Her icy question was not without merit. He had wondered as much himself. But he did not like the accusation in her tone. “Perhaps you would be better served to wake your son and put the question to him directly, Duchess.”
The mouth he had once claimed with his own thinned into a harsh, unforgiving line. “I am asking you, however. What occasion did you have to speak to my son, Mr. Ludlow?”
He clenched his jaw, taking her in, wishing he did not still find her so bloody alluring. That after all these years—after the scar on his cheek, after her betrayal, after the way she had savaged his heart—he would no longer be susceptible to her. “You certainly seem to have a habit of misplacing the young duke, Your Grace. He had also gone missing from the nursery when last I saw him yesterday. Mayhap you ought to ask yourself why.”
She paled. “He has been distraught. His father was murdered.”
“Does that make you any less his mother?” he returned.
“You are overstepping your bounds, Mr. Ludlow.”
He did not give a damn. Her frigid bearing skirted the walls of imperturbability he had long ago erected around himself. He hated that she could be so cold when everything inside him was a raging inferno whenever he was in her presence. “I have no bounds here, madam.”
“You have those which I set for you, sir.” She raked him with a dismissive stare. “You are an unwanted presence within my home, and while I may not have a choice of who the Home Office has decided to install here, I will not allow you to ride over me roughshod.”
He closed the distance between them, partially because he could not resist and partially because he wanted to discomfit her. To prove she was not as unassailable as she pretended. That he was not alone in the old attraction that would not leave him, painful as a splinter.
His gaze attempted to bore straight through hers. “There is only one manner in which I would like to ride you, madam, and I assure you it does not involve trading barbs with you over the whereabouts of your son.”
Her mouth opened, those pretty pink lips forming anoof surprise before she gathered her wits. Her nostrils flared. “How dare you?”
Because he was a fool, he did not look away. Nor did he relent. Perhaps it was pride that spurred him on. Perhaps the awful, throbbing need for her that had never faded. “Have you forgotten, Your Grace?”
Red tinged her high cheekbones. He wanted to touch her. His hands ached with the restraint he exercised, fists curled tight. He would not touch her. Would not lay one finger upon her creamy throat, or the delicious hollow at its base where he fancied he could see her pulse thrum.
“Why would I wish to remember my greatest regret?” she asked, her tone carrying the lash of a whip.
Her greatest regret?Lord God, woman, you have no idea what a regret is.
Her words should not hurt. Should not cause a great river of agony to unleash inside him. But they did. What the bloody hell had he been thinking? That she would throw her arms about him and beg his forgiveness for the sins she had committed against him? That she would have changed?
He stepped back, keeping his countenance devoid of expression. “He was in the gardens.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The lad,” he elaborated, using a tone as cool as hers. “He was in the gardens when I first came upon him yesterday. The child’s governess had been wholly unaware of his absence, from what I gather. When I came upon him, he held my cat in his arms. I can only surmise a maid unwittingly allowed Sherman to escape. Either way, the young duke found him. I told him I have a friend who rescues stray creatures, and she gifted me with a cat who has become my companion.”
Her jaw tightened as her gaze flicked over his face. “It is hardly appropriate for you to bring a feline into Burghly House that was given to you by a paramour.”
“Her Grace, the Duchess of Leeds, is not my paramour,” he corrected, for nothing could be further from the truth. “She is my friend.”
Ara’s expression remained sour. “As you were once my friend?”
Perhaps she was not as unaffected as she would have him believe.
He stifled the surge of triumph that wanted to rise within him, for he dared not hope she was as haunted by their past as he. Even if she were, it would still mean nothing. The water had passed beneath that particular, ugly bridge long ago. “I thought you did not wish to remember your greatest regret, Ara.”
Her eyes flashed. “I have not given you leave to use my name.”
“I am not a man who asks permission.” He gave her a feral smile. And she would be wise to remember that. He was not the youth who had been easily swayed by her beauty and charm, mad for the twitch of her hips and the curve of her breasts. He was a man now, with a man’s desires. A man’s body.
And he could have any woman he wanted.
Why, then, do I still want her?
Damn it, but as he stood near enough to touch her, his entire being caught up in her—her scent, the gleaming copper of her hair, the silken rustle of her skirts, how smooth and soft her skin looked—he recognized the heaviness in his loins. The familiar tug in his belly. He remembered how she tasted. How she had felt, warm and wet and so tight he had lost himself inside her far too quickly.
His cock rose against the placket of his trousers once more.
