She’d felt his words forming; they’d rumbled in his chest before he murmured them.
“Forgive me.”
She supposed he meant for everything.
For the liberty taken, because he wasn’t a man who simply took things, even though he was a duke, and even though he could.
For hurting her with his words. But they both knew why he’d done it. He flailed for any weapon to hand when pulled by forces he could not command. She understood it. She didn’t like it, either. She would fight dirty, too, to save herself. And that’s what he’d been trying to do.
For ruining every other man for her, precisely as he’d said he would. He was indeed a man of his word.
For leaving her with an impossible choice.
Although she supposed he had one, too.
He loosed his arms, and they eased away from each other.
Stepped back and assessed.
His face was now a veritable chessboard of shadows.
But she felt rather than saw his watchful wonder, the near fury, the desire that, even from that distance, made her shiver.
All for her.
She felt powerful and frightened. Dizzy from kisses and from an elation she ought to thoroughly stamp out before it killed her. Surely, no matter what, devastation would be the end result.
But oh. The bliss between this moment and then.
She couldn’t find her voice to answer him. But she did forgive him, and he likely knew. Because she would have given him anything in that moment, except she could not give him what he likely wanted most, which was to not want her.
Well, that was mutual.
Then the war hero gracefully bowed to the harlot as if she were a queen.
Once upright, his mouth tipped at the corner in another wry salute.
He turned and departed, patting his hat back into place.
Just as he disappeared out the door, his hand rose. And wonderingly, he touched his fingers to his lips.
Lady Beatrice Galworthy had clearly been told that her eyes were beautiful. And they were—sable colored and doe-limpid, her lashes so luxuriant they bent against her cheekbones when she was seen in profile. Which wasn’t often, as she had clearly been instructed to aim them unrelentingly at the Duke of Valkirk. The hope was no doubt to mesmerize him into falling in love.
And this took courage, he thought, blackly amused. She was half his age and clearly frightened of him. But her mute awe at his presence was offset by a self-congratulatory gleam in those doe-eyes. Very few of the other young ladies of the ton would be able to say they had watched the duke take another helping of peas in sauce. He suspected she knew about everything he owned and its value, to the penny. Her mama would have made certain.
All in all she was very pretty, a veritable replica of her mother, who watched over the dinner like a sparrow hawk in green satin. He liked her father; he’d been a good soldier and was an intelligent man. Of course he was going to try to get his daughter a triumphant match.
Valkirk was so bored he did not feel as though he fully occupied his body.
The fault of this lay in the few hours earlier when he had fully occupied his body for the first time in what seemed like years.
Her hot mouth open to his.
That catch in her throat at the pleasure.
The curve of her arse.
As he maintained polite conversation with the Galworthy family, his senses continued to riot. Every cell of him was ravenous and amazed. So this is who and how I truly am, he understood with surprise and a certain resignation. He hadn’t known, because he had never before met a hunger that matched his own. He had, in fact, never been this hungry for any other woman. He had the oddest sensation he was meeting his true self for perhaps the first time, and Mariana had somehow affected this introduction.
And yet. Slim silver candlesticks that had likely been in the Galworthy family for centuries marched down the middle of the table, and he approved of this. He’d spent a lifetime amassing a fortune and building a legacy, and he imagined his descendants dining at tables just like this one, in front of silver owned for a hundred years. He saw his own face now distorted in the smooth, bulging side of a silver tureen, as though he was already inextricably a part of this way of life.
He thought about declarations of love caused by candlelight.
He wondered how Mariana would look naked, by firelight. Which caused him to surreptitiously dig his nails into his palm.
Marrying again meant life with a girl like the dark-eyed one sitting in front of him. She would lie alongside him at night and accept his attentions dutifully. He’d leave her a rich widow, no doubt, he thought mordantly. Free to happily traipse about England and Italy like Mrs. Pariseau, having done her duty by her husband.
He thought of a little girl witnessing her father disappear off a pier and how she had scrambled, valiantly, to find her footing ever since, and his breath went strangely short. It suddenly seemed imperative to be where she was. As if he could forestall anything like that happening to her ever again.
He didn’t know how he felt. Only that he did. He was suddenly all feeling, and the identifiable emotions that rose to the surface were restlessness and irritability.
He should leave it lie. One passionate clinch with a diva in a ballroom. Followed by an apology to her for the indiscretion. A line firmly drawn. Propriety restored.
Easily enough done. Who knew more about discipline than he did?
He was suddenly glad Lady Beatrice had a decent man for a father, and that she would never need to learn another language just to protect herself from the eager, casual hands of men, because no young woman ought to endure that. She should be allowed her innocence.
And he was glad that he was a duke who could say things like:
“I’m afraid I must offer my gratitude along with my heartfelt apologies. I am unable to linger after dinner. Duty calls.”
And shortly thereafter he was gone.
“We did not expect you to return so early this evening. Did you enjoy your dinner with the Earl of Galworthy?” Delacorte asked when Valkirk appeared in the entrance of the sitting room. He had known, courtesy of conversation in the smoking room the night before, where the duke intended to go.
“He has a pretty daughter, doesn’t he?” Mrs. Pariseau wondered, slyly.
“Everybody does,” the duke said grimly.
Mariana hadn’t known where he was going, but she’d suspected. She had not expected him to say. What mattered now was that he was back much, much sooner than anyone had anticipated.
“How go your Italian studies, Miss Wylde?” Mrs. Pariseau wanted to know cheerfully.
Mariana froze.
And the pause seemed inordinate. For perhaps the first time in her life, she had no idea how to reply.
The duke did. “Miss Wylde is an excellent pupil. I should be pleased if she should wish to continue for the duration of her stay here.”
She took a long and surreptitious breath, and an unseemly yet delicious heat pooled between her legs.
“I should like to continue. Grazie, Your Grace,” Mariana told him, gravely.
Mrs. Pariseau said happily, “How delightful! Soon we’ll all be chattering away in Italian.”
“Imagine all the things in the world that can be learnt when you know words,” Dot said, with a happy sigh. “Chess, Italian, who is shooting who.”
“Whom,” Mrs. Durand corrected her absently.
Chapter Twelve