Page 52 of The Duke’s Suspicion

Doubt crystallized in Erica’s amber eyes. “And your other responsibilities here?”

“I never imagined they would be mine,” he said after a moment. “I never wanted them.”

“But still they’re yours.”

She was right, of course. He thought of Davies, Guin, and the rest. The neat columns of figures in the account books, not quite as reassuring as he’d hoped. How long did he mean to go on using his father’s apathetic management of the estate as an excuse for avoiding his own fears?

“Either way,” Erica continued, “I’d say the possibility of a spy at Hawesdale demands your undivided attention.”

“Yet it does not have it.” He paused before saying anything more. But he could not go on pretending as if nothing had happened between them. “I confess myself distracted by…other things.”

But what should he say now that the subject had been introduced? She would not thank him for making her another offer. And he did not know how else to put his own wishes into words. He’d shown her she could trust him with her body, but would she ever trust him with more? Never had he felt so strongly the distinction between the dictates of propriety and the dictates of his heart.

While he was still debating with himself about where to begin, she wrapped the fingers of one hand around her wrist where it lay in her lap, as if she could still feel the snug silk bonds he’d tied. “How did you know?”

A few less-than-honest answers presented themselves, the impulse to feign ignorance of her meaning, but he brushed them aside and reached out to cover her hands lightly with his. “I know you.”

“Because of what you read in my journal, you mean.” A flush of color crept above the edge of the coverlet where she had pinned it against her chest with her arms.

He shook his head. “You’re so much more than what you’ve written between the covers of that book.”

“Am I?” Her hands slipped out from beneath his. “I think perhaps I should go back to my own room.”

He could not argue, though he wanted to. He rose instead, wrapping a sheet around himself as best he could, and helped her to dress despite her protests. “You can’t very well lace up your own corset,” he said.

Though the words were true, he regretted them as soon as they’d passed his lips, for of course then it was incumbent upon him to stand behind her and perform the task himself. The zing of the silk cord through the eyelets was a bittersweet melody now, as the garment once more imposed its rigid order on her delectably soft form.

Last of all, she bent and retrieved her journal from the floor. It hung from her fingers like dead weight, and he had a sudden mental image of her casting it onto the flaming hearth. He walked with her to the door to make sure the coast was clear, grateful suddenly never to have remembered to order Armitage to post a footman there. On the threshold, he reached up to brush a wayward lock from her cheek, then left a soft kiss in its place. The only things he could think to say were so utterly inadequate, he opted in the end to say nothing at all.

As she disappeared into the shadows of the corridor he caught himself wishing that she were a spy, just to give him an excuse to keep her close.

* * * *

Erica bit her lip, hard. Hard enough that for the second time that day, she recoiled at the taste of her own blood. But she couldn’t relent. She refused to allow her mind to think of anything but the route back to her room. Refused to allow her stockinged feet to depart from the shortest, straightest path there. Most would say she had wandered far enough astray already.

The corridor was dark. The sconces that had been burning when she was hurrying in the opposite direction had long since been extinguished. In her room, all was dark too. A maid had turned the bedcovers down. With a resigned sigh, Erica laid down on the bed, shifted her hips, tossed her head against the pillow. Tired of answering questions about her frequent sleepless nights, she’d long since learned how to make it appear as if her bed had been slept in.

But she didn’t stay there. She extracted herself from the now-tangled linens and went to the windows. All was dark, though the faintest suggestion of dawn separated the sky from the rugged hills and the hulking shadow of the house. Within the hour, servants would be up and at work. She’d made it just in time.

So why did a part of her wish she’d been caught in the duke’s bed? There would have been no question then of what their futures would hold. He would have offered, because it was the honorable thing to do and he was, as the duchess had said, an honorable man. And she would not have had the strength to refuse a second time.

Because of all the foolish, careless things to have done…she’d fallen in love with Major Tristan Laurens, the Duke of Raynham.

All along, she had been thinking of him as a rule-maker. And she was the consummate rule-breaker. But after tonight, she understood that he was governed not by mere propriety, but by something much deeper than that.

What other man of her acquaintance, given the choice between a life of ease and a life fraught with danger, would have chosen the latter? Even now, his heart was divided between his obligations at home and his duties elsewhere—and leaning strongly toward the latter. For all his love of order, his determination to maintain control, he was an unconventional duke.

But it did not therefore follow that he would want an unconventional duchess.

If he married her, then this—her eyes scanned the shadowy wings of the monstrous house, from the kitchens to the ballroom, from the schoolroom to the ducal suite—would be hers to manage. On her shoulders would rest some portion of the happiness of scores of servants, of Lady Viviane, of Tristan. And she would collapse under its weight and bring everything tumbling down with her.

In the face of those facts, what could it possibly matter what her body wanted? Or her heart?

The fingers of her left hand encircled her right wrist and chafed at the sensitive skin there, feeling again the welcome bite of the bonds he’d tied. She hadn’t any word for that…peculiarity, the discovery that pleasure prowled on the very edge of pain. Ought she to add immodest and immoral to the long list of her sins?

But no. She had promised him she hadn’t gone to his bed to punish herself, and she wouldn’t do so now. In his dark eyes, she’d glimpsed no judgment. Just the opposite, in fact. Love, he’d called her, and while even she wasn’t naïve enough to imagine he fancied himself in love with her, she had no doubt he too had taken pleasure in her surrender.

She’d had nearly four and twenty years on this earth to come to grips with who and what she was, to learn what could be changed about herself and what couldn’t. And what she’d done with Tristan could not be undone. Self-recrimination would doubtless come creeping along on the nighttime shadows, but now it was nearly dawn, and she refused to waste time on it. The start of a new day was a time to look ahead.