You May Kiss the Duke EPB by Charis Michaels

Author:Charis Michaels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The problem, Stoker thought, with touching Sabine, was that once he touched her, he did not want to let her go. Ever. Not to walk home (or in his case, limp home) from Belgrave Square; not to instruct servants to carry a summons to the doctor, which she had insisted on; not even to eat bloody supper, an endeavor he’d waited five long days to experience in her company rather than across the tray from Harley.

Now that she was finally back, elaborating on her findings at Hampstead kiln, all Stoker wanted to do was upend his tray and reach for her.

Instead, he stared at his food. He answered her questions about explosives and charcoal and how she might discover what they, along with barrels and wagons and the Isle of Portland, had to do with her uncle’s illegal smuggling business. Her dog, blessedly absent from the gardens, now sat beside his bed and begged for scraps from his plate.

Thankfully, Sabine seemed to have set aside the topic of the Duke of Wrest, although he was not so naive as to believe she’d forgotten it. It had never been his intent to conceal from Sabine what the investigator had learned. When he’d said the conversation had “gotten away from him,” it had not been a lie. The list of things he’d not intended in the garden were legion. He’d not intended to scold her about her ramblings in Hampstead. He’d not intended to translate her own feelings into his terms. And then of course, there was the thing he intended least of all.

He’d kissed her. Again. After he’d spent five days vowing to get a handle on his control. No matter how she provoked him. No matter how his desire for her raged. Because kisses, as he knew, led to other things, all-consuming, violating things, and he would never, ever violate Sabine. He would not be a source of distress or shame or pain in her life; and his ferocious lust would not be the end to the brief meetings they had always enjoyed or the simple knowledge that she existed somewhere in England, not hating him.

If these stopped, if she shut him out, he would embrace the demons of his terrible boyhood and wild youth and stop making any effort to be a gentleman. He would simply allow the memories and fears to consume him.

And no one wants that, he thought cynically, acknowledging his penchant for melodrama. Perhaps there would be no consumption, but there would be wretchedness, nightmares, and hopelessness. For the time being, she kept it all at bay.

Stoker passed another haunch of chicken to the dog and tried to keep up with the conversation. Sabine had set aside her own tray and now tacked pieces of parchment to his bedroom wall, explaining that she’d prepared the parchment as an evidence mural. Now securely hung on the bedroom wall, they could digest the evidence together. He admired her organization and artistry but also felt a heavy weight roll from his chest.

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