Duke of Desire (Maiden Lane #12)(22)

As if they’d been caterpillars in the chrysalis, about to turn to butterflies, and he’d crushed the chrysalis to pulp between his fingers.

A teardrop splashed on the page, warping the elbow of a girl. Iris gasped and hastily wiped at her cheeks.

The last model was different from the others, although he, too, was nude. The drawing was of a small boy, no older than five or six. He sat with one leg drawn up, his elbow resting on his knee and his head in his hand. Unlike all the other children’s, his face had been sketched in meticulous detail.

He was beautiful.

She stared at the little boy. It was hard to tell—a child was so different from an adult—but there was something in the lips, the set of the eyes …

She swallowed. She must be imagining the resemblance to her husband.

She must.

Except she knew she wasn’t. This was Dyemore—her husband—and his face was beautiful and innocent and entirely unblemished.

There was no trace of a scar.

Iris slammed the book shut and thrust it onto the table.

Standing, she turned back toward the door to the dressing room. A man was staring at her from the shadows.

She bit back a scream—and then realized that it was only a painting.

A life-size painting.

She inhaled and walked closer, peering at the figure. It was obviously the last duke, judging by the cut of his purple suit. He had a red velvet robe lined in ermine flung over one shoulder and wore a full-bottomed wig powdered gray. In the portrait he appeared to be about forty years of age. He gazed out at the viewer with a sly smile on his red lips, one beringed hand resting on a gold snuffbox sitting on a table next to him.

Iris remembered what Dyemore had said: this man had led the Lords of Chaos. Such corruption should leave a trace on his countenance, surely? Some mark of his evil? She’d heard whispers about him—of depravity so terrible it could not be named.

This man had been notorious.

But the duke in the painting was unblemished, his face unlined. If anything, he was rather handsome.

Suddenly the room was too quiet. It seemed oppressive, filled to suffocating with desires and emotions too black to have simply died along with the man who had engendered them. They lurked here like malevolent spirits, waiting to infect the living, drag them closer with skeletal hands, and breathe despair and hatred into their faces.

No wonder Raphael had locked this room up.

Iris rushed from the dreadful bedroom. Her hand shook as she locked the door, and then she nearly ran back to the room she shared with Raphael.

He still slept. She crept to the bed and looked at him. In her candle’s light his scar stood out like a livid worm on his face, almost as if he bore the mark of evil his father did not. Dear Lord. Was that possible? Was his scar somehow caused by his father’s sins?

When had it happened?

And who had scarred him?

Iris swallowed and tried to rein in her imagination. She touched one finger to his scar and traced the length. The skin was tight and abnormally smooth beneath her fingertip.

And it was slippery with sweat.

He was still terribly ill—perhaps deathly ill.

Whatever he had done, something inside her knew that Dyemore didn’t deserve to die. Not when his father had lived a long life without consequence. Not when his father’s face had been unmarred.

She inhaled shakily, feeling the hot splash of tears against her cheeks, and bent over him.

Gently she kissed his scar.

The next time Raphael escaped his nightmares, the bedroom was dark, but his duchess still sat beside him, candlelight softly lighting her face as she read her book.

The curve of her cheek, limned by the light, made him ache.

The fire in the hearth crackled, creating the only sound in the room besides her soft breaths and the turning of her pages.

She’d pulled her golden hair into a simple knot at the back of her head and found a rough-looking shawl to wrap about her shoulders. Perhaps she’d borrowed the garment from Nicoletta? She might’ve been an ordinary woman—a cobbler’s daughter, a seamstress, or the wife of a baker—were it not for the way she held herself. So very upright, her spine straight, her shoulders level, her chin tilted just slightly so she could look at the book in her hands.

Even if she were in rags she’d be discovered as a lady at once—by her gait, her gaze, her speech, and the manner in which she sat.

His lips quirked at the thought.

She must have sensed something, for she looked up and met his gaze.

She smiled like the sun breaking through cloud cover. “You’re awake.”

He nodded.

She stood and poured him a glass of water, then sat on the edge of the bed to help him sit up to drink it.

He wrapped his hand around her wrist, feeling the delicate bones beneath her skin. The scent of oranges lifted to his face.

He swallowed the water gratefully.

She made to rise, but he stilled her.

“How …” He coughed and tried again. “How long?”

She knit her brows, looking at him warily. “What?”

He blinked, trying to focus his eyes, glancing about the room. Where were his men? Nicoletta? “How long have I been abed?”

“Yesterday and today,” she replied calmly. “This is the evening of the second day. You were feverish, your wound infected. The fever only broke this morning. Do you remember arguing with me before you collapsed?”