Genevieve Eversea tells herself the reason she's
wandering the house after midnight is that she's in search of
just the right book to help her sleep. It's of course just a coincidence
that she'd accidentally discovered a few nights earlier that
their houseguest, the notorious Duke of Falconbridge—who
has gone from dark legend to unnervingly observant nuisance to
wry ally to a source of sensual fascination in a matter of days—never
sleeps until after midnight.
She found him in the gray salon.
He was standing at the window,
looking out at nothing again. Arm upraised to hold the curtain
aside. The line of him was eloquent, fine as any sculpture. Perfectly
shaped, from shoulder to waist to thigh.
She halted in the doorway.
And as if he could actually hear her heart
beating, he turned. Very slowly.
Good heavens. The front of him was in
disarray. His slightly-too-long hair was every which way. His
sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. His cravat was untied and
hung unevenly. His shirt seemed to have been unbuttoned and then
rebuttoned crookedly, exposing a good deal of burnished bare skin
and curling dark hair at the throat. His whiskers had gotten a
good start on a beard.
"Good heavens," she blurted
on a whisper. "What have you been doing this evening?
Moncrieffe stared. The
muscles of his stomach tightened, and his lungs tightened, too.
Her hair was down. She had miles and miles of it, all shining
like dark water. Her face was small and delicate and white admist
all of it. And yet she'd clearly never undressed for sleep; her
dress was rumpled.
"Rescuing baby orphans," he
said softly. "What does it look like I've been doing?"
"It looks like you've been set upon
by thieves."
He winced. "No need to scream,
Miss Eversea. I was set upon by thieves, euphemistically
speaking. I prevailed. I generally prevail over five-card loo."
He grinned crookedly.
"I spoke in a perfectly ordinary
conversational tone. Mother says you've turned the withdrawing
room into a Den of Iniquity."
She was teasing him. And she was whispering
now to protect his sensitivities, which he suddenly found unbearably
touching. She was always so thoughtful.
He also found the soft voice unbearably
sensual. It was another texture of her, like that silken hair,
and her luminous skin, and those hands that hinted she was everywhere
soft. Whispers were the proper language for the dark, after all.
"I divested a group of gentleman
of a good deal of money in five-card loo. Harry included,"
he said with a certain mildly cruel satisfaction. "He's a
surprisingly determined and bold player, and I would warrant he
oughtn't be playing at all, given what you've told me of his straightened
finances, but that could be the reason he does play. He does lose
as often as he wins. We're in the country, for God's sake. Outside
of shooting and walking about, what is there to do?"
He was half serious.
And it occurred to him, a thought that
slipped through his defenses as they'd been weakened by brandy,
that she was the reason he was staying in the country at all.
That, and ensuring Ian Eversea went pale every time he saw him
and flinched at every loud noise.
He became aware that she was smiling.
"We might have had a good
deal to drink throughout the game," he conceded. "And
a good deal to smoke."
He won so frequently it had almost become
dull. But then all the men present were able to go home with a
story about how the Duke of Falconbridge bet chillingly large
amounts and raked in astonishing winnings. Fearless, they'd called
him. Ruthless. Cold. And etcetera.
She took a step closer and was about to
take another one when she paused with her slipper hovering off
the ground. Then stopped abruptly and moved the candle pointedly
away from him.
"If I come closer you'll ignite.
I shouldn't like you become Duke Flambé. Did you drink
the brandy, or bathe in it?"
He gazed at her. "You're so solicitous
of my welfare." He was again touched that she didn't want
set him alight.
"I'm more concerned about my mother's
curtains. That particular shade of velvet cost a fortune and I
shouldn't like to tell her I used a duke for kindling."
He smiled broadly at her.
She smiled in return.
And all at once it felt like a bright
light had entered the room, though illumination was provided only
by her candle and the gray light that managed to push its way
through the window.
And after a moment. She settled the candle
down on a tiny table.
It was a tiny, fraught gesture.
It meant she intended to stay. For a moment
or two, anyhow.
Suddenly his heart was beating rapidly.
He was cautious of moving too quickly, lest he frighten the moment
away.
"What makes you so certain it's brandy?"
he was genuinely curious. "Can you truly identify it just
by the smell?"
"You've met my brothers."
The word "brother" was unfortunate
in his weakened state, when he was less capable of filtering feelings.
His hand twitched as though it would still have loved to close
it around Ian Eversea's throat. The very room seemed to tighten
around them like a steel band, such was the new tension.
"They really did, you know,"
he said softly, suddenly.
"Did?" she was puzzled.
"The roses. Remind me of you. They're
precisely the sort of flowers you ought to have."
Those spectacular, throbbing, lush blooms
that now stood guard over her bed.
With petals unconscionably soft.
Something like pain or joy flickered over
her face. His words had penetrated deeply. And for a moment all
either of them heard was the soft, soft sound of swift breathing.
"Well, I wish you an easy night of
it, though there seems little hope of that," she said quickly,
suddenly. "I'll ring for a footman and send him down to…help
you. Good ni—"
"Please don't go."
Words as unbidden as her presence, and
shaken loose by brandy.
And the hand he would have used to choke
Ian Eversea reached out and landed just above her elbow and closed.
Firmly stopping her from leaving him.
Motionless, they stared at each other,
and then they both stared down at his hand, as though it belonged
to someone else, had naught to do with them.
And then his hand slid slowly up her arm
as if it were a road he had no choice but to follow. Up the soft
skin of her arm. It was so cool, such a silken, heartbreakingly
soft path.
She tensed beneath his hand.
And when it touched her hair lying draped
over her shoulder, he exhaled softly. He sank his fingers into
it, then drew it slowly, slowly out, in aching wonder.
"It's what this night would feel
like if I could seize hold of it."
More words loosed by brandy and darkness
and foolishness. He wasn't sober enough to feel embarrassed by
their lyricism or to wonder how that sort of poetry got inside
of him and kept emerging around her. They merely struck
him as accurate.
She gave a breathless, astonished laugh.
The laugh excited him. And he knew very
well what short breath meant.
He knew that Genevieve Eversea was excited.
Her eyes were shadows in her pale face,
but he didn't sense fear, only fascination. Her breath came swiftly
through parted lips. She didn't move to test whether he'd release
her.
He wondered if he would release her if
she tugged.
He decided he wouldn't.
But she didn't tug.
"Genevieve," he murmured
speculatively, landing hard on that first syllable, gliding over
the next, as though they were soft rolling Sussex hills, as though
each syllable had its very own character and deserved equal attention.
["Gideon" is the code word for the February '11 contest]
He wound more of her hair in his fist,
again, and again. So soft. And this manner he reeled her absurdly
closer to him.
And she came to him.
She was so close her breath landed softly
was on his chin.
She looked up at him. Their gazes fused.
"What did you think would
happen, Miss Eversea, if you ever encountered me alone in the
dark?" he murmured.
And then he eased her head back with a
final tug on her hair, and brought his mouth down to hers.
{end of excerpt}
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