Page 11 of The Duke Who Dared Me (Wayward Dukes’ Alliance #31)

One carriage. Two enemies. And a storm no one saw coming. Sources confirm: Thunder isn’t the only thing that shook the countryside last night.

- The Polite Observer

A footman found Verity just as the soup course was cleared, bearing a silver tray and a letter with her name scrawled across the front in her brother’s unmistakable hand.

She hesitated, just long enough to peek up and catch the swift glances of guests pretending not to watch, before slipping her finger beneath the seal.

Her heart dropped. Colin, sweet baby Colin, was gravely ill.

“Is something the matter, dear?” Lady Quinlan leaned in with concern.

Verity swallowed hard, the letter shaking in her hand. “My nephew is ill with fever. My brother’s asked me to return to London immediately.”

“Oh, my dear.” Lady Quinlan waved over a footman. “Take my carriage.”

Verity began to protest, but the countess dismissed her concern with a graceful flick of her gloved hand, glittering with rubies.

“I’ll escort her,” Alistair said, already pushing back from his chair. “He’s my godson.”

Lady Quinlan blinked at him, then smiled. “Very well, Your Grace. Safe travels, both of you.”

She personally led them through the marbled entry as staff hurried to prepare the carriage. At the door, she pressed a blanket and a basket of sandwiches and tea cakes into Verity’s hands. “I can’t send you off hungry. Children are resilient. I’ll keep him in my thoughts.”

The rain started as Alistair helped her into the carriage, the early March wind already lashing through the trees. Thunder rolled above them.

By the time they were well on their way, the heavens had opened entirely. Rain sheeted against the windows. The road had turned to mud a half hour ago, and the wheels slid with every turn.

Verity pressed herself into the farthest corner of the seat, arms wrapped tightly around herself as another crack of thunder split the sky.

“Wonderful,” she muttered. “As if the closet wasn’t enough, now we must be trapped in a carriage.”

Alistair didn’t look up. He sat across from her, maddeningly unruffled with legs stretched out, cravat still crisp, the very picture of infuriating ease. One might never have guessed they’d spent hours locked together in the dark.

“This is hardly my fault,” he said at last, eyes fixed on the rain. His voice was quieter than usual, clipped. Tense.

“He’s only six months old,” Verity whispered, more to herself than to him. The letter crinkled in her grip. “Babies are so fragile. What if we’re too late? Percy wouldn’t have written if it weren’t serious. What if?—”

“We won’t be.” Alistair’s voice was firm, cutting through her spiraling thoughts. “Colin’s a fighter. He barged into the world three weeks early, bellowing loud enough to wake half of London.”

Despite everything, she felt a flicker of warmth. “You remember?”

“I remember everything about the day he was born. How you cried when you first held him, how proud your brother looked.” His voice softened. “Dr. Norris is the finest physician in London. Colin is in competent hands.”

Outside, they heard the driver yell at the horses, and the carriage lurched to the left.

“The roads aren’t safe.” Alistair gripped the bench and pressed his face against the window. “We’re not far from Town, but we’ll need to spend the night at the coaching inn ahead.”

Nearly a half hour later, after freeing the coach from the mud, they arrived. The Gold Bumblebee Inn was tucked against the rolling hillside, tilted to the left, with hasty patchwork of crumbling lime mortar across the stoneface of the building.

Alistair wiped his face, now soaked from helping the driver with the coach, before hopping to the soft, muddy ground and handing her out of the carriage.

“Do we need to stay here?” she shouted over the stinging rain. She squinted against the storm, rushing to the stone stairs as he barked orders out at the driver.

“You want to argue? Now?”

After her parents’ accident, she would rather be cautious than risk her life.

If they lingered, there was a chance of a limb striking them or catching their deaths from the cool March rain. It was infuriating when he made sense.

“Fine,” she huffed.

He tucked her under his coat, and the pair raced inside. The vestibule smelled of wet wool, stale ale, and desperation. The innkeeper, a round man with knowing eyes and a gap-toothed grin, studied them with barely concealed amusement.

