Untouched

“Oh, my dear.” Unerringly, he reached out and captured a tear in his fingers. Another tear, another. She closed her eyes and struggled for composure.

“Crying won’t help,” she said huskily.

“Sometimes it’s all we can do.” His voice caressed her like black silk.

With a sigh, he stretched out and drew her close so they lay facing each other. Strong arms locked her to him and he tucked her throbbing head into his shoulder. She folded into his body without resistance and burst into a useless fit of weeping. Nobody had offered care or support since she was a girl. She’d been alone and struggling against a hostile world ever since.

She cried for her foolish sixteen-year-old self. For Josiah who had never found contentment. For the beautiful marquess who wasted youth and strength in this secret arena.

She cried for Grace Paget who, after nine years of marriage, finally learned what desire was. Grace Paget, mistaken for a whore. Who now promised to become one in truth.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out, telling herself she could bear it if he turned away. She’d learned she could bear almost anything. But she didn’t believe it. If Matthew rebuffed her, it would hurt more than all of Josiah’s unsubtle efforts to belittle her. She sprawled across Matthew’s chest, her head resting on his soft linen shirt just below his collarbone.

“I’ve howled like a lost dog upon occasion,” he said in what she recognized was a deliberately light tone. “Why, your few pathetic tears hardly justify the name.”

What a brave, good man he was. Although how he’d retained either bravery or goodness through the hell he’d endured, she couldn’t imagine. Desire lurched to life again. The chest beneath her hands was broad and powerful. Under her ear, his heart beat steadily. If she shifted the palms that lay flattened on his crushed shirt the slightest inch, she’d touch bare skin. Although she wanted to stay close to him more than she wanted air to breathe, she tried to pull away.

Instead of releasing her, his grip firmed. “Don’t go.”

She heard the aching need in the soft words. An aching need that mirrored her own. Without speaking, she subsided against him.

Silence heaving with all they felt but could not say weighted the air.

Dear heaven, they couldn’t go on like this. Thwarted desire would end in destroying them both.

Eventually, he slept while Grace stared dry-eyed into the darkness.

Her harum-scarum past paraded through her mind like a pageant. Memories of the pampered girl, the unhappy wife, the destitute widow. Cruel memories of a father consigning his daughter to perdition with words that stabbed her soul. Words she’d sworn would never become truth. More recent memories of a madman who frightened her, then saved her, then carried her to heaven with kisses.

Through the last unhappy years, honor alone had sustained her. She was about to relinquish that precious honor. And strangely, she felt not an ounce of regret.

Long dark hours passed while she said farewell to the woman she’d always been. And embraced the woman she was about to become.

Tomorrow night…

Chapter 14

Giddy with a heady mixture of excitement and apprehension, Grace waited in the bedroom for Matthew. Downstairs, she’d deliberately kept the conversation neutral, as it had stayed neutral most of the day.

It was late, nearly midnight, and everything was quiet. She’d abandoned him to his port while she dashed upstairs in a lather of nerves. And desire. Desire that swung her wayward heart into a drunken, swaying waltz that played in urgent triple time.

I want him. I want him. I want him.

Anticipation fizzed in her veins like fireworks. A deep breath. Another.

She stood leaning brazenly against the base of the bed so he’d see her the instant he came in. She wore the most beautiful—and most risqué—of the nightgowns his uncle had ordered. A sheer batiste sheath embroidered with a scatter of tiny silver stars.

The garment could almost look virginal, if one ignored its transparency. Or the way it dipped over the unconstrained jut of her breasts. Or that only four tapes held it together, two on the shoulders and two at the sides. A couple of well-judged flicks from a man’s fingers and the garment would crumple to the floor.

At last, she heard Matthew leave the salon, cross the hall to the stairs. She listened to each reluctant footstep as his booted feet mounted the steps. He paused on the top landing, striving for control.

How was she so sure what he felt?

Because she’d fought the same battle.

Tonight she yielded.

And gloried in defeat. This outcome had been destined from the moment she’d first looked into his enigmatic eyes.