Chapter Thirteen
Montague sighed heavily as he sat—dropped—onto his sofa.
Hell’s bells, but his leg hurt. Not in the way it had done for months, though. He would give Doctor Walsingham his due, even if he did not like it. The longer walks had helped.
Not that Montague would own it aloud, with words, in the doctor’s presence. It would never do to start giving the man the idea he was right all the time. Where would that sort of thing lead?
Still. Montague rubbed his leg, the slight ache traversing his entire thigh. It still wasn’t right, not entirely. Not how it used to be.
The old energy that propelled him forward time after time in a fencing match, or marching over fields and hills until ordered to slow…
Those days were gone.
The moment the thought entered his mind, he pushed it aside. He would not permit himself to accept defeat. He was a Caelfall. He was a duke!
Accepting defeat was not supposed to be in his vocabulary.
Montague leaned back with a groan and stretched out his leg, placing his ankle on the chair opposite. The relief that swept through his leg was unmistakable.
Damn and blast it.
Try as he might, Montague had to admit he was not yet healed. Even if he wanted to be. That damned doctor had a great deal to answer for if you asked—
A knock on the door.
Montague’s head snapped up. “What?” he barked.
He could perhaps have been a little more polite, he thought begrudgingly.
That thought only grew in conviction as a gentle voice said, “Montague?”
He winced. Sarah. He should have guessed; who else bothered to see him?
That was not fair. He had done his best, after all, to ensure his friends had no idea he was here. Safer that way. Best not to answer awkward questions about precisely what he was doing here, and not in Caelfall Place.
He cleared his throat, as though that could take back his gruffness. “Miss Lockwood?”
The door opened and Sarah’s face appeared in the gap with a wry expression.
“Since when was I was ‘Miss Lockwood’?” she asked, eyebrow raised.
Montague grinned. Well, he couldn’t help it. Whatever ailed him, Sarah was sure to be the tonic to make him feel alive again. More human. More himself.
“Since when did you knock?” he quipped back.
A look of mock outrage swept across Sarah’s face as she stepped inside and leaned against the door, closing it. “I have always been polite enough to knock before barging in here and accusing you of being a poetry professor!”
Montague snorted. Wasn’t that the truth? “I suppose I cannot refute that, try as I might. Come, sit.”
He moved to lift his ankle from the chair, but Sarah raised a hand. “No, don’t move. I’ll sit beside you.”
She had stepped across the room and done so before he could refute her statement—not that Montague knew why he would wish to do such a thing.
The sofa provided by Wessex College was not large. Montague had been irate at first when it was brought into the room. He’d had grand ideas of seducing ladies on that sofa, and in his mind, it was simply not large enough.
But now, with Sarah sat pressed up beside him, her hips most deliciously curved against his, Montague found it was the perfect size.
“How is it?”
He blinked. Sarah was looking at him with great concern, but he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. “I beg your pardon?”
She nodded at his ankle. “Your leg. Does it pain you?”
Montague swallowed. Embarrassment threatened to overwhelm his tongue, but he forced down the sensation swiftly. He did not need to be ashamed of what he was. He had sustained the injury during serving his country.
Besides, he never needed to be reserved in Sarah’s presence. That was something she had taught him, just by the way she was, the way she looked at the world, her kindness.
Who a person was never needed to be explained away. Explained, perhaps. But never excused.
“It does ache a bit, yes,” Montague conceded. It was difficult to say, despite his finer feelings. “The blasted fool of a doctor said the long walks would help.”
“And have they?”
He shrugged, adoring the way his sleeve brushed against her arm. Was he imagining things, or had the hairs on her arm stood up at the movement? “I suppose there is some improvement, but I thought…hoped I would be healed by now.”
The admission made prickles of humiliation curl around his spine. He’d had great hopes when he’d returned to England. Why, our medicine was the best in the world! Of course he would be up and running about again in no time.
No time, it appeared, was the crucial part of that hope. No time at all.
