Chapter 33
“When am I going to be allowed out of this bed?” Georgia groused impatiently.
“When the doctor says so,” Keaton replied softly. He felt her take his hand as he leaned forward in his chair. “I have been by your bedside for two days and a night. I am not about to let you get out of that bed too soon.”
“Can you feel that?” she pressed, squeezing his hand to make a point, “I feel strong, hale, and hearty apart from a slight headache.”
“Then, when the doctor arrives in the morning, he will certainly reiterate the same to me,” he replied, raising her fingers to his lips.
“Even the bump has almost gone,” she bemoaned.
“I would not forgive myself if I allowed you to fall to harm by hastening your recovery.”
“What harm could I come to here? Westvale is home.”
Keaton paused. “Truly?” he eventually asked. “I did not think you saw it so.”
“That is because I did not always see it so. I thought, when I arrived, that it would be a temporary resting place. But I am glad that it is not. Are you?”
Keaton frowned for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I did not seek a wife. In fact, I had resigned myself to living alone. I could not see how I could share my life with anyone. It required too much trust, something I have always been short of. But then you thrust yourself into my life.”
He smiled to soften his words and show Georgia his emotions. She shifted on the bed, bringing herself closer to him. Keaton rose and sat on the edge of the bed, putting an arm around Georgia’s slender body.
“You did not seek a wife, but you found one anyway. And that doesn’t chafe?”
“Are you seeking reassurance?”
“Yes! Is it not obvious?” Georgia laughed.
Keaton grinned, savoring the feel of her body beneath his hand. He stroked her shoulder and then her back.
“I would very much like you to model for me soon. I would like to create a statue of you.”
“I am honored,” she said, giggling, “no one has ever expressed such a desire to me before.”
“Then all other men are fools and more blind than I am. There are artists who would give everything for a model such as you. For such beauty and perfection.” Keaton rasped, heatedly.
He knew his passion was coming through, but he let it. Georgia sought reassurance, and showing her this side of himself was the best way to give her it. To show her the man behind the Duke.
“Can you feel the heat of my face?” she asked softly.
Keaton put the back of his hand to her cheek. He smiled.
“Do I embarrass you?” he asked.
“Deeply,” Georgia replied, playfully, “but as it is only the two of us to witness it, I shall allow it.”
“You should not be, even in jest. You should be aware of your beauty, of how others see you. If I can see it, then others surely can.”
“I do not care about others.”
“Good.”
“Your jealousy is all the reassurance I need,” Georgia breathed in a soft purr. “My eyes are closed.”
“Why?”
“So that I can experience your body the way you experience mine.”
She reached up to run her hands over his face and then down his chest. Keaton was in his shirtsleeves and breeches.
Georgia tangled her fingers in the laces of his shirt.
Her blind fingers were tracing the outline of his nipples beneath his shirt.
He breathed in, shivering, and she chuckled, her touch dancing down his flanks, caressing his ribs, and then his stomach.
“Amelia asked me if I trusted you. I could not answer her. I could say that I lived in hope.”
Keaton felt her words cut at him. He knew that he’d had no right to demand Georgia’s trust when he had been so slow to give his own. But, it still caused him pain to know that she had been unsure of him, had perhaps lived in fear and uncertainty.
“I was a fool,” he muttered.
“No, we have both indulged in a little foolishness. It was hardly sensible for me to kiss you in public and deliberately cause a scandal.”
“But I thank God that you did it,” he said, fervently, “I cannot imagine my life without you in it.”
He lowered his head to hers, feeling her hands caress his cheeks. He stretched out beside her on the bed, holding her close to him.
“Nor I. How quickly things change,” she whispered, “it was not all that long ago that you contemplated seeing the back of me.”
“I have already admitted to being a fool, dear,” he reminded with a smirk. “Blind in more than one way.”
“Well, I for one forgive you,” Georgia murmured, and Keaton could hear the smile that he could not see. “Are we safe, finally?”
“All are safe. You and Amelia,” Keaton replied, “my solicitor has received a copy of the suit being made against me by Silverton. He has replied with confirmation of precisely how much it will cost, with a conservative estimate of my resources and my utter refusal to settle or surrender. It will take years for them to litigate, and by the time they lose, she will be over one-and-twenty. She is safe from them.”