“Terrible night to be traveling,” he said, wiping his hands on a stained apron. “You’re lucky we’ve got anything left. Storm’s brought in more than our usual.”

“Two rooms,” Alistair said curtly, placing coins on the scarred wooden counter.

The man’s grin widened. “Ah, well, there’s the rub, isn’t it? Only have the one room left. Take it or brave the storm, I say.”

Verity felt the blood drain from her face.

One room?

With Alistair.

“My wife would prefer…”

“We’ll take it,” she interrupted, her voice steadier than she felt. Alistair’s head snapped toward her, his eyes wide with something that might have been panic. “Unless you prefer we sleep in the stable?” She lifted her chin. “I’m sure the horses would appreciate the company.”

They didn’t speak as they were led up the narrow stairs and into the small, crooked room at the end of the corridor.

The fire was crackling. The windows rattled in their frames as the wind howled outside.

And the bed had clearly seen better years.

The mattress sagged in the middle, and she tried not to think about how close that would force them to sleep. If they slept at all.

A fire crackled in the grate, casting warm light over faded red flock wallpaper and a washstand which had probably been white once upon a time.

“You can have the bed,” Alistair said, bending down to stoke the fire.

“How generous.” She began pulling pins from her hair with sharp, efficient movements. “And where exactly do you propose to sleep? On that chair in the corner that’s missing half its stuffing?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Another pin clattered onto the washstand. “We’re both adults. It’s just sleeping.”

But even as she said it, she knew it was a lie. Nothing about being alone with Alistair had ever been “just” anything.

He straightened slowly, firelight playing across the sharp planes of his face. “Verity, you don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“I'm asking you to be practical.” Her voice came out breathier than she intended.

“Practical?” He stepped toward her, and suddenly the room felt impossibly small. “There’s nothing practical about this. About being here with you, wanting things I have no right to want.”

She turned away to examine the faded landscape painting above the bed, but really because she couldn't bear the intensity in his eyes. “You make it sound dangerous.”

“Isn’t it?”

Her hands stilled in her hair. One curl tumbled free, brushing against her neck, and she saw his gaze follow its path in the mirror's reflection.

“You make it hard to be the gentleman I'm supposed to be.”

She turned slowly to face him. “What kind of gentleman is that?”

“The kind who walks away.” His voice was raw now, all pretense stripped away.

“The kind who doesn’t touch you, even though I’ve been wanting to since the moment we were trapped in that damned closet.

Maybe… no, most assuredly well before that moment.

The kind who doesn’t tell you that every time you’re slighted by society, I’m ready to draw pistols like some idiot with a death wish. ”

Her throat tightened. “Alistair.”

“You’re not a mistake, Verity.” He moved closer, close enough that she could see the storm reflected in his eyes. “No matter how many times I’ve tried to convince myself you are.”

His voice dropped, raw with honesty. “You light up every room you enter, not because you’re trying to, but because you can’t help yourself. You’ve this way of making everyone around you feel more alive. Even me. Especially me, and I’ve spent years fighting it because it terrified me.”

He reached up, his fingers barely grazing her cheek.

“You’re brilliant and maddening, and you attack life like it’s an adventure waiting to be conquered.

I’m envious of that fearlessness, that joy you find in everything.

Promise me you’ll never dim that light for anyone.

I can survive almost anything, but watching you make yourself smaller would destroy me. ”

The walls she’d built around her heart didn’t crumble. They simply ceased to exist. All those years of telling herself he despised her, of believing she was too much, too loud, too everything ... His words rewrote every cruel whisper she’d ever heard about herself.

Heat bloomed in her chest, spreading outward until even her fingertips tingled. She wanted to touch him, to prove to herself this wasn't another dream where he looked at her like she mattered.

His hand lifted toward her face, and for one breathless moment, she thought he might actually touch her. Then he caught himself, his fingers curling into a fist that fell back to his side.

“We should sleep,” he said roughly, stepping back. “Percy needs us to be clearheaded tomorrow when we arrive to help with Colin.”

