Chapter Twenty-Nine
Celine woke when the mattress dipped beneath her. She had one moment to adjust to daylight and no time at all to adjust to the duke here, in her room, on her bed.
“Get up,” the duke said, her eyes frost-bright.
Celine lowered her lashes, like those men who died in the Arctic must have done to protect their eyes.
She hadn’t seen the duke for nearly two days.
She snuggled back into her pillows, making a show of unconcern.
Her heart pumped and struggled in the narrow passage of her throat.
“Good morning didn’t occur to you? How did you sleep? Would you like some breakfast?”
“Come on,” the duke said, hauling her up by her arms to sitting.
“I heard you kicked half the house out of your rooms and dropped the other half out your window. You’re done being mollycoddled, I take it, so let’s get out of London.
There’s a horse I want to buy.” The duke pulled the covers back, grabbed her behind each knee, and pulled her to the side of the bed.
“You’ve never seen anything like this horse.
” Enthused by what she was saying, focusing on her task, the duke kneeled between Celine’s legs and started undoing the buttons of her nightgown.
It had the quality of a task undertaken many times before.
A suspicion Celine had been indulging about who had actually looked after her during her illness coalesced into tender certainty.
Blithely unaware, the duke went on, “Sired by a hunter on a racehorse, seventeen hands tall but fast. Never mind, you won’t understand until you see him in action. The country air will do you good.”
Was she still dreaming? Light tremors ran down her body, one after the other. She tried to will herself fully awake. Somehow, she found her voice. “A horse that’s better than a morning in bed? I don’t believe you.”
The duke slanted her an amused glance (as though she’d meant something naughty … Had she meant something naughty?) and she became suddenly conscious of how badly she wanted to reach out and stroke the duke’s head—a possessive, indulgent gesture.
“Up,” the duke said, and she stood, slightly unsteady. It wasn’t until the duke began to lift her nightdress that she came fully awake.
She pinned it with an arm over her stomach, hand to her clamped thighs.
The duke looked up at her. She remembered the duke’s hand under her dress in Paris; the duke’s fingers boldly entering her body; the duke’s lips against her ear, saying, “You’re all right,” with only a trembling hint of the need that was going to unspool between them that night.
For a moment, it seemed as if the duke would ignore her and keep lifting her nightdress. For a moment, she hoped, dreaded, wanted—but she had already known the duke would stop when asked. The duke looked away and swallowed, then straightened.
“Tell your maid to be quick. The carriage has already been brought round.”
STEADY, KATE TOLD herself, breathing in great lungfuls of air. It was thick London air but somehow easier to breathe than the air in Celine’s bedroom. Steady.
She waited by the vehicle in the front yard of the house, the matched pair of chestnuts fussing in their harness behind her.
She bent all her focus to pulling on her gloves, flexing each finger inside its soft sheath. Steady.
She had been amused by Celine’s dramatic return to health, by her enormous, autocratic tantrum.
She had invaded Celine’s bedroom and worse, Celine’s sleep, without properly considering the consequences.
She had practically lived in that room for three weeks; she had undressed and washed Celine, laid hands on her, watched her sleep for hours on end.
But now Celine was, emphatically, on the mend, and it made all the difference in the world.
She could still feel the warmth of Celine’s nightdress in her fingers—warmth from Celine’s sleeping body, warmth that had brimmed over in Celine’s eyes when she first opened them.
Perhaps it was a small, everyday treasure that thousands of Englishwomen enjoyed without thought: welcome in the waking eyes of their wives.
Christ.
She had been naked with this woman; they had been lovers. It was a thought she had repressed for a long time. It resurfaced with a vengeance.
No!
Celine was not for her. She was not allowed to have Celine.
(Celine did not want her! If you think I’ll let you near me, then you have taken absolute leave of your senses.)
She could offer none of the things Celine wanted: not love, not affection, not family, not safety.
Lord Burnley would give Celine these things.
The Peckes would give Celine these things.
She should have seen it the first time they called on Lady Pecke: How Lady Pecke had worried over Celine.
How Celine hadn’t wanted to leave the friendly table, where she’d been welcomed and made to feel like one of the family.
How Kate had dragged her back out into the cold, impatient to be gone.
And what could Kate give her? A cousin with a poisonous reputation who was in debt up to the eyeballs and yelling half the time?
Another cousin who’d thrown Celine to the wolves to further his own advancement?
An enmity with one of the most powerful families in England that meant Celine would never be safe?
Me? she thought with a bleak, humourless laugh.