The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(9)

Sera willed her breath steady, her heart calm. She’d intended to infuriate him. She’d wanted to set him on edge. To make him wish her gone. To give her what she wanted. To set her free. She’d planned to be here. Planned to irritate. To leave him for the summer with the sourest of tastes.

She simply had not expected to be so trapped by the memory of him.

“I don’t forget it, Seraphina. Not a moment of it. And neither do you.” He drew closer, and she could not stop the step she took backward, toward the windowsill overlooking all London—the city that bowed to him as she once had. She took a deep breath, refusing to let him intimidate her.

And he did not intimidate. He did something much worse.

He reached for her, his fingers playing gently down the column of her neck, barely there, a whisper that she should have been able to ignore. “You think I do not remember you well enough to see it? You think I did not see the memories assault you when you stepped through that door? Into this room? You think I did not recall those same memories? The last time you were here? In this room?”

She swallowed, disliking the way he closed in upon her. “I don’t recall ever being here.”

“Lie to the rest of the world, Sera,” he said, his fingers teasing over her shoulders. She would not pull away. Would not let him win. “Lie to me, even. About your past and your plans for the future. About where you have been and where you plan to go. But do not ever, ever imagine that I do not know the truth of your memories.”

His touch reversed itself, returning to her neck, this time finding purchase, fingers curling warm and sure, his thumb stroking strong and familiar across her jaw, tilting her face up to his.

Marking her with the past.

With his words, soft as silk. “Do not ever, ever imagine that I do not know that you watched me remove those robes thinking all the while of the thickness of them. Of the softness of them against your skin. Of the way you once lay bare on them on this very floor. Of the way I lay there with you.”

He was so close now, close enough to feel, to smell—leather and earth, as though he’d come in from the fields instead of the Houses of Parliament—intoxicating in his nearness even as his words stung.

Even as she told herself she did not care.

“I remember, Sera. I remember the taste of you, like sunshine and peace. I remember the feel of you, heat and silk. I remember the way you gasped, stealing my breath for yourself. Stealing me. The way you offered yourself as a prize. Making me believe in you. In us. Before I fell and you triumphed.”

The insinuation that she had ruined them and what they might have had should not have surprised her, and still it did, moving her to find her words and strike her own blow. “It was never triumph. It was the worst mistake of my life.”

Her aim was true. He released her. Thank heavens. “You received your title, did you not? And your sisters, the purchase they required to scale the walls of the aristocracy. And your mother, the voice to crow her triumph to the world. Her eldest trapped a duke.”

Only because I never wanted anything like I wanted you.

She shook her head, hating him for being so close. Hating herself for wanting him even as she wanted nothing to do with him. “I no longer want it.”

He drew nearer, his eyes locked upon her, forcing her to tip her head back to remain his equal. “You should have considered that before you took it.” Closer still, until she could feel the soft warmth of his breath on her skin. On her lips. “You think you have not ruined this place for me? This place that is for men of purpose? For history? For order? You think I am not in constant reminder of you? Of the future we might have had?”

It was a lie, of course. He didn’t think of their future. If he thought of her at all, it was in anger and nothing else. But even now he toyed with her, searching for emotion. She’d always been his toy. Never his equal. She shook her head, refusing to be swayed by him. Refusing to be deterred from her goal.

“Enough,” she said. “It’s ancient past.”

He gave a little laugh at that, devoid of humor. “Past is prologue, Angel. I think of it every day.”

Sera’s lips parted on a silent gasp. He was close enough to kiss her, and suddenly she could remember, too. The feel of him. The taste of him. The way he had made her ache with want.

Except she was no longer that silly, stupid girl. She placed her hands flat against his chest, the strong, muscled ridges beneath his shirt stiffening at the movement, rippling as she traced them to his shoulders, her fingers teasing at the warm skin of his neck, tempting him.

He leaned in barely, nearly undetectable. Detected, nonetheless. Sera sensed victory. Her own whisper echoed in the room. “Your memory fails you if you think I have wreaked such havoc alone, husband. There were two of us on those robes. Two of us at Highley the day I trapped you. Two of us in London the day I begged you to release me—the day you swore you would take your vengeance for my sins by refusing me the only thing I ever wanted.” She was proud of the steel in her words. Of how she could speak without her voice cracking. Without summoning memory of the child she’d lost, and the hope she’d lost in the same instant.

Proud enough to stand in her purpose and drive her point home. “But perhaps you do not recall the specifics as well as you think. Surely, it is difficult to remember all the times with me, as there have been so many other women since.”