Chapter 22
Victor woke to warmth in every direction. Not the polite warmth of a banking fire or the measured comfort of his bed in Greystone House.
For a few delicious, disorienting seconds, he refrained from questioning it. His body registered only the pleasant weight against his chest, the faint tickle of hair beneath his chin, the way his arm curved naturally around a narrow waist.
Then his mind caught up.
His eyes shot open.
Gwen nestled against him as neatly as if she had been made to fit that space. Her cheek rested just above his heart. Her right hand had slipped beneath his shirt at some point, her fingertips curled lightly against his ribs. Her warm breath fanned the linen.
The sight struck him with alarming force.
She looked younger in slumber. Unburdened for once by the lines that tension had carved around her mouth. Her lashes cast pale crescents on her cheeks. The faintest shadow of last night’s flush still lingered along her throat.
His first clear thought was not, This is dangerous, as it should have been. It was, I quite like this.
The realization hit him like a blow.
He went very still, his arm reflexively tightening around her for a heartbeat before he forced it to relax. The urge to pull her closer, to bury his face in her hair, to remain exactly as they were until the world ceased to exist, clawed at him with terrifying strength.
He crushed it.
You are a fool. A sentimental, reckless fool.
He stared at the low ceiling. The inn woke slowly. Somewhere below, a door banged. Boots thudded along the passage. A woman laughed with the bright, tired note of someone who had been up too late.
Gwen did not stir.
He grew acutely aware of everywhere their bodies touched. Her hip aligned with his. Her knees drawn up, one brushing his thigh. The weight of her hand beneath his shirt, her fingers sleeping trust into his skin.
His chest tightened.
He should not have stayed in bed.
He should have slept on the floor. Or taken a separate room. Or left her in London instead of trailing her carriage like a man bewitched.
He had rules. They had served him well.
Seven nights. No more.
Seven nights to satisfy his curiosity, to exert control over his own inclinations, to avoid becoming entangled in anyone’s life beyond a series of contained moments.
Seven nights, then distance.
He had never deviated. It was a line he did not cross.
Yet here he lay, on what would have been their fifth night if he kept count, holding her as if she already belonged to him.
She did not.
She could not.
He was a duke. She was a viscount’s stepdaughter with a tarnished reputation and a future as a governess if she was lucky. That was what the world saw.
He saw far more, but it did not change the fact that the match would be madness in every ledger that mattered.
He had no business wanting to marry anyone. Perhaps not ever. Marriage invited intimacy he had never been taught to wield kindly.
What if he became his father in some insidious way he could not predict? What if his temper resembled that cold cruelty he so despised?
He would not risk it. Not with anyone. Certainly not with Gwen.
The idea of setting expectations where he could not safely follow made his stomach twist. The notion that she might, even unconsciously, begin to hope for something his circumstances and nature made impossible terrified him far more than the thought of gossip ever had.
He had seen what false hope did to women. He had watched his mother wait for tenderness that never came. He would not be the man who offered crumbs and called it a feast.
Gwen murmured in her sleep, as if feeling the tension in him. Her fingers flexed against his ribs, then relaxed.
His throat worked.
Carefully, as if handling something fragile, he eased his arm from around her and rolled onto his back, creating a small space between them.
She shifted, her brow creasing, and he almost abandoned the effort.
Almost drew her back. Almost succumbed to the simple, forbidden desire to be needed in this way.
Instead, he slid to the edge of the bed and sat up, rubbing a hand over his face. His body ached pleasantly from too little sleep and too much restraint. His mind felt like a room with too many doors flung open.
It is nothing. It was a moment of weakness. She needed warmth. You offered it. You will see her safely to Cheltenham, leave her in her cousin’s care, and ride back to town. She will have her freedom. You will have your order.
He rose quietly, careful not to jostle the mattress. She rolled into the warm space he left, burrowing into the pillow that still held his scent. The sight tore at him.
He forced himself to turn away.
At the small washstand, he poured water into the basin and splashed it on his face until the chill bit straight through the haze of the night. The man who looked back at him from the spotted glass was the same as always—controlled and uncompromising.
He did not look like a man whose heart had just stuttered in someone else’s arms.
Good. Keep it that way.
