Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“This is the second time you have been somewhere you had no business being, duchess. Is this a pattern I ought to take note of?”
Jane's breath caught in her throat and she closed her eyes quickly, praying to God that she had not just made a costly mistake. She turned slowly, as though if she performed the motion deliberately enough, she might be able to buy her some dignity.
That idea perished rather quickly when she finally faced her undoing and found Thomas standing in the doorway of his own bedchamber in a state she did not expect. Very quickly, she closed her eyes and immediately wished she had not turned at all.
He was... half-dressed. That was a mild, piteous way to think of it, especially when her mind was more focused on the state of him, rather than the clothes he seemed to be missing.
His dark hair was damp – which told her he had just finished a bath, and she found the drops of water tracing slow paths down the column of his throat mesmerizing.
She watched the droplets roll over the broad plane of his chest, winding between the defined muscles of his abdomen before disappearing beneath the waistband of his breeches.
He had evidently not expected company, because there was not a stitch of clothing above his waist and he did not appear particularly bothered by this fact.
Jane, however, was sufficiently bothered for both of them.
“If this happens a third time,” he continued, in that low, unhurried voice of his that she was rapidly discovering had the ability to cause her immense distress, “I will have to assume that perhaps you are purposely seeking me out.”
Her cheeks instantly became traitorously warm.
She tried to will herself to respond, perhaps with something sharp or composed words.
Something that would undoubtedly suit a woman who was not still staring at her husband’s bare chest. Instead, her gaze slid – without her permission, without any cooperation from her better sense – across the breadth of his shoulders, down the lean taper of his sides, and she registered, distantly, that she had stopped breathing at some point in the last several seconds.
Then she noticed the scars.
They were everywhere. Pale and silver in some places, still faintly pink in others – scattered across his ribs, his shoulder, curving around the side of his torso in a pattern that could only have been made by something desperate and violent.
The cost of surviving battle, she realized quietly. This was what war looked like when it was over. When the fighting had stopped and the man remained, carrying every moment of it in his skin like a map of everywhere he had almost not survived.
Something moved through her chest, thick and disconcerting. It was not pity, not exactly. Pity felt too thin for it. It was heavier than that. Sadder.
He had endured all of that. He had come home from it, inherited a title he had never wanted, buried a wife and watched his small dear son go silent, and he had done all of it alone, with scars that nobody had apparently thought to ask him about.
“Duchess.”
She jumped, startled by the sharpness of his tone. His expression as he watched her was somewhat undiscernible, the rest of it guarded carefully as she tried to compose herself.
“I –” Jane straightened and cleared her throat, lifting her chin on pure instinct. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I did not expect you to be here. I came to inspect the room.”
“To inspect it,” he echoed, his tone a tad amused but otherwise dull at the edges.
“The redecoration,” she said, with considerably more confidence than she felt. “I did not wish to neglect your personal quarters. Mrs Greene mentioned that the furniture in here has not been replaced in some time, and I only wanted to assess what might be needed.”
“And you thought to do this,” he said slowly, “While you believed I was away from the estate.”
It was not precisely a question. Jane felt the tips of her ears burn beneath the weight of his stare.
“I thought – that is, I had assumed you would not –” She stopped, and pressed her lips together for a few seconds before trying again. “I may have assumed you would not be in.”
“You entered my room,” Thomas said, “Because you assumed I would not be here to know about it.”
“I entered your room,” Jane corrected firmly, “Because I wished to ensure that your chambers were not excluded from the work being done throughout the rest of the house. Every other room has received attention. It seemed unfair to leave yours as it was simply because –”
“Because I did not invite the intrusion?”
She wanted to stamp her foot petulantly in frustration.
She did not, because that would be a ridiculous overreaction when it was apparent that he was gaining some satisfaction from their interaction.
The glint in his eyes told her as much and she silently mourned the loss of her inner peace from a mere conversation with her husband.
