Chapter Fourteen #2
“She cast the first spark. Besides—someone must defend you, since you insist upon being too diplomatic to defend yourself.”
“I am not diplomatic,” he murmured. “I am strategic.”
“Well, I am not strategic,” she returned. “I am protective. And I dislike the way she looks at you—as though you remain a grieving boy to be scolded for tragedies that were never yours to bear.”
He halted, turning her fully toward him. “You are protective. Of me.”
“Someone must be,” she said softly. “You are too occupied protecting everyone else.”
Something in his expression slipped—surprise, tenderness, something dangerously close to longing.
“Celine—”
“The Duke and Duchess of Rothwest!”
They turned to see Lord Ashworth approaching, immaculate, smiling like a wolf in borrowed silk. At his side stood a striking young woman Celine did not know.
“Ashworth,” the Duke said coolly.
“Rothwest. Lady Rothwest.” Ashworth bowed, perfectly correct and perfectly insolent. “May I present Miss Grayson? Newly arrived from Bath, eager to become acquainted with London’s… most prominent figures.”
Miss Grayson curtseyed prettily, though her eyes never left the Duke.
“Your Grace,” she said with breathy admiration, “what a pleasure. I have heard so much of you.”
“All of it dreadful, no doubt,” he replied.
“On the contrary,” Miss Grayson near-purred, stepping uncomfortably close. “I hear you are an excellent horseman, a formidable investor, and—most intriguingly—a superb dancer. Might you honour me with a turn later?”
A slow, poisonous heat unfurled in Celine’s chest. Miss Grayson’s proximity, her smile, her design—all too obvious. And Ashworth was watching with avid amusement.
“I’m afraid my dance card is quite occupied,” he said. “My wife has claimed every dance permitted.”
“Every dance?” Miss Grayson gasped. “Surely that cannot be proper—some people may talk.”
“Let them,” Celine said, sliding her arm through the Duke’s with deliberate intimacy. “Gossipers must occupy their idle hours with other people’s happiness, don’t you think? Otherwise, they would be forced to consider their own lives—and how very little of interest they contain.”
“Happiness,” Ashworth echoed, a thin smile curving his lips. “Is that what you call it? How… intriguing, considering the circumstances of your marriage.”
The Duke went rigid; Celine sensed danger ripple through him.
“Would you care to clarify that remark?” he asked, voice like ice.
Ashworth’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, I would not dare. We all know the tale—swift courtship, swifter wedding, the adoring couple. A charming little story.”
“Yes, quite charming,” Celine agreed brightly.
“It is astonishing what occurs when one meets someone who renders every sensible plan irrelevant. Someone worth any risk, any scandal, any consequence.” She fixed Ashworth with a pleasant smile that held the lethal accuracy of an arrow.
“Of course, not everyone has such an experience. Some must remain perpetually on the outside, forever proposing to women who find them inadequate, forever bitter about rejections they can’t accept, forever trying to create drama in others’ lives because their own are so painfully dull. ”
Ashworth’s face flushed red. Miss Grayson looked between them with dawning comprehension and took a small step back.
“You always did possess a sharp tongue,” he bit out.
“And you always did write indifferent verse,” Celine replied.
Someone nearby snorted, and Ashworth’s flush deepened.
“Come, wife,” the Duke said, amusement and pride threading his voice. “Our dance begins.”
He led her toward the floor, his hand firm at her waist.
“That was merciless,” he murmured.
“That was deserved. And Miss Grayson was eyeing you as though you were the main course.”
“Were you jealous?”
“Fiercely. Did it show?”
“Delightfully.” His hand tightened. “Though you have no cause. I could not look at another woman if I wished.”
“Good.”
The orchestra struck up a waltz. The Duke drew her into position—closer than propriety allowed, closer than sanity permitted.
“Everyone is watching,” she whispered.
“Let them. If they want a spectacle, we shall give them one worth retelling.”
He pulled her close enough that her breath caught. The dance became a conversation of bodies, of longing held at bay, of promises deferred but not denied.
“You are holding me too near,” she breathed—though she did not step back.
“I hold you precisely as near as I wish. In truth, it is not nearly near enough.”
“People will talk.”
“People are already talking. Might as well give them something worth discussing.” He spun her, and her skirts wrapped around his legs. When he pulled her back, they were even closer than before. “Besides, in but a few hours, I shall hold you far closer than this.”
“Still counting?”
“Every heartbeat.” His thumb moved against her waist, finding the sensitive spot between corset and hip. “Do you know what you do to me?” he murmured. “How entirely you undo me?”
“Tell me.”
“I used to have perfect control. Perfect discipline. Twenty years of carefully maintained walls and rigid schedules, and predictable patterns. Then you walked into my life with your sharp tongue and sharper mind, and suddenly control became torture. Every rule I’d made for myself became a chain.
Every wall became a prison. And every locked door became a mockery of what I really wanted. ”
“Which is?”
“You. All of you. Not just your body, though goodness knows I want that too. But your thoughts, your dreams, your fears, your fury. I want to know what makes you laugh and what makes you cry. I want to be the first person you think of when you wake and the last before you sleep. I want to possess you so completely that you forget there was ever a time we were apart.”
“Elias—”
“But more than that,” he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that only she could hear, “I want to be possessed by you. I want to surrender all this careful control and let you remake me into something better, something worthy of the way you look at me when you think I’m not watching.”
The music swelled around them, but Celine could hear only his words, feel only his touch, see only the raw honesty in his eyes.
“A few hours,” she breathed.
“Hours.”
“It’s going to kill us.”
“Or save us.”
“Is there even a difference anymore?”
“I cannot tell,” he said, his forehead brushing hers for the briefest, most improper second. “I only know that when this dance ends, I must release you—and the thought feels… intolerable.”
And the music did end eventually.
The final notes drifted through the air like a held breath finally exhaled. The Duke slowed their steps, guiding her into the final turn, his hand at her waist steady, possessive, reluctant.
He let her go—slowly, as though each finger had to be convinced.
Applause rose politely around them; a perfectly ordinary end to a perfectly executed waltz.
But as he bowed over her hand, his eyes held hers with a heat that belied every rule of propriety.
“Celine,” he murmured, too soft for anyone else to hear, “if we must endure these final hours… stay near me.”
She curtsied, her pulse unsteady. “I was not planning to stray.”
He offered his arm. She laid her hand upon it.
To the watching world, they were the flawless Duke and his elegant Duchess, completing a dance and moving calmly back into the crowd.
Only they knew the truth:
The dance had ended.
Their restraint had not.
And the hours ahead would be harder than any waltz ever could be.