“Wilhelm,” she sobbed, her fingernails clawing into the thick fabric of his coat. Her muscles coiled, tightening into a knot of unbearable tension that centered entirely where he was touching her.
“Yes,” he urged, his voice thick and low, vibrating against her throat. “Don’t fight it, Madeline. Give in.”
The tension snapped. Her body buckled as a violent, thrumming release rolled through her in waves. Her internal muscles pulsed rhythmically against his hand. She clung to him. Her vision blurred into white heat, until the tremors finally subsided and left her sagging weightless in his arms.
The climax hit her with the force of a tidal wave, a blinding, thrumming release that made her knees buckle. He caught her, holding her tight against him as her body shuddered with the aftershocks, his hand remaining steady until the world finally began to slide back into focus.
The silence that followed was heavy with the weight of what they had just done. The music from the ballroom seemed a world away.
Madeline pulled back, her chest heaving, her hair falling in loose, copper-brown waves around her face. She looked at him—at his blue, blown-out pupils and the way his chest was heaving in time with hers—and reality came crashing back down like a physical weight.
The ballroom. Tessa. The people inside.
“No,” she whispered, her voice trembling. She took a step back, then another. Her hands flew to her skirts to smooth them as if she could erase the touch of him. “No, this… this was a mistake.”
“Madeline, look at me,” Wilhelm said, reaching for her, his voice rough with an emotion she didn’t know how to identify.
“You shouldn’t have,” she cried, the guilt rising in her throat like bile. She thought of Tessa inside, of the Duke’s need for asuitablewife, and of the lie she was living every single day. “You cannot open up to me like that. You cannot touch me like that. You are a Duke, Wilhelm! You have a life, a name, and a daughter who needs a mother who isn’t… who isn’t living a lie!”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, his brows knitting in confusion. “A lie? Madeline, what do you mean to say?”
“I’m not who you think I am!” she shouted. The truth hovered on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to confess her name, her heritage, and the reason she was hiding in his house. “My?—”
A sudden, terrible crash of glass echoed from the ballroom, followed by a high, piercing scream that cut through the night air.
Wilhelm went still, his protective instincts overriding his confusion in an instant. He turned toward the house, his jaw setting. “Tessa.”
Madeline froze, the confession dying in her throat as fear of a different kind took hold. Wilhelm was already moving, his long strides carrying him back toward the house with the speed of a man who would kill anything that threatened his child.
Madeline followed, her heart in her throat. The heat of their passion still burned on her skin while the cold hand of her past reached out from the ballroom to pull her back into the dark.
CHAPTER 22
“Where is she?”
The words left Wilhelm low and sharp, cutting through the garden air as he turned toward the house, already moving, his long strides devouring the distance between himself and the terrace doors.
One of the footmen stationed near the entrance straightened instinctively. “Your Grace?—”
“Lady Tessa,” Wilhelm snapped, not slowing, not breaking stride. “Where can I find my daughter?”
The guard gestured hurriedly toward the ballroom. “There was a disturbance near the refreshment table. The young lady?—”
Wilhelm was already past him.
The heat of the garden still clung to his skin. A phantom pressure where Madeline’s body had been stuck with him as he strode forward. His pulse thundered in his ears, a coiled readiness that snapped fully awake the moment the music crashed back over him.
The sights and sounds in the ballroom struck him as if he had walked directly into a stone wall. Candles flared against gilt and crystal, skirts brushed and whispered, laughter rose and fell in practiced arcs, and for half a heartbeat he saw nothing but chaos. His gaze cut through it all with brutal focus, searching, discarding, until he found her.
Near one of the refreshment tables, a small, rigid figure stood frozen in place.
Tessa.
Her shoulders were drawn inward, her chin lowered, her hands clenched so tightly at her sides that the knuckles showed pale against her skin. A woman loomed before her, tall and elaborately dressed, a dark stain spreading across the front of her pale silk gown where wine glistened wetly in the candlelight.
Wilhelm felt something in him go utterly still.
“I’m so sorry,” Tessa said, her voice small but careful, each word placed as though she were terrified of making it worse. “I didn’t see you.”
