Page 36 of The Duke Decides

“Then you oughtn’t be dallying with older widows.” Louisa pulled the waistcoat from him, along with the cravat. Above the loose neckline of his shirt, bruises showed against his throat. She swallowed hard, her own throat aching with a clutch of emotions she couldn’t untangle. “You ought to court someone young and fertile.”

“How old are you, Louisa?” he asked, submitting to her loosening his suspenders.

“Five and thirty. Practically old enough to be a grandmother.”

“You are only five years old than I. And I don’t care if we have children or not.”

“You must care. You are the Duke of Barkham.”

“I would rather have you.”

Her hands shook as she pushed back his thick hair to inspect the bruise developing at his temple. “It is foolish to say such things. You did take several blows to the head.” She peered into his eyes, inspecting his pupils.

He gazed back at her steadily, his eyes wide and dark. The emotion in his gaze trapped her breath in her throat and teased up longings better left unheeded.

The longing to be looked at, by him, like this, for always. The longing to be this close to him, always.

She smoothed a hand over his hair and pressed a kiss to his hairline beneath his temple, one stretch of skin not marked with a bruise. Her entire body leaned toward him, falling into his gravity, succumbing to the pull. Of his beauty. Of her own desire.

“Of course, I understand if you do not consider me much of a prize,” he muttered, his gaze falling to his damaged knuckles. “You could have better. You should have better.”

“Gabe.” Her throat burned again, as tight as if the attacker’s fingers were still wrapped around her windpipe. She ached at the bleak expression in his eyes. “There is no one—”

A scratch at the door announced Sister Agatha, bearing an earthenware basin, and Alice behind her with an armload of cloth and bottles of salve. Sister Nan appeared a moment later. Louisa slipped into her role as Matron, not willing to let them see how Gabe affected her.

Still, she was certain her feelings bled through her mask, showing in the way she clung to his hand as Sister Nan inspected his ribs and prodded the tender areas. She sucked in air when he winced as Sister Agatha daubed at the cuts on his face crusted with dried blood.

By unspoken consent the others let Louisa twist the bandage around his body that would bind his cracked ribs, and though he was correct in his speech and as dignified as it was possible to be on a sickbed, he learned toward her as she worked, and his heat, his nearness, made a puddle of her insides. She tried to be brisk and not let her hands linger against his warm skin, not let her arms remain wrapped around him for longer than it took to unroll the length of linen. But his scent made her hunger for him, earth and iron and man, and her mind moved heavy and slow through a fog of pleasure and alarm.

The others finished their work and withdrew, Sister Nan leaving instructions about movement and medicines, how to apply more salve to his cuts, when to give the next dose of laudanum if His Grace wished something to dull the pain.

“You,” Gabe said when the others had left, leaving Louisa with her patient and a pair of candles and the reckoning she knew must come. “You dull my pain.”

“You are being foolish again. You must rest.”

“So must you. Come here.” He held out an arm, inviting her onto the bed beside him.

Louisa held herself stiffly, clenching her fingers into the sarcenet overlay on her skirt, torn and ruined beyond repair. She felt the same way about her life, suddenly—as if something had broken that could never be mended.

She was broken.

“Gabe,” she said softly. “I could never be your duchess.”

“You could,” he said stubbornly. “If we both wished it.”

Louisa shook her head, trying to free herself from the seductive spell of him, the low pull of his voice, the heat in his shadowed gaze, the wanton, deceptive voice in her own head that whispered, Why not? The mere shape of him in her bed was a magnetizing force. She wanted to curl up against his strength, his heat, and let herself be lost there.

“What I’ve done,” she said. “What I am. It’s impossible.”

“Come here,” he said again, his voice softening, “and tell me about it.”

She gave in to the spell then, his gentleness summoning her as no command could have done. He patted the quilt at his hip, and Louisa curled up beside him like a cat. His arm came around her, warm and heavy and strong and safe, and she wanted to whimper. She had not felt this relief in fifteen years—the sense that she could finally lay her burden down.

That she could allow herself to be seen, at last, by another.

“I’m an Egyptian street rat who became a duke.” He nuzzled his face against her hair, which was a tumbled wreck after the events of the evening. “So why can a respectable Hospital Matron not become a duchess?”

“Because I am not respectable. Not in the least. This Lord Vérité found me out somehow, and what he knows— It would ruin me. And it could ruin you by association.”