What I Did For a Duke (25 page)

Chapter 23

A
nd that evening the duke, true to his role as a bad influence, lured all the men present into playing another game of five-card loo, leaving the ladies to talk amongst themselves.

Millicent showed her a sketch of a nest of little kittens she’d found sleeping piled up together in the barn, her true nature drawn right back to her true calling.

She’s right,
Genevieve thought. She was
right
to sketch kittens. They
were
soothing. And perhaps this was key to Millicent’s nature: she drew soothing things, things grounded in reality and possibility. Ordinary things. Adorable things. She didn’t trouble herself with complicated Italian art of nude mythological beings or poetry or become entangled with difficult, fascinating men. It was probably why she liked Millicent.

Which came first, Millicent’s temperament or the kittens?

“I think you should continue with the kittens,” she encouraged. “I do believe they are your forte. Though I do admire the angry swans.”

She
thought
she was soothed, except for at intervals she glanced toward the doorway. Grateful neither the duke nor Harry entered the room.

A
nd then later, much later, Genevieve lay in bed, thrashing as though the sheets were her enemy, as they’d become since the beginning of the house party. She sat up, and wrapped her arms around her knees, and watched the fire avidly as though it had secrets to reveal.

When it was clear no secrets could be found there, she turned her attention to the clock.

Midnight had never before been so powerfully significant.

She’d never been more aware of her own skin, which was alert, expectant, restless as any other creature that typically found sustenance after dark. Or of the texture of her sheets, which suddenly slid with unbearable sensuality over every part of her that was bare. Or the silence inside and outside of the house, the echoing dark, all of which seemed to be waiting, even yearning, for her footsteps, in search of him.

But everything was
wrong
now.

And since she didn’t know why it was, and she didn’t know how to make it better, and because she was tired of confusion, it was wisest, it was best, to stay where she was. They had partaken of each other as a means to forget. And as it could go no farther, it was best to stop altogether.

She was glad to have made at least that decision.

Which was, of course, why she flung herself out of bed and padded to the window to part the curtains and peer out. Because as usual, whenever she’d decided to stay away from him she found herself heading straight
to
him instead.

She wondered what law of physics was involved in this peculiar effect.

And then decided that physics couldn’t possibly have anything to do with lust.

He wasn’t in the garden, at least where she could see him.

Indecisively, she seized her candle, and turned her doorknob, and peered down the hall. The faint smell of the candles doused in their sconces lingered.

She took four steps. But then her feet felt the chill of the marble and burned from the cold, and she rationalized that if she moved quickly onto carpet she would be warmer. So she dashed on tiptoe down the staircase, her hand flat and sliding on the mercifully polished and gleaming banister as she went.

And she tiptoed across the foyer and began with the library. The fire had burnt down to embers. The chairs were empty.

She stood, foolishly indecisive.

“Moncrieffe?” She whispered it.

The word virtually echoed back at her. Almost as though he were gone forever.

An absurd fancy.

She crept from the library, made the icy journey across the chilled marble of the foyer again, her hastily seized stub of a candle scarcely lighting inches in front of her, but she knew the way so well it was scarcely necessary.

She wandered into the green room. She recognized the feel of the carpet on her bare toes. Olivia’s exotic blooms towered menacingly in the corner.

He wasn’t behind them. She knew because she looked.

She abandoned the green room in favor of the parlor, where they had stumbled about in blindman’s buff, and he had identified her from her heartbeat and the texture of her skin.

And she paced like a frantic ghost, growing reckless now. “Alex . . .” she called softly in the room where she’d first kissed him. As though the word was a conjuring spell.

But he wasn’t there.

She’d stopped feeling the cold.

And now panic drove her. Down the servant’s stairs, out through the kitchen, where a fire did burn and a kitchen boy stirred on the hearth restlessly but never opened an eye. Her bare feet were mercifully numb with the cold now.

She ventured out the kitchen door, and stood in the frigid dark for an instant.

And in that moment she accepted failure.

The grounds seemed as vast as the sky, inscrutable, and if he wanted to hide from her, if he was out there, she would call for him forever and her voice would echo mockingly back to her.

And if he didn’t want to be found, he would not be found.

She wanted to howl to the sky.

Damn him.

For
ruining
things. For changing the rules, such as they were. For being the one to decide what the rules were. For introducing her to the hunger in her, and for making it clear he was the only one who could assuage it.

Why had she agreed to any of it?

Because she’d wanted him. Because they were the same
species
.

She was the girl of enormous crimson roses and savage kisses, and only he knew it.

She would be shameless, desperate if she knocked on his door during the journey back to her room. She wasn’t
that
desperate.

She paused before it. Oh, bloody hell.

She tapped.

Apparently she
was
that desperate.

She pressed her ear against the door and heard nothing, nothing at all.

Was he ill? Was he sleeping?

Was he gone altogether?

She carried that notion like a new burden back to her own bedchamber. Only to confront those roses, standing in the corner, mocking her now. Oh God. What would become of the girl who’d earned those roses if she didn’t marry Lord Harry Osborne?

She closed the door behind her, pressing her back against it, closing her eyes.

If the duke had departed Pennyroyal Green, surely her father or mother would have mentioned it? Surely a man like the duke wouldn’t slink away out of disappointment from Eversea House in the dark of night?

Perhaps one more little look around the house.

She opened her door again to bolt out, but her path was blocked by a large wall of a chest.

Her heart flew into her throat and mercifully stopped her from shrieking. She could have stumbled, but he casually stretched out a hand and touched her shoulder. Righting her.

Simultaneous fury and a silent vehement
hosanna
almost lifted her clean out of her body.

