Chapter 3 #2
She was purposefully taking him through the worst streets.
Dangerous, particularly since he was dressed like a damned fop, but if he was determined to force her into his servitude, she would force him into discomfort.
Besides, these people had done nothing but be poor, and the duke and his like acted as if poverty was a cardinal sin.
When they reached her lodging house, she shook his arm. “I’ll go up alone and get my things.” And then sneak out the back door and run off so he couldn’t find her.
Morington hinged at the waist until they were almost nose to nose. “Do you think me a fool? I’m coming up with you.”
She sighed but let him follow her inside. She’d make her getaway. She just needed the right moment. Her room was at the very top of the building and behind a flimsy door, and the duke’s mouth dropped open when she stepped aside to give him entrance.
“Welcome to my little castle. I know you’re awed by the majesty of the surroundings, but do try to remain calm. It’s not dukely of you to gawk like that.”
She nearly tripped over her threadbare rug, and splashed water on her face at the chipped and discolored washbasin across the room.
She pushed the thin, tattered curtains aside, but the yellow light that spilled through the window did not improve the view.
Everything gray, though tidy. The bed—just big enough for two—occupied one corner and was sagging in the middle.
Her clothes were hung over a line she’d strung across the room, and they separated the sleeping area from the kitchen area—a fireplace, a small table, and a dented brass hip tub for bathing.
Though it was difficult to get water for it.
“Could you stand in the hallway?” she asked.
“I’d like to bathe before I dress to be carted off across the country.
If you please.” She was resigned to going with him.
She wouldn’t take his money, though. She’d make sure he didn’t take anything, thwart him at every moment.
She’d tag along as his own personal curse, not as a helper, and in the only way she could, she’d protect the grave work of the souls who’d departed long ago.
“No,” he said. “No. No, no, no.” He snatched her gown off the line, a shift, too. “Corset?” he asked.
“Wearing it, naturally.”
“You don’t have another?”
“Of course not.” God, she was tired.
He grabbed a pair of stitched-to-death stockings and tattered ribbons and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He was very handsy. “You can bathe at my house.”
Why not? She wasn’t going to take his money, so she might as well get something out of him.
“Just a moment,” she said in the hallway. She ducked out from under his arm and knocked on the thin door opposite hers.
It opened immediately, and a tall, thin woman with a bundle of baby on each shoulder and big, heavy eyes opened the door. “What do you— Oh, Sephy. It’s you.” Sarah’s gaze flicked to the duke. “Is everything well? Who’s that?”
“An… acquaintance. I just wanted to let you know, Sarah, I’ll be gone a few days. Perhaps a week. I don’t know. A fortnight?” Persephone stroked a palm over the sleeping babies’ heads. Down-soft hair, innocent warmth. “Don’t let them grow up too much before I’m back.”
Sarah grinned. “Course not.”
“And if you need anything, there’s the jar beneath my bed.”
“Won’t touch it.”
“You will if you need it, yes? You helped me, and I owe you.”
Sarah’s mouth tugged to the side. “Fine. You return safely now, ya hear?”
Persephone nodded and hugged her friend. They’d moved into their rooms around the same time, Sarah big with child and thrown over by the man who’d made her that way. They took care of each other.
Back on the street, her arms full with her belongings, the duke guided them west, and once the streets had broadened and the people passing them looked less of pinched misery and more of thoughtless ease, he hailed a hack and bundled her up inside.
Less than a quarter hour later, he rushed her back into the street in front of a house.
A huge house. A gargantuan house. All brick and marble and columns and wrought iron details. Looked like someone cleaned it twice a day.
“Is it glamoured?”
“A bit.”
“How many people live here?”
“Me.”
Ridiculous. “What do you do with all that space?”
“Pony races on Mondays. On Tuesdays, I invite the city’s orphans over to paint the walls.
Every other Friday, the militias have shooting practice in the gardens.
We breed guinea pigs in the parlor half of the year.
” He opened the door and pushed her inside.
Marble everywhere. Just like the mausoleum.
Even his whisper, hot on her ear, echoed.
