Claiming the Courtesan (20 page)

She read the signs of old wretchedness. He might hide his torments from the daytime world, but they emerged in the screaming nightmares that shattered his sleep. She read pride and intelligence. She read the passion that made him, as much as her, its victim.

Strangely, she could find no anger in his face. She wondered why.

He sighed heavily and came into the room. “Are you all right?” His dark blue eyes searched her face. “Kate tells me there’s no fever.”

“I’m fine. I’m never sick.” Her sturdy Yorkshire forebears had gifted her with an iron constitution. Her eyes sharpened on the duke. He looked strained and unhappy. “How are you?”

“Me?” He was clearly surprised at her inquiry.

It struck her he was a man who never expected anything as commonplace as kindness.

“Yes,” she said steadily. “You were out in the elements too.”

The wry smile that somewhere in the last days she’d learned to treasure flickered and died. “The recollection of my sins kept me warm.”

With apparent reluctance, he stepped forward to the bedside and ran his hand down the shining braid of hair that fell over her shoulder and across her breast. The gesture conveyed a rare tenderness. Even so, her heart began to race with excitement and her nipples tightened under their chaste cotton covering. He was close enough for her to hear his breath catch at the swift response.

He stepped away, and the warmth of his touch went with him. “Sleep now.”

Shock silenced her for the few seconds it took him to reach the door. “Your Grace?”

He didn’t turn. “Good night.”

Good night?

Clumsily, she scrambled out of the bed, ignoring the screaming protest of her aching muscles. “Wait, Your Grace.”

He looked back at her, his eyes opaque.

“Yes, what is it?” He sounded calm, uninvolved, neutral.

What was happening? She’d braced herself to meet rage, disdain, insult, vengeance. But this indifference bewildered her.

In her head, she’d played out many scenes of what might happen tonight. None had included having to coax him into her bed. Good Lord, hadn’t she spent the last days battling without surcease to keep him out of it?

“Aren’t you…aren’t you going to stay?” she asked awkwardly.

Soraya would have come up with something alluring to
say. Verity, however, was at a loss.

He shook his head, although at least he didn’t leave. “No.”

No?

She must be going mad. Did her insatiable lover deny her?

On trembling legs, she went after him and put her hand on his arm. She had a moment to register the tension in his muscles before he shook himself free.

“Your Grace?” she asked softly.

“Madam, I am weary,” he said in a cold voice. Still he didn’t look at her.

Unbelievably, he rejected her. And it hurt. How it hurt.

Had she hurt him like this each time she’d denied him? No, of course not. He wasn’t vulnerable to her the way she was vulnerable to him. How could he be? She’d merely been a challenge to his pride. Now she wasn’t even that much.

“I see,” she said slowly, fighting desperately to conceal her pain. “I ask your pardon for detaining you, then.”

“Christ give me strength!” he bit out under his breath. “You’ll catch pneumonia, woman!”

He swept her up into his arms and strode back to the bed. She had a moment to register his heat and scent before he tucked her safely under the covers and returned to the door.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said without looking at her.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, pushing herself up into a sitting position.

“Devil take this,” he muttered under his breath as he whirled around to face her. “What the hell do you want, Verity?”

She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought that what she wanted mattered to him. It certainly hadn’t up until now.

“I imagined you’d be angry with me for leaving you again,” she said uncertainly.

“I know why you ran away,” he said flatly. “It was my fault,
not yours. Hell, this entire damnable mess is my fault.”

None of this made sense. “So you’re not angry with me?”

“No, I’m not angry with you. We’ll talk in the morning.”

She didn’t want to talk in the morning. She didn’t want to talk at all.

Dredging up the right words to seduce her previously demanding paramour shouldn’t have been so difficult. Hadn’t she shared her body with this man for over a year?

But her voice cracked as she spoke. “Your Grace, it’s all right if you…I mean, I…I won’t object if you want to—”

“No.” He spoke firmly, as though argument would never change his mind.

The pillar supporting the structure of her life collapsed into rubble with a mighty crash. Ruins lay all around her.

Of course, she’d known this day would come. No man made a lifetime commitment to his mistress, after all.

Yesterday, he’d wanted her. Today, he didn’t.

The transition was too abrupt. She hadn’t prepared herself to meet her dismissal with pride-salving coolness or self-possession.

“Is it over, then?” she asked starkly.

A muscle jerked in his cheek. He sounded so certain when he repudiated her, but that tiny, betraying movement told a different story. “Isn’t that what you’d prefer?”

A fraught question she had no intention of answering. “So you no longer desire me?”

His short laugh was bitter. “Madam, there hasn’t been a second since the day I met you when I haven’t desired you.”

She tried to interpret his expression. The only word that came to mind was
hunted
.

Continuing this inquisition took every shred of her courage. With her bandaged hands, she clutched at the blanket he’d pulled over her with such care.

