Page 12 of Til Death Duke Us Part
“Me.”
Ridiculous. “What do you do with all that space?”
“Pony races on Mondays. On Tuesdays, I invite the city’s orphans over to paint the walls. Every other Friday, the militias have shooting practice in the gardens. We breed guinea pigs in the parlor half of the year.” He opened the door and pushed her inside. Marble everywhere. Just like the mausoleum. Even his whisper, hot on her ear, echoed. “And sometimes we open the doors for urchins to bathe.”
She shook him off and started up the stairs, no idea where they went. “Do stop touching me, your grace. It’s disconcerting.”
“Disconcertingly arousing?”
“Disconcertingly disgusting.”
The last thing she heard as she reached the landing of the first floor was his deep chuckle echoing across the empty walls.
She opened every door and found the rooms empty of furnishings, their curtains pulled tight against any light. Dusty and hollow, they were sadder than the graves she dug. For what purpose did they serve? Graves, at least, would be visited; final resting places were final homes. These rooms were abandoned.
Only one chamber on the second floor possessed furniture. It was massive, larger than the room she rented. In the middle of the room sat a bed she could roll across several times before reaching its end. One side contained large windows shrouded in curtains, and another a fireplace taller than her. There was not much else in the room—a hulking wardrobe and a spindly writing desk. Everything else had, likely, been sold away.
“Welcome,” he said, his heat suddenly behind her, his lips almost brushing her ear. Then he was sweeping around her and across the room. He threw open the curtains, letting in dusty yellow light, then he veered off in the opposite direction. “Tub’s this way.”
She followed him through a door near the fireplace and found another room, small, interesting, and echoing with the sound of running water. He sat on the edge of a large tub, hand moving away from a lever of some sort. He waved a hand and sconces on the wall flared to life. She took a risk, pushed her fingers into the flames. Cold air. A glamour. Another flick toward the fireplace, and a fire roared there.
“Fake, of course,” Morington said. “You’ll get no heat from it, but perhaps it will trick your mind into thinking you’re warm.
“The floor? Fake too?” It was beautifully tiled in green-and-blue bits that sparkled like glass.
“Real. Can’t sell it off, unfortunately.” He stood. “I used to enjoy hot water here, even without a fire. There was an alchemist chap in the kitchen who warmed the pipes for me, but he’s quit. Don’t blame him. I couldn’t pay him. So unless you can do the same…”
“I don’t think I can. We all play in the forge when we’re little, but only the boys are trained, apprenticed out, and taught how to mold the metal. The doors to the tombs open because they are made with untrained family members in mind. They appeal to those years spent playing in the forge. Nothing to do with formal training. The pipes are different.”
“Ah. Unfortunate, that. Good luck, then.” He left the room, and she draped her bundle of belongings over a chair near the tub. It looked cozy in here with flames leaping, causing shadows. But they cast off no heat, and the October chill still tickled her bones.
As she pulled off her clothes and brushed the loose dirt off her skin, she listened to him in the bed chamber beyond the closed door. He was rather like this house—magnificent and cold. And empty. A pity.
The cold water took her breath away until she was used to it. She pressed her hands against the sides of the copper tub. If she concentrated enough, perhaps… was that… did the water creep up a few degrees in warmth?
She laughed at herself. All in her imagination. But the glamoured fire did help her pretend she was wrapped in the cocoon of a warm bath as she hadn’t been in years. She sank into the water, rested her head on the edge of the tub, and lazily scrubbed her skin with a clean linen that was draped over the tub’s side. Likely kept there in readiness for the duke. Likely had once—or often—stroked across his skin. So very… intimate to use a cloth someone else had used. She shivered.
Disconcertingly arousing.
She groaned and ducked her head beneath the water. The man was a scoundrel, even if he was pretty. And even if she knew better, her body was starved for… a man.
And the duke—oh yes—he certainly was a man.
She came up for a breath and rested her head on the edge of the tub again, feeling cleaner than she had since she’d married Percy. She lost herself in the illusion of the fire in the nearby grate.
Until she saw real movement there.
She peered more closely. She could see through the glamour and into the room on the other side. The fireplace went right through the wall, connecting the bedchamber to the bathing chamber. And sitting on the bed in the next room, shirtless, legs wide, forearms braced across thickly muscled thighs—the Duke of Morington.
And he was watching her.
Damn the way her body jumped to life—arousal leaping like the fake flames in the grate. But real. So very real.
And so very dangerous.
4
UNEXPECTEDLY MARRIED
