A Duke in Disguise by Cat Sebastian

Author:Cat Sebastian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Ash woke with a gasp, his heart pounding and his sheets soaked in sweat. He had dreamed again of Arundel House, of sweeping stairs and marble floors. Of falling. It was an old dream, one that sometimes visited him nightly and other times waited years to reappear. But now he knew the setting to be Arundel House, and he knew the fall to have been the accident that injured his arm. Not an accident, he reminded himself, but his uncle’s attempt to murder him. Unless, of course, Lady Caroline was mistaken. It could be an odd series of coincidences, surely.

“Ash?” Verity stood in the door to his room. “I knocked but there was no answer.”

He probably hadn’t heard her over the sound of his heart thudding and the blood rushing in his ears. “Bad dream,” he said.

“You called out. I thought you might have had a seizure.” She wore only a night rail, not even having bothered to reach for a dressing gown before rushing to his door.

“Just a nightmare.” He wished he could tell her the truth, but she was the last person he could talk to because she was the most affected by his future. If he were to be a duke—utterly ludicrous—then any future with Verity would either make her a duke’s mistress or a duchess, and as much as he wanted to believe that she’d want to be with him no matter his title or status, he did not think she would jump at either option. That left them with this month, and he wasn’t going to ruin it for her—for them—by burdening her with truths she’d find out eventually.

“You can go back to sleep,” he said.

“You’re shivering.” She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed a cool hand to his forehead. “You’re freezing cold, Ash.”

“My sheets are sweaty,” he admitted.

“Come to bed with me. It’s warm.” At his hesitation, she squeezed his hand. “Just sleeping, Ash. Otherwise I’ll help you change your sheets.”

He went with her. When she got under her quilt, he stripped out of his nightshirt and climbed into bed beside her. The next time he woke was when Verity’s forearm landed on his face. He opened his eyes. The woman took up a full three-quarters of her bed, leaving Ash with a sliver of mattress and a scrap of quilt. He was marveling over the mathematical precision with which her not-particularly-large body was arranged to occupy the lion’s share of a not-particularly-small bed, when he heard a hiss. It was pitch black, but following the direction of the sound he found a pair of glittering eyes staring at him from on top of Verity’s clothes press.

“It’s too early to be laughing,” Verity mumbled, pressing her face into the pillow and somehow pushing him even further off the bed. “Save your levity for business hours.”

He pushed a lock of her hair out of his mouth. “The cat thinks you’re attacking me. Which, to be fair, is not an unreasonable interpretation of the facts.

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