Page 64 of Dare to Love a Duke
“A few items of my father’s were sold, and I convinced a fisherman to give me passage to Capri, where the English ships docked. I found a British captain willing to take my money for the voyage. The voyage was... long.”
She’d been sick and terrified, praying to her mother for relief and courage.
“Turned out,” she said in as offhand a voice as she could manage, “my important grandfather was unimpressed with hisbastardagranddaughter. He showed me a letter written to him by my father—making plain the plan to abandon my mother rather than bring her to England.”
“Christ.”
“Again, I learned how to survive, this time in the cold and gray streets of London.”
It had shocked her, the frigid English climate, and the leaden skies, and the fact that life in the big English city was no better than it had been in Napoli. The difference was that here, she was considered a foreigner.
She pushed open the door to the laundry room. Inside, the large copper pot in the hearth steamed. Lucia tossed the shifts, chemises, and shirts into the boiling water, then added wood ash to the mixture. Tom watched with fascination.
She eyed him. “Seen laundry done before?”
“I’ve seen it, surely. Have Iwashedlaundry?” He shook his head. “But I’m keen to try my hand at it.”
“Truly?” she asked, surprised. “It’s messy, hot, and tiring.” She picked up the heavy wooden bat.
“In that case...” He shucked his jacket, setting it aside, and then his fingers flew over the buttons of his waistcoat before pulling it off. A moment later, he’d tugged off his shirt and put that on the ground, as well.
He stood before her, bare from the waist up.
Dio aiutami.
Her recollections of their night together hadn’t been embroidered by the passage of time. He truly did possess a body that made her mouth water and her hands itch to feel all that taut muscle, and rediscover ridges and planes and the texture of the dark hair that swirled across his chest.
Desire for him was far easier, and much more pleasant, than dwelling on the past.
“How...” She wet her dry lips. “How is it a duke has the form of a Roman statue? I thought men of your class did nothing but eat and drink and fuck. You should be soft as pudding, not...” Her hand made a vague gesture toward his torso. “...Not like this.”
His smirk proved that her words pleased him. “Pugilism thrice weekly, riding, fencing, as well. And never underestimate the health benefits of all that fucking.”
Her body went supple. She’d firsthand experience of the benefit of his sexual experience. “Let’s see if your brawn isn’t merely for display.” She handed him the wooden bat. “Use this to pound the clothes in the tub.”
“As my lady wishes.”
This day was proving to be an unending torment as she watched the shift and play of his muscles as he worked the garments in the tub. Truly, she could earn a goodly amount of coin by charging admission to this display.
“You found yourself without family in a foreign land,” he said between thumps of the bat. “Tell me what happened next.”
The hot glow of her arousal cooled. “Are you not weary of the subject?”
“As I said, you are a source of endless fascination.” A droplet of sweat traced along his pectoral muscles, then dipped over the ridges of his abdomen.
Come tu sei per me. “As you are to me.”
“My story’s not so unusual.” Once more, she reached for a tone of bored indifference, as if she could convince herself to feel nothing. “A girl finds herself alone in a strange place and there’s only so many ways for her to earn her bread—and it’s worse if the girl has no trade or skill.”
“Thus the desire for the girls’ home.” He stopped his labor, his gaze distant and thoughtful. “God, I’d honestly no idea.”
“Didn’t you?” she asked pointedly.
He dragged his forearm across his brow before resuming his work. “Truth is,” he said darkly, “I’ve seen poverty. Seen it, but never known it. Some tenant farmers in Ireland barely scratch a living out of the earth, and when I could, I tucked bits of my supper into my pockets and took them to the barefoot children outside cottages.”
His forehead furrowed. “Forgotten about that,” he said to himself. “Or how I’d get a thrashing from my tutor whenever he caught me sneaking food out of the house. ‘It gives them false hope.’ That’s what he’d say to me between strikes of the cane. ‘A mouthful today, and not a bite tomorrow is crueler than nothing at all.’” He exhaled through his nose. “Damn me, but I ought to do more for Ireland.”
“Perhaps you ought.”
