Chapter 45
Damien fell asleep within minutes of undressing and sprawling across the bed. He had not relaxed for a minute during the operetta. Now Emily sat beside him, studying his hard features and the sculpted perfection of his shoulders and upper torso. “I love you,” she whispered, leaning down to kiss his cheek before she slid away from him to the floor. She slipped on the nightshirt he rarely wore and carefully drew the coverlet over his intimate parts.
For a moment he stirred and she waited for him to awaken. But he slept on while she surveyed the appalling state of their bedchamber. As quietly as she could, she hung his still-damp clothes on the linen press by the fire. She draped her discarded garments over the dressing screen. She placed his boots by the armoire and retrieved his gloves from under the table; then she spotted his waistcoat, fallen from a chair in the corner. The man truly did need a valet.
She reached down. It was the vest he had worn the night he searched his trunk and removed from it the paper he had not wanted her to see. It was none of her business. For all she knew it contained a cryptic message from the Home Office.
Whatever the mysterious article was, it had mattered enough to Damien that he’d removed it from the trunk. Then again, if this was a missive that contained any Crown secrets, he surely would not be so careless as to leave it where his wife would come across it and be tempted to take a peek at the thing.
Perhaps he was testing her integrity. Perhaps it was a letter from an old lover.
Perhaps Emily would be better off not knowing what his secret was. Except that not knowing would nag at her for ever after, and she might never have this chance again.
He might be furious at her invasion of privacy . . . unless she didn’t tell him, in which case she would be the one hiding a secret, and that might be worse.
She reached inside the pocket of his waistcoat and withdrew from it a slightly wrinkled card that read—
“‘Mariage,’” he said over her shoulder, his warm body pressed to hers.
She turned, holding the card to her heart, uncertain whether she could trust what she saw in his eyes. “You kept it,” she said in wonder. “I thought it might be a love letter.”
“Oh, it is,” he replied. “The woman who possessed it stole my affection from the moment we met.”
She swallowed.
“She was an impostor,” he said, plucking the card from her hand and dropping it on the table.
“Was she?”
“She had set a lure for another man. Fool that I was, I walked straight into it and took his place.”
“What a shame.”
“It was shock, you see. I thought I was to wed a sultry, raven-haired fortune-teller who would make my life a living hell.”
“And?” she whispered.
He shrugged his bare shoulder. “I ended up marrying an entirely different woman.”
“Is she sultry?”
His mouth curved in a smile. “Like the last burning coal in a tavern fire on a winter’s eve. She draws a man to her warmth.”
“Do you prefer her raven hair to mine?”
He lifted a strand of her hair and let it fall to her breast. “There’s fire in your hair, too. That might mean you are dangerous.”
She placed her hand around his neck and drew his head to hers. “You do know that I have no talent for fortune-telling whatsoever? Will that be a mark against me?”
His eyes kindled. “It might have been a point in your favor if I’d planned to spend the rest of my life at the horse races. As luck would have it, I’m not much of a gambler.”
“But you do take chances with your life.”
He shrugged again. “Until now it’s been mine alone to risk.”
She drew a deep breath, the heat in his eyes stealing through her. “And—”
He waited, bending his head as though every word that she uttered enthralled him. The sensuality on his face made her falter, forget what she had wanted to say. “And what?” he coaxed.
“And you still desired this other woman, despite your certainty that she would make your life a living hell?”
His fingers traced the curve of her cheek, her chin, then stroked lower through the nightshirt with unmerciful skill. “On that account,” he murmured, “I might have been mistaken. We’ll never know, will we?”
His fingers glided over her swollen breasts. Arousal pulsed through her every vein. “Why not?” she asked, her breath constricted in her throat.
“For one thing,” he answered, shifting his weight so that his hard body held her captive against the wall, “the fortune-teller disappeared the night we met, and so what influence she would have had on my life will remain a mystery. “And—”
“But you wonder—”
“For another, she loved another man.”
She shook her head in denial. “That is untrue. The cricket player was an infatuation. There is only one man who could compete with you. He is—” She paused as he lifted the nightshirt to her waist.
“He is?” he prompted, guiding the head of his shaft between her thighs. “Tell me his name, and I will demand satisfaction.”
She smiled, closing her eyes to concentrate on their coupling. Slowly he pressed through her plump folds, giving her only an inch at a time. “Sir Angus Morpeth of Aberdeen,” she whispered. “Sometimes I dream of him.”
“Doing what precisely?”
She moved her hips to allow him deeper penetration. “This.”