Chapter 21 #2
His voice steadied by small degrees. The pauses grew shorter.
His hand relaxed in Biscuit’s fur. Once, when a word caught hard on his tongue, he stopped, whispered “bark” under his breath so softly Rowan might have missed it if he had not been listening with every part of himself, and then tried again.
The word came.
Rowan’s throat tightened.
When Aaron reached the end of the chapter, he closed the book with both hands and looked down at it, breathing hard.
“Well?” he asked, barely audible.
Rowan looked at his son.
The praise should have come easily, but the feeling had risen too large and unwieldy inside him, filling spaces that had been empty too long. He reached out before he could decide against it and ruffled Aaron’s dark hair.
The touch was clumsy. Aaron went still beneath it, then his mouth curved. Rowan let his hand linger only a second before withdrawing it. Too much would frighten them both.
“You read very well,” he said.
Aaron ducked his head, but this time he was smiling when he did it. “Thank you, Father.”
The words almost made his eyes sting. Rowan rose. If he remained on that rug another moment, some part of him might give way, and he did not know how to be seen in that giving.
He looked at the book in Aaron’s lap. “You may tell me tomorrow whether Captain Morley survives.”
Aaron’s head lifted quickly. “You want to know?”
“Yes.”
The boy’s smile returned, more openly this time. “I shall tell you.”
Rowan nodded and left the library before he could ruin the moment by trying to improve it.
Back in his study, Rowan had just managed to drag his attention back to a letter from the steward when her voice cut through the room.
“I am looking for Biscuit.”
She stood at the threshold. His body remembered exactly how she had looked in his bed last night with her hair loose, lips softened from his mouth, limbs heavy with pleasure while she nodded and let herself settle beside him.
“I have not seen him,” he said, with a composure that would have served him well in Parliament.
Something shifted on his lap.
Rowan lowered one hand beneath the desk and closed it gently around the puppy’s middle before Biscuit could lift his head into view.
The dog had appeared twenty minutes earlier, pushed his way in through the not-quite-latched door, and placed both paws against Rowan’s boot until he had been acknowledged.
Rowan had told him to leave. Biscuit had not.
One thing led to another, and somehow the animal had ended up asleep across his thighs like a disgraceful little monarch.
Emmeline stepped into the study. “I see.”
Rowan kept his eyes on the page. “Perhaps Aaron has him.”
“I have just come from Aaron.”
“Miss Harrow, then.”
“I am beginning to suspect, Your Grace, that you are hiding something.”
That brought his gaze up.
Emmeline stood before his desk in pale blue, her hands folded neatly, her expression composed with an innocence he knew at once to be false.
Her hair was pinned, but one loose curl had slipped near her cheek.
He remembered that curl brushing his hand last night when he had held her face and told her she was beautiful.
He remembered the way she had trembled when he touched her.
The way she had tasted when he kissed her after making her spend against his mouth.
His body hardened at once.
Biscuit shifted again, and Rowan pulled his chair closer to the desk. Emmeline’s eyes lowered to the movement, then lifted to his face.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Are you quite comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“You seem rather close to the desk.”
He looked at her flatly. “Did you require something beyond locating the dog?”
“I did.” She approached the desk slowly, and with each step, the room seemed to lose air. “I wished to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For the note.”
His grip tightened on Biscuit to prevent him from launching himself toward her voice. “It was necessary.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“Urgent business,” she said softly, stopping near the corner of the desk. “How very fortunate that it called before I woke.”
His jaw tightened. “Emmeline.”
Her eyes moved deliberately across the desk, then to his shoulders, then to the stiff way he sat with his chair nearly tucked beneath the writing surface. The heat in his blood sharpened.
Her smile deepened and she moved around the desk.
Rowan’s hand tightened. “Duchess.”
She paused with one brow lifted. “Yes?”
“There is nothing on this side of the desk that concerns you.”
“How disappointing,” she murmured. “I had begun to hope otherwise.”
The words ignited his blood.
Biscuit, sensing that all secrecy had become tiresome, lifted his head and sneezed.
Emmeline looked down.
For one moment, silence held.
Then her lips parted in triumph. “Rowan.”
The puppy exploded from his lap, little paws skidding over his waistcoat, then leapt to the floor and ran in wild circles around Emmeline’s skirts as if she had returned from war.
“There you are,” she said, laughing as she bent to gather him. “Have you been corrupting His Grace?”
“I was working,” Rowan said.
“With Biscuit in your lap?” Emmeline asked, one brow lifting as the corner of her mouth curved.
“He climbed there.” Rowan gave a slight, grudging lift of one shoulder, though the puppy’s betrayal had made it dangerously difficult to keep his own mouth stern.
“And you were powerless?”
