Slightly Dangerous (Bedwyn Saga, #6)

by Mary Balogh

You had no need to exert yourself as you did on my behalf.” “I had every need,” he said quietly.

I had every need. To exert himself on her behalf, that was.

It was a dreadful moment. It was the moment she would have far preferred to avoid. It was the moment at which she finally and quite consciously knew. She knew that she was deeply entangled with the Duke of Bewcastle with no safe way out—and surely no possible way in.

But it was already too late to guard or deflect her feelings.

But she somehow knew the answer. It was as if she had lived this moment before and knew just what he was going to say.

“One can get lost in vastness,” he said. “Sometimes even I forget that I am anything else but the Duke of Bewcastle.”

Yet curiously I have not been here for a whole year—not until last week anyway, when it occurred to me that I must bring you here.”

And therefore, you see, I cannot assure you that I will become a changed man in order to fit your dream. You find me cold, reticent, hard, and I am all those things. But I am not only those things.”

“I cannot offer you anything I am not, you see,” he said. “I can only hope you are able to see that any person who has lived for almost thirty-six years is vastly complex.

You accused me a few evenings ago of wearing a mask, and you were wrong. I wear the mantle of Duke of Bewcastle over that of Wulfric Bedwyn, but both mantles are mine.

I am not less of a man because I choose to put duty ...

And then you wondered if I am a cold, unfeeling aristocrat right through to the very core. I am not. If I were, would I ever have been first enchanted by...

He had found her enchanting. He had been haunted by the memory of her? Haunted?

On his deathbed he kissed my hand and told me that sometimes love hurts even though it is nonetheless love.

He was baring his soul to her. Because . . . because he had been enchanted with her and then haunted by the memory of her.

Because he had brought her here deliberately—here to Lindsey Hall, here to the dovecote, his private hermitage, for just this purpose. Because he had begged her to give him a chance.

This time she was wiser and far more cautious. This time she was well aware that no happily-ever-after danced merrily just beyond a proposal of marriage and its acceptance. And yet . . .

And yet he was a man whom, against all the odds, she had grown to like. And he was a man she was unwillingly coming to admire. How could she not admire a man to whom honor and duty meant everything?

How could she not admire him? And, God help her, how could she not love him?

She smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said. “I understand that you are a very private person. Thank you for showing me this enchanted private place and for telling me about yourself.”

“I have dreamed,” he said, “for almost a year I have dreamed of seeing you here, sitting there, just as you are.

am not going to ask any questions today. The time is not right. I will tell you something, though. I did not bring you here to seduce you. But I want you. You know that. I want to have you now, here on that bed. I want it as a free expression of what I feel for you and what perhaps you feel for me.

He took the three steps that separated them and held out his right hand, palm up. She pushed the sheepskin aside and set her hand in his. He raised it to his lips.

He did not want this to be a simple outpouring of sexual hunger as it had been last time. Although he had not used the word to her and would not, he wanted to make love to her.

She had a lovely mouth, with soft, smooth lips that were almost always curved upward at the corners.

he had never seen her unclothed. He wanted to see her now. He wanted to make love to her with no barriers between them.

he could have stood there for a while just drinking in the sight of her,

He lowered his head to the soft spot beneath one of her ears and growled. She laughed again, and her legs tightened about his and her inner muscles clenched about him again.

But there was something else that he wanted, and he was not at all sure he would ever have it. He was certainly not going to ask today. Maybe not even tomorrow or the next day. He was afraid to ask. He was afraid the answer would be no. And, if it was, he could never ask again. So the question must wait. He wanted her love.

They had shared far more than they had at Schofield. They had shared bodies there. Here they had shared themselves.

Christine still felt weak-kneed and vulnerable. She was deeply in love.

But what if he never did ask? How could she bear it?

He had called her Christine. It was absurd to remember that as perhaps the most tender and precious moment of all. But it had been precious—Christine, spoken in his very cultured, very aristocratic voice.

Though he had whispered it the first time. And when she had called him Wulfric, he had growled at her.

He was, Christine realized, playing up to his audience, which was loving it.

It was the moment at which Christine slid all the way—irretrievably—in love.

“If this is what you have done for him,” she said, “I will love you all my life.”

“I am happy to remember, ma’am,” he said, “that I did not laugh at you that day beside the Serpentine. I now understand the discomfort you were suffering.”

But she laughed at him. Not out loud. She laughed with her eyes. He had done it for her, she was sure. To prove to her that he was Wulfric Bedwyn as well as the Duke of Bewcastle.

His guests were to leave the day after tomorrow. Even his family was leaving, some for town, some for their own homes in the country. And he was going to let them all leave. He was going to let her leave. He had decided that.

But he wanted this evening to be special.

And she looked lovely too—Christine Derrick, who was smiling and brimming over with light and joy as she passed the receiving line and had her first sight of the room.

She looked like a piece of the springtime. Wulfric’s heart lifted at the sight of her.

He was feeling absurdly shy.

She was looking flushed and bright-eyed, and not at all the way a lady ought to look at a ball—aloof and slightly bored. She looked really quite adorable.

Her eyes met his across the empty floor. He could not resist. His fingers grasped the jeweled handle of his quizzing glass and raised it all the way to his eye before lowering it slightly. Even across the distance he could see the laughter well up into her eyes.

She brought the object slowly up to her eye and regarded him—through the lens of his own quizzing glass.

Wulfric Bedwyn, the oh-so-toplofty, oh-so-frosty Duke of Bewcastle, was shocked into uttering a short bark of laughter. Then he smiled at her slowly until his whole face beamed his amusement and affection.

“Did I miss something?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “A looking glass. You missed seeing yourself smile.”