Page 59 of The Duke is Wicked
“Duchesses for everyone,” Finn whispered, on the verge of sleep.
Think like Delaney. An impossible task with such a vibrant mind as hers, but he could try.
What does she want? What can she not give herself?
Her words, so softly spoken, fluttered through his senses, soothing his ire and his uncertainty as effectively as her finger trailing along the nape of his neck.
Love is healing.
Love is healing.
And, unexpectedly, he understood exactly what to do.
Chapter 18
Delaney had read the passage so many times, that even without Charles Dickens’s fixed placement in her attic, she would have known his words—now Sebastian’s—by heart.
You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good—every good—with equal force.
The ruin of me.
A simple statement. When being someone’s ruin was hideously complicated. Letting someone ruinyoueven more so.
Sebastian had said she was terrible for him, and he’d meant ruin. Her heart had broken in that moment, beyond repair broken. Yet, she’d not understood it was the ruin caused by passionate love, Dickens style. Delaney hadn’t considered weathering the storm, sticking it out, marrying the duke, then worming her way so deeply into his heart he wouldn’t be able to leave her.
A magnificent maneuver, when she was the American queen of them.
Letting his love heal in the way she’d asked him to lethersheal. She’d been, for the first time, afraid to gamble. Hedge her bet. Roll the dice. Pick a card. Loose the arrow.
When she loved gambling.
But not with her heart.
She’d considered herself a fighter until she met a handsome Brit one fine day in Hyde Park and saved him from a bee sting. But Sebastian’s rejection had destroyed her, an unimaginable wound for a woman who’d never invited anyone, outside her twin and her duke, inside her lonely little attic.
The carriage rumbled over a crater in the road and tossed her against the velvet squabs. She glanced out the window, not knowing exactly where the conveyance took her, only that they’d traveled northwest of the city and had recently entered a stretch of woodland, a lake shimmering in the distance, charming stone cottages edging the roadway. She’d gone into her attic and studied a map, only to determine her treasures didn’t always provide answers. Hadn’t Sebastian once told her that reading about things doesn’t bring them to life?
The air was crisp, the scent of pine, earth and approaching rain circling the carriage’s luxurious interior. With a joyous smile she didn’t try to contain, she breathed deeply of her future.
He’d taken her dare. Sebastian had come for her.
In the summons, he’d sent Dickens, the book’s page marked with a bright blue ribbon attached to his signet ring, and his carriage. She’d climbed inside without changing into more formal dress, without asking a single question of his liveried footmen or her guards, such was her need to see him. Seven impossibly long days without him had shown her how unprepared she was to enforce her threats. Impose her will.
He loved her, loved their baby.
His love, even if it necessitated his absence, would have to be enough.
A stray sunbeam shot through the window and struck the tiara sitting on the opposite seat, dispatching a brilliant, faceted burst across the carriage walls. She reached, then pulled her hand back. The piece was dazzling, like nothing she’d ever seen. Scrolled platinum flowers set with sapphires, pearls and diamonds. It was elegant and pretentious, and she loved it upon first sight, like the man who’d given it to her. She’d visited her attic and determined it was likely designed in the mid-1500s, older than the country she was from.
It was a tiara fit for a duchess.
An invitation to behis. But on his terms.
After all, she was a humble girl from South Carolina who’d somehow fallen in love with a duke. So she kept her hands to herself but her eye on her tiara, wondering what Sebastian was set to offer. And what she could accept.
In the distance, the peaked roofs and spires of a city loomed on the horizon. Leaning from the window, she laughed and caught the eye of the coachman, who appeared startled before a broad smile lit his face. They traversed a narrow stone bridge over a thin river, angling between a set of low-slung buildings before turning onto a major thoroughfare. Wagons and hacks fought for space amidst a line of carts selling sweetmeats and pies. And young men, everywhere. Students. Racing across the jammed street and gathering in groups on the corners.
Delaney laughed, understanding dawning.Oxford. Sebastian had brought her to Oxford.