Page 9 of The Duke’s Only Desire (The Dukes of Darkness #3)
S hay strode into the entrance hall, welcoming the silent, dark warmth that greeted him after another evening wasted in the noisy tavern.
The long case clock in the stairs hall struck midnight, and as the chimes died away, he stared up at the large portrait hanging over the fireplace where he’d paused to warm himself just as he’d done every night since his return from London. The painting was life-sized, a joint portrait of his father and John from years ago when his brother had just turned thirteen and before his mother had fled. The duke and the heir, both looking full of vitality and power…yet neither of them was given the future they’d expected.
Shay supposed he should take the portrait down, stash it up in the attic, or put it with the rest of the Douglass ancestors whose pictures graced the long gallery. But for years he’d needed this reminder of what he’d cost the dukedom, so he could serve penance every time he entered the place that should have been his home but never had been.
“And never will be,” he muttered and lowered his gaze to the fire. Just as on every other night, it had been left burning so he could warm himself when he returned.
And just as on every other night, Pearson met him in the entry hall to take his coat, hat, and gloves.
“You won’t need me and will undress yourself,” Pearson anticipated, although it wasn’t much of a guess. Shay had given him the same orders every night for the past sennight.
“Correct. But be up at dawn. I want to ride out early.”
Pearson chuckled as he shook out the greatcoat and mumbled, “Perhaps not.”
“Pardon?”
“Goodnight, Colonel.” Pearson turned to leave, and Shay could have sworn he heard another laugh from the valet. “Sleep well!”
Good Lord, had the entire world gone mad? “No,” he muttered to himself as he headed upstairs to his bed, even though he knew sleep wouldn’t come. “Just my little corner of it.”
He opened his bedroom door and froze.
A small table had been placed in front of the fireplace and set for dinner for two, right down to Ravenscroft Manor’s best china plates, crystal, and silver. Candles flickered in their crystal holders and matched the soft, golden light of the fire that warmed the room against the cold darkness of the winter night. Roasted pheasant and braised vegetables filled both plates, and decanted red and white wine shimmered in their crystal bottles. Even the dumbwaiter from the banqueting hall had been brought up, placed beside the table and covered with various desserts, including chocolate cakes, poached pears, and sugared orange peels.
It was a feast that could have fed a regiment. But it was the woman standing behind the table that seized his attention.
And stopped his heart.
Sophie stood in the soft glow of the firelight wearing a white silk and lace confection that rivaled any of the desserts for delectability. She was breathtaking, with the negligee’s silk skirt coming down only to mid-calf and the tight lace bodice leaving very little to his imagination, her gold hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders. Silhouetted by the firelight, the round, full curves of her hips and thighs were revealed through the silk, along with the small circles of her rosy nipples that pressed against the low-cut lace, which was closed by a single velvet ribbon twining up the bodice.
She boldly locked gazes with him across the room. “Hungry?”
His cock jumped. Famished.
How he kept himself from slamming shut the door and taking her right there on the table, he had no idea. Or how he managed to slowly step inside the room and close the door behind him with a soft click before an errant footman passing in the hall could catch a glimpse of her and force Shay to kill him for it.
Needing time to recover, he stripped off his jacket as casually as possible, as if finding his nearly naked wife in his bedroom was as normal as a Sunday roast. “I ate at the Red Lion.”
“Tavern food. You probably didn’t enjoy a bite of it.” A knowing smile played at her pink lips. “Then it’s a good thing I had your favorites prepared.” She shrugged a shoulder, bare except for a thin strap of ribbon that precariously held up the bodice. What a damn shame if the ribbon broke and her gown fell down of its own volition…or was helped by his teeth. “I’m sure you’ll want seconds.”
Christ. Fate was either playing a cruel joke on him, or the devil had finally come to bargain for his soul by presenting him with the greatest temptation imaginable.
Knowing better than to rise to that bait—did she even know what kinds of sexual entendres were spilling from her lips?—he sank onto a wing back chair in the corner that had been moved away from the fireplace to make room for the table. Leaning forward to yank off his boots, he gestured a hand at her. “I know you’re new to Ravenscroft Manor, but we dress for dinner here. And you’re not dressed.” Dropping the first boot to the floor, he couldn’t help but rake a lingering look over her. “At all.”
“Don’t you like it?” She turned slowly in a circle like a debutante showing off her first ball gown. But the effect only allowed him to see even more of her curves beneath the nearly translucent skirt, including that place at the juncture of her thighs where he knew he would find golden curls. “I wanted to look pretty for you.”
