Page 22 of Don’t Let Your Dukes Grow Up To Be Scoundrels (Dukes in Disguise #1)

Chapter Twenty-One

Hal felt every choked cry Gemma made like a knife to his gut. His brave, bold Gemma who never cried—this was what he’d brought her to.

The couple nearest to them, the Mulgraves, cast concerned glances over their shoulders. Moving on instinct, Hal shielded Gemma from their stares with his body, giving them a reassuring smile before guiding Gemma away from the crowd toward the relative privacy of the inn. He didn’t think she would want the entire village to witness her tears.

He kicked open the door and maneuvered her through it, into the cool, dim interior of Five Mile House. The familiar scents of the place seeped in: the malty tang of ale, the sweetness of fermented apples, the linseed oil they used to polish the old wood of the bar until it gleamed. Hal hoped they were as comforting to Gemma as they were to him.

She did not seem comforted. If anything, her weeping had grown more intense. He struggled for an instant, knowing that the last thing she probably wanted was to be closer to him. But he could not stand here and listen to her cry without trying to help. It wasn’t in his nature.

Slowly, giving her time to protest, he enfolded her in his arms. She stiffened for a moment, then seemed to collapse, turning her face into the side of his throat and dampening his collar with her tears.

Hal held her, murmuring soothing nonsense into her hair, and savored the feel of her for what might be the last time.

They fit together with a kind of perfection Hal had never dreamed existed.

He might never have this again, he knew. Not just the physical pleasure of the closeness, but the chance to be the one Gemma turned to, with her cares and her troubles as well as her joys and successes.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” she wailed, the words muffled into the wool of his coat. “I didn’t even cry when I saw the satirical prints about us.”

Hal froze. “Satirical prints?” Ah, God, that must be what the unopened letter from his friend and solicitor, Jonathan Reed, was about. Hal had found it when he returned to the Manor, wet and dripping and heartsore, after the encounter with Gemma in Westcote Brook. He’d been too distracted getting dry and changed to open it at once, and then he’d forgotten about it.

She cried harder. “They were awful. Awful! Drawings of me, falling flat on my face while you and Thorne looked on, laughing. Thorne told everyone about us, about the foolish, deluded Lady Gemma, on the hunt for a duke to marry, having no idea there was one beneath her nose all along!”

“Thorne? That bloody bastard, I’ll kill him,” Hal snarled, muscles coiling.

“Stop.” Her hands clenched in the fabric of his shirt. “I don’t expect any better from Thorne. He’s a thoroughgoing scoundrel. You made me believe you were different. And anyway, Thorne isn’t the one who lied to me.”

All the fight drained out of him. Hal closed his eyes, despising himself. “No. That was me.”

“Whoever you are,” she sniffled. “I don’t even know you.”

Hal’s heart squeezed painfully.

“You know me, Gemma. I promise, you know me better than anyone. I shared things with you I’ve never shared with another living soul. Everything between us was true.” Self-loathing gripped him in an iron fist. “And then, because I was afraid to trust, afraid to try, I let you keep believing a lie…and made you hate me.”

She made some movement against his chest, maybe shaking her head, maybe merely wiping her tear-stained face. She sagged against him, letting him take a bit of her weight, and he gladly gathered her closer and gave her something to lean on.

“I wish I could hate you,” she muttered.

Hal’s breath caught, lodged somewhere behind his sternum. It was an opening. A small one, but Hal had not brought his estate back from the brink of total ruin by failing to seize upon every opportunity that presented itself.

“Gemma. Do you know what day it is?”

She turned her face up to his. The quizzical pinch of her brows made him want to kiss her. Everything made him want to kiss her. He forced himself to settle for cradling her face in his hands and using his thumbs to smudge the tear tracks on her cheeks.

“It’s May Day.” Her mouth turned down in an unhappy curve. “The day the earl returns to hear my answer to his proposal.”

Everything in him roared a denial.

He knew, in that moment, what Bess had been trying to tell him. He did have something to offer. And Gemma didn’t want to marry the earl.

I should have laid myself bare.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe, if Hal was brave enough, if he worked hard enough, maybe there was a chance. Maybe he could create one.

Hal had never been afraid of hard work.

“May Day is a celebration of new beginnings,” he told her. “A moment to give thanks for the bounty of nature and the joys of our lives. And in my life, there has been no greater joy than knowing you.”

He felt her resistance in the sudden tension of her body. Taking a deep breath that swelled her breasts precariously against the tight bodice of her gown, Gemma took a step back, away from Hal.

It physically hurt to let her go, but he did.

“You don’t get to say that to me.” She crossed her arms over her chest in a gesture that looked as if she were hugging herself for comfort. “You forfeited the right.”

