To Redeem a Rake (The Heart of a Duke Book 11)

by Christi Caldwell

  His words hit her like a fist to the belly and she glanced down at her skirts. Of course, he’d never dare countenance that she, the prim, proper spinster hired to aid his sister, had, in fact, been the naïve miss he accused her of being. And that naiveté had seen her stripped of her virginity in a night of folly. Daphne forced her gaze back to his and found him watching her; the harsh, angular planes of his face set in an inscrutable mask. “Tell me about your profligacy, then, Daniel. Tell me so I can know.” And stop seeing good where there, in fact, was none.

  He furrowed his brow. It was a remarkable slip in that impressive composure.

  “Do you meet widows in alcoves?”

  “Yes,” he said instantly.

  Why did her heart twist at the rapidity of his reply and the images evoked with that single syllable utterance? “Do you bed other men’s wives?”

  “Undoubtedly.” He gave her one of those mirthless half-grins, his pearl white teeth flashing bright in the darkened room. “Sometimes two at the same time.”

  Disappointment flooded her, filling her with a regret she didn’t wish to feel. “And do you dally with debutantes? Offer them pretty words so you might be the first to bed them?” she forced herself to ask.

  Daniel chuckled. “I’d never be so gauche as to bother with a virgin.” He winked. “Entirely too much work for me.”

  The tightness in her chest. Yes, Daniel was so quick to present himself as an unrepentant rake. While he might toss around flippant replies about virginal debutantes, his answer stood as proof. “I don’t care what your father thought in his misery and grief, or what you’ve spent these years shaping yourself into. There is good in you,” she said gently. Whether he chose to see it or failed to acknowledge it, it was there. And it gave her hope for the boy he’d once been and the man he could still be.

  Why had he divulged those details about his father? Words he’d never shared with anyone.

  Mayhap because when he was with her, Daphne didn’t fawn or preen over him the way bored ladies of the ton did. Rather, she treated him as she always had, with a frank directness that knew no boundaries or bounds. And when was the last time anyone called Daniel Winterbourne, good?

  Certainly not his father, who’d wished him dead too many times to count. Nor his departed mother, who had ceased seeing him after Alistair’s drowning. Nor the rakes he kept company with. And yet, he’d found the last, solitary soul in the whole kingdom who believed there was good in him, insisted on it even after he’d admitted such scandalous things to her. Words not fit for any respectable lady’s ears.

  Foolish chit.

  He’d even less of a desire to sit here, disabusing her of her foolish notions, than he had of a meaningful discussion on St. Albans’ worries about him. Pocketing his flask, Daniel shoved to his feet. “I will allow you to your reading, madam,” he said brusquely, sketching a bow. He’d rather lob off his left arm with a dull blade than sit here, resurrecting the memories of his youth.

  Daphne inclined her head, but remained in repose. “My lord.” She did not stand. Rather, she sat, precisely as she’d been since he’d poked his head in the room and found her here.

  Just go, damn it. Go seek out your rooms and drink your brandy. He narrowed his eyes on her face, taking in details that had previously escaped him. The tense lines at the corner of her mouth. The strain around her eyes.

  Then the truth slammed into him, briefly robbing him of breath.

  She is hurt.

  Even after her injury, he’d only ever seen her as the strong-willed girl he’d called friend. He’d never seen limitations because, well, there could never be limitations with Daphne Smith. Her spirit would never allow for it. Yet, here she sat, motionless from an old injury and he didn’t know what to do with the realization.

  Daphne angled her chin up another notch, all but daring him to voice that discovery aloud. She was as bold and proud as she’d been the day he’d come upon her at the edge of the lake, her leg broken.

  With a sigh, Daniel reclaimed his seat.

  “What are you—?”

  “How long have you been down here?” he interrupted.

  “I don’t…” He leveled her with a single look and her words trailed off. “Several hours.”

  By God, she’d always been stubborn. “How many is several?” he asked impatiently.

  Daphne lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Four.”

  He cursed roundly.

  “But I do enjoy your library,” she said on a rush.

