Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
S amuel didn’t take risks. A man like him had little room for error.
But he would teach the matchmaker how to throw a knife, by God, no matter the dangers it posed.
And it did pose dangers, as thick in the air as the cinnamon scent of her. Because she didn’t laugh at him when he talked about his Guide. She didn’t stare at him as if he were mad. And even though he likely was, her calm questions, her reassurances he at least had some of it right, made him feel a bit less lost.
Dangerous, too, because their conversations seemed to always come back to kissing. And when it did, he could think of nothing but their meeting in the garden, the softness of her lips, the warmth of her breath.
Hell. Touching her was like walking into the Seven Dials—not safe in the least. He’d be hurt. But damn, he wanted her to know how to wield a knife as well as his sisters could. Better him hurt than her.
“Gloves,” he said, voice husky, giving him away.
She stepped away from his arm, gently removing her wrist from his hold and encircling it with her own fingers. “Pardon?”
He stole her wrist once more, lifted it between them, and ran his thumb along the hem. More flowers embroidered there in the cream color of her glove—a secret hidden for someone close enough to touch her to discover. He was close enough, but he’d discovered it before then, somehow seeing what was hidden about her as well as he saw the armor she wore for the world. “These. Your gloves. Pretty.”
“I”—she cleared her throat—“I embroider them myself.”
“Do you?” He circled the center of a bloom with his thumb. “Extraordinary. Why don’t you use contrasting colors? So others can see and marvel at your talent.”
“I do not do it for others. My mother was better with a needle than I, and she used to put little flowers hidden along the seams and hems of my clothing. When I found them…” She shook her head, tried to steal her wrist back, but he held tight with just enough pressure she could not break free without causing a scene. “This conversation serves no purpose.”
“When you found them, what? Did it delight you?” As it did him.
She looked away, and he took the knife from her, replaced it in the box, then traced his fingertips up and over her knuckles to tug on the fingertips of her gloves, loosening them. He revealed her wrist first. It was not delicate. Why would it be? Her hands would possess the strength and dexterity of a seamstress. But freckles scattered across it, constellations across creamy skin he’d never have the bliss of tracing, of kissing. They extended across her hand, too, he saw as he tugged the glove free. Then the other. He placed them on the table next to his knife case, then he handed her a blade smaller than the one she’d held before.
She wrapped her hand around it. Strong fingers, capable, perfect. He should have known he preferred this type. More beauty in strength and daring than in delicacy.
What was he doing? Fixated on a wrist, a set of bare fingers? He knew better. She did not want his attentions, and he could not give them.
He cleared his throat, gestured to the knife she held. “This is a better weight for a novice. It is what I started out with when my father began to teach me. I was ten, and I was temperamental. A bit wild.” He guided her hand around the hilt. “Thumb just there, remember.” He positioned her in front of the target. “I had too many emotions and no idea what to do with them.”
“I remember being like that as well.” She stood stiff in the ring of his arms, shoulders like buttresses. The neck of her gown scooped a wide curve from one side of her neck to the other, and he could only just see the cream of her skin through the flimsy fichu.
If he touched her—only to relax her, only that—he would not even be touching her skin.
Do. Not.
He did. Stroking a line down the center of her neck, over one shoulder, and all the way down her arm to her wrist. Her bare wrist. What was that about not touching skin? He’d found some, hadn’t he, and bloody hell, it was warm.
“Relax everything,” he said. Still his voice sounded like that of a man on the edge of pleasure.
Was this all because of the dream he’d had last night? The one where they’d been alone in Hyde Park, and he’d peeled her out of the blue velvet she’d worn yesterday and laid her on her bench and—
Hell. Now he was the one taut and vibrating. “Relax,” he said again, more to himself than to her.
“Impossible.” The word a low bedroom exhalation.
He was not going to survive this. Somehow, he managed a light chuckle. “Come along.” He jiggled her arm, his fingers lightly shackled around her wrist. “Loosen up.” Her bare, warm, pulse-rapid wrist.
She heaved a breath that was born part sigh and let her body go limp.
“Excellent.” He released her arm. Easier to focus now. Yes, focus on the task. Or she’d get hurt. That drained his lust right quick. “My father always told me to let my worries drain away as I relaxed, to toss them out of me with the knife.”
She tilted her chin toward her shoulder, flicked a glance at him. “What worried you so?”
“Who knows? That all feels rather unreal now. A fairy tale, not real life.”
“What worries do you toss out of you now?” She bit her lip like she knew she should not have asked him.
“I suppose you could hazard an accurate guess.”
“Likely. You worry you do not do enough. You worry you have done more harm than good. You worry about them .”
He curved his fingers into his palm to keep from cupping her cheek. “I knew you would know. You possess the same worries.”
“Aye.”
