Page 47 of Unbound Duchess

“We did,” Ellen replied, casting a quick, unsure glance in his direction.

“I am glad to hear so,” he remarked, shifting in his seat to face her fully. “But might I ask what she meant? About me ignoring you?”

Ellen turned to look away from him, but he caught her chin and gently guided her gaze back to his.

“Ellen?” he asked, searching her eyes for an answer.

She swallowed, but said nothing.

“I want you to be able to talk to me,” he gently urged. “About anything.”

Sadness drifted into her eyes, making his stomach plummet.

“Then why do you stay away?” she asked.

Laurence inhaled a sharp breath. How could he tell her the fantasies he’d been wrought with? That, even though he did not love her, he wanted her body so much that it made him ache from the inside out?

“After what Benedict put you through,” he said carefully, “I…I did not want to risk putting you in an uncomfortable situation.”

“But you are the reason I no longer have to be put through Benedict’s cruel or uncomfortable situations,” she countered.

Laurence could not argue that. Still, that did not give him leave to take advantage of her. There were certain things—certain emotions that he could not promise. Emotions and hopes that had died when Annabel had. The way he’d lost his sister…it had changed him. Frightened him of what could be lurking inside him.

He had never considered himself a bestial man, but after discovering that so many other men had found the auction alluring, he often feared that it was inside him, too. Some demon lurking in his shadows, just waiting for an opportunity to reveal itself.

“I…” He sighed, wishing that there was a way to say what he wanted to say without sounding so cruel.

“I do not love you,” he finally confessed. “I understand why you would feel that way. Our kiss. The way I took you out of harm. But⁠—”

To his surprise, Ellen sat up and laughed. Laughed!

“I am not in love with you either,” she replied.

Laurence could not tell if he was relieved, dismayed, or perhaps both.

“You are not?” he asked, and Ellen shook her head, looking far more comfortable than just a moment ago.

“Of course not. I barely know you,” she replied earnestly. “You saved me, and I am eternally grateful for that, but…but I do not love you for it. I am not a character in a book. I do not fall in love with the knight in shining armor simply because he slayed the fictional beast keeping me captive. I am real. I have real understanding, real thoughts and feelings that are entirely my own.”

It was pure relief Laurence felt that time; he was sure of it, and he withdrew his grip from her chin and leaned back into the settee. Feeling much better than before, he chose to move on with his confession.

“The kisses we shared were extraordinary, but I worried that if I continued pursuing them from you, you might feel used, and I do not wish to make you feel that way.”

Ellen’s wide smile softened a little as her blue eyes darkened.

“Our kisses were extraordinary, were they not?” she asked, and Laurence could not help the devilish grin as he nodded.

“But they did not make me feel used. In fact, I love how they draw my mind utterly blank and how my body seems to relax more in those moments than during any other activity that is supposed to soothe my nerves,” she went on. “I like these things, very much, yes, but I also understand that we are in accord for something entirely different and far more serious than the fleeting joys of mutual pleasure. We are married so that you can destroy Benedict. And I want to help you with that as much as I can.”

Laurence shook his head slowly as he stared at her with renewed admiration.

“Ellen Munro Curtis, Duchess of Blackford,” he said with awe. “You are a wonder of a woman.”

Ellen blushed again, though this time it was clear it was from his praise and not out of embarrassment.

“I am, am I not?” Her tone was teasingly haughty as she lifted her chin and shimmied her shoulders.

Laurence chuckled, his tense muscles relaxing by the second.