Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea (18 page)

And that was why she could do the one thing that she should not do.

Tonight.

Before she lost her nerve.

Chapter 12

A
lex’s intuition had served him well his entire life. It had saved his neck when he was fifteen and he had begged Mémé to leave Mont-Saint-Michel with his brother the night before they had originally planned. It had saved his life many times over when he had assumed a new name and joined the Hussars under Napoleon from the age of sixteen to nineteen, before he had escaped to England. It had not served well only once—the night he had been captured by the Portuguese.

Tonight, however, it appeared his intuition would not serve him well once again. He had been certain Roxanne would seek him out. And so he had excused himself from the boredom of the after-dinner entertainments and had retired early to his apartments.

He was grateful his valet was in London so he could enjoy the solitude of undressing in peace. It was strange. He was coming to like the quiet of the Mount. The ceaseless rush of the waves and the rhythm of the tides. His sleep was never disturbed by the sounds of hooves on cobblestones, or curses from inebriated drivers, or revelers in London. He shook his head. He refused to like rustication.

It was impossible.

It was too much like before.

He examined his pocket watch and then laid it on the marble table near the massive mahogany bed in his chamber. He had decided he would not go to comfort her. That way led to temptation and complete disaster.

But he would not turn her away if she came to him. Yet, if she did come, he could not do what he dreamed of doing every sodding moment. She was far too vulnerable at this moment, even if she displayed a cool front.

He had wanted to throttle that idiot Paxton. Frigid? Roxanne frigid? Why, she was the most open and passionate female he had ever encountered—when she chose. Everything about her left him wanting more. But she would only scoff if he suggested it. It would seem as if he were lying to her to assuage her finer sensibilities. She would disbelieve him and tell him to go—

He cocked his head toward the door and then set aside the crashing bore of a book—
Cows of Southwest England
—that had served far better as an attempted-murder weapon. Footsteps. He had heard footsteps.

He flung back the bedcovers, swung into his dark dressing robe, and crossed to the exit.

He paused, listening, and then opened his door.

Roxanne stood there, in the simple pale blue satin gown she had worn that evening, her clenched hand raised. “I didn’t knock,” she insisted.

“All right,” he agreed. “And I didn’t open the door. Do you want to speak to me or not?”

She looked up and down each side of the corridor. “Yes, but not in the hallway.”

“Then how about in here?” He grasped her clenched hand and pulled her into his room. He closed and locked the door.

She glanced toward the huge bed and then took several steps to sit on the stool in front of his dressing table. She took up his shaving soap brush and stroked the inside of her other hand. “What did he mean?” Her eyes did not meet his.

He didn’t pretend to not understand. “He is
un imbécile
.”

“Please answer the question.” She lifted her huge eyes and tilted her head back, her pride in evidence. “There’s no one else I can ask.”

He drew up a side chair, and helped her turn on the stool to face the looking glass. He carefully extracted the first two pins from her simple coiffure. “It refers to a woman who lacks ardor.” He exhaled and spit out the rest. “Or cannot find completion.”

She remained silent as he pulled more pins from her hair. He glanced over her slim shoulder to see her cast-down eyes in the looking glass.

“You,” he continued evenly, “do not suffer from what he suggested. He is an idiot, as I said. A complete fool. He shall be found out ere long.”

“How do you know?” Her eyes met his in the reflection of the looking glass.

“Because idiots never get away with—”

“You know what I was referring to—how do you know I’m not what he said?”

Lord, he had hoped she wouldn’t ask. “I know because I know you.” He combed his fingers through her loosened locks and removed a final pin. He pushed aside her curtain of hair and gently kissed a pulse point on the side of her neck.

“I’m always cold,” she muttered. “My feet are like icicles in bed, even during the summer.”

“That’s because you’re a long, tall glass of water. It takes far longer for your blood to circulate to the tips of your toes than a short, stout female. And actually, I suffer from a similar condition. I know it’s shocking but I will admit that I sometimes wear woolen stockings to bed.”

“You had better not be lying to me,” she murmured. “I need you to explain the other thing you said—the part about completion.”

“Um . . . did not your mother ever discuss with you—”

“My mother died when I was ten. Of a lung complaint.”

“All right,” he said, massaging her head. “If a female cannot find completion . . . well, it is sometimes said—”

“Completion? Completion in what?”

He opened his mouth even though he had no idea what he would say.

She continued for him. “You mean if the husband is so repulsed he cannot finish the act?”

“No,” he whispered. “That’s not it. Roxanne, you are just going to have to take my word for it. You are not frigid. You are just the opposite. You had it right. You had a lying, murderous clod for a husband. We both know it. Do not be a fool by believing anything he says.”

She dropped her head down, and her long blond hair fell forward and shone in the candlelight.

He couldn’t stop himself from stroking her head again. That one sign of tenderness revived her.

She swiveled on the stool and faced him. “But I didn’t particularly care about what he did to me—what husbands and wives do. It didn’t repulse me, you understand. It was just a routine activity, rather like candlemaking.”

Alex coughed.

“And I assumed he didn’t really give much thought to it either for he rarely came to me, if what the midwife confided to me was true. So I agree he was at fault just as much as I for not conceiving a child.”

“Yes,” he said. “I think we already agreed that a man who prefers plants to women is a . . . Need I say it again?”

She was silent for a while and he retrieved the shaving-soap brush from her stiff fingers.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “I only have one last question.”

