Chapter 8
“Iwas not trembling,” Diana muttered to herself as she lay on her back in the great bedchamber at Rosewood House, staring at the intricate, carved canopy above her.
Usually, the soaring height of this room brought her peace, a sense of grand, cool space where her thoughts could breathe. But tonight, the shadows felt thick, heavy, and charged with a presence that wasn’t there.
She lay perfectly still, her heart a drum against the mattress, yet her skin was screaming. It was as if his touch had stripped away her top layer of protection, leaving every nerve ending raw and expectant.
She could still feel the heavy, solid weight of his hand at her waist, grounding her even as her mind spun. The heat of his palm remained a searing, invisible brand against the center of her spine, a focal point of fire that radiated outward until her blood felt like liquid gold.
And then there was his thumb. That rhythmic, slow-motion pressure at the hollow of her hip haunted her most of all.
She closed her eyes, and the darkness only made it worse. She felt awakened. And the realization was terrifying because it meant that the cold, safe Duchess she had spent a year becoming was dying. And the woman who replaced her was starving for a touch that was only a wall away.
She turned sharply onto her side, twisting the fine linen sheets around her legs, and pressed her face into the cool pillow. She tried to smother the memory of his mouth near her ear, but his voice was trapped in her mind—low, dark, and heavy with a promise that felt like an ultimatum.
I have every intention of ensuring that you tremble for the right reasons.
This was absurd. It was dangerous. She had survived a year of glacial silence and a year of being unwanted with her head held high. But tonight—in the span of one waltz—he had dismantled it all.
She threw the covers aside with a frustrated groan.
The bed was too soft, the room was too warm, and the air was too still.
If she stayed there another moment, she would start to imagine the mattress dipping under his weight.
She would start to imagine him crossing the threshold of the connecting door.
Diana rose, her movements frantic as she wrapped a silk robe over her nightdress. She slipped from her chamber into the dim, silver-lit corridor, seeking the cold air of the library or the terrace.
Anywhere she could breathe without feeling his shadow over her.
The house was quiet at this hour. The footmen long dismissed. The candles lowered to a subdued glow. Her slippers made almost no sound against the carpet.
The library door stood slightly ajar. She placed her hand on the heavy oak, her pulse jumping at the cool touch of the wood, and pushed. The door swung open on silent hinges, revealing a room steeped in the scent of old leather, beeswax, and the dying embers of a fire.
She moved toward the shelves with the instinct of a creature seeking shelter, her fingers skimming the spines. She told herself she was seeking a distraction, something dry and sensible, a historical text to cool the fever in her blood.
Instead, her hand betrayed her, hovering over a slim, leather-bound volume she had deliberately ignored for months.
The Indiscretions of Lady Carrow.
It was a scandalous thing, a novel whispered about behind painted fans and tucked beneath velvet cushions in the most daring drawing rooms of London. It was a map of the territory she wanted to avoid.
She knew she should pull back. Her pulse quickened, a frantic drumming against her ribs that matched the heat still radiating from the hollow of her hip where he had touched her.
But after the way Alexander had looked at her tonight, logic felt like a flimsy shield.
She needed to know what happened when the waltz ended and the doors were finally closed.
She pulled the book free.
The leather felt unnervingly warm in her palm, almost alive. Diana crossed to the deep armchair near the hearth and sank into it, tucking her bare feet beneath her. The silk of her nightdress whispered against her skin, a soft, intimate friction that reminded her far too much of his hands.
With a shaky breath, she opened the book.
The words were bold, brazen. They spoke of longing glances, of stolen kisses in dark corridors, of a husband who had once been distant and had returned transformed, claiming his wife with urgency that bordered on worship.
Her breath slowed. Then quickened.
Her fingers tightened around the page as she read of the heroine’s heart pounding when her husband leaned close, of the way his hand had bracketed her against a wall, of the heat that spread through her when he murmured her name.
Diana swallowed. She shifted in the chair, pressing her thighs together as though that might quiet the ache.
The heroine in the book surrendered slowly, a cautious retreat into a fire that Diana was beginning to realize could not be escaped. As she read the forbidden words, her pulse throbbed at her wrists, mirroring the rhythmic heat of the prose.
