Chapter 10 #3
“That sounds—” He paused. Ah. She’d gotten him. Finally. “You’re being sarcastic.”
“Yes, of course, I am!” she said, throwing up her hands. “I beg your pardon, but are you listening to yourself?”
He frowned. “I feel as though the requirements I’ve listed are perfectly reasonable—”
“Requirements,” she interjected. “You seem to think that this is a circumstance in which you can issue orders—in which you can set forth requirements.” She gave him a closed-lipped smile. “But this, Sir, is not a situation in which you are doing me a favor.”
He looked almost curious.
“Is it not? I am protecting your sister’s reputation—”
“From yourself!” she countered. “The matter is this: you want a wife. I am meeting that need in exchange for you keeping my sister’s name out of it.
We are, therefore, equal in this. So.” She folded her hands neatly.
“Here is my counteroffer. I get complete and total freedom to do as I wish, and in exchange, I will not embarrass you.”
He regarded her carefully. There was a spark of interest in that gaze.
“You will agree to serve as hostess four times per year, will attend Society events with me as requested, and will speak in a manner that promotes the Redcliff name,” he returned.
As annoying as she found him—and God help her, he was so wretchedly annoying—she felt the corner of her mouth kick up in a smile. He was negotiating with her. Treating her like an equal—as she’d demanded.
She took a step forward, tilting her chin up at him. The effect of this was likely undercut by the swathes of scarf around her neck, but she made do.
“I will serve as hostess for a major event—a ball, a large soiree—no more than two times per year, but I will be happy to host medium to large dinner parties on two to three additional occasions. I will attend Society events with you once per month. And I will speak in a manner that promotes the Redcliff name when you deserve it.”
His tongue darted out to touch the corner of his lip. Phoebe tried very hard not to track that motion with her gaze.
“You will have to give me an heir,” he added, his voice significantly lower than it had been during the previous round of debate.
There was that same spark in his eye that he’d gotten before he kissed her, and though Phoebe should have taken a step back—that look did not bode well for her ability to think—she found herself leaning in just a little, instead.
“I understand,” she agreed. “But you—you will have to be faithful. No going off and getting yourself a mistress.”
He looked offended, but he merely nodded in agreement. “Naturally. Aside from the aforementioned, you shall be free to use your time as you please, except—”
Had he leaned a little closer, too?
“Except?” she prodded. If her voice was a little breathy, it was no doubt a result of the icy wind.
He swallowed. He wasn’t wearing a scarf, just an overcoat, and she saw the way his throat bobbed beneath his cravat.
“Except we shall share meals,” he concluded.
A flicker of confusion darted through Phoebe. That was a relatively small request.
“Very well,” she said, not even bothering to counter. It was such a small thing, really. “How often? Weekly?”
“Every day,” he said. “All meals.”
Phoebe blinked. Not such a small request, then.
“You want to see me,” she said slowly, certain that she must have misunderstood him, “three times per day. Every day?”
“Yes.”
He gave her a brisk nod but didn’t explain himself any further.
Phoebe supposed she couldn’t deny him for all that it was a bizarre thing for a man like him to desire, especially from a woman like her—a woman who was so far from his first choice for marriage that she wasn’t even the first choice from her own family.
That reminder hit her like a fistful of snow shoved down her collar.
This was an arrangement, nothing more.
She stuck out her hand, determined to arrange this in as businesslike a manner as possible. She needed the reminder.
“If that is all, Your Grace,” she said in her briskest, most unbothered tone, “do I take it that we have a deal?”
He looked down at her hand as if it offended him.
“Who is the romantic now?” he asked, almost as though he was disappointed in her. But that was nonsense. Phoebe needed to stop reading things into his reactions.
“Don’t tease,” she ordered him, shaking her hand in encouragement. “I am trying to treat this as it is. I know what our arrangement is to be.”
He still didn’t take her hand.
“And what is that?” he asked. She was distressingly aware of the stern way that his lips turned down. She was horrifically aware of what those lips felt like on hers—of what she felt like when he kissed her.
Distance. She needed distance.
Phoebe glanced at the world around them. The gentle snowfall was the trick, she reminded herself. The bitter gusts were the reality.
“Cold,” she said firmly, all too aware that he was watching her mouth as she said the words.
A storm crossed the Duke’s face, his expression changing in slow motion, something determined settling in.
He looked down at her hand, and she thought, with a pang of dismay, that he was going to shake, that he was going to agree to this—which was what she wanted, she tried to tell herself. It was what she needed.
But he didn’t shake her hand. Instead, he wrapped his long fingers—too warm, given that he wasn’t even wearing a proper set of gloves—around her wrist and used the leverage to tug her closer, pulling her against his chest until she had to reach out her free hand to support herself.
It landed on him, and she felt sure that she could feel the racing thunder of his heart.
She gazed up at him, knowing that her eyes had gone wide, that they likely made her look like any na?ve chit barely out of the schoolroom, not a woman of six and twenty. But she couldn’t help it. She was simply that shocked.
She was even more shocked when he bent down, slowly tracing the tip of his nose over her cheek, then moving across so that his lips gently caressed the delicate shell of her ear as he whispered to her.
“Tell me, Phoebe,” he asked, and God, it was all she could do not to gasp when he said her name, “does this feel cold to you?”
