Page 12 of A Duke for Opal (The Carmichael Saga #2)

A s long as he’d known Opal, Strathearn had been intrigued by the lady’s laughter.

Where Strathearn was concerned, ladies employed tears the same way they did smiles and laughter.

Their actions were always contrived and all with the intent of getting something from him.

Be it a place in the Duke of Strathearn’s bed, the title of mistress (or even more improbable, the title of duchess), jewels, power, influence, or favor.

Opal remained the one woman who spoke freely and desired nothing from him or of him.

Only when he’d begun noticing the changes that’d befallen her—her developing figure, a slight deepening of her musical voice, had he taken to steering clear of her at all costs. Time and distance hadn’t helped. Since their time apart, her laughter and smile had become somehow more powerful to him—a lure that allowed him to imagine what it’d be like to live the rest of his life bathed in the slightly husky, lilting, sound of her happiness.

“Given the Duke of Devonshire, one would think I’m kidding.” Opal gave her head a rueful shake. “Alas, I’m quite serious. It proved a fascinating read.”

“Consider me, for the first time in the whole of my existence, absolutely stunned by Devonshire’s generosity.”

The moment he spoke, it was like he’d reminded Opal of his presence, and her wistful smile faded like a glittering star that’d been forever extinguished.

“He was beautifully poetic,” she explained, like a knowledgeable tutor schooling an intrigued student.

And Strathearn was just that, intrigued, but by her.

Opal gave another laugh, this one smaller and somewhat strained. “Not the duke, of course, but Marbode.”

They shared a knowing smile.

“As one would expect of men, then and now,” she added with a wry smile. “Marbode possessed a disdain for women.”

Strathearn dropped an elbow on the table, and resting his chin on his fingers, he leaned in. “More the fool was he and all those other mindless chaps.”

Opal’s lips parted in a sweet, bemused, little moue. “Oh.”

A queer sensation filled his chest. Strathearn equal parts wanted her to go on talking because he was endlessly fascinated when she spoke, but more appallingly, he needed a distraction from her full mouth and the rakish dreams of teaching her the pleasure she could give him with that soft, pliable, flesh.

Sitting up quickly, he gave up his previously negligent pose. “Tell me more about your Marbode.” His voice cracked the same way it’d done when he was a lad becoming a man.

Like she’d been plucked from the sea and deposited back on solid earth, Opal’s sooty black lashes swept up and down in a slow blink.

I know the feeling, love…

“Uh…yes. Despite the time period, Marbode wasn’t just a theologian who wrote about religion—and what he did write about the saints of the period, pertained to those figures’ real-life experiences, and secular aspects of life.”

With every curious detail imparted, her body arched towards his. Opal’s airiness juxtaposed Strathearn’s total prepossession of this woman and every word to leave her lips. It both humbled and further captivated him.

“Did he?” Strathearn murmured, solely for the need to say something and break the spell she had over him.

His attempts had the opposite effect.

Opal nodded enthusiastically, and her buoyant black curls bounced wildly about her shoulders. “ Liber decem capitulorum is oft considered his most popular book.”

“ The Book of Ten Little Headings ,” he translated.

“Yes! In each chapter, he focuses on the human condition. He writes about women, life, advancing age, death, writing, in the fallen world.” She spoke with an enthusiasm that bespoke her admiration for the long-ago poet.

The sight of Opal lost in her telling, Strathearn drank his full of her. What was it that this woman’s spirited lecture on an ancient writer should stir Strathearn in ways not a single lover’s erotic words or touch had ever so moved him? What’s more—how could she have absolutely no idea the thoughts tumbling around in his head?

Her eyes went soft. “He composed poems.”

The almost bashful quality in her lilting voice grounded him. Some .

“Yes?” he murmured, needing her to continue.

“Erotic ones.”

But a single word uttered in that slightly breathy from this lady made Strathearn harder than a lad with his first Cyprian.

“Erotic poems,” he said; his voice sounded thick to his own ears.

She nodded. “They were…are. One wouldn’t expect a bishop in the 11 th century to compose verse on such topics, and yet, he did. His poems were about love—the emotional and… physical kind—between men and women and…”

He kept stoic.

A delicate blush dusted her cheeks and further captivated and seduced Strathearn. “Men and men and multiple men and a woman. He wrote about Saint Thais, a 4 th century Egyptian prostitute. They were deeply sensual.”

She was deeply sensual. With every word she spoke, his erection climbed and throbbed from a brutal, hungry lust to possess her.

Too satyric to feel so much as a smidgeon of contrition, he drank Opal, and her telling, all the way in, and urged her on. “Sensual?”

