My Dangerous Duke (20 page)

Still, he found his own preoccupation with her slightly disturbing. It would have helped his peace of mind if he could have been sure his fascination with her was strictly physical, if he could have seen her as he usually chose to see women, as little more than a beautiful assemblage of alluring curves to be explored.

But with Kate, this approach proved impossible. He found too many real traits to admire in her character—courage, independence. With all of the needy, clinging ladies waiting for him back in London, he particularly liked her sturdy self-reliance. Gerald Fox’s daughter was as sharp as a tack and yet quite down-to-earth.

She did not weary him with mindless prattle; did not simper, grovel, or pry; did not even seem to know how to toady to a man of his consequence. She did not play the coquette, either—a tactic he had enjoyed from women but had never trusted. Instead, she spoke her mind almost as plainly as a man, and as a result, her conversation actually held his interest.

Kate peppered her language with witty observations, occasionally made at his expense. He found her saucy impudence oddly refreshing, and instead of minding it, served it back to her. It was great fun to jest and needle each other in mutual irreverence, as they had that night at dinner; one thing they had in common was a willingness to mock their own foibles. Kate laughed at herself for a bluestocking, while he knew very well he was a superstitious fool.

But even all of this did not get to the heart of her effect on him.

Growing up out there on the moors, isolated from the world, she had an untouched quality about her that made him ache in ways he could not explain.

He was so drawn to her.

It made him rather uncomfortable. But that night at dinner when she had described her solitary mode of life at her cottage, he had realized that, unlike so many others, she, too, understood the degree of loneliness that he knew all too well.

Deep down, he knew his heart had never been in such jeopardy before, and considering both their bloodlines, this was a very bad state of affairs. His instincts whispered that her arrival here was destiny. It remained to be seen, however, if she was to be his doom or the answer to his curse.

Given his reputation among his brother warriors as the Order’s most expert killer, all he knew was that his team-mates would have been utterly stunned to see the way he was with Kate.

He was also rather sure they would be horrified to learn that the little “present” who had so captivated him came from Promethean bloodlines. But of course, the Order still knew nothing about Kate, a fact over which he suffered serious pangs of guilt.

He knew bloody well that he should have written to his handler in London about her by now. He had composed the letter to Virgil and had even gone through the tedious process of putting certain parts of it into the necessary code. But he had no sooner written it, than he crumpled it up and tossed it into the fire. He did not want to give Virgil the chance to order him to bring Kate in for questioning.

He had promised to protect her.

An interrogation by his colleagues would not be a pleasant experience, and by God, the girl had already been through enough. If he handed her over to them, her fragile trust in him would be destroyed. She needed him. Right now, he was all she had. If he did not help her, no one would, and perhaps … in a way, he might just need her, too.

He was fiercely committed to protecting her; that she openly appreciated it and trusted him to keep her safe sealed his resolve. Her utter reliance on him for her very survival had somehow renewed his whole sense of meaning.

For once, he had taken up a mission to preserve a life instead of snuffing one out. No wonder everything in him took hold of the mission as if his soul depended on it.

Thus he made up his mind that the Order could wait until he knew more about who exactly was after Kate and what their plans might be. Virgil would be furious—to be sure, it was practically unheard of for any dutiful Warrington to ignore protocol.

But as her protector, he determined that Kate was still too fragile after her kidnapping ordeal to withstand his colleagues’ questioning. And this was the same reason why he stuck to his decision not to touch her.

Honor required it, though he burned for her. He had given his word that she would not be made to pay for her safety with her body, so he stifled fantasies of laying her down in his bed for a second interlude.

Perhaps a part of him wanted her to see that, on occasion, he could be more than a Beast.

Still, her tantalizing nearness was exquisite torture, having had a fleeting taste of her that first night, only to be denied the fullness of the feast.

He was not sure if Kate was aware how closely he was watching her. He hoped not. Surely, she sensed his deepening hunger, but she, too, kept a careful, friendly distance, occupying herself with the library books.

