What she felt was a peculiar anger that the world should ever have treated him thus.
“You were afraid because there was naught you could do for her. And you could only watch her suffer.”
She thought his silence was her answer.
Until he confirmed, “Naught.”
The darkest, bleakest syllable she had perhaps ever heard in her life.
“It was like the day we waited for word of Colin’s death. We did everything we could to save him, to defend him, and still we knew he was going to die. One never feels more like a speck upon the breast of the universe in those moments.”
She felt his finger still on her a moment, as if he was taking it in. She didn’t want him to stop stroking.
“It was the worst day of my life. Worse than the day my son died.”
Chapter 21
She thought for a moment he hadn’t meant to say it. Because he stilled again, as though he’d surprised himself.
“You had a son?” she said softly.
He spoke to the ceiling, but he stroked her arm, finding comfort in the aliveness of her.
“He was just a baby. He was about . . . this big.” He curved his arm in the shape of a baby, and all at once she could see him holding the tiny thing in one arm, and looking down at it, and imagine how he must have felt to be a father.
It knocked the breath from her completely.
“Could fit him in the crook of an arm. He lived a few months. A fever took him.”
His voice was even, very contained. The tone drew boundaries around the words and topic and urged caution: This is all I will say. It was a perilous thing to be a baby in their times; nearly every family she knew had buried a little one too soon. Her own included. There was a gravestone in the churchyard over a brother she’d never known.
“What was his name?” she asked, careful not to ask too gently.
“Gilles. A rather ambitious name for a baby, don’t you think? Gillyflower, she’d called him.” He smiled faintly. His beard was starting up, she noticed. This seemed intolerably poignant, the rakishly disreputable shadow of his whiskers juxtaposed with talk of losing a baby. “He died just a few months before she did.”
She thought her own heart would break. Gillyflower. He’d lost a wife and a baby in the space of a few months.
“What did you call him?”
He looked at her. “Gilles,” he said sternly.
“Of course,” she said. No Gillyflower nonsense for him.
But then he noticed she was studying him.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking. Your eyes have gone all limpid and terribly kind.”
Had they? “What am I thinking?”
“That I’ve gone off the notion of love altogether due to an irretrievably broken heart, and that it has made me a bitter hard man out for vengeance. That I’ve been nursing devastation all this time. But it isn’t like that, you know. Not altogether.”
Drat. She had been rather thinking that. “Everyone thinks you poisoned her.”
“I doubt anyone really thinks that. They just enjoy saying it. People like to be frightened and they like to make myths. Who am I to deprive them of that pleasure?”
“Don’t you mind? Couldn’t you put a stop to it?” She was indignant on his behalf.
“What could I have done? It’s absurd to defend something that cannot be proven. I’ve never been a merry sort though I’m hardly truly dour. And after she died I quite simply wanted to be alone. I grieved. The gossip suited me, and it suited me to be fearsome, because then a path was cleared away from me. No one bothered me which meant I didn’t need to deflect pity, which I can’t abide. And then . . . well, I quite grew to like it, frankly. I can see from your expression you were hoping for a different answer.”
He, as usual, had laid waste to preconceived notions.
“I have a certain mystique. I’ve a good deal of influence and money. One or two friends who aren’t servants.” He smiled again, dryly.
“But nobody likes you.” She meant nobody in the ton, she supposed. This was the accepted wisdom.
“Oh, ‘nobody’ is an exaggeration. You do.”
She smiled slowly. This amused her. As if she was enough. The Everseas were astonishingly wealthy and possessed significant influence, as well. But they weren’t dukes, and she was a youngest daughter.
Though the King did like to proffer titles to the Everseas and Redmonds and then snatch them away, as he’d just done when he’d styled the new Earl of Ardmay. The King derived perverse entertainment from watching the Everseas and Redmonds genteelly battle for prestige the way two cats danced for a dangled kipper.
“Not everyone is you, Genevieve. And needs to be liked. Or to be tremendously careful about what they say or do. Controlling yourself isn’t going to control the world around you.”
This turned her smile into a frown.
“Is this careful?” She swept a hand over their nude abandon.
“No, but you’ve me to thank for it. It isn’t something you would have considered . . . fomenting, shall we say. From a kiss on the hand.”
Good heavens, but she was sorry she’d ever told him about the kiss on the hand.
“But I came to find you.”
He smiled a slow, lazy, satisfied smile. “So you did.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Do you think me cold?” he asked suddenly. It sounded like a serious question.
Did he really care? How could a man who turned her into flame be cold? But she did give it some thought. She found his unapologetic honesty compelling, intimidating, hard. Like breathing the cleanest cold air. Tremendously, strangely freeing.
She laid her hand flat over his chest. Crisp curling hair, warm skin stretched over hard muscle, a few scars where war and life had got to him, a heart that thumped beneath her hand, a body that stirred and fiercely demanded when she touched him, a heart that had loved unequivocally, had been battered by loss. He did everything passionately, with single-minded intent. He was a man one could trust with one’s life if he was loyal to you. A man to fear if he was not.
