Page 24 of The Duke Undone

“You’re right,” she repeated, more firmly. “I’m sorry.”

It was his turn to stare. Confounding woman. Despite himself, he laughed.

“And how do you mean, covered me? I woke naked as the day I was born. I had to buy a shawl off Nick so I could hail a cab.”

“Nick?” Her brow furrowed.

“A little ragpicker.” He’d had to take the bright-eyed urchin with him to make good on the sale. On the ride to Weston Hall, Nick had given him an earful about his ma and da and wee sisters.

“That was my freely given shawl he sold you.” She laughed. “How much?”

“He asked for a quid.” The cabman had waited with Nick behind the stables while Anthony crept into the glasshouse for clothes, then up into his study for coin.

“And I paid him sixpence to watch over you.” She shook her head admiringly. “Clever boy.”

“I gave him back the shawl, or I’d return it to you.”

“I wonder how many times he can sell it.” She smiled. “It was kind of you to let him keep it.”

He shrugged, uncomfortable. What was a tattered triangle of paisley-print wool to him? She was the one who’d been kind. He didn’t tell her he’d slipped Nick one of his father’s gold pocket watches as well, to help his sick ma. Nick had vanished from his thoughts. He’d become too aware of Miss Coover’s proximity, the rise and fall of her breasts.

She was a confounding, extraordinary woman. She’d covered him with one hand and exposed him with the other.

As the pause extended, she sighed.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I’m not just sorry you nearly died. I’m sorry for what I did. Something came over me. It’s no excuse, but . . .”

She sighed again. “I pass through that alley every day. Suddenly, you were there.”

Shoreditch. His mind twisted and turned through the boggling labyrinth of tenements, flophouses, bars, theaters, brothels, and workshops. She was native to that borough, where he slummed after midnight. And yet here she was, in the Royal Academy, on his side of London.

They’d made reciprocal journeys. But hers had been harder. Shame again, heavy, thick, a wellspring of sludge that never ran dry.

“It was like a miracle,” she said, eyes widening slightly, the line of her lips softening.

He startled.

“A miracle?” He shook his head. “Stepping on a soused idiot?”

He laughed softly.

She didn’t.

“Seeing you,” she said. The slight burr that gave her voice its velvety nap snagged in her throat. The words emerged as a croak. That croak was all it took. Something felt different. Charged. Something was kindling.

His skin prickled.

“Everything I wanted to know.”

There was only a whisper of air between their bodies. He couldn’t resist.

“Everything?” He drawled the word and reached out, slowly. He touched a ringlet that skimmed her temple, felt its spring, then rubbed it between his fingers. She shivered but didn’t flinch away. A line appeared between her brows.

“Not everything. I couldn’t see your backside,” she said. “But I feared you’d wake if I tried to tip you over.”

A laugh escaped him. She could be blunt, and humorous. Laughter didn’t break the spell. It strengthened it. He laid his thumb on her cheekbone. Her skin was smooth, those little golden freckles without texture.

“Here I am, awoken,” he said, with mock grandiosity; then he cleared his throat. “Which means it will be more challenging now, to see my bare backside. You will have to beg my permission.”