She curled her lips in a gently rueful grin. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Is that so?” he drawled. Oh, you have no idea, sweet. If she did, she wouldn’t be wearing that blithe smile. If she did, she’d have hightailed it the hell out of the flower room.

“How sensual could an ancient theologian and bishop be?”

“Fair enough.” That was the thought he’d have were he speaking about Marbode with anyone that wasn’t Opal Carmichael.

A veritable Circe, Opal gracefully wagged a long, slender, finger at him, saying without words ‘she knew it’.

She leaned in and a moth to the flame, Strathearn leaned in closer.

“ Hanc puer insignis, cujus decor est meus ignis,

Diligit hanc, captat, huic se placiturus adaptat;

Quae, puero spreto, me vult, mihi mandat…”

This illustrious boy, whose beauty is my fire,

He loves her, he captivates her, he adapts himself to her, hoping to please her…

He drew a slow and silent breath in through his nose.

Who’d declared Latin wasn’t a romance language? Whoever it was hadn’t heard the language spoken in this woman’s melodic and rhythmical way.

Opal stared at him expecting him to interpose.

“You are correct,” he said, powerless to even try and conceal the husky, hungry, quality of his voice. “That is certainly sensual.”

She looked pleased as punch by Strathearn’s concession .

“He wrote about a love that was taboo then, now, and likely always will be, and did so eloquently and beautifully and fearlessly,” she said, clasping one of his hands in hers.

Both of them looked at their linked palms.

The hell he’d shake free of her involuntary, but intoxicating, touch.

She was the one to break that contact between them. Withdrawing her palm, she joined her own fingers together and lay them upon her lap.

Opal studied her hands. “At first, I was embarrassed that my father had selected verse about lovers,” she said timorously. “I believed he was trying to humiliate me, and yet, I found myself too fascinated by the verse to be shamed.”

Mention of her evil sire effectively killed his desire. Strathearn’s admiration for Opal, on the other hand, only grew to new depths.

God, she was breathtaking in her strength and honesty.

Like a restless soul who needed something to do with her hands, she fiddled nervously with her arrangement. Knowing she craved an anchor to the present, Strathearn sought to ground her in the moment here with him. Unsolicited, he handed Opal another branch.

She murmured her thanks. “There was no hope for it; I admired the Marbode’s works.” Her shoulders climbed in a little shrug. “It was impossible not to. One evening, my father invited me to dine with him. He asked my opinion on the original Latin edition he’d secured on Marbode for my benefit.”

“As we dined and spoke, I thought perhaps with Flint and Diamond both gone and with only me remaining, he’d discovered a need for companionship. We conversed and even agreed in many ways about Marbode’s cleverness and progressive nature for then and now.”

She smiled sadly. That slight, downturn, of her lips erased every trace of warmth from Strathearn’s body.

Absently, Opal fetched rosemary sprigged with purple flowers and affixed the cheerful branch to her bough. “I actually managed to believe ours was a real-life moment between a doting father and a favored daughter.”

“And it wasn’t,” Strathearn said quietly, to spare her from having to utter that painful admission.

“It wasn’t.”

He should’ve known Opal was too courageous to take the easy way out.

“Once he’d affirmed that I greatly admired Marbode’s talents, skill, and intellect, he fetched a small leather volume. He’d personally purchased the rare work. He’d even had my name etched in gold lettering just underneath Marbode’s.”

He knew from the nuances of her body and the sadness that’d swept over Opal—and hell, by the admission, she’d herself made, this wasn’t a happy telling. Even with all that, he wanted it to be.

The same as when he’d been a boy seeing for the first time a live performance of Romeo and Juliet , and knowing the inevitable, outcome of that tragedy, who’d still hoped the end would turn out different, he prayed that’d be the case here.

Opal drew in a shuddery breath. “That book was called Liber Lapidum.”

The Book of Stones.

She nodded, confirming he’d spoken aloud. “Devonshire marked a selection for me to read aloud. It was about opals.”

Strathearn froze. Even without knowing what Opal would say, Strathearn knew the utterance to come merited ending the Duke of Devonshire’s life.

“’Tis the guardian of the thievish race, Marbode called them . It gifts the bearer with acutest sight; But clouds all other eyes with thickest night.”

His entire body hurt. Opal’s rote recitation came in a way that indicated she’d read those words over and over and repeated them in her mind until she’d committed them to memory.

“As easily as my father earlier credited the Marbode’s genius, so too did he speak about the bishop’s accuracy in seeing opals as destructive to society and therefore should not be trusted. He told me how opals were symbols of famine, death, and plague. Unlike Glain, who came into the world with the brightest blonde hair, I possessed thick, black curls.”

