Page 42 of The Wayward Duke
Resigned, Julian released himself and studied the cryptogram with renewed focus. But the nonsensical symbols blurred before him, their meaning sliding out of reach. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted how Caroline worried her lush lower lip between her teeth when lost in thought, or how the tip of her tongue darted out to wet her lips when she changed brushstrokes.
He noticed.
He noticed it all.
Control. It was all Julian had left. He clung to the fraying edges of restraint even as he wanted to pin Caroline down and kiss her. This woman had a way of fracturing the barriers he’d constructed betweenwantandtakeandmine.
After a while, she glanced over. “How goes decoding the message?” Her voice was like a fingertip brushing his shoulder blades, smooth and lovely.
“Not well,” he admitted.
“Perhaps your coded Cyrillic needs practice,” she said.
Or perhaps I find myself too distracted by fantasies of my wife spread out before me, begging to be fucked.
Julian wanted to ruin her composure, leave her breathless. Wanted to watch those sharp eyes glaze with lust as he drove into her again and again.
He made another note on his page.Control.“If you’d like to come over here and show me how it’s done, I’d be more than happy to oblige you.”
Colour bloomed in her cheeks, but she cleared her throat. “Very well. I suppose I’ve had enough painting for today.”
He shifted to make room, and she sank on the divan. Lush curves pressed to his side, searing him even through the layers of her clothing.
“Rub my lower back,” Caroline said, presenting the rigid line of her spine to him.
“So demanding,” Julian murmured, even as his hands moved to obey. Kneading the tense muscles elicited a soft noise. “You carry too much tension here. It’s no wonder your back pains you.”
“Mm. That’s why I keep you around. To rub all my sore spots,” she said, bending over the cryptogram. All business. He wanted to shatter her.
Control. Get yourself under control.
“A modified Vigenère tableau to start, I think.” Caroline traced the intricate rows of symbols. “But there seem to be varying patterns layered throughout. Have you done a frequency analysis?”
In answer, Julian retrieved the tidy columns of numbers from beneath the rumpled sheets of foolscap scattered on the divan. Caroline studied them, frowning in concentration as she tallied letter frequencies in her agile mind.
“The frequency for this symbol” – she indicated the triangle – “changes here, do you see? It disappears. This is a distinct code after line twenty, with another shift after line thirty. This pattern strikes me as different from a Russian distribution.”
“Some others were in German and Italian,” he said, continuing to massage her back.
Caroline’s gaze cut sideways to meet his. “So a scholarly terrorist. But how many of those with vendettas against thetonwould have fluency across multiple languages?” She shook her head, not waiting for his answer. “I’ll determine the length of the keyword used to encode this and then break the message into a single alphabet.”
Julian watched his wife work, her movements deft and precise as she devised a mathematical formula to calculate letter repetitions in the coded text. That brilliant intellect spinning out statistics and permutations, seeking a pattern in randomness. She was mercury, quicksilver. Never still, never idle. Always in motion.
Quick slashes of ink filled page after page with translations and frequency analysis. He soaked up her small noises of excitement, the way she gnawed her lower lip in concentration. Desire kindled, gathering intensity.
He marvelled that of everyone in London, only he got to see this side of her. The cool aristocrat. The barefoot woman with ink-smudged fingers. Both were seated here now, balancing on his bare thighs.
And both were his. Still.
Always.
When she had finished dividing and re-dividing the encrypted text, Caroline blew out a frustrated breath. “No wonder you were struggling. This isn’t Russian, German, or Italian. The frequencies don’t match.” A delicate furrow formed between her brows. “Perhaps French?”
He wanted his teeth on that graceful neck. Wanted to mark the flawless canvas of her skin until she wore proof of his claim for all the world to see. Until no other man dared look too long, much less touch what was his.
Mine.
He fought against a low groan.