  Daniel swiped her forgotten copy from the arm of the chair. “Oh, yes,” he said dryly. “There is so much to enjoy.” He wagged the aged leather volume before her face. “Colebrooke’s, A Grammar of the Sanskrit Language, I take is quite riveting?” It remained one of the several hundred titles not carted off by the auctioneers who’d systematically emptied his library shelves.

  She shifted in her seat. “It really is fascinating stuff.”

  “Even more so, if you read German,” he said, his lips twitching. “Have you acquired a grasp of the German language since we last met?”

  Daphne pressed her lips together. “No,” she managed to push that denial out through them, anyway.

  Setting aside all teasing, Daniel tossed the book aside where it landed on the floor with a loud thump. “You’re hurt.” Something in breathing aloud that somber charge, knifed at his chest.

  “It is nothing,” she said quickly.

  He thinned his eyes all the more. She’d always been a rotted liar.

  With an exasperated sigh, she hurled her arms up. “My leg hurts, is all.”

  He trailed his gaze down her slender frame and he lingered his stare on those lower limbs expertly concealed by her dress. A desire to tug the fabric back for reasons that moved beyond the sexual, gripped him.

  “I promise, I am fine. I’ll be able to see to my responsibilities in the morning,” she rushed to assure him.

  The air froze in his chest. “You believe I’d remove you from your responsibilities because of your leg?” He clenched his jaw. The fire’s glow bathed her in light, emphasizing the color that filled her cheeks in a damning testament to that very fact. Hurt stabbed somewhere inside his chest. Hurt and a slow-building anger. He fixed on the anger, the anger was safer. “Hardly speaks to the good you still see in me,” he sneered.

  Her lips turned down at the corners. “Of course, I do not believe you’d send me away,” she said with such matter-of-factness, she knocked him off-kilter. “Not without references.” At that weak attempt at humor, she gave him a sheepish grin.

  He sat there in mute silence and her smile faded. Why should it shock or surprise him that everyone, including this woman, had such an ill-opinion of him? They were right for those opinions. Yet it frayed on a jagged nerve he’d not known or felt—until now.

  Daphne turned her palms up. “I believe in your effort to spare me from overexerting myself, you’d absolve me of certain tasks. I do not wish to be treated differently, Daniel. I want to be like every other companion, able to work without assistance. I want to be the way I was.”

  That person had died at the lakeside under the rain-dampened leaves, long, long ago, just as who he’d once been had ceased to exist. “You’ll never be that woman, here,” he said quietly, touching her legs. She jerked as though he’d struck her. Did she see herself as inferior? Having liked the man he was of his youth far more than the man he’d become, he could appreciate that. Daphne, however, had not changed. Not truly. “But you remain the same woman you always were here,” he touched a fingertip to her forehead. “And here,” he pressed a palm briefly to her heart and stilled. Of its own volition, his gaze fell to his hand upon her, with only the thin fabric of her gown a barrier between them. All he needed to do was move slightly and he’d cup that delicate—

  “You don’t know that.” Her challenge emerged breathless. Her eyes turbulent with unidentified emotion cut across the haze of desire clogging his senses.

  He yanked his finge
rs back. By God, if ever there was a doubt of his rakish reputation, lusting after Daphne was proof of his wickedness. “Don’t I?” he challenged, winging an eyebrow up. “The girl who challenged me to races and fights is now a woman who’d storm my estate and demand I be a decent brother.” An impossible task, as there was nothing decent about him. “And you’re strong enough to make your way in the world.” Of all the ladies of his acquaintance, she was the only one who’d beg for references and not baubles.

  At the sudden adoration seeping from her expressive eyes, he recoiled, backing up a step, the moment too real. Unease filled him. He didn’t know what to do with that sincerity. It went against everything and anything he knew or dealt in. To shatter the solemnity of the moment, he waggled his eyebrows. “Plus, I’d never send you away because I’m a selfish enough bastard that I’d never absolve you of your tasks when I have need of your assistance.”

