“We are old friends,” she admitted. What was the point in keeping it secret now? “I’m sure you’ve enjoyed a great deal of private amusement over the idea of me being your cousin.”
His eyes danced with glee, but the sight just made her feel worse. “Can you blame me? I arrive at my perennially deserted hunting box to find a lovely stranger staying here and claiming to be my cousin.”
“Why didn’t you expose me right away?”
“Because I was intrigued by you, of course.” He paused. “More than intrigued.”
She realized that she was clutching her glass far too tightly and put it on the table and stood up, needing to put space between them. And to think that only minutes before, she’d been trying not to hope he’d steal another kiss. With his seductive manner and the wine, she guessed that he’d intended to entice her into doing something far more foolish than kissing.
This was all a game to him. She had no right to object, considering how she’d tricked him, but she’d thought she knew him better.
She moved to the hearth and leaned a little on the mantel. Her charade was exposed. She would have to leave and accept whatever future could be scrabbled together, which might mean marrying the baron after all. Though even as the idea formed, she knew that she would not. She would never go back to being a woman who could accept such a thing.
But it had been foolish to believe that she might change her future into something wonderful.
“Please accept my apologies for imposing myself on your household. It was unforgivable of me. I’ll be gone first thing in the morning.”
He stood and drew closer. “Claire, I didn’t bring all this out in the open to drive you away. I spoke because I want honesty between us. I want nothing but what’s real between us, and what’s real is that I’m glad you came to Foxtail—I would never have met you otherwise.”
Her brows drew down. “How could you possibly be glad that I tricked you?”
“Because,” he said quietly, “I don’t feel tricked.” He glanced down and reached for her hand, and she let him take it, though surely it was a mistake to do so. And yet, his manner and words were not at all what she would have expected, and she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to know what he would say.
His fingers were strong and masculine, and despite knowing that they must routinely wield a quill to sign important documents and hold the most costly of crystal glasses, they still made her think of the blacksmith’s hammer. Rowan was a physically powerful man, and he was also a duke. Everything about him was strength and power.
“From the first moment I saw you, Claire Beckett, you’ve done something to me.”
She had not expected such words, nor the huskiness coloring his deep voice. For the first time since he’d exposed her ruse, she felt a glimmer of hope. “I have?” Could it really be possible that he felt as powerfully drawn to her as she did to him?
He leaned closer, his dark eyes holding hers. “I need to touch you, and everything in me has been burning with one question: Do you need to touch me too?”
He fascinated her, he made her heart beat faster, she felt things with him that she’d never felt before. Of course she needed to touch him.
How could she, in this moment, say anything but the truth? “Yes.”
“I want you,” he said.
Just like that, in his direct way. He was stating his desire to lie with her. He knew that she’d lied about her identity, and he’d doubtless guessed that she was of the kind of minor gentry with whom the Duke of Starlingham would never normally consort.
He was the Duke of Starlingham.
But he’d been Rowan to her first, and he was still Rowan. She’d known him as a man first and not a duke, and that man had made her feel things she’d never felt before. He’d made her want things.
Wanting wasn’t love. He wasn’t speaking to her of love, but of physical desire. She desired him too.
He was a man from a world vastly above her own, and after she left Foxtail—as she must surely do the following day—she would never see him again.
But would she ever have the chance again to experience what was between them, to explore their inexpressible connection and this potent desire?
Now would be her only chance.
For years she’d refused to acknowledge that she had needs and wants, but she’d come to understand that to ignore her deepest feelings was to chip away at the full unfolding of the person she was meant to be.
Now was her chance to take what she wanted, and she wanted him.
* * *
Rowan whispered a silent prayer of gratitude that Claire hadn’t yet thrown him out. He’d gambled, coming to her room as he’d done, and revealing that he knew her secret. If she was indifferent to him, surely she would have sent him away by now, and his chances would have been finished. Or at least that was what he was telling himself.
How had she become so dear to him in such a short time? He was utterly infatuated with her. But no, that wasn’t the whole truth. He wanted far more than some sort of affair. It was funny: He’d been attracted to Maria—a woman he’d known, or thought he’d known, for his whole life—but what he felt for Claire, whom he’d known only for days, was entirely different. It was wilder, messier, and more real. And impossible to resist.
He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Her skin was nearly unbearably soft. Her eyes regarded him steadily.
“Yes,” she whispered, and his heart soared.
Leaning closer, he brushed her lips with his own, gently tasting her, coaxing her lips to part, and when they did, tasting her more deeply as he’d longed to do. Her mouth welcomed him with heat and moist skin, and their breaths mingled in the closeness.
One of her hands settled against the bare skin of his neck, and his own came on top of it, pressing her closer still. He slipped her robe off her shoulders and untied the strings at the neck of her night rail. She looked at him, her eyes never wavering, as she stepped out of it. She stood naked to him in the firelight, which shone in her golden hair and paid homage to the loveliness of her slender, feminine body.
