Page 21 of A Gamble on the Duke (The Gambling Dukes #4)

“It is just a turn of phrase,” Catherine shot back.

“Is it?”

I watched her swallow, watched her hesitate, and knew—knew that she felt something for me.

Perhaps it was lust. Perhaps it was love.

In a way, I did not think I could disentangle those particular sensations from my own heart.

Maybe it did not matter. What mattered was that Miss Catherine Shenton and I had an arrangement, an arrangement I had gambled on…and it had paid off in a way that neither of us could have ever predicted.

“Catherine,” I said quietly, lifting a hand to cup her cheek. “I don’t want this arrangement any longer.”

She flinched from me as though she’d been burned. “What the hell does that mean?”

I blinked. Could I have been more clear? I didn’t think so. “Precisely what I say?—”

“So this is the way that you get rid of me? Bring me to the most splendid place to look at pottery, which you know I love, and then cast me aside before the Earl of Tuxford has become a member?”

Catherine spoke quickly, clearly hurt, and dawning swiftly pooled through me.

“No, I didn’t mean?—”

“Because I was perfectly happy without you,” Catherine said firmly, turning away from me and marching down the corridor. “Perfectly happy!”

Really? Because I had not been.

I only realized it then, as Catherine was walking away from me. My feet stumbled forwards, clear in the knowledge that I could not be without her. I could not permit her to walk away from me?—

Not without knowing what a cad I’d been in my pathetic explanation.

“Catherine—Catherine, wait!”

I only managed to catch up with her in the hallway, but it was to see her leave the building.

“Catherine!”

My carriage had been waiting and of course she had managed to get into it before I could say a damned word. Glancing at my coachman, who understood the silent order to return home, I clambered into the damned contraption and sat opposite the glaring woman.

“Are you going to drop me off at my pottery shop?” Catherine said darkly as the carriage moved forward. “Or will I have to make my own way?—”

“You are not going to have to make your own way anywhere,” I snapped, trying to calm down as my affection for the dratted woman threatened to overcome me. “I want you to listen.”

“Another lecture on how to act in polite Society?” shot back Catherine.

I gripped the seat of the carriage with my fingers. “A declaration of affection, I’m afraid.”

“A—a…I beg your pardon?” breathed the woman seated opposite me, her eyes now wide as she stared at me.

The carriage rocked as we turned a corner, but I hardly paid it any attention. How could I, when all I could see was the woman before me?

“You…what did you say?”

“I said…Catherine, I don’t want this to be an arrangement anymore,” I said quietly, my heart hammering and making it difficult to think for more than five se conds together. “At least, I do. But not the same. Not the same at all.”

Catherine’s lips had parted in wonder and I couldn’t help but stare at them, wishing I could be tasting them in this moment. It was always so much easier to do, rather than speak. I was not florid in my conversation like Markham, and I did not have the directness that Lilah boasted.

Perhaps I was closer to my sister-in-law Georgiana. When I spoke, each of the words mattered. But I spoke about my feelings so rarely.

I couldn’t remember doing so in months.

“You want…something different?” Catherine said quietly.

I took a deep breath. “I want you.”

Her gasp filled the carriage but she did not shy away from me, or tap the roof of the carriage and demand to be let out.

She just sat there, as though waiting for an explanation.

I swallowed. Right. An explanation.

“Miss Shenton,” I said briskly.

Her eyes glittered. “I think I preferred it when you called me Catherine.”

Catherine. Right. The trouble was, it felt particularly intimate, using her first name, and though there was even greater intimacies that I craved, I was not entirely sure I could be trusted to speak to her like that and not crush her into my arms and kiss her senseless.

Which, admittedly, would probably give her a clear understanding of what I wanted.

What I needed.

“Catherine,” I said reluctantly, hating how the three syllables awoke something dark and primal in me. “Our arrangement is for a false relationship. Fake courting. ”

“And I have done everything that you have wanted,” she pointed out, as the carriage turned another corner.

“I have nothing to complain about, except…except I want more. I like you, Catherine,” I said with a laugh. “I like you far more than I could ever have imagined or predicted. And that night when we?—”

“We do not have to speak of it,” said Catherine hastily.

The hell we didn’t. “But I want it again. I want more,” I said quietly, not taking my eyes from hers. “I want to kiss you all over and please you until you cry out my name and sink myself into you until you feel like you can’t take any more of me.”

I had not taken my eyes from hers as I spoke, and I saw the gleam of delight, of eager hunger.

Yes, she wanted this. She wanted me.

But would she allow herself to take it.

“I offer you nothing more than pleasure,” I said quietly. “Marriage for me as you know is…is something I cannot, will not do again. But I do not see why we should not take our pleasure while you are under my roof. Until…until the end of the plan.”

Until the Earl of Tuxford makes up his mind.

It still stung, the idea that whatever happiness Catherine and I found would be temporary. But surely a temporary happiness had to be better than this painful distance between us?

Catherine’s gaze was raking over my features as though hunting for any lies. “My reputation?—”

“No one would ever have to know,” I interjected, excitement brewing within me as I saw that she was actually considering this. “We would keep this between ourselves—and it is not as though there is anyone to challenge me on this. ”

Catherine gave me a wry smile. “Save for my great aunt, the Dowager Countess of Ormkirk.”

I grinned, enjoying her jest about her made up relative. “Other than her. So. What do you think?”

At that moment the carriage pulled up outside my townhouse. The coachman, thank God, did not bother to step down and open the door.

We sat there for a moment in silence.

Catherine tilted her head. “You said that you didn’t want this to get complicated. This, between us.”

My stomach twisted. “I know. But it already has, hasn’t it? I love kissing you, Catherine, and I think you like being kissed by me. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to be kissed all over?”