Page 14 of A Gamble on the Duke (The Gambling Dukes #4)

EIGHT

Catherine

It was the noise that woke me.

I couldn’t tell at first what it was, but something had. A noise—a moan. A shout?

I sat bolt upright in the large, still unfamiliar bed. What was going on—was someone here?

Only after a few heart stopping moments did I remember that someone was here. Kineallen—the Duke of Kineallen. The man I was supposed to be pretending to be courting. The man whose kiss had been burned onto my lips.

There it was again—a moan, this time, and in pain. In panic.

Something was wrong.

It didn’t take long for me to creep out of the bed and into the hallway. I only slept in a light nightgown, but it was enough to cover me.

I could hear the noises clearer now, and it was definitely someone in distress. I followed the noise and knew before I opened the door what I would find.

Kineallen. He was tangled in his sheets, a sheen of sweat on his face, anguished tones pouring from his throat.

“No—no!”

I didn’t think. I just moved.

“Kineallen—Alfred, you’re safe, I'm here.”

Clambering onto the bed in the darkness seemed natural. I pulled him to me, clutching that strong chest into my embrace. Good God, he was shaking.

“Alfred, wake up,” I whispered, smoothly back his hair from his brow. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”

His eyes jerked open and he stared at me, unseeing at first and then the focus returned. “Catherine?”

I allowed it. The man had earned it. “Yes.”

My voice was nothing but a breath. I didn’t want to disturb him, frighten him back into a panic.

And he had been panicked.

“Are you…are you quite well?” It was a stupid question and I didn’t know why I’d asked it, but there didn’t seem to be a better question to ask.

What else could I say? Why were you screaming? What was your nightmare?

“I'm…I'm fine.” Alfred—the Duke of Kineallen pulled himself away from me and I felt the loss of him immediately. Damn, but I had never expected to feel so empty without his touch. “Just a nightmare.”

Just a nightmare. Just screaming so loudly that I heard from four rooms away in a building that had solid thick walls.

Something of my disbelief must have shown on my face, because he laughed darkly. “Well, I guess I mean…damn.”

I waited. Something told me that rushing him, forcing his man to reveal more than he wanted, was hardly going to help .

Blowing out a long breath, Alfred shook his head. “I’ve not had a perfect life, Catherine. I’ve…I’ve mentioned before, I think, that I had a wife. Georgiana’s sister.”

I nodded, suddenly highly conscious that I was seated on a bed of a gentleman, and with the gentleman still in it.

This was not the sort of socializing that a young lady of repute, like myself, was supposed to have.

“She…she was lovely. Loveliness, that is what Olivia was,” said Alfred with a wry smile. “I suppose I became infatuated with her all too soon, and when we married—I thought I would never be happier.”

My stomach twisted. I did not need to guess at where this story was going—this Olivia was his late wife. That meant that the tale ended in tragedy.

Alfred’s expression twisted. “And then…then the most wonderful thing happened.

I blinked. “It did?”

When the Duke of Kineallen looked at me, there was genuine delight in his eyes. “There was to be a child.”

Something churned in my chest—joy for him, and yet misery at the same time. There was no child here in the Duke of Kineallen’s townhouse. No child had been introduced to me.

And that could only mean one thing.

“Alfred—”

“I was so happy, I had always wanted a large family. Being an only child as I was,” the man said hurriedly, as though he had to get the words out somehow.

“And Olivia was radiant, I had never seen a woman blossom so. And when it came time for the child’s arrival, I waited downstairs as I was told, as all men did, waited for my child to be delivered… ”

His voice trailed away .

His pain was palpable, the air full of it.

And I knew I should leave, that to be discovered here was to force a true courtship ending rather swiftly in matrimony…and yet I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear to leave him.

When Alfred heaved a sigh, I knew what he was about to say. “She died in that birthing bed. Her and the child.”

“I am so sorry,” I whispered.

Well, what else was there to say?

Perhaps I should have expected it. This loss, this pain—that would explain it. The rigid control. The complete inability to compromise.

Here was a man who had realized he had lost everything, and so now had a tight grip on it. No matter what happened.

“You did nothing wrong,” I said quietly, settling onto the bed with my legs alongside his. “There was nothing you could have done?—”

“I could have made sure that she was taken care of,” Alfred said sharply in the gloom of the night. “I should have had doctors, more doctors?—”

“Sometimes…sometimes even a doctor cannot help,” I said quietly.

