There was more tohim. She couldn’t stop thinking of the emotion he had shown her earlier in the day. Or that fact that he didn’t demand reciprocity for the pleasure he had given her the night before. And the stories told by his friends were all charming, revealing a side to the duke that went far beyond cad. He was cocksure, certainly, but he was also clearly loyal and loving to his friends.
Which left her conflicted and confused and longing for the arrangement he kept telling her they could make.
“If you want something stronger, I have other options.”
Katherine jumped and turned to find Emma standing at her elbow. Katherine blushed, for she realized she’d been standing there, holding the bottle of sherry, just staring at the door for heaven knew how long.
“I must have been woolgathering,” she said, tilting the bottle and filling her glass at last before she offered the same to Emma. She shook her head with a little smile.
“I wanted to tell you again how happy I am you joined us. I know you came in part to avoid Roseford, and I do apologize again for the misunderstanding. But it seems you two are getting along.”
Katherine ducked her head and hoped that her blush wasn’t too revealing. Emma was one of the quieter duchesses, but she had the impression that the pretty woman was always watching and listening. “We are making the best of the situation,” she said at last.
Emma nodded. She said something then, but Katherine didn’t hear it. At that same moment, the parlor door opened and the gentlemen streamed back inside, filling up the room with masculine presence and laughter. The last to enter was Robert and his gaze scanned the room until he found her. He nodded a fraction, then entered the room and crossed to speak to the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield on the opposite side of the chamber.
“I want to say something,” Emma said softly. “And it is violating the bounds of our very new friendship. But if I don’t, I will worry about it.”
Katherine shook off her obsession with Robert and refocused on Emma. “Oh, that sounds dire. Please, do say whatever you need to say.”
Emma glanced across the room and Katherine blushed as he realized she, too, was looking at Robert. “Roseford is a good man, beneath it all. I believe that. But he is…fire. And that can be a very good thing, many of my friends have married fire and learned to dance within the flame. But if you don’t learn, fire can still burn. Do you…understand what I mean?”
Katherine stared at the duchess, taking in her words and trying to find a response that didn’t reveal too much or put her on the outs with her new friends. None of them could truly understand, after all, what she was about to do.
“I can fight fire,” she reassured Emma. “You needn’t worry about me.”
Emma wrinkled her brow, but James said her name in that moment and she excused herself before the conversation could continue. Katherine took a breath as she departed, happy for the privacy as long as it would last.
Emma wasn’t wrong that Robert was fire. Katherine had felt that fire, never more than last night. But she had no intention of fighting it, not anymore. She just had to figure out how to dodge the flames to get only what she wanted and not a bit more.
Chapter Twelve
Katherine’s hands shook as she made her way down the dark and empty hallways of the guest wing of the house. Robert had whispered which room was his as everyone was saying their goodnights, and now she counted doors from her chamber to his as she prayed no one would come out of any of them.
Not that it seemed likely. The rooms were filled with dukes and duchesses, and in the quiet of the hall, she sometimes heard murmurings from behind the doors. Even little moans.
All it served to do was put her on edge in the most shocking way.
At last she reached the seventh chamber from her own. She had to smile, as it was almost as far removed as they could be from each other in this wing. Emma was true to her word that she’d been trying to separate them.
And yet here Katherine was, standing in front of the beautifully carved door, ready to knock and place herself in the immediate path of a man who knocked her off kilter. A man whose actions had led to her marriage years before, a man she had tried to hate for that.
A man she knew she couldn’t trust because of his wager, his reputation, his…everything. And yet if she knocked and gave him just a little, she could take so much more. Take the pleasure she’d sought all through her marriage. Take the wickedness she’d been told was her nature. Take the sensations she had experienced last night at his hands and tongue.
“Just don’t forget to take,” she muttered, and finally forced her shaking fist to tap the wooden surface before her.
It took him less than a minute to answer the knock. When he opened the door, her breath vanished. He was undone. His jacket, cravat and waistcoat had been discarded. His shirt, too, and now she was staring at an expanse of muscled perfection like nothing she’d ever seen before.
Being a libertine normally meant overindulgence in everything under the sun. Clearly Robert did it very differently, for his body was carved from stone.
He could not have been more different from her husband, and she stared because she couldn’t look away. Slowly she forced herself to look at the rest of him. His hair was mussed. His trousers slung low on his hips, revealing the most fascinating curves and lines. He was wearing no boots.
And he was smiling at her. Not smug, not challenging, not even teasing. It was a smile of…welcome.
She gaped, trying to find something clever to say to break the tension when her mind was now entirely empty. He didn’t wait for her to find words, he simply caught her hand and drew her into the room.
He released her and then turned, locking them into the chamber, locking out the world that would judge her for what she was here to do. Now it was only the two of them.
“You came,” he said softly.
