Just one night.
What could be the harm?
In the morning, she would wake, return to her side of the demarcation line. Fortify herself for what she must do. Prepare to leave him, betray him, and save her brother.
The reminder gave her pause.
Since when had carrying out her original plan becomebetrayingthe Duke of Carlisle?
She was wading into treacherous flood waters, and she knew it. At any moment, they were likely to sweep her to her doom, and yet here she stood, lingering, hating to leave him. “I ought to return to my chamber. Do you not wish to lock me in there once more?”
He shook his head slowly. “I told you, Bridget, that I trust you. I’ll not be your jailer again.”
The statement was a stunning one, particularly coming from him. If only he knew how little he should trust her. The knowledge was acid, churning in her stomach. “Thank you, but all the same, I cannot stay. It would not be wise. We are not husband and wife in truth, and no good can come of my remaining in your chamber, now you are mending.”
But he did not release her wrists, nor did his thumbs stop their tender travels, and neither did his gaze allow her to look away. “I am too tired to be anything less than a gentleman. You have nothing to fear in staying here.”
“In your bed?” She was more tempted by the invitation than she cared to admit. She had eaten a hasty dinner in her chamber while his manservant had attended him, and though the hour was early, she too was weary from the grueling days of tending him and fretting over him. There was nothing to stop her from settling into bed alongside him and surrendering herself to the bliss of slumber.
Nothing except for ration, reason, and all the instincts within her screaming she could not afford to get too close to this man. She must guard her heart. Remain impervious.
Too late for that, mocked her heart.
“My bed is large.” His voice was husky, a decadent rumble that made her ache and long for that which she must not want. “You are small. There is ample room. Please, Bridget. Your presence calms me.”
She could not believe it was so. “How can I calm you? You loathe me.”
“No.” His hands explored higher, moving over her forearms, which remained exposed from assisting him with his bath. It was too much. She wanted to tear away from him. She never wanted him to stop touching her.
“I tried, wife. Believe me, I tried. You are the one vice I cannot seem to deny. Everything else, I can control. You are the only lure that dogs me, and I am too weary to fight you now.”
She wondered at his comment about vices, recalling he had been thoroughly soused the first evening she had met him at Harlton Hall. Yet, he had not smelled of spirits, nor seemed as if he tippled in all the subsequent weeks she had spent in his presence. Something told her he had hidden facets she had yet to see.
Something else told her she wanted to see them.
And not to find weaknesses she could use against him, but because she…why, she cared.
There it was, the realization as jarring as it was unwanted.
She, Bridget O’Malley,caredabout the Duke of Carlisle.
Which was precisely why she needed to deny him his request, extricate herself from his gentle grasp, and put some much-needed distance between them.
“I too am weary,” she conceded. It was perhaps the most honest she had ever allowed herself to be with him, emerging from some place deep inside herself that refused to be stifled. It was the part of her that had been lonely and fearful, desperate and hungry, the part of her that had belonged to no land, to no man. Wild and restless, the rawest recesses of her spirit.
It was her heart.
“Stay with me,” he said again. “Just for the night.”
“Very well,” she found herself relenting against everything she possessed—aside from that willful weakness that called itself a heart, that was. “For the night. But you must give me your word that nothing untoward will occur.”
“I give you my word,” he said easily.
Too easily. But she could hardly argue the matter. “And only on account of our temporary truce. I do not want you to think I am getting soft for you, Duke.”
The ghost of a smile flirted with his lips. “Only one thing about you is soft, banshee, and we both know what that is.”
The wicked man. Somehow, in the ease that had fallen between them, the casual intimacy,bansheelost its bite. Instead, it sounded rather like an endearment. Heaven help her, but she liked it more each time he spoke it. “You are a difficult man to deny.”