In turn, Rohan kept looking for reasons not to trust her, any reason to keep on holding her at arm’s length. So far, it had been a losing battle.

One day about a week into her stay at the castle, he decided to bring her into the high medieval family chapel.

He wanted to see if Valerian’s enchanting descendant betrayed any flicker of recognition when she viewed the Order’s many ancient symbols on display there. They were in plain sight if one knew what to look for, from the white Maltese cross above the altar to the princely marble statue of St. Michael the Archangel, the Order’s namesake. Perhaps he was trying to test her again, still hoping to expose her for a fraud.

Perhaps because her innocence was too much of a threat.

Taking her lightly by the hand, he led her into the chapel, where most of the Warrington dukes had wed their brides, and watched her face intensely as she gazed at the towering archangel statue.

The warrior angel, Michael, was portrayed clad in his Roman-style breastplate, a fiery sword in his hand and the writhing Lucifer under his sandaled foot. Though Kate stared at it in wonder, she did not appear to realize it held any particular significance.

She smiled shyly at him, nodding at the statue. “He reminds me of you.”

He just looked at her.

She moved on, turning away, soaking in the serene beauty of the chapel. She stared at all the old relics and intricate carvings both in stone and wood, then knelt to say a prayer. Fiercely aware of her, Rohan watched her from the corner of his eye.

The more he felt the power of her innocence, the more it struck him how much he was asking of her, expecting her simply to trust her life to a man she barely knew, a man she had been given to as a plaything—and a Beast, at that.

A few nights later, they were in the library, her favorite room, drinking chocolate by the fire, while flurries fell gently beyond the mullioned windows.

Rohan had propped his feet on the low table across from the leather couch and was perusing the results of the latest prizefights in the sports page of the
Times.

Kate, meanwhile, for reasons beyond his understanding, was tormenting herself with the cruelest book in his family’s entire collection: the Latin volume of time-honored logic puzzles by the ancient scholar, Alcuin.

“Oh, here’s a good one! The wolf, the goat, and the cabbage. In what order shall we get all three of them across the bridge without any of them eating the other?”

“You are the strangest girl I’ve ever met,” he remarked idly, turning the page of the paper.

Seated at the other end of the couch, she shot him an indignant look. “Why? Because I enjoy using my brain?”

“ ‘Enjoy’ and Alcuin don’t belong in the same sentence, darling.”

“I see, but bare-knuckle boxing is vastly amusing,” she countered archly, leaning over to flick the back of his newspaper.

“Winning is.”

When he cast her a smile, she held his gaze a little too long and began to blush. He did not fail to detect the sparkle of feminine interest in her eyes before she demurely dropped her gaze again to the book.

She turned the page. “Very well, forget the wolf, the goat, and the cabbage. Perhaps I should wrangle the problem of masters and valets, instead. Or the three jealous husbands?”

“You have at it, sweeting. I’ll go schedule an appointment for you with the King’s mad doctor.”

“Ha,
ha
,
” she replied.

Laughing softly, he set the paper aside, then, leaning his head back on the couch, he studied her. He had an inkling that her Alcuin puzzles were simply her way of keeping her too-clever mind off the dire threats that waited for her just beyond the safety of the castle walls.

“How are you these days?” he asked.

“Oh—all right.” She lowered the book onto her lap and briefly held him in a wistful stare. “Rohan?”

“Yes, Kate?” he murmured in a tone gone slightly husky. He could not explain why this girl made his heart clench.

Restlessly, she turned away, staring for a long moment into the fire. “What if my father really
is
alive?” She looked over at him again. “Doesn’t it seem strange that he never tried to contact me to let me know he was all right? What if he just—forgot about me?”

“No one could ever forget about you, Kate.”

Her emerald eyes filled up with a soulful longing to believe. But shaking her head, she cast her book aside. “I could never do that. If my child were in danger, I’d stay with her, no matter what.”