“I have never seen anything more beautiful, Claire, than you are right now.”
Her eyelids dropped lower for a moment as though she was suddenly shy, but then she lifted her chin and smiled pertly up at him, and his heart thrilled with that joy only she could bring.
She loosened his shirt, and he drew it over his head and removed his trousers. They stood before each other completely naked. Her eyes traveled down his body and widened a little as they took in the evidence of his desire. He’d been naked with women many times before, but this was different. He’d never before wanted a woman to see him.
“Have you ever—” he began, but she stopped him with a finger against his lips.
“It is my choice,” she said. “Let’s not talk about practicalities. We are together here now, only for this. For what is between us.”
He touched the elegant curve of her shoulder, his hand moving along the warm silk of her skin to cup her breast. Heat rose in him, and she quivered as he stroked his thumb over her nipple.
“Rowan,” she whispered. He kissed her, their mouths meeting in tenderness and desire.
She was likely a virgin, and he would take her virginity tonight if she wanted to give it to him. But he would allow himself this only because he wanted to offer her everything. She was the woman he wanted to marry.
He took her hand and led her to the bed, and they lay down facing each other. He traced the lush mount of her hips and the valley of her waist and kissed her breasts, and she moaned, a quiet, husky sound that made him feel at once deeply carnal and also tenderly protective of what she was entrusting to him. She explored his chest, his shoulders, his hips. Her touch gained sureness, and her hand lingered over his erection. He burned for her.
Gently he urged her onto her back and slid his hand along the smooth skin between her thighs to touch that most secret part of her body. She was wet and hot, and
he pleasured her until the shiver in her breathing told him she was ready.
He nudged her legs wider and moved between them. At her entrance, he paused to look in her eyes.
“Oh,” she whispered. Her eyes were liquid and vulnerable, her skin glowing with a light that was more than fire glow. “Please come to me, Rowan.”
He pushed into her steadily, met the resistance of her maidenhood, and thrust through it. He paused, but she made no indication that the moment had brought her pain and instead drew her legs up against him to urge him on.
He stroked into her, the bliss unimaginable yet made only more exquisite as she responded to him, her breath quickening and her legs tightening around him.
She found her release with a little cry that caught in her throat. He thrust into her a few final times until, overcome with a radical new pleasure—a pleasure that was far more than simple enjoyment but an opening to a territory beyond—he jerked himself from her body to spend his release on her belly.
A few moments later, he rolled to the side and located his handkerchief, which he handed to Claire before settling back under the sheets. After she had tidied herself, he slid his arm under her shoulders and kissed her cheek.
* * *
Almost as soon as her skin began to cool, regret settled over Claire like a blanket of snow. What had she done?
“I guessed it would be amazing between us, but my imagination has been put to shame, sweet.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll have to move out of Foxtail now, so I can court you properly. And I’ll have to figure out some way to explain why I’ve been concealing my identity from everyone here.”
Claire’s stomach dropped. He was talking about the future, about courting her. About the reality that he was a powerful duke whose movements were of great interest to many. The heat of the moment had allowed her to forget who she was, but the very idea of being courted by a duke—a title that allowed a man to ignore the word no—was a splash of much-needed icy water.
She pushed herself up against the headboard, pulling the blanket up to cover herself.
“You don’t need to court me. There is no need.”
“No need?” he said in a puzzled voice, moving to sit next to her. He rested his head lazily against the headboard and smiled. “Of course there’s a need. Never mind that it’s exactly what I want to do.”
She wished it didn’t have to be this way—that he could just leave now and they wouldn’t have to say another word to each other. That they wouldn’t have to discuss any of what they’d done. It would have been the easiest thing, though even as she told herself that, she knew it was a lie. Nothing about this entanglement of emotions was going to be easy.
“This was very nice—” she began, meaning to frame what they’d done in a way that would let them move past this moment, but he interrupted her.
“Nice?” he said, something dark creeping into his voice.
“It was very pleasurable,” she tried again, feeling off-kilter. She drew her legs up and leaned forward, hugging them to herself, needing to close herself off from the powerful pull he exerted over her. “But it was still a mistake. A foolish mistake on my part. Could… could you leave now, please?”
Nothing from him but silence for long moments. She didn’t turn to look at him.
“Do you mean to suggest that I seduced you? Is this the moment when you regret that you didn’t say no?”
“Of course not. I wanted to do what we did. But it was just momentary lust, and there is no need for there to be anything further.” It hurt to say such words—it hadn’t been only desire that had made her step into his arms. But she couldn’t afford to listen to the foolish, vulnerable part of her that wanted a man who was wrong for her. Did she need any more evidence of her own weakness than what she’d done tonight?
When he didn’t reply, she finally glanced over her shoulder. He looked dangerous.
“I don’t believe you,” he said roughly, crossing his arms. “This is just you being contrary.”