The sharp creak of a floorboard snapped the silence of the library.
“Diana?”
Diana stiffened, her heart leaping into her throat as she instinctively clutched the scandalous volume to her chest. She watched, breathless, as the door swung open further.
Alexander stood in the threshold, his tall frame illuminated by the dying glow of the hallway and the flickering amber firelight from within the room.
He had discarded his coat and cravat, leaving only a crisp white shirt that remained unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the sharp, pulse-beating hollow of his throat. His dark trousers clung to the long, powerful lines of his legs, and his hair was disordered, as if he’d been pacing in the dark.
Diana’s breath caught in her throat. He looked devastating, a raw version of the man who had haunted her dreams for a year. She felt a surge of heat that made her skin tingle, but she shoved the sensation down, clutching her robe tighter as she fought to find her voice.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
She meant for it to sound authoritative, but it came out as a soft, breathless whisper that only seemed to pull him closer.
Alexander’s gaze slid over her with agonizing slowness. He took in the way the silk of her robe clung to her curves, the messy spill of her loosened hair over her shoulders, and the scandalous book still clutched in her lap.
A faint, knowing smirk touched his mouth. There was a weariness in his eyes, a restless hunger that made the air in the room feel heavy.
“I could ask you the same,” he replied, his voice a low vibration that seemed to travel right through the floorboards and into her feet.
She held his gaze, refusing to let him see how her heart was thrashing against her ribs. He exhaled, a long, weary sound, and stepped fully into the room. The door closed behind him with a quiet, final click that made the library feel suddenly very small.
“I had a nightmare,” he said at last, shrugging a shoulder as if a haunting were a mere inconvenience. “Sleep was not inclined to return. I thought perhaps being here might… prompt something.”
“Prompt what?”
“My memory.”
Diana nodded once, her movements stiff. “Of course. Then I shall leave you to it.”
She moved to pass him, her heart thundering, but she only made it two steps. His hand shot out, his fingers encircling her wrist with a firm, heat-seared grip.
The contact was electric. Diana froze, her pulse leaping beneath his thumb. He anchored her in place, his skin burning against hers.
“Stay.” The word was a low, rough command, stripped of all polish.
“Why?” she whispered, her lungs struggling for air.
He released her slowly, but he didn’t retreat.
Instead, he stepped into her personal space, his heat radiating through her silk robe, forcing her to take a trembling step back toward the armchair.
He didn’t stop until she felt the edge of the velvet against the back of her knees, trapping her between the chair and the sheer, overwhelming force of his presence.
“I have questions,” he said, his voice dropping into a lower, more intimate register that seemed to vibrate in the air between them.
“Questions?” Diana asked, her fingers digging into the scandalous leather of her book.
“About our courtship. About how it began.”
She laughed once, a sharp, humorless sound that cut through the quiet of the library like a blade. “Courtship? Don’t be absurd, Your Grace.”
He tilted his head slightly, watching the way her chest rose and fell with her quickened breathing. “Explain it to me, then.”
“There was none,” she said plainly, the bitterness she had buried for a year finally beginning to seep through the cracks.
“We met for the first time on our wedding day. You examined me as though I were a prize horse, assessing the bone structure, the lineage, the temperament. You informed my uncle that I would do. And that was that.”
He didn’t interrupt, but she saw the muscle in his jaw jump.
“After our wedding, you told me,” she continued, her voice trembling with the ghost of that old humiliation, “that you had no interest in a wife. Only a Duchess to manage your house. You said I was free to do as I pleased, but all without you.”
A heavy silence followed, broken only by the soft, rhythmic pop of the fire. The flames caught in Alexander’s green eyes, making them glint in a way that sent Diana’s stomach dropping unexpectedly. She had almost forgotten how dangerously handsome he was when he looked at her like that.
“If I behaved so poorly,” he said quietly, stepping into the narrow gap between her knees, “then perhaps this void in my head is a mercy. An opportunity to improve.”
Her breath caught in a jagged hitch. He moved forward, crowding her gently, his presence a wall of heat that forced her back until her knees hit the velvet of the armchair. She sank into it, her silk robe sliding up her legs, exposing a sliver of pale skin that he didn’t miss.