Hal took a deep breath. “I know. I broke faith with you. I called myself an honorable man, but I have behaved with anything but honor.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” She looked away, her eyes still red and wet. “When Stonehaven returns, I will accept him. And we will leave this place.”

She was so distant, as though she was already gone, and Hal felt panic rise up in his chest like a storm. “That is undoubtedly your wisest course of action. And it’s your choice to make. But I can’t let you choose without making your options clear.”

“Options.” She snorted, finally returning her scornful gaze to him. “Please. There is no choice to be made.”

Stillness filled Hal, the quiet determination of having found the purpose for which his entire life was intended.

Holding her gaze, he said, “You could marry your earl, be safe and secure and content. Or…you could marry me instead.”

Gemma went rigid, her knuckles whitening where she gripped her own upper arms. “What?—?”

“Marry me,” he repeated, intensity vibrating through his voice. Slowly, deliberately, never taking his eyes off her face, he went down on one knee. “Perhaps I can’t offer you the life you want, the life you deserve. Yet. But I promise I will work without ceasing, I will sacrifice anything, I will do whatever it takes to give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ll even?—”

He paused, hesitating only a moment before continuing in a rough voice he hardly recognized, “I’ll leave Little Kissington. We can make a life anywhere you like, London, Paris, the moon. I can live anywhere, so long as I’m with you.”

She stared down at him, her eyes searching his face before they widened in shock. “You mean it. You would leave your estate, your people, to dance attendance on me in London. Surrounded by the very cream of the aristocracy, whom you despise—despite being one of them .”

He set his jaw. “I would do anything to be with you. I’ll follow you wherever you want to go. Even London.”

She gave a watery gurgle of a laugh, one hand coming up to cover her eyes. “Even London. One of the greatest cities in the world, the exact place I’ve been trying to get back to for months now—and Hal, you don’t know me at all if you think that’s still the life I want.”

Heart kicking in his chest, Hal surged to his feet and caught her by the shoulders. “Tell me what you want.”

A shadow crossed her beautiful face. “I want you never to have lied to me.”

Hal’s heart split down the middle. “I wish that too. It is the most unworthy thing I’ve ever done, and I shall regret it until my dying day. But Gemma, I swear to you, not everything I told you was a lie. The things I told you about myself, the way I grew up, the way my family was, and what I want for the future…that was all true.”

“But why did you lie about your title? Why not be honest with me from the beginning?” she cried, her voice tearing into Hal like the claws of a wild animal, desperate and in pain. Now was his chance, to bare his heart the way he wished he’d had the courage to before. He owed her that much, at least.

“My family—everything I saw as a child, everything I ran from as a young man,” he said slowly, “it all taught me that one of the worst things one human can do to another is trap them into a loveless marriage based on nothing but financial convenience.”

“Which was exactly the plan I blithely set out for myself upon arriving,” Gemma realized.

“I lied about who I was at first because all I wanted was for you to leave and take your schemes with you. But later—I wanted to tell you, but there didn’t seem any point to it. You were steadfast in your determination to make a good match, and I could hardly offer you that myself. You, of all people, understand what a title without money or social standing behind it is worth. I never expected to keep you, Gemma. But if there is even the smallest chance…”

He broke away, restless and needing to move. Running a hand through his hair, he gripped the strands and pulled, letting the pain ground him in the moment. Letting it push him to say what had to be said.

“I hate that I’m coming to you with nothing to offer except myself,” he said hoarsely, staring at the scuffed wooden planks of the floor. “I know, very well, that you could do a lot better. I’ve spent the past year working from sun up to sun down to undo the damage my family did to this county, and to pay back the debts I inherited so some other titled arsehole doesn’t swoop in and take the estate, starting the cycle all over again. It hasn’t left a lot of time for anything else. You deserve more. You deserve better. All I can promise is to try to become the man you deserve. A man who loves every part of you, with every part of himself. A man who will never lie to you again.”

“What I deserve.” Gemma came slowly toward him until they were standing toe to toe, and she was staring up directly into his face. “I think…I deserve a man who would raid his own manor house for furniture to help me catch a titled husband. I deserve a man who was shown nothing but neglect and disregard by the people who should have cared for him, yet despite that, he grew into the most selfless, caring man I have ever met. I deserve a man who makes me feel safe enough, and strong enough, to cry.”

Her eyes were looking distinctly wet once more, but this time, she was smiling a little. Hal’s pulse thudded. He could hardly bring himself to believe her.

The early lessons of his childhood—that he was nothing, an annoyance if he was remembered at all—were hard to dispel.

He didn’t know what to do, what to say, where to put his hands…and then she stood on tip toe and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he knew exactly what to do.

Taking the sweet offering of her mouth was the easiest decision he’d ever made. He wrapped her up in his arms, determined never to let her go.

