Perhaps she would slip.
“Jane,” she said on a hum of delight as he stroked the base of her skull, finding taut muscles there in her neck and kneading them. “Palliser.”
Irritation surged. He had shown her more kindness than he had even supposed he possessed. He had carried her to her bath, washed her, and yet she still maintained the wall of misinformation she had erected. He removed his hands, allowing her to slip beneath the bath water.
She emerged a second later, sputtering and coughing.
Outraged.
She spun about in the large tub, facing him, her black hair sleek and flattened down her back. Her eyes were wide, incredulous. Burning with fury. “You villain! Do you mean to drown me?”
“I mean to make you honest,” he drawled, not feeling a moment of guilt for sending her beneath the water. He had bent for her. Made exceptions for her. By God, he had not sent her directly to prison as he should have done—and true, that was for his benefit more than hers, but she did not know that—and yet she clung to her lies. She gave him not a crumb of truth.
It made violence burn within him. The need to punch something. To slam his fist into something. Anything.
She watched him with wide, defiant eyes. “I will never give you what you want, so you may as well resign yourself to it, Your Grace.”
More anger seared him, and he welcomed it, for it was far better than desire. “Your bath is over, prisoner,” he announced, then stood and hauled her unceremoniously from the water.
Carrying her like a babe, he deposited her on the nearest surface, which happened to be his bed. Also a grave error, for the sight of his prisoner, wrists bound before her—naked, wet, and utterly at his mercy—did strange things to his body. Uncontrollable things. Possession roared through him. Need. Desire. Want.
Closing his eyes against the vision of her nude on his bed, he toweled her dry before realizing there was no means by which he could wrangle her fresh, new chemise—a replacement for her stinking sickbed smock—over her body without first unbinding her wrists.
And this, he refused to do on principle. Instead, Leo brought her his dressing gown, fashioned of luxurious silk, and hung it over her shoulders, belting it over her bound hands. “Back to your chamber.”
“What will you do with me?” she asked, her eyes burning into his.
“I do not know,” he answered honestly. “That depends upon you, Miss Palliser.”
Chapter Eight
Several more dayswould pass before Bridget saw the Duke of Carlisle again. Six, to be precise. Not that she had been counting.
Very well.
She had been counting.
Trapped inside the chamber he had given her.
Six days at the mercy of Annie, who, as far as Bridget could see, possessed no mercy at all. Which meant Bridget had been forced to beg for future baths. She had not been treated to the delicious, full tub soak she had experienced in the duke’s chamber. Instead, she was given a pitcher and bowl, a cake of soap, a cloth. The water had been cold. Old experience had guided her as she performed her ministrations all the same.
Her hands continued to be bound, but Annie’s knots were not nearly as solid as the Duke of Carlisle’s, which meant Bridget could sometimes escape her bonds and enjoy her freedom in the locked chamber she had been given before she heard footsteps on the stairway and hastened back into her bindings.
She had not been told where the duke had gone or why. One moment, he had been carrying her back to her chamber, wrapped in his dressing gown, and the next, the door had closed upon his back.
And so it was that the sixth morning of his absence saw her freed of her wrist bindings once more, thanks to Annie’s ineptitude at knot tying, standing before a westward facing window, watching the birds fly about in the verdant summer grasses and leaves beyond. Wondering what would become of her.
Did Carlisle intend to keep her here, waiting, until she could not stand a moment more and confessed everything she knew to him? Or did he intend to instill a deep and abiding fear in her—the fear of the unknown, of him, of what he would do to her, prolonged by his absence?
She could not be certain.
All she did know this day, without doubt, was that by the time she heard the first creak in the hallway, it was too late to dive back into her bed and her bindings. And at that point, she was not even certain she cared. Her time in Purgatory needed to come to an end, one way or another.
And so she remained where she was, tensed but committed to her decision, as the door opened.
“You are free of your bonds, madam.”
The voice, deep and low and velvety, a delicious rumble to her senses no matter how much she disliked the man, sent heat into her belly. Here he was at last, ready to face her. She turned to find him hovering on the threshold, tall, dark, and dangerous.