“Me, too,” he answered in a low tone.

Hugging her bent knees, she returned her troubled gaze to the crackling hearth fire. “Did
you
get along with your parents, Rohan? Were you close to them?”

He considered, watching the pale flames licking at the darkness. “I admired them greatly,” he replied in guarded tones. “Especially my sire. Hell, I worshipped the man.”

“What about your mother?”

“She was a fine lady, but, um … rather distant. I don’t know. I think she found me somewhat loud and aggravating. I was too rambunctious.”

Her eyes twinkled when she glanced at him. “You, Your Grace? Rambunctious? Surely not.”

He arched a brow at her. “As I was saying. They sent me off to school when I was seven. My mother died when I was eight, and my father, well, he was hardly ever home. He had a … lot of responsibilities. But you know, my friends at school were my real family.”

Which made his unwillingness to reveal her existence to his brother warriors all the more meaningful—but Kate didn’t know that.

She studied him in surprise, resting her chin on her forearm. “I’m sorry to hear of your loss. How did your mother die? ”

He looked askance at her, saying nothing.

Her eyes flared at his meaningful silence. She lifted her head and stared at him in astonishment. “The Kilburn Curse? You mean your father—”

“No, no, he didn’t actually
kill
her. But he certainly held himself responsible for her death, and … not without cause.”

“What happened?” she asked, wide-eyed.

Having gone that far, Rohan saw no point in stopping now. “My father was sent on a diplomatic mission to North Africa.” It was always a “diplomatic mission” when speaking to outsiders.

The Order had charged the previous Duke of Warrington and his team with the task of rescuing an English dignitary who had been captured by Barbary pirates off the coast of Malta. The ambassador’s aide was being held by the fearsome Bey of Tripoli for an exorbitant ransom. Somebody had to get him out without implicating the Crown.

“My father had no sooner completed his task than he fell ill with some unknown North African fever. He spent a couple of days on Malta being bled by the physicians, but he soon had enough of that. Declared he was over it, and proceeded on to London. Tough as nails, my old man. He was never a very good patient. Unfortunately, he was not as much recovered as he wanted to believe, and he brought the fever back with him. My mother rushed to Town to tend him, caught it, and was dead within a fortnight.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” she breathed with an unabashed look of compassion that disconcerted him. “Rohan, you poor thing. It must have been terrible for you.”

He looked away uneasily. “No, it was worse for my father. He never believed in our ‘family curse’ until that happened. But from then on, he made a point of warning me it was real.” He paused for a long moment, staring into the fire. He tried to comprehend how he would feel if he were ever responsible for hurting Kate. “I’m not sure how he lived with it,” he said at length. “He didn’t, actually, for very long. He died about three years later.”

Killing Prometheans.

But he did not tell her that, either. He just shrugged.

“Father said his only comfort was that I was at school at that time and had not caught the fever, too, and also died.” A world-weary sigh escaped him. “But I know it wouldn’t have killed me, anyway. Nothing ever does.”

She gave him a quizzical look, but leaned closer, bridging the small distance between them; she cupped his face with tender affection. “Well, I, for one, am glad of that.”

He stared at her. Her touch was so soft it made him ache. He closed his eyes as his control slipped; tilting his head, he pressed a fervent kiss into her palm.

He heard her breathe his name, then her delicate hand turned his face forward again; without warning, she moved forward onto her knees and pressed an urgent but virginal kiss to his lips.

His heart slammed in his chest.

Wonderstruck by her unexpected move, he sat in trembling stillness, chaining himself back, only returning her kiss gently as his pulse pounded. God knew, he barely dared breathe for fear of scaring her away.

His restraint emboldened her. She moved closer, kissing him again, and again. Her lips stroking his were supple, satin, sweet.

He shuddered with the need to unleash his passion, but still, he held himself back, just as she paused with the air of a woman stopping herself with great effort.