My Fair Duchess (A Once Upon A Rogue Novel Book 1) (34 page)

Colin’s mouth felt too dry to speak. He reached for his glass to take a drink, remembered once again, he had finished his, and swiped up Harthorne’s untouched liquor. After several swigs, he set the tumbler down. His head knew Amelia would not accept the offer, but his heart reacted peculiarly anyway. “She declined the offer, I assume?”

“Of course,” Harthorne said with a wave of his hand. “I knew she would, tried to convince the chap of as much, but he refused to listen, so I had to let him hear it from her lips.”

Colin released a breath he had not realized he held and met Harthorne’s gaze. “Amelia is not going to change.”

Harthorne smiled, his eyes sympathetic. “No, she is not. The question is, are you?”

“I am going to try,” Colin said, making up his mind to go see his mother again tonight. He didn’t give a damn how late it was. His gut told him he’d have a better chance of understanding himself if he could simply understand her

.

Not thirty minutes later, Colin stomped away from the steps of his mother’s home on Mayfair and lumbered into his carriage. “Take me home, Barnes.”

“The duchess isn’t in, Your Grace?”

Colin laid his head back and closed his eyes. “According to her butler, she and another group of women who call themselves the Angels of the Orphans decided to spend the night at the orphanage. They suspect the children are being mistreated, and they don’t think the ladies currently on the orphanage committee are doing enough about it.”

“Your mother? Spending the night at an orphanage?”

“I know,” Colin said. “I find it hard to believe myself.” Not only that she was so passionate about the orphans, or anyone at all, but that she was willing to spend the night somewhere like that. God alone only knew whom she coerced into letting her and her friends stay there.

He’d come by again in the morning, but if she still wasn’t home, he would go speak to Amelia. He didn’t want her to go off with Scarsdale before he had a chance to talk to her.

Colin awoke the next morning, and after stopping by his mother’s and learning she had come home but had gone out again to somewhere the butler wasn’t privy to, Colin headed to his aunt’s home. He expected that both Aunt Jane and Amelia might still be asleep, but he would simply sit and wait until Amelia made an appearance downstairs.

He knocked on the door, and when the butler opened it wide, Colin caught a glimpse of Amelia on the far side of the entrance, slipping out the terrace door that led to the gardens. “I’m here to see Lady Amelia,” Colin announced and brushed past the butler, not waiting to actually be let in. “No need to announce me,” Colin called over his shoulder. “I saw her heading to the gardens. I’ll just go catch up with her.”

Colin was across the parquet floor and descending the steps into the garden before the butler likely ever took a full breath. He stopped near the water fountain and glanced around the grounds but did not see Amelia anywhere. That was odd. She had come this way. “Amelia!”

The sound of trickling water was his only returning answer. Determined to find her, he strode around the grounds, and after a few minutes, he stopped in front of the small maze his aunt had commissioned last year to replicate one of the larger ones at her country home. A woman’s parasol lay open on the ground. He smiled and slipped into the maze and followed the path toward the center. Once there, he peered into the opening and breathed deeply at the sight of Amelia flapping a blanket in the air. Stepping back so as not to be seen, he soaked in the pleasure of simply watching her.

Her lovely melodic voice filled the air as she sang softly, and he smiled when she wrinkled her nose because she couldn’t seem to get the blanket to lie on the grass exactly as she wanted it. She got on her hands and knees and ran her hand over the quilt until all the wrinkles were out, all the while her delectable bottom waving invitingly in the air. His desire had heated his blood by the time she sat down and opened a book, instantly laughing.

Taking a long measured breath, his chest filled with painful emotion that partially made him want to move forward and gather her in his arms and somewhat made him want to turn around and leave for fear of taking this step. He could not remember ever being afraid of anything in his life, but he was now. She laughed again as she turned the page, and the sound was so sweet, he could not stop himself from moving forward to be near her.

The smell of cut grass and shrubbery filled the mildly warm air, but Amelia’s fragrant scent also lingered. He breathed deeply as he walked toward her. She was so engrossed in her book she never looked up. “Amelia,” he called very gently.

Startling, she dropped the book and gazed up at him. “Colin, whatever are you doing here at this hour?”

He kneeled down beside her, so near his thigh pressed against her leg. Her gaze lowered to where they touched and then raised to his.

“Did you want to talk to me?”

He glanced around the maze, only just registering the fact that they were completely alone. “Where is your lady’s maid?”

Amelia frowned. “Do you really care?”

“No. Except for the fact that it means I have you all to myself.”

She batted her eyelashes at him just as he had taught her to do. By damn it had the desired affect he had instructed. He instantly became hard.

“Do you want me all to yourself?” she asked innocently.

Every second. Every minute. Every day, hour, and week. For the rest of her life. But first he had to say the things that needed to be said.

Kneeling and facing her, he cupped her face in his hands and ran the pad of his thumb over her lips. “You’re so very beautiful.”

She shook her head, her eyes flitting away from his.

His gut clenched, and he swallowed the lump in his throat. “Look at me, please.” His voice was husky even to his ears.

