“Why not?”
“Because I don’t belong to your world. Because I have too many duties awaiting me, and I must attend your household and guests. Because you are meant to court a beautiful aristocrat like Lady Diana.”
She could have gone on listing reasons, but she stopped herself, for her emotions were running too high, like the waters of a rain-swelled stream threatening to flood its banks.
“Joceline.” He brought her hands up, kissing her knuckles, which ached from stoning raisins and pounding lump sugar earlier that evening. “Please allow me to explain myself, if I may.”
How could she deny him when he was so vulnerable before her? His expression was earnest, and he clung to her fingers as if she were the rarest, most precious treasure he had ever beheld. He was still wearing his evening finery from dinner, cutting an elegant figure. For a wild moment, she wished that she had been seated with him at the dining table. That they had conversed and flirted and she had worn something suitably lovely, a silk evening gown trimmed with flowers instead of a gray woolen frock covered with an apron.
“Go on,” she allowed against her better judgment, for she knew the longer she allowed him to remain here in her space, the harder it would be for her to fight against her intense attraction to him.
“I don’t want to court Lady Diana. I don’t want anyone but you.” He paused, shaking his head as if he were perplexed, trying to sift his thoughts together into some semblance of order. “I never expected to feel this way. It confounds me and astounds me, but I cannot help it. You are all I can think about. When I wake up, I cannot wait to see you.”
“Please,” she interjected, not certain if she could bear to hear more, for it was everything she had secretly yearned to hear. “You needn’t say more.”
“But I do need,” he insisted, squeezing her fingers gently. “Do you not see? I am nothing but raw, aching need, and the fault is yours. I spend all day hoping for a fleeting sight of you, for a shared glance. I go to sleep at night thinking of you, imagining your glorious black hair unbound, wondering if it’s as soft and silken as I think it is. I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for it.”
The vehemence of his tone cut away at her defenses.
“I didn’t want it either,” she protested. “Nor did I ask for it. I came to Blackwell Abbey to be your housekeeper, that is all.”
And a part of her was begging him to allow her to continue to be nothing more than just his servant, that part of Joceline that was mired in obligation. The part that had been diligently working to send everything she could home. But the rest of her—the selfish, longing, foolish part of her—needed to hear him acknowledge what he felt. To hear the full extent of how strongly he was drawn to her. Because she felt the same relentless pull.
“But you are far more than that now, Joceline,” he said, his voice low and beseeching. “Do you not see? I have spent these last few weeks fighting it with all I have. Denying what I feel. I was perfectly content in my misery—or at least, I thought I was. But then you came here with your sunny smiles and your stunning cheek, and your garlands and your bloody trees. You unlocked a part of me I thought was gone, brought it back to the light, and I don’t know how to be this man again, a man who can find happiness and hope after so much loss and grief. I don’t know what it means, what I feel for you. All I know is that I think I’m in lo?—”
“No,” she cried out, interrupting his declaration before he could complete it, for it was too painful. She wanted it too much, with a desperation that terrified her. She couldn’t have it.
But that was immaterial. For now, she would seize what she could.
Joceline threw herself at him. Into him. Their bodies collided as she rose to her toes and pressed her mouth over his, kissing him, showing him what she didn’t dare to acknowledge with words. Because quite suddenly, it didn’t matter what would happen tomorrow. It didn’t matter that she was a servant in his employ and he was a wealthy duke who was far above her station. It didn’t even matter if she had to find a different situation for herself.
She had fallen in love with the Duke of Sedgewick.
She loved this beautiful, broken, imperfect man who had suffered unimaginable loss and tragedy. And she intended to show him just how much, even if tonight was all she could ever have with him.
Their entwined hands came apart, hers settling on his broad chest, his on her waist. Their kisses were frantic and deep, hard and hot. She quickly grew impatient, needing more. She glided her fingers under his coat, helping him to shrug out of it. The garment slid to the floor with a whisper of sound as she settled on the buttons of his waistcoat. And even though her hands were tired and sore from her tasks that day, she worked those buttons out of their moorings with absurd, unerring haste, stripping him of that boundary as well as she opened for his questing tongue.
She was not the only one exploring, caressing. His fingers found the fastening of her chatelaine, but when she felt him fumbling, she broke the kiss. “Allow me.”
Joceline made short work of removing the pin holding it in place at her waist, laying it carefully upon a tabletop for tomorrow’s use, her heart giving a pang at the thought that their time together would be so brief.
“My gloves,” he murmured, flexing his fingers before him, staring at the leather coverings he still donned to shield his scars from others.
“Will you remove them for me?” she asked gently.
He hesitated, indecision flashing on his handsome face.
“I saw your hands before,” she reminded him. “But if you prefer to keep them on, I understand.”
“No.” A muscle tensed in his wide jaw. “I want to feel you.”
The sweet thrill of anticipation went through her, an ache pulsing to life between her thighs. “Yes.”
She watched as he stripped them off himself, revealing the puckered skin on his big hands, his fingers long and thick. To her, the scars were a symbol of his honor. The reminder that he had fought so valiantly to save the woman he loved. And Joceline loved him all the more for it.
She took his hands in hers, and, as he had done earlier, brought them to her lips.
“You needn’t?—”
