Page 122 of Dukes for Dessert

She’d rolled like restless waves in the night, doing her best to escape fevered memories of the man. Recollections that became lurid dreams, once she’d finally wrestled sleep into submission.

Though morning had been her nemesis since she was a girl, Veronica was particularly fond of breakfast. Coffee and scones, biscuits and bacon, soft boiled eggs in their little cups, and toast drenched in butter. These were the things that beckoned her from the warmth of her bed each day.

And Sebastian Moncrieff, that arrogant bully, had deprived her of that pleasure this morning.

Had stolen it, like the knavish pirate he’d been.

That he apparently still was.

Because, though she was seated in one of Europe’s most opulent first-class dining cars, sinking her teeth into the butteriest croissant she’d had in ages, she could hardly taste a single morsel.

His scent had taken her olfactory senses hostage, filling her with the extraordinarily masculine flavors and aromas that were distinct to him. Warm, wild, and clean. Like bergamot and citrus…both sharpened and sweetened with notes of honey.

Should she bottle the essence, she’d make a bloody fortune.

Damn him for being free to walk the world she inhabited! For confining them into a space from which there was no escape. Were she to flee, she’d run out of track.

And even were she to leap from the train, he’d find her still.

She intrinsically knew that, somehow.

In her unbidden thoughts, she had often wondered if their paths would cross again. Of course, she’d always immediately rejected the idea. He’d been arrested by none other than Carlton Morley, the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. She’d watched as they’d led him away in irons.

Surely he’d have been tried for kidnapping, theft, privateering, even murder. As it was more than a year after his capture, he should have had his neck stretched by a rope.

Which was one of the reasons she avoided British papers. She found she didn’t want to know. Because in all reality she should be relieved that justice had been done.

And yet…

A sudden cold dread clenched in her stomach, and she glanced across the table to see Penelope Weller’s eyes widen in her elfin face with a brief flash of unmasked trepidation.

Veronica was horrifically, intimately acquainted with all that was hidden behind that very expression. The instant physical tension at the approach of an oppressor. The shattering of any pretense of inner peace. The anticipation of humiliation or condemnation. Of punishment and peril.

During her marriage to Mortimer Weatherstoke, the Earl of Southbourne, Veronica learned to read the most insignificant indications of emotion. Such as the tremble of Mrs. Adrienne Weller’s teacup as she returned it to its saucer. The tight, compulsive movements of Penelope’s throat as she worked to swallow her fear more than once. Hoping her voice wouldn’t reveal the chaos within. The returning of both women’s hands beneath the table, to grip at each other. To draw strength from a fellow captive.

Veronica steeled her own spine, measuring her voice and breath the moment before Arthur Weller joined them.

“And here I rushed to breakfast, beset with worry that your food would cool whilst you waited for me.” He scowled down at his wife and daughter’s breakfast plates, on which the food had been more poked and nibbled at than consumed. “I see I needn’t have bothered.”

This was how Weller expressed his disapproval. Sneering over the spectacles perching on his hawkish nose, he expelled the politest words from his mouth.

Yet they landed like a threat.

The subtext always being: You will suffer for my displeasure.

Men like him had so many vast and varied ways of collecting their dues. The range was incredibly wide, spanning from slight cuts and pinpricks of hurtful words, to physical blows that would beat a grown man into dust. Men like Arthur Weller didn’t just break bones, he reached inside the people he should have protected and broke their spirits as well.

To say nothing of their hearts.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” Penelope whispered, her gaze never leaving the table.

Because his wife and daughter could not speak up, Veronica did it for them, taking perverse pleasure in doing so.

Arthur Weller was always pleasant in public.

“Lend us your pardon, Mr. Weller, we were uncertain if you would join us this morning, as you did not yesterday.” She kept her tone conversational, as if oblivious to the fraught atmosphere between the entire Weller family. “In fact, I didn’t see you in your cabin at all, so it was assumed you’d awoken early and breakfasted already, seeing as how breakfast began a quarter hour past.” Picking up a muffin, she slathered it with preserves and bit off an unladylike mouthful, chewing it at him.

This one tasted like strawberries and spite.

---