Page 10 of While the Duke Was Sleeping (England’s Sweethearts #1)

Peter didn’t need to be awake in order for Rhett to feel the weight of the duke’s disappointment. It hung over his shoulder like a specter, silent and judging. On more than one occasion, the ghostlike presence had set Rhett’s heart racing. He’d left his brandy on the table and run upstairs to Peter’s bedroom, convinced his brother had passed. Each time, the duke had been lying peacefully, unmoved from his previous position. The footman in the corner would bow and say, “Nothing has changed, my lord.”

But it had all changed, and he couldn’t put his finger on why. In theory, if Peter woke at this moment, Rhett could go on living his life as he always had. He’d still need to plead his case regarding his allowance, but a near-death experience could only relax the duke’s unrealistic expectations, surely.

Yet still, it felt like nothing would be the same again. Facing his brother’s mortality had shifted something within him. Everyone would die at some point, and their lives would be collected as memories and judged, even if the judgment was unintentional. Even if the worst did not come to pass and Peter lived, Rhett had this dreaded feeling that life as it had been was no longer possible.

For the fourth time that morning, Rhett approached his brother’s room, prepared to be devastated. The door was open, and the footman was gone. Instead, she was pacing before the window. The sunlight caught her strawberry blonde hair, turning the edges gold. It shone through the delicate muslin of her skirts, exposing her silhouette and her long legs that he was far too familiar with.

Rhett swallowed. She was every bit as arresting as before. His heart thudded off-kilter, and his cock twitched. He adjusted it to sit beneath the waistband of his trousers. Never had a woman had such a visceral effect on him. Why the hell did it have to be this woman? His brother’s fiancée. Lady Cordelia Highwater.

Supposedly.

Dukes’ daughters didn’t argue toe-to-toe with ships’ captains. They didn’t kiss strange men in strange taverns. They didn’t gnaw on their thumbnails the way she was doing. They certainly didn’t mutter obscenities, in French or any other language, yet here she was, quietly cursing.

More importantly, Rhett certainly wasn’t attracted to single young ladies of the ton . There was nothing about a milquetoast debutante that raised his blood pressure or his cock. Not anymore.

That he was attracted to this woman meant that she was not who she said she was. It was clear as day to Rhett, even if his sisters refused to see it. Whoever she was, she had an agenda, and he would discover what it was.

Rhett coughed, drawing her attention. Her face smoothed over into the polite expression of a proper young lady. A less observant person might not have noticed that split second of conscious thought before the mask appeared. He’d noticed. He noticed everything about her.

“Lord Everett,” she said, curtsying perfectly. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

Of course she was intruding. This was a deeply personal family emergency, and she’d inserted herself into it for some unknown reason that he was determined to ferret out. Rhett’s best option was to be as smooth as she was and catch her in a lie.

He bowed with all the grace he’d show the queen. “Lady Cordelia. Your presence could never be an intrusion. You are most welcome.”

She arched a brow. Damn it. Too smooth.

“Thank you, my lord. I am glad. Your butler had my things put in a room down the hall. Is that agreeable?”

“The room with puce-colored wallpaper and a hideous stuffed bear’s head with gilded teeth?” he asked as he strolled into the room as casually as he could. “Daunt must like you.” Daunt should have known better. Putting her in the family wing was inappropriate.

“I wanted to be close by, in case…”

“In case my brother carks it?”

The woman purporting to be Cordelia flushed, backing into Peter’s desk. “That is a crude description.”

“I wouldn’t have thought a woman willing to call a ship’s captain a gullible prick would be so easily offended by language.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head, the pink flush creeping up from under her collar deepening. “Please forget that.”

He stepped closer to her. Too close. He’d intended to overwhelm her with his height, overturn her senses with his nearness. Instead, he fell into her gravitational pull, as though she was the sun and he was a celestial body destined to be burned by it.

In an effort to regain control, he cupped her shoulder with his hand, grazing a path with his thumb that caused his throat to tighten. “Forget the way you kissed me?”

He moved even closer. There was barely an inch between them and no telling where his body warmth ended and hers began, just that the air between them snapped and crackled as if on fire. “The press of your lips against mine was an experience I’ve no desire to forget.”

She swallowed and, for a brief second, he would swear he saw her sway toward him. Then she took his hand and removed it. “I saved you,” she said, stepping to the side and leaving a gulf between them.

