Page 19 of Til Death Duke Us Part
“You could sneak away.”
“Perhaps I will.” She wouldn’t. He’d stomp about the London alchemist cemetery as if he owned it, destroying what he couldn’t profit from. “But until then, I’m taking the bed.”
“So am I.”
“Fine.” Not fine. Her body still throbbed for him.
He threw the bedding back, holding her gaze, then slipped in. A flash of his feet. Big and sinewy, and she’d never been attracted to a foot before. Stupid rings.
She threw back the bedding on her own side and slipped in. Wearing only her chemise. She should have kept more clothing on. But she hadn’t, and she wasn’t getting up again, not with him settling in comfortably against the headboard, hands cradling the back of his head. He was terribly long. Even propped up as he was, his feet were too close to the end of the bed. They’d hang off at night.
“You didn’t blow out the candle,” he said.
“I don’t trust you enough to sleep with you in the dark.”
“But you’ll share a bed.”
She hugged the edge. “You stay over there.”
“Are you positive that’s what you want?”
She nodded because she didn’t trust herself to not tell the truth. She wanted his hands on her. Everywhere. But only as a prelude to his lips traveling the same places across her skin. She ducked under the covers and squeezed her eyes closed.
“Stay over there,” she warned.
“As you wish, Mrs. Graves.”
At least he wasn’t calling her Persephone anymore. He seemed to shape the name into something erotic. She’d never heard satin in it before, but on his lips, her own name seduced her. She shivered and pulled the covers more tightly about her.
After a few minutes, the bed rocked and he shifted, and she didn’t look to see if he was lying down, but soon after that his breathing evened, and she didn’t think she’d ever get to sleep with him one unfortunate and unintentional movement away from her.
But she did.
Persephone woke the next morning to an empty bed. And an empty room—all their luggage gone but for her clothes and a note telling her to meet him downstairs. Thank God he’d gone before her. She could breathe fully. And dress without being observed. The tingle of attraction had entirely dissipated. She wouldn’t touch the damn rings until she had to put them back in the tomb. But which tomb?
And that question sent her looking, once dressed, for her traveling companion. She found him in the dining room on the ground floor of the inn surrounded by a crowd. He’d glamoured his face again, and he wore the same features he’d worn the day before as they’d traveled. He lifted both arms to the ceiling.
Which was no longer a ceiling. It was a view of London, the entire city skyline arched over their heads.
“No need to travel south,” the duke was saying, “when I can show you the great capital’s beauty in the comfort of your own home.” A smattering of applause made him preen.
“Who is he?” a maid near Persephone asked.
“Dreamy,” another maid sighed.
The other tittered.
Persephone thought he looked better as himself, though.
“But he must have a title, or he couldn’t do that.” The first maid gestured to London on the ceiling.
“’Spose so.” The second maid screwed her mouth to the side. “Does it matter which one he is?”
“It does indeed matter,” the duke said, bowing low. He’d heard them, and he was coming their way. “I am the Earl of Givesly.”
“You’re a lying liar is what you are,” Persephone muttered. Of course he wouldn’t use his own name. But had he used another man’s name or had he made a name up? Likely the former. It wouldn’t bother him to start rumors like this about a peer.
As long as that peer was not him.
