Page 64 of The Runaway Duchess

“Muriel Pendrake.” He purred it, and she tried—valiantly—to smile. But she knew, already she knew. Her throat moved convulsively.

“The worms aren’t cooperating,” she said, with a lightness that jarred with the fear he read plainly in her eyes. “In China, they leap onto the hook.”

Her struggling smile suddenly widened. She hoped to dazzle him with that heart-clutching prettiness. To stave off the inevitable.

The time had come.

He prowled back to her. The light filtering through the leaves dappled her with gold.

He’d always been susceptible to dappled things. Fawns. Finches. Foxgloves. He’d avoided noticing the sweet freckles forming across the bridge of her nose.

“Muriel Pendrake,” he repeated. Silky. Threatening.

“Yes?” Her smile faded. She was shaken. Exhausted and shaken. He was the immediate cause of that troubled expression, but she had created the situation. She was to blame, she and her lies.

“I like the sound of it, that’s all.” He looked down at her. “Don’t you?”

She made an uncertain motion and more slippery hair fell down to frame her face. She couldn’t push it back, not with her hands filled with mud, worms, the hook and length of line. She was helpless, stippled with light, rather like a trout herself.

He’d caught her. Now what would he do with her?

He laced his fingers together, settled his chin on them, to keep from touching the shining lock, rubbing his fingertip over her cheek.

“Muriel. Pendrake.”

Her eyes begged him to end her torment. He could clasp her to his chest, taste the sun and the shadow on her skin, put it off—this reckoning—for another hour, another day.

That was a reprieve, though, not a resolution.

“What’s your real name?” he asked.

Chapter Eleven

With her eyes shut, she could pretend she didn’t exist, had winked out. And hadn’t she? She wasn’t Muriel to him. She wasn’t anything. How much easier if she could disappear entirely. Leave no trace.

She felt the dig of his fingertips as he took her face in his hands.

“Look at me.” His voice grated.

She wouldn’t, tried to shake her head, but his fingers dug deeper. She didn’t want to see the transformation she’d noted in him across the past two days completed, irrevocable. Neither of them existed anymore, not for each other. Better to sink into darkness.

“Look at me.” Distinct menace in his voice. Her gentle, teasing gardener—no more. Her chest creaked, the bony cage constricting, until it cut her heart. The soft red muscle inside her—sliced into ribbons. She screwed her eyelids more tightly together. Then his lips were at her ear, his breath burning.

“Muriel.” It was a groan, a plea.

Her eyes snapped open. Neal filled her field of vision—blunt, squared-off face and broad shoulders—the whole of him big and thick and strong, and steeled against her.

“Dammit,” he breathed. “Tell me what the hell else I should call you.”

“Lavinia.” Her own name clogged in her throat. She tasted the salt of hot tears, or blood.

“Lavinia what?”

Fair question. Tears slipped down her cheeks, wetting his fingers, his palms. He didn’t loosen his grip. His brown eyes were banded with green and gold, striped as agate, and just as hard.

“Nothing.” She heard her own whisper as she heard the river, the sifting of leaves, the flutter of bird’s wings. She didn’t exist but formed a part of this quiet green place, this moment in time.

He swore again and pulled back from her, flicking the tears from his fingers.