Page 67 of The Forger and the Duke
His kiss was sweet and hot and unhurried and consuming all at the same time. She met his fervor with her own. They plunged through tender exploration into demand, and she was just as insistent as he. Heat leapt between them as he pressed close, and she felt him vibrating with restraint as he clamped his hands on her shoulders, using his mouth to call up the depths of herpassion. She leaned against his hard chest, clinging to his neck in surrender.
Her knees turned to jelly, her mind floated away, and there was only Mal, this kiss which was a declaration and a promise, beneath it the slow burn in her blood, and beneath that the deeper knowledge that this fire between them fed on more than infatuation. What had grown between them was solid and true and lasting, the kind of bond that could cleave one soul to another through life and into eternity.
The realization was devastating. When he lifted his head to stare into her eyes, his expression as dazed as hers, as full of wonder, she almost sobbed with the weight of this revelation. She closed her eyes as his ragged breath warmed her cheek.
She was his, for always, and she had just sealed that offering with a kiss in a church. In the cool quiet of the ancient brown stone, with the bars of colored light from the stained-glass windows reaching toward them across the stone floor, instead of impious their embrace felt sanctified. Holy.
“You told your cousin you meant to marry me.” Mal murmured the words against her cheek, brushing his lips across her cheekbone, then below her ear and down her neck. She tipped her head to the side, helpless to resist him.
“I did,” she breathed.
“Will you?” He paused with his nose at the high collar of the smart jacket that went with her riding habit, another loan from the duchess.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tears caught between her lashes. More than anything in her life—more than she wanted to start her antiquarian bookstore; more than she’d wanted Mr. Karim to buy her copied manuscripts—she wanted to marry Malden Grey.
“Because I’ll stay a bastard,” he said when she made no answer. She opened her eyes to face him.
“That has never mattered to me.”
His arms came about her carefully, as if she were fragile, as if he didn’t dare move too quickly. “It’s mattered to everyone else.”
“Not to me.” She pressed a firm, swift kiss to his cheek, trying to impress this upon him once and for all.
“Then what is holding you back?” he asked.
It was her perfidy that kept her from opening fully to him, not his birth. But with everything else pressing on his mind, now was not the time to discuss her dubious means of earning a living.
She straightened the neckcloth she’d crushed, pressing herself against him so wantonly. She rested her nose against one of his broad shoulders and inhaled.
“You’ve business to see to in London. I—I need to tell you something, but it can wait until this is settled.”
He stood still, and in his embrace, with his scent and his heat and his powerful arms surrounding her, the muted light sanctifying the room, her head against his chest—where she wanted to be, always—Amaranthe promised herself that she would become worthy of Malden Grey. He had made a noble sacrifice for his siblings. She would sacrifice something as well.
She would make theBook of Secretsto repay Mr. Karim for his many kindnesses, and she would give the money to Joseph and his bride as a wedding gift to help set up their household since she would not be there, the reliable spinster aunt, to ease things for him and his new family. One more book, one more secret copy, and then she would be done. Only honest commissions from here on.
Mal’s arms fell away. “I think I should go back to London alone,” he said.
She opened her eyes. “Why?”
He stepped back, and a cold draft blew over her. His expression was shuttered, distant. He looked at the burial plaque instead of her.
“Your reputation. Your cousin thinks we are engaged, but we cannot pose as a married couple back to London, as we did in Tavistock.”
She blinked in bewilderment. They had traveled together, with just the changing round of post boys for company, all the way from Callington. Why was he withdrawing from her now?
“Besides, if Joseph is to be wed, you’ll want to be here, won’t you?”
“I suppose.” She tried to meet his eyes, but he avoided her gaze.
She had lost his trust in her. Because of her hesitation about marrying him? Or because of something else?
Without coming closer he bent and dropped a kiss on her forehead, a small, chaste kiss. It felt too much like a goodbye. She swallowed an ache in her throat as he moved toward the door of the church, breaking their closeness. She wanted to stay in his embrace forever. She wanted to stay in that moment when he believed in her. When he thought her worthy of him.
Only one book more, and then she was finished. She truly wanted to marry Malden Grey, and he was slipping away from her. She might lose him forever once he knew the truth.
“I’ve never seenour Mal so angry.” Beatrice drew the damp sheet from the wringer and stretched it to its full length. Amaranthe grasped one corner and helped her drape it over a forsythia bush in its last stage of yellow bloom.
Bea shook her head. “Can you imagine the nerve of that Sybil! Coming back to demand the estate and guardianship ofthe children, after she stole from them all and left like a thief in the night.”