“Yes?” He wasn’t sure how much more restraint he had. All this talk of completion and finishing and dipping candles . . . well, it was a good thing his robe concealed far more than his breeches ever had in her presence. He wanted to pounce on her and ravage her and prove to her that there was not an ounce of frigid in her lovely bones.

“If you insist I’m not what he said I was, then why do you find it so easy to keep your distance from me right now?”

“You keep reminding me you are married.”

“And you keep reminding me I am dead.”

She stood up suddenly from the stool. He slowly rose from his chair until she was forced to tilt her head back to stare into his face.

The candle flickered, and her golden hair shimmered in the low light. He cupped her face with one hand, and her waist with the other—and began walking her backward toward the door. He could not take her. No matter what she said. But he would not make her feel worse by suggesting she was vulnerable.

When they were two steps from the door he stopped.

“You know,” she whispered, “you are ruining your hard-earned reputation by turning me away.”

He searched her face long and hard. “Perhaps I’m just shortsighted,” he murmured.

“Well, I’m farsighted. I think you wanted to go in the other direction,” she said, urging him backward toward his bed.

And then, he lost any chance of a witty retort when she reached for the belt of his robe.

G
od, she had no idea what she was doing. Her knees were shaking uncontrollably. She had never behaved in such an outrageous manner in all her life. It was wicked to speak and act in this fashion. And yet . . .

And yet, she thought she might just very well shrivel up and fade away if she didn’t do this. Tonight. With this man.

She was going away. But she would do this and then go away. And she would take this memory with her. It would mean very little to him. Just one more female in a long string of ladies. Maybe, the last one before he chose a wife. And this, most certainly, would be her last chance at intimacy before she moved to a remote corner of Scotland, where there was certain to be more gossip over who did what, when, where, and with whom than in the sprawling villages of Cornwall.

She had unknotted his belt. And with that movement he had repositioned her so that her back was to the bed. She forced herself to be bold. To do what she had seen the maid do to the stable master behind the hayrick. She ran her hands inside his charcoal velvet robe to circle his narrow, rock-hard hips and finally rested her fingers on his back. His muscles tensed through the fine linen of his nightshirt. A breath hissed out of him as she tucked herself inside his robe. He was so warm and she was so cold. Her body drank in his heat.

A moment later she felt his fingers and hands move to the short puffed sleeves of her evening gown. He eased down the wisp of satin and dipped to kiss her shoulder.

Oh, he was going to do it again. He was going to touch and kiss her breasts, something she had relived in the solitude of her bed almost every night since that evening by the pond. She had never felt anything like it. Just the memory of it left her dizzy with longing.

The stillness of the night was disturbed only by their breathing.

He eventually lifted his head and searched her face from half-shuttered eyes. She felt his fingers working the row of tiny unseen buttons on the back of her gown.

“Don’t know why people ever complain about buttons,” he murmured, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “It’s all in the waiting, don’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she whispered, breathless.

He winked, and pulled apart the edges of her gown until it fell open to her waist. “Mmmm,” he murmured, plucking at the ties of her corset, loosening them.

She wasn’t sure why the prickle of mortification tickled her. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her small breasts. It was just that before he had eased them above her corset and gown, making them appear larger than they were. She had always been painfully embarrassed by her coltish figure. Her father had always told her she was the son he had never had whenever he had seen her climbing trees and clamoring down into a mine.

Oh, a flurry of thoughts was getting in the way of living this moment. She turned her eyes away from his shoulder to meet his gaze straight on.

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” she lied.

“Nothing good I can see,” he said with a lazy smile. “Do you know what I’ve dreamed about?”

She looked away. “No.” Certainly it was not about a scarecrow figure of a woman’s body.

“Your back.” His hands turned her body so she was facing the bed. At the same moment she heard the sound of his heavy robe hitting the carpet. “You can tell a lot about a woman by her back. And you have this way of holding yourself. As if you could balance a book on each shoulder and waltz across a ballroom. I want to see it,” he growled. He pulled the final lace from the corset and flung it to the other side of the room. A moment later he managed to disengage her arms from her shift and now she was bare to the waist, and colder than she’d ever been in her life. Her nipples hurt, they were so tight.

His hot palm traced the length of her spine and she shivered.

“Are you chilled, Roxanne?” Without waiting for an answer, he urged her body forward onto the plush draping of the huge bed.

“Not really,” she breathed. She was glad he didn’t turn her over. She clamped her eyes shut.

The bed dipped and she knew he sat on the edge of the frame. Again, his hand traced the curve of her spine, only this time his other hand joined the first. He singled out every last quivering muscle of her back to ease the tension. As she relaxed, his touch became smoother, and he traced the contours of her back over and over in a figure eight until she grew warm.

And then suddenly, he was pushing the chemise and gown gathered at her waist even lower, exposing her bottom.

She heard a muffled sound escape him. Every muscle in her back reengaged.

“Oh, Roxanne,” he murmured.

She dug her face into the covers, mortified.

“You take my breath away. Truly, you do.”

And then his mouth took the place of his hands before she could tell him again that she didn’t fancy compliments. He was kissing every last inch of her back and her bottom, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in his wake. She turned her head to inhale a huge lungful of air.

She knew she should be lost to these feelings, but she was too busy wondering what he was really thinking and also what she should be doing to him. How could she even touch him if she was too shy to turn over and expose herself to him?