Then Montague gasped. He could not help it—the most wild and glorious thing had happened.
Sarah had reached out gingerly…and laid her hand on his thigh, right above the wound. Where the wound had been.
Heat shot through him just as the bullet had. It was all Montague could do not to gasp again; the intimacy was intoxicating.
“You were very brave,” Sarah murmured, looking into his eyes.
Montague swallowed. This was every gentleman’s dream, wasn’t it? To find a woman who found them brave, who idolized them as a solider and wished to show them just how much they were grateful…
But this wasn’t just some harlot playing a game. Sarah wasn’t like that. This was heartfelt, and his own heart leapt in response.
“I am not sure I can be described as brave,” Montague said awkwardly. “Foolish.”
“I am not sure of that. I think anyone who goes abroad to serve their country is honorable, and the fact you wish to return, even with this injury…” Sarah’s voice faded, but her hand did not move.
Montague tried desperately to control himself. The trouble was, her hand was close to—or actually, not close enough to…
No, he mustn’t think that! This was a lovely moment between them, he tried to tell himself fiercely, and he was not going to ruin it with lascivious thoughts.
“I had hoped, perhaps, that we would have another lesson today.”
Montague’s eyes sharpened. “Today?”
Oh, bother it to damnation. He would like nothing more than to take Sarah to the gymnasium, make her rush about a bit to get her breath short and her breasts heaving, then pin her against the wall and—
Montague buried the delightful thought and focused on the Sarah beside him, not the imaginary Sarah who would permit him to do anything and everything.
This woman was more than real enough already, he thought wildly. Why, she still had not removed her hand, and surely she could see just what an effect it was having!
On some parts of him more than others…
“Yes, today—I wished to practice the retreat again, as I do not seem to be very good at it,” Sarah said.
Montague almost groaned. Did she know what she was doing to him? Did she understand every word she spoke ignited tingles of delight and anticipation? Did she see every part of him responding, aching, needing more than a mere touch through his breeches?
But his damned leg still ached. He doubted whether he could walk to the gymnasium, let alone have the strength to pin her against a wall.
Or teach her fencing.
Montague swallowed. “I regret to say I am not the right shape to teach today. I am sorry, Sarah.”
Her name tasted sweet, but it was not the only taste he wanted. Montague’s gaze flickered to her mouth just as she nibbled on her bottom lip, evidently trying to decide whether to say something or not.
She needed to leave. Soon.
Montague had not indulged in pleasure since his return from France and was in sore need of it—sore in need of her. If Sarah did not leave soon, he would not be responsible for his actions. He would kiss her, beg her to touch him again, touch him elsewhere—
“You know, eventually, I will have to stop taking lessons.”
Montague’s gaze snapped to her eyes. They were bold. “You will?”
Sarah nodded. “I cannot expect my mother to permit such things going on indefinitely, and besides…there may not be much more you can teach me.”
Now that was a challenge, and no mistake. “I am sure there is a great deal more I can teach you, both inside the gymnasium and outside of it.”
Montague reveled in the flush in Sarah’s cheeks, though scandalously uttered.
What was he doing? Meandering closer and closer to a liaison he could not undo?
“I-I suppose that is true,” stammered Sarah, her hand still on his leg. “But I will need to stop the lessons soon, regardless. For…for my own sake.”
He could read every unspoken word in her expression. They were dancing far too close to the edge, weren’t they? The back and forth, the exhilaration while fencing together…
The kisses he had stolen. The kisses she had willingly given. That moment in the bookshop, only days ago, when he had almost been reaching for her skirts to pull them up, her wrist in his hand as he pinned her against the bookcase…
“You know, I think I like poetry more than I thought.”
Montague swallowed. It would not do to show Miss Sarah Lockwood what an effect she was having.
As though she did not already know.
And before he knew what he was doing, before Montague could stop himself, before all remembrance of his position and hers, his determination to return to France, everything that should stop him came to the fore…he spoke.
“I cannot live without you.”