He bit back a laugh. She would have looked beautiful in burlap or in nothing at all. The laugh turned into a frustrated groan. Especially in nothing at all.
“What do you think?” she pressed. “Does it make me look pretty?”
“You look…” Delectable. “Cold,” he managed to force out.
“I’m warm.” She gestured toward the fire. “Downright hot, in fact.”
The second boot dropped. He didn’t have the patience for this. Or the restraint.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and fixed a hard gaze on her. “Why are you doing this, Sophie?”
Beneath another shrug, the ribbon strap slipped tantalizingly down her arm, baring her shoulder completely. It was all he could do to hold back a groan. “If my husband won’t come home for dinner, then dinner must go to my husband.” She sat on the chair at the table and lifted her wine glass. “I hear married couples dine together all the time. Rumors say some of them even enjoy it.” She took a sip of wine, then studied him over the rim of the glass. The tip of her tongue darted out to lick away a drop of wine, and he nearly sank into a puddle on the floor at her feet. Emotion colored her voice when she added, “Besides, you can’t ignore me forever.”
He focused his attention on undoing his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves so she wouldn’t see the torment she caused him. “I’m not ignoring—”
“Besides, it’s only dinner.”
Not with her dressed like dessert, it wasn’t. He wanted to slowly lick the icing from every delectable inch of her, then devour her whole.
She tilted her head curiously, revealing a tempting stretch of neck. God help him, he wanted to put his mouth right there and feel her pulse spike beneath his lips. “What are you so afraid of, Shay,” she asked quietly, “that you won’t let yourself be close to me, not even as a husband?”
That quiet question nearly undid him. He pushed himself out of the chair and snatched up his velvet dressing robe from where Pearson had draped it across the foot of the bed. He circled the table and came up behind her to place it over her shoulders.
“I’m afraid that you’ll catch your death of cold,” he murmured in her ear. He stood so close he could smell the scent of lavender on her skin, and he couldn’t prevent himself from breathing in deeply and filling his senses with her.
He squeezed his eyes shut for one pained moment, then stepped away to put distance between them. He busied himself by continuing to undress for bed by removing his neckcloth and waistcoat, as if she wasn’t there, leaving himself in only trousers, braces, and shirt. Not a man undressing for seduction. He wanted his actions to be clear about that. Just as he would never bare more of himself to her, body or soul. Both were far too scarred.
Obstinately—or perhaps simply because she wanted to torture him until he broke—she pushed off the robe and let it fall around her on the floor. Sweet Lucifer . She somehow seemed even more naked than before.
Hell. That was what this evening was turning into, complete with a wickedly beautiful siren who wanted to take his soul.
Unless he physically carried her from the room and deposited her safely back in her own bed, he had no choice but to finish this torturous dinner as quickly as possible. So he sat on the chair across the table from her and reached to lift his own wineglass in a silent toast to her, the crystal glass and red wine shimmering like brimstone in the firelight.
When she lifted her own glass to return the toast, he saw the bandage on her hand.
His eyes narrowed with concern. “What happened?”
“I hurt myself working in the greenhouse. It’s nothing serious.”
He set down his wineglass and reached across the table, his hand palm up. “Let me see.”
With an irritated little sigh, she laid her hand in his and allowed him to lift it to gain a better view in the candlelight. He turned it slowly, careful not to hurt her, and unwrapped the bandage to examine the cut. Clean and long but shallow—thank God, it didn’t need stitches, and that realization allowed relief to seep over him and push out the concern. If not the guilt.
“How did you hurt it?” he asked, not daring to raise his eyes from the bright pink cut.
“I was clearing up debris in the greenhouse. I wasn’t paying close enough attention, and my hand slipped across the tin top of a worktable.” She shook her head, the faint motion not reassuring him in the least. “It looks worse than it is.”
He traced his fingertip across the poultice in a feather light touch. “Who tended it for you? This isn’t Mrs. Sexton’s handiwork.”
“Miss Danvies.”
His eyes darted up to hers in surprise. “The village midwife?”
“And apothecary. She takes care of all medical emergencies, apparently. Perhaps we should consider hiring a doctor for the village and estate.”
He nodded as he carefully wound up the bandage and tied it back into place, distracted by a gnawing guilt. His responsibility was to protect her, and he had failed. She’d been under his care, and she’d been hurt because he hadn’t had the restraint to be near her.
But being around him would have pained her even more. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t…and the one woman in the world he never wanted to hurt was the one who caused him endless torment.
