“Shall we retire to the library now?” she dared to ask him.
The smile curving his lips was somehow sensual and sweetly charming at once. It revealed dimples and crinkles at the corners of his bright-blue eyes. “Of course.”
* * *
“‘No more to laugh,no more to sing, I sit alone with sorrow’.”
The haunting, final line of the poem Tilly had read aloud hovered in the air.
The sadness in her voice pierced his armor in a way that took him by surprise. He was not meant to feel anything for this woman, and yet, over the span of the evening, he had found himself softening toward her. Lowering his battlements.
He was drawn to her, torn away from his ambling exploration of the thousands of book spines lining the walls of the massive Coddington Hall library. So many damned books assembled in one room, more than he’d seen in a lifetime. But what had he expected from a house with gold lining its windows?
There was no denying it. He was pulled as if by some invisible cord connecting them. There was an odd restlessness within him as he moved toward her, crossing the distance to where she stood by the library’s cold, dead hearth.
“The poem is about regrets?” he asked.
Her scent, roses with a hint of bergamot, unfurled around him, heady and yet not too cloying. It was a refined note, elegant and intoxicating.
Much like the woman wearing it.
“I believe it is,” she said softly, closing the volume and holding it to her breast. “It was written by Christina Rossetti, one of my favorite poets. The loneliness in it, the grief over what she has lost and can never regain, moves me.”
There was a poignancy in her words.
“You see yourself in the poem, do you not?”
He need not have asked, for he could plainly see the answer. The Duchess of Longleigh was not a very happy woman. Was her life one of loneliness and sorrow, too?
Why should he care?
He should not. And yet, he did.
Her lips tilted down. “I have many regrets in my life thus far.”
I hope I will not prove one of them.
As soon as the thought emerged, he banished it. She could regret whatever she wished when he was gone. He would be far from her. After this month, he would never see her again.
So why did he long to take her in his arms now? To kiss the frown from her lush lips? To give her the sort of reassurance that was not his to give?
“I expect most of us do.” He held out his hand to her instead. “I saw some sherry on the sideboard. Will you come sit with me?”
She settled her hand in his without hesitation. “I would like that.”
Awareness jolted through him from that simple touch. Strange. Was it the night, the intimacy of the setting, the knowledge he would soon be bedding her? Was it her uncommon loveliness, her scent?
Their fingers tangled and he guided her to a cozy seating area. She settled herself on the overstuffed cushions of a divan, her gown a sea of luxurious burgundy silk around her. And that was when he noticed her feet were bare, and that she was not wearing stockings. Her toes peeped from the bottom of her ribbon-trimmed hem.
He turned away from the tempting sight, trying not to wonder when or how she had shed her slippers and stockings. The sideboard was neatly arranged, stocked with all the amenities he could require just as everything else at Coddington Hall was.
To have been born to such astounding opulence—it was impossible to imagine. And while the duke had lived in splendor, he had consigned his only son to penury. He had broken Adrian’s mother, left her as nothing but jagged shards of herself. Had destroyed her.
And he had been hiding away in his fortress with the great hall and its frescoed ceiling which had once been painted in the anticipation of a king’s arrival. The king had never visited, but the testament to the vast wealth of the past and present Dukes of Longleigh remained. The valet he had been assigned, a footman raised from his ordinary position for the next month and quite pleased at the prospect, had chattered all about the massive home’s history after Adrian had explained that while he was the duke’s “nephew,” there had been a family rift, which had prevented him from previous visits to Coddington Hall.
But Adrian must not think of that now. If he allowed himself to dwell too long in his bitterness and resentment, he would sit alone with his sorrow, just as the forlorn lady in Tilly’s poem had done. And he had far more important tasks at hand.
Namely, getting himself soused enough to forget he needed to seduce his father’s wife.
