Page 55 of The Duke
“Of course I forgive you,” she replied, and he had the absurd notion she meant she’d forgiven him for more than just the damage he’d inflicted to her scalp just now.
Turning to look, she reached up and covered his fingers with hers. “Let me,” she gently admonished, and proceeded to untangle her own hair in three deft movements.
To his astonishment, she sat up when he did, following his movements, keeping them close. Somehow, she retained a hold on his prosthetic, and her gentle grasp held him more captive than any chain or manacle ever had.
Silently she plucked at a few solitary strands of her hair that had broken off and remained entwined in the intricate metalwork, and allowed them to drift to the carpet beneath them.
Cole remained motionless as his senses abruptly sharpened, his body tensed as everything became louder, clearer, as though he’d awoken from some bewildering dream, or surfaced from beneath the water. The tick of the ornate clock on the mantel raced his pounding heart. The soft butter and sage hues of the solarium somehow became more vivid. The sunlight shafting in through the open windows broke upon her with a brilliance he’d never before seen.
And when she spoke, her voice was like a melancholy concerto, filtering through him as only music was capable. The vibrations plucking at his very soul.
“It pains me that we humans can be so terriblyinhumaneto one another.” Her fingers wandered from his cold, metallic hand to the round fitting. Sliding beneath his cuffs, they didn’t stop until she met his flesh. “What horrors we can wreak on someone who is more or less exactly like ourselves. The lies we conjure to justify the infliction of such deeds.” Her damp eyes met his, swimming with a potent emotion that made him catch his breath over an answering burn in his own throat. “It hurts my heart,” she whispered, and blinked out a tear that swiftly fell from her chin.
Gentle thunder growled in the distance, warning that their sunshine was not to last.
Cole’s heart reverberated in time to the gathering storm. Were her tears for Lady Broadmore? Or for the mangled wrist she held in her hand. “Are you not afraid of me?” Cole breathed. “Of this?” He glanced down to where she touched him, the sensation more intimate than if she’d reached into his trousers.
She shook her head, her fingers threading through the fine hairs on his arm, drifting upward. “There was a time that I was afraid of the whole world,” she said. “But not you.”
“Maybe you should be,” he warned. If she knew what he was thinking right now. If she realized how close he was to ripping her night robe off her… Despite the mess in the backyard, or the open doors, or the inherent wrongness of it all.
He wanted his mouth on hers again. He wanted her beneath him, just as she’d been, her sweet breath on his damp flesh as he took her.
How the devil did this fucking happen?
“All right,” she relented. “Perhaps I fear you alittle.” Her lashes shielded her expressive eyes from him. “Most especially after last night. But I also…” She didn’t seem to be capable of finishing her sentence as she stared at the metal hand in her lap.
“Donotpity me.” A cold warning crept into his voice.
“You’re in no danger of that,” she said flippantly. “I know how strong and capable you are. Since your… ordeal, you’ve climbed mountains and forged through oceans. You’re more formidable and fearsome than you’ve ever been.” She made an amused sound. “I don’t pity you, Your Grace, only the people who have to spend a great deal of time in your churlish company.”
He deserved that. Cole frowned until he noted the glimmer of mischief in her eye and the slight quirk of her lip. She was teasing him.
“I’m glad you can smile today,” he said, and meant it.
Instantly, her smile died as she glanced at the window, reminded of the horror being investigated in her own garden. “I just can’t understand how a man can be so cruel to a woman, how he can take something more helpless than he and destroy her with such violence.”
“That is because you do not understand what it is to be a man.”
“Apparently,” she said bitterly. “I mean, yes, we women are generally smaller and softer than you, but why does that make us less than human in your eyes? Or less capable?”
“It doesn’t.” Did she mean, him, personally? Or all of mankind? Cole wasn’t certain he was ready to defend those of his sex to her.
“But itdoes,” she insisted. “If I were a man, would you so strongly object to my charitable undertakings?”
“Yes, I would. But we’ve already established that I am an unmitigated bastard. That has nothing to do with your sex,” he reasoned.
She balled her hand into a little fist, her expression turning fierce. “You haven’t any idea the strength it takes to be a woman. In my experience, it ismenwho are the weaker sex. Either too undisciplined to control their baser, primal instincts or, conversely, they are too fragile to endure the discomfort of honesty or integrity. Yet women endure and survive by whatever means we are able. And still we are either property or playthings. We have as much use in the eyes of the law as a cow or a fertile plot of land. It is not wrong to mistreat us. To objectify us. To shame and demand things of us and bend us to your will. That is your right as a man and our duty as a woman. Is it any wonder the world is in chaos?” A verdant fire snapped in her eyes, and Cole recognized a great deal of fear behind the anger. He pondered a moment, his entire being focused on the warmth of her hand as she clutched at him, seemingly unaware that she did so. What a little activist she was. So fierce.
“You know what I think?” he finally said. “Men are terrified that were they to hand over power to women, they’d be humiliated at what a better job you’d do of everything. If you look at it, some of the most peaceful, prosperous times in our empire’s history have been when a great woman occupied the throne. Elizabeth, for example, and our own Victoria, of course. Not many men have ruled so wisely.”
The reluctant smile she gave him melted some of the ice bricked in his chest. “You continually surprise me, Your Grace.”
“I propose that, under the circumstances, we can dispense with all that,” he murmured. “In private you can call me Collin if you wish.”
“Collin?” She wrinkled her nose. “Is that what your friends call you?”
“It isn’t, actually.”
