Chapter 30 #2
They lay still. Their breathing slowed in tandem. Hugo rolled onto his side and gathered her against him, and the cool night air met their damp skin, and neither of them moved to pull up the sheets.
“Hugo?”
“Mm.”
“Are you all right?”
He almost laughed. She had just given him the most profound experience of his life, and she was asking if he was all right. He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“I am considerably better than all right.”
“You are very quiet.”
“I am trying to find words for something that does not have any.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. The candlelight caught the gold flecks in her green eyes, and the vulnerability in her expression told him she needed more than silence, no matter how reverent. She needed him to speak.
“You are extraordinary,” he said. “And I do not mean the way you look, although you are making it very difficult to form sentences at the moment. I mean you. Your courage. Your trust. The fact that you are lying in this bed with a man you did not choose and looking at him as though he might be worth choosing after all.”
Her fingers traced the line of his jaw. “You are worth choosing, Hugo.”
The words landed in a place he had not known was empty until she filled it.
He wanted to say more. He wanted to tell her that she had cracked something open inside him that he was not sure he could close again, that the feel of her body against his had rewritten something fundamental about what he believed he deserved.
He was not ready to say those things. Not yet. But he held her gaze and let her see, for one unguarded moment, the man behind the mask, and the tenderness in her expression told him she understood what he could not yet speak.
He pulled her closer. She settled against his chest, her head tucked beneath his chin, her fingers tracing idle patterns across his ribs. Her breathing slowed. The candlelight threw warm shadows across the ceiling, and the house was silent around them.
Her breathing had slowed. The candlelight threw warm shadows across the ceiling, and the house was silent around them.
He pressed his lips to the top of her head and said nothing, because the words that wanted to come out were too large for this room and too dangerous for this moment, and if he said them, everything would change.
She fell asleep against him. He stayed awake for a long time, feeling her weight, and did not move.
The days that followed took on a rhythm Hugo had not anticipated. A negotiation was conducted through shared meals and evening walks and the slow, careful mapping of each other’s boundaries.
He taught her to fence on the third morning.
“Your grip is wrong.” Hugo adjusted Lily’s fingers on the foil’s handle, repositioning her thumb along the spine of the guard. “Looser. A foil is not a kitchen knife.”
“I have never held a kitchen knife either.”
“Then you are doubly unprepared for life.” He stepped back and raised his own foil. “En garde.”
She lunged. The foil whistled past his right ear, and Hugo sidestepped with a grin.
“Enthusiasm is not a substitute for technique.”
“Technique is not a substitute for determination.” She lunged again. This time the tip caught his sleeve.
“Better. But you are telegraphing. Your shoulder drops before you extend. I can read you from across the room.”
“Then stop reading me.”
“Impossible.” He parried her next thrust and riposted, stopping the foil an inch from her sternum. “I have been reading you since the night you walked into my parlor.”
She batted his foil aside and came at him again. Hugo retreated across the gallery floor, matching her stroke for stroke, and the clash of steel rang off the high ceiling. Lily’s laughter filled the spaces between the strikes, bright and fierce and utterly unguarded.
She was a quick learner. By the end of the hour, her footwork had improved, her lunges had tightened, and she had landed three touches to his one, though he suspected at least two of those were because he had been distracted by the flush in her cheeks and the way her loosened hair whipped across her face when she advanced.
That evening, they played cards in the parlor.
“The stakes,” Hugo said, shuffling the deck, “are as follows. Each hand lost, the loser removes one article of clothing.”
Lily set down her brandy. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am always serious about cards.”
“You are never serious about anything.”
“Then this will be a refreshing change.” He dealt. “Ladies first.”
Lily picked up her hand and studied it with the focused intensity she brought to everything. Hugo watched her over his own cards and felt the familiar pull of want and tenderness that had become the background noise of his existence.
She won the first hand. Hugo removed his cravat.
She won the second. His waistcoat.
“You are cheating,” he said.
“I am winning. There is a difference.”
She won the third hand, and Hugo pulled his shirt over his head. Lily’s gaze dropped to his bare chest and lingered there for three seconds longer than she would have admitted.