“No. Not cold at all.”
He surprised her. Gently, he laid his hand over hers.
Your hand is unconscionably soft, Miss Eversea.
For a moment, his chest rose and fell beneath her hand. It felt almost more intimate than the lovemaking itself, and she was uncertain whether to take it away, or whether she wanted to. It was this push-and-pull she’d felt from the moment she’d met him.
What was he thinking?
Had he lain just like this alongside his wife?
“And I didn’t turn to stone overnight. I’ve always been rather stubborn and I’m unlikely to change. There’s naught wrong with money, with power, or with a little fear inspired by respect or respect inspired by fear. I’m not a very nice man, but I don’t care. I don’t have to care.” He stretched luxuriously, taking his hand away from hers. “I’m a duke.”
This made her smile. And shake her head.
“As for everything else said about you . . . have you dueled?”
“Yes.”
She propped herself on her elbow and looked down, aghast.
“Oh, now. One can hardly reach adulthood without fighting a duel!”
“One can,” she objected. “Harry can.”
“Oh, Harry can,” he repeated, rolling his eyes.
More silence.
She wondered at the etiquette of mentioning Harry while she was stretched alongside another man. But somehow she didn’t suppose this lovemaking was a betrayal of Harry, given that Harry intended to betroth himself to another woman.
Until he came to his senses, of course. Which he seemed to be doing. As the man next to her was helping Harry to see her in the necessary light.
And in this she fancied herself very modern. It wasn’t a notion she would ever have entertained before the appearance of the duke. Love and desire do not necessarily always coincide, he’d said, and
as it turned out, it was true.
“Was she beautiful?” She meant his wife.
“Was she beautiful?” He repeated this question almost scornfully, sounding amused. As though he’d expected it. He shook his head. “How like a woman to ask that question! I don’t know.”
“You don’t know! But you were married to her!”
He shifted away from her, very, very subtly. “That is to say, I suppose she was. Of course she was. Ah, Miss Eversea.” He was laughing at her again when he glanced up and saw her expression. “So sorry to disappoint you, but you want to know the color of her eyes and hair and all about her ruby lips and the like and because you’re a woman you want to know whether you are more beautiful. I found her beautiful, and that’s all that matters. And it’s less about how she appeared. Because that’s all a bit misty for me now, and her miniature doesn’t do her justice. Does anyone’s miniature do them justice?”
She shook her head somberly.
“It’s everything she . . . well, everything she was.”
He said it evenly, but his voice went quieter and he turned over onto his back. He didn’t want to look at her when he said these things, apparently.
And she was coming to know that when things were important he didn’t trust his eyes not to reveal it. He looked away instead.
Control, indeed.
She would honor it.
“Beauty has so much less to do with that than women know. With curly hair and the like,” he said suddenly. He glanced sideways at her; the corner of his mouth twitched wickedly, and he got hold of one strand of her stubbornly straight hair and drew it out, pensively. “The greatest pleasure of my life was knowing I kept her safe and happy while she lived. I looked at her and thought ‘beautiful,’ and likely I would have thought the very same thing when we were seventy. But it’s all quite distant now.”
He interpreted her silence as confusion or skepticism. She was, in fact, mulling what he’d said.
“Truly,” he insisted.
She reflected on men. “Did you love her?”
“I wonder if Harry enjoys being interrogated. He is welcome to you, if so. Yes. I loved her.”
“Did you know straightaway?”
A curious hesitation. “Yes.”
“And Lady Abigail . . .”
“Well, yes. If you’re going to ask all of the same questions, I do believe she’s beautiful. I’d planned to do my best to love her. And that’s all one can really do. I shall find someone else,” he said on a yawn. “Oh, perhaps Millicent, once Harry comes to his senses and discovers his devotion is all to you.”
She was aghast on his behalf.
“That’s all you can really do? Love selects you, Moncrieffe, not the other way around. Harry is my best friend, and I’ve loved him for as long as I’ve known the meaning of love, from the moment we’ve met. I cannot imagine life without him. What more can I ask from happiness?”
“As long as you’ve known the meaning of love,” he repeated slowly, as if she amused him. “What more can you ask, indeed. Since you’re an expert on what it is to love. I don’t imagine passion ought to play a role in a marriage.” He was mocking her. He drew a gently, possessive, also somewhat mocking finger down the inside of her arm, along the faintest blue vein, just to watch the gooseflesh rise.
“I’m certain he’s passionate. He definitely expresses himself passionately with regards to art and poetry.”
“And you know all of that from a kiss on the hand. And vehement conversations about Italian artists.”
“It was an excellent kiss.” It was barely a kiss, she now knew. Still, she’d cherished it for a very long time and wasn’t about to relinquish the notion now.
“How do you know you didn’t like that kiss simply because you like to be kissed?”
Well. Another excellent question.
“I thought all men arrived in the world with . . . this sort of knowledge.” She swept a hand about their bodies again. “Or perhaps . . . oh, learned it at White’s.”
His expression was comically aghast.
