Page 46 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
She’d recognized that his life had been far different from hers. Rougher. Though she’d never realized quite how much more brutal. She’d taken pride in believing her fiancé was unlike the men of the ton, but it had been a shadowy understanding of who he was.
“I’d known...” Willa barely saw the cards in front of her. “I’d known there were challenges he’d faced, but never the depths of his struggles. He’d said nothing about it.”
“Nor would he,” Celeste said quietly. “Prideful, he can be.”
Willa exhaled softly, ruefully. She and Dom were a pair. Ostensibly, she belonged in the world of the ton. An earl’s daughter, popular despite her insistence on flouting convention, with a substantial dowry. And yet she’d always worn her carefully constructed mask, just as she had when at school. As though nothing could touch her and she laughed in the face of any censure.
At her heart, though, fear lurked. And that fear made her even more afraid that someone might see and guess that she was far less sure of herself than she ever let anyone know.
Then there was Dom, prowling on the periphery. Part of Society but never belonging.
They’d each used the other. He’d been the perfect, shocking choice for bridegroom. And she’d been a prize for him. But even beneath that, they’d gravitated toward each other, instinctively understanding each other even with barriers between them. Something within themselves found a kindred soul in the other.
Yet—“I still cannot understand him. He proposed to me, and then, weeks before the wedding, suddenly became surly and withdrawn. Then everything changed. Why?”
“That,” Kieran said grimly, “I can’t tell you. Whatever happened, he’s said nothing to me or Finn.”
“Or me,” Celeste added.
Frustration bubbled in Willa like a hot spring. Try as she might, she could not untangle the knot that was Dom. Yet the longer she spent with him on this island, in this house, the more it became clear that simply walking away was less and less possible.
On her own in one of the house’s libraries, Willa studied the chessboard in front of her. She’d set out all the pieces in a specific arrangement, one that had been plaguing her for years, and as she sat in a wingback chair next to the fire, she frowned over the layout.
The rest of the guests were in another room, having repaired there after dinner, and music from the pianoforte drifted through the library’s open door like a half-remembered memory.
“Oh, damn,” Dom’s husky voice said behind her. “Didn’t expect anyone else to be here.”
She turned in her seat to see him in the doorway,resplendent in his evening clothes. There was something so magnetic about him in the austere combination of black and white—it had attracted her when they’d been courting, but now he carried even more allure.
“You’re not dancing with the others?” she asked.
“It never came naturally to me.” He moved into the room, and the firelight caught on the pearl that glowed from the folds of his neckcloth.
“You always seemed to enjoy dancing with me,” she noted.
“Ididenjoy dancing with you.” He walked to a table that held a crystal decanter and glasses. “Felt so damn proud of myself, whirling you around ballrooms.”
“Only proud of yourself?”
His smile flashed as he poured a tumbler of whisky. “Randy, too, getting to touch you like that when we waltzed.”
“You weren’t the only one,” she said under her breath. Between feeling his hewn strength under his clothes, and the rhythm of their bodies, she’d always left the dance floor flushed and excited.
At least he was also aroused whenever they’d danced together.
He held up his glass. “Want one?”
“Please.”
After filling another tumbler, he walked it to her. They watched each other over the rims of their glasses as they sipped, and the searing interest in his eyes heated her far more than the whisky.
A pop in the fireplace startled them both. He tore his gaze from hers to frown at the chessboard, and then the empty seat opposite her.
“Where’s your opponent?”
“In here.” She tapped her temple. “Well, more like the recollection of my opponent is here. My father used to have the board set up like this.”
“And you played him,” Dom guessed.