After what seemed entirely too long, she focused her trusting, blue stare on him. He threaded his hands deep into her hair, glad she had not put it up this morning. The silk tresses glided between his fingers. “You
are
beautiful. I should have never tried to change you. Like most men, I was an utter fool and did not truly look at you when I first saw you. You did not need me to make you an Incomparable, Amelia. You already were one.”

She raised her eyebrows questioningly, as if she were trying to decide whether to believe him or not.

For once in his life, he was going to give to a woman for purely unselfish reasons. He was going to give Amelia confidence. “Amelia, I have known a great many women.” More than he wanted to recall. “You are the most beautiful I have ever encountered, not only inside but out.”

No words came from her, but her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. His heart lurched, and he brushed a very gentle kiss across her lips.

She grasped his hand and pressed a kiss to it while peering shyly at him from under her lashes. “When I was younger I was teased mercilessly about being too tall. I took to slumping and slouching to appear shorter. Your words make me want to stand straight.”

Something in him broke, snapped, came unclasped like a heavy iron chain being cut, and all the pain he had held at bay filled him. His past was trying to break the surface and destroy his future, but a kiss from her would stop the pain. He was sure of it. He captured her lips with his own and kissed her with all the mastery he had gained in all the years of bedding countless women. He would bring Amelia to writhing ecstasy with his kiss. He knew he could. He could make her want to bed him tonight, and then she would be his forever, unable to turn away from marrying him, chained to him by raw desire.

He’d seen the trust in her eyes. He had trusted the first woman who had ever used him and been burned for it. Changed. Scarred. His blood rushed in his ears, and his heartbeat joined the cacophony like a drum of desire, pain, and rage, mingled and beating a steady never-ending rhythm. Searching for some unknown something, he increased the pressure of his mouth until Amelia cried out and pulled away from him.

Her eyes were round, her breathing labored. The world around him seemed to stop, the pain of his past colliding with the hope of a future he did not know how to reach for or let himself have. Bitterness curled his hands into fists. He trailed his gaze to her lips, swollen and red from his savage kiss. Shame curled in his gut. Was this what he had to give her? Rage and shame? The need to cry out made his throat ache. The fear in the pit of his heart crept out and took hold of him. He was dirty, damaged, and unable to properly love another. Even now, when it was all that he wanted.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Determined to get away, he rose quickly, but she captured his hand and stood.

Grasping his face, she tugged him down to her and pressed her lips to his, the kiss tender and light as the summer breeze blowing around them. “Please don’t walk away from me,” she whispered. “No matter your past, I won’t judge you.”

His body went rigid. He wanted to believe her, but it seemed unfathomable. He held her unblinking gaze. “You won’t say that when you know all the details.”

“I vow I will, Colin. Trust me.”

He took a deep breath. “I was fourteen when the woman who wanted revenge against my mother first offered herself to me.”

Amelia gripped her throat in horror. “Fourteen? But you were so young.”

He smiled a merciless smile. “I was a lad, much enthralled by the idea of bedding an older woman. I thought myself special.”

“But she used you,” Amelia whispered.

“Yes, but at the time I thought she loved me. I eventually understood she didn’t.”

“Oh, Colin,” Amelia started and reached for him, but he stepped back and shook his head.

“No. That’s not it. I slept with her, and then there were others that following year, all while I was still bedding her.” He glanced up at the bright-blue sky, thinking it should have been dark and cloudy to fit his mood. “There were four women when I was fifteen. Each of them used me. I got quite good in bed. Developed somewhat of a reputation. Around my seventeenth birthday, I realized the reputation could turn the talk in the
ton
away from how my mother was cuckolding my father with every man she could get her hands on. So I threw myself into cultivating my reputation. It wasn’t hard. There were plenty of women, married and widowed, lined up to sleep with me and use me for various reasons.”

She gasped, but he kept his gaze on the sky. “I told myself it was all for my father, but in the dark of night, I know I enjoyed feeling as if I were getting revenge on all the women who wanted to use me but not love me.”

He forced himself to glance over at her. Tears streamed down her face. He did not attempt to wipe the tears away. She would likely jerk out of his reach, if he tried. “This is the man I was. No matter what I do in the future, the stains of my past cover me. We both know you deserve and want better.”

“Lady Amelia!” Amelia’s maid Lucy stumbled into the clearing and gaped at them. After a moment, she spoke. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Lady Langley says to come back to the house immediately. Lord Edington is here, and she’s quite sure it’s to ask for your hand.”

Amelia scowled and glanced between Colin and her lady’s maid before focusing on Colin. “Please don’t leave. I―”Amelia shot an annoyed look at her maid and then faced Colin once more. “You simply cannot go. Those are no last words to leave by.”

“No, they are not,” Colin agreed, his chest feeling as if it had just cracked under the pressure of his love for her. She would likely tell him she could never love him, knowing his past, but fool that he was, he had to stay. After everything, the hope that she would love him in spite of himself was there.

He nodded. “I’ll wait for you.”