Chapter 8
Chapter eight
‘It’s not something that should be done.’ Tillman’s voice sounded strained and thin to his own ears.
‘It’s not.’ She stepped over the axe, towards him. ‘Do it anyway.’
Tillman strode across the room, his feet swallowing the space between them.
In one movement drawn from endless years of longing, he threaded his fingers through her hair and cupped her neck.
She tilted her face up to him like a flower chasing the sun, offering lips that almost never curved into a smile.
He dreamt about them anyway.
Tillman bumped his nose against hers. She smelt like warm summer days and flower buds, like afternoons of lazy bees dawdling around blooms and fresh-shot grass.
‘Am I… am I doing it right?’ she asked.
‘Everything about you is right. I’m just enjoying you. I’ve thought about kissing you more than is polite to say. I don’t want to rush it.’
‘Oh.’ She dropped her gaze, then lifted it back up to him. ‘I was worried I was doing it wrong. It’s just that… I’ve never really kissed anyone before.’
Tillman leant back so his eyes could adjust and focus on her face. ‘You were married. For years. You had a baby.’
‘The making of heirs does not require kisses.’ Pink and red blotched her cheeks. ‘Apart from a peck in the church, I don’t think he ever kissed me.’
An onslaught of emotions erupted into battle in his chest. Indignation and embarrassment, churlish gratitude and ridiculous anger at a dead man. Tillman gathered all the threads together as they rose. Kept them quiet and stuffed them out of sight as he’d done so many times before.
‘Her Grace has never been kissed.’ Tillman pressed his cheek to hers, relishing her softness against his coarseness, and moved his lips close enough to brush her ear. ‘It would be my honour and privilege to be your first.’
A small gasp escaped her lips. Tillman swept an errant curl away from her forehead.
He was not a man of vast experience, but he knew that what mattered was to take his time.
He ran his thumb—far too rough and coarse for skin like hers, which was always shielded from the sun—along her jaw, then over her lower lip.
Its petal-soft flesh was the exact same shade as a late summer rose.
He traced her cheekbone. Hooked a finger under her chin and tipped her up, just a little. Her lips parted, and she closed her eyes, a vision of perfect innocence.
He moved slowly, like she might fracture against his harshness. Teased himself with her plumpness. Sought her lips with his.
For a long, long moment, their connection was just this.
Just their lips and her hand on his hip.
Then she stiffened as she inhaled, and her fingers slid and spread against his waist. She moaned, vibrating against him in welcome, and he embraced her.
Not like she was something delicate, a debutante in need of a waltz…
but like she was made for tumbling in the hay or for tugging behind trees in the fields.
Like he was a cad, and she was a sweet maid.
He touched his tongue to her lips. She opened, and softly, experimentally, he tasted her.
Her tongue met his, and now the only parts of him that were alive were the parts connected to her, his only movements were those that made her feel good.
He kissed her. And kissed her. Kept kissing her until the air in his lungs thinned and his chest screamed, until he had to break away to suck in a breath.
‘Oh heavens,’ she whispered, panting. ‘That was more shocking than I expected.’
‘Good shocking?’
‘Better than good. Stupendous.’
Tillman flexed his fingers against the back of her neck, drew her length against his own with some force, and claimed her mouth again.
Lorelei squeaked, and her body arched and surged against him, her arms wrapping around his neck as she pulled him closer.
Her lips were heaven, and she was as delicious as a peach.
Every part of her seemed to open to him, from her shoulders stretching to her mouth following his lead—even the way the tips of her fingers pressed into his nape.
Every small motion coaxed him over her walls and into her shrouded sanctum.
With a mutual moan of loss, they separated, inhaled, kissed again, then broke apart. Foreheads touching, their breaths interlaced.
‘Lorelei… I’ve always… You know I…’
‘Don’t say it.’ Her dry tone, underscored by a plea, halted his confession. ‘I know. Just know I know. One day,’ she whispered. ‘But not today.’
He’d always known it, really. That if he found the courage to reach out to her, and if she felt the same way in return, there’d be a price, and not one paid by him. He released her. She smoothed the fabric of her skirts, then caught that errant lock of hair and tucked it into place.
