Page 29 of Dare to Love a Duke
“I’ve never had a night like last night.” His voice was tender, his gaze even more so. He smoothed a lock of hair off her face.
“For me, as well.” She couldn’t keep the sincerity out of her words. “It was remarkable.”
Even in the dimness of the room in early morning light, his eyes gleamed. “I swear to you, I’ll not forget you. Not for the length of my days.”
But she wanted to forget him. Forget that two people could create such pleasure together. Forget that watching him prepare to leave made her heart feel like lead and sit heavily in her chest.
It had been a spectacularly bad idea to learn truths about him. No longer was he merely a construct of her imagination or an object she could use to find her own pleasure. He was real and human and subject to the same desires and vulnerabilities as she.
“I hope you have a good life,” she said softly.
He cupped the back of her head and rested his forehead against hers. Her heart seized with the tenderness of the gesture. “I hope that you’re given whatever your heart desires.” He kissed her, gently, sweetly.
She swallowed around the mass in her throat. “Please.” Her words were barely audible, even to herself. “Go now.”
He straightened, then strode to the door.
Don’t look back.
He looked back.
With all of her will, she forced herself to remain in bed rather than leap up and run to him. Her body ached with the effort. Instead, she stared at the ceiling. She heard the door open and shut, and then his steps in the hallway.
She could mark his progress all the way through the house, until he reached the foyer. Guests from the club were staggering out the front door. He joined their ranks, and then he was gone.
Forever.
Chapter 8
Tom tried to make his step brisk as he strode into the parlor, despite the fact that his whole body felt ready to sink to the bottom of the Thames.
In the early-morning hours, he’d returned from Bloomsbury to Mayfair and barely had time to hastily wash, change his clothes, and throw back several cups of coffee before meeting with his men of business and reviewing mountains of paperwork.
The idyll of last night—of finally making love to Lucia—was truly over. He reminded himself of this as he entered the parlor. He’d put that part of his life behind him. His role as the duke, and protecting his family’s reputation, superseded everything else.
“Ah, there you are, Tommy lad,” his mother, Deirdre, said from the sofa. The sunlight caught in the strands of silver interwoven amongst her black hair, made all the more dramatic by her widow’s black crêpe day gown. “Here we’d begun to believe you’d never join us.”
She offered her cheek, which Tom dutifully kissed.
“Tommy’s never missed taking tea with us.” Maeve poured out a third cup of tea. Her eyes glinted when she threw him a cheeky smile. Clearly, her meeting with Lord Stacey had revived her spirits. “No matter what time he gets home.”
He kissed his sister’s forehead. “Never tell me you were awake at that hour.”
After setting down a sheaf of documents, he lowered himself into a chair and prayed he wouldn’t fall asleep.
“Well, no,” Maeve said. “But my maid said she was on her way to the kitchen when she saw you creeping in, looking like you’d been wrestling with a bear all night.”
Tom only offered his sister a mild look. No point in telling a girl of nineteen that her older brother had, in fact, been wrestling with a very lovely, sensual bear.
“Hush,cailín,” Deirdre said as she plucked a small cake from the tray. “You’re not to know the ways of men.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. “If I’m to one day marry Hugh,of courseI need to know the ways of men. I can’t pretend he exists only when we’re together, and then just disappears into a mist when we’re apart.”
“Oh, blast, you know our secret.” Tom drank his tea, but wished for more coffee.
When Maeve moved to throw a candied nut at Tom’s head, Deirdre said in a timeless mother’s voice, “Children.”
Maeve’s hand lowered.
