Page 35 of The Wolf and the Wildflower
“How does it move you?”
Her belly tightened at that odd question. Yet somehow she understood his meaning. “Move me?”
“Do not prevaricate with me,” he ordered, his tone almost hard, yet his gaze…gentle.
Trust. Honesty. The building blocks of whatever connections flowered between them to hook inside her chest. “Your scent enters like a breath of air inside my body. One that does not want to leave. It moves through me with a power and feel of…wonder that I do not understand.”
There is my truth, Your Grace,and the earth has not crumbled.
The pleasure he took in her words made itself evident from the gleam in his gaze. “Good,” he murmured.
Jules stood, desperately needing some space. This honest discourse between them might be harder than she’d anticipated. She did not like feeling exposed or vulnerable, and it startled her that being truthful with the duke was akin to such feelings.
The duchess wanted thehaut tonto see a man of refined gentlemanly qualities, one who would smile easily, ask a lady to dance and flirt, perhaps seduce one or two. His mother was desperate for him to appearnormal. The duke clearly understood this goal but did not believe in that role for himself. That he only wanted to know how to put on a veneer of gentility informed her of that much.
Jules had less than three weeks to perhaps help the duke reshape his perception of his former life so that he might desire to truly be a part of it, to truly hunger to transform himself into the Duke of Wulverton. Or perhaps only enough to satisfy the queen and those society carrions who would watch, eager to pick him apart with their wild speculations and gossipmongering. For a wild moment, Jules felt a profound sense of panic.
“Will you learn to dance?” she asked him once again, without turning around. “Reabsorb etiquette lessons?”
“If I must.”
She did not jerk to hear his voice so close. “You must.”
“I do not believe in bowing to any part of society’s ridiculous expectations.”
There was that rough humor beneath his tone, as if everything was ludicrous. There was something else there that she could not decipher.
“Youcannotfail,” Jules said, glancing over her shoulder to hold his stare.
An indecipherable expression flickered in his gaze. “Then I shall endeavor to do my best.”
The duke did not yet understand his mother was hoping they could soften the hard dangerous edge that cloaked him like a second skin. The duke had been standing alone for so long, and against such insurmountable odds, his character had been sharpened and honed into its own blade that followed his own rule.
The duke…Jules closed her eyes and looked away from him.Not the duke…James. Removing that formal barrier suddenly made her feel frightened, less certain that she might be able to maintain only professionalism. Jules already felt this encounter with him had shaken the bounds of propriety.
“Are you fearful to face me?”
Yes,that internal warning cried, yet she said,“No, why would I be?”
Jules turned around. Their gazes collided and in the deep blue of his eyes, she spied an aloneness that nearly choked her breath. Something desperate inside of her reached for him, wanting to comfort…to understand and to heal. “Is there anything that you miss, Your Grace?”
That arrogant head lifted. “Miss?”
“What do you long for…in the nights when your sleep is restless and you peer around the darkness, a hole awakens inside of your chest. If you are indomitable enough, you will question what is needed to fill that space and you may sense something can fill it if only you should reach for that something. I already know you are indomitable, and you have peered into that abyss.Whatdo you long for?”
It flashed then in his gaze, a hunger so raw and primal her heart jolted.There is something.
“Would you share with me, James? Or better, I invite you to make a list.”
“A list,” he repeated slowly, those eyes tracking her every gesture.
Though his barely there smile was mocking, the gleam in his eyes was…cynically amused. She wondered if he knew he had the mannerism of a predator, one confident of its hunting skills. “Yes. A list of things that you would like to do. Things that you have thought of, even in fleeting moments since your return.”
And it was in those needs she would understand him more. “James?” Those piercing eyes held hers. “Be honest with your desires…be honest with me.”
He lifted his head to the sky, his side profile stark and almost forbidding. The duke was silent for several beats, and she patiently waited.
“These woodlands were one of the last places I saw my father.”
