“You need not issue warnings, Carlisle.” Trent sobered at last, frowning. “What do you need of me?”
He sighed, a weight settling upon his chest, constricting him, threatening to swallow him whole. “Your promise you will see my wife is taken care of should anything happen to me. I need to know she will always be safe and looked after.”
Trent’s frown deepened. “Jesus, Carlisle. Of course I shall see her protected. She is my wife’s sister. But why would you need such a promise from me?”
The dread grew, tainting all the bittersweet tenderness and hope that blossomed inside him whenever he and Bridget were naked in each other’s arms. It grew and it grew.
He steeled himself, somehow meeting the duke’s gaze without flinching. “I have a plan.”
When their guestshad taken their leave, Leo dropped a kiss on Bridget’s brow and laced his fingers through hers. Shaken from her conversation with Daisy, and the knowledge she would soon have to leave this idyll and the man she loved behind—possibly forever—she allowed him to guide her to the ducal apartments. They traveled in silence, neither of them seeming to need words.
The door had scarcely closed on their backs when he took her in his arms and kissed her. His mouth on hers was a beautiful gift, one she could not help welcoming. How she wished she could kiss him like this every night, that he would always be hers. Her arms locked around his neck, her tongue ready for his. There was something different in his kiss tonight. A sadness.
Or mayhap that was merely a projection of her own confused feelings. She kissed him back with more ferocity than necessary, their teeth knocking together as she inhaled deeply of his familiar scent. Spurred on by a growl in his throat, she bit his lower lip, wanting to somehow mark him forever. He groaned and nipped her in return, deepening the kiss until she sagged against his broad chest.
When at last their mouths parted, he gazed down at her, his breathing harsh, expression chiseled from stone. His stare was the pitch of midnight bereft of stars or moonglow.
“I trust you, Bridget, but I need to know if you trust me.”
Did she trust him? Strange how she had not even bothered to question it these last few days. Their union had become something stronger than she had ever imagined it could be. Something real and true and deep. She trusted this man with her body—to touch her and take her and give her pleasure, to lead her to the edge of comfort, and challenge her to go one step further. She wanted to believe him when he said he would protect her, when he said she was his and he meant to keep her as his wife in truth.
She swallowed, settling for partial truth. “Yes, I trust you.”
He nodded once, his expression as intense as ever, jaw a rigid plane carved from marble. “Good. You can trust me, banshee, and I vow it upon my life. Upon my mother’s life.”
Despite herself, she frowned, for the latter avowal was not entirely reassuring.
“My true mother,” he amended. “Lily Ludlow, the only mother I have ever known. I vow it upon her life.”
Bridget nodded, for in one of their late-night dialogues, he had revealed to her how deep his love for Mrs. Ludlow ran. With good reason, it would seem, for the woman had shown him as much love as she had shown her own son. “I believe you, Leo.”
He took her hand, his large, warm one dominating hers. A jolt of energy rocketed through her at the contact, just as it always did, landing between her thighs in a delicious tug of want.
How was it the mere touch of his hand could make her so desperate for him?
It made no sense, and yet, it did. Despite all the reasons why they should never be together, there was something elemental about them that was so very right. She would never be able to stay away from him.
“Come with me,” he ordered, and before she could protest, he led her to the massive bookshelves dominating one of the walls of his chamber. Stopping just before it, his free hand shot out, fingers reaching beneath a shelf, almost as if testing its texture.
But then a mechanical click snapped through the silence between them, and he pushed on the shelves. They gave way under his pressure, revealing a dark passageway within. The light from his chamber illuminated several feet, and cool air, along with the undeniable scent of a room that had been kept closed for too long—must and dust—a century or more of walls that had been lived and loved in.
But this dark, desolate passageway seemed rather eerie. She could not help but to feel as if he intended to lead her to her prison cell at last. Her trepidation must have shown on her features, for he squeezed her fingers with his in a gesture of reassurance and lowered his head to drop a kiss on her cheek.
“You are safe with me, Bridget,” he whispered against her ear. “Always.”
She believed him when he uttered those words, so she allowed him to lead her into the passage, bringing a handheld lamp along with him which illuminated only a mere scant foot before them. Once they were inside the passageway, he released her hand and found the mechanism within the wall that slid the door closed once more.
They were closed off from the outside world entirely.
Hidden from everyone and everything.
Bridget should have been frightened of the notion. Once, before she had come to know Leo, she would have been terrified to follow him blindly into the darkness. But he was the man she loved. And so, when his fingers found hers once more, she laced them tightly to his, allowing him to lead her where he would.
They traveled through the darkness, making two turns and going down a set of steps, before they reached a small chamber. One by one, he lit the gas lamps within, and with them all burning at once, the room seemed rather like any other, aside from its distinctive oblong shape and its lack of windows.
She cast curious glances around her, noting a solid but beautifully carved desk, chairs, a handsome sideboard with decanters and tumblers, and pictures hanging on the wall. Oils, all of them, done in dark and somber tones, mostly landscapes. One in particular captured her attention—the silhouette of a female form, a raging deluge of rain pounding down around her.
She turned to him, feeling awkward, as though he had just shown her a glimpse of what it looked like inside himself. He watched her with an expression she could not decipher. “What is this place?”