  A shuddery sigh filtered from her lips. Despite his tumult, that whispery exhalation pulled an unwanted grin from him. Of course, only Daphne would react so to those pragmatic words, when every other woman he’d bedded wanted his praise of their beauty. He reached for her leg and she squeaked.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded on a scandalized whisper, all dewy-eyed awe gone.

  “Examining your leg,” he said, easily disentangling her hand from his.

  “You most certainly are not,” she demanded, gripping him by the wrist.

  He made to shrug her off once more, but something in her eyes held him back, froze him. A pleading. Since they’d met as children of five and eight, respectively, she’d been bold and demanding, just as she’d been the woman who’d stormed his manor and put demands to him. Through it all, she’d never been this figure with entreating eyes. “I will not look at it,” he promised, in a gentled tone.

  She eyed him warily and the clock ticked away a long stretch of silence. Then, she gave a slight nod.

  With that, through the muslin fabric, Daniel ran a hand down the expanse of her lower leg.

  Daphne gasped. “Wh-what are you doing? You said—”

  “I promised not to look. I didn’t say I would not touch,” he murmured, stroking the taut, knotted muscles.

  “You cannot… You should not…” Her protestations trailed off as he ran his knuckles in a circular rhythm over her upper thigh.

  God, she must be in agony. It was a testament to that misery that she—now proper Daphne—did not resist his touch. Through the fabric of her out of fashion dress, he rubbed her calf until a little, throaty moan spilled past her lips. This was the first time in the whole of his life that he’d ever stroked or caressed a woman without sexual gratification being the ultimate goal to which they both sought. And oddly, there was a greater intimacy in this moment than any of the hot couplings he’d known.

  “I have never felt anything so exquisite.”

  Did those words belong to Daphne or him? He glanced up from his task and momentarily froze. She sat, with her head hung back, eyes closed, the delicate planes of her face softened in a languid splendor. A bolt of desire worked through him; a hungering from a simple touch, through her frayed skirts, no less.

  She opened her eyes and he swiftly yanked his attention back to her leg. He lifted her skirts ever so slightly and she jumped. “You said, you would not—”

  “Let me rub your leg, Daphne.”

  Indecision raged in her eyes.

  He’d been a rake far longer than he’d been a gentleman and, as such, a master of manipulation and words—it just had always been for his own personal gratification—until now. “Come,” he cajoled. “I’m the same boy who swam naked with you in a lake. There is nothing I’ve not seen.” A shame, he’d not had the proper appreciation to gaze upon her then.

  She flared her eyes. “Daniel,” she whispered, stealing a glance at the closed door. “We were children.”

  “There are no worries of disloyal servants,” he assured. “The majority of my staff was let go due to lack of funds. All that remains are the oldest, who with their advancing years, are all abed, as well as their kin.”

  Daphne caught her lower lip between her teeth, worrying that flesh, and, by hell, if he wouldn’t sell what was left of his black soul just then to taste the same succor. Then, she gave another slight nod.

  Daniel gently raised her skirts, slowly, allowing her time to voice any objection. He lifted his gaze, questioningly. She remained motionless and he resumed his efforts, pushing the fabric up until her lower limb was exposed.

  Silence fell on the room and agony squeezed his chest. The lower limb, improperly set, had left the entire portion below her knee twisted.

  …I’ll never ride again. Or curtsy. Or dance…

  Her child’s voice of long ago, wreathed in pain, echoed around the room as loud as though they were the words whispered in the copse where he’d found her. Had she done those things with the passage of time? Or did the old injury make those movements impossible?

  His throat worked. She’d marched to Mrs. Belden’s and then sought him out. And then marched back home with nothing more than a wooden cane to aid her. God, he was humbled by her strength.

  Aware of her gaze burning a spot into his neck, he proceeded to rub the flesh, working the knots, and then continuing higher.

  “D-Daniel, this is too intimate,” she chided, her voice faintly breathless as she made to push her gown back into place.