“You
frightened
me,” she hissed.

“I doubt that.” He was almost but not quite whispering. “How long have you been looking for me, Genevieve? In vain?”

How
dare
—

“I haven’t looked at all for you,” she lied. “I thought I heard a sound in the hall, and so I opened the door just now. And now that I know it’s you I can close it again.”

She began to do just that.

He stretched out that hand again and pressed it against the door. He was too strong. She abandoned her efforts to close it.

“Is that
so
,” he drawled on a whisper. “Funny, by the firelight it looks like your cheeks are flushed. Almost as though . . . well,
almost
as though you’ve been dashing all over the house for an hour. And you’re breathing
almost
as though you’ve just had a brisk run up the stairs.”

Bloody man.

“The breathing is because you frightened me,” she maintained stiffly.

But why wasn’t he inviting himself into her bedchamber? The fire was burning in there, illuminating him just a little. It wasn’t safe to stand on the threshold of her room after midnight chatting with a duke.

Any more than it was safe to dash all over the house silently calling his name in various rooms, of course.

“I see. It’s not because you darted to peer out into the garden. And then took a circuitous lap about the library while you were at it. And from there, toured the green parlor, and the gray parlor, though you didn’t take a peek behind the settee. And then all but bolted outside my chamber door and hovered an instant before stalking back to your own bedchamber. Nothing at all like that.”

With every sentence her temper increased ten degrees.

“You
spied
on me?” she hissed.

“I simply wondered what you were doing, dashing all over the house like that. Since you weren’t . . .
looking
. . . for me.” He was diabolically amused. “Perhaps you’d left something in one of the rooms? A book of some sort? Although I did wonder why . . . you called my name.”

She was speechless with fury now.

“I would in fact call it a
desperate
search,” he goaded on a cruel, cruel drawl. “You’re
perspiring
from the search.”

He reached a finger beneath a chin, where a bead of sweat traveled, and drew his fingertip up her throat.

She slapped his hand away.

He froze.

His eyes flared. A warning.

She doubted anyone ever slapped him. And lived very long thereafter.

She didn’t regret it.

Her hand stung. It was worth death to her in that moment to slap him.

And then she watched as he leisurely touched his fingertip to his tongue and sucked her sweat from it.

And now something else sizzled along her spine. He might as well have been sucking her . . . elsewhere. She watched the lift and fall, lift and fall of his chest. He was breathing faster now.

“I was concerned about you.” Her voice was hoarse on the heels of that thought. It was hoarse from wanting him, and from the relief, and the fury, and fear, from darting about in the cold, and the pure joy of seeing him standing there. “You seemed in an odd mood after . . . after our conversation today. And I know you don’t sleep well.”

It wasn’t untrue. She
had
been unable to stop thinking about him. In that sense she was unbearably concerned about him.

“Ah. I see. You thought perhaps I was devastated on the heels of your refusal. Once again, you oughtn’t trouble yourself, Genevieve. It was really more of a suggestion. Nothing more.”

And now
he
was lying. But she wouldn’t accuse him of it. Not when he was at last standing before her.

Not when she might be able to lure him into her bedchamber.

“I think you were more concerned about
you
and what you wanted. From me.”

So that was his theory? she thought indignantly.

He was exactly right.

It infuriated her. And frightened her. What had she become? He roamed after midnight. And now she knew of a certainty
her
doom was to roam halls after midnight, searching for him, once he was gone.

Once he was gone?

One day he would be, of course. But the notion was unthinkable.

“You’re mad.” Her voice was faint.

“Well, of course I am. But I’m not wrong, am I? Remember when I warned you might not be able to do without me?”

She was panicked that he was correct. “You should go. Now.”

Now, now, now. It all needed to stop now.

He was utterly unmoved by this suggestion.

“Here is what I wonder, Genevieve. You can go searching for me to ask for what you want from me. To
demand
what you want from me. And yet you cannot seem to tell Harry what you want and how you feel. Why do you think that is? What, pray tell, is the difference?”

It was as though he’d slapped her.

Bastard
.

She didn’t want to think of that. “I want you to go,” she whispered.

“After you answer my question.”

She put her hands to her face. Brought them down. “You’re my friend.” She was panicking. “I was worried about you. I was so afraid I would lose . . . I would lose . . .”

“The pleasures of my body.”

Argh!
“The pleasures of your company. Your friendship. Surely you see me that way, too. We are friends, you and I.”

“Friends,” he repeated thoughtfully. Rolling the word about in his mouth as though investigating the bouquet. “Do you know, Genevieve . . .”

He sounded as though he’d had a useful revelation.

“Yes?” she prompted gently.

“I can see your nipples
right
through your night rail.”

She whipped her arms into a bandolier shape over her chest.

“
Don’t
look through my
night rail
!” she whispered with absurd vehemence.

They stared at each other furiously. She could hear his breath sawing in and out. Was he angry? Aroused? Some combination thereof?

In a startlingly deft motion, he seized hold of the night rail at her hips and yanked it off over her head.

She didn’t even have time to gasp. So surprised was she that she all but assisted him, as her arms shot up high.

She was entirely nude.

He looked at his hand, filled with bunched fine muslin, almost in surprise.

“There. I’m no longer looking through your night rail. And oh, look. It’s just like the Veronese.”

They glared at each other in fury for a ridiculous moment.

Rather like Venus and Mars. Boticelli’s version.

And then he swore under his breath and came at her.

She backed away swiftly until she was in the center of her bedchamber, and he closed the door behind him, sliding the bolt.

And she backed swiftly away while he stood just inside the door.

They stood at a safe wary distance from each other on the carpet, like two stalking animals.