Page 60 of The Duke’s Suspicion

As her wandering steps wove among the groupings of furniture—sofas, tables, high-backed chairs—she considered where she might best secret herself. Then a warm hand grasped her ankle.

She did not scream. Three silent breaths left her lightheaded but proved insufficient to slow her frantic pulse.

“Erica?” Tristan’s voice. He hadn’t left after all. With a sharp tug he brought her to her knees beside him. “What are you doing here?” His whisper was laced with a mix of fear and fury.

The sun had set, leaving no light by which to read his expression. “No one saw me leave my room,” she whispered back. “And I—I needed to be here. I had to know.”

She expected him to argue. Instead, she could hear the sound of his coat sliding against the fabric of the sofa as he settled back into his hiding place. “Sit with me,” he murmured, and in the darkness, she let his hands guide her to the floor beside him, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. She had not realized she was cold until she felt the heat of his body against hers, and she turned toward him like a heliotrope following the sun.

He lowered his head to hers and his breath puffed across her lips when he spoke, more sensation than sound. “If I kiss you now, Erica, all our plans will be for naught.”

“Why?”

“Because I won’t be able to stop at kisses.”

A whimper of longing rose in her throat at his words.

“Shh…”

Only a fraction of an inch separated their lips. The effort required to close the gap was far less than the effort required to keep herself still. To cede control to him once again.

Her reward—and a dubious reward it seemed to be—was to feel him slip his hand into his coat, then search for her hand and press a folded square of paper into her palm.

“What’s this?”

“A coded missive.”

Had there been some misunderstanding? “Then what’s on the desk?”

“New orders from my commanding officer.”

“Forged?”

“Real.”

“But—I don’t understand—”

“We have much to discuss.” His hand circled hers and squeezed, and the stiff paper crumpled and curved into her palm as she curled her fingers more tightly around it, as if she could absorb its contents that way. “Later.”

She nodded, and the scrub of her hair against the silk damask of the sofa must have been sufficient to convey her assent, for he said nothing more. She freed a hand to tuck the note into her bodice, but as soon as she was done, he laced his fingers through hers and rested their joined hands on his hard thigh. After last night’s intimacies, it should have been the merest nothing. Yet it was…something. Something extraordinary. And when his thumb stroked idly across her palm, a sound rose again in her throat. Had it escaped, it would have sounded much like the last, needy and hungry.

But what she needed, what she hungered for, was them—not just the joining of their bodies, but the joining of their souls, the clasp of support and reassurance that would always be there, whenever, wherever one of them needed it, together or apart, public or private, weak or strong. She returned the pressure of his fingers. He was nothing she’d ever wanted and everything she’d ever needed, and she would be a fool to let him go.

That knowledge, the certainty that she was his and she would find a way to make him hers, made it somewhat easier to release his hand when, an eternity later, the door creaked open and clicked shut again and his arm went rigid with anticipation. They were about to catch the spy in the act.

Despite the darkness, she squeezed her eyes shut, the better to concentrate on sounds. The carpet was too think to register a single footfall, but wasn’t that the rustle and scrape of paper across the polished desktop? And a little gasp of surprise—a woman’s voice, surely—when the library door opened once more?

A man’s voice this time, though only a whisper. “Have you got it? Good.”

Erica swore she could hear Tristan’s heartbeat as he leaned closer and spoke into her ear. “Pilkington.”

But who was his accomplice? Opening her eyes, she discovered that all was not in total darkness. The man had left the door ajar, allowing light from the corridor to leak into the room. She leaned away from Tristan in hopes of peering around the edge of the sofa, but he caught her hand again and would not let her move.

“I expected to have to handle matters myself, this time,” Pilkington said, an edge of annoyance in his voice. “I feared you would not get word of the delivery of that letter. Now, give it to me.”

Who was she, the woman who, from the sound of things, was still scrabbling to gather the papers strewn across the desk? Who on earth did Pilkington imagine might have failed to hear the rumors that had swept through Hawesdale Chase like fire? One of the lower servants, perhaps, though he did not strike her as the sort of person who entrusted important matters to scullery maids.

“Give it to me,” Pilkington repeated, his voice rising above a whisper for the first time.