How very wrong she had been about him. How wrong everyone had been about him. For while it could not be denied his reputation was loathsome, every black mark against him was the direct result of what he had suffered. What he had seen. What haunted him still.
“I hurt for you, Your Grace,” she admitted at last, though she knew all too well he could use such a confession against her later. “The horrors you have seen, the nightmares you have endured, should not be suffered by anyone. I ache knowing you suffer so.”
“I am alive,” he said bitterly, “and that is more than I can say for my friend. If my greatest complaint is a lack of sleep and some nightmares, I still remain on the correct side of the soil. And whilst I decidedly do not deserve to be here, nevertheless, here I stand.”
Broken and sad and lonely.
“If I could take on the pain for you, I would,” she said simply, and she meant it.
The Duke of Whitley was not at all as he seemed. She could not help but feel that here, in the blackness of the night, she had seen him—truly seen him—for the first time.
Chapter Twelve
For the firsttime since his miserable return to England’s shores, he wanted to hold a woman, to bask in her sweetness and comfort, bury his face in her hair and hold her soft body against his, every bit as much as he wanted to tup her.
You want to hold her more than you want to bed her, his heart whispered as it absorbed her words with an undeniable pang.If I could take on the pain for you, I would,she had said. And he believed her. Heard the note of sincerity in her dulcet voice, felt the tenderness in her tentative caresses. Up and down, her hands swept.
Consoling him.
Undoing him.
The wetness of the tears she’d shed for him coated his bare chest, and he could not think of a single, more humbling experience than the prim little governess holding him in her arms. Need swept through him with such violence his teeth ached. But it was not just a need to carry her to his bed and finish what they had begun on the night in his study. It was a need for her touch. For her concern. For her caring and gentleness. For her patience and grace with his sisters as much as with him.
He kissed the top of her head, for he could not stay himself. Her unbound hair was soft and smooth, falling in waves he longed to wrap around his fist. He inhaled, wishing he could keep her forever thus, bound to him, at his side. But she was his sisters’ governess, and she was an innocent, and she was not for him. She deserved a whole man who could love her, who could make her his wife so she would never again need to work to earn her bread.
“Jacinda.” He spoke her name with great reluctance, for there was nothing he wanted more than to strip her bare and lose himself inside her this night. Somehow, in the absence of light, she had become his sun. And he did not wish to dim her brilliance. “You must return to your chamber now.”
Her hands stilled in their slow ministration, and he wished he could recall the words at once. As if suddenly remembering their stations and the impropriety of remaining in his bedchamberen déshabillé, she withdrew from him. “Yes, I suppose I must. Forgive me for the familiarity. I do not know what I was thinking, entering your chamber.”
“Do not run from me.” He reached blindly for her, finding her hand and holding it when she would have retreated. He could not allow her to rush away, not in embarrassment or shame. Gratitude welled up within him, spilling forth. “I… thank you for…”
Caring.
His lips would not form the word.
He licked them, his fingers tightening over hers, his heart thumping as wildly as it had when he’d been wrenched from the nightmare. He did not dare to presume that someone as good and patient and kind as Miss Jacinda Turnbow could care for a man as jaded and depraved and ruined as he. They shared an attraction. She had heard a sound in the night. And he had raved on like a madman, unburdening his soul to her as if she could absolve him of all his sins. Little wonder she sought to escape him now.
“You are most welcome, Your Grace,” she said firmly, giving his fingers a tentative squeeze in return.
He stood there stupidly, holding onto their linked hands. Her bare skin against his was a cooling balm and a roaring flame all at once. He could not let her go, and yet he could not beg her to stay. It had been selfishness, pure and simple, to think he could make this lovely, fierce woman his mistress. Selfishness to think he could keep her for himself, like a bird in a cage.
Crispin released her. He had no choice. It was either that or haul her into his bed. “Naturally, neither of us shall remark upon this occasion ever again. I do expect your silence and loyalty.”
“Naturally, Your Grace, you need not fear. Your confidences shall remain private,” she said quietly, using his title again. “I bid you good evening.”
It rankled, not hearing her call him by name now that she had. Just as it rankled to send her away from him, to remind her of her place in his household, to demand her fealty when she had never exhibited a hint of anything but a strict discipline and an adherence to her duties. She had disposed of a mouse carcass on his order, by God.
Shame swept over him as he thought of his treatment of her. He had been callous and cold, cruel and demanding, because her presence nettled him and her denial infuriated him, and because from the moment he had seen her in her dun weeds and lace and hideous caps, he had wanted her for his own. He had known she was different. That she was someone who could make him weak.
She had not been like any of the governesses who had come before her.
Nor would she be like any who came after.
Because she was more than a governess to him, and she always had been. She was a woman, daring and intelligent and proper and feisty. Yet even when he had tried to force her to hate him, he had longed for her still. And no matter what he had done or said, she had still come running to him in the night, defying her iron-hard sense of propriety, taking him in her arms, crying for his pain.
If I could take on the pain for you, I would.
Her footfalls crept over the carpet, taking her father and farther from him.
