Page 57 of The Duke is Wicked
While working through his delight, he extended hers.
She returned from her pleasurable haze to find him braced on his forearms above her, chest hitching, hair a silken shroud around his face. The Soul Catcher had rolled from his pocket and lay beside them, an array of pale yellow facets striking the side of his face. Their muted exhalations mingled, the only sound aside from the slap of a branch against the orangery window panes. Pressing his forehead to hers, he reclaimed her mouth in a rough, impassioned kiss. “I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “More than anyone I’ve ever known. More than anyone I willeverlove, except this baby. Make no mistake, you’ll marry me. Become my duchess. This child will have my name. Tomorrow, in the village chapel, if I can secure a special license with such haste. I can surely bribe a solicitor, and this bloody title should move the needle. And then…” His breath rushed forth in a belabored exhalation, and he dropped his brow to her shoulder.
Awareness hit her, his disquiet breaking through the sensual fog. “You’re thinking to leave me...”
He sighed, a warm caress against her cheek. “We’ll see each other. I can’t stay away.” His throat clicked as he swallowed. “I could never stay away. But we can’t live together. Not when I’m a danger to you. And to ourchild.”
Delaney shoved him hard enough to dislodge him from her body. It was only the second time he’d remained with her until completion, an act she’d dreamed about—and now she’d been forced to end it in anger. “I’ll never forgive you if you do this, Sebastian. You propose a society marriage. Tome. You must be mad.”
“It’s because I love you and this baby that I suggest this. I would’ve crafted an elegant proposal, the most magnificent known to theton, to a woman I did notlove. Jewelry offered on bent knee with liveried footman serving champagne and tossing rose petals at our feet. My mind, my body, is not fully mine when I’m with you, forgive me.” He clenched his fingers into a fist and punched it against the settee cushion. “Do you think I want to be apart when you’ve owned my heart, my soul, since the moment I met you with the dust of Rotten Row swirling around us?”
She scrambled from beneath him, kicking out and making contact with his shin, the Soul Catcher bouncing off the floor and coming to a glittering rest against a wooden bucket. “You coward. The duke of cowards!”
Grimacing, he rubbed his shin, half-turning from her to put his clothing to rights. “Fine, I’m a coward. I could cling to you, to this, to what we have, hoping love will change me, take the heat from my fingertips, the fires from my dreams. Keep you safe. Our baby safe. When I know in the heart so full of you, the worst realization for a man like me, that I can’tprotectyou.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “Because I’m the dangerous element.” His gaze found hers, his face drawn in lines of stark despair. “You’re not helping my control. My adoration has made me more unpredictable, like when I was a boy. I practically burned the estate down around us the moment I grasped you were pregnant.”
Hurt bubbled from her chest and spread through her body, a thousand tiny slices from his words. “Like Piper helps Julian. And Victoria, Finn.”
His look was bleak, his denial nonexistent.
“I’m like opium for you—intoxicating but deadly.” Stumbling to her feet, Delaney jerked her nightgown past her knees, ripping the hem. “Let’s face facts. I’m a commoner. A filthy American. You’ve gotten yourself in trouble,ruinedsomeone beneath you in class, and now this is your only—”
He pulled her into his arms before she could finish the statement, curling her against his long body and holding her there. His heartbeat tapped a frantic rhythm beneath her ear. “I love you more for your uniqueness. More foreverything. Your lilting speech. Your fantastic mind, your razor-sharp wit, your boundless courage. Your beauty. I’ve never known a woman like you. I couldn’t care less about your lack of a blue-blooded birthright.”
“I’m to remain in Oxfordshire while you gallivant around London without me? Leaving you available to another opera singer, another actress.” She struggled to wrench from his hold. “I won’t do it. I won’t share you.”
“There isn’t, nor will there ever be, anyone else for me, Delaney. But that doesn’t alleviate the danger. Or the hard choice I must make to keep you and the babe safe.” He brought her closer without effort, his strength on potent display. Pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, he asked in a soft voice, “Aren’t you going to tell me...that you love me, too? Can you at least give me that?”
She sniffled and shook her head, damning the tears that this pregnancy brought so easily. “Not until you realize that love is healing. Until you do, the words are like smoke, drifting away. Gone.”
“I think love is healing,” he whispered into her hair.
No, you don’t.
And she wasn’t going to marry him until he did.
Chapter 17
Three hours after Delaney failed to attend their wedding, the Duke of Ashcroft opened the door to his leased London suite of rooms to find Finn in the foyer, his typically cheerful expression, for once, not so cheerful. Sebastian’s heart raced, his vision dotting for one sluggish second, a painful ache constricting his chest until he feared he’d lose consciousness, which would be a proper end to a miserable day.
Is she well? The baby?
Finn shook his head, and Sebastian understood he’d not said the words aloud, which wasn’t necessary with a mind-reader. “Finally, it happens. You give away your shriveled ducal heart, then you go and make a mess of it. And you thought I was an idiot with Victoria. My friend, you have surpassed all previous masculine follies. I dressed for a wedding, which delights to no end, but without a bride, thereisno wedding.”
Groaning, Sebastian put his hand to his temple and pressed hard.
Too much gin.
Too little Delaney.
When Case Temple stepped into view at the top of the stairs, Sebastian started to slam the door, but Delaney’s brother slapped his hand against the burnished walnut and shoved his way into the room.
Turning his back on the men, Sebastian wandered to the sideboard and poured gin in two glasses, making a good show of hiding his trembling hands. Case looked too much like his sister to do anythingbutgive Sebastian’s belly a painful twist. A lonely, agonizing knot. He hadn’t touched her in seven days, seen her face in five, and he was dying inside. “You can tell Julian I’m clean except for a modest detour inside a bottle. Is that why you’re here?” Although he’d been tempted to trot down to Seven Dials and the filthy doss house he’d once frequented. Lose himself, forget about dreams of babies with eyes the color of storm clouds and hair as black as midnight. Forget about the one woman in the entire universe he longed for, liked.Loved.
The woman he wanted but with whom he couldn’t live.
The woman who’d decided she couldn’t come to terms withhisterms.
“So you chose to hide out at the Albany,” Finn murmured with a sniff, brushing his hand across the brocade sofa before settling his long body across it. Kicking one polished boot atop the other, he stretched his broad shoulders with a pop. “As posh as they say. I passed two earls and a marquess on the way up. My first time here, you know. Management would never stoop so low as leasing to a viscount’s byblow.” He glanced at Case with a smile. “Or an American. But for a duke—who has a townhouse three streets over, where he should be, but has decided not to be, because of the crowds waiting outside for a glimpse of his new duchess—the doors are thrown wide. Probably tossed the baronet vacating these rooms out on his silly arse the moment you called. You’re a much higher card in the game, Ashcroft. It must be nice.”