Page 31 of The Wayward Duke
Heat crept up her throat, but Caroline made herself continue. “Of course. You don’t really think I didn’t treasure those moments when you made music?” She touched the back of his hand with her fingertips. “I was quite taken with your hands.”
With you. I was so in love with you, I could hardly breathe.
Julian’s eyes fell shut. He turned his palm upwards in silent invitation.
Caroline traced the hills and valleys of his knuckles, the delicate tracery of veins inside his wrist. The years peeled back like old wallpaper. She was an infatuated girl again, and Julian the charming boy who featured in all her youthful daydreams. It was a language written into her very bones, into the deepest parts of her soul.
Something she had thought turned to ash long ago.
“And the rest of me?” Julian whispered into the swirling steam between them. So softly, she almost missed it.
As if her answer meant the difference between forever and nothing at all.
“As I recall, the rest of you was my undoing,” she said wryly. “I remember meeting a brooding boy in your father’s gardens and thinking him the most interesting creature I’d ever encountered. All sharp cheekbones and brooding countenance. Utterly magnetic. Until you opened that mouth of yours and told me people bored you.”
The barest smile touched his solemn mouth. “And you proceeded to declare plants better company and lectured me at length on the superiority of most flora over humans for the remainder of that afternoon.”
“Naturally. You needed schooling.”
“I stand by my original assessment that most people are terrible company. With two notable exceptions.”
Caroline’s breath snagged.
Grace had been his other exception.
“Do you think Grace would be happy to see us together?” she whispered.
Old grief flickered over his features. “She would scold us both about the last eight years, I think.”
Steeling herself, Caroline whispered the long-held fear that had corroded her from the inside out. “Did you love her very much?”
There. The poison was out. Now, she could only wait for the blade to fall.
Julian searched her face. “You believed I was in love with Gracie.”
Caroline forced herself to hold his gaze. To speak the thoughts locked away in the deepest vaults of her heart. “You intended to propose to Grace at the end of that summer, and you only married me because my reputation was compromised. And when you left after we lost her, I thought maybe you—”
“No.” A sharp inhale, then softer, “No, sweetheart. I did care for Grace once, but I lost my heart to you that summer.”
Hope and uncertainty warred inside her. Who knew if this fragile détente would last beyond the confines of this room? One truth didn’t undo the shared grief and distance between them.
“I lost my heart to you, too,” Caroline replied.
Dropping a kiss on her hand, Julian took up the sponge and resumed washing away the last traces of blood and soot. She remained pliant, craving the solidity of his hands on her skin.
When he had finished, Caroline drew a steadying breath. “Let me return the favour.”
They did not speak as she swept the sponge across the sleek muscles of his shoulders, his broad chest – along the cuts and bruises that were evidence of the protective way he’d curled himself around her during the explosion. With reverence, she traced old scars, though she did not ask about them. Those stories belonged to another Caroline, one who had shared this man’s past as well as his bed. One who had lost the right to such intimacy and hadn’t yet earned it back.
When she gestured for Julian to turn, he complied without argument. The rigid line of his spine was an accusation, his body coiled tight as if bracing for something. As if he, too, expected this moment between them to snag on all the jagged glass of their history. Caroline set her teeth against the threatening sting behind her eyes and resumed washing him with meticulous care.
By unspoken accord, they left anything below the cloudy bathwater untouched.
Without a word, Julian rose from the bath in a cascade of water. The lean muscles of his back and thighs flexed as he wrapped himself in a length of linen.
“Let’s get you to bed. You need rest.”
Caroline dutifully donned the nightclothes Julian held for her. Allowed him to tuck the sheets around her as she sank onto the mattress.