He pulled back just enough to look her in the eye—though she didn’t miss the way his eyes dipped down to her mouth again, a flash of a hint that didn’t prepare her nearly enough—
And then he kissed her.
It was immediately unlike the kiss they had shared previously.
If that one had been a snapping of restraint, this one was a binding—a pledge, a vow, linking them together as powerful as any words spoken on an altar.
Phoebe gasped, all instinct, and the Duke pulled her even tighter against him, banding an arm around her waist and pulling her inward and upward until she was barely balancing on her tiptoes.
She threw her arms around his neck to keep her balance.
God, he was strong. It made sense—of course, it did—for the rugged soldier of a duke to be as formidable as he looked, but Phoebe was still thrilled with the intimacy of feeling that strength for herself.
His tongue, hot and wet and fascinating, probed gently against her bottom lip, and Phoebe opened eagerly to him, giddy with the influence of his kiss. Was she really allowed to have this now? Was this really just the beginning?
She let herself explore, her tongue mimicking his movements, touching against his lower lip. She sucked in a delighted breath when he growled into her mouth and his fingers clenched into his side.
Was this what it felt like to do her duty? she wondered hysterically. She’d always thought it would feel—well, she couldn’t think properly, but she hadn’t thought it would be as good as this. What could be as good as this?
He bit lightly at her lower lip.
Oh.
Yes.
That was—that was as good.
She pulled her arms tighter around his neck, the motion pressing her breasts against his chest. Oh, God, she’d never noticed her breasts like this before, but now, she felt a wild heat rising in her, one that made her want to press closer and closer to him.
A little whimpering moan came out of her, and his fingers clenched again, leaving little points of bruising sensation on her that somehow felt incredible.
“Jesus Christ, Phoebe,” he muttered, not pulling his mouth away from hers to do so. He sounded desperate, and Phoebe thrilled at that, too. She wanted to know what she could do to make that desperation grow. Could she cause his control to snap entirely?
She wanted more of it. More of him. She wanted—she wanted everything.
“Yes,” she breathed into his mouth, then, on impulse, she licked his lower lip.
He bit her lip in return. It stung. It felt incredible.
Curiosity had always been her greatest strength, except for the times that it was her greatest weakness. It remained to be seen whether this instance would prove the work of angels or the devil himself.
“More,” she urged, grabbing a fistful of his hair and using it to tug him down.
He—stubborn creature that he was—gave her what she wanted, though not in the way she’d intended it.
Instead, he banded his other arm under her rear and used his leverage to heft her up, maneuvering them until she was pressed with her back against one of the posts of the gazebo, every inch of her front plastered against him.
There were skirts in the way, of course, and her cloak, not to mention all his clothing.
Phoebe was far too overwhelmed to actually count the number of layers between them.
Too bloody many.
But when she hitched a leg around his waist, she felt a surge of heat low in her stomach, anyway. Her breath came in shuddering little gasps.
“You’re greedy, then, wife?” he asked, and though she wanted to argue that she wasn’t his wife, not yet, the words died before they reached her lips.
They’d agreed. They’d chosen. And what was a marriage if not those things?
Sealed with a kiss as well.
“I have many fine qualities,” she said instead, squeezing the words between kisses. “You could spend your whole day trying to list them all if you tried.”
And at that, she got the very first real laugh out of him.
She felt it rather than heard it, a low rumble that shook through his body and then through hers, the motion pulling a little groan of pleasure from her throat.
Even she wasn’t certain whether her enjoyment came more from the way the laugh made him rub against her, just a little, or from the knowledge that she could make him laugh.
Because that laughter was hope. Hope that maybe this whole thing would be fine. Not the kind of marriage that people dreamed of—it might be an arrangement with kissing, but it was still just an arrangement—but enough. Maybe it could be enough.
He stole one more long, probing kiss, then lowered her slowly enough that she managed to keep her balance, despite her shaking knees. They stared at one another in a moment that could have lasted for mere seconds or for eons while regimes rose and fell. Their breath fogged in the air between them.
“Right,” he said, his voice trembling just enough to gratify Phoebe down to her bones. “I will make the arrangements. We will be married in two days.”
“Two days.”
It wasn’t a question, but it wasn’t quite not a question, either.
It was perhaps an expression of shock. It was really hard to tell, what with all the warmth that was swimming through her body, offering a strange, delightful contrast to the chill in the air.
It all felt good—everything. He might have told her that they were to be married in twelve minutes on the moon, and she didn’t think she would have protested, at least not just then.
“Two days,” he repeated. “I will see you then.”
He took a step back, then another. A third step had his hands falling from her waist. He took a fourth before he turned away.
Phoebe watched him go. Every step of it.
Only when the Duke had retreated out of sight did she let her head drop back against the post of the gazebo. She let the hard line of wood support her as she gazed up at the star-shaped slats of the ceiling.
And then she saw it.
A sprig of mistletoe, tied up with a ribbon.
Well, that had Hannah’s name written all over it.
Phoebe wanted to be annoyed, but instead she laughed and laughed and laughed until she had to sit down, the faint dusting of snow be damned.
She didn’t know how this marriage was going to go. She didn’t know what would happen next. She didn’t know how her life had shifted so quickly from what she had always planned and expected to this.
But she had liked that kiss. She’d more than liked it.
And that was more than she’d ever expected to have. So maybe—maybe—maybe just this once, she wouldn’t end up disappointed.