Perhaps there was a little too much darkness in my tone, for he looked at me with a quizzical air. “You know that from experience.”

It was not a question, but I answered it, nonetheless.

“My mother. It had been a difficult pregnancy, that is what my father told me, and he had saved all his earnings from that time to pay for the most expensive doctor. My mother…she came from a better family, and he was determined to do right by her. ”

I could not help but smile at the memory of my father. A good man.

Alfred’s voice broke into my thoughts. “It made no difference.”

“No difference at all,” I said as brightly as I could manage. “Except that I lived, which I suppose was something.”

“To save a child is no small thing,” the Duke of Kineallen said quietly. “I am only relieved that I was never asked to choose.”

A shiver rippled down my spine. I could think of nothing worse.

Only then did I realize that he was pretty much naked. A pair of breeches, that was it.

I swallowed. Do not look do not look do not?—

I looked.

I looked away. Jesus and all his saints, he was well endowed in that area.

“I know I'm fortunate to have had a second chance. My friends have been…”

“They seem rather special,” I said softly.

Alfred’s face cracked into a grin. “Rather special, yes. Christ, I thought—in my dream, I was…”

He swallowed, the pain very real on his face for a fleeting moment.

It was devastatingly attractive. Finally, here was a part of Alfred that he had allowed me to see. Something more than just a business arrangement.

And it was no longer possible to deny the fact that I was attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be? But it wasn’t just the chiseled good looks and the delicious muscles, though I’d be lying if I said they weren’t part of the package .

No, it was the openness. The vulnerability that we shared, here, with no one else.

“I’m about to lose everything.”

There it was—a sudden sharpness in his eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean…it’s why I accepted this plan. This gamble on the duke,” I said, trying not to smile.

Alfred appeared to be unable to help himself. He grinned. “You know, it sounds rather exciting when you put it like that.”

“It is, in a way—but it is also a means to an end,” I said lightly. “My shop—I am two months behind on the rent. I just never seem to be able to gain sufficient custom, and my savings…well. They ran out a little while ago.”

Was that true concerned in Alfred’s expression? “That sounds most precarious.”

“It is indeed, when one has no immediate family,” I said with a shrug, hoping to bely the extreme panic that the financial situation had put me in. “I knew that it was a risk—a gamble, in your words, to take on such an enterprise.”

“You are brave.”

And I was absolutely not going to notice how his gaze raked over my body as he said that. “It will only be a gamble if it fails—if I can make it work, it will have been a sure investment.”

Alfred was definitely smiling now—and his eyes were definitely trailing down to my breasts. “You were never a gamble to me.”

My breath hitched in my throat. “Yes. Well?—”

“I could have chosen anyone, you know.”

It was hardly the compliment he thought it was. “Perhaps so, but?—”

“And I am glad indeed that I have chosen you,” Alfred continued as I tried to glare. “Because you have the brilliance and the mind to pull it off.”

“Oh.” Oh indeed. What was a lady supposed to say to such a thing? I certainly did not appear to have any words left.

Alfred’s expression warmed. “These last few days have been…pleasant. Do you not think so?”

Pleasant? I could hardly think of a time I had been more happy. “Yes. Yes, pleasant.”

“Thank you.”

I blinked. Unless I had seen his lips move, I wouldn’t have believed the words had come from him.

“I mean it, thank you,” Alfred said with a lopsided grin. “Waking me up. Acting like the perfect spouse. Letting me kiss you.”

Letting me kiss you.

God, I wanted more—but he hadn’t offered more, and I’d be damned before I asked for it.

And not here. I was no courtesan, no harlot offering my favors to strange gentlemen in beds!

But Alfred—the Duke of Kineallen, he wasn’t a stranger. Not anymore.

I smiled, shrugging. My smile broadened as I spotted how Alfred’s gaze dropped immediately to my shifting breasts, untethered in this nightgown. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s good, sharing this with you.

Almost…” He swallowed. “These last few days with you—they have been the first time that I have been able to think of Olivia without pain. That I have realized that what I had was lovely, but it was a shallow love. A calf’s love, an affection for what I thought true love was. ”

My heart was beating faster, and I could not, should not, think more on this. My traitorous voice said, “Truly? ”

The duke’s eyes bore into mine. “You have changed me, Miss Catherine Shenton. I do not know how, do not ask me, but arguing with you has brought a life back to me that I had not expected.”

I could not help but laugh at that. “I had hoped to give you a little more pleasure than mere arguments.”