Amidst the heartbreak of her telling came the wistful thought of Opal as an adorable babe about to face the entire world. The painting in his mind shifted to one of Opal, grown, and with a little girl who had the same dark curls. The appeal of that vision stirred his unease but could not totally free him with his absorption of her.

“Opal,” he murmured. “Your hair…” He’d glibly given compliments and pretty words for other ladies, but for this woman, for Opal, every way in which to describe her and her splendor seemed inadequate.

Opal gave him a peculiar look. “Yes?”

“Is…is…beautiful,” he finished lamely.

Opal snorted. “If that were the case, men wouldn’t covet the pale, golden-haired, English ladies.”

“Yes, but we’ve already determined men have shite for brains.”

Opal laughed, and that he’d knocked the sadness from her, if even for a minute, left him awash in warmth.

“Well, the way Devonshire saw it, the color of my hair marked me as inferior in every way. It’s why he insisted upon naming me ‘Opal’. That night at dinner, he told me his appreciation for Marbode’s work had merely been feigned and that he’d only given them to me as a test.” Her lips were so taut, the blood had seeped from the corners of her mouth, leaving it white. “He proclaimed I had the makings of a whore and he’d cure me of my sluttish ways. That was the night he told me that I was being sent away.”

Towering, ungovernable furor rose up inside Strathearn. He wanted to pound his chest like a primal beast and hunt the father who’d hurt her so, and feast on the ravaged remains.

Opal lifted sad, accepting, eyes to his and the sight of her suffering hit him like a kick to the gut. “Do you know what, Locke?”

It took everything within him to contain his rage. Here in this moment, his anger didn’t serve Opal. She wouldn’t benefit from his indignation, and she was all that mattered, not he and his need to protect her.

“What’s that, love?” he asked softly.

“I was glad to be banished. I wanted to be free of him and his household. I just didn’t imagine…” Her words trailed off.

To keep from going mad, Strathearn focused on breathing evenly. “What didn’t you imagine?”

She shook her head.

But she needn’t have answered, anyway. Strathearn already knew what she couldn’t bring herself to say—she just hadn’t imagined it could be worse.

Growing up with his cruel sire, Strathearn encountered such emotional and physical abuse he’d believed himself immune to pain. Now, brokenhearted and hurting for Opal and all she’d suffered, he discovered how wrong he’d been.

Opal kept on examining and fiddling with her bough.

In the course of knowing the Carmichael family, there’d been any number of instances when Strathearn could have happily murdered Opal’s father, the pernicious, execrable Duke of Devonshire.

Nevermore had the urge to separate Devonshire’s beating, stone-cold heart from his body than it did now, listening to Opal share the suffering she’d endured these past years.

No. For the course of her entire life. She may have entered his life as a smiling girl, but she’d also been a girl who’d been hurting her entire life.

Fury sent his hands curling into tight fists at his side. His anger, however, wouldn’t serve her here. As such, he forced himself to reign in his volatile emotion.

Finally, he managed to speak. “With your knowledge of history, I don’t expect you’d ever claim medieval scholars and culture to be superior to some of the ancient civilizations?”

How many women, let alone men—that was aside from Grimoire and the librarian’s sponsors—could Strathearn say that to?

She smiled. “No.”

“The Greeks saw an opal as capable of amplifying the power of its wearer.”

Opal eyed him dubiously. “ You believe that?”

Strathearn didn’t let her incredulity distract him. “The Romans saw them as gems of such beauty,” he said. “They were the first to name them ‘opalus’—precious stone.”

She stared at him with eyes so wide and beautiful as to rival any precious gem.

Hooking his boot on the underside of his chair, he dragged himself closer. “They saw the kaleidoscope of colors that set the opal apart from the one-dimensionality of a diamond or pearl. Like a rainbow, they were considered more exotic for their effervescence. For those reasons, the Romans saw the opal not as something bad or evil, but as talismans of good luck…so much so that the Caesars gifted them to their wives.”

“Truly?”

Strathearn nodded. “Truly. In fact, it wasn’t until the medieval era, when plague and famine struck, that people began to look for sources with which to assign blame. In the absence of clear answers, people come to fear that which they didn’t know or understand.”

He swept his gaze over the beautiful plains of her face. “Your spirit, your strength, and curiosity and intelligence terrify small men like Devonshire. So don’t you dare let those men make you feel as though you are something less when you are greater than all the peers of London combined, Opal Carmichael.”

Opal continued to look at him like he’d conferred the sun.

And…what was it about this woman that made him wish he could do just that for her?