Chapter Two
Unfortunately, Verity had taken a sip of tea at precisely the moment Julian voiced his outlandish proposition—that they marry. She sucked in a breath, and with it, a measure of the hot liquid. Sputtering and coughing, she hinged forward as her cheeks flamed with heat.
Julian, ever the gentleman, erupted from his seat to round the desk and thump her lightly on the back. “Verity, are you…what is wrong?”
As she wheezed, his gentle whacks between her shoulder blades gave way to languid caresses. The heat from his palm permeated her gown, corset and chemise, sending ripples of pleasure throughout her body. Gooseflesh sprouted over her limbs.
“I-I’m fine,” she finally managed, straightening.
Julian’s palm ceased its glide, but he did not remove it from her person.
To her extreme horror, her nipples hardened. She drew a shaky breath and prayed he did not notice. “I…er…inhaled my tea. Clumsy of me.”
His icy blue gaze remained locked on her, though his expression was unreadable.
“Julian, despite your words to the contrary, I do not believe you have thought the matter through. You are the Duke of Penrose. You will want to procure a real wife. A young wife. One who can give you children.”
He shook his head, very definite, his square jaw going hard as granite. “I have no desire to venture to the marriage mart that is the London season. I am content with our arrangement here, with you remaining lady of the manor while I see to the dukedom.”
With fervency, she wished he had not made his outlandish proposal. Because Julian was her friend. Her closest friend. Just as friendship was the extent of what he felt for her.
Unfortunately, what she was feeling at the moment did not resemble anything close to platonic friendship. Something warm and fluttery had invaded her insides, spreading like tentacles of sunshine, and his large, warm palm pressed to her body was not helping matters.
She had never experienced this heady sensation running roughshod through her, this thrumming, pulsing heat, concentrating deep in her core.
Yet, she recognized it enough to call it by name.
Desire. Her cheeks throbbed like she’d spent too much time, cliffside, facing the wind.
Whether embarrassment or excitement was the cause, she could not say.
As if he’d read her thoughts, he withdrew his hand from her and edged back.
She drew a calming breath and told herself she was not disappointed.
“As it happens, Julian, it occurred to me less than half an hour ago that you would have no need to travel to London to procure a wife. I daresay, any number of requests for a visit will arrive via the post.” Her laugh sounded tinny to her own ears.
“Marriage-aged debutantes and their mamas will flock to you.”
His icy gaze went flinty. “Be that as it may, I believe you are missing my point.”
“Which is?”
“If I had wanted to take a wife, I would have by now. Did it never occur to you that I…do not wish to…er…marry? To enter into a courtship, that is?”
She allowed his words to sink in, trying, and failing, to take their meaning. “You don’t?”
He shook his head and ruddy color splashed over the taut skin at his cheekbones and bridge of his nose.
“And yet, you offer for me?” she queried, utterly bemused.
“Indeed. I wish for you to stay, and this arrangement makes that possible. And, as you have nowhere to go at the moment and as you are, I believe, comfortable here. You are comfortable here?” he asked, sounding uncertain for the first time since broaching this insanity.
She nodded carefully as a conflagration of thoughts and emotions swarmed through her. How very much she did not want to leave him. She had ruminated on that very fact not five minutes ago. Why, however, suddenly seemed unclear.
As unclear as his reasoning for wishing to marry her—he, a man five years her junior who, by all standards, should marry a woman ten years his junior.
“Good. That’s settled then,” he said, as if they had just resolved a business matter.
Idly, he picked up a blown glass paperweight sitting atop his desk and eyed the bit of amber in its center.
“I shall procure a common license. Not as prestigious as a special license, mind you, but with it I believe we can see the ceremony accomplished in an expeditious manner.”
Her patience abruptly gave out and she surged to her feet. “Just one moment, if you please.”
His eyes shot to her face, and, after replacing the paperweight atop the desk blotter, he linked his hands behind his back and inched closer to her, not stopping ’til only a whisper of space existed between them.
The aroma of his subtle aftershave teased her nostrils, the heat from his body engulfed her like a cloak, and her breath stuttered in her lungs.
“I’m listening,” came the low rumble of his voice.
He was so virile. So arresting. So mind-numbingly captivating. She could barely think over a dawning physical awareness of him as a man. It didn’t help that she’d never been this near to him. Certainly never without the buffer of her late husband or a member of the household staff, hovering.
She reminded herself she was no green girl. She was a woman, grown. Five years his senior. And despite visions of marriage to him dancing in her head and all that might entail, and despite the sight, the heat, the scent of him twisting her insides into knots, she had a point to make.
She lifted her chin and finally found her voice. “You never once mentioned not wishing to take a wife, Julian, not in all the years I’ve known you.”
He rarely argued with her. Rarely voiced dissent with her notions—even when she knew he disagreed with her.
Like the time she’d insisted upon venturing out for a ride along the cliffs when he expressly warned her a storm was approaching.
She had seen clouds in the distance, but had gauged them far enough off and insisted she had time before the weather broke. Rather than argue, he merely had his own horse saddled and rode out with her, and then saw her safely home when the storm indeed broke and her horse threatened to panic.
