Page 49 of The Devil's Accidental Duchess
Selina looked up as her hand settled on the gate, and a sharp gasp cut through the still air.
“Your Grace.” Her eyes widened. “I… I didn’t know anyone would be out here. Apologies. I will… um… I will go.”
He was curious to knowwhereshe planned to go when she would have to come through the gate to get to the main entrance of the gardens.
As she turned, he quickly closed the distance between them, his hand reaching across the gate to catch her wrist. Not a forceful grab as he had done before, but a gentle touch to urge her to turn back around.
She did, frowning down at his hand.
“Don’t,” he said.
She glanced up. “Is that an order?”
A great sigh heaved out of him. “No, it’s not an order.” He released his hold on her and ran that hand through his hair. “I have done everything wrong, haven’t I?”
Selina hesitated. Then, her head dipped in a hesitant nod.
“Sit with me,” he said, gesturing to a nearby bench. “Please.”
He walked there without her, letting her decide. The hard bench refreshed the old ache that had been troubling him, but at least it gave him something else to focus on while he waited for her to come to him.
The gate opened, and she walked through. Her gaze traveled to the garden entrance, then back to him.
Slowly, holding her cloak around her to hide her nightdress, she approached the bench and sat down. A polite distance gaped between them.
“I am sorry about yesterday,” he said. “That business with Mary. I am aware of what you must think, and I apologize for it.”
Selina shook her head. “No one is a saint in this society, Your Grace. No man, certainly.” She chewed her lip in consternation. “It wasn’t the surprise you think it is.”
“No, perhaps not.” Philip paused. “Is that why you were not at dinner? Because of my actions yesterday?”
Every time he kissed her, or almost did, she seemed to pull further away from him. In his experience, that was not how it was supposed to go, but Selina was not like anyone he had met before.
“It’s not justthat,” she replied, staring out across the starlit gardens. “It is everything and nothing that I can put my finger on. I just… I thought that the days leading up to my wedding would be different, somehow. When I dreamed of it as a girl, it didn’t look like this.”
“What did you think it would look like?”
She flicked a leaf from her cloak. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I thought I would know my husband better, I suppose—that I would feel wooed. I thought it would be romantic. In truth, I imagined my future husband might read poetry to me or confess to me as they do in the books I adore. Something to stir the heart. Something to let me know that my husband wants me.”
“You think I don’t want you?” Philip stared at her, incredulous.
He had assumed that his desiring her too much, too intensely, had upset her. Yet now she was saying she thought he did not want her? It was absurd, but then he had never really understood the minds of women.
She shrugged. “I, like you, don’t know if I am wanted the way I want to be wanted.”
He was beginning to wish he had not said that to her. If it was making hishead swirl, it must have been the same for her.
“Then let me show you,” he purred, twisting toward her.
His hand cradled her cheek, his thumb brushing the rosy apple, while his other arm wrapped around her and pulled her to him. His lips sought hers in a fierce kiss that he hoped would explain better than any words that if it was not being wanted that she feared, then she had nothing to worry about at all.
