Page 8 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

Diana went very still in the cooling water.

“You’ll want to keep your strength about you,” she went on comfortably, mistaking her silence for maiden nerves. “It’s hard work, the wedding night, and no mistake. His Grace is a vigorous sort of gentleman, by all I’ve heard tell. But there’s no cause to fret over that. It’s a blessing, when all’s said. You’re young, and you’re strong, and God willing you’ll give His Grace his heir before the year is out.”

An heir.

The word went through Diana like cold water down the spine. I cannot, she thought. The chamber swam. I cannot do that.

“Your Grace?” A hand at her shoulder. “You’ve gone white as a sheet. Come, up you get, the water’s gone cold on you.”

She let them draw her up. She let them dry her and dress her in a nightgown of white lawn so fine it might have been spun of frost, and brush out her hair until it fell dark and gleaming down her back. All the while some far part of her mind was screaming at her to run, to snatch up her skirts and fly down those marble stairs and out into the London dark and never look back. But there was nowhere to run to. And her body would not obey her in any case. It sat where they placed her, upon the edge of a great curtained bed, hands folded in her lap, and waited, because there was nothing else in the world left to do. The candles burned low. The house grew quiet around her.

And then the door opened, and the Duke of Rosewood came in.

He had shed his coat and his cravat somewhere; his fine lawn shirt hung open at the throat, and open some way below it, so that she saw more of him than she had ever seen of any man, the strong column of his neck, the hard plane of his chest, the shadowed suggestion of muscle where the linen fell away. The smell of brandy came into the room with him. Yet he was not unsteady. He crossed the floor with the same unhurried certainty he did everything, and sat upon the edge of the bed not a foot from her, and the mattress dipped beneath his weight and tilted her a fraction toward him.

Diana pulled away.

His hand came up and caught her chin, and tipped her face gently back toward his own. His thumb rested at the corner of her jaw.

“Why do you pull away, Duchess?” His voice was low and dark, and there was something lazy in it now, some warmth the brandy had loosened. “You are trembling.”

She lifted her own hand and drew his fingers from her face, and was proud, distantly, that her voice came steady. “You said you would bring me your terms. Your Grace. I am waiting to hear them.”

“Ah. The terms.” He leaned nearer.

She leaned back.

“Oh, that.” He said it above her ear, as though the whole of her bargain was a small and pleasant thing he had already half agreed to and merely wished to draw out a little longer before he said so. “You have asked me a great deal, Duchess. It seems only fair that I should hear the whole of it before I answer.”

“You have heard the whole of it.”

“Have I?” His mouth curved. “I confess I was not attending as closely as I ought. I found myself distracted.”

She could see the dark blue of his eyes and the shadow of his jaw. The way his gaze moved down over her and heat crawled up her throat and into her face.

His fingers found the shoulder of her nightgown and drew it slowly down, baring the smooth curve of her shoulder to the cool air.

Fight, some small voice told her. Push him away.

But her arms had gone weak and useless. He bent his head, and pressed his mouth to the bare skin of her shoulder, and breathed her in. She shivered and stood still as she inhaled him in return. He was so close. She wanted to hate it and found she could not. His body carried that same comforting warmth it had held at the altar that morning.

“You smell of rosewater,” he murmured against her skin. “It is doing me very little good, Duchess.”

She had no answer for that at all, and knew it. She turned her face away rather than let him see it color.

He laughed softly and lifted his head just far enough to look at her properly.

“You have gone quite red.”

“I have not.”

“You have. To the very tips of your ears.” His thumb traced along the line of her jaw. “Why is that, I wonder?”

“I am perfectly well, Your Grace.” It came out unsteady, and she heard it come out unsteady. “It is only warm in here.”

“Has no one ever told you,” he said, “that you wear every one of your feelings upon your face? A man need hardly ask you anything at all.”

“I have not—” Her voice caught. She tried again. “I have not had a great many conversations of this sort, Your Grace. I would not know how one is meant to conduct one’s face during them.”