Page 43 of When the Rogue Returns
Still breathing heavily, he glanced over to see her lying there flushed and beautiful and seemingly content. The top of her chemise was pulled down nearly to her belly and the bottom pulled up nearly to her mons. He hardened just to see her looking so luscious, with the candlelight turning her exposed breasts golden and highlighting the tops of her thighs before disappearing into the dark shadows between them. It made him want to reach over and unveil the umber curls just hidden beneath the bunched-up fabric.
But before he could act on the impulse, she straightened her clothing to cover herself more. When she rolled to face him, his breath caught in his throat. For the barest moment, she looked at him exactly the way she’d done when they were first married—as if he were the knight come to save her.
Then the look faded, and he choked back a curse. Hehadn’tsaved her, after all. He’d barely saved himself. And now all those chickens were coming home to roost... and leave droppings all over her life.
Yet when she spoke, it was abouthislife. “You have so many scars.” Running her hand over his chest, she fingered a healed gash along his collarbone. “As I recall, this was done with a bayonet during the war, right?”
“Yes.” One that had narrowly missed his heart. He swallowed convulsively. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
Her hand continued to skim his chest. “You’d be surprised what I remember. These whorls of hair. This tiny mole near your underarm.” She flashed him a shy smile. “The way you kiss.”
That brief glimpse of the old Isa made him kiss her again... and cup her breast and nuzzle her neck as she ran her hands over him. He was just wondering if it was too soon to seduce her once more, when she drew back with a frown.
Her fingers had found two scars along his ribs. “These are new.” Her brow furrowed as she touched a small round patch of skin on his other shoulder. “And this. It looks like that other one you have on your back, where you were shot with a musket at Waterloo.”
With a sigh, he threw himself against the pillow. Clearly she was done with seduction for now. “That’s because this one was made by a musket ball, too.”
Her gaze filled with a stark concern that made his throat tighten. “How? Why? There haven’t been any wars for you to serve in. What have you been doing all these years, that got you shot?”
“Looking for you,” he said truthfully.
She eyed him askance. “On the wrong end of a musket?”
Covering her hand with his, he brought it to his lips to kiss. “I had to make a living, so I hired out my services. Sometimes the work was dangerous.”
“How dangerous?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “I got shot a time or two. Gained a knife wound here and there. All in a day’s work.”
She pressed a kiss to the scar on his shoulder, her eyes troubled. “Who were you fighting?”
“Why does it matter? It’s in the past.”
“Is it?” She glanced around the room. “You’re clearly a close enough intimate of a duke to be given his finest guest suite. You must have done something to earn his friendship.”
“Trust me, it’s not his finest.” The servants had wanted to give him the best one, and he’d refused. It made him... uncomfortable. Sometimes he felt like an impostor when people tried to toady up to him. He might be a duke’s cousin, but hefeltlike a criminal’s son. “There’s a much finer one down the hall.”
“That’s not the point,” she said tersely. “How do you know a duke? Why did you come here?”
He hesitated, on the verge of telling her about the Duke’s Men and his newfound relations, about being hired by Lochlaw’s mother. But he couldn’t bring himself to trust her that much yet. There were still holes in her story, and before he unveiled all his secrets, he needed to know more.
“Tell me whyyoucame here,” he countered. “Once you realized I wasn’t joining you in Paris, why didn’t you return to Amsterdam to look for me? Or Antwerp, if you thought that was where I’d gone?”
“If?” She drew back from him with a wounded look. “You still don’t believe me.”
“That’s not...” He jerked the sheet up to his waist and turned to face her, some of his decadelong resentment rising in him again. “I’m just trying to understand how you could throw away our marriage on the word of your family. Why you didn’t even attempt to look—”
“How was I supposed to manage that? I had no money unless I used the ‘spoils’ of the theft, as you called them, which I refused to do. And my family wouldn’t have given me the money to go looking for you, anyway. They kept saying I was better off without you.”
He tensed. “And you believed them.”
She shifted onto her back with a haunted expression. “I didn’t know what to believe. You were always so reticent, and I can see now that Jacoba played on that. She pointed out that you never talked about your family, that I barely knew you. All of that was true.”
One day he was going to make sure Jacoba Hendrix paid for every deceitful word she’d spoken to her sister.
“And I wasn’t even sure where you were,” Isa went on. “Was I supposed to roam the Continent like a penniless nomad, searching for my husband? Or did you expect me to find some post where I could earn my living, in hopes that I might stumble across you one day?”
“Of course not,” he clipped out, conceding the point. “Finding work is easier for a man than for a woman, anyway.”
