Page 23 of The Icy Duke Claims a Bride

But none of them were ever coming back. As this familiar and depressing reality settled over him, another old memory of Rose flashed in his mind, bright as a comet across the night sky.

“There’s something rather sad in an old instrument unplayed…”

They had been at a neighbor’s house following a funeral service, and Rose had taken him on a walk through the house while the adults discussed serious matters over the funeral breakfast. The lady who died had been very old, indeed, and there had been a thick layer of dust on the instrument Rose had approached in some distant wing of the house, despite the sheet covering it.

Hugh could even hear the handful of notes his sister had played on the ancient keyboard before she spoke those words. Had it actually been an old harpsichord rather than a pianoforte? It probably had. The sound of those few notes and the smile on Rose’s face both felt very real.

“I think Rose would have wanted you to play her pianoforte,” Hugh told Catherine, feeling some of the tension in him easing. “My family loved music. It did disturb me at first when I realized you were playing, but it was also good to hear that piece after so long.”

“Then shall I play these fantasias for you again?” Catherine offered. Hugh nodded, taking a seat by the window. “I think I was playing the one in D minor when you came in.”

As Catherine began the fantasia once more, Hugh gazed out the window and listened, remembering the past painfully but also with pleasure. Rose might be dead, but the music was still alive, and he felt more certain than ever that his jolly sister would not have wanted this room to be kept as a shrine to her memory. Even if Hugh did.

As the music ended, Hugh found his wife looking at him with a thoughtful expression on her face.

“I am sorry, Hugh,” Catherine said quietly, her green eyes fixed on his as though seeking some answer in his gaze.

Hugh did not know whether she was sorry for upsetting him with her playing today or for what had transpired in herbedroom on that first afternoon after their wedding. Perhaps she might even be sorry for marrying him at all?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she clarified a moment later. “I would like to have met your family, especially Rose.”

Hugh nodded solemnly but then grinned at another unbidden memory, this time of his tall, red-haired brother standing and laughing heartily beside the pianoforte. “If you had met them, you’d never have married me. Henry was much better-looking.”

“I can’t believe that,” Catherine replied and then bit her lip, her cheeks flushing as she realized the compliment she had just given him.

Hugh could tell that it was an honest remark rather than pitying solace or disingenuous flirtation. While not quite willing to believe that his wife might find him handsome, her reaction did evoke some emotion in him, and he moved to a chair beside the pianoforte.

“Do you not find me terrifying, then?” he asked plainly. “There would be no shame in it. I am disfigured, after all, and the whole ton knows it. I believed that you didn’t care about my scars, but I won’t blame you if you do…”

Before he could stop her, Catherine had reached out and pushed his mask up into his hair, the slender musician’s fingers on her other hand caressing the scars on his cheek.

Hugh gasped involuntarily at her touch, at first in protest at being exposed, but then that gasp turned into a groan as her fingertips lightly stroked the still-sensitive spot where he had been burned as a child.

“It’s nothing,” she soothed. “Even with the mask, I could see that you are handsome. Now, I know it.”

“Dear God, Catherine,” Hugh whispered, his breathing unsteady as he covered her hand with his own. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted in an unconscious, irresistible invitation. “But it is always best to face reality, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is…”

The Duke drew his unresisting wife onto his lap and kissed her fully, his hands caressing her face as delicately as she had caressed his, and then removing the pins from her hair. He wanted to see those dark gold tresses falling around her shoulders again like the first time they met and the same wild energy in her green eyes.

Just as on previous occasions, Catherine’s physical response urged him on, fueling the fire of his deep longing. Her wriggling on his lap only stoked the flames further. He wished he could unfasten her white muslin dress and fully attend to her breasts, or raise her skirts and show her the other ways a man could kiss a woman.

But this time, Hugh was more cautious, remembering how the fear and anger had suddenly overtaken Catherine on their wedding day and the ensuing harsh words that had ruptured his fantasies. He still saw no clear way to take her or to keep his hands off her if they remained in the same room. The frustration was torture.

“Enough,” he muttered to himself and slid out from under her too-shapely bottom, setting her back on the chair.

“Hugh?” Catherine’s confused voice sounded as he went to the door, but he did not look back.

CHAPTER TEN

Stunned and breathless, it took some moments for Catherine to come to herself after her husband’s stirring embrace and precipitate departure.

“Hugh?” she called again. “Hugh?”

Opening the music room door, she listened and heard a man’s footsteps rapidly retreating in the opposite direction, almost running.

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