Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
She meant to sleep, and did not.
She lay through the whole long amber slide of the afternoon and turned over perhaps two hundred times, and when the supper tray came at eight she took two spoonfuls of something and had it taken away again.
Then she sat up in the dark and looked at the bed.
It was very large. It was very cold. And she was thinking.
She could not seem to stop herself thinking of the sensation of him beside her, of the heat that had come off him in that carriage and in that church, of the hard severe face that had frightened her so badly four days ago and did not frighten her now.
Diana got up. She put on her wrapper. She told herself she was going for a book. The study door was unlocked.
She stood in the doorway and breathed in. The whole room was him, soap and leather and old paper and that dark undernote beneath it. A feeling in her chest let go so suddenly that she had to put her hand on the frame.
She went in. She walked the length of the shelves without reading a single spine.
She came to the table where the decanters stood, and the little rank of glasses beside them, and she picked one up because it glittered in the moonlight.
It had a pattern cut into it, vines and small sharp leaves, quite beautiful.
She was turning it in her fingers when a voice came.
“Duchess?”
The glass leaped out of her hands and burst on the floor.
Diana gasped. Something bit her, a sting across the top of her bare foot, and she looked down, and there was blood and glass everywhere.
“Are you hurt?”
And he came across the room to her, still in his greatcoat, road dust on him. Diana looked up at him and something in the middle of her gave way with relief at the sight of the man.
“It is nothing—”
He did not let her finish. He bent and put one arm behind her knees and the other at her back and lifted her off the floor, and her arms went round his neck without asking her leave at all.
She felt the whole strength of him take her weight as though she weighed nothing.
She was near enough to see the dust in his lashes.
And close up, she thought, he did not look cruel at all. Perhaps it was only that his eyes had gone soft with concern. Perhaps she was imagining it entirely.
“The glass will cut you,” he said. “We cannot have that, Duchess.”
She let herself rest against his chest, and he carried her out.
He set her on the bed and looked down at her foot, frowning.
“It is a scratch,” she said. “Truly, Your Grace, it is nothing at all.”
He ignored her and put his head out the door. “A clean cloth and warm water. And send someone to my study; there is broken glass on the floor, and I want every splinter of it gone tonight.” A pause. “The Duchess is not to be hurt in this house again.”
The maid bobbed and fled. He came back and sat on the edge of the bed beside her.
Diana swallowed. “I must beg your pardon. I had no business in your study. I only wished for a book, and I—”
“There is no room in this house you have no business in.” He said it without any particular emphasis, gently turning her ankle toward the light. “You are its mistress. Go where you like.”
She looked at his bent head.
He is so gentle, she thought. Is he like this with her? With the woman he keeps in his thoughts? And then, quieter and colder: no. Of course not. This is duty. He has a wife with a cut foot and a duty to see to it, and that is what this is.
The water came. He cleaned the cut himself, which no duke in England ought to have done.
Then he set the basin aside and said, “I shall sleep in here tonight.”
Her heart leaped into her throat.
“Very well,” said Diana, and nodded calmly.
He was watching her face. “Something troubles you.”
She hesitated. Then she said it, because she was too tired not to. “My father has refused. My sister is not to come. I am trying to think of some way to—”
“Tomorrow we will call on him,” he said, “and I will make the request myself.”
Diana’s mouth opened. She could not remember anyone ever doing this. Not once. Not in eight years. Every trouble she had ever had she had carried up the stairs alone and solved alone, and never once had anyone said, “Leave it to me,” and she found she did not know the words to answer it.
“You wish to say something,” he observed.
“No. I only—” She swallowed. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“It is my duty.”
Duty. Something foolish in her chest sat down.
“Is there anything else?”
She hesitated. It was not her place. It was not her place—
He leaned in.
“Speak, Duchess.” His thumb came up and traced slowly down her lower lip, and his eyes followed it, and Diana’s heart stopped entirely. She caught the scent on his fingers. The soap and leather, all of it him. “Or must I make you speak?”
His hand dropped to rest against the side of her neck.
“I did not see you all day,” she said. “I was not aware you had gone away on business.”
He grinned. He leaned closer still, until she could feel his breath. “So my Duchess wishes to know where I am at every hour.”
“No — I was only—” She was looking at his mouth. He was very near. Will he kiss me? Her whole body had gone heavy in that way she was beginning to recognize, and she could not do the first thing about it. Why does it do this? Why does it always do this?
He drew back.
“I confess I am not accustomed to it,” he said. “Informing anyone of my movements. I tell Mrs. Fletcher and think no further about it.”
Of course, thought Diana, and sank.
“But I shall inform the Duchess in future,” he said.
She felt the smile come up before she could stop it.
He reached out and lifted her chin.
“This is the second night.”
She swallowed.
“Tonight, Duchess,” he said, “we shall do something interesting.”
The heat rose through her in a slow, scalding wave.
She sat very still while he kicked off his boots.
He took her by the waist and pulled her down into the bed with him, and she shut her eyes, and she waited for his mouth, and God forgive her, she wanted it, she wanted it so badly that her hands had curled into the sheets.
He turned her round and gathered her back against his chest and put his arm over her.
“We sleep like this tonight, Duchess.”
Diana’s eyes flew open. She twisted her head to look up at him.
There was a twinkle in his eye. He was laughing at her. He had known, the whole time, exactly what she was waiting for.
“Good night, Duchess,” he whispered.
Oh, Diana, she thought, burning to the roots of her hair. You did not even try to resist. You did not even think of it.
But his chest was warm at her back, and his breathing had already begun to slow and steady, and it steadied her too.
Just before she went under, Diana understood, with a kind of quiet astonishment, that she was safe.
That she felt safe. Here, in the arms of the beast of Rosewood, safer than she had felt in eight years.
And that was more dangerous than anything he had done to her yet.