Page 72 of The Captive Duke
More than anything, Christian had feared coming to love his captor. In a calculus known only to the captive, such a thing was possible, even inevitable. The bonds formed outside captivity faded to improbable memories, leaving only the relationship based on deprivation and hurt, balanced with an equally insidious appearance of mercy and generosity.
The prisoner, in an effort to maintain his sanity, lost his connection with a universe created by a just and loving God, where questions had rational answers, andpain was expected to be productive of some end. He existed, cast out of all light, all reason, save what kept breath soughing in and out of a battered body and a despairing spirit.
Girard had offered women at various points, and Christian had been relieved to his bones to feel no reaction. Not to the vacant-eyed slatterns recruited from the French army camp, not to the apple-cheeked dairymaids, and not—thank a merciful Deity—to the rare women taken prisoner and thrust into the dungeon to share Christian’s fate.
Early in his captivity, he’d noted the occasional morning salute resulting from a need to heed nature’s call. Even those responses had been reassuring, initially, but then they’d faded, and indifference to everything—sexual functioning included—had become a necessity.
And then, the circumcision as St. Just so baldly pronounced it, a surgical Latin term for what Christian privately regarded as intimate mutilation.
Anduvoir’s wielding of the knife had felt like the mutilation of Christian’s soul, but in an odd way had given him back his life. Thereafter, he’d truly stopped caring, truly stopped wanting to speak, to scream, to rail against his fate. He’d become stronger for the absence of any emotion save the will to live, and even that…
The countess shifted in his arms, making a sound that suggested she was descending into sleep as she cuddled against him on the sofa.
He let her drift away.
Napping had been one means by which he’d coped with the long, uncomfortable nights, and just at that moment, he needed to hold her. He’d been convinced until recently he could not be an adequate husband to her. If his scars didn’t scare her witless—and apparently they did not—then there had been the continuing lack of animal stirrings from his base urges.
Until recently.
And then he’d discounted what he felt as mere biological habit, not enough to sustain a wedding night, until St. Just, with a soldier’s blunt kindness, had made his little comment about a full complement of Hebrew children throughout history.
The man was right. Disfigured did not necessarily equate with dysfunctional.
And if this last kiss had proven anything to Christian, it had given him incontrovertible evidence that his heart was not the only part of him once again taking an interest in life.
Gilly awoke to the novel and lovely sense of being held in a man’s arms, and realized Christian had shifted her as she’d dozed. She was cradled in his lap, supported by his arms, Christian’s chin against her temple.
“Sleeping Beauty awakens.”
His tone was bemused and teasing, and she felt the words in low down, unmentionable places. A prudentwoman, even a prudent widow, would have scrambled off that sofa.
She nuzzled his arm, catching scents of soap and linen from the sleeve of his shirt. “I must look a fright.”
The silliest words a female ever uttered, though usually, she uttered them while patting a perfectly intact coiffure. Gilly blew the stray curl off her cheek and tried to find her common sense.
“You look delectable, if a tad pleasantly disheveled. We’re about to talk though, so you’d best get comfortable.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” She closed her eyes and snuggled down, letting her use of his title serve to chide him. That same tone had never failed to make Greendale—
She would not think of Greendale.
“Will you still be Your Gracing me when I’m inside you, Gilly? Will you call me Mercia when passion overcomes your reason and you cry out in pleasure?”
She opened her eyes, and what she saw in his expression did have her scrambling off his lap. He wasn’t teasing; he was genuinely looking forward to learning the answer to those questions.
Perishingfeathers.Nowhe called her Gilly, her very name a seduction. That was what came of impetuous kisses.
She retrieved her glass of water, relieved he’d let her put even that much distance between them. From the look in his blue eyes, he considered enticing her to dally in the same vein as he did stalking particularlyjuicy—and doomed—prey. She took a sip and sat on the hard bricks of the hearth, across a low table from the duke lounging on the sofa.
When had he become such a well-muscled specimen, and how was she to look him in the eye now that she’d attacked him not once but twice?
“You must allow, two accidents befalling you in a span of days is at least a dangerous coincidence.” He took a sip from the water glass she’d placed on the table.
The dratted man watched her over the rim of the glass the whole time, drinking from the same spot she had, and Gilly felt panic welling up at the implications of such a simple action.
Such drama, and over a few kisses.
Except—this awareness thumped into her mind, rather like a blow—he hadn’t meant the two incidents of kissing as the accidents he’d referred to. Something had shifted in Christian’s regard for her, and not because the girth on her saddle had broken.
