Chapter 5
Chapter five
In Which Wanton was Lifted, Laid Flat, and Very Nearly Kissed in a Spy’s Bedchamber
Wanton stepped inside Cassian Drake's room with caution and very little coverage.
The air was warm and dark, laced with a musk she suspected was either exotic cologne or weaponized pheromones.
Velvet curtains clung to the walls. The lighting came not from candles but from strange, pulsing sconces hidden behind silk screens—as if the room itself were in a permanent state of seduction.
The Duke followed her inside like a judgment in boots. He moved silently to a chair, sat, crossed his arms—and his forearms, good heavens—and watched her as if this were all vastly more entertaining than it should be.
She ignored him.
Her mission was clear—find clues of sculpture theft. Something damning. A letter from a collector? Marble dust? A ransom note reading return the glutes or else?
“I don’t trust this room,” Wanton whispered. “It’s too... intentionally moody. Like a boudoir designed by someone who’s definitely poisoned a rival before breakfast. Who exactly is Mr. Drake?”
“I care less about Drake,” the Duke said, voice deceptively mild, “and far more about why you constantly place yourself in danger.”
She paused, then continued rifling through the desk. “Danger? This is a simple investigation.”
His voice sharpened. “You arrived here alone, escorted only by a chicken. You traipse into gentlemen’s bedrooms with scandalous disregard for propriety.
And you seem hell-bent on testing every boundary placed before you.
It’s reckless. It’s dangerous.” His voice lowered, almost a growl.
As if he were incredibly vexed that he even cared for such a mundane subject as her.
"I don't approve of it. And when I don't approve of someone's choices, Miss Wallflower, I have a tendency to spank them. "
Her pulse quickened, and her backside tingled with an excitement entirely disproportionate to the threat.
“I’m a female explorer,” she retorted, trying desperately to sound composed. “I only bow to science.”
“Then consider me your new professor,” he drawled, “specialized in discipline.”
She flushed furiously, but choose to ignore the thrill coursing down her spine. Nonchalantly, she flipped open a ledger. Inside was a sketch of a Grecian wrestler, scandalously detailed. She snapped it shut.
“I am perfectly capable of caring for myself.”
Wanton continued searching while the Duke watched, saying nothing. The air between them thickened with unspoken things.
She opened a drawer and found three passports under three different names.
“Mr. Drake likes to be prepared,” she said. “He’s either a spy or a very efficient honeymoon crasher.”
She moved to a pastoral painting of sheep.
“This frame’s crooked,” she muttered, adjusting it.
The sheep fell away to reveal a hand-drawn map of the French coast, annotated with artillery positions, garrisons, and the phrase Weakest at low tide.
This was useless. Where did Drake keep his sculpture dealings?
The Duke coughed.
She plucked a music folio from the harpsichord and flipped open the sonata pages. A letter slid out—wax-sealed, DO NOT ALLOW PARLIAMENT TO LEARN OF THIS ARRANGEMENT.
Behind her, the Duke was reclined, watching her with deepening amusement. One brow arched. His fingers drummed against his thigh.
Wanton sniffed. “Everything in here is suspicious, but not a single clue about glutes. Nothing stolen, nothing carved, not even a transport crate.”
She opened a shaving mirror. Scrawled backward on the glass, in wax pencil, were the words:
“Explosives placed beneath bridge at Arques. Proceed as planned. —Rook.”
She blinked.
“That’s either a very aggressive grooming reminder or he’s planning to blow something up with aftershave.”
The Duke let out a long, slow exhale. “Miss Wallflower, you are the only woman who could find four separate acts of treason and consider them irrelevant to the case at hand.”
“They are!” she said indignantly. “None of them concern your backside, Your Grace.”
He sat back. “You truly are a menace."
She eyed a high cabinet speculatively. “There's something up there. Perhaps the glutes.”
The Duke started to rise. "Allow me—"
“No need.” Wanton waved him away breezily. “I'm quite capable.”
She placed one foot on a low shelf, gripping the wood firmly as she began to climb. Her fingers brushed something round and smooth, and she leaned further. Too far. Her footing slipped.
“Blast!” she yelped.
In a heartbeat, the Duke crossed the room. He caught her around the waist just as she lost her grip, pulling her tightly against him. And suddenly they were falling, tumbling back onto the bed—an unholy tangle of silk sheets, limbs, and one very powerful man trying not to swear.
They landed together—her atop him, his arms wrapped around her back, steadying her like a man used to catching falling things with consequences.
Her robe had slid askew, baring one thigh; his had parted at the collar, revealing chest and skin and heat. The only thing separating them was thin terry cloth.
His hands were wide across her back, rough-palmed and devastating. Her thigh was tangled over his hip. Their faces were inches apart.
“What were you thinking?” he snapped, voice furious. “You could have been seriously hurt.”
Wanton’s breath caught, heart hammering. “I—I had it perfectly under control.”
“Clearly,” he drawled, each syllable dipped in disdain and delicious threat.
He loomed above her like judgment in human form, his eyes blazing. The kind of look that could pin a girl to the wall and peel her sanity off with a single raised brow.
Wanton’s breath hitched. He wasn’t just angry. He was interested.
She cleared her throat. “Is this… prolonged eye contact really necessary?”
He didn’t blink.
“Because,” she continued, flailing for composure, “overly long gazing has been known to trigger unexpected… emotional phenomena. Particularly in small rooms. With partial nudity.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping to a rough whisper. “Too late.”
She could breathe—technically—but only in shallow, untrustworthy gasps that felt more like punctuation than respiration.
Her body was staging some sort of coup. Every nerve rebelled. Her robe had betrayed her completely, slipping down just enough to make diplomacy impossible. His thigh—bare, taut, alarmingly specific—pressed against her hip like it had opinions.
And then she felt something unmistakable. Something insistent. Something that clearly hadn’t read the spa’s code of conduct.
Her pulse didn’t just race. It threw on a wig and fled the country.
Hypothesis: The Duke is currently hosting a personal uprising beneath his robe. Further research required. Possibly with diagrams. Note to self: Did she bring her watercolors?
“Do you keep a life-sized statue in your robe, Your Grace?” she whispered weakly.
His lips brushed her ear. “At this point, Miss Wallflower, I hope your investigation leads nowhere. Just so I have an excuse to discipline you.”
She whimpered involuntarily, pressing closer.
“Thoroughly,” he continued softly, “and repeatedly, until you learn to behave.”
Her body didn’t tremble. It vibrated. Not delicately, but with the kinetic hum of a woman whose moral compass had just thrown itself into the sea and yelled “Do me next!”
He rose slowly, arranging his robe with deliberate calm. “Shall we move to the next room?”
She lay breathless on the satin sheets, nerves frayed, heart pounding. “Yes,” she managed. “Clearly, there’s nothing useful here.”
Nothing except the burning knowledge that she wanted nothing more than to push him until he made good on the threat he'd issued with that glacial voice and scandalously mobile eyebrow.
All in the name of academic rigor, of course.
She was a woman of science.
And someone had to test the limits of ducal restraint.