Page 26 of The Duke Who Dared Me
But even as she said it, she knew it was a lie.Nothing about being alone with Alistair had ever been “just” anything.
He straightened slowly, firelight playing across the sharp planes of his face.“Verity, you don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I'm asking you to be practical.”Her voice came out breathier than she intended.
“Practical?”He stepped toward her, and suddenly the room felt impossibly small.“There’s nothing practical about this.About being here with you, wanting things I have no right to want.”
She turned away to examine the faded landscape painting above the bed, but really because she couldn't bear the intensity in his eyes.“You make it sound dangerous.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her hands stilled in her hair.One curl tumbled free, brushing against her neck, and she saw his gaze follow its path in the mirror's reflection.
“You make it hard to be the gentleman I'm supposed to be.”
She turned slowly to face him.“What kind of gentleman is that?”
“The kind who walks away.”His voice was raw now, all pretense stripped away.“The kind who doesn’t touch you, even though I’ve been wanting to since the moment we were trapped in that damned closet.Maybe… no, most assuredly well before that moment.The kind who doesn’t tell you that every time you’re slighted by society, I’m ready to draw pistols like some idiot with a death wish.”
Her throat tightened.“Alistair.”
“You’re not a mistake, Verity.”He moved closer, close enough that she could see the storm reflected in his eyes.“No matter how many times I’ve tried to convince myself you are.”
His voice dropped, raw with honesty.“You light up every room you enter, not because you’re trying to, but because you can’t help yourself.You’ve this way of making everyone around you feel more alive.Even me.Especially me, and I’ve spent years fighting it because it terrified me.”
He reached up, his fingers barely grazing her cheek.“You’re brilliant and maddening, and you attack life like it’s an adventure waiting to be conquered.I’m envious of that fearlessness, that joy you find in everything.Promise me you’ll never dim that light for anyone.I can survive almost anything, but watching you make yourself smaller would destroy me.”
The walls she’d built around her heart didn’t crumble.They simply ceased to exist.All those years of telling herself he despised her, of believing she was too much, too loud, tooeverything...His words rewrote every cruel whisper she’d ever heard about herself.
Heat bloomed in her chest, spreading outward until even her fingertips tingled.She wanted to touch him, to prove to herself this wasn't another dream where he looked at her like she mattered.
His hand lifted toward her face, and for one breathless moment, she thought he might actually touch her.Then he caught himself, his fingers curling into a fist that fell back to his side.
“We should sleep,” he said roughly, stepping back.“Percy needs us to be clearheaded tomorrow when we arrive to help with Colin.”
The mention of her nephew was like falling through the icy pond at Warwick Cottage.Of course.Even now, even after everything he'd just said, he was thinking of duty first.Of what was proper and right and safe.
“Right,” she managed, her voice steady despite the ache in her chest.“Sleep.”
But as she settled against the pillows, facing the wall, she heard him whisper her name.Just once, so soft she might have imagined it.She closed her eyes and let herself believe it had only been the wind.
* * *
Alistair had been staringat the ceiling for what felt like hours.The fire had burned down to embers, casting restless shadows across cracked plaster.His makeshift bed of his greatcoat and threadbare blanket was about as comfortable as the cobblestone alleyway of the East End he woke up in one too many times as a young buck.
But discomfort wasn’t the problem.
The problem was the woman three feet away, so still he might have thought her asleep if not for the careful rhythm of her breath.The problem was the way she’d looked standing by the fire, skirts damp, hair loose, lips parted from some muttered insult.The problem was the memory of kissing her.The taste of it.The shock.The way it felt like the one true thing in his life.
God, the problem was that she was Verity.
He shut his eyes, only to see her laughing at something Lord Brookhouse said, bristling at some society slight, crying when she first held Colin.It was every moment.Every year.Each little glance or scrape or argument had wedged into his chest until it left no room for anything else.
It wasn’t irritation.Hadn’t been for years.It was something that made his chest tight and his hands restless.
The rain drummed on, relentless.The wind ruthlessly rattled the window shutters of the small inn.It sounded as if the world was trying to shake something loose.The same could be said of Alistair and this evening.
She’d muttered at him when he offered to take the floor again, something halfway between a threat and a thank-you, then turned away to face the wall.
