Tamed by her Duke (Seductive Mysteries #4)

Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

T he sun was just starting to slump toward the horizon, casting a slanting orange glow across the room, when Caleb came awake the way one might emerge from deep water, gradually, then with the final break into fresh air.

He took a deep breath—and froze. Fingers were dancing along the curve of his hip, over toward his ribcage. And Grace—Grace, who could see everything in the light—was breathing lightly against his back.

“Are you awake?” she asked, voice quiet in case he wasn’t.

Caleb wished to be a coward, just for a split second, but it was no use. She knew. She’d seen.

“Aye,” he said, bracing himself for whatever came next.

But her tone wasn’t horrified, just curious, perhaps tinged with sadness.

“I hadn’t realized you’d been injured while fighting,” she said. Her fingers moved then, her touch light as a puff of air, as she touched the hideous mass of scars that he’d tried so hard to spare her from ever seeing.

“Aye,” he said again, hoping he sounded unaffected. “Ye needn’t look at them, if ye find them hideous.”

There. His voice had come out even. Controlled.

Even so, there was a flurry of movement behind him as Grace propped up on her elbow. When she looked down at him, dark tendrils framing her face, she looked confounded.

“Wait, can you not see them?” she asked, glancing from his face to his back and then to his face again. “Not even with a looking glass?”

Now he frowned, too. “No, I can.”

“Then what do you mean if they’re hideous? You must know they’re not that bad.”

This was a bald-faced lie. One of the scars was a puncture wound from a French bastard’s bayonet, the other was a long swath of burns that extended from the right side of his neck, down and across to the upper side of his left ribs. It had taken ages to heal and had left a rough, rugged texture behind.

“Ye needn’t coddle me, Grace,” he said coldly, trying to shift away without hurting her. She did not make it easy on him. “I know what I am.”

Now she was looking at him like he was stupid.

“They’re just scars,” she said. “I have one just here, look.”

She raised her left arm—which, given that she was still unclothed, gave him a marvelous view of her breasts, as well, though he did try valiantly to focus on what she was showing him. There were two little divots there.

“This isn’t even from my time away,” she said. “This scar is from pure idiocy, I’m afraid. I was, oh, seven or eight years old, and thought I could climb trees just as well as my brother and his friends. I was wrong, and when I fell, I managed to jab a stick straight through the skin of my arm here.”

“Ye what?” Caleb demanded. His hands reached for the little scars, as if he intended to probe for some lingering injury.

“I’m fine, you dear, foolish man,” she said, and Caleb wondered if he should object more strongly to being called dear or foolish . He let her continue speaking instead. “My point is, I got my scars by being a ninny. You got yours from defending our country from Napoleon. Which do you think is more honorable?”

Technically, not all of Caleb’s scars were from his military service, but the worst of them were. He didn’t know if the fighting had been honorable, however. It had been his work, and he didn’t regret it. But he’d seen too many men die painful deaths for the glory of kings to be at all certain that there was any honor in battle.

Grace continued speaking through his silence.

“I confess—and do forgive me for saying it if I’m wrong, here—that I’m surprised to see that you were injured, however. Weren’t you an officer? Shouldn’t you have been kept well behind battle lines, seeing as you were a duke’s heir?”

This was, Caleb recognized, the moment where he had to make a choice.

He could push her off, push her away. He could be gruff, could remind her that this was an arrangement between them. She had no right to his past, his history, his scars.

If he did it now, he sensed, it would be final. He would put distance between them forever. And perhaps that was meant to be what he wanted. Perhaps it was what he should do.

But…

But the golden light made his wife look like something from a painting, and the familiar way she curved her naked body around his, even after seeing all the places he was too big and too rough and too ruined—that familiarity opened some other kind of wound inside him, something deep and old and still not yet scabbed over.

And so he let himself acknowledge the other possibility, the one that was dangerous and dark, like a cave never explored.

He could tell her the truth. He could let her see him.

And maybe, just maybe, she would understand. If anyone did, surely it would be this woman, the one who had been snatched by demons and dragged into hell, only to escape with her light undiminished.

Caleb wasn’t a coward.

“I had an officer’s commission, aye,” he said, rolling onto his back so he could stare up at the drapery that surrounded Grace’s bed. “But, seeing as my father feckin’ hated me, he bought one that was as shite as he could get away with, without anyone questioning him.”