“Your deal,” she said, her voice slightly unsteady.
Hugo dealt. He won the next hand, and Lily removed her shawl with the dignified composure of a woman surrendering the least consequential piece of fabric available. He won again, and she removed one glove.
“That is hardly equivalent to a shirt,” he protested.
“A glove is an article of clothing. You did not specify size requirements.”
“You are exploiting a loophole.”
“I am playing within the rules. You should have been more specific.”
He dealt again. She won. Hugo stood and unfastened his trousers, and Lily’s eyes went wide.
“Hugo.”
“Those are the stakes.” He stepped out of them and sat back down in nothing. “Your deal, Duchess.”
The cards shook in her hands. She dealt poorly. Hugo won.
Lily stared at the cards as though they had betrayed her.
He leaned back in his chair, looking insufferably pleased with himself. “I believe that is another article of clothing.”
“You are enjoying this far too much.”
“I am a devoted husband. I take an interest in your wardrobe.”
“My wardrobe is presently in peril.”
“So is my sanity.” His gaze dipped, slow enough to make her cheeks warm, then returned to her face. “But I am bearing it bravely.”
Lily gave him a look of regal disdain, then removed her remaining glove one finger at a time. She did it slowly, deliberately, and with just enough elegance to make his expression shift from amusement to hunger.
“There,” she said, laying it atop the growing pile between them. “Another article.”
Hugo looked at the glove. Then at her. “You are a menace.”
“I am a Duchess.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.”
She smiled sweetly and gathered the cards. “Your deal.”
His hand closed over hers before she could shuffle. The touch was nothing, really. His fingers over hers. His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist. Yet the room seemed to draw in around them, warm and close and suddenly much too quiet.
“Lily,” he said.
It was only her name, but it changed the air.
Her teasing answer caught in her throat. “Yes?”
He rose from his chair, still holding her hand, and drew her to her feet. She came willingly, though she told herself she meant to scold him. She even opened her mouth to do it.
He kissed her before a single word emerged.
The kiss made her forget the cards, the candles, the ridiculous state of his undress, and the even more ridiculous fact that she had only surrendered a shawl and two gloves.
He drew her closer, his hands settling at her waist, and she laughed softly against his mouth.
“What?” he murmured.
“You are not dressed for seduction.”
His brow lifted. “I was unaware seduction required trousers.”
“It gives the impression of preparedness.”
“I assure you, my Duchess, I am prepared.”
“Hugo.”
“What? You began this game.”
“I did not imagine you would take it so seriously.”
“I am a man of honor.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “The rules must be respected.”
“Then perhaps I should respect them by winning the next hand and taking your dignity.”
“My dignity left the room when I removed my trousers.”
She dissolved into laughter, and he took shameless advantage of it, kissing her throat while she tried and failed to regain her composure. His mouth found the sensitive place beneath her ear, and the laughter thinned into a breath.
“Hugo,” she whispered again, but this time it sounded less like a warning.
His arms tightened around her. “Say that once more and I shall forget there is a card table in this room.”
“Perhaps the card table deserves to be forgotten.”
He drew back just enough to look at her, his eyes dark with mischief and heat. “Are you encouraging me?”
“I am merely observing that furniture should know its place.”
He laughed, low and delighted, and kissed her again.
This time, Lily forgot to be clever. She slid her hands up his bare arms to his shoulders, feeling the warmth of him beneath her palms. He backed her gently against the edge of the table, and the cards scattered in a soft, treacherous slide across the floor.
Neither of them cared.
His mouth moved over hers with increasing persuasion, and her fingers curled against him. She felt him smile.
“You are very quiet for a woman who had so much to say about loopholes.”
“I am thinking.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Good.” He kissed her again. “Thinking is vastly overrated.”
She made a small sound, half laugh, half sigh, and caught his lower lip between hers just long enough to make him go still.
Then a discreet cough came from the doorway.
Hugo froze.
Lily froze.
The footman, to his eternal credit, had fixed his gaze on some interesting point several inches above the mantel. His face was as expressionless as a marble bust, though one ear had gone violently red.