He tried to hide the sense of loss with a cheeky grin, turning to lean against the dressing table, his arms crossed. “And I saved you, so we’re even.”

She took a fierce breath. “You wouldn’t have had to save me if you hadn’t dragged me into that refuse-ridden water to begin with.” Her eyes sparked, adding to the roiling flame within him. “Would it have been so hard to let go of me?”

“Impossible.” The truth was out of his mouth before he could stop it. It would have been impossible to let go of her then, and if she hadn’t stepped away just now, it would have been likewise beyond his capabilities. He shook his head and took advantage of the distance she’d created to back out of her orbit. She was a charlatan or his brother’s fiancée, neither of which included a future of continued kissing. Rhett turned away from her, toward his brother, guilt immediately washing through him. Pull it together. “Has there been any change?”

“None,” she said, her voice evening out. “Not a flicker of movement other than the steady rise and fall of his chest.”

Rhett crossed to the bed and took Peter’s hand. “He’s not drenched in sweat. That’s a good sign.”

She sighed as she came to stand beside him, though she kept her distance by several feet. “He wasn’t drenched in sweat earlier.”

He turned to her, eyebrow raised.

“There was a pitcher of water by his bed. I thought it might wake him.”

The image of his brother, one of the most powerful men in England, being doused in water by this slip of a woman was one he wished he’d seen in person. Peter would be horrified. Genuinely aghast. Dukes were never so maligned.

Rhett chuckled hard enough that Cordelia, or whoever she was, looked at him askance.

“When he wakes, I will relish teasing him about that.”

“If he wakes.” Trepidation wove through her tone, and for a brief second, she raised her thumbnail to her teeth, before catching herself and clasping her hands behind her back. Would her plans fall through if his brother passed, or was she genuinely worried about him?

“My brother is stubborn and arrogant, and he always gets what he wants. He’ll come through this. Death is no obstacle to him.”

“We all die eventually,” she whispered.

We all do. He’d be wrestling with that thought all morning, and with what it meant. She didn’t need to know that, though. “How encouraging,” he drawled. “Thank you.”

She shook her head, rubbing at her temples. “I apologize.” She reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Of course your brother will come through. Ignore my comment. I am a cynic.”

Her hand in his felt nice, natural, as though it was meant to be. The reassuring look on her face actually brought him a measure of peace. Then he remembered who she was, or perhaps wasn’t, and he pulled his hand from hers.

“A cynic at your age? After one season? I thought young debutantes all had fantasies about love and knights and horses. Although I suppose a duke is the going dream of the day, is it not?”

“My fantasies are… different.” She tucked her arm around her body.

He shouldn’t ask. He didn’t want to know, except he desperately did. “What are your fantasies, Lady Cordelia?”

She didn’t answer.

“Come now. We’re to be family, are we not?” Curse the thought. Did it make her stomach roil as much as it did his?

She paused, frowned, and he could tell she would not answer.

“Come on, Della.” He bumped his shoulder against hers. “Tell me a truth.”

She shifted uncomfortably before relenting. “A bookcase that stretches across an entire room that not even ten men could move in a cottage that’s all my own where I can forget the rest of the world exists.” There was a wistfulness to her tone, a sense of yearning that wrapped around his heart like ivy and squeezed.

Every instinct in him wanted to rescue her from whatever had caused her to want to hide away, to tease apart her desire to be alone and replace it with himself.

Which was how Lady Meredith Moylan had done it. She’d played Rhett’s emotions like a violin, winding him taut, dragging her stories over him until he was playing her tune. The difference now was that he could recognize a fraud when he saw one.

“My brother owns several such homes, which I’m sure you know.”

She recoiled as though he’d raised a fist. “Are you calling me a fortune hunter?” The outrage was genuine. Blast.

He liked women. He loved women. At least, he loved the ones who were married, or who didn’t know that he was brother to a duke, or who were related to Rhett and had no ulterior motives in talking with him. He took no pleasure in offending one. If a man spoke to Rhett’s sisters in such a manner, Rhett would hoist them up a flagpole—if he was feeling generous and didn’t thrash them instead.

“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning toward her. She stiffened. “Forgive me,” he said. “That was rude. Please stay. Meg has taken Winnie into town; Jac is writing letters to whatever mystery person she’s been obsessed with. I could use the company.”

She glanced at him sideways. “You don’t want some alone time with your brother?”