“But that’s changed?”

A spasm of strong emotion crossed his face and made him look almost savage. “For God’s sake, woman, of course that hasn’t changed.”

“But I’m inviting you into my bed,” she said helplessly, wondering why she wasn’t dancing around the room in relief.

He bowed in her direction, momentarily reminding her of the formality that had prevailed between them in London. “I thank you for the offer, but regretfully, I must decline.”

She spoke after him as he started to go. “Are you releasing me, then, Your Grace?”

The hand he’d placed on the door bunched into a fist against the wooden frame. “I don’t know. I should. I will.” She watched his shoulders tense as if he braced himself to meet a powerful foe. “
I will.
Just not tonight.”

She frowned at the stiff line of his back.

More was happening here than the careless discarding of a mistress who had outstayed her welcome. She could smell the lust on him. That at least hadn’t changed.

So why didn’t he tumble her without delay in the bed that had been their battleground?

“Please tell me what this is about, Your Grace,” she said calmly.

“Jesus, Verity!” He whipped around to confront her again, and she saw she’d finally awakened the anger she’d feared earlier. “My name is Justin. Kylemore, if you must. Stop bloody
Your Gracing
me into the ground. You don’t need to hammer the message home.”

“What message?” she asked, confused but strangely undaunted.

His long mouth flattened in self-derision. “I want you. You don’t want me. But you’ve accepted that escape is impossible so you’re making the best of a bad situation by hu
moring me. I can’t blame you. It’s the sensible choice. Perhaps if I were a sensible man, it would be enough for me too.”

“You think I’m being pragmatic?”

“Aren’t you?” His remarkable eyes were haunted as they settled on her.

At last she thought she understood. “You want Soraya back. I’m not enough for you,” she said sadly.

He inhaled deeply, audibly. “Yes, I want Soraya back. But I also want Verity. They’re both the same person, you bloody little fool.”

Suddenly under attack from an unexpected quarter, she flinched back against the pillows. “No, they’re not,” she said sharply.

His eyes burned into hers. “Yes, they are. You created Soraya because you wanted someone to blame for everything you’ve done, everything pious little Verity can’t countenance in herself. Soraya sold her body. Soraya enjoyed sex. Soraya wasn’t afraid.”

He took another deep breath, and his gaze didn’t waver from hers. “Well, here’s a revelation, Verity Ashton. Soraya is you. Soraya’s innate sensuality and sense of adventure are also yours. Verity is sweet and virtuous and Soraya is a woman who goes after what she wants without regret or fear. Those two women unite in you. Until you recognize that, you’re no use to me or to yourself.” He turned once more to go.

“What do you want, Kylemore?” she asked unsteadily to his back. His accusations charred a path through her mind. Was he right? And if he was right, what could she do about it?

He didn’t look at her as he spoke very slowly and clearly. “I want you to want me the way I want you. I want you to come to me and tell me that. Then I want you to show me it’s
true.”

She’d been prepared to surrender so much tonight, but never had she thought she risked this final bastion of her soul. He was too demanding, too greedy.

“You ask too much,” she whispered, shocked.

“Yes, I do,” he said, and the sorrow in his voice lingered in her ears as he left her alone in the firelit room.

V
erity still pondered the duke’s extraordinary parting lines—how could she not?—the next afternoon as she sat in the sunlit garden. The rain that had made her escape so wretched had relented for the moment. She ached all over from her ordeal in the mountains, and she was tired after a troubled night.

Kylemore had been gone all day. Which, she told herself, was a blessing.

What could she say to him? Especially now, when he wanted more than her simple physical surrender. Instead, he wanted everything—her heart, her soul, her body. More than Verity had ever been capable of giving.

He saw too clearly, damn him. Somehow, he comprehended the games she’d played for her sanity’s sake.

At fifteen, she’d created a being called Soraya who could commit any sin, break any rule. Verity, the core of who she was, remained as pure and untouched as she’d been when she’d sat in chapel with her Methodist parents.

The fiction was fragile. But it had helped her survive.

Now Kylemore wanted to meld the two halves of her nature into one. More, he wanted her to present that unified whole unconditionally to him.

Was all this just one more twist to his revenge?

If she gave him everything he wanted and he spurned her, he’d destroy her. She knew that in her bones.

His rejection would cut to her soul because she no longer had Soraya to hide behind. She risked her real, vulnerable self.

Her hatred had retreated impossibly far, considering how she’d raged when he’d kidnapped her, dragged her to Scotland, forced himself upon her.

She’d lost Soraya. She’d lost her sustaining resentment against him. She’d lost her longing for freedom.

What was left? She hardly dared to find out.

Somewhere in the last days she’d forgiven him. Perhaps when he’d wept in her arms. Or when he’d listened to her sorry history without judging her.