A creak came from down the hall. Then a tap at the door.
Cecil. ‘I don’t mean to disturb you… Your Grace,’ he said, but his gaze flicked to Tillman, then back to the duchess. ‘I need a forwarding address for His Grace.’
‘Forwarding address? He’s not going back to the academy.’ Panic edged into Lorelei’s voice. ‘Not unless he wants to. Did he say he wants to?’
‘Your father sent a man to collect him, to return him to school,’ Cecil replied.
‘He hadn’t even packed his books and such that were downstairs.
The man refused to wait. I offered to arrange to send them on to the academy, but the driver said His Grace wouldn’t be returning to that school.
Before I could ask where he was taking him, they left. ’
For a moment, they all stood frozen. The pink had left Lorelei’s cheeks.
She stared into the room, unseeing, before her gaze sharpened.
It flicked over the windows, the bedposts, the spent feathers, and lastly, to the axe.
‘Difficult cases,’ she whispered, then cleared her throat and locked eyes on him.
‘The headmaster at the academy said he had a friend who specialised in difficult cases. What does that mean?’
A knot, heavy as lead, tied itself in his stomach.
‘I only heard rumours,’ he replied. ‘From other boys. But there are schools stricter than the academy. Not quite the military, but not far from it. Hard places with harsh discipline, meant to turn boys into proper men. Or so they say. Would your father send his grandson somewhere like that?’
Her lip trembled, and she wiped her fingers across her cheek, leaving a shiny smear that had been a tear.
‘Would he?’ she rasped. ‘Does he look like the sort of man who would rap knuckles until they bled, for poor posture? Or lock a girl inside her room without supper because she finished her small slice of cake instead of only taking a few bites? Or shout until she wept because she was slow to recite titles after spending all day rehearsing dance steps, or for being out of tempo at the keys? For being anything other than a perfect, perfect princess?’
She wobbled like she might topple. He took a step closer, ready to catch her, but she placed a hand over her eyes and extended her hand, palm out, to stop him.
Held herself against the air, against nothing.
Seeing her steady herself on her own feet unhitched his heart, and all his years of smothering every feeling fell away.
A gentle love burst from its pod and slowly wound into life inside him.
Not a love of worry or pity, but of admiration.
The small girl who’d known neither care nor kindness, who’d grown into a disrespected wife, who’d been humiliated as a widow…
somehow, she’d found the courage to love her boy.
Against the constant fear of failure, she had persisted in her own, quiet way.
She’d been alone and yet so very, very brave.
‘No. He will not take it from me. He will not take my one, small happiness. My sole achievement in life. My son needs a home, a place to land, a compass. Not more discipline.’ She fixed him with her gaze. ‘We must find him and bring him home.’
‘Did the headmaster say where the school was?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Where would he send him?’ She paced the length of the room, her fists clenching and unclenching, her nostrils flaring with each uttered frustration.
‘Not back to the academy, but what about one of the bigger schools? Eton? Rugby? No, that can’t be it—if I demanded it, they would defer to me, and he would never tolerate that.
’ Lorelei looked up, her eyes flicking between himself and Cecil.
‘Father must tell us. It’s the only way. ’
‘I’ll hail a cab. We can head to his house straight away.’ Tillman took a step towards the door.
‘Don’t bother. He won’t be there. On a Saturday evening, there’s only one place he will be.’ She turned to Cecil. ‘Send someone to help me dress. I shall be in the guest room.’
And the duchess’s skirts swished around her as she left the room.
Tillman nodded at Cecil to leave first, but the butler studied him, his gaze keen and questioning.
‘It’s not proper for you to be in here alone with Her Grace,’ he finally said. ‘The staff might imagine there’s something inappropriate between the two of you.’
‘They might?’ Tillman feigned surprise. ‘I’ll be sure to… to avoid that. In future.’ A stiff, awkward silence grew in the space between them as Tillman kept his focus on the floor.
Cecil snorted. When Tillman dared to meet his eyes properly, he discovered that the other man was smiling.
‘It’s about time,’ he said, then turned and strode from the room.