“Well, then, for a moment at least, let them go.” He stepped behind her—he shouldn’t—and lined her body with his. A mistake. His chest pressed lightly against her shoulders, his belly met the length of her back, and his interested cock twitched inches away from her perfectly rounded arse. Horrible idea. Every bit of this no good.
He was too damn tired to fight this rising need. He would take nothing else from her but a memory of how perfectly their bodies settled into one another. But he would take that memory.
He stretched his arm out along the length of hers and corrected the angle of her wrist, the placement of her fingers. “It is best to have good aim so you can maim an attacker before they reach you. If they reach you, your odds of escaping unscathed are lower than otherwise. Aim, Lady Emma, throw, hit your target without mercy, and run.”
“You think I might need to know this?”
He nodded, his cheek brushing against the soft, red curls near her ear. “If you do, you will know how.”
“I do not possess a knife.”
“You will. Now bring the knife back here.” He bent her arm, cupping her elbow. “Next to your face. When you release your arm forward, use the thumb to guide it. Are you ready?”
She swallowed, nodded. Was that her heart he heard, almost felt, beating so wildly? Or was it his own?
“Relax.”
She did. And then she threw the knife. Its hilt hit the tree, and it clattered to the ground.
“Bother!” She stamped her foot.
And he laughed, a belly laugh like one he’d not enjoyed in who knew how long.
“It’s not funny. Show me again.” She marched over to the knife and picked it up, marched back and settled herself into his arms once more. Without hesitation. As if she belonged there.
Bloody hell.
Tighten his arms. Pull her back against his chest. Nestle his lips just below her ear. Scatter her jaw with kisses. Whisper how much he needed her into her ear. This need, this damn aching need growing like a fever over every inch of him, skin and bones and heart. A fever that could not be controlled, and neither could the rush of need for this woman through his veins.
Step away. Tap her elbow with a single fingertip. Keep his distance. “Try again, Lady Emma.” No kisses. No whispers. No fever. “My father told me to envision the knife’s tip sinking into the wood. To will it.”
She laughed. “Does that work?” Then she glanced at Aunt Millicent. “Will we wake her?”
“It does work. And we won’t wake her.”
“You chose a most unsuitable chaperone.”
“I’m beginning to see that. She’s been my sisters’ chaperone, you know.”
Lady Emma’s jaw dropped. “No. Oh, Clearford, that is abominable. You must find a new one for your remaining three.”
“And dispossess them of the freedom the elders had? I do not think they would thank me for finding them a more awake woman.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them, then. As long as I’m in London, I will consider them my own and consider myself their chaperone. No trysts while my eyes are open, and they are always open.”
There was a chair, right there, where they’d been sitting earlier. He could take his seat once more, drag her down onto his lap, and—
No. “And I will protect your sisters. A pact.” The best way he could protect them was to leave them alone and marry his widow. Then, no one’s prospects were ruined by the erotic books quite literally in their cupboards. Wha… what else was he considering doing? There was no other option! Certainly, none with the woman before him.
Hell.
This was physical attraction.
This was professional respect.
Personal admiration.
It was not… not… it was not anything else .
“Try again.” He nodded at the knife in her hand and took two gigantic steps away from her. Still felt too close. “On your own this time.”
She lined herself up. All wrong. She took aim. All wrong. She threw it. And it didn’t even hit the tree. “Bother.” She stomped to retrieve the knife this time, then lined up again. Wrong. Aimed.
“Wrong, all wrong.” He exploded toward her, decimating that distance he’d put between them. And then she sank into his embrace once more, eager for him to shape her, teach her. She should have stiffened at his touch. If she had, he could have kept necessary inches between them. But when he cupped her elbow and she melted into him, a little purr of something in her throat, barely audible but there all the same, he couldn’t.
He simply could not .
He smiled. His body loved her, wanted to keep her, to strip her, to taste her.
“Line your body up using mine as a guide,” he said low in her ear. “Arm to arm and leg to leg.” Her arms settled against his, her skirts married the length of his legs. His cock, already twitching, tightened. Painful. Needing. “Back to belly.” And heart to heart. Too much. Too perfect. “Now let me guide you.”
She gave a little nod. Was she breathing? She’d gone entirely still.
He stroked his knuckles up and down her neck. Completely giving up the fight, was he? Yes, it appeared so. “Loosen. Breathe.”
Another tiny nod as she did so, and he wrapped his hand around hers on the hilt.
For a moment.
For a breath.
For a sin-filled second.
He closed his eyes and let their bodies be. Together. Perfect. Possibly everything he’d ever wanted. Everything he could have if things were different. If things were different, she’d find him here some days, needing help with who knew what, and she’d take the blade from his hand and set it aside, and instead of honing his unnecessary wildness through the blade, he’d channel it into her, throwing her over his shoulder and carting her off to their bed. Her hair would fan out like the sunrise on white sheets, and he’d kiss her everywhere the sun shone.
