Page 41 of In Need of a Duke
“You don’t have to read to me at all. I don’t wish to impose.”
He scratched his jaw and glanced at her, studying. Always studying.
“I want to read to you,” he said at last. “It would be no imposition.”
Charlotte only sipped at her sherry instead of commenting further, wishing to move beyond the verbal sparring. It was exhausting, and her head hurt.
She placed her sherry down and reclined against the pillow, sighing as the rest of her body refused to relax.
The duke began to read, his voice raspy and edged with exhaustion, but the low timbre somehow magically curled around her and melted her body against the sofa cushions. The velvet pillow brushed against her cheek as she nestled closer, a shiver crashing down her spine when his hand brushed against her ankle.
Like this evening, nothing had made sense then, either.
The duke suddenly stopped reading, and she was much too tired to open her eyes to discover why. She heard him move across the room and then felt the weight of a blanket cover her body.
She smiled into the pillow, dreaming of those lost years. Of his soft smile cutting across the hard features of his face or the way his laughhad always spurned her own laughter further. Of his hands and lips touching her, always on the brink of driving them both into madness.
Those were the same memories that flooded back to her as the laudanum had taken hold of her in her sickbed while recovering after her accident.
“Charlotte?”
She opened her eyes slowly, her heart breaking all over again to be met by what was left. She braced herself for a cold comment or sneering smile, but Ian had turned to her on the sofa, the book in his lap, and one arm tossed on the back of the sofa once more.
“Hmm?”
“I realize we… I mean to say, I know I have behaved in a way unfitting of a duke.”
She pushed herself up onto her elbows to face him.
“But will you allow me to try to be better? Give me through the summer, and if you cannot stand me, I will grant you a divorce.”
It felt like a trick, like a way of placating her further.
“You wish to stay?”
He stood and reached his hand out for hers. “With you. Yes.”
CHAPTER 11
Charlotte pushed asidethe leaves of the small fern plant. “You look thirsty.”
Charlotte winced as she reached for the mister high on the shelf, stubbornly kicking the stool over beside her foot. She didn’t wish to be coddled any longer. She wouldn’t deny a warm bath sounded like heaven either. Or perhaps curling up by the fire and reading a book.
In winter, the world turned into itself. It quieted as a chill settled over Cumbria, and the hope of spring at times seemed a miracle if ever reached. That was how she had felt for years. She didn’t know if it was the fact that Ian had returned or if she had fought for her life after being thrown from her horse, but she knew spring was on its way.
Soon, her feet would be in the sun-warmed grass, and she could tilt her head up toward the sky as birdsong filled her heart. Soon, she would smell the earth and roam the estate in search of new flora and fauna to send to her peers at the Naturalist Society.
Soon, everything would return to how it should be. As it always was.
Charlotte bent closer, inspecting a discolored leaf on the new tiger lily she had received after Christmas. She pinched back the newgrowth and discarded the tender leaves into the cracked terracotta pot on the workbench, satisfied it had survived.
The light was waning, but she wasn’t ready to return inside yet.
“Susan told me I could find you here.”
Charlotte stiffened at the sound of Ian’s voice behind her. Instead of saying anything, she glanced over her shoulder a moment, acknowledging him, then returned to her work.
There was no protecting herself any longer. One look and her heart squeezed in her chest, and she was certain she would either break down or confess the secret thoughts she had kept locked away for years from her husband.
