Chapter 9 #2
With a sigh, Everett began a cursory explanation of what had occurred, from Sybil’s unexpected appearance at the house party in Wingfield Hall to her confession about her father.
He left out the intimate details of his dealings with Sybil.
He wasn’t entirely proud of his behavior, particularly now that he knew about Eastlake.
Not that it excused his wife’s betrayal on their wedding day; nothing could absolve her of that sin.
“Oh my,” Verity said quietly when he had finished. “That is indeed a complex change of circumstance. You did right in bringing Lady Eastlake here.”
“I know. She is safe from him now, where she belongs.”
“As is your wife.”
His wife.
It still felt strange to think of Sybil thus.
He’d done everything in his power over the last three months to banish thoughts of her from his mind.
To forget how badly he wanted her. And he had failed abysmally.
The moment she had been within his reach, he’d proven just how impossible it was to resist her.
He wanted her more with every passing day, the feelings he struggled to deny insurmountable. He was hopeless when it came to Sybil.
“I am not certain she belongs here,” he said stiffly. “But she is my duchess, and I am charged with her protection.”
“You don’t intend to leave London and return to your bawdy house party, do you?” Verity asked, suspicion coloring her tone.
He would admit that he had selfishly considered it, for no reason other than he still wasn’t prepared to face the way Sybil made him feel.
“The house party is coming to an end tomorrow anyway,” he said. “And you needn’t fear I will hide from my obligations.”
“You’re a good man, Everett. If your wife has any common sense at all, she will realize what she has in you.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t been particularly kind to her since our wedding day,” he admitted, thinking of how he had abandoned her and left her at Riverdale Abbey for three months. When she had arrived at Wingfield Hall, he’d been positively beastly.
“Then you shall have ample opportunity to change that now.” Verity finished her whisky and rose from her seat. “The hour grows late, and I really should be abed by now, as should you, brother. It isn’t healthy for a man of your advanced years to get so little sleep.”
There was a sparkle in her pale eyes, so like his.
“A man of my advanced years, indeed,” he drawled wryly, for he was only two-and-thirty to her eight-and-twenty, but she forever reminded him of the four-year age difference separating them.
“You’re fortunate I love you as I do, or I’d sneak a frog into your bedroom tonight, just like I used to do when we were children. ”
“Ha!” She laughed, setting her empty tumbler on the table at his side. “Then I would have no choice but to retaliate by pouring treacle in your hair whilst you sleep.”
The minx had done so once when they were younger, and his hair had been sticky for weeks.
“I’ve never seen Mother so furious at you,” he recalled, grinning.
They had run wild as children, but he was damned grateful for her.
“It wasn’t one of my finer ideas, I admit.” Verity gave his arm another sisterly pat. “Now do go to bed, brother. You looked weary when you arrived, and you’re beginning to resemble a stray mongrel.”
“So I shall, after I finish this whisky.”
“See that you do,” Verity said sternly before taking her leave in a swish of mournful black skirts.
Once more, Everett was alone. The night—and the visit he needed to pay to Sybil—loomed before him as he watched the fire dying in the grate, the embers glowing furiously in their desperate attempt to spark flame.
One by one, they failed, until the library was ensconced in almost complete darkness by the time he departed, so much weighing on his mind.
All he knew was that he couldn’t allow her past his defenses a second time. Their marriage was one of convenience. He would take his pleasure, get her with child, and then he would damned well carry on with his life. He had to harden his heart and protect himself at all costs.
The hour was ridiculously late, and for the third time in as many months, Sybil was once again beneath a new roof in an unfamiliar bedchamber.
She had seen her mother settled in a pleasant room with cheerful damask and landscape pictures dotting the walls.
Mother had been understandably weary after all her journeys and had retired early.
Which had left Sybil alone to pace the confines of her new chamber, awaiting the pleasures of her husband.
Supposing, that was, that Everett would deign to visit her this evening. He’d given her no indication either way when they had parted following a somewhat stilted dinner. She was prepared for him.
As prepared as she could be, she thought as she swept her hands over her dressing gown and paced the floor to the warmth of the fire in the hearth.
Her cold feet appreciated the heat. Traveling in the damp and rains from Wingfield Hall had left her in a chilled state that she couldn’t seem to shake.