He released her hand and reached for his wine. “What were you doing in that old greenhouse? It hasn’t been used for years.”
“I wanted to tidy it up for spring.” When he frowned, she asked, “Am I not allowed in the greenhouses?”
“Of course you are.” He reached for the wine bottle to refill his glass even though all the wine in France wouldn’t dull the ache in his gut. He had no idea which ache tormented him more—the ache to possess her, or the one from knowing he never could. “You’re allowed to go anywhere on the estate. This is your home.” Then he arched a brow pointedly. “ Except in here. My rooms are off limits to everyone but Pearson.”
“Even to your wife?”
Especially to my wife. “We’ll draw a line of demarcation at the threshold, shall we?” He forced the unscarred corner of his mouth to lift in a smile whose amusement he didn’t feel. “I’ll take my rooms, you’ll take everything else above ground, and we’ll leave Spain and Portugal to fight it out with Mrs. Latimer over the kitchens.” He lowered his voice as if sharing a deeply hidden secret. “Her Christmas puddings could stop a frontal assault in its tracks.”
Sophie didn’t laugh as he’d hoped. He’d wanted that laughter to chase away the dejected expression darkening her beautiful face.
More punishment for him, he supposed.
“Ask the gardeners to help with the greenhouse,” he told her as he swirled the wine in his glass and watched the red drops sheet down the bowl in the firelight. “MacHeath should be able to free up time to help you. There’s not much to do in the gardens at this time of year.”
“Winter can be the busiest time of year in a garden,” she corrected. Then it became her turn to force a smile. “Gardeners are the most optimistic people in the world, you see. We plant bulbs as the world is dying, with only the cold and darkness ahead to greet our work. Then we wait for months without any sign of life, but we trust in our hearts that it was all worthwhile, knowing that when the spring sun warms the earth, the flowers of our labor will bloom. I trust in that, above all else.”
She meant far more than flowers. He countered, “And I take comfort in the cold and darkness.”
“Horseshit.”
He choked on his wine. “Pardon?”
“What gardens also need to flower,” she explained, deadpan. But from the way her eyes gleamed, the frustrating woman knew exactly what she had implied. Sophie was nothing if not the sharpest woman he’d ever met. And he loved her for—
No. He did not love her. He couldn’t . Loving her once had nearly destroyed him. Letting her invade his heart a second time would simply end him.
He set down his wine and pushed back from the table. “I’m not a garden, Sophie.” He leveled his gaze on her through the flickering candlelight. “There’s nothing left in me to bloom.”
“Horseshit,” she repeated. There was no doubt this time that she wasn’t referring to fertilizer. She placed her napkin on her untouched plate. “Then I suppose dinner is over.” She glanced toward the open connecting door to her bedroom, as if leveling a challenge. “It’s time for bed.”
His gut tightened so swiftly that his breath caught from the force of it as he watched her rise slowly from the table. She hesitated for a moment at the side of the table, her sensuous lips parting slightly as if mulling over some playful flirtation. Then she silently turned her back to him and walked toward her room. Her back was nearly as enticing as her front, with creamy stretches of warm skin revealed from nape to sashaying bottom.
God help him, he couldn’t help but torture himself more by calling after her, “Aren’t you going to invite me to come with you?” He pushed himself to his feet. “That was the point of tonight’s dinner, wasn’t it? To seduce me into your bed.”
She stopped, not turning to face him, and her back straightened. He knew the stern posture was meant as a rebuke, but all it did was make him want to lick his tongue down her spine.
“Originally,” she admitted quietly into the cool darkness of her bedroom where no fire or candles burned against the winter’s night. “But not now.” Her head lifted proudly. “I would never ask that of a man who so obviously doesn’t want me, even if that man is my husband.”
She walked on.
Shay reached her in a single stride and encircled her with his arms from behind, stopping her. She inhaled sharply as he brought her against him, her bare back pressed against his chest with only the thin material of his shirt separating her warm flesh from his. He wanted to rip off his shirt and press her against him, warm flesh to warm flesh, but he knew he couldn’t do that. She’d see the true extent of the scars across his body, along with the ever-raw wounds to his soul, and she would loathe him for the monster he was. But he could offer her this much of himself, if nothing more.
“Understand this,” he murmured as he lowered his mouth to her ear. “Whatever you think of me, whatever curses you level at me, however much you come to despise me—” His deep voice trembled as softly as her body in his arms, and his eyes squeezed shut as he admitted in a rasping groan, “You will never be able to fathom how much I want you.”