Martin had been strange tonight. Different. There had been moments when his mask had slipped, revealing glimpses of something beneath, something that looked almost like longing.
But that was impossible. Martin did not long for her. He never had.
He does not know about the letters,she reminded herself as she reached her room.He acted completely normal. There is no reason to think anything has changed.
But as she undressed for bed, she could not shake the memory of his voice, low and soft in the candlelight.
You were never afraid to want things.
Had she imagined the weight in those words? The significance?
Or had Martin Hale, Duke of Montehood, been trying to tell her something?
She lay in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling, turning the evening over in her mind. Every glance, every word, every moment of tension that had crackled between them. She dissected each interaction, searching for meaning, for clues, for some indication of what was happening beneath the surface.
But the more she analysed, the less certain she became.
Perhaps Martin had simply been in a philosophical mood. Perhaps his comments about bravery and wanting things were nothing more than dinner conversation, the idle musings of a man who enjoyed wordplay and double meanings.
Perhaps she was seeing what she wanted to see, rather than what was actually there.
And when she finally slept, she dreamed of grey eyes and cryptic smiles and a voice that whispered secrets she could not quite hear.
Chapter Eight
The letters were in his desk.
Martin had not looked at them in three days. This was, he told himself, a sign of admirable restraint. A lesser man would have pored over them endlessly, memorising every line, torturing himself with words never meant for his eyes. Martin was not a lesser man. He was the Duke of Montehood, and he possessed self-discipline in abundance.
He had only read them twice, perhaps three times…certainly no more than four.
The morning sun cast long rectangles of light across the carpet of his study, illuminating dust motes that danced in the still air. It was early yet…too early for callers, too early for correspondence, too early for anything but solitude and the thoughts he could not seem to escape.
He had tried distraction. He had reviewed estate accounts until his eyes blurred. He had answered correspondence until his hand cramped. He had even attempted to read a novel, something light and forgettable, but every heroine had somehow taken on Vanessa's face, and every hero had seemed pale and inadequate by comparison.
It was absurd. He was behaving like a green boy in the throes of his first infatuation, not a man of nine-and-twenty with considerable experience of the world. He had conducted affairs and maintained liaisons. He had navigated the treacherous waters of Society's romantic intrigues with skill and discretion.
None of it had prepared him for this.
Vanessa Wayworth had written him letters.
Not to him, precisely. She had never intended him to read them. They had been private musings, confessions penned in the safety of assumed secrecy, and he had no right to the knowledgethey contained. He was aware of this and understood this. He understood the violation implicit in having read them at all.
And yet.
I wonder sometimes if he sees me at all,she had written,or if I am merely Edward's sister to him, a fixture of the household, no more worthy of notice than the furniture.
He did…he always saw her…always sought her out…
Martin rose from his chair and crossed to the window, his hands clasped behind his back in a posture his father would have recognised. The elder Duke of Montehood had stood thus when contemplating matters of import concerning wars and treaties and the fate of nations. His son stood thus while contemplating a woman he had spent six years pretending not to want.
The irony was not lost on him.
He could remember the precise moment the trouble had begun. A house party in Kent, the summer Vanessa turned seventeen. She had been in the library when he arrived,curled in a window seat with a book of poetry, her hair escaping its pins, her stockinged feet tucked beneath her in flagrant disregard of propriety. She had looked up at his entrance, and instead of the simpering deference he received from most young ladies, she had fixed him with a stare of frank appraisal.
"Lord Montehood," she had said. "I did not expect to find anyone else seeking refuge from Lady Hartwell's interminable musicale."
"The soprano was threatening to perform another aria. I fled for my life."
