Chapter 7 #2
Lair or stately home, Rose was still to be its mistress and could not therefore shrink into a corner as she was accustomed to doing at Westvale Park or social events. Plucking up her courage, she raised her eyes to Dorian’s face.
“Can I ask, Dorian, what you expect of me now? What do you expect of this marriage?”
Unlike when she spoke to her brother, the wedding guests, or even the housekeeper, her voice somehow emerged soft and steady when she addressed him. Perhaps it was because he always seemed to be listening, and to hear her words. Even so, the very act of asking such a question disturbed her.
The duke’s quizzical dark eyes met Rose’s and held them.
“What do you mean, Rose?”
“I mean,” Rose said, rushing on before she could lose her nerve. “I know you didn’t want this marriage any more than I, but you have always been…kind to me. I hope we can understand one another and live together well. I want to be a good duchess, although I don’t know how yet.”
Dorian smiled and shrugged, these questions not running so deep for him as for Rose.
“I had not planned to marry, but I suppose if I must, I ought to be glad for such an amiable and beautiful companion,” he answered. “I’m sure you will grace my house here at Ravenhill and my arm when we are in London.”
These easy words were not really an answer, not to the deeper questions in Rose’s bosom.
“I will fulfill all my duties, Dorian. I must learn to manage the household, I know, and support you in any business of the duchy,” Rose prompted him, hoping he might tell her something of what these things involved.
“I’m sure you will,” he said evenly. “We will get along well enough.”
Rose frowned, no more certain than she had been before she spoke.
“But what do you want from me, Dorian? I don’t know.”
At this question, he took a long breath and shook his head. His face looked as though it wanted to smile but was holding back. She did not fear that he would mock her, but she wished she understood his amusement.
“What do you want from me, Rose?” the Duke of Ravenhill turned the question back on her, his deep, dark eyes boring into hers. “Perhaps, one day, it will turn out that we want the same things. That could be our understanding.”
Puzzled by this reaction but also touched by it, Rose thought hard to herself. The duke might never love her, but he still seemed interested in her thoughts and feelings. For some reason, it was hard to assemble them clearly at this moment under such a penetrating gaze.
Even though he did not frighten her, Dorian Voss made Rose feel something else equally strong but far less familiar.
When he looked at her like this, parts of her mind seemed to fade into the background, even as her senses heightened and her heart beat faster.
Rose closed her eyes in order to shut out such distraction and focus on her answer.
“One day, I should like a child,” she declared after a few moments, her cheeks warming with this intimate admission. “A child I can love and care for. If you could give me that, I would be the best wife and duchess…”
Once she said this aloud, Rose felt the urge all the more strongly. Yes, she did want a child and would love her son, or daughter, with all her aching heart. They would love her too. Even if Rose was never to love and be loved as a bride, she could still be loved as a mother, couldn’t she?
Opening her eyes, she saw surprise on the duke’s face. It did not seem a very strange desire to Rose’s mind. Why shouldn’t she wish for a child too? Most married couples had children and most women seemed to want them.
“My father would be so proud to be a grandfather,” Rose tried to explain further, in case Dorian only needed further detail to understand. “He wants me to be happy too. I think I could be, if I had someone to love.”
The Duke of Ravenhill’s expression changed again.
It didn’t exactly darken, but the amusement was gone from it, if not the intensity.
He took two slow steps towards Rose, unthreatening but communicating some unknown intent.
The atmosphere in the room thickened and Rose’s voice caught in her throat when she tried to say something more.
“You speak very calmly of bearing a child, Rose. I wonder if you know what it entails?” he said quietly, leaving this question hanging in the air between them, half challenge and half warning.
“I know that married women have children,” she replied, frustrated by how simple she sounded but unequipped to pretend she fully understood his question, never mind its answer. “Why shouldn’t I have a child like other married women?”
“I see.”
Studying her face carefully, Rose had the sense that Dorian saw exactly what he expected there, reading her lack of knowledge like a book.
At such close quarters she could smell his cologne again and thought of the night in the gardens at Ashbourne Castle when she was seized and held to this man’s chest.
As the echo of the lightning his touch had sparked rushed through her, Rose swallowed and forced herself to stand her ground rather than attempting to move away from him.
“I am not afraid, you know,” she said. “Not of you.”