“I may never believe I’m good enough for you,” he whispered against her lips. “But if you want me, I’m yours.”

“I want you. I want to be happy. But I don’t think happiness is something you are, I think it’s something you do—something you choose, over and over, and work at every day. This place taught me that.” She smiled up at him, her fingers flexing against his scalp and making him want to push up into the caress. “You taught me that.”

His heart expanded, pressing against his ribcage and up into his throat. “I love you. I choose you. I want to stand by your side and at your back and anywhere you’ll have me, so long as we’re together. Will you marry me?”

Eyes shining, she laughed through a fresh wash of tears. “Yes. God, yes! I want nothing more than to marry you.”

Laughing, he lifted her off the ground and swung her around, dizzy with the possibilities, the future stretching in front of them like an endless field of golden wheat.

She was going to be his. And he would be hers.

“Hal,” she said, her arms tight around his shoulders, her beautiful eyes intent on his face. “I love you.”

Triumph blazed through Hal, along with joy almost too fierce to bear.

“You love me.” The words felt unbelievable, impossible, but her gaze never wavered as she nodded.

This wild, brash, caring, ambitious, clever, gorgeous woman loved him.

Deep inside, a barren, parched part of Hal’s heart unfurled and stretched towards the life-giving light of Gemma’s love. She would change everything, he knew, just as she’d blown into Little Kissington like a whirlwind and upended all their lives with her schemes.

Her love would change him. If he was wise enough, and brave enough, to let it.

Vowing to never close himself off from her again, Hal let her slide down the front of his body, every nerve and sinew glorying in the contrast between her softness and his hardness.

Her eyes lit up, going slumbrous with need, the same need that coursed through Hal’s veins and brought his member to stiff, aching attention.

They sealed their engagement with a kiss that quickly went from romantic to desperate. Gemma nearly climbed Hal like a tree to get to his mouth, moaning her approval when he lifted her to wrap her legs around his waist.

He stumbled over to the bar and set her down on it. She writhed against him like a living flame, searing hot and unpredictable. Hal gave himself over to the heat, craving the burn and spark of her lips, her touch, her tongue.

“Hal,” she murmured against his lips. “I want you. I need you to drive out all the fear and pain and doubt of the last few days.”

His blood fired. He felt ten feet tall. It was as though he’d been fumbling in the dark his entire life, and someone had finally handed him a candle. “You’re mine.”

Outside, the song ended in a round of applause and cheers, reminding Hal of where they were, and the possibility of being walked in on at any moment.

And this particular moment required more than a quick, furtive fumble. This moment required a locked door and a bed and thank God, he knew exactly where to find one.

Swooping her off the bar and into his arms, Hal carried a laughing Gemma up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom. Gemma kicked her legs happily as he slammed the door shut behind them, blocking out the sounds of revelry and merrymaking, shutting them into their own small world of heated touches and shared breath.

Hal let Gemma’s slippered feet kiss the floor. Not wanting her to feel exposed, wanting only to show her that he had bared himself entirely to her, at last, Hal stripped off his clothes.

It was an odd sensation, being naked while she was still dressed, and he savored it for a moment while letting her hungry gaze roam his nude form. He hoped she liked what she saw. The way she licked her lips said that she did.

“Now me,” she ordered, and Hal had never been happier to be given an order in his life.

He’d not had the chance to undress her before, and he did so now with the reverence the revelation of her body deserved. Every new inch of skin that appeared was a joy to him, and he lavished her with kisses from the sensual curve of her neck to her plump arms and soft, silken belly, the dip of her waist and the flare of her hips, the shapely perfection of her legs and the dainty arches of her feet.

“My turn,” she said, her small hands pulling at his shoulders and urging him from his worshipful kneeling position back to standing. “You make me want such wicked things, Hal. You make me wanton.”

“I love you wanton.”

Her lips curved into that saucy smile that he’d loved from the start. “Do you know something? I do too.”

And she sank to her knees before him, naked and unashamed, and took his hard, throbbing cockstand into her hands. Her touch undid him and remade him, all in one breath, and then she devastated everything Hal had ever thought he knew about pleasure by taking him into her mouth.

* * *

The whirl of giddy happiness and fizzy nervousness in her head all quieted the moment Gemma got her mouth on Hal. When she was sucking him, there was no room for anything other than the delicious taste of his most intimate skin, the satiny heft of his shaft pressing her tongue down, the smooth bumping of the domed head of his cock against the roof of her mouth.

She swallowed, which made him groan, which delighted her so that she did it again, and he groaned again, like a conversation that she wanted to go on and on forever.

Forever. They had forever now.

Joy sparkled up inside her like the bubbles in champagne. She took her mouth off him long enough to grin up at him, and Hal grinned back, his smile tinged dark with a desire that twisted heat into Gemma’s belly.

