Page 87 of The Captive Duke
She ran her hands over the soft abundance of his unbound hair.
Now she was so befuddled, by passion, by fatigue, by fear, byhim. Christian nestled against her, knelt at her feet like a tired child, and he was no doubt fatigued, but he was also canny as hell.
“Perhaps you should send me away.”
He raised his head up, his hair in disarray from her attentions. “Perhaps I should take you away.”
“Where would we go?” She should not have asked that question. If she went away with him, she’d have no choice but to marry him.
“I have property in a dozen counties. You choose.”He rose and took her hand to assist her to her feet, then stood frowning down at her in the gathering morning light. “After our first night of loving, I don’t want to part from you.”
Their first, because he was confident they’d share others, and so—may heaven help her—was Gilly.
“I’m traveling clear across the hallway, Your Grace.”
He smiled crookedly at her form of address and put one of his hands on each of her shoulders.
“For last night, thank you, my lady. I wasn’t…” He tucked her closer, and Gilly allowed it because some things need not be said staring a woman directly in the eye.
And he’d already delivered her a lengthy lecture about the poison, and not eating or drinking anything unless he was with her.
“You doubted yourself,” Gilly said. “Doubted your manhood over that business with the French and their perishing knives, may they rot in hell.”
Along with Greendale. Gilly hadn’t thought she couldbeany more enraged at her late spouse, but the morning brought that revelation too.
“I doubted myself, yes.” Christian brought her fingers to his lips. “I have doubted myself for months, but a man doesn’t sort out such things easily on his own.”
“You’re sorted out now,” she said, smiling up at him, because this, too, was a scar they shared. “I am a bit sorted out as well.”
Not entirely, of course. She might never be entirely sorted out. She’d been married to Greendale for 3,147nights—she’d done the math the day he’d died—and each one had been awful.
No wonder she was hesitant to accept Christian’s proposal, even though every single particle of her heart, mind, soul, and strength craved to become his wife.
In the days that followed, Gilly felt as if her true grieving were getting underway. Christian came to her room each night, scooped her up, and bore her away to his bed. At first, he was careful with her, his attentions always tender and sweet and limited to one coupling per night. By degrees, he became bolder.
Gilly had the sense it wasn’t his confidence that was increasing, it was hers.
And therein lay some of the grief. As Greendale’s wife, she’d quickly grasped that her marriage was a sad caricature of what a marriage should be. With Christian’s example to compare it to, though, she realized her marriage hadn’t been merely sad.
Her union with Greendale had been tragic, a murder of a marriage. Thank God that Christian was a man who understood the futility of violence in any form.
May-December pairings were common enough, particularly among titled men who had the wealth and position to take their pick of the debutantes on the market each year. Gilly had known some of those couples among Greendale’s cronies, and even theirmarriages could be characterized by affection and respect.
She’d never been more relieved than when Theo Martin had told her Greendale was unlikely to recover. Her husband had taught her how to hate, how to loathe and abhor another human being. How to endure a nightmare with a fixed smile.
With Christian, she was learning how to cherish and esteem, and no matter how she chided him for his presumption or made noises each morning about him overstepping, each night, she clung to him and gave him her body and another piece of her heart.
“You’re quiet,” Christian said. How long he’d been standing in the doorway to her sitting room, she did not know. “You’ve made this place your own nest. I like it.”
He liked her, and Christian Severn’s liking was a precious rarity.
Gilly had appropriated pillowcases and slipcovers from her trousseau, such that embroidered flowers and designs from her wildest imagination were creeping over the couches and chairs.
“You’ll be after my curtains next,” he said. “And you’ve started Lucy on this habit of decorating every fabric in sight.”
“Greendale allowed it,” she said. “He thought a woman with her head bowed over her hoop was a pleasing sight.” To take what her late husband had permitted and make it an excess had been a form of revenge.
Sharing herself with Christian was more of thatsame revenge, at least in part, and Gilly hated herself for that.