Or perhaps she’d finally forgiven him during that desolate moment in the kitchen before she’d escaped. The moment she’d admitted he and she shared much more than just carnal passion.

Certainly, by the time he’d been so furiously intent on saving her life yesterday, she hadn’t hated him.

How could she hate a man who acted as though, without her, he lost every hope of happiness? For one strange second on that cliff face, she’d recognized that he would have gladly changed places with her if it meant she stayed safe.

Oh, why did she even think about this? Hadn’t she wanted him to keep away from her? And at last she’d managed to coax him into a halfhearted agreement to let her go.

But she couldn’t forget how he’d looked as he’d left last night.

He’d been a man at the limits of his endurance. She’d seen him in the grip of physical desire, but this was something else, something infinitely more powerful.

Not for the first time, she wondered if they’d end up annihilating each other before this contest played out.

“Och, lassie, it’s too bright a day tae look so fashed.” Hamish came around the corner of the house.

The giants were nowhere to be seen. Clearly, Kylemore thought he’d vanquished her impulse to run off. Why not? He had.

She managed a smile for the older man. Chasing her fears and doubts around her head was driving her mad. At least company promised distraction.

“It’s a strange place, this valley. Yesterday, it was utter misery. Today, it’s the Garden of Eden.”

Hamish stopped in front of her, his bright eyes considering as they rested on her. She wondered what he saw. Nothing of Soraya, that was sure. His manner was unguarded, and for the first time, he sounded genuinely friendly.

“Aye, it’s a country of extremes,” he said. “Much like the people born here.”

Verity’s curiosity got the better of her now that the normally taciturn Scotsman seemed in a mood to chat. “Does that include the Duke of Kylemore?”

Hamish shook his grizzled head. “No, my lady. The heir is always born at the castle further down the coast. Young Kylemore grew up in this glen, though. At least until he was seven and they sent him away tae some Sassenach school tae learn tae be a wee gentleman.” Hamish’s sarcastic tone indicated what he thought of that plan.

Verity glanced around at the isolated valley. It was an unlikely location to raise one of the kingdom’s greatest landowners.

“And you were here then?”

“Aye, I worked for his father, the sixth duke. The Macleishes have always been in service tae the Kinmurries.”

“I understand your loyalty to the duke,” she said softly.

Hamish looked at her sharply. “I doubt ye do, lassie. I doubt ye do. Justin Kinmurrie is a better man than he lets ye or anybody see.”

Once she’d have laughed such a statement to scorn. But recently, the duke hadn’t behaved like the unredeemed villain she’d believed him on the road north. And even on that onerous journey, he hadn’t been as cruel to her as she was sure he’d intended.

Light and dark battled for supremacy in Kylemore’s soul. Occasionally, she was lunatic enough to imagine light might emerge victorious.

Oh, you’re a willfully blind fool,
she chastised herself.
He kidnapped and abused you. Never forget that. Don’t make the mistake of imagining just because he saved your life, he’s some sort of hero.

She bit her lip. Did she really want to learn more about Kylemore? She was too confused already. Right now, she needed a clear head and a cold heart. A devoted servant’s reminiscences about the duke’s childhood would only cloud her thinking, remind her that Kylemore was human and not the monster she so desperately wanted him to be.

But Hamish’s teasing offer of information lured her. This might be her only chance to answer her questions.

She met the old Scotsman’s steady gaze with equally unwavering eyes. “You know him so well,” she said.

Was that approval she read in his face? Surely not. A woman who had led the life she had would be anathema to this stern man.

“Aye, that I do. Ever since he was a wee bairn.” He gestured to her bench. “May I join ye, my lady?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Thank you.” He took the space next to her and stretched his bare legs under the kilt out to the sun. “I’m not as young as I used tae be.”

She didn’t say anything, afraid she might discourage confidences. Because confidences were about to flow, she knew.

After a pause, he went on. “I was gey lucky—I’ve always had work on the estate. Most other crofters werenae so fortunate. They were all tossed off their land when the duke’s mother decided more gold lay in sheep than in folk. Families who had served the Kinmurries for centuries were cast away like so much rubbish tae starve or emigrate or find what work they could far from all they knew and loved.”

Verity was appalled. “Surely you exaggerate.”

“No, lassie,” he said sadly. “I wish I did. It’s a common story since the lairds started tae cut a dash down south. The clearances were late coming tae Kinmurrie holdings. But when she decided tae act, the duchess was ruthless. Folk tried tae resist but there wasnae anything they could do. And when the troopers shot John Macleish, my nephew, most of us went quietly enough. We couldnae fight the law.”

It was a terrible story, more terrible for what Verity suspected Hamish left out—the destruction of a whole way of life. “On the way here, I thought it was odd that we saw no people, just ruined cottages.”