Her voice trembled treacherously and the duke’s eyes missed nothing. His hand reached out slowly and brushed back a lock of blonde hair from her face.
“Not afraid of me, but afraid, nonetheless,” he countered softly, his hand now gently cupping her jaw.
How warm and good his fingers felt on her skin! Rose instinctively rubbed her cheek against him even while she gasped at the slight contact. Then, the Duke of Ravenhill leaned in closer and his lips took hers with a gentle ferocity that astonished and thrilled her.
Her own lips parted in automatic response and the duke’s tongue joined the hungry dance, one hand now in Rose’s hair and the other at her waist, holding her firmly to him.
That kiss was a revelation, deliberate, consuming and irresistible.
In the first dizzying moments, Rose gave herself up to it entirely.
It was not at all like the vague kisses of Rose’s fantasies, so chaste and clearcut and accompanied by long flowery decorations of undying devotion. The man whose arms held her now was very, very real in a heated and almost animal way.
Wolf…
The word came back to her yet again as his teeth grazed her lower lip and Rose moaned with the jolt of heat this sensation provoked in her blood. It was like a spell he cast over her. The same spell the “Wolf of West London” cast over so many other women…
Thinking of Dorian Voss as a wild animal did not offend Rose’s sensibilities but the all-too-human nickname revealed by Madeline did. Wolves only obeyed their essential nature but rakes were deliberately wicked, weren’t they?
As if sensing Rose’s discomfort, her new husband drew back and released her, leaving her gasping for breath.
“Until you know what you want, how can you know if you are afraid or not?” the Duke of Ravenhill asked her, his voice low and rumbling. “Be careful what you ask for, Rose, until you understand it.”
Rose blushed furiously, feeling exposed but also soft and almost melted in the heat of those kisses.
“I understand that women should be very careful not to fall for your charms, Dorian Voss,” she answered. “I imagine that is enough.”
“Aha, so you do find me charming?” he inquired with a dark-eyed and teasing smile. “Or should I kiss you again to be sure?”
“I do not want to be charmed!” Rose insisted, suddenly irritated by his amusement.
“Certainly not by a man whose hobby is charming every comely lady he meets. You are right that I have much to learn of the world, but I am not a fool or a pet animal to be alternately teased and indulged. I am a woman, with a heart and mind of my own.”
The atmosphere in the room shifted once more and the teasing expression vanished from the duke’s face. It was replaced by something cooler and more controlled.
“Well, I am pleased to hear you say that, Rose. My wife is the last woman I would ever want to charm. Such things can end very badly.”
Picking up a poker, he stoked the fire and threw on another log from the basket.
“You are free to live your life as you please, as long as you fulfill your duties as Duchess of Ravenhill. You shall have your own carriage, maid and social secretary if you require one. If you really want a child one day, I will give you that too, once you truly know what you’re asking for.”
Rose nodded silently. This had been what she wanted to hear from him after all – a clear statement of his expectations for her as Duchess of Ravenhill.
“That all sounds very reasonable,” she told him in stilted tones.
“I hope that I am, and that you will be equally reasonable. Our marriage may be one of necessity and convenience but that is no reason why we should not be friends, in time.”
Finishing with the fire, the Duke of Ravenhill turned away without meeting her eyes again.
Reasonable? Convenience? Friends? Rose blinked in bewilderment, trying to reconcile the duke’s latest utterance either with the passion of his kisses or her own ruined understanding of what a marriage ought to be.
“Do stay by the fire until you are warm. I will see you for dinner at seven."
With this final remark thrown back casually over his shoulder, Dorian Voss walked out of the library, closed the door and left Rose standing alone in front of the fire.
She touched a wondering finger to the lips that had tasted his and felt the lingering tingle of his touch.
Why had it felt the way it did when the duke kissed her?
Rose did not want to feel such overpowering sensations, especially not at this man’s hands.
She had spoken the truth when she said she did not want to be charmed by Dorian Voss.
And yet, when he kissed her, there was still something inside Rose that longed for more and was only sorry that he had stopped. Wanting to drive the thought of that dark gaze and perfectly shaped mouth from her mind, Rose closed her eyes, only to find the image of him all the stronger.
Thinking again of wolves, Rose shivered, although in mind, heart and body she was now far, far from feeling the cold.