Grace’s fingertips, still trailing along his side, stuttered but did not stop. And when she spoke, it was not without sympathy, but there was none of the pity he so dreaded.

“I see,” she said, and knowing her father, he gathered that she probably did. “And so you saw battle?”

“I did,” he confirmed. “Mostly early on. The deep mark, on my shoulder here—that one actually came from my very first battle. Got stabbed.”

Now she sucked in a breath, but it sounded furious.

“You could have been killed!” she said.

He gave a humorless laugh. “Aye, I think that was what my father was counting on. A way to get rid of me without losing the sympathy of the peers whose voices he valued. But he was damned lucky that I didn’t, in the end, because…”

He trailed off. Grace filled the space.

“Your brother,” she said softly. “Leonard. He died.”

Caleb let out a sound that was almost, not quite a laugh. Why was he not surprised that she knew about Leonard?

But if he was telling her the truth, he might as well tell her the whole truth.

“Leonard,” he said, his voice catching slightly on his brother’s name, which he had not spoken out loud in so, so long. “He was better than me, ye ken? He was like my maither. Sweet, kind. He’d never hurt anyone.”

Not like Caleb. Caleb had been Leonard’s fists, and he’d never regretted the role.

“My faither,” he continued. “Well…my faither was the kind of man who’d send his son off to war and hope that he die. He couldnae control me, ye see. I was too big, too stubborn. And too loyal to my maither and brother, nae to him.”

“But Leonard,” Grace said softly in a voice that said the pieces were falling into place. “He wasn’t too big. And maybe not stubborn enough.”

“Nae, he wasn’t,” Caleb agreed. His heart felt heavy in his chest. “When he was wee, I protected him. Got in the way of my father’s fists when I needed to, but that ended soon enough. I got big young, and my father never did like to fight anyone who might be able to fight back. So, if I stood between him and Leonard, he’d back down. That worked for a little while. But once I went off to school, I couldnae look out for him—and my maither was gone by then, ye see.” He breathed in and out slowly. It hurt. No matter how many years went by, talking about his mother and brother always hurt.

“I scarcely took a breath, those years when I was in England and Lenny was still in Scotland. I would count down the days to the end of each term like a man counting down the days until the end of a prison term. I kept my head down, kept out of trouble—anything to keep from reminding my father that he had sons, or that he might control the elder by striking out at the younger.”

She pressed a featherlight kiss to his shoulder.

“I thought,” he said, bitterness creeping into his tone, “that once I was done with Eton, I’d gotten through the worst of it. My brother came a few years after me, and I protected him from bullies as best I could—that place is practically crawlin’ with bullies, ye ken, and Leonard was a prime target. He was too sweet, too small, too Scottish for yon English lads to stand for.”

Her strokes up and down his arms were soothing, repetitive, and better than any verbal response.

I’m here, those motions said. I’m listening. I’m not afraid .

“But my faither, he pulled strings, wielded his ducal power.” He was practically spitting the words now. “Got me a commission as a Second Lieutenant—only office that’s higher than an Ensign. He couldnae bear me fightin’ alongside the sons of mere merchants, ye see—as a matter of his honor, not mine, of course. Normally, a man signs up for his own commission, but a duke is a duke.”

“And so you and your brother were separated again,” Grace murmured.

“Aye.” Caleb had to breathe slowly in and out before he could keep going. “I gather that my father thought that, if he got me out of the way, he’d be able to shape Leonard however he wanted. Then, once I got myself blown away by the French, he’d have the heir he wanted. Except—” He cleared his throat. “Except I hadn’t been in the army a year before Leonard killed himself.”

Grace sucked in a sharp breath; her hand clenched briefly on his arm before she forced herself to keep stroking, back and forth, back and forth. Oddly, the flinch soothed him, made him feel she understood the seriousness, not only of what had happened to Caleb’s too good brother, but of Caleb telling her this story.

Of him trusting her with the truth.

“My father dinnae even write me in time to attend the funeral,” he said, hoarseness betraying the depth of his emotion. “I dinnae even see my brother buried.” His last words were sharp. “And so, when my father died, I dinnae see him buried, either. He wrote me, when he started to ail, and I did not come back. I waited until he was gone, and then I resigned the commission he’d forced upon me.”

“Good.” Grace’s words were savage. When he glanced up at her, not truly surprised, her face was lined with grim certainty. “I hope he regretted it. I hope he wished you were there. And I hope when he died, that he was scared of being alone and knew that, if he was, it was his own fault.”