Sarah blinked. “I-I beg your pardon?”
Montague hesitated, but there was no going back now. What would be the point? He craved her, needed her more than he could express.
But he was going to do his damndest to try.
“I need you, Sarah,” he said, words stumbling over themselves to be uttered. “It doesn’t make any sense, and yet it does; it makes perfect sense—more sense than anything in the world. I need you, need your company, your laughter, the way you look at me. No one looks at me like you do.”
Not like a piece of meat, or a duke to be snagged, or a gentleman with more money than sense, Montague thought wildly. No. Like a man. Like someone who was cared about.
Montague wondered whether he had said too much, yet was it enough? As blood pumped wildly through his veins, his lungs tight and fingers craving the sensation of her own, he said quietly, “I need you, Sarah.”
Sarah had sat in silence listening to his every word without interruption. As he finished, Montague sought any sign she was going to reply with the words he craved.
“I need you too, Montague.”
She took a deep breath. “But I don’t need you, Montague.”
Montague’s jaw almost fell open.
If he was honest with himself, he had been certain of a different response, had he not?
After all, how many ladies received such a speech as that, and from a duke to boot! How many ladies wanted to be told how desirable they were?
The very least she could have done was pretend to be gratified by his desire!
Pain ate at his stomach as Montague tried to take in her words. She did not need him?
For some strange reason, she was smiling. “I don’t need you, Montague. I want you.”
Montague blinked. “Want me?”
“I don’t want to be needed, like—like your cane,” Sarah said quietly, nodding toward the stick that lay on the floor.
Montague flushed. “Needed…needed feels like you have to have me, and I could quite easily become like that cane of yours. A part of the furniture. Something you resent, because without it, you feel less.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say she had him all wrong, but as Montague went to open his mouth, he stopped. It was hard to argue with.
“I want to be wanted,” Sarah said, turning to face him on the sofa, her eyes bright and pink spots appearing in her cheeks.
He stared. Want to be wanted? Was that not the same thing?
And yet, it wasn’t. His gaze meandered, just for a moment, to his cane. Irritating thing. And she was right; because he depended on it, it had become a shackle he wished to escape.
Would he truly start to treat Sarah like that if he considered her something he “needed”? A burden, something he would one day cease to look at with affection and instead with naught but boredom?
Sarah was watching him, Montague could feel it. He turned. Shyness still flittered across her face, but she was bold, bolder than ever before.
The more she spoke, the more that boldness grew.
“I think I know what you mean,” he said slowly.
She smiled nervously. “It…well, I am sure it is brazen to even think of saying such a thing, but…Montague, I want you. Every moment I am with you, I want to be swept in your arms and kissed, and—”
He did not give her a chance to continue. She wanted to be kissed? Well that want, at the very least, he could oblige.
Pulling Sarah into his arms, Montague crushed his lips upon hers, unleashing all his pent-up longing.
And she responded—oh God, she responded. Pressing herself against him, curling her fingers in his hair, Montague lost himself in the delight of feeling Sarah, of tasting her, of knowing she wanted this just as much as he did.
Teasing her lips apart, Montague moaned as their tongues met, as pleasure roared through his veins.
He never felt more alive than when kissing Sarah. More than riding, more than the battlefield, more even than fencing. This was what it was to be living.
The trouble was, it was so glorious, Montague could feel his self-control slipping away. The temptation to move his hand to her skirts, her hips, was so insistent he found he had already done so.
Sarah leaned in, her fingers descending to his cravat, and somehow, it was untied and on the floor.
Montague’s manhood throbbed with restrained passion, aching to be freed, and for one heady moment, he actually thought he would.
And then he caught himself.
He leaned back, releasing Sarah and hating the very instant she left his arms. “I mustn’t—we should not….damn, Sarah! If I hadn’t stopped myself, I would have taken you right here in this room! And we—you certainly—we mustn’t!”
She grinned, hair mussed, lips pink and glistening with the after effects of his passion. “I know. But don’t you want to?”