Page 30

Chapter Twenty-Five

S elina was engaged. She had agreed to marry the Duke of Aldworth, and there was nothing that Hugh could do about it.

A pressure sat upon his chest from the moment he had approached the butler as he opened the door. Magnus stood there, smiling and as calm as ever, as he proceeded into the house. Hugh knew the future that would soon come to pass from the moment he saw him.

When he’d watched Selina as Magnus was escorted into the drawing room, her sisters and mother scurrying off to the room nearby to overhear the conversation, Hugh had been unable to look away from her face.

All sound had left the room. All light had been focused on Selina and Selina alone. He didn’t need to hear the words exchanged to understand what was going on, and just as the rumbling base of Magnus's voice disappeared from the background, Selina’s eyes found his.

They stared at each other for who knew how long. Hugh could not be certain. He had lived in that moment for this perfect fraction of time. It was just the two of them gazing at each other as they had done so many times before.

His chest had constricted. He could feel the words lingering on the tip of his tongue.

Tell her no. Tell her not to accept his offer. Make your own, Hugh. Ask for her hand.

But that was lunacy. There was no way that Hugh could marry Selina. They were too different, their situation so wild and uncouth. Every inch of his being called out for her, yes, but no way could come to pass.

Hugh had inherited his position as Duke from Selina’s late husband, which made the situation awkward enough, and marriage still did not suit him. He was not the type for it.

No, Hugh was better suited as a businessman and a businessman alone. No woman was safe within his grasp, and as much as he ached to hold Selina, he could not allow himself that. So, he had said nothing, and he had watched Selina’s eyes track from him toward Magnus, sound returning to the room.

And she had said yes.

A flurry of wedding preparations had descended upon the estate shortly after the proposal.

Hugh continually thanked whoever had looked down on him the day that he had been made a man.

There was no way in hell that he could be involved in any of these damned preparations, especially when his heart sank every time they were mentioned.

Most days and in every way feasible, Hugh tried to remain away from Selina. He would keep to the study, take his meals there, and whenever there was an errand that needed to be carried out outside the house, he staunchly refused to be a part of it.

It was not his job to help arrange the wedding anyway. Selina had her mother for that, and even Magnus had joined in on several of the outings. Hugh could certainly do without watching the two of them together.

Still, Hugh found it impossible to remain entirely away from them when they were in the same house together. Whenever the two of them crossed paths, he was drawn to her, somehow finding the room she would be in, seemingly by accident but potentially by some cruel fate.

And whenever they were in the same room together, he would be drawn to her all the more, unknowingly crossing the empty space that separated them until he was too near her, too close.

You cannot do this. You, you must stop yourself, pull yourself together.

However, there was no use in arguing with himself. There were too many times when the two of them would be alone in a room or in a room with a small population, and in those instances, Hugh found himself gravitating towards her, drawn into her orbit as if she were the sun itself.

He would bask in her warmth, seeking ways to touch her fiery glory, to run his fingers over the bare skin of her hand or to brush his shoulder against hers. But just like getting too close to the sun, and in an argument Icarus himself could make, he was continually burned every time he did it.

Glances, touches, they had gone a time without all of them, but it was starting all over again.

With each rebuffed turn or each moment when they had to yank themselves apart, Hugh burned for it.

He ached somewhere deep beneath his rib cage in a place he couldn’t name.

Every time he was forced from her sight or she from his because of circumstance or present company, Hugh wished only to howl out loud for the amount of pain he was in.

It was all too much. It had been going on for too long now. These preparations had lasted for a week, and Hugh needed a way to bring all of this to a halt.

Think, Hugh. Think about what you can do to make all of this go away. Think about how you can pull yourself from Selina’s grasp. You must not fall like this.

But the only thing his sleep-deprived brain—a condition that had resulted from restless nights consumed with fantasies and dreams about Selina—could come up with was the notion of not thinking at all.

