Claiming the Courtesan

He swept her up into his arms and strode back to the bed. She had a moment to register his heat and scent before he tucked her safely under the covers and returned to the door.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said without looking at her.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, pushing herself up into a sitting position.

“Devil take this,” he muttered under his breath as he whirled around to face her. “What the hell do you want, Verity?”

She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought that what she wanted mattered to him. It certainly hadn’t up until now.

“I imagined you’d be angry with me for leaving you again,” she said uncertainly.

“I know why you ran away,” he said flatly. “It was my fault, not yours. Hell, this entire damnable mess is my fault.”

None of this made sense. “So you’re not angry with me?”

“No, I’m not angry with you. We’ll talk in the morning.”

She didn’t want to talk in the morning. She didn’t want to talk at all.

Dredging up the right words to seduce her previously demanding paramour shouldn’t have been so difficult. Hadn’t she shared her body with this man for over a year?

But her voice cracked as she spoke. “Your Grace, it’s all right if you…I mean, I…I won’t object if you want to—”

“No.” He spoke firmly, as though argument would never change his mind.

The pillar supporting the structure of her life collapsed into rubble with a mighty crash. Ruins lay all around her.

Of course, she’d known this day would come. No man made a lifetime commitment to his mistress, after all.

Yesterday, he’d wanted her. Today, he didn’t.

The transition was too abrupt. She hadn’t prepared herself to meet her dismissal with pride-salving coolness or self-possession.

“Is it over, then?” she asked starkly.

A muscle jerked in his cheek. He sounded so certain when he repudiated her, but that tiny, betraying movement told a different story. “Isn’t that what you’d prefer?”

A fraught question she had no intention of answering. “So you no longer desire me?”

His short laugh was bitter. “Madam, there hasn’t been a second since the day I met you when I haven’t desired you.”

She tried to interpret his expression. The only word that came to mind was hunted.

Continuing this inquisition took every shred of her courage. With her bandaged hands, she clutched at the blanket he’d pulled over her with such care.

“But that’s changed?”

A spasm of strong emotion crossed his face and made him look almost savage. “For God’s sake, woman, of course that hasn’t changed.”

“But I’m inviting you into my bed,” she said helplessly, wondering why she wasn’t dancing around the room in relief.

He bowed in her direction, momentarily reminding her of the formality that had prevailed between them in London. “I thank you for the offer, but regretfully, I must decline.”

She spoke after him as he started to go. “Are you releasing me, then, Your Grace?”

The hand he’d placed on the door bunched into a fist against the wooden frame. “I don’t know. I should. I will.” She watched his shoulders tense as if he braced himself to meet a powerful foe. “I will. Just not tonight.”

She frowned at the stiff line of his back.