For a moment, Caleb stared up at her, not truly surprised as much as he was in awe of his fierce little warrior bride. When she caught him looking, she flushed.

“I’m not sorry for saying it,” she said stubbornly. “I know we’re not meant to speak ill of the dead, are supposed to forgive, but I don’t and I won’t. He was wrong for hurting you, and I’m glad he’s dead. I hope it hurt. I won’t apologize.”

He didn’t want her to apologize. He wanted to?—

Well, he wanted to seize her mouth and kiss her, which was precisely what he did.

When he finally released her, he saw that he’d kissed the stubborn expression right off her face, leaving a happily dazed look in his place. He quite liked having that effect on her.

Caleb would have liked to pursue this activity with more vigor, but there was one thing left to say.

“I’m not like Leonard,” he said. “I’m not like my maither. And that makes me worry… If I’m not like her , perhaps that means I’m destined to be like him .”

“That,” said the wife who had been so sweetly sympathetic to him, who had been so vengeful in his name, “is so profoundly idiotic I simply cannot explain to you how.”

Caleb honestly didn’t know whether to laugh, be offended, or get cross with her. He was saved from deciding because Grace apparently did know how to explain his idiocy to him and proceeded to do just that.

“First off,” she said, raising a finger primly like a governess about to illustrate a clear point—only she was still nude, and therefore miles more arousing than any governess Caleb could imagine. “I would like to say this: I am not putting on blinders. I am not defending you out of loyalty alone. You have done a number of rude, not to mention highly annoying, things to me personally. I haven’t forgotten them.”

Caleb wasn’t sure he would say she was defending him at all let alone out of blind loyalty, but she looked maddeningly compelling while pontificating, so he left her to it.

“And second,” she went on, “I never met your father—lucky for him,” she added darkly. “But I nevertheless feel wildly confident in saying that he would not have given his new bride several weeks to adjust to her change in circumstances before dragging her off to the marital bed, would he now?”

“Well, nae, he?—”

“And,” she went on, looking increasingly pleased with herself—which, Caleb was distressed to note, only made him stiffen even more with desire, “would he have chased your mother while she sleepwalked to make sure she didn’t break her neck?”

“No, he?—”

“ And ,” she said emphatically, “would he, upon discovering that there might be a villain afoot who intended to do harm to his wife, hie off to a city he despised—oh, don’t frown Caleb, you’ve made your opinions quite clear—just to dispense with that hypothetical threat?”

“The man sellin’ the mill is real, Grace; he’s no mere hypothetical?—”

She cleared her throat pointedly.

“Christ, woman, stop interruptin’ me. No, he wouldn’t, all right? Are ye happy now? Are ye done?” As he spoke, he could not restrain himself any longer. He snaked an arm around her waist and dragged him until she was perched in his lap.

She paused, considering.

“No, I suppose I’m finished,” she said at last. “But only if you’re adequately convinced.”

Two days ago—hell, two hours ago—Caleb would have thought this wound could not be healed. And it wasn’t fixed . He didn’t think losing his brother was something that would ever feel finished, not so long as he kept having moments, as he still so often did, where he saw something or read a book and thought, Ah, Lenny would love that .

Leonard would have loved Grace, for one. The pair of them would have driven Caleb mad with their sly little smiles and that way they both had of making it impossible to stay angry with them.

So, no. This wouldn’t ever fully heal.

But the fear was less for having shared it. The pain was less.

Later, Caleb would recognize that this moment was the point at which it became impossible for him to turn back.

“Aye,” he said. “I’m convinced.”

She inspected his face for signs of duplicity—as if he’d dare, now that he knew how bloodthirsty she was—and when she found none, her smile was sunlight.

“Good,” she said, nodding in brisk satisfaction. “And if you ever forget it, I shall be right here to remind you. And to curse the bastard’s name,” she added, almost absent in her consideration, which made Caleb pull her close so that he could bury his laughter in her hair.

This, of course, brought her breasts close to his chest, and he realized that, in hiding his scars, he’d not spent nearly enough time luxuriating in the feel of his skin against hers.

“Ye know,” he said, shifting just enough that she could feel where he’d grown once more rock hard beneath her. “We’ve a good hour until supper.”

He felt the curve of her smile against his cheek. “Have we? We ought to put that time to good use, then, don’t you think?”

He did think. And so they did. And as they did, Caleb wondered if he’d ever felt something that was so close to peace in all his born days.