Page 62 of Duke in Darkness

The sound of the slammed door still echoing in the bedchamber, Gabriel marched toward his wife. Lilian might be occasionally stuffy, but never before had she been rude. And now she stood defiantly in the middle of the room.

“You require something?” she asked, her face pale and chin lifted.

Gabriel scowled. “Don’t you dare take…that chilly tone with me. Explain yourself. Explain how a lady could be so…so damned rude to a guest. You just left!”

“I was doing you a favor,” she flung back.

He frowned and moved even closer, until he stood barely a few feet from her. “What is that…supposed to mean?”

“Y-you are obviously very close to Mrs. Taylor,” she replied, her chest rising and falling, her delicate hands clenched into fists at her side. “And share memories of war I could never hope to understand. The last thing you need is a silly duchess who likes fashion to dull the party.”

Gabriel blinked, utterly confused. Then as a thought dawned, he rubbed his jaw. “Aggie and I are not, and never have been, lovers.”

“Oh, stop. I…I did not think that,” Lilian replied, blatantly lying to him.

“You stop,” he bit out. “Aggie was married. To a captain killed during the siege of San Sebastian. We lost so many men…capturing the French garrison. But because of her nursing experience…and skill with herbals…the army requested she stay. She did. Thanks to her, I am alive today. Aggie cared for me…alongside Hobbs after Bayonne.”

His wife stared at him, her lower lip trembling. “You have made it clear you are special friends. There is no need to belabor the point. Nor that you wish to speak with her of your time in the army, not me.”

“The particulars aren’t…for a lady’s ears,” he snapped. “Or anyone’s, for that matter.”

“Of course, Your Grace. Thank you for clarifying my role further. I am decoration, much like a chandelier or an urn. Not a helpmate. Or someone to share a bed with for the entire night. Just used and left without second thought.”

Gabriel froze at the hurt in her words. At this point it seemed unlikely that he would ever understand his duchess. Or his own twisting, turning thoughts. Downstairs he’d been about ready to heave Lilian into some particularly prickly shrubbery after her behavior toward Aggie, thinking it aristocratic nonsense toward someone considered lesser because she wasn’t a daughter of the ton.

But no. It seemed his cool, mostly proper wife considered Aggie a rival. Rather laughable, when he’d never seen his nurse as anything other than a friend he would be in debt to for the rest of his life. Besides the fact that Hobbs would probably turn from Nanny to nightmare if another man got between him and his sweetheart. Even now his library might be witnessing eye-opening acts, well if the two of them got their act together and stopped wasting anymore time, of course. But what the hell was Lilian talking about when she said he only saw her as decoration? He’d made it plain that he valued her contributions with Fairlie, and the way she’d taken the menus and townhouse in hand, hadn’t he?

“You are not seen as an urn,” he ground out eventually, grasping for the right words when it felt like he waded through quicksand. “And I am curious to know…why leaving your bed…is now a complaint. It’s what you wanted. Albeit couched in terms of my preferences. Or servant sensibilities.”

Lilian’s cheeks went dark pink. “I…I…”

“You think you are the only one…who feels like an interloper…in this damned mausoleum?”

Frustration added an extra edge to his tone. The angrier and more tense he became, the worse his speech got, until he sounded like a drunken buck at the end of his first night out.

“I don’t know,” she choked out. “How would I know? You keep your secrets locked tighter than a vault.”

“As do you, madam. So I ask…you again. When did…leaving your bed…become a complaint?”

Lilian looked away, but her fists unclenched. For the longest moment she didn’t speak, and the crackle and snap of the fire in her bedchamber sounded almost as loud as cannon fire.

At last, she met his gaze. “The other night…”

“After the ball?” he asked, suppressing a groan of annoyance as desire coiled around his anger, hardening his cock.

“Yes,” she whispered. “When we…er…”

“When I had you…over and over again.”

Lilian shivered. “Mmmm.”

Lust burned through him, brighter and more intense than the flames warming the bedchamber. “When I bound your wrists…and you begged me…so prettily…to fuck you.”

“Yes!” she burst out. “You made me say those wicked words. Made me feel things I’ve never felt before and didn’t understand, how pleasure and pain can be as one. More intimate than I ever thought marital relations could be. I have so little experience, it was overwhelming. But you…you hurled me into this new world, and then just left. Without a goodbye. Or a kiss. Like I didn’t…like I didn’t matter.”

Guilt and shame settled like a boulder in his gut. Yet again, the darkness, that crushing panic that drenched him in sweat and made it so hard to breath or think, had unmanned him. But how could he begin to explain the truth of why he’d left, when a four poster bed reminding him of his cell sounded so damned foolish? That would mean sharing the excruciating details of his capture and torture by the French, and he wasn’t ready to do that. Not even Hobbs or Aggie knew everything. “That is…not true.”

She stared at the floor. “Is it not?”