Page 7 of The Wayward Duke
“See anything of interest?” he murmured in amusement.
The blood roared in Caroline’s ears as she tried to gather the tattered scraps of her composure. “Determining the best angle for my sketch. Taking note of geography. The, er, angularity of your…” She coughed into her hand. “Hipbones. That sort of thing.”
“Well then, please inform me how best to arrange my… angular hipbones. What do you require?”
You. Beneath me, behind me, inside me.
Good Lord, where had that thought come from?
Pasting a smile on her face, Caroline lifted her charcoal. “If you could just lie back and relax.”
He shifted onto his back, thighs falling open in casual disregard for modesty.
Swallowing hard, Caroline ignored the temptation now on display. She flipped to a fresh page and began sketching the lines of his shoulders and arms, the lean muscles of Julian’s abdomen, the enticing hollows of his hipbones. The sketch became a detailed study rather than a chaste outline. She took longer than necessary shaping his powerful legs, smudging the shadows to suggest coarse, dark hair.
As she worked, the lingering awkwardness dissipated. Julian made for a mesmerising subject. His body was all lean, honed muscle, strong yet elegant. She lost herself for a time in the sure strokes of her charcoal, sketching curves into angles into planes. The world narrowed down to breath and motion and vision until Julian’s likeness emerged beneath her fingers in painstaking detail. Dappled light and smooth skin. The shape of temptation scrawled across the paper.
When she finally set down her charcoal, a pleasant glow of accomplishment replaced her earlier frustration. “There, I believe I’ve finished for today.” Pulse skittering, she extended the sketch towards him. “What do you think?”
For long moments, Julian stared at the detailed study rendered on paper. At the intimacy there.
Several heartbeats passed in fraught silence before Caroline asked, “Is it dreadful, then?”
His gaze lifted, blue eyes dark with hunger. Ferocity barely leashed. Caroline’s breath snagged as his focus moved along her flushed skin.
“No.” His voice came rough-edged. “No, it’s magnificent. Now, all that’s left is to sign it.”
Caroline heard nothing except the pounding of her own heart. This felt like more than just a playful artistic study between friends. Some silent threshold had been crossed as soon as she put charcoal to page. Or perhaps it had been crossed long before, in furtive moments of connection neither had dared acknowledge.
A thing between them too new to name.
“We shouldn’t immortalise the scandal in ink,” she said softly.
His burning stare stripped her down. “Then let it be our secret.”
4
London, 1874
Nine years later
Silence permeated through the rooms of the sprawling townhouse after midnight, smothering even the soft ticking of the clock. Caroline paced the bedchamber, her thoughts crashing together – memories, conversations, a relationship tangled and tossed. She thought back to her and Julian’s childhood, when friendship came easy. To the early days of their marriage, when passion still burned hot.
Before all the grief that came after.
Before the open grave of the last near-decade.
And then, music – the first strains of a familiar melody plucked from the keys of a piano. Caroline froze, listening, rediscovering the shape of a song she had not heard since girlhood.
Before she realised she was moving, her feet had carried her out into the corridor, the floorboards silent beneath her bare soles. Drawn towards the sitting room by some invisible tether woven of memories and might-have-beens.
At the door, she hesitated, peering through the crack at Julian, his shoulders hunched as his fingers danced across the ivory keys. His eyes were closed, lost in some private memory. The song had layered complexity beneath its simple structure, rich and textured, speaking of things lost and found again. Caroline shut her eyes too, swept back through the years to girlhood afternoons in the grounds of Ravenhill. Back when his music was a gift just for her.
And now she listened to his music as if for the first time. As if she knew him and yet knew nothing at all, this man she married but who had become a stranger to her.
The melody crested and faded, the final notes hanging tremulously in the air between them. An ache bloomed in her chest as she opened her eyes to find him watching her in the darkness, shadows carving hollows beneath his cheekbones. His gaze was remote, the silence heavy with years of distance.
Turning away, Caroline retreated to the bedchamber. She lay between cold sheets, her thoughts too loud in the hush. Who were they to each other now? Not friends. Not lovers. Not even husband and wife, except as lines on a contract.