“Aye. This happened all over the Highlands,” he said with a bitterness he didn’t hide.

“Yet you don’t blame the duke?” Surely this tragic tale provided her with another sin to heap on Kylemore’s head.

“Och, he was but a bairn. He might have inherited the title, but he had nae real power until he reached his majority. The duchess had all the say, and she’s no a woman tae put anything ahead of her own selfish wishes.”

“But Kylemore continued to profit from what she did.”

Hamish stared straight ahead into the misty hills. His expression was distant, as though he relived those tragic events.

“No, he did his best tae make amends. When His Grace took over, he set out tae find everyone he could. But by then, fourteen hard years had passed. Folk died or were lost. Many went across the water tae Nova Scotia. Still, he tracked down those he could and invited them back. Those with new lives, he gave them money tae make up for their trouble.”

“Fergus and his family,” she said, remembering their fervent and, at the time, inexplicable devotion to Kylemore.

“Aye. Fergus is my brother. Search as ye will, my lady, ye won’t find a soul on any Kinmurrie estate tae say a word against His Grace.”

Once she mightn’t have believed Hamish. But while the last days had revealed a darker, more complex Kylemore, they had also shown her the honorable man hidden inside him too. She had no trouble imagining that honorable man moving heaven and earth to make recompense for the pain his mother had caused.

The duke would abhor them discussing him like this. He wanted her to view him as the impossibly self-assured Cold Kylemore.

But she’d held him in her arms too often. Held him when he’d shuddered with sexual release. Held him when he’d sobbed with misery.

He’d never be that impervious aristocrat to her again. Hamish’s revelations only moved that false perfection further out of reach.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

He turned his head and looked at her squarely. “I’ve watched ye, lassie. I’ve watched the laddie with ye. I know
he’s done wrong by ye. I think in his soul, he admits that. But there’s good in him, if ye look. And for all his privileges, he’s no had an easy life.”

“He’s rich and handsome enough,” Verity said, echoing her brother’s dismissive reply when she’d falteringly tried to describe the tormented depths she’d sensed in her lover’s soul even then.

“Aye, weel, neither make ye happy. Ask him about his father some time.”

She already knew Kylemore had feared his father. She shivered as she recalled him begging his papa to leave him alone. A child’s cry in a sleeping man’s voice.

“Can’t you tell me?”

The older man smiled ruefully down at her. “Och, I’ve gossiped enough for one day. Too much, folk might think.”

Kylemore would certainly agree, but Hamish had only whetted her curiosity.

“The duke has bad dreams,” she said abruptly.

Hamish looked unsurprised. “Aye. He’s had them since he was a ween.” He gave her another of those straight looks, as though he sought some commitment from her. “But ye can help him. If ye feel braw enough tae take the task. And the lassie who climbed Ben Tassoch yesterday is as braw a lassie as any I’ve ever met.” He stood up and stared down at her.

“I was so frightened,” she admitted, remembering the raw panic that had threatened to paralyze her throughout her misguided attempt to flee. She hadn’t been brave. She’d been utterly terrified.

Hamish’s smile didn’t fade. “Aye, but ye still did it, my lady.” He bowed his head to her, one of the few times she’d seen him show anything like conventional respect for anyone, even the duke. “Good day tae you.”

Clearly, he’d tell her nothing more. Troubled, she watched him walk away toward the stables.

Was he right? Did she have the heart to take on Kylemore and the demons that pursued him?

Did she have a heart left at all?

Kylemore’s ultimatum last night had demanded a surrender that was already so precariously close.

Her abject surrender had been his goal from the start. She wasn’t fool enough to imagine anything else.

Oh, why couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone simple and straightforward? Someone who at least promised her a tiny hope of happiness.

She’d never asked much from life. Experience had taught her to make do with what was within reach and never to howl after the moon. She’d be content with kindness and a few shared interests. Companionship. Consideration.

She didn’t want a difficult, brilliant, mercurial, tormented man like the Duke of Kylemore.

But she did.

A horrified gasp escaped her, and she staggered to her feet in denial. The devastating truth hammered at her with the grim inevitability of the cold Scottish rain she’d endured in the mountains yesterday.

She’d struggled against this fate since she’d seen a gloriously handsome young man across a London drawing room. Something within her had immediately warned her of danger. But she’d kept her head over the years, difficult as that had sometimes proven.

Until he’d radically altered the game between them.

In London, she’d been able to maintain the detachment that kept her safe. Here in this small house, where Kylemore refused to countenance barriers between them, she couldn’t pretend she felt nothing for her lover.

Was this the revenge he’d planned all along? Had he fought to stay in her bed because he’d known that eventually she’d fall victim to love?

Love.

Such a small word for what she felt.

Yet what other word could there be?

She loved the Duke of Kylemore. And that love could only lead to disaster.