Georgia took his hands playfully and let them caress the contours of her face. “What of Swinthorpe?” she frowned.
“Justice was swift. The driver who tried to… drown you, confessed to being one of the men paid by my uncle to injure me, in exchange for a commutation of his sentence from hanging to transportation. The others were found with Thorne’s tenacious help, and they testified that my uncle was the one who paid them and masterminded the attempt on my life.
Thorne was at the Old Bailey. My uncle was found guilty and will hang. It is over.”
“So, there are no more obstacles,” she whispered.
“None. And no more mystery.”
“Elias died trying to save the life of a stranger.”
“My life. And I will spend the rest of it trying to repay that act of selfless heroism.”
“We both will. Were it not for him, I would not have you.”
“I do not know how I will even begin,” Keaton murmured.
“Nor do I. We will think of something. I have not said it before, but I want to say it now, as we were talking of Elias. Thank you for coming after me. For risking your life to save me.”
Keaton furrowed his brows. “How could I do anything else? You were in danger.”
“It is just the kind of thing Elias would do…” she said thickly, her voice trembling, on the verge of breaking.
“I am glad I have found a man as brave as my brother was. Someone who can protect me. It is all I have ever wanted, I think. I lost my father, then my brother. It seems there has never been anything in my life that I could rely on for too long.”
“While I have viewed the world as a dangerous place to be guarded against and mistrusted because I could not see it,” Keaton grunted.
Georgia hugged him tightly.
“Through me, you will see how wonderful the world is. And through you, I will feel safe and protected.”
Keaton smiled and considered how rarely that expression had come to him for so long. How rare it was that he found anything to smile or laugh about. He thought about his marriage, the circumstance into which he had been thrust against his will. No matter its origins, it was true.
“Then we are perfectly matched,” he murmured against her hair, breathing in the lavender scent that always clung to her skin.
Georgia's fingers found the open collar of his shirt, tracing the hollow of his throat where his pulse thundered. “Do you know what I thought about while I was drowning?”
The question made his arms tighten around her. “Don't—”
“You.” Her lips brushed the word against his jaw.
“Not my life passing before my eyes, not God or heaven. Just you. The way your hands felt that afternoon in the lake.” She guided his palm to her waist, pressing it flat against the thin muslin.
“The way you made me feel things I did not know were possible. How I might never feel that again, never have you take me apart so… thoroughly.”
“Georgia...” Her name came out strangled, a warning.
“I thought I might die without knowing all the ways you could make me yours.” Her teeth caught his earlobe, tugging gently. “Without discovering if you had darker desires you had held back.”
Heat pooled low in his belly, sharp and immediate. “Christ, you can't say such things.”
“Whyever not? Because I am a lady?” She shifted from the bed and into his arms, somehow managing to straddle his thighs despite the tangle of bedclothes.
The position made her nightrail ride up, and his hands found bare, soft skin above her stockings.
“I am tired of being careful. I want to be debauched. Thoroughly, completely ruined by my husband.”
His control snapped like overtightened wire. He fisted his hand in her unbound hair, pulling her head back with enough force to make her gasp. “Careful what you wish for, wife.”
“Show me.” The words vibrated against his mouth as he dragged his lips down her exposed throat. “Show me everything you have held back...”
He bit down where her pulse fluttered, hard enough to mark this time, sucking the delicate skin until he knew she would wear the evidence of his possession tomorrow. She moaned, grinding down against him with shameless need.
“Such sounds from a duchess,” he growled, but his hands were already pushing her nightrail up, finding nothing but warm skin beneath.
“No drawers?” His voice had gone rough, dangerous.
“They seemed… unnecessary, given my intentions.”
He laughed, dark and low, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs hard enough to bruise. “You have been planning this while playing the invalid? Need I remind you, you are supposed to be resting.”
“I have been going mad!” She worked at his shirt fastenings with desperate fingers. “Watching you pace the room, listening to your voice reading to me, feeling you so close but untouchable. I need you, Keaton. I need you to remind me I am still alive.”
The raw honesty in her voice broke something in him. He stripped his shirt off with violent efficiency, then made quick work of her nightrail, tossing it aside. His hands mapped her naked body in the darkness, relearning every curve, every sensitive spot that made her writhe.