Page 37 of His Temporary Duchess
She rested her hand on his arm, looking up at him as she did so, as though she thought he might fling her off.
At home, he might have done. At home, where he was free to treat her as he liked, free tohaveher if he so chose, he would have been both far more likely to push her away, and far more tempted to let her remain close.
“I had not expected to see you with Lord Greycliff,” she said, looking at where his former friend strolled arm in arm with her friend. “You told me once you were not friends.”
“We are not. He found me here much the same as you did.”
“But why?” she persisted. “If he is so eager to be your friend, why do you deny him?”
“He lost that right a long time ago.”
“So then he seeks forgiveness?” She let out a long sigh, and Sebastian cursed her for understanding the situation so quickly and easily. “And you are reluctant to give it. Did he do something very bad?”
“Not in the slightest. I merely find it more convenient to have as few ties to my companions as possible.”
A frown touched her brow, drawing a line down the center, and he had the ridiculous urge to smooth it away somehow. To reassure her, though that had never been his purpose. “Is that truly what you think? That it is better to be lonely?”
“I said nothing about loneliness.”
“Perhaps not, but does that mean you are never lonely?” She peered up at him, her eyes almost blue in the sunlight. He thought briefly, explosively, that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, and he burned a little with the need to touch her, to make her his in the only way he knew he could not.
She may be his in the eyes of the law, but she would never be. And that was the way he wanted it, even if sometimes his fingersitched with the need to feel her skin against him, and his lips burned with the memory of her kiss.
She was a ghost to him, yet so achingly alive. Sometimes, in moments like these, he wondered if he could ever survive this marriage.
“I am too busy to be lonely,” he muttered instead, attempting to distract himself. “I have my work, my estate, and my engagements in town. When one has as many things as I do to occupy himself, he has no need for idle friendship. Luke’s friendship would not reflect well on either of us, and I have no desire for it.”
Eleanor’s hand tightened on his arm. “Will you let no one in?” she whispered, and although they were on a large pathway in Hyde Park, surrounded by trees, the Serpentine in the distance, and many other promenading families all around, he felt briefly as though she had transported them to a private parlor where there was no one but the still air around them to hear her words.
He stopped, and so did she. The cruel rejoinder was on his tongue, a heartbeat away from crushing the delicate hope in her eyes. Heneededto crush that hope, but even as he thought the words, he knew he could not bring himself to do so.
A long time ago, he had made the decision to keep everyone in his life at bay, and it had worked spectacularly—until now. Better he keep his distance and not get hurt. The moment he allowed someone to pass his defenses, he knew they would take advantage of his weakness and use it against him.
After all, it had happened before. Everyone he had ever cared about had left him.
He pressed his lips together, irritated at himself, at every laughing god in the sky who had watched him propose to this woman without doing anything to intervene and spare him.
Even without letting her into his life, perhaps she would destroy him anyway.
He leaned in closer. “Do you think you have the power to change me, Eleanor? A man’s habits are not easy ones to break.”
“I am not looking to break you, Sebastian,” she murmured back. “Nor am I looking to change you. I just want to know you.”
Shaken, he leaned back again. Luke and Miss Ashby had strolled further ahead. No one was close enough to overhear them, but he felt exposed, flayed open under the punishing glare of the sun. Only, it wasn’t the sun seeing through him, but Eleanor.
“You will never,” he told her, as harshly as he could, and dropped her arm. They walked the rest of the way in silence.
As she traveled back to the manor, Eleanor rubbed her fingers together where she had held his jacket. Although he had told her she would never know him, she had not missed the flash of indecision across his face, so raw it looked almost like pain.Perhaps his mouth said one thing, and perhaps that was what he thought he should say—cruelty appeared to be the thing he relied upon the most—but she got the impression that was far from the thing his heart desired.
And so, uncowed by his rejection of her, she prepared for the evening in relative solitude, allowing him to think that perhaps he would not find her again that day. Then, as night approached, she bid Abigail to dress her in her most revealing nightgown.
Sebastian would not get away with this so easily.Shewould not allow it.
Perhaps he thought his explanation in Hyde Park would be enough to satisfy her, but he would find himself mistaken. He found itconvenientto have as few ties to his fellow man as possible? Even if he believed it was the truth, she did not think so. Everything about him spoke of a man who suffered deeply from loneliness. A man whose loneliness had grown to be a part of him, as integral to his being as an arm or a leg. Of course he did not notice its presence; he would only notice its absence.
She would ensure that he noticed it. One way or the other.
And if her presence in his bedchamber inspiredotherthings, then so be it. Her entire body hummed with desire at the thought, and as she stepped inside his bedchamber—through the main door, as the adjoining one had remained locked since that first night—she felt the slick heat between her thighs.