He’d merely laughed when they made it to the safety of the stables as she bemoaned resembling a drowned rat.
Another time, when her late husband had planned a house party—his preferred method of gathering influential men with whom he wished to consult to him and thereby avoiding the trek to London—she’d tried her hand at matchmaking Julian.
When she asked him for input on the guest list, and asked what sort of woman he preferred, he’d politely informed her he did not wish her assistance in the matter.
With no other option, she’d made discreet inquiries as to who society deemed the season’s most disarming, marriageable young ladies, then chose a handful of potential brides for him from among them.
The poor man had spent most of the party evading said females which left her, perversely, uncontrovertibly amused.
And, perhaps, somewhat gratified, though that made no sense.
After all, she had chosen the ladies present.
In any case, Julian had made his displeasure known, developing a distinctly mulish set to his jaw, specifically when gazing toward her, for the duration of the house party.
Exactly as he was looking at her now.
“Perhaps, I did not state my preference plainly, Verity, but I damned sure never broached the subject of wanting one.”
She blinked at his sharp tone. She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She could not deny he made a valid point.
But, if he really did not wish to marry, what on earth was he offering her? A marriage in name only? And why did the thought of that fill her with such conflicting emotions?
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do not wish my life to be disrupted, Verity. I am a man of routine. And that includes having you here.”
“Routine?” she scoffed, spreading her arms wide. “Says the man who drinks coffee one day and tea the next? An early riser some days, and then, when the mood strikes, a night owl? A man who chooses all different cliff walks for his morning exercise, who—”
“My,” he cut in, smoothly, “someone has been paying attention.” Speculation gleamed in his magnificent eyes.
Her cheeks burned in an instant, although why she should feel the least bit embarrassed? There was nothing unusual about her noticing things about him. She sniffed. “You take my meaning.”
A sound akin to a low growl rumbled in his throat.
“Fine. If you must know, I do not wish to seek a bride because, as it happens…” He dropped his gaze to his boot tips and two ruddy splashes mottled his burnished cheeks.
“As it happens,” he repeated, “my heart has long belonged to another and, it would seem, that is never going to change. I will not marry some young chit and put her through what you suffered married to Sylvester.”
Silence descended between them.
He had never let on. Had never so much as hinted that he had noticed her husband’s refusal to relinquish the memory of his first wife in order to bond with his second. She could have told him that she’d never truly minded, because she’d never been in danger of falling in love with Sylvester.
But that was not all that left her speechless. His admission that he had loved another, that he loved another still, had half of her wanting to flee the room, and the other half wanting to pummel him.
Julian’s gaze lifted to meet hers. Somber. Searching. “Will you marry me, Verity?” he asked, his voice nearly hoarse.
“Is that truly what you wish?” she whispered, ridiculously on the verge of tears.
His nostrils flared and something unreadable glinted in his unblinking stare. “I do. Say you will.”
She had neither the will nor, in truth, the desire to refuse him. As to what lay at the root of the latter, she did not care to examine it. “Yes, Julian. I will marry you.”
*
The following day, Julian rode at dawn for Exeter, where he met with the archbishop. Obtaining the license required the payment of a small fee, and that he swear an oath to the high ranking clergyman that no impediment to his marriage to the dowager duchess existed.
When the man did not immediately produce the document, and instead eyed him with suspicion, Julian produced a second bag of coins and laid it on the offering plate. “A donation—toward your good works.”
Soon after, he left, license in hand.
Now, as night fell, ensconced in his carriage, bound for Penrose Abbey, he closed the small drapes, turned up the carriage lamps, and stared at the parchment that would seal his marriage to Verity.
He’d done it. He’d not only stopped her leaving Cornwall, but in a matter of days, would take her as his wife. His wife.
He’d never dared dream that one day Verity would be his, to have and to hold, ’til death would they part.
And yet the triumph that he’d first experienced looking into her sky-blue eyes, hearing her utter the words, Yes, Julian, I will marry you, now felt hollow.
Because he had tricked her. All right, lied. He’d told her, in essence, she had nowhere to go. He’d badgered her into marriage to him and then set about procuring the license as rapidly as humanly possible because he feared she’d change her mind if given enough time to think her decision through.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. He wanted her. Wanted her more than he wanted his next breath. But he wanted her to want him equally. No. He wanted her to love him.
What a bloody mess. When they consummated their marriage, and the mere thought of doing so had his cock growing hard and gooseflesh sprouting over his limbs, he didn’t want Verity coming to him beholden for the roof over her head.
Nor did he want her lying beneath him out of sense of duty as she no doubt had when Sylvester visited her bed—something he tried hard never to contemplate.
But another slim possibility did exist—that she felt more than friendship for him.
Over the years, she’d been unfailingly kind to him. Warm. Welcoming. But never had she so much as hinted at having any sort of attraction for him.
Until yesterday, when he’d proposed. He’d glimpsed something in her eyes. A well-spring of longing?
It could be nothing but wishful thinking on his part, of course. But how could he know where her true feelings lay?
He would have to admit the truth and then put the choice to her. Exactly when, exactly how, were questions he must consider very carefully.