“You’d better come up here,” Hal rumbled. “Or you’re going to have me spending in your mouth.”

Gemma sat back on her heels, intrigued. She thought she’d quite like to find out what Hal tasted like, and what it felt like to swallow him down, knowing her mouth had brought him to bliss. Someday she would.

All the somedays they would have together lifted her to her feet as though on a cloud. She barely had time to enjoy the shivery goodness of their two naked forms brushing together, him so hard and her so soft, before he’d picked her up again as though she weighed no more than the goose down that stuffed the mattress onto which he deposited her.

He came down on top of her and she welcomed him into her arms, relishing the heavy thrust of his hips that sent his rampant erection sliding across the smooth roundness of her stomach. She ached and burned for him at her core, a restless longing that had her raising her knees so that his lean hips settled more firmly against her.

Hal slid down so that he could prop his elbows on the bed and frame her face between his forearms. They stared into one another’s eyes for a long, suspended moment.

“I can’t believe you are willing to give me another chance,” he said, the words seeming to be ripped from him painfully.

He could not seem to stop himself from giving her openings to take it all back, to rescind her acceptance of his proposal and escape him.

Once, that might have given Gemma pause. She might have leapt to the conclusion that Hal was the one who wanted to escape, that he didn’t really love her or want to marry her.

But she knew now that it was only his own fear talking. Gemma could see how their individual fears—her conviction that she would always be alone, his that he deserved to be alone—had tangled together to create a situation rife with misunderstanding and hesitance, but they had pushed through that to end up here in this bed, together.

The bone-deep sense of unworthiness that his family had instilled in him would take time to overcome. Hal had made a start on his own, building his community and a place for himself with the people and the land he so loved. And Gemma would love him through the rest, so ferociously that he would have no choice but to believe in it.

As for her, she had only to look up into his beloved green eyes, staring so intently back at her, to know and to feel in every corner of her starved heart, that she was no longer alone. Hal was here with her, in every way, and if she could learn to trust in that, she sensed a lifetime of happiness on the horizon.

Trust was not easy, especially after what he’d done.

It was a risk.

But Gemma thought in some ways, her entire life had prepared her to rise to the challenge of trusting in love. She knew love was real; she’d seen it between her own parents. She’d never expected to find it for herself, but now that she had, she knew she would be an utter fool to let it go.

Perhaps she was as reckless as the Ton believed her to be, but Gemma knew the love she had with Hal, and the life they would have together, was worth the risk.

So she looped her arms behind his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

“I love you,” she told him. With her words. With her hands. With the warm, wet welcome of her body as he moved into her, merging with her and going so deep she could feel him everywhere.

As his careful thrusts began to deteriorate into the hard, driving rhythm she craved, Gemma knew that there would be no escape for her.

Luckily, she didn’t want one.

All she wanted was this. Hal in her arms, pushing pleasure and completion and oneness into her and filling her up with the essence of himself. She cried out, limbs trembling, as the last, juddering thrusts of his thickness inside her tumbled her over the edge.

When Hal would have pulled out, concerned that he was too heavy for her, Gemma protested by wrapping her arms and legs about him and keeping him still.

“I want to feel you in me, just a little longer,” she pleaded breathlessly.

“I would stay right here forever if I could. Gemma.” Hal pushed his face into her hair, resting his forehead against her temple. “I will never leave you.”

Her heart ached along the fault lines of the cracks so recently mended. It was the most important promise Hal knew how to make, and it made Gemma’s insides go wobbly and soft with love.

“I believe you,” she told him, lifting an arm to curve shelteringly around his head. His big body shuddered against her, wracked with an excess of emotion that paradoxically steadied Gemma. They would figure it out.

Together.

She didn’t realize they had dozed off, curled in each other’s arms, until a knock on the bedroom door startled her awake.

All at once, she remembered that the Earl of Stonehaven was due to arrive back at Five Mile House sometime that day, hat in hand and ready for her answer, and her blood ran cold at the idea of him finding her naked in bed with Hal.

Stonehaven was too good a man to deserve the shabby way she’d treated him, and guilt propelled her out of bed to struggle into her chemise and stays.

But the hissed whisper through the door wasn’t Stonehaven’s mild, cultured voice. It was Lucy.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, hiding away in there, but you need to come downstairs at once!”

“Why,” Gemma called as Hal roused himself from the bed to tug on his trousers and help her into her dress. “What’s happened?”

“You’ll never guess who’s come,” Lucy said importantly, leaving room for a dramatic pause while Gemma frantically tried to deal with her hair.

“Stonehaven?” she guessed, distracted.

“No! It’s Ashbourn! Our brother, Nathaniel!”