“Given he’s currently such a charming conversationalist?”

She smiled. “Fair point.” She took the embroidery from a chair by the bed and sat, arranging her skirts so they lay without creases. The embroidery she barely glanced at before placing it on her lap.

He had options. He could take the seat next to hers or one of the others that were placed in a semicircle around the bed. Remembering how easily he’d slipped into her orbit earlier, he left a chair free between them.

“What would you like to discuss?”

“Tell me more about you.”

Her smile faded. The rest of her expression shuttered, as though preparing for a storm. “There isn’t much to know.”

Which was the evasive response he’d expect from someone not being honest about who they were. “Come on now, surely you can share a little of yourself given we’ve both seen each other at our worst.”

“Was that our worst?”

“Perhaps not in character, but it had to be the worst we’ve looked or smelled, unless you have a rollicking good story to tell me.”

Cordelia laughed, and it caused his stomach to swirl. “No, that was definitely the low point in my hygiene.”

He shifted. “Tell me about your family.”

Her shoulders tensed, and for a moment, he thought she’d refuse. She was certainly hesitant to tell him anything. Finally, when she realized he wasn’t about to fill the silence, she relented and sat back in her chair.

“I don’t have a lot of family.”

That rang true—as far as Rhett knew, the Duke of Thirwhestle only had one child and had no siblings himself.

“My father was absent, even when we were in the same room. One time, he so completely forgot about me that he left me behind and was half a day’s ride away before he realized and had to turn around.”

“The servants didn’t notice you were missing?” It was hard to believe this goddess of a woman could be overlooked.

“We weren’t traveling with a large retinue.”

“I hope he was profusely apologetic when he returned.”

Cordelia gave an unladylike snort. “Hardly. It was, of course, my own fault. He was never responsible for his actions. That would require being honest with himself when he wasn’t honest with anyone.”

He heard the truth in her words. Not just because of the rawness in her voice or the ways her eyes drifted, as if remembering the neglect, but because Rhett had met the duke once, and that was all it took to know that he was not a good man.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That sounds… difficult.”

She started, eyes focusing as she returned to the present. “Don’t be. Difficult family is better than no family. It’s hard to be alone. But it makes you self-sufficient, I suppose.”

She was self-sufficient enough to run from her own wedding, setting fire to all the bridges behind her. Was that why she was here? Had she gone out into the world this past week and realized it was harder to get by on one’s own than she’d thought?

She shook herself, and her expression shifted to one of neutral politeness, as though for a moment a mask had slipped, and she was now firmly replacing it. “And what of your family, Everett?”

“Rhett, please. You called me that once.”

She softened. “Rhett, then. Is yours a difficult family?”

“Are you curious to know what you’ve gotten yourself in for?”

“It’s always best to be prepared.”

He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, juggling his own feelings with what his brother’s betrothed might want to hear. “My sisters, once they love you, will love you forever.” It was their best trait. It was what set them apart from others. It was something he had yet to master.

“And His Grace?”

“Loves with equal strength, though it manifests differently.” That was half of the problem. If Peter cared less about Rhett, he wouldn’t be so doggedly determined to see Rhett ensconced in a traditional, acceptable career. The trouble was that while the duke cared about Rhett’s happiness, he simply did not know Rhett well enough to know what that happiness would look like.

It was difficult to blame him. Peter had barely reached his teens before the dukedom was thrust upon him. He’d suddenly had estates to look after and four siblings to care for. Winnie had not even been a month old. His attention had gone where it was required. Rhett had been ten, old enough not to need or want his brother as a parent. The two had always been friends, peers almost, looking for ways to avoid their annoying little sisters. Then their parents had died, and Peter’s duties had pulled him away, and somehow, a gulf had developed.

At some point, Peter and Rhett had become strangers. Strangers who loved each other for no reason other than blood.

“There are worse things than being loved too much by one’s brother,” she said.

She was right. Damn it. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, keenly aware of the privilege in his problems.

“Perhaps Peter needs some quiet.”

“If you wish,” Della said, picking up the half-completed embroidery that Winnie had given her.

He faced forward in his chair, pretending he wasn’t off-kilter. The conversation hadn’t gone to plan. He was supposed to be interrogating her, drawing out the truth of her motivations, confirming that she was a fraud. Instead, all he’d discovered was that she could stir thoughts in him he thought he’d eliminated years ago.