The duke filled the doorway.
He was in shirtsleeves, cravat-less, rolled up, bootless, and the firelight cast the V of visible skin at his throat in copper. Dark hair curled up from it.
Her head went light.
“Miss Wylde.” He managed not to inflect the words with anything other than conviction: she was indeed Miss Wylde.
She did not reply, because she couldn’t. She could not move her eyes from his bare throat. She thought if she touched her tongue to the bones at the base of his throat, his skin would taste like toasted bread coated in honey.
Her skin was everywhere warm suddenly, like the pelt of an animal. It remembered how it had felt to be crushed up against his body, and every inch of her wanted that again.
“My apologies for startling you.” This was how he interpreted her speechless stare. “I saw the toes of your slippers flash in the crack beneath the door.”
She looked down. “Oh. I suppose they are shiny by candlelight.” She was mildly pleased by this.
She looked up again to find a slow smile spreading across his lips. As if no one had ever said anything more charming or absurd in a doorway of a boardinghouse.
Which made her realize: he’d likely known precisely how long she’d been standing here.
Her cheeks went hot. She hadn’t realized it was possible to simultaneously feel like a virgin and a whore.
And then it occurred to her: he might have been waiting by the door, too.
Nothing about him betrayed impatience. But his silence was unlike him. Perhaps he was mesmerized by her in candlelight.
But his silence made her wonder if he had rifled through a rash of reservations between this afternoon and this moment.
She cleared her throat. “I... I brought the letter I told you about.” She brandished it. If she clutched it for one second longer, the ink would transfer to her damp palms. “I’ve come to believe the other pages are a libretto or lyrics.”
“Ah. Very good,” he said. There was a pause. “Shall we read it together?”
He slowly turned like a drawbridge lifting, and the room behind him was revealed in flickering gold firelight and dense velvety shadow. The lamp next to the dark contours of a roomy bed put out a hazy nimbus of light. The light picked glints off a decanter of brandy, a snifter, a vase next to the bed.
Tomorrow. During the daylight. That’s when they should read the letter. That’s what she should have said.
She looked up at him, mutely.
He gently, chivalrously took her candle from her.
He closed the door behind them and slid the bolt once she was inside.
“I was sitting on the settee and reading and having a brandy. May I offer you a... or would you rather...”
He didn’t know the protocol for whatever this was, either, clearly.
“Brandy would be lovely.” Did ladies drink brandy? Did it matter? She was hardly a lady atthis point. It needed to be something. Sherry seemed far too tea-with-the-ladies for the occasion.
She stood just inside the room, rule breaker that she was.
The room smelled of him. Manly, expensive, perhaps a little sweaty. Excellent soap and thebesttobacco and a little of the citrus, woody scent that had haunted her since she’d kissed him. He didn’t baptize himself in scent the way Giancarlo did.
And then there was actual leather, which could be ascribed to the Hessians standing next to the hearth as erect as if he was still in them. They were considerably shinier than the toes of her satin slippers.
She was a cobbler’s daughter. She knew Hessians like that cost the earth, relatively speaking.
It was ridiculous, but suddenly, the beautiful boots, and the great distance between where they stood at the hearth and where she stood at the doorway, underscored their stations in life. This room was vast, and she could onlyimaginewhat his actual home looked like.
She took in a breath, feeling absurdly shy.
