Page 22 of The Confessions of a Lady
Penny’s senses flamed to life. Sparklers crackled over her skin, bands of steel wrapped around her lungs, her nipples contracted into almost painfully sensitive buds, and her fingers tingled.
What is happening to me?
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ He said again. This time, the words rumbled against her scalp.
‘I couldn’t leave.’ The truth spilled from her lips unbidden. ‘I heard the music and saw you playing, and I couldn’t leave.’ Butwhyshe couldn’t leave remained a mystery. Whatever this was between them – the gossamer strands wrapping them together like spider threads, the magnetic force pulling her closer when she should have walked away – made no sense. He was an evil man, intent on harming the innocent.
Unless I’m wrong.
It was a staggering thought. One she couldn’t afford to entertain. It would destroy her purpose for being in his house, her hopes for freeing her mother, her dislike of the beautiful man. Besides, even if she was wrong about his crimes – and that was a big if – he was still a marquess.
And I am still just his maid.
This was impossibly forbidden. She was so far beneath him as to be insignificant. But the inevitability of the moment resonated in her bones like the ebb and flow of his song, the rise of the moon, the wind rustling in the newly budded cherry trees.
‘I play when I’m restless. When I can’t sleep. When my mind is troubled.’ He released her wrist, and she felt his fingers tracing up her arm, wrapping around the back of her neck, tangling in her curls, holding her steady.
‘What plagues your mind so late at night, my lord?’ She shouldn’t have asked. What would she do with his answer? And why did she wish to offer comfort to her enemy? Only, he didn’t seem like an enemy. He seemed lost, lonely, and achingly vulnerable.
‘Liam. My name is Liam.’ He brushed his lips against her temple, so soft, it could have been the wings of a moth. ‘Will you say it? Let me hear it from your lips?’
Liam.
She tasted his name on her tongue like honey drizzled with melting butter, but she wouldn’t dare repeat it. She shook her head but still leaned closer. Their bodies almost touched. Tracing her hand along the edge of his snow-white shirt, she wasn’t bold enough to test the texture of his skin.
‘You would deny me such a small pleasure? Hearing my name on your lips?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Her voice grew husky as her fingers grew brave, breeching the boundary of his shirt to skate along warm flesh.
He hissed in a breath, his voice growing even deeper. ‘Of course. It’s only right. Do you always do what is right?’
Rarely.
‘I try, my lord.’ Her hand retreated back to his shirt, and she pressed it flat over his heart. The wild thumping beneath her palm matched her own heartbeat.
His thumb grazed her ear as he whispered into the delicate shell. ‘We must all try, mustn’t we? I find myself wrestling the demons of my past tonight, Miss Smith.’
She didn’t miss the emphasis he put on her name.
Why would an evil man wrestle his devils? Wouldn’t he embrace them?
‘What fiends lurk in those shadowed halls?’ she wondered aloud.
‘My brother died a few months ago.’ The words ripped from his mouth, taking with them some of her composure. She knew this but hadn’t thought Reynard’s death would affect the marquess. Evil men weren’t supposed to care about people. They were lone entities existing only to be feared or punished.
But I’m not scared of Liam.
And in this moment, she didn’t want to punish him. Which was perplexing.
Rubbing her hand up and down his chest, less to explore and more to comfort, Penny wondered what kind of monster had a heart to bleed for his brother. She opened her mouth to say something – a trite condolence – but he saved her from her ineptitude.
‘Don’t offer me comfort, Miss Smith. I don’t need it. I did not mourn him.’ His hand trailed from her ear, down her neck, over her shoulder, bumping along her ribs and landing on her hip where his fingers gripped her like a drowning man gripped a piece of flotsam.
Liar. You are in great need of softness. You are grieving him even now, lost in your sadness.
‘I met your brother.’ It was a truth he could easily discover, so she might as well own it.
He pulled back, catching her in his amber gaze. ‘Did you?’
