Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Aurelia’s hands shook slightly as she tossed back her second glass of wine. Ordinarily, she didn’t partake—when she had been at home, her mother had deemed her too young for wine, and the Duchess of Fenwick had, of course, never permitted her a sip.
But tonight, she would need it.
Tonight, she would confront the duke about the rumors surrounding his wife’s death. She would find out once and for all.
She just needed a little liquid courage.
That would solve everything.
Mr. Fellows held the door to the dining room open with military precision, and she sailed in, her head held high. She suspected he still polished his boots like a soldier and made his bed with hospital corners, too.
The duke was already sitting in place, at the opposite end of the table from her, and she surveyed the place settings with more than her usual ire.
Confrontations, in her experience, did not happen at opposite ends of a long table. From there, she would not be able to see the intricacies of his expressions. If she were to learn the truth, she would have to be able to see it.
And so, without another glance at him, she gathered her silverware and plate.
The duke frowned. “What in the devil are you doing?”
“Coming to sit beside you. Are we not husband and wife?” The room spun a little as she made her way to him and returned everything she held to the table.
Yes, this felt right. She would get the truth out of him like this—close enough to read his eyes, and close enough to catch the clean, quiet scent of him: leather, cedar, and the faintest trace of sea salt.
He leaned back in his chair. “I presume you have an ulterior purpose in this.”
“I always have a purpose,” she said loftily.
“It has become rather apparent.”
“It is to be hoped you are not too put out by my presence.” She touched his arm, much like she might have touched a friend’s, and at the contact, he froze, looking down at where her fingertips brushed his bare wrist.
She was not wearing gloves, and she became aware of that simple fact at the same time as he did. Inside the house, she preferred not to wear gloves, but it seemed the sight of her bare fingers against firm muscle had shocked the duke beyond all speech.
“…Well,” she murmured, looking down embarrassedly at the proof of his horror. “Evidently, you do not want me that badly.”
His gaze traveled from her hands to her face, his expression faintly incredulous. “That is the conclusion you’ve come to.”
“You asked me to kiss you the other day, but I doubt you’d have liked the experience.” She withdrew her hand, trying to recall her original intentions. Not to needle him about his lack of attraction to her, or the fact that he intended to visit her bedchamber at some point in the future.
What else could be expected of a duke-husband?
“Before you arrived, I was unaware of your appearance,” he began in a deep baritone.
“What am I to infer from that?”
“I was prepared for my wife to be plain in the extreme.” He picked up his own glass and swirled it. “Instead, I found myself pleasantly surprised.”
Pleasantly? That… came as a veritable shock.
But she had to retain her wits, wherever they had disappeared off to for the second.
There was a reason she could not be certain she could trust him.
If only she could remember what that was.
When he looked at her with those smoldering dark eyes, her heart thumped hard, and she was liable to forget all thoughts in her head.
Lady Mary Ann was right—he truly was devastatingly handsome.
And from some stroke of luck or fantastic good fortune, he had married her. Yes, so he could use her as a breeding mare, but even so. There were worse fates; to her knowledge, most ladies were used in such a way.
He watched her with eyes that seemed downright suspicious. “I have something to tell you,” he uttered abruptly.
She coughed a little, snapping out of her trance. “Does this have something to do with your former wife?”
At the slack shock on his face, she gathered that it did not.
“If my earlier sentiments were not made clear enough, I have absolutely no intention of discussing my former wife with you,” he said, withdrawing and picking up his glass of wine. “So you may dispel that thought from your head.”
She nodded slowly. Not his wife. Then, presumably, it was also nothing to do with his wife’s death, and anything he might have had to do with it.
But… “I would like to know,” she tried, the words tangling a little on her tongue. “The truth.”
He raised a single brow. “The truth?”
“When I hosted the dinner, I made a friend of my guest, and she informed me of some of the… rumors circulating in the village. That you…” When it finally came down to it, she found she could not utter the words.
He watched her with very dark eyes. “Go on? If you wish to ask me a question, you must be able to say it. Or I shan’t know what to answer.”
“I…” In the end, her words failed her, and she changed tack. “I like being married to you.”
His eyes snapped up to trap hers. “You do?”
I… do?
His brows rose still further, and his gaze seared across her face. “And why is that? I thought you were wishing you’d never come here.”
“Well, perhaps you aren’t always nice to me…” she admitted slowly. “And there are the rumors. But this is a nice house.” She waved a hand. “And I’m a duchess.”
“Yes,” he said shortly.
She leaned in even closer, mesmerized by the flecks of gold in his eyes. “And of everyone in the world, you chose me.”
“I had Mr. Arnold select you,” he corrected, as though the prospect of him choosing her intentionally could not be considered, even for a moment. “I merely agreed.”
“You agreed to marry me.”
“I did.” He pushed his plate back as she leaned in even closer, her head practically by his shoulder. “What are you attempting?”
An excellent question. What was she attempting? The wine had made her bolder, she only now realized, but it just highlighted her desires, which seemed to currently be in his lap again, his giant arms snaking around her.
That sounded nice.
Perhaps he would finally kiss her this time. She felt as though she had been waiting altogether too long for his kiss.