“My dear, you’re the beneficiary of much of my knowledge, and I can assure you that you do not want to know how I arrived by it, as it was hardly remotely as genteel as White’s. Not all of my teachers, shall we say, would be accepted into polite society. Harry is far too decent a lad to have . . . availed himself of the same teachers.”
He was talking about whores, she was certain. Or actresses.
Shocking.
Intriguing.
But his voice had become promisingly low and pensive, and on the word “teachers” he tipped on his side. Their faces were inches apart now, and he traced her lips with one finger, lightly, lightly, then placed his lips there as if he’d drawn them into being. Softly his fingers skimmed up her rib cage to her breasts. He cupped each of them in his hands, and ducked his head to close his lips over her nipple, and gently, gently suck.
“God,” she murmured.
“Do you want me again, Genevieve?”
She couldn’t speak. Of course she did. She just didn’t want to discuss it.
“You will,” he promised on a whisper.
She wrapped her arms around him the better to hold him close as he came for a kiss. All the textures of his mouth were compelling; he knew so many ways to kiss, and each of them ultimately devastated her. She felt his cock swelling and growing harder, nestling against her belly, and this gratified and excited her, because he’d had various exotic teachers and yet he wanted her very, very much. She threw a leg over him to press her body against him. She was already wet with wanting.
Yes, she wanted him. She was a wanton, apparently.
“Wait.” He tipped her over onto her back, rose up over her, and she watched as his beautiful body rose up and covered her. She arched up, opened her legs to accommodate him, as he guided himself into her. So thick and hard and shockingly masculine.
She gasped when he was deeply seated.
But then he lowered himself over her and with languid, graceful ease rolled the two of them so that they faced each other. And side by side, legs entangled, he moved inside her. His hips rocked almost languorously; they rippled together like a flame. Their eyes locked. Their mouths met and parted, caressed and left each other in distraction, as pleasure banked in each.
“I want to watch you come,” he whispered against her mouth. “I want you to watch me come.”
It was so coarse and shockingly intimate, and it ought to have appalled her, she supposed, but it was frantically erotic.
She understood his temptation to turn away when he revealed something important, for she felt—she knew—he could see right through her, had penetrated her body and her mind if not her heart. She felt exposed, raw. But she bravely kept her eyes open; she was both lost and found in the soft, burning depths of his eyes. But their mingled breath became a low roar as release came upon them. His eyes became brilliant and intent and inwardly focused; he was lost to her. She closed hers as her head thrashed back, because she only wanted to feel what was coming upon her, not see, not think. An impulse entirely new. And she was keening from the urgent press of her release, which came from everywhere in her body, roared toward escape like a molten river. He knew his was upon him, too. She was arching against him, shattering into bliss and he drew himself from her body with a gasp.
He came against her belly, his release wracking him almost brutally, her name—his new hallelujah—on his lips.
The hands of the clock were on the one and the six. His eyes were closed. Hers were open. She watched his eyelashes shuddering. He looked a decade younger and limp with bliss.
“The thing is, now you expect it to be like this always,” he said suddenly.
Like “this.” Like exiting your body prematurely for Heaven and crashing back to the earth like a falling star, brilliant and spent.
The clock face was neatly divided by the gold hands now. He would leave soon.
And she thought she didn’t need to ask what
time of night his wife and baby had died. She was almost certain she knew the answer.
“Isn’t it?” she whispered.
She was suddenly afraid.
He inhaled and folded his arms behind his head, and pressed it into the pillow, and sighed out a breath. She looked into his furry armpit, that achingly splendid curve of his bicep, and marveled at herself for the intimate knowledge she now possessed of him, and how little shame she felt about it. He was quiet, eyes open now and aimed at the ceiling, where the shadows of the fire fitfully danced.
And then he tipped over on his side and looked down at her, frowning slightly, as though she were an arithmetic problem.
She was tempted to reach out and gently smooth out the lines around his eyes, wondering if sadness or squinting into the sun or just the inevitable process of growing older had caused them.
She pictured his arm bent in the shape of a baby.
She felt the pain of his loss inside her like a savage hook. She wanted to reach into him and take it out, as though it were shrapnel. But the pain was old to him, and somehow it had become a part of him. He could bear it and speak of it. It had shaped him; he had accommodated it. He had loved and he had lost and it had made him who he was.
But it was new to her. She wanted to cry for him, because she was truly sorry he’d known any pain at all, and she was angry, too, and didn’t know why. Life was, quite simply, unfair. It killed wives and babies, it made young men long to propose to the wrong women.
A line for his wife, a line for his baby, and a line for . . .
Pure contrariness.
The ones that appeared about his mouth when he smiled she liked very much.
She would never say this to him aloud. At least not yet. But she suspected he was wrong about love. Very wrong. He had loved truly and he had suffered pain. In deciding to marry Lady Abigail he’d been protecting himself against that sort of pain again, for he hadn’t loved her. And in making love to someone he desired but didn’t love, someone who in fact loved someone else, he was doing precisely the same thing.
What I Did For a Duke Page 23