The only thing on it that wasn’t terrifying was an adorable, tiny, stemmed glass with pretty buds sticking out of it.
But there were two cups.
Yeah.
They knew I was in here.
“Your sisters really can’t cook,” I said to the tray. I looked up at him. “That’s the visual representation of ‘it’s the thought that counts.’”
He smiled at me, then he swooped in to give me a soft kiss.
After he did that, he walked into the bathroom and shut the door.
I kept the sheets around me as I poured coffee.
I gave it plenty of room for cream, but even so, once I’d mixed it, I could tell by the color it needed more.
When he came out, he had a gray dressing gown with him.
He handed it to me, murmuring chivalrously, “Just in case you prefer modesty.”
He was just so great.
I shrugged it on, climbed out of bed while he climbed in, and I tied the belt, trapping the voluminous material around me as he called while I walked to his bathroom, “I got out an extra toothbrush head, if you like.”
So great.
I did my business including brushing my teeth.
And I did this in a very modern, all-black bathroom (it even had a black soaking tub). The only break in the black was some gold fixtures and pendant lights and a few green plants here and there (even the towels and mats were black).
Being nosy, instead of going back to the bedroom, I poked my head into the next room over and saw more black. This had white and gray accents, but it was a closet, about three times the size of mine, and the built-in dressing table at one of the two windows in the space was even better. Though, it was empty.
Put there, waiting for the duchess to move in.
Hmm.
His closet had an island in the middle, where I could see open-sided drawers filled with rolled ties and displayed cufflinks and the like. The island was flanked with benches with tufted ivory velvet tops that you could sit on to put on your shoes.
It wasn’t full, but there was a duke in this house who liked his clothes, that was certain.
I headed back to the bedroom, and although I wanted to study the shirtless man lounging in bed with a cup of coffee, I finally took in his room.
Juxtaposition was his thing, because this room was mostly white.
There was a thin black stripe around where his duvet would fall over the edge of the bed when it was made. But the big seating area on the other side of the room (yes, by a fireplace) had two white couches facing each other, flanked with two white chairs, also facing each other. All of this was on a white rug edged in two thin black stripes.
There were no old paintings or portraits on the walls.
But there was a clear crystal Lalique sculpture of the nude dancer, and a black one of a hunting panther.
However, the minimalism was extreme here except…
I stopped dead as I spied the portrait over the fireplace.
It was of a man’s torso. He was wearing a light-blue button-down covering his wide chest. He had his hand in the pocket of his jeans.
However, instead of a head, over the open neck of his shirt and the strong column of his throat was a stunning, drifting trail of flowers, cut rubies and prancing cats that filled the black background of the top half of the painting.
