A shiver moved through his whole body. “You don’t know how much I want to do just that. But your pleasure is my pleasure today, Your Grace. And I will live on that for a very long time to come.”
She tilted her head. A man who only cared for her pleasure? That sounded like a dream in some ways. Only she didn’t feel content with the answer. She wanted him to want more. To ask for more. To feel his control break and know she had done that.
“It meant something to me,” she said. “What you did. What I felt. It meant a great deal to me. I never thought I’d be wanted again, let alone by…by someone like you.”
He stared. “Someone like me?”
“Young, handsome…desirable. I stopped seeing myself as the object of a man’s desire a long time ago. So if this is the only time we’ll do this, I want you to know that it meant something to me. Thank you.” Her cheeks heated as she said those words. It felt so foolish. She pushed to her feet and smoothed her wrinkled skirt. “You—you said before that you had something you wanted to tell me. What is it?”
He opened and shut his mouth for a moment and then shook his head. “Nothing. It was nothing. Just an excuse to come visit you.”
“Oh.” She bent her head. “Well, I’m glad you did.”
“But now we’ve been locked up in this room for too long.” He motioned to the door. “I should go before I can’t resist you at all. Will you walk me out onto the drive to wait for my horse?”
She nodded and followed him from the room, but she had an uncomfortable feeling in her chest as she did so. He had done nothing but tend to her desires and make her feel safe and wanted. And yet now as they stood together on the drive, her footman rushing to fetch his mount, she had the uneasy sensation that he wasn’t being fully truthful with her. That he was leaving for some other reason than that the time had merely grown too long.
But she wasn’t certain how to ask him for more information, to demand he tell her the truth about why his gaze held on hers then moved away over and over again. Because she feared what she’d learn would hurt, and she didn’t want to hurt. Not now when she still tingled from his touch. No, she wanted to stay in this fantasy land. At least for a while longer.
In the thirty years that Roarke had been on this planet, he had never felt so torn by opposite emotions as he did standing beside Flora, waiting for his horse to be brought around. The first emotion was easy: desire. He had been free to touch and please her and his world was still shaken. He wanted this woman, and when he was with her he all but forgot the troubles in his life, which was a rare and beautiful thing he didn’t want to consider overly much.
Probably because of the other emotion that tormented him.
Guilt. He felt awash in guilt. He’d come here meaning to confess his relationship to her stepchildren, to tell her about the threat to her and his role in that thread. But once she’d touched him, kissed him, asked him for more he had been swept away.
And when she’d told him what those moments meant to her, he hadn’t been able to crush them with the truth. Which was why he was so bent on running away. He didn’t want to take that joyful moment from her. He didn’t want to tell her that he had pursued her, at least at first, with an ulterior motive.
His horse was almost here now, he could see the footman drawing him around the corner. In a few moments he would be able to ride away, regroup, find some other mode of confession or protection for Flora.
Only before the animal had arrived, up the lane rode Callum. He stopped at the house just next to Flora’s where Valaria lived, and smiled over at Flora and Roarke.
“Good afternoon!” he called out as he handed over his own reins and came down to Flora’s door. “What a pleasure to see you two. Have you been calling, Roarke?”
Flora shifted, her hands clenched in front of her. “We were just talking,” she burst out.
Callum lifted both brows at the strenuousness of her tone. “Er, very good. Well, I was just about to join Valaria for a late tea. Why don’t you two come down and join us?”
Flora glanced over at Roarke, her gaze seeking his. “You…you needn’t if you have someplace else to be.”
Roarke heard the lilt of hope in her tone. And he saw Callum’s judgment of his response. Worse yet he felt the call to stay. To spend a little more time with her in a way that would further buffer what they’d just done together from what he would ultimately have to tell her about himself.
“I’d be pleased to join you,” he found himself saying. Meaning it, too. After all, if he didn’t have this wretched secret hanging over himself, if he had nothing to stop him, he would have been only pleased to spend more time with this woman and their friends.
And perhaps that was unfair of him to want to have that moment. But he intended to take it.
CHAPTER 11
Valaria was just as welcoming to the pair as Callum had been, and soon they found themselves a cozy foursome, seated out on Valaria’s veranda in the rare warmth of the autumn day. The leaves were turning, fluttering reds and oranges on the light breeze.
Roarke glanced at Flora. He could still taste her on his lips. No amount of tea could erase that flavor of her passion. He didn’t want it to. He wanted to hold that moment close, not sully it with what would eventually come.
She was laughing now at something Valaria had said. The two women had their heads close together as they chatted and he was fascinated by how comfortable Flora was with her friends. There was none of the hesitance in this space, none of the belief that she could not earn welcome the way she feared she would not earn his desire.
“I think Callum and I will get a dog once we’re married,” Valaria was saying with a wink for the duke.
Callum smiled with indulgence and glanced at Roarke. “She thinks she can make me fall head over heels in love with a puppy. And she’s likely right. She knows she just has to crook her finger and I’ll fall right in line.”
Roarke couldn’t help but be moved at the warmth between his friend and the duchess. They seemed truly in love and it was nice to see Callum so happy. They had a future laid out before them once Valaria’s official mourning period was over, an easy joy that was right here and would only grow in the future. He was almost jealous of it, and tried not to look at Flora with those thoughts in his head.
“When I married Stuart, he had five dogs, all ancient things that puttered around the house like little old men,” Flora said with a laugh. “But it was all a ruse, meant to trick me.”
“The dogs were playing a trick on you?” Roarke asked, leaning forward. “How so?”
“One day I decided we all needed some exercise, an escape from…” She trailed off and shook her head. “I needed air. And I took these five old man dogs out with me for a short walk in the garden. Well, apparently this wasn’t done without a lead, which I didn’t know, because the moment we exited the confines of the pathways, they realized they were free and started running.”
Roarke laughed. “I thought they were old putterers.”
“So did I!” Flora said, smiling as Callum and Valaria laughed, too. “Here I am, gathering up my skirts, racing after these five demons in disguise as dogs, screeching their names in rapid succession: Anton, Ruby, Fierce, Bottle, Dragon!” She glanced at Roarke. “Before you start, I didn’t name them.”