Perhaps if he did not dwell on the image of Selina’s face or remember the way her hair looked when lit up by the sun from behind, he would be better. He would be saner.

That evening, when most of the house had gone to sleep, except for the staff, Hugh had stealthily left his bedroom and made his way down to the study once more. There, he found the small liquor cabinet that he kept hidden from sight and pulled out a bottle of scotch.

It seemed as good a plan as any to drown his woes in the bottle he hid in his desk. And perhaps several more.

It was certainly no worse than any other idea he had had lately, such as that brief moment when his mind had flirted with the idea of asking Selina to marry him.

He had almost done it when she came to him after Lydia’s attempted flight.

He had almost told her that if she married him, nothing would have to change; they could all live in the house.

But that was insanity.

He was not designed to be a husband. He would do a piss poor job at it, and he wouldn’t let Selina suffer the consequences of being shackled to him.

So, this was where he remained right now. This was where he resided, trapped within this estate, and if he had to live here and had to watch his Selina get married to someone else, then he would be drunk when it happened.

Hugh pulled the cork from his bottle of whiskey and retrieved the small glass from within his desk.

He poured himself a few inches of the beautiful brown liquid and admired the way it smelled.

The burning peat fragrance was one he was so very familiar with, and he recalled too many evenings of his youth spent drowning other woes at the bottom of the bottle.

His life had not changed very much, it appeared.

Lifting the glass to his lips, Hugh drank deep of the alcohol, feeling it burn all the way down his throat until a warm fire started in his belly. He did it again and again until he was interrupted by a knock at the door.

He sighed. “Damn, I can’t have just one small moment alone. Who would even be bothering me this late at night?”

As the question filled his mind, Hugh could think of only a few people who might be standing on the other side of that door: Lydia and another attempt to leave, Myra in a new attempt to flee like her sister had, or perhaps…

the one person he knew he should not be seeing, and the one person he knew he longed to see more than any other.

Selina.

He stood up from his desk. The chair squeaked against the wood floor as he pushed it away, and he stepped around to the other side, approaching the door purposefully.

The sound of his shoes on the wood was a gentle staccato that filled the room.

It was the only other noise he could focus on, aside from the desperate pounding of his heart in his ears.

When his fingers reached for the doorknob, he found them shaking. Hugh took several breaths to steady himself and then pulled the door open.

There, on the other side, stood Selina.

While he might not have been surprised to see her there, he was utterly shocked by the sight of her. Selina had clearly stolen from her bed, just as he had, and she was dressed down as proof of it.

Her fragile chemise was the only thing left on her.

No stays, no overdress, nothing. The dark swaths of her hair, which were usually piled into elaborate arrangements on the top of her head, hung down around her shoulders and draped down over her chest. The fabric separating her bare flesh from his eyes clung to her, doing little to hide the curves beneath it.

Perhaps equally strange was the utterly serious look pinned to her face.

“May I come in?” Selina kept her voice low, but still, she did not enter without permission, which might have better concealed her appearance at his door.

Hugh stepped to the side, not saying a word, only gesturing inside.

When Selina was past the threshold, he closed the study up once more, latching the door out of an abundance of caution—and perhaps hope as well.

Turning, he found Selina perched in the center of the room, and he approached her, coming around to her front so that they could speak eye to eye.

“Is there something I might assist you with, Your Grace? You have come at such a late hour. And so… informally dressed.”

Selina’s pulse fluttered beneath the smooth skin of her neck, and she swallowed hard, blinking pointedly before meeting Hugh’s stare.

Furthermore, when she did, that stern expression remained in place.

Despite her nerves, Selina was attempting to be a resolute businesswoman which should have set Hugh right, not further excited his thoughts.

God, looking at the woman is like staring into the sun, too bright and strong for my eyes to withstand. Ugh, I have become a blathering poet.

“It must stop.”

Her voice was direct and level, and Hugh furrowed his brow, doing everything he could to keep his tone equally unmoved.

“What must?”