Page 64 of The Duke
“Adele?”
“I haven’t a clue, miss.”
“MisterShaw—”
Throwing his hands up, Mr. Shaw said, “Her Grace had all the traffic on the Thames stopped the day you woke up so that the noise wouldn’t disturb you. The city’s been losing ten thousand pounds a day, and the guilds have tried to break in at the gates. To say Westminster’s in an uproar is underplaying it.”
“She has,” Celine gasped out, “what?”
At that moment a footman came in the door, edged carefully around two standing vases of flowers while holding a tray high above his head, missed a third vase, which toppled with great inevitability to the floor, tripped over it, landed on his knees in a puddle of water and roses with the tray still balanced on his hands, then cleared his throat and intoned, “Your broth, miss.”
Nobody moved for one long moment.
Then Celine got to her feet and did the only reasonable thing she could think of: She started dropping vases out the window.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Celine woke when the mattress dipped beneath her. She had one moment to adjust to daylight and no time at all to adjust to the duke here, in her room, on her bed.
“Get up,” the duke said, her eyes frost-bright.
Celine lowered her lashes, like those men who died in the Arctic must have done to protect their eyes. She hadn’t seen the duke for nearly two days. She snuggled back into her pillows, making a show of unconcern. Her heart pumped and struggled in the narrow passage of her throat. “Good morningdidn’t occur to you?How did you sleep? Would you like some breakfast?”
“Come on,” the duke said, hauling her up by her arms to sitting. “I heard you kicked half the house out of your rooms and dropped the other half out your window. You’re done being mollycoddled, I take it, so let’s get out of London. There’s a horse I want to buy.” The duke pulled the covers back, grabbed her behind each knee, and pulled her to the side of the bed. “You’ve never seen anything like this horse.” Enthused by what she was saying, focusing on her task, the duke kneeled between Celine’s legs and started undoing the buttons of her nightgown. It had the quality of a task undertaken many times before.
A suspicion Celine had been indulging about who had actually looked after her during her illness coalesced into tender certainty.
Blithely unaware, the duke went on, “Sired by a hunter on a racehorse, seventeen hands tall butfast. Never mind, you won’t understand until you see him in action. The country air will do you good.”
Was she still dreaming? Light tremors ran down her body, one after the other. She tried to will herself fully awake. Somehow, she found her voice. “A horse that’s better than a morning in bed? I don’t believe you.”
The duke slanted her an amused glance (as though she’d meant something naughty…Hadshe meant something naughty?) and she became suddenly conscious of how badly she wanted to reach out and stroke the duke’s head—a possessive, indulgent gesture.
“Up,” the duke said, and she stood, slightly unsteady. It wasn’t until the duke began to lift her nightdress that she came fully awake.
She pinned it with an arm over her stomach, hand to her clamped thighs.
The duke looked up at her. She remembered the duke’s hand under her dress in Paris; the duke’s fingers boldly entering her body; the duke’s lips against her ear, saying, “You’re all right,” with only a trembling hint of the need that was going to unspool between them that night.
For a moment, it seemed as if the duke would ignore her and keep lifting her nightdress. For a moment, she hoped, dreaded, wanted—but she had already known the duke would stop when asked. The duke looked away and swallowed, then straightened.
“Tell your maid to be quick. The carriage has already been brought round.”
STEADY, KATE TOLDherself, breathing in great lungfuls of air. It was thick London air but somehow easier to breathe than the air in Celine’s bedroom.Steady.
She waited by the vehicle in the front yard of the house, the matched pair of chestnuts fussing in their harness behind her.
She bent all her focus to pulling on her gloves, flexing each finger inside its soft sheath.Steady.
She had been amused by Celine’s dramatic return to health, by her enormous, autocratic tantrum. She had invaded Celine’sbedroom and worse, Celine’s sleep, without properly considering the consequences. She had practically lived in that room for three weeks; she had undressed and washed Celine, laid hands on her, watched her sleep for hours on end.
But now Celine was, emphatically, on the mend, and it made all the difference in the world.
She could still feel the warmth of Celine’s nightdress in her fingers—warmth from Celine’s sleeping body, warmth that had brimmed over in Celine’s eyes when she first opened them. Perhaps it was a small, everyday treasure that thousands of Englishwomen enjoyed without thought: welcome in the waking eyes of their wives.
Christ.
She had been naked with this woman; they had been lovers. It was a thought she had repressed for a long time. It resurfaced with a vengeance.