The mention of her nephew was like falling through the icy pond at Warwick Cottage. Of course. Even now, even after everything he'd just said, he was thinking of duty first. Of what was proper and right and safe.

“Right,” she managed, her voice steady despite the ache in her chest. “Sleep.”

But as she settled against the pillows, facing the wall, she heard him whisper her name. Just once, so soft she might have imagined it. She closed her eyes and let herself believe it had only been the wind.

* * *

Alistair had been staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours.

The fire had burned down to embers, casting restless shadows across cracked plaster.

His makeshift bed of his greatcoat and threadbare blanket was about as comfortable as the cobblestone alleyway of the East End he woke up in one too many times as a young buck.

But discomfort wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the woman three feet away, so still he might have thought her asleep if not for the careful rhythm of her breath.

The problem was the way she’d looked standing by the fire, skirts damp, hair loose, lips parted from some muttered insult.

The problem was the memory of kissing her.

The taste of it. The shock. The way it felt like the one true thing in his life.

God, the problem was that she was Verity.

He shut his eyes, only to see her laughing at something Lord Brookhouse said, bristling at some society slight, crying when she first held Colin. It was every moment. Every year. Each little glance or scrape or argument had wedged into his chest until it left no room for anything else.

It wasn’t irritation. Hadn’t been for years. It was something that made his chest tight and his hands restless.

The rain drummed on, relentless. The wind ruthlessly rattled the window shutters of the small inn. It sounded as if the world was trying to shake something loose. The same could be said of Alistair and this evening.

She’d muttered at him when he offered to take the floor again, something halfway between a threat and a thank-you, then turned away to face the wall.

He knew this would be bad. Sharing a room. Breathing the same air. Hell, the closet nearly finished him. But he hadn’t expected this.

Not want. Not desire.

Need.

“Are you asleep?” he asked at last.

“I was.”

Her voice, low and dry, tugged a smile from him. “Sorry.”

He heard her shift slightly, making room. Without a word, he rose from his makeshift bed on the floor and settled carefully on the far edge of the mattress, leaving space between them.

“Why did you say that?” she asked after a minute, so quiet he almost missed it.

“Say what?”

“That I’m not a mistake.”

He stared at the soft curve of her shoulder, the fall of tangled dark curls spilling down her back and over her shift.

“Because it’s true,” he said. “And I think... you believe that’s what I think of kissing you. That I regret it.”

She rolled onto her back, turning her face toward him at last. “You’re not usually this sentimental.”

“Lack of sleep is a wicked beast.”

She didn't smile.

“Or maybe I’m just tired of pretending you don’t get under my skin.”

Her brow lifted. “That’s what this is? Irritation ?”

“No.” His voice didn’t sound familiar to him just then, the soft crack, the way he wavered. “That’s the problem. It never really was.”

She watched him carefully, like she was waiting for him to pull back again. “If it wasn’t irritation,” she said softly, “what was it all these years? The fighting, the distance, the tears…”

“I can’t bear to think I caused you to cry.”

“For a while, it seemed you enjoyed it.” She shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “I’m only Verity.”

He moved before he could stop himself, closing the careful distance he’d maintained, and brushed his knuckles over her chin. Her skin was impossibly soft. “Bug,” he whispered. “You matter. You’ve always mattered. It’s easier to argue than admit?—”

“Kiss me.”

His arm wrapped around her, pulling her flush against him. She leaned in, and her mouth met his with a kiss that shattered the last fragile thread of his restraint.

It was breathless. Desperate. Real.

“You can tell me to stop.”

Their hands fumbled with fastenings, with fabric, with the desperate need to be closer. Her shift tangled around her legs. The blankets slid forgotten to the floor.

But then, she caught his wrist.

“I don’t want you to,” she whispered, and though her voice was steady, her fingers trembled against his wrist.

When he kissed her again, it wasn’t just hunger. It was everything he’d buried for years under duty, under silence, under fear. It wasn’t surrender. It was relief. It felt like finally arriving home.

And for once, she let him stay.