Claiming the Courtesan

He reached out and took her arm. The heat of his touch burned through the damp wool of her sleeve and made the blood throb sullenly in her cold flesh. He turned her back toward the doorway and began to walk with her.

His hold was firm without bruising. Why exert his power overtly? He knew as well as she that he’d emerged the victor tonight, however staunchly she stood up to him now.

A great wave of misery swept her as Kylemore led her, outwardly submissive, inside the house and up the stairs. She’d never escape this man. She’d never escape Soraya. For thirteen years, the thought of being free one day was all that had kept her going. She hadn’t foreseen the duke and his obstinate desire for her.

But surely desire died when it received no encouragement to live and thrive. When its object gave nothing, offered nothing, shared nothing. He was too proud to beat himself to destruction against the unbreakable rocks of her resistance.

Except he’d told her he had already abandoned his pride.

And even over the last few days, she hadn’t always been unresponsive. Corrosive shame ate at her as she remembered moments—more than moments, if she included his kiss in the carriage or this morning’s explosive climax—when her body had answered his with pleasure and not denial.

She told herself it was habit. After all, she’d been his mistress for a year.

Or it was his unquestionable skill as a lover.

Or her irredeemably sinful nature.

It certainly wasn’t because his touch had the power to circumvent everything she wished for and believed in, she insisted in desperation. If she stayed strong and strove to remain like ice in his arms, he’d tire of his mad quest.

But even if he did, what then? Would he just wave her on her way and allow her to return to the life she wanted? She doubted it.

Perhaps he meant to kill her when he finished with her. In this isolated place, he could dispose of her easily enough.

However, she couldn’t picture the duke murdering her, no matter how angry he was. He might dominate her sexually, he might force himself upon her, but her instincts told her he preferred her alive.

If only the thought provided the slightest comfort.

Verity stood shivering with cold and reaction in the center of her bedroom and watched Kylemore feed the fire. He must believe she was unlikely to make another dash for liberty, at least for the present. He hadn’t locked the door. Now he seemed content to take his time at the grate.

For one of the nation’s greatest noblemen, he showed great dexterity with kindling and bellows. Not for the first time, she reflected how she’d underestimated him in London. Then, she’d considered him just another useless aristocrat. Cleverer and perhaps more ruthless than the other men who’d vied for her favors, but basically made of the same stuff.

Since then, she’d seen him slough off the effects of hard travel. And he didn’t act as if he found this humble house beneath his dignity. While it would have seemed the height of luxury to her in her rustic youth, it hardly matched the standards a duke was used to.

She looked at him now, on his knees building the fire, a task for the lowliest maid in any of his mansions. He was strong. He was intelligent. And he was alarmingly complicated.

Oh, how she wished he really was the effete wastrel she’d once judged him to be. But if this last week had demonstrated anything, it was that she didn’t understand the Duke of Kylemore at all. He was darker, deeper, more dangerous than she’d ever imagined, although there had been clues in London t

o the truth of his nature, if she’d cared to read them.

His dogged pursuit of her. Certainly, his unquenchable passion when he came to her bed.

She remembered what a revelation that potent ardor had been. Eldreth had been a man of sedate habits, and she’d had to train James out of his inept fumblings.

How Kylemore would laugh if she admitted one of the reasons she’d misjudged him so disastrously was her own inexperience. London’s most notorious courtesan as taken aback by a man’s powerful virility as any green young miss? She almost laughed herself.

Part of her had always considered Kylemore a threat. Why else resist his blandishments as long as she had?

But those vague instincts had given no hint of the evil she’d courted when she’d become his mistress. What she’d thought of as her sensible self had discounted her vague feelings of mistrust and had insisted she grab the chance for financial security.

Sensible self? She should have jumped into the Thames before she’d accepted him in her bed.

All this hard-won wisdom came too late. She’d become entangled with the wrong man and had to pay the price. That would be soon enough, if the knowing glint in his blue eyes was any indication as he rose and prowled across the room to her.

“Why keep fighting me?” he murmured, flicking open the hussar fastenings of her bodice with a deftness that rankled even in her fear.

Her trembling intensified, but she didn’t move away. What was the point? He’d only catch her again.

“You know why,” she said stiffly.