Page 596 of From Rakes to Riches

The desperation in the break of her voice was clear, and all Rake wanted was to take it away.

As a duke.

As a man.

As the man who?—

The breath stopped in his chest—the world might’ve stopped spinning on its axis—as a truth, immutable and sure, sank into him and revealed itself.

As the man who loved her.

But he couldn’t speak that truth so bluntly.

She needed to be eased into the idea.

“If you stayed,” he began.

“I can’t stay,” she said, so certain of her words.

“But, if you stayed”—he wouldn’t be deterred—“you wouldn’t have to stay as my jockey.”

Her head canted, but she remained silent.

“And you wouldn’t have to stay as my mistress, either.”

Still, she didn’t speak.

Yet words insisted on falling from his mouth. Words not guided by his mind, but by his heart.

“You could stay as my?—”

Her eyes went wide, and her hand shot across the table, touching a staying fingertip to his lips. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret on the morrow.”

Rake reached up, his fingers gently curling about her delicate wrist. He turned her hand and pressed his mouth to her palm. “We’ll have it your way, Gemma,” he spoke against her warm skin, his gaze holding hers steady. “For tonight.” A beat. “But on the morrow, I shall finish that sentence.”

A promise.

“Tonight, however…” He stood and tugged her hand, inviting her to follow him. “I want to show you something.”

He led her to the dressing mirror, his larger body behind her smaller one. Their gazes found each other in the reflection. Within he met connection—but also a question.

He took her baggy coat in hand and slid it off her shoulders. Within her eyes, he also saw knowledge. She knew what he was about.

But not all of it.

There was something he wanted to show her.

Something she needed to see.

About herself.

He tugged her shirt loose from the waistband of her trousers. “You don’t have to live in the shadows any longer, Gemma.” He pulled the shirt over her head, exposing another article of clothing—if it could be called that. The length of linen that bound her breasts. That hid Gemma from the world.

His fingers found the tucked-under end and began unraveling. “Here, in the light, with me, you can be entirely yourself.”

In her eyes he detected a desire to believe him.

But she couldn’t quite.

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