“He is persistent.”
“He is a puppy.”
“An unusually strategic one.”
Emmeline laughed, and the sound struck him with such force that he forgot, for half a second, why he had meant to remain seated behind the desk like a civilized man.
Then she set Biscuit down. The dog ran beneath a chair, found nothing of interest, and darted back toward the door.
“Biscuit,” Emmeline called.
He vanished into the corridor.
She sighed. “Traitor.”
She looked back at Rowan, and the smile deepened.
Emmeline came around the desk fully and stood before him. He should have risen, created distance. Instead, he remained seated as she placed one hand against his shoulder.
“Emmeline,” he said, warning and want tangled beyond usefulness.
She lowered herself onto his lap.
The breath left him.
She settled carefully, one knee beside his thigh, her skirts spilling over them both, and wrapped her arms around his neck. His hands rose to her waist at once, closing around her, holding her.
Her face hovered inches from his. “You left this morning.”
“I had business.”
“So your note claimed.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. “It was true.”
Her fingers moved lightly at the back of his neck. “What was the whole truth?”
That he had almost forgotten every vow he had made to himself. That he had wanted to turn her beneath him with the morning light on her skin and bury himself in her before reason could intervene.
He did not say any of it.
Instead, he pulled her closer and kissed her.
She yielded with a soft sound, and the world narrowed to the taste of her.
Tea and sweetness. Warm breath. The faint tremor of her body as his hands tightened at her waist. Last night returned violently: her thighs under his palms, her cries in his mouth, the helpless way she had said his name as pleasure broke over her.
He groaned and stood with her in his arms.
Emmeline clutched at him, startled, but before she could speak, he turned and pressed her back against the desk. Papers slid beneath her hips. A pen rolled off the edge and struck the carpet. He did not care.
“Rowan,” she whispered, half warning, half plea.
“I know.”
He did not know what he meant by that.
He only knew that her skirts had ridden up just enough for his hand to find the silk of her stocking, that her mouth was open beneath his, that the little gasp she gave when his thumb pressed into her thigh nearly destroyed what remained of him.
She arched against him.
He kissed her throat, dragging his mouth down the line of it, tasting the pulse that beat there. “Do you know what you do to me?”
Her fingers tightened in his hair. “Tell me.”
His laugh came out rough and humorless. “If I begin, I will not stop.”
“Then do not stop.”
The words struck him low, brutal and sweet.
He lifted his head.
Her eyes were dark, cheeks flushed, lips swollen from his mouth. Desire had made her bolder. Pleasure had opened some door in her that could not easily be closed again, and seeing it, knowing he had done that, made pride and hunger twist together inside him until he could hardly breathe.
He kissed her again, deeper, and she answered with a hunger that stole the last of his caution. His hand slid higher beneath her skirt, over the warm skin above her stocking, and she trembled against the desk.
Then the study door opened.
“Emmeline?”
Rowan froze.
Emmeline froze beneath him.
Aaron stood in the doorway with Biscuit at his feet, one hand resting on the doorframe, his eyes wide and uncertain.
For one appalling second, no one spoke.
Then Biscuit barked.
Emmeline slid down from the desk so quickly that Rowan had to grip her waist to keep her steady. Her hair had loosened, her cheeks were bright, and one of his account papers clung to the back of her skirt until she brushed it away with shaking hands.
“Aaron,” she said, breathless but composed with heroic effort. “There you are.”
Aaron looked from her to Rowan, then down at Biscuit. “He r-ran away.”
“So he did,” Emmeline said, smoothing her gown. “A most serious offense.”
Biscuit wagged his tail.
Rowan cleared his throat. It sounded like a man being hanged.
Aaron’s gaze flickered to him. “Were you… were you helping Her Grace find him?”
Emmeline’s mouth pressed together.
Rowan looked at his son, then at the dog, then at his desk, where half his papers had been disturbed beyond recognition.
“Yes,” he said flatly. “Unsuccessfully.”
Aaron considered this, then smiled.
“Biscuit is very good at hiding.”
“Unfortunately,” Rowan said.
Emmeline bent and scooped the puppy into her arms before he could cause further destruction. “Come, Aaron. We shall take Biscuit back to the nursery before His Grace declares war on us.”
Aaron glanced at Rowan. “He does that.”
“Frequently,” Emmeline said.
Rowan’s eyes cut to hers.
She looked back, lips curved, cheeks still flushed, and the sight of her almost made him reach for her again.
“I shall see you later, Your Grace,” she said.
The promise beneath the words nearly finished him.
Then she turned and left with Aaron and the dog, her skirts whispering through the doorway, leaving the study in ruins and Rowan gripping the edge of his desk like he had just survived a battle.