“And sometimes we open the doors for urchins to bathe.”
She shook him off and started up the stairs, no idea where they went. “Do stop touching me, your grace. It’s disconcerting.”
“Disconcertingly arousing?”
“Disconcertingly disgusting.”
The last thing she heard as she reached the landing of the first floor was his deep chuckle echoing across the empty walls.
She opened every door and found the rooms empty of furnishings, their curtains pulled tight against any light.
Dusty and hollow, they were sadder than the graves she dug.
For what purpose did they serve? Graves, at least, would be visited; final resting places were final homes. These rooms were abandoned.
Only one chamber on the second floor possessed furniture.
It was massive, larger than the room she rented.
In the middle of the room sat a bed she could roll across several times before reaching its end.
One side contained large windows shrouded in curtains, and another a fireplace taller than her.
There was not much else in the room—a hulking wardrobe and a spindly writing desk.
Everything else had, likely, been sold away.
“Welcome,” he said, his heat suddenly behind her, his lips almost brushing her ear. Then he was sweeping around her and across the room. He threw open the curtains, letting in dusty yellow light, then he veered off in the opposite direction. “Tub’s this way.”
She followed him through a door near the fireplace and found another room, small, interesting, and echoing with the sound of running water.
He sat on the edge of a large tub, hand moving away from a lever of some sort.
He waved a hand and sconces on the wall flared to life.
She took a risk, pushed her fingers into the flames.
Cold air. A glamour. Another flick toward the fireplace, and a fire roared there.
“Fake, of course,” Morington said. “You’ll get no heat from it, but perhaps it will trick your mind into thinking you’re warm.
“The floor? Fake too?” It was beautifully tiled in green-and-blue bits that sparkled like glass.
“Real. Can’t sell it off, unfortunately.” He stood. “I used to enjoy hot water here, even without a fire. There was an alchemist chap in the kitchen who warmed the pipes for me, but he’s quit. Don’t blame him. I couldn’t pay him. So unless you can do the same…”
“I don’t think I can. We all play in the forge when we’re little, but only the boys are trained, apprenticed out, and taught how to mold the metal.
The doors to the tombs open because they are made with untrained family members in mind.
They appeal to those years spent playing in the forge.
Nothing to do with formal training. The pipes are different. ”
“Ah. Unfortunate, that. Good luck, then.” He left the room, and she draped her bundle of belongings over a chair near the tub. It looked cozy in here with flames leaping, causing shadows. But they cast off no heat, and the October chill still tickled her bones.
As she pulled off her clothes and brushed the loose dirt off her skin, she listened to him in the bed chamber beyond the closed door. He was rather like this house—magnificent and cold. And empty. A pity.
The cold water took her breath away until she was used to it. She pressed her hands against the sides of the copper tub. If she concentrated enough, perhaps… was that… did the water creep up a few degrees in warmth?
She laughed at herself. All in her imagination.
But the glamoured fire did help her pretend she was wrapped in the cocoon of a warm bath as she hadn’t been in years.
She sank into the water, rested her head on the edge of the tub, and lazily scrubbed her skin with a clean linen that was draped over the tub’s side.
Likely kept there in readiness for the duke.
Likely had once—or often—stroked across his skin.
So very… intimate to use a cloth someone else had used. She shivered.
Disconcertingly arousing.
She groaned and ducked her head beneath the water. The man was a scoundrel, even if he was pretty. And even if she knew better, her body was starved for… a man.
And the duke—oh yes—he certainly was a man.
She came up for a breath and rested her head on the edge of the tub again, feeling cleaner than she had since she’d married Percy. She lost herself in the illusion of the fire in the nearby grate.
Until she saw real movement there.
She peered more closely. She could see through the glamour and into the room on the other side.
The fireplace went right through the wall, connecting the bedchamber to the bathing chamber.
And sitting on the bed in the next room, shirtless, legs wide, forearms braced across thickly muscled thighs—the Duke of Morington.
And he was watching her.
Damn the way her body jumped to life—arousal leaping like the fake flames in the grate. But real. So very real.
And so very dangerous.