He could see it all.
Even after he opened his eyes, he saw her and him and everything they could have from this moment until dark earth spilled onto their coffins.
He spilled the need and the frustration into the blade, and together they flung it across the room.
It sank tip first into the tree with an echoing thwack, and she spun in his arms, eyes bright as sapphires, and mouth curved into happiness itself.
“I did it!”
He allowed himself one thing—to trail the pad of his thumb down the length of her jaw and settle at the tip of her chin, so very close to the pout of her bottom lip. “You did. Now do it again.”
He left her, taking the chair to the side of the room. Alone.
She ran to the other end of the gallery and retrieved her blade, then tried again and again, and when he could guarantee he would not give away the emotion thick in his chest and throat, he offered instructions for improvement. She missed it seven times out of ten. But she’d get better.
“We will have our meetings here,” he said. “So, you can practice as we discuss my sister’s suitors.”
“I should enjoy that. You truly do not mind?”
He shook his head. “I will be glad to know you know how to protect yourself.”
She’d been aiming at the tree, but she lowered the knife and sat across from him once more. Folding her hands over the blade in her lap and looking out the window, she said, “My mother taught me to embroider. It’s a tedious skill. The stitches must be so close together. When I first began to learn, I would accidentally unstitch my stitches, pushing the needle through the same hole I’d just come up out of.” She chuckled. “I was never very good. But when I found little flowers on my sleeves or the corners of my cloak, it… I never felt alone then. My mother was always with me. And when she died, soon after Briar was born… I realized there was no one to stitch those flowers into Briar’s clothes. Or my other sisters’ clothes. Nor mine. Not anymore. So, I began to try my hand at it again. It’s likely more accurate to say I became obsessed. I’d stay up all night, killing candle after candle.”
“Your eyesight, too.”
“Mm. Yes. I remember how blurry the world was after narrowing my sight for so long on such a tiny corner of the world. A needle. A length of thread. A hole in the tiniest bit of cloth. But I got much better quite quickly. At embroidery and at… living without my mother.”
“You poured your grief into learning your mother’s art.”
“As you have poured your various frustrations into learning your father’s.” Her hand crept across the table between them, palm down and fingers seeking. “Thank you for teaching me, Your Grace. And thank you for… seeing me.” She meant the embroidery, but she meant something else as well.
“Thank you for sharing your story.”
Beneath the table her leg brushed against his, and his jaw tightened, the first in a sweep of muscles down his body, tightening, locking down his every cursed desire. He’d had his moment with her, felt its perfection. He’d seen what he feared most—that he could love her.
The moon maiden was not supposed to have existed outside of that night. Yet here she was, as perfect in the sunlight as she had been beneath the stars. Hell, the things he’d said to her…
Fall in love with me? she’d asked.
Perhaps , he’d said.
And now he must forget it all.
Her skirts brushed, once more against his leg.
He stood so quickly his chair toppled over, and she yanked her hand across the table and back into her lap.
And yelped. “Oh! Oh.” She lifted her hand. A ruby blood drop welled at the tip of one finger.
His body raced into a panic, and he hit his knees beside her chair, took her hand as if he had every right to.
“I’m fine.” She tried to pull away.
“ Shh .” He held tight with one hand, untying his cravat with the other and tugging it off his neck. “ Shh .” Cravat freed, he dabbed at her finger, found a cut an inch wide. A sliver of her skin slashed and bleeding still. He doubled up the cravat and pressed it against her finger, holding tight.
“I’m well.” She pushed a curl behind her ear.
“You’re bleeding.” Still pressing the end of the cravat to her wound, he threaded it through her fingers, then wound the length of it around her entire hand, tucked the end underneath it all. “There. That will do until the doctor—”
“I do not need a doctor. Aunt Georgie will—”
“I will—”
She cupped his cheek with her uninjured hand. “Look at me, Your Grace.”
He could only see her hand wrapped up like one of those Egyptian mummies.
The pressure on his cheek grew. “Look at me. Samuel.”
Oh hell. His name. Only his sisters had ever called him that. Only his parents.
And now Lady Emma.
Emma.
He met her gaze and found hers soft and… slightly amused.
“‘Tis but a scratch. It does not even hurt anymore.” Her hand dropped away from his cheek, but she still wore that wonderful smile. “I can see the brother in you more than ever. Worried about a scratch.”
“I’m the one who gave you the knife.” Each word scratched against his throat. “And who scared you so that you hurt yourself.”
“You are too hard on yourself. I know because I am, too.”
His hands rested in her lap, on her thighs, bracketing her hands. What an oddly affecting, oddly erotic image—his skin, dusted with dark hair, against the pale cream of her skirts. A flinch only would bring his hands around her waist, and he could drag her to the edge of the chair and bury his head in her belly, breathe her in, breathe peace in.