Gwen would be gone from his life soon enough. That had always been the understanding. Whatever tenderness the night had tempted from him must be folded away, like a letter one chose not to send.
He dried his face, straightened his cuffs, and slid his mask of cool composure back into place.
By the time she woke, he would be ready.
Gwen woke up slowly, blinking against the thin morning light that crept between the curtains. Victor had taken the chair nearest the hearth, boots on, coat on, hands resting on a notebook that lay open on his knee.
He had not written a single figure. Instead, he watched her.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, her hair mussed, her eyes still heavy with sleep. For a moment, she looked disoriented, like a girl roused from a dream. Then memory returned. He saw it in the way her shoulders rose to her ears.
“Good morning,” he greeted.
She glanced instinctively at the other side of the bed, as if making sure they had not been discovered by some invisible chaperone. Finding only rumpled sheets, she exhaled.
“Good morning,” she returned.
He felt her husky voice in places he preferred not to think about.
“There is water for washing,” he said. “And I will ask the innkeeper to send up breakfast.”
She hesitated, her fingers twisting in the coverlet. “Victor.”
He steeled himself.
“I have been thinking,” she admitted. “About my mother.”
Of course.
He closed the notebook. “Go on.”
“I cannot leave her,” she sighed. “Not like this. Not knowing what he will do when I am gone. It feels like abandoning her to his temper.”
His frustration flared, swift and sharp. “We discussed this,” he reminded her. “She has chosen to remain. You cannot save someone who refuses to step out of the fire.”
“She may not step out, but I can stand beside her,” Gwen insisted. “If I go, he will have no one else to torment. I know he hurt her even with me there, but I also know he turned some of his attention to me. Now, there is only her.”
Victor’s jaw clenched. He rose, needing to move. “So you mean to return? To that house? To that man?”
She lifted her chin. “To my mother. Yes.”
Ice slid through his veins, so cold it tempered his anger. “You are willing to walk back into a situation you already know is intolerable?”
“Yes,” she repeated. “Until I can find another way that does not involve leaving her alone.”
Victor stared at her. He had spent the long hours before dawn convincing himself that his feelings were a momentary lapse in judgment, a sentimental indulgence that would mend itself once he had placed her under another roof and washed his hands of the matter.
Now she was calmly proposing to remain within two miles of him indefinitely, tethered to a man who would not hesitate to hurt her.
It was intolerable.
“You are irrational,” he chided.
She flushed. “I am loyal.”
“Loyalty without reason is merely stubbornness in a prettier dress,” he retorted.
“And what would you have me do?” she demanded. “Forget the woman who has loved me all my life and run to comfort with my cousin? Pretend I do not hear her cry at night?”
“Yes,” he almost said. He turned away instead, anger and something darker simmering under his skin. “If you remain, he will hurt you.”
“He already hurts me,” she said. “Through her. Through his control. I have lived with that for years. At least this way, I will know what happens. I will not lie awake in Cheltenham, wondering if my absence has killed her.”
The words struck him with more force than any accusation.
He looked back at her. She sat straight, her hands clasped tight in her lap, resolve written in every line. She was terrified, but she was determined.
She was not a child to be commanded. She had chosen her path.
And he hated it.
“You have made your decision. I will escort you back to London.” His voice was clipped.
Her shoulders relaxed, though her expression remained wary. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” he said. “I dislike it immensely.”
A hint of humor flashed in her eyes despite everything. “I noticed.”
The room suddenly felt too small, his emotions too large. If he remained, he would say something he did not mean. Or worse, something he did.
“I will speak to the innkeeper,” he muttered, reaching for his composure as if it were a coat. “We should eat before we ride back. If you mean to keep playing the devoted daughter, you must not arrive looking as if you have not slept.”
She opened her mouth, perhaps to say that she had not slept much at all, then thought better of it. “Very well.”
He left before he could change his mind, striding down the narrow passage, past a pair of maids carrying linens and a man with skin weathered by the sun.
The innkeeper greeted him with good cheer, delighted to prepare breakfast for the polite young couple in the Rose Room.
“The happy newlyweds,” he boomed, his eyes twinkling. “Your lady wife is lovely, Your Grace.”