No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (The Rules of Scoundrels #3)(104)

Even as you lie here with me?

His hands stilled on her skin. “Yes.”

“But you don’t know her.”

“No.”

“You don’t love her.”

“No.”

Do you love me?

She couldn’t ask him. Couldn’t bear the answer.

But he seemed to hear the question anyway, hand coming to her jaw, lifting her to meet his gaze . . . his lips.

Yes, she imagined he meant.

He rolled her to her back on the bed, keeping them joined as he settled between her thighs and made love to her mind and soul and body with everything he had, moving in her with quiet certainty, holding her gaze with undeniable intensity. Kissing the swell of her br**sts and the column of her neck and worrying the soft lobe of one ear, whispering her name in a long, lovely litany.

There was nothing brute about this. Nothing beastly.

Instead, it was slow and seductive and he moved for what seemed like hours, days, an eternity, learning her, touching and exploring, kissing and stroking. And as pleasure washed over her in lush waves, rocketing through her until she could no longer hold it, he captured her cries with his lips, finding his own release, deep and thorough and magnificent before speaking again, whispering her name again and again, until she no longer heard the word and instead heard only the meaning.

The farewell.

They lay together for long minutes, until their breath was steady again, and the world returned, unable to be refused or ignored, coming with the dawn in great red streaks across the black sky beyond the window.

He pressed a kiss to her hair. “You should sleep.”

She turned away from time and its march, curling into his heat. “I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want you to go. Ever.”

He did not reply, instead wrapping her tight in his arms, holding her until she could no longer feel the place where she ended and he began, where he exhaled and she inhaled.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she repeated, the threat of slumber all around her. “Don’t let me go to sleep. One night isn’t enough.”

“Shh, love,” he said, stroking one wide hand down her back. “I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.”

Tell me you love me, she willed silently, knowing he wouldn’t, but desperately wishing for it anyway.

Wishing that, even if she couldn’t have him, she might have his heart.

Have his heart. As though he could pluck the organ from inside his chest and hand it to her for safekeeping.

Of course, he couldn’t.

Even if it felt as though she’d done that very thing herself.

Even as she knew it wasn’t safe with him.

It couldn’t be.

He waited a long while before he spoke again, until she was asleep. “One night is all there is.”

When she woke, he was gone.

Chapter Seventeen

There are times for experiments that make for blinding, unexpected outcomes, and there are times for those that are directed by the hand of the scientist.

Cross Jasper A great man once told me that there is no such thing as chance. Having come around to his way of thinking, I find that I am no longer willing to leave my work to chance.

Nor my life.

The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury

April 2, 1831; three days prior to her wedding

Pippa and Trotula walked the mile to Castleton’s handsome town house on Berkeley Square two days later, as though it were an entirely ordinary occurrence for a woman to arrive on the steps of her fiancé’s home with none but a dog as a chaperone.

She ignored the curious glances cast in her direction outside the house just as she ignored the surprise on the butler’s face when he opened the door and Trotula rushed into the foyer, uninvited, even as Pippa announced herself. Within moments, she and the hound were ensconced in a lovely yellow receiving room.

Moving to the windows, Pippa looked out over the square, considering the proper façades surrounding the perfectly landscaped green, and imagining her life here as the Countess of Castleton. Every one of the houses was occupied by one of the most important members of the aristocracy—Lady Jersey lived next door, for heaven’s sake.

Pippa couldn’t imagine the patroness of Almack’s finding time or inclination to either visit her new neighbor or support Pippa’s odd interests. There was no room for anatomy or horticulture in this massive, manicured home.

Viscountess Tottenham rode by, proud as ever, head high from the thrill of being the mother of one of the most powerful men in Britain, future prime minister who was three days from marrying Olivia, the favorite of the Marbury daughters.

It occurred to Pippa that this room, bright and filled with lavish furnishings, on the most extravagant square in London, was the ideal home for Olivia, and that was lucky, as her sister would soon live this life. Happily.

But there was nothing about this place that made it the ideal home for Pippa.

Nothing about its master that made him the ideal husband for Pippa.

Nothing at all to recommend her to this place.

There was no Cross here.

No, Cross appeared to live in a cluttered office on the main floor of a gaming hell, surrounded by papers and strange turmoil, globes and abacuses and threatening oil paintings and more books than she’d ever known one man to have in a single room. There was barely room to move in Cross’s quarters, and still she somehow felt more comfortable there than here . . .