Too ridiculous. The moon’s magic held sway during the day, but Samuel couldn’t let it.
“Thank you.” He stood and held out a hand. When she let him help her to her feet, they stood, silent and awkward, their hands somehow wound together. Her uninjured hand woven with his. His other hand cradling her wrapped one.
He yanked away, taking several large steps backward.
“I should leave,” she said, clearing her throat.
“Yes, of course. We’ve discussed everything there is to discuss at the moment. But, erm”—he pulled his sleeves down, covering his forearms—“promise you will call the doctor.”
Her lips trembled into a silly smile as she held up her bandaged hand. “What more is there for a physician to do, Your Grace.”
Samuel , he wanted to beg her. Please call me Samuel again . But he could not.
“The wrapping is as big as my head.” She held it in front of her face.
She was right. He saw only the bandaged hand and her halo of red hair around it. He laughed. To scoop her into his arms and share that laughter, own it… a dream.
“I do not think I will be able to return it.” She dropped her hand to her side and unlinked her other hand from his own. She stepped away. “It’s ruined, I’m sure.” Her gaze seemed to catch on his throat where the cravat had once been warmed by his heat. Now his heat warmed her. Good.
“I’m yours.”
Her eyes widened.
Damn it. “I mean, it is yours. The cravat.” He rolled his sleeves up again to fight the heat rising in his body. “The cravat is yours now. Dispose of it as you see fit. After the doctor has seen to you.”
Giggles. Not hers. And more of them than a single person could produce.
“Hell,” he hissed, striding for the door to the hallway.
“Bother,” she muttered, chasing after him.
He swung open the door, and six bodies fell through, a tumble of skirts and hair and laughter.
He stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. “What is this?”
Rolling to her backside and scowling up at him, June said in a tone rather like his own, “How dare you tumble a group of ladies to the floor.”
“Rude.” Gertrude managed to push from hands and knees to feet and stand. “You should not meddle in others’ business.”
“Me?” he demanded. “I see six sets of ears where they should not be.”
“Everyone has a right to the hallway.” Lady Diana helped June to her feet. “Do they not?”
“Diana,” Lady Emma warned. “Do not speak to the duke in such a way.”
Samuel sighed and waved away her objection. “No matter.” He fixed the girls with his sternest expression. “Do not seek conversations not meant for you with open ears. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” June lifted her chin.
Felicity smoothed her skirts. “My apologies, Samuel.”
“You’re too old for eavesdropping,” he said.
“You as well, Glenna.” Lady Emma’s hands found her hips. “Now go.” Her voice as stern as his expression.
Yet Lady Briar remained behind as the others filed out in a whispering flurry.
“Yes?” Lady Emma asked, one toe tapping.
“I want to learn how to throw a knife.”
“Of course you do.” Lady Emma huffed. “But—”
“I’ll teach you.” No reason not to. He’d promised to help Emma protect her sisters.
“No.” Emma’s hand on his arm. Her hand. On his arm. Burning like a star fallen from the heaven, burrowing beneath his skin. “It is too much.” Her gaze dropped to her hand. On his arm. And she yanked it away.
“It’s not too much. I’ll do it. Before our meeting every week.”
Briar grinned like she’d been looking forward to knife-throwing lessons her entire life and ran off to join the others.
Leaving Samuel and Emma to stand toe-to-toe once more, the silence between them a tight wire, alive and vibrating.
“I should leave as well,” she said finally, inching toward the door. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For caring. I have decided not to hold that kiss in the garden against you.”
“What kiss?” He raised a brow.
“Precisely. You would never do anything to hurt those you care for. Not purposefully.” She wandered toward the door. “It’s easy to feel carried away. Beneath the moon.” She smiled over her shoulder as she floated through the doorway. “Shall we be friends?”
He nodded, somehow returned her smile, and then she was gone.
Despite legs like ancient oak trees, Samuel somehow made it back to the chair and dropped heavy into it. He dropped his head into his palms with a groan.
The sofa creaked, and he shot upright, hands dropping into his lap as his aunt groaned and she sat up. She rubbed her eyes and chuckled and didn’t even bother to smooth her skirts or hair before making her wobbly way toward the door.
“That was quite dramatic, Nephew. Thank you for the show. And good luck. With all that.” She smacked her palm twice on the doorframe before disappearing into the hallway.
Hell. Not quite as sleepy as he’d thought, the wily old woman.
And him? Not quite as in control as he’d assumed.
A wreck, he was. Completely, utterly wrecked.
He cleaned up his knives, closed the box, and swept up the parcel Lady Emma had brought before leaving the gallery. In his own bedchamber, he dropped it on the dressing table and collapsed onto his bed.
Friends. Friends? With Lady Emma.
Yes. Apparently so.
If friendship was all he could have with this woman, he’d take it and find some way to be grateful instead of wallowing in grief.