Her bath had been restorative, but the moment she had emerged, she had been cold again.
A tapping at the door adjoining her chamber to Everett’s disrupted her solitude and made her stomach tighten in anticipation.
“Enter,” she called.
The portal opened, and her husband strolled through.
She caught her breath at the sight of him.
They had been in close confines in the carriage, and she had sat at his elbow at dinner, and yet there was something distinctly different about watching him prowl toward her in the night, his feet bare, a maroon dressing gown belted loosely, a slice of his strong chest and all his throat on display, unobscured by proper layers and a necktie.
Moreover, there was a bed not far from her.
A bed he had likely come to make use of.
“Good evening,” she greeted him softly, uncertainly.
She didn’t know where they stood. It seemed as if so much had changed in the course of the day. And yet, he was still the same cold-eyed stranger who withheld the smiles and easy charm of the handsome duke who had courted her.
“You are well settled?” he asked.
She plucked at her dressing gown. “Yes.”
He stopped before her. “Everything is to your liking?”
The scent of him hit her, familiar and alluring. Musk and amber with a hint of pine. His jaw was freshly shaven, she noted, the ends of his mahogany hair damp. He must have bathed as well.
She swallowed against a rogue rush of yearning. “It is fine.”
He raised a brow. “You don’t like it?”
“It doesn’t feel as if it is mine,” she admitted, thinking it odd indeed that they should be having such an ordinary, if not mundane, conversation at this hour of the night.
“Make it yours,” he invited, his cool gaze sweeping over her face and lingering on her hair, which she had allowed her lady’s maid to keep unbound after her bath.
Not for him, she’d told herself.
But she wasn’t so sure of that now.
“Perhaps a change in wall coverings,” she ventured. “Or some new pictures.”
“Change it however you wish.”
Now that he was near to her, she detected a hint of spirits on his breath. Was that the reason for his delay? Had he lingered for so many hours because he held her in such disregard? Perhaps bedding her was a chore.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are most generous.”
“No, I’m not.”
She frowned up at him.
“I’m selfish.” He reached for her, cupping her face, the pad of his thumb skimming tentatively over her jaw. “And you are beautiful. Far too beautiful.”
These were words she had hungered for, along with his admiration. Heavens, his attention, his presence. It was all she had dreamed of over the first few terrible weeks after their wedding. But instead, he had left her alone. She didn’t know what to make of them now. How to feel.
“I’m hardly that,” she said, knowing she shouldn’t like the sweep of his touch nearly so much.
Unable to keep the desire from sparking to life.
“You know you are,” he countered, his caress trailing lower, along her throat where her pulse pounded hard and fast.
She didn’t know it. What she did know was that she was not beautiful in the traditional sense. But she’d had the interest of gentlemen. She simply hadn’t wanted it until Everett.
Her nipples tightened into hard buds against the bodice of her night rail.
It was too much. He was too much. She wasn’t prepared to lower her portcullis for him after his shabby treatment of her on their wedding day.
And yet, the way he had come to her defense and to her mother’s rescue had changed everything.
“Shall I disrobe?” she asked quickly, seeking to snuff the burgeoning flame of longing that had already been lit deep within her.
“No.” With slow deliberation, he glided his hand from her neck to her nape. Long fingers cupped the base of her skull, kneading the tension from her scalp. Making her head fall back into his ministrations before she could think twice. “Let me do it.”
She was about to protest, but his mouth settled over hers, stealing her ability to speak and erasing any words she may have said with the persuasion of his lips and tongue. Her hands flitted to his shoulders, fingertips delving into the muscled cords for purchase.
He tasted like whisky and dark desire, like passion and anger and mystery and everything she shouldn’t want but somehow did.
Sybil opened for him on a moan, sucking on his tongue as he kissed her deeply, tenderly.
Kissed her in a way he hadn’t yet. Not before their marriage and most certainly not since.
Heat built low in her belly and licked outward, taking her over.
She became aware of his tall, lean form pressing into hers, of his length springing hard and demanding and thick against her.
Of his warm strength. Everything shifted and changed.
This was what she had promised him, yes, but it was also somehow different.