“May I call you Sebastian?” she breathed.
“That is my name, and you are my wife.” He caught her before she could topple to one side. “How much have you had to drink, Aurelia?”
“Not so very much. Just a little. For courage.” She emphasized the word so he wouldn’t think she was in the habit of drinking too much. “Do you know?”
“I do know,” he replied dryly, and it seemed as though he was attempting not to laugh. How colossally ill-mannered of him! “You should learn some different interrogation techniques, I think, miss fledgling.”
The amusement fled from his face when she brought her hand to the strong line of his jaw.
Her fingertips trailed across his skin as she explored his cheekbones, the proud line of his nose, and the unexpected softness of his lips.
What a handsome man he truly was… and he was hers. Hers for the taking…
“Sebastian,” she whispered in awe, trying his name out in her mouth. She rather liked it. Yes, she liked many things about being married to him. “In truth, when I heard you wished to marry me, I thought you were an ugly old ogre in search of a young wife.”
His mouth parted under her fingers, and she felt his damp, hot exhale. The motion made her stomach clench, and there was a slick kind of warmth between her thighs she had never experienced before.
“Is that… so?” he asked, but this time, his voice rumbled.
“And you thought I was haggard and plain,” she said, half-laughing at the idea. To be sure, she was not the prettiest young lady in London, but she was certainly pretty enough to be groped by repulsive young men.
What that said about her, she had no idea.
“I have never been kissed before…” she mumbled, watching his mouth assiduously. “I should like, very much, to know how it feels…”
“Is the interrogation over, then? Am I to breathe easily?”
She looked up at him in surprise. She’d quite forgotten she’d intended to ask him questions, but although she had a feeling the questions were important, she couldn’t for the life of her think what they might be! Nothing seemed more pressing presently than being kissed.
He took hold of her wrist and wrapped his fingers around it. “You are happier being married to me than otherwise?”
“Oh yes.” That she was sure of. There was no room for doubt, no competition in the slightest. “I am very glad you made me your duchess, Sebastian.” A memory occurred to her, and she tilted her head. “Did you have something to tell me?”
He shook his head, cursed, and kissed her.
His mouth was warm and soft against hers, and utterly disarmed her.
If she had something else she wanted to say to him, she couldn’t recall.
All she knew was the press of his lips, the way they opened, parting her mouth with them.
The tilt of his head, the graze of his hands.
He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, as though he might never quench the thirst that was her.
As he deepened the kiss, she took hold of his shoulders to anchor herself before she lost herself entirely.
It seemed all too easy to lose herself as of late…
This was not, strictly, her first kiss. But her first kiss had been a boy named Julian, who had cornered her one day and informed her, in a self-important way, that all young ladies ought to know how to kiss, and he would show her.
That had been a rather truncated affair, largely because she had raised her hand and struck him across the face for his audacity.
She had no desire to strike Sebastian now…
In fact, her body and blood hummed as his tongue slid slowly, luxuriously, across her bottom lip.
He tasted of sea salt, wine, and something else that was entirely male—and that made her think of silken sheets and grasping hands.
How a man could taste of—well, of nighttime activities—she didn’t know. But this man managed it.
His hand slid into her hair, and she accidentally let out a sigh against his lips. When his tongue swept into her mouth, she matched it with her own. Presumably, this was what he wanted. If not, the way he gripped her hip and pulled her even closer was wildly misleading.
She was not an expert, but all evidence pointed to the fact that he wanted this. More than wanted it—he craved it. Needed it.
She knew how that felt.
His teeth scraped against her bottom lip then, making a bolt of lightning pass through her, right to her core. Heat bloomed between her legs, messy need, and she squirmed to get more comfortable.
“Aurelia…” he groaned against her mouth, “you will be the utter death of me.”
“Is that a compliment?”
He scraped a laugh, though it sounded more like a grunt. “I suppose for the sake of this, yes. But we shouldn’t go any further.”
She pouted at him, leaning back slightly so she might see his eyes. “Why not?”
“Because you’ve had more wine than is good for you.
And when I take you for the first time, I would like you to be far more present.
” He toyed with one of her sleek curls, his expression turning contemplative.
“If you are still amenable to things progressing… then we can discuss that as and when we reach that moment.”
Aurelia felt as though she would never not be amenable to things progressing.
She felt pleasantly dizzy, as though he had spun her around on a silver platter until the world spun.
And underneath it all, right in the very center of her body, she felt oddly hollow, as though she needed something more.
While she didn’t know precisely what that could be, she suspected Sebastian would be able to fix it for her.
But instead of showing signs of wishing for that, he picked her up with apparent ease and placed her into her chair once more. “Have something to eat,” he told her. “That’s a good girl.”
“And after I’ve eaten?”
“After—” He broke off with a growl. “Are you trying to tempt me into madness?”
Madness sounded rather fun, so long as it was with him. “I may be amenable,” she whispered vaguely.
He gave a dark laugh. “Of course you would be. Come now, eat up, little mouse. And for now, let’s forget this ever happened.”
She would not be able to forget that easily. But for the sake of keeping the peace, and because he had tempered the eagerness inside her to discover what had happened to his wife, she obediently picked up her fork and began to eat.