Eloise watched himsleep.
Moments after curling around and over her, Robert had dropped into a slumber so deep, she half-waited for him to stop breathing entirely. That his mental and physical exhaustion had been so thorough that it had kept him from finding the very pleasure he had given her had been a wonder to her—although it did leave the lingering fear that she was somehow the cause. It had made her aware that, except for his signs of mourning at the funeral, Eloise had not been able to tell how heavily what he had been through weighed on him.
Although—obviously—it did.
That lack of awareness annoyed her like a thorn in her shoe. Eloise had grown up with a woman supremely unaware of the emotions and concerns of those around her. It made life tense on good days and excruciating on bad ones. Although she loved her mother, Eloise had striven her entire life to be nothing like her.
So she had lain in Robert’s arms, reviewing in her mind every moment they had spent together in the last twenty-four hours. As if they were line items in a ledger, she examined each expression, hand gesture, tone of voice. And a clearer picture of the man began to emerge. The way he repeated a person’s words when he thought they were ridiculous. That habit she had noticed when he had spent so much time with Lydia—who said a great many ridiculous things. Those moments when his light or joking tone of voice did not match the emotion in his eyes.
She also recalled how the façade of the brainless dandy had dropped with her, and how seriously he took his role as Robbie Green. That he had mourned Bill Campion as a beloved friend, a father.
Most vividly, Eloise realized this man had captured her heart. Thetimethey had spent together—or not spent—having less impact on her thanwhatthey had been through.
I am in so much trouble.
Eventually she had slept, that one thought persistent in her mind.
A spear of dawn’s light through the bedchamber’s windows nudged her awake, as did a bothersome twinge from her bladder. She got up, sought out the chamber pot behind the screen, and closed the curtains before the sunbeams could make their way to Robert’s pillow. Now she stood by the bed, once again watching him sleep.
He had pushed aside the covers, and he lay on his side, bare before her, and Eloise fully saw how beautiful a man he truly was. With his most mesmerizing feature—those ice-blue eyes—now shuttered in sleep, she could focus on his other features—the tawny brown of his skin, which had such a marked contrast to hers when they were pressed together. His broad cheekbones and a once-elegant and patrician nose that had been broken at least twice. A scar below his left ear; another just below his collarbone. The stubble that made the shadows of exhaustion even more pronounced on his face.
He was taller and heavier than most men she knew, but his muscles were well formed and taut over his long frame. The soft patch of hair on his chest traced up over the arched muscles of his breasts and down the center of his stomach to his loins, where a dark triangle surrounded the trio that had caused him such embarrassment last night—and her such pleasure the night before.
Lying there, relaxed and calm in sleep, Robert reminded her of the statues she had seen in museums. Stone incarnations of gods, sculpted and perfect, representing the raw potential of power.
Eloise ached to touch him, to run her hands over that beautiful body, to see if she could stir back to life that which had abandoned him last night. But now was not the time. The coming days would be almost as rough as the ones they had just had. He needed to sleep. She gingerly lay down again, trying not to shift the mattress too much as she slid up next to him, reaching for the covers to stave off the slight chill of the early morning. Robert mumbled in his sleep, stretched his legs, then enfolded her in his arms. As he moved, Eloise did as well, snuggling into a more comfortable position, plumping her pillow, and settling in against him. Sleep came quickly after that, more restfully than it had in quite some time.
*
Robert had forgottenhow much he adored waking up with a woman in his arms. To come to consciousness inhaling the floral aroma of her hair, the lingering musk of the pleasure they had shared. To embrace the unique softness that is a woman, the feel of her skin against his.
He had missed this.
Wakefulness came slowly, allowing him to relish the sensations that came from being curled around Eloise’s supple frame. They lay on their sides, her back to his front, his arm draped over her waist, their fingers entwined.
As he came fully awake, there was a flash in his mind, a fleeting vision of waking like this every day, holding a woman who cared for him, who wanted him and did not hesitate to say so. A futile fantasy, and he squeezed his eyes shut to force it away, knowing he would never have the strength it took to pursue such a thing. To break with the daughter of Makendon at this stage would send repercussions of ruin through his entire family, just at a time when everyone involved would be struggling to return from the revelation of Robert Ashton being Robbie Green.
Nor could he justify embroiling Lady Eloise Surrey further in the plan he had put in place last night, the seeds he had planted. To risk revealing her subterfuge, to intensify the scandal would entail too great a cost.
Cost. A word which sent his mind flitting over the details of his plan. If it went well, they would be able to locate Timothy and get him home not only alive but well, back into the arms of his family. Even if it went somewhat awry, Timothy could disappear into the perverted underground into which Robert hoped to encroach. If it went completely awry, not only would Timothy be gone but Robert would be in prison. But if Timothy could be extracted from what Robert feared he had been lured into, it would be worth it. Robert knew this to the very core of his soul.
Because Bill Campion had extricated him from just such an entrapment. And he knew those who had lured Robert into their world all those years ago, who had held him there with no mercy for weeks when his parents thought him safely at Eton, had been watching him ever since. Waiting for a slip, a sign that he remained as they were. That he would eventually revert to their ways having once experienced them.
Memories from that bleak time sliced into him, like icicles dropping from a house eave. Rooms never fully lit, bindings too loose to injure but tight enough to prevent escape. The raw, burning flesh of repeated abuse. The fog of laudanum that dulled the senses but not the pain. The stench of sweat, urine, and rotting food...
...and the obsession with Rose Timmons that had kept him sane and alive, engendering in him a hope he had clung to, a belief that this time of darkness would pass, that he would see Rose, be with her again. It had helped him survive, but it had also crippled him in a way he had not fully understood, leaving him with a craving that he believed only Rose could fulfill.
His stomach gave a ferocious growl, one loud enough that it startled him and disturbed Eloise, who stirred in her sleep. Whatever the reason, his body clearly did not intend to let Robert dwell in the past. Eloise shifted again, and Robert eased away from her, slipping out of the bed. He placed a still-warm pillow at her back and tucked the covers around her. She curled into a tighter ball and settled.
Robert grabbed his boots, trousers—the braces still attached—and shirt, and tiptoed into the sitting room, closing the door. He dressed and left the apartment, heading down to the kitchen. One advantage of living in the same rooming house that he had for several years earlier is that he knew just who to talk to and when.
Following the aroma of fresh-baked bread, he found the house’s cook kneading even more dough for the afternoon’s baking. Cook, a pleasant woman in her mid-fifties, had the build of a woman who had spent most of her life laboring in the kitchen—plump hips and stooped shoulders, a red face and a ready grin. When he grabbed her from behind, she slapped his arm playfully, sending up a cloud of flour dust.
“Ach! I couldn’t believe it when he told me my favorite scoundrel was back. Ya couldn’t stay away from ma cookin’, could ya?”
He gave her cheek a quick kiss. “How could I? There is absolutely nothing from a Mayfair chef that matches it. Nothing. I do not know how I stayed away this long.”
She grinned. “And full of cow-slaver as ever. Sly devil.”
