Page 88 of The Duke
He didn’t look happy about it, but he edged around the duke and left, glancing back at her once apprehensively. The duke watched him go before moving unhurriedly to close the door behind him.
The sounds of the party dimmed. The duke locked the door. Celine was conscious of her skin, as though every bare inch of it had the sensitivity of lips and fingertips.
The duke turned back to her and said almost idly, “Did you accept him?”
She had told Lord Burnley she would be fine, but she felt cornered, threatened. How long could she hold the duke at bay? She hadn’t engaged in any of the seductions she’d planned this evening, and yet the momentum was undeniable. Maybe in the end there was nothing she could have done to stop it.
“I told you,” she said, “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“Did—you—accept him?”
“This has nothing to do with you! You knew this was my goal, I have been as clear on that point as possible. You told me you understood. Why get in my way now?”
“Because,” the duke said, coming to her, voice low and rough, “you are mine.” The duke’s hand went around her head, bringing their foreheads together. “As I am yours. Tell me you didn’t accept him.”
She could have wept. She felt an awful anger at the duke, though it was her own fault.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, struggling to maintain the cool distance that was her only hope of getting through this encounter. “What do you imagine you could do if I did accept him? Nothing.”
“I will have to leave England. I can’t stay and watch you become another lord’s wife.”
Her heart twisted at the plain truth in the words.
Her hands were inside the duke’s coat, against warm satin. The duke’s face was not still against hers, but moving, searching. Hard thighs came against hers. They were no longer merely touching, but embracing.
As soon as she became aware of it, she put her hands flat and pushed, her body straining against the duke’s hold on her. “No.You can’t just take me when it’s convenient. That’s no better than you leaving me when it was convenient.”
She had thought the reminder of their troubled past would put distance between them where her own straining body was unable to, but the duke only took a more complete hold of her, a warm, masterful hand around her nape. The urge to submit, to drop off the razor wire she was walking and fall into the duke’s sheltering body, was overwhelming.
The duke spoke against her temple. “Maybe if I had your gift with words I could tell you what I feel when I think of Paris. How it took me far too long to realise what happened between us that night wasn’t an accident. That to know how dearly I love you now, I must understand the woman I love was with me then as well. If anyone else had left you, instead of saving you, I would have killed him.”
The duke had come back to get her. The duke had come to give her the future she desperately wanted, three years too late.
“I was scared,” the duke murmured against her cheek. “You scare me. You always have. Last time, I ran until I’d put the sea between us. But…” The duke lifted Celine’s resisting left hand to her mouth, pressing her lips to Celine’s forefinger. She absorbed the strain of Celine’s body without any apparent sign of effort. “I gave you a ring, and you came back to me, still wearing it. You cannot in all honesty tell me you are free to marry elsewhere.”
She wasn’t, and never would be.
“You cannot do this to me,” she cried, and wrenched herself away. “Don’t do this,I beg of you.”
“Celine.” The duke laughed, quiet and warm. “What is it you think I’m doing? But forgive me, I haven’t made myself clear. I want to marry you. I want you to be my duchess. My wife. I want you to let me love you, for as long as you can stand it.”
The words—she hadn’t been able to stop them after all, not even by begging—were an assault on her heart she couldn’t survive. Cracked bones and pints of spilled blood.
Duchess.
Wife.
“For as long as I can stand it,” she said dumbly. “Kate, what do you think I…” She couldn’t even put into words what she was feeling. For as long as she could stand it? She would die cloaked in love. She would carry the duke’s love across the threshold with her.
That the duke could believe Celine might one day find her love a burden… It was more than she could take. Desperately, she cast around for anything she could throw in her own path to stop the glorious rush towards capitulation. Come morning, marriage between her and the duke would be impossible. She knew it—all her plans depended on it—but her dumb animal heart wouldn’t understand.
“The letter,” she gasped out. “I will use the letter if I must.”
“Yes,” the duke said, coming closer, “the letter. The letter I can only have when you marry. Celine, it has not escaped my notice that the quickest route to getting the letter back was always for me to marry you myself. It wasn’t possible for me when you first arrived. I’m sorry. All this trouble I’ve put you to, when I could have been loving you instead.”
Celine’s mind went blank, and then she felt herself blush all over. Wasthatwhat she had been doing when she designed the terms of her blackmail? It was so blatant. For all her subtlety and finesse, she’d been wearing her most private desire like a bloody heart on a brooch.
The duke’s eyes went very soft, and she cupped Celine’s cheek. “You hadn’t realised?”