“I apologize,” she stated instead, each word clipped and sharp. “It was not my intention to overstep. I shall take my leave now.”
She moved to do exactly that – to slip past him with her chin up and her notebook clutched to her chest and whatever remained of her composure intact – when she noticed the direction of his gaze had changed in the last few seconds.
He was not looking at her.
He was looking at his nightstand. Rather, at the paper on top of it.
Jane's feet stopped moving of their own accord.
She watched his expression shift, something passing quickly across his face, too fast to name. And then he looked at her again, there was a change the air she felt deep within.
He casually moved towards her, his steps making up for what they lacked in urgency with deliberation, as though he had made a decision and was focused on simply carrying it out.
Although she was quite uncertain and perhaps as tad frightened, Jane held her ground because retreating felt worse than staying.
And possibly because her legs had apparently forgotten their primary function.
He came to a stop beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his bare skin. When she inhaled shakily, she caught faint traces of the scent of soap and something darker beneath it.
Cedar, she thought in fascination, or perhaps sandalwood, utterly entranced by the realization that it suited him far too much, to the extent that she did nearly missed the slight downward tilt of his head as he focused his gaze on the paper on the nightstand.
Silence stretched between them for what felt like ages. Jane could scarcely breathe, even though she wished to smell more of that wonderful scent coming from his body, even though she knew that she had technically done nothing wrong. After all, he was the one who –
“Are you bothered by it?” he asked suddenly, raising his eyes to look at her.
She should have said yes. Yes would have been the sensible answer – the answer that preserved whatever careful, cordial distance they had been maintaining for the past several days.
Yes would have sent her from the room with her dignity restored and her heart rate finally settling into aa normal pace.
“No,” she heard herself say quietly.
It was not entirely a lie. Bothered was not the right word for what she was. Bothered implied something simple and manageable – like offense or repulsion, and what Jane was currently experiencing was neither.
Thomas turned fully to look at her then, and she made the mistake of meeting his eyes – dark green and intent, and far too close to be considered good for her health.
“I could not stop myself,” he admitted, just as softly.
Jane's grip tightened around her notebook. “I beg your pardon?”
“The drawing.” He did not look away from her as his spoke and she found herself utterly at his mercy, pinned beneath his gaze. “I could not stop myself from making it. I tried, truly. I tried rather more than once.”
She swallowed shifting uneasily. “You should not have –”
“No,” he agreed easily. “I should not have.”
“Then why –”
“Because I have not been able to stop thinking about you,” he said swiftly, “Not since the night you allowed me to paint you. Since I kissed you.”
The words landed heavily upon her ears and in her mind, leaving her no other option than to just..
. stare at him. Her mind was making quite the effort to produce a response – something measured, something that demonstrated she was a sensible person in full command of her faculties – and it was failing completely.
“Every time I closed my eyes,” Thomas went on, and his voice had dropped lower now, though it remained steady, “I was back in the painting room. With you, plagued by all kinds of thoughts of the things I could have done. Things I wanted to do.”
Her curiosity, foolish as it was, seemed intent on being her undoing, which was why her lips parted and she forced out the question,
“What... what sort of things?”
His expression remained guarded, but his posture relaxed, his shoulders dropping as he spoke.
“I have though quite a lot about pulling you close. Close enough that we would share the same air. That we would share the warmth that surrounded you. I wanted to run my hands over you, to learning the shape of your body – to memorize every dip, every curve of your warm flesh and trace my name into your skin. I have thought about what it would sound like to hear you say my name. What it would sound like, breathless and heavy with pleasure as you writhed beneath me, unable to think of anything beyond the heat claiming your body. I wanted to taste you, every inch of you, over and over again.”
Jane felt the heat that had long since settled across the apples of her cheeks climb up to the crown of her head.
“That is –” she began, finally summoning the courage to lower her gaze.
“Inappropriate,” he said. “Yes. I am aware.”
“I was going to say needlessly blunt and forthcoming.”