As wrong as could be.
Her longing for him had only grown, compounded by his unexpected gift and equally unexpected admission that she made him happy. When had anyone ever said something more profound to her?
She could not recall, as she sat across from him in the dining room, where they were being served luncheon. Lady Beaufort was feeling bilious today and suffering from an unfortunate attack of arthritis, which she blamed upon the cool, rainy weather, leaving Hazel and Lucien alone.
Like every dish set before her at Lark House, lunch was presented upon delicate china. Cold chicken and ham, curried eggs, and freshly baked bread, along with a jam tartlet and lemonade, which she was sure Arden had requested for her benefit. Her stomach growled in most unladylike fashion, and she surreptitiously pressed her palm over it, willing the most disagreeable and demanding part of her to quiet.
“That will be all, Reynolds, thank you,” Arden said. “You may close the door behind you.”
The butler and duo of footmen accompanying him bowed before taking their leave of the room. When the door was closed, she became acutely aware of the fact she was alone with Arden once more. Though they had just been closeted within his study all morning, there was a distinct difference between their earlier toiling on behalf of the League and now.
She vowed she would distract herself with food. She would not think of the kisses she had shared with him last night. She would not envision him without his clothes. Nor would she imagine his mouth and tongue, and the wicked pleasure of them both upon her most intimate and shocking places.
Her plate was laden. In grim silence, she stared, unseeing at it, and stabbed the first object within reach of her fork tines. Unceremoniously, she shoveled the sustenance into her mouth. Cold roast chicken, she realized, seasoned well. Her stomach rumbled again. Yes, it was far better to answer the hunger in her belly, rather than the other hunger.
That one was far more pronounced. And far more troubling.
“I was betrayed,” Arden said suddenly into the silence.
Her gaze jolted to him at last. He was watching her with an indecipherable expression. She did not know what to say, and there was a lump of chicken in her mouth precluding her from speaking anyway. She swallowed, then took a sip of her lemonade. Then another, working out what she would say to him next.
A swallow, a breath. She attempted to regain her composure. If she had felt gauche before, she felt positively foolish now, reminded once more that, despite what had happened between them in the night, he was a duke, a blue-blooded aristocrat, and she was nothing but an orphan. She did not have his effortless manners. She was graceless and brusque, decidedly unfeminine, even when she wasn’t garbed in her divided skirts, devoted to a vocation most of the civilized world considered solely male.
“Betrayed?” she repeated at last, after having swallowed two more bracing gulps of lemonade. His chef certainly knew how to perfect the drink. Not too sugary, not too tart. Just perfection on her tongue.
Much like Arden.
But that was a thought she needed to banish altogether.
“By a man I considered unimpeachable,” he added. “He was my most trusted aid, in truth. He was gambling and suffering heavy debts. I had no knowledge of the difficulties in which he had found himself mired. Instead of coming to me and asking me for assistance, he turned to his cousin, a Fenian sympathizer.”
She took another sip of her lemonade, fighting for the right words to say. “You are speaking of the reason for my presence here, are you not?” she dared to ask. “The reason why the Home Office suddenly required you to have a partner, yes?”
“Yes,” he bit out, his eyes searching hers, his lips unsmiling. Firm, like his clenched jaw.
He looked every bit the forbidding aristocrat, the arrogant duke. He was beautiful, yet untouchable. Only, she had touched him last night. Had more than touched him. He had been inside her. She remembered his tongue, then she remembered she should never think of it again.
But such a decadent wickedness could never truly be forgotten, and she knew it.
“How did he betray you?” Her curiosity and her concern for him collided, overruling any hunger roiling through her belly.
“He planted evidence of Fenian collusion at the home of one of my agents. I mistakenly believed the agent was guilty, and brought him here to Lark House, keeping him under duress. He escaped and eloped with my sister, proving me wrong, but not before the bastard I trusted almost killed him, myself, and two other men I respect and admire. Not to mention my sister.” He paused, his tone rueful, shaking his head. “Lettie saved us all that day, but the crux of it is, she would not have been capable of doing so, if not for the man I believed guilty of treason. He taught her how to shoot a pistol when I refused, you see.”
Hazel absorbed everything Arden had just revealed. Part of her was shocked he had been duped, for he seemed so omnipotent. Part of her was shocked he was admitting to it, for he was exposing a weakness to her. But she was grateful, so grateful, he was entrusting himself to her. Here was his story, the information he had carefully guarded from her, laid out and open before the both of them, as plainly as the food gathered for their luncheon.
“The man you believed was guilty, his name has been cleared?”
“I saw to it,” he said, his face devoid of expression.
She sensed how deeply what had happened affected him, however. He had revealed something else about himself she had not known until this very moment: he had a sister. “And your sister, she saved you all?”
Arden nodded. “She did.”
Hazel could not contain her smile at the affirmation, for she could not deny she applauded the notion of a woman saving a group of men from imminent danger. “Your sister—Lettie, as you call her—she sounds like a lady I would admire and respect very much, Arden.”
“Yes,” he agreed, deadly serious now. “You would both admire each other, I suspect. I… I very much fear my actions have created a rift between us that cannot be mended.”
“You have apologized, have you not?” she asked tentatively.