“That’s just it, Rowan. I’m not contrary at all.” Needing whatever distance she could claim, she turned away from him again. Her eyes settled on the outline of her toes pushing up the blanket where she’d pulled it across her feet. She’d never even taken off her shoes in the presence of a man who was not a relative before, and this man had seen and touched all of her. And it had all started because of that game she and Louisa had dreamed up.
“I’m not bold, and I never do things like I just did tonight. It was out of character for me, just as it was out of character for me to be contrary toward you, as I was almost as soon as I met you.”
Though she wasn’t looking at him, she could feel, in the heaviness of the silence he allowed to drag out, the ducal disapproval rolling off him. “You’re not making any sense, Claire.” His voice was firm. “I like you, you like me—I don’t see a problem with our being together. In fact, I think our mutual liking means we ought to be together.”
She needed to put more space between them, so she got up and pulled on her dressing gown. He watched her from the bed with an unreadable expression. “That’s because you’re a duke and you’re used to ordering people around. If I spent any more time with you, I’d soon be just one more person you were dominating.”
His brow plummeted toward dark eyes that had turned stormy. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve done nothing but order me about since you arrived.”
“And you resisted me at every turn!”
“It was a game.”
“A game?” He sounded genuinely confused.
“Something Louisa and I devised to cure me of a tendency I had developed of being too agreeable.”
“An unusual undertaking,” he bit off. “Yet, considering the difficulty I’ve had getting you to agree even to pass me the butter at breakfast, I’d say the game was a success.”
She shook her head. “That’s just it—it was only a game. I know myself, and I know my weaknesses. If you and I spent more time together, things between us would only become unbalanced.”
He stood and drew near her. “You’re not giving yourself enough credit, Claire.” His tone was reasonable but firm, as though he believed that she was just about to see things his way. “You claim to know yourself, but you don’t seem to have much faith in yourself. Do you really think I would have been so drawn to you if you were as weak-willed as you seem to think you are?”
She sighed, wishing he would just accept what she’d said. “Have you considered that the very reason you wanted me is that men love the chase? I have three brothers, Rowan. I know how men are.”
Haughtiness settled over his features. He was a man accustomed to ordering things exactly as he wished, and she reminded herself that that quality would make him want to order her life as well, even though she knew she was being a little unfair to him. He was a good man. But he was also a man who didn’t know what it was like to be powerless.
“You’re unfamiliar with how I am,” he ground out, “if you think I can’t make up my own mind about what I want.” He reached for her hand, enclosing it in his much larger one.
“What’s between us is just attraction, Rowan. It’s powerful, but it’s not the stuff of everyday life. People can be attracted to each other—very attracted—but also be a bad match.” Though she loved the strength and comfort of his touch, she reclaimed her hand and crossed her arms, needing to seal herself off from him and what he wanted her to accept.
A growl slipped past his lips. “What is it about me that makes you think we’re a bad match?”
“It’s not you…”
He gave her a dark look.
“Very well, it is you—and me. Rowan, I’ve spent the last few years of my life living like a ghost, meekly making myself into a woman who did just as she was asked. Coming here to Foxtail has given me the space to think a little, and what I’ve discovered is that I don’t want to tie my life to a man who might overwhelm me.�
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He shoved a hand in his hair. “What are you talking about? Why would I overwhelm you? I care for you.”
She could feel his frustration, feel how much he wanted things to be other than the way they were, and maybe that feeling—that capacity for empathy—was one of the reasons she’d come to ignore her own needs in favor of what other people wanted. Even now, with all she’d learned, she had to force herself not to give in to what he wanted from her—but then, was it surprising that because she cared for him so much, she was at the greatest risk of all with him? Capitulating to what someone else wanted from her would be the death of her hopes for herself, though, and she couldn’t do it.
“I’m sure my father cares for me too. But I’ve seen how ready I am to diminish myself in the company of fierce people, and I know it’s sensible not to put myself in such a situation.”
“This is nonsense,” he said, his voice hard with anger. “Look at yourself: You’ve stood up to me just now, even though I’m trying to press you into marrying me. Which you want to do anyway.”
“I’m not going to change my mind, Rowan.”
She heard the sound of teeth grinding. “Am I to understand that despite what just happened between us, you want nothing further from me?”
“Yes.”
His eyes held hers for long moments, dark eyes that seemed to penetrate to her very soul. When he spoke, the anger was gone from his voice, leaving only the deep tones she’d come to cherish, and now that was worse. “I’m not looking for a mistress, Claire, if that’s what you think. I have far more serious intentions.”
He meant marriage. She had to push down a nearly hysterical laugh at the idea of being married to the Duke of Starlingham. “You’re a gentleman, and I understand that you feel constrained by a sense of honor. But I just need you to go.”
He didn’t say another word, and she looked away as he collected his things and left, closing the door quietly after himself.
Chapter Seven
Dukes In Disguise Page 32