The Confessions of a Duchess...
From Chapter 3
He heard a knock and a step
in the doorway and turned to find Laura there, her arms full of clothes. She
was staring at his naked torso and a deep pink colour stained her cheeks.
There was confusion and shock in her eyes. The clothes slipped from her
hands and she made a grab for them even whilst her gaze was still riveted on
him.
“I’ve brought… Um… Did you…”
Dexter was surprised that
she was acting like a startled virgin when she was an experienced woman, a
widow with a child. Surely there was no need for any pretence between them
after all that had happened? And surely she did not possess an ounce of
modesty? In bed with him four years previously she had been open and
generous, warm and wanton. Her sweet, seductive shamelessness had been one
of the reasons that he had fallen so disastrously in love with her. It had
seemed so honest and unguarded at the time.
But she had put him right
quickly enough on that score. She had no use for him and his devotion, so
she had said. And when she had had him in her bed once it seemed that she
had no further use for him in that respect either.
“It would be best for you
to leave now,” she had said in the morning, with a cool, aristocratic
disdain that had made him feel utterly insignificant. “I would not wish
the servants to find you here…”
Yet now it seemed that she
had forgotten her indifference to him, since she was staring like a woman
who had never seen a half-naked man before and looking flustered and more
than a little intrigued. Her glance stirred something sensual in Dexter,
reviving the fire he had only just managed to damp down.
Somewhere at the back of his
mind a voice was cautioning him that to take this any further would be
dangerous and irresponsible. He ignored it. He wanted to know if what he had
experienced before with Laura had been no more than vivid imagining. He
needed to know. Once he had exorcised the power she had over him, once
he had proved that there was nothing special about Laura at all, he would be
free of the past and this curious hold she seemed to have over him. And this
time he could control his feelings. This was not like the time four years
before when he had been an inexperienced youth. He was at no risk of falling
in love with Laura Cole all over again.
Very deliberately he
bent down and eased off his boots. When he straightened up Laura was still
staring. With calculated intent he started to unfasten his trousers.
“Did you want me to take
these off as well?” His voice had a rough edge to it.
Laura’s eyes met his and
there was a confused and heated expression in them that made the lust slam
through him, tightening its grip on him even as he cautioned himself not to
lose control.
“Stop! No!” Laura seemed to
wake from a trance. She thrust the pile of clothes down on the table and
glared at him. “What are you doing?”
“I am removing my
wet clothes,” Dexter said. He allowed his gaze to drift over her
appraisingly. “You should do the same, your grace. You look,” his voice
dropped, “most dishevelled.”
He saw Laura swallow hard.
Her hazel eyes darkened further and the unconscious desire in them sent
another jolt of lust through him. The warmth of the room, the intimacy of
the small space, the heady scent of lavender and his semi-nakedness were a
powerful blend. Dexter took a step towards her.
He had not intended this
when first they had met. He had certainly not meant to provoke Laura or
tease her or make love to her. Such a course of action was completely
irrational. But she was standing there with her hair tumbled about her
shoulders and the damned gown still clinging to every curve and he wanted
her. He wanted her with all the raw longing he had known four years before.
And he wanted to prove that he could master that longing and take one kiss
and that it would mean absolutely nothing.
He took another step towards
Laura. She took a step back so that she was trapped between his body and the
warming room door. She was clutching the pile of garments to her breast now
like armour.
“Mr Anstruther,” Laura’s
voice was a thread of sound, “this is most improper.”
“You were swift enough to
help me out of my clothes the last time we met,” Dexter said, “and you know
that your concessions to propriety are only for outward show.”
