you wanted”—she slashed a hand between them—“this. Or anything more, Your Grace.”
Crispin sank onto the edge of the bed. The lumpy mattress squeaked under the burden of his weight. “I did,” he whispered. All these years, he’d blamed her. He’d yearned for her. Only to find, in the end, that his own cowardice and folly had cost him the future he’d desperately longed for with her.
It had only ever been her.
*
With his stricken expression and his ashen skin, Elizabeth could almost believe the lie.
She could believe he’d missed her and wanted a future with her. And mayhap she would have if she hadn’t overheard the argument between him and his father.
With the fight leaving her, Elizabeth sank onto the mattress beside him. Drawing her knees up, she looped her arms around them. Her skin burned from the piercing intensity of his stare upon her.
Elizabeth dropped her cheek atop her knees. She’d not thought of that night in so long. She’d not allowed herself to.
“What I said to my father, Elizabeth,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean any of it. I didn’t feel those things.”
“And yet, you said them, Crispin.” Elizabeth looked at him, holding his gaze. As a woman who’d first set off on her own, she’d been filled with resentment. Now, she was a woman grown, and his rejection hurt still, but she could not hold him responsible for what he’d felt… or rather, what he’d not felt for her. “Within every statement made, there is a shred of truth,” she said gently.
He flinched. “There was no truth in what I said,” he said again.
Elizabeth gave him a sad smile. “You’ve changed so much.” At that unexpected shift in discourse, he stiffened, and a question glinted in his eye. “Your hair”—she briefly brushed those locks she’d once shorn with a scissors when they’d been experimenting children—“is longer. Your frame…” Her gaze went to the swath of naked skin, his broad shoulders, the light mat of tight black curls upon his muscular chest. She swallowed hard. “Is different. You’re a rogue.” With legions of lovers all over London. Her foolish heart spasmed. “And yet, so much about you is unchanged.” Lest he spy the misery that realization cost her, Elizabeth glanced over at his trunk. “Your reading is the same. And the way you neatly organize your articles by color, with those articles a cushion for the books that are really your prized possessions.”