Page 106 of Trapped with the Forbidden Duke
Silently, the two managed to get a staggering Nicholas back into the parlor and lowered him into a chair that Isabel had already pulled up.
“Oh, good Heavens!” she cried, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Oh, look at your face!”
“My face? Aunt Isabel, I have only cut my head.”
“Yes, but—Oh! There, there, the physician shall make it all better. Do you feel dizzy? How many of me can you see?”
“Well, with the speed of your questions, there may as well be two of you,” Nicholas grumbled.
Edwina was pleased, despite what they had gone through, to hear him joking with their aunt. When had she last heard him crack a joke?
She was so aware of Lucien hovering behind them that when the constables arrived to arrest Stockton’s man, she only knew by her husband’s absence. The physician was stitching Nicholas’s wound, and she forced herself to focus on that instead of Lucien. But then he was back at her side, his body close to hers.
“Come with me,” he said. His voice, quiet and insisting, had her shivering.
She hesitated for a moment before his hand grabbed her waist. Edwina kept her eyes on her aunt, who was fussing over Nicholas, and she stepped back into Lucien’s embrace, both despising herself for wanting it and knowing that she could not keep on denying herself.
“Do not make me beg,” Lucien murmured. “Simply come with me so we may speak privately.”
After another moment of not knowing whether she aimed to torture herself or him with the delay, Edwina followed him into one of the studies, away from the rest of the household. He closed the door with a resounding, firm click.
“Lucien—”
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “Allow me to speak first. Heavens, I hate this distance between us.”
He gestured between them, but neither of them moved closer. Edwina used the opportunity to study him. His shirt waswrinkled and not fully buttoned. His hair was in disarray, and she could not work out how long it had been since he had shaved.
Disheveled and desperate as he was, Edwina found herself growing hot.
This is what our time apart has done to him.
“Edwina,” he began again. “I have been a fool, and I do not need Jasper to remind me once more. I know it, clear as day. I never should have pushed you away, nor goaded you with the possibility of you staying at the townhouse. This last week has been… torturous. I have never felt such despair before. I cannot lose you, Edwina, and I am sorry for all of it.”
“You cannot lose me,” she acknowledged. “But can you confide in me? Can you trust me?”
Lucien winced. “I am trying my best. Let me start with the biggest truth I have tried to protect you from. I am the way I am with my uncle and my cousins because of my aunt. I tried to downplay our relationship, but I absolutely abhorred her, and she hated me. When I was seventeen, I found out that Katherine had been slowly poisoning me, as she had my father, causing his death. It was not some romantic story of him following my mother, but the work of his calculating, jealous sister-in-law.
“And then she did the same to me, trying to clear the way for Allan to become the Duke of Stormhold, so her line would retain the power. I struggled with accepting my cousins and unclebecause of their love for her and their desire to be close to me. I never saw how the two could co-exist, and I ran myself ragged trying to understand it. For years, I have used my trauma as an excuse to keep everybody away. You said I keep you at arm’s length, and it is true, but I refuse to use it as an excuse anymore. As soon as I realized you were in danger, I rode as fast as I could because—Edwina, I cannot lose you, I cannot.”
He grew agitated, the look on his face one of utter devastation and vulnerability she had rarely seen on him.
“Edwina, I love you. I realized it when I saw the Viscount Rothmond celebrate his daughter. I wished to do the same for my own daughter, one day. I realized it when I saw the Duke and Duchess of Silverton laughing together. I realized it when I was deep in my cups this last week, because no matter how many bottoms of bottles I saw, you were there throughout it all, a resounding melody draped in jasmine and rose-scented oil, driving me to insanity. So that is why I look like this—because I cannot go on without you. I do not wish for us to live separately, Edwina. I cannot even bear to sleep separately anymore.
“Come back to hate me, come back to argue with me or to call me a thousand terrible things, but just come back. Come back home with me, and I shall make it up to you ten times over. A hundred times, a thousand times…”
“Lucien.”
Edwina’s voice was hard, yet that one word wobbled on her tongue, desperation lacing it. She could not figure out herthoughts—nothing existed past that terrible longing that had seized her this past week. His story, what he had gone through, she knew it was only the surface, and he would slowly peel back all the layers. But for now, she could begin to understand.
It was all she had ever asked for.
Her silence stretched on, until Lucien nodded, swallowing.
“I understand,” he whispered. “I shall check on the constables.”
He made to leave, but Edwina flung herself at him, her arms wrapping around his waist. She clung tightly to him, breathing in the scent of brandy, the forest, and something so uniquely him that she moaned softly into his shirt. Beneath the thin layer, she felt every hard muscle.
She lifted her face to his. “Lucien, I think I realized a long time ago that I love you. However, I am not a woman who always knows when or how to lower her defenses. Yet, for you, I want to lower them. I want to meet you halfway if you shall indulge me. I love you, and it was all I could think about when that man aimed his pistol at us. All I could think about was you. All I ever think of is you.”