  “Bah,” he interrupted. “This isn’t intimate.” He raised his eyes to hers and, never taking them from her face, said, “Touching you here,” he brushed his palm higher up her thigh. The warmth of her leg burned his hand and killed all levity. He forced himself to finish the thought, his tone garbled. “That would be intimate.” What had begun as an attempt at teasing, quickly faded as a charged undercurrent blazed to life. He lingered his hand on the smooth flesh of her thigh and worked his hand higher, stroking his fingertips over her searchingly.

  Her breath hitched loudly as he came up slowly on his knees. His pulse pounded hard in his ears as he drew his hands out from under her skirts. Daphne’s eyes, limpid with desire, searched his face. “Daniel,” she whispered.

  On a groan, he cupped a hand about her neck and availed himself to her lush lips as he’d ached to do since she’d pushed back her hood at Winterbourne Manor. Not bothering with gentility, he plunged his tongue inside her mouth, searching the hot cavern. A low, throaty moan spilled from her and he swallowed that testament of her need.

  She twined her fingers in his hair, bringing her flush to his chest so her small breasts crushed against him. Emboldened, he reached a hand between them and caressed one. He tweaked the erect peak through the fabric of her dress and the bud pebbled all the more under his ministrations. His groan melded with her throaty whimper.

  Fueled by a desperate hungering, Daniel slanted his lips over hers, drowning in the intoxicating taste of mint and chocolate. By God, she tasted of sweetness and innocence and he wanted to lose himself in her. He guided her down and shifted himself over her, never breaking contact with her lips. Working his hand up her legs, he cupped her mound and her hips bucked.

  All these years, he’d disavowed innocence. With Daphne undulating into his hand while he rang little pleading sounds from her lips, he conceded that mayhap there was something to be said for innocence, after all.

  Chapter 11

  At seventeen years of age, Daphne had turned her virginity over to a rogue. She’d known that man in the most intimate ways, joined together in a quick moment. That had seen her willingly divested of that thin bit of flesh and innocent no more.

  And yet, never before, not even in Leopold’s arms for that coupling had she felt…this. This exhilarating blend of pleasure-pain from Daniel’s expert stroking. And more, as he caressed his lips down her cheek, blazing a hot trail with his mouth, lower to her neck, she felt—beautiful.

  Her head fell back involuntarily as she opened herself to his searching. He nipped and sucked at the flesh, grazing his
teeth lightly over her skin, as though he were a primitive warrior branding her as his. And God help her, with all the follies of her past, knowing the dangers in this seductive bliss, she wanted to belong to him.

  “I have wanted to worship you here since you stood in my office,” he breathed hotly against her skin that was moist from his ministrations. “I—”

  Daphne twisted her fingers in his thick chestnut strands and met her mouth with his. She didn’t want words from him. Words that reminded her of all that was wrong in allowing him, nay, needing him to touch her in these ways. She wanted this rapturous wonder to carry on into forever, where all she knew was this burn inside her veins.

  They tangled their tongues in a volatile thrust and parry, exploring one another, and she cried out as he drew his mouth back, but he lowered his head to her chest.

  With deft movements, he slid her bodice down. The night air slapped at her heated skin and a shuddery gasp exploded from her lips as he palmed her right breast. Daniel raised it to his mouth. He closed his lips around the taut, sensitized nipple, drawing it in and suckling.

  “Daniel,” she cried out softly, past the point of shame or fear of discovery.

  Against her chest, his rumble of masculine approval increased her desperate fervor. In the single time she’d lain with a man, he’d given no consideration to her body. There had been only hasty caresses and a mouth used to silence her quiet cries of pain. This slow unfurling inside, that Daniel awakened her to, shattered every belief she’d had about lovemaking.

  Daphne lifted her hips, searchingly, and he placed his hand on her mons. She bit her lower lip and thrust into him, besieged by the realization that he had, in fact, been correct—there was a vast difference between a rake and a rogue. This was it. This caress. This inspired a sense of beauty from a woman who was anything but.

  Daniel palmed her center, with only her shift as the thin barrier between his touch and her body. And in that touch, she could almost believe, wanted to believe, she was…beautiful.

  As though he heard that secret longing, he whispered against her breast, “You are so beautiful, love.”