This was a man who wouldn’t ask for a kiss.
This was a man who wouldn’t brush his lips against hers, and then capture her waist with a desperate touch.
This was a man who would put her on her knees, wrap a hand around a fistful of her hair, and tell her to beg for mercy.
Edwina desperately wished she hadn’t read the particular book she’d found on his desk that had put that thought in her head.
Twenty-seven and still a virgin, and yet, she’d been witness to several of the solstice rites the order used to celebrate the equinoxes. Sex was often a means for a sorcerer to gather energy and realign their auras, and whilst she’d grown up in her somewhat puritanical aunt’s house, she’d seen enough since then to know exactly what men and women got up to in private.
“You’re being awfully quiet,” Sterling told her as he handed his calling card to Lord Willoughby’s butler.
“Just taking in the manor,” she murmured as the servant left to see if the Willoughby’s were receiving.
“Mmm.” She could feel his gaze upon her, and looked up from where she’d been examining his tie, or more particularly, the muscles of his throat.
Silence fell.
There was a somewhat knowing look in his eyes. “Edwina.”
“Yes?”
“You’re not focusing on the manor, at all.”
She turned away from him, fanning her face. “It’s a little unnerving to see you like this.”
“Dressed up like a peacock?”
“No.” She gestured at him helplessly. “You don’t look at all like my Sterling. I’m… not entirely certain I like it.”
A faint, husky laugh came from his throat. “Really? That wasn’t the impression I was gaining.”
Heat flooded through her cheeks. “Yes, well. You look divine and you know it. A woman cannot help but notice. But you don’t look like the man who rolls up his shirtsleeves and takes tea with me. You don’t look like the man who patiently helped me through my mental blocks in accessing my telekinetic side. You look colder, somehow. Inaccessible.”
His gaze dropped to study the floor. “I look like the duke.”
And there it was.
He didn’t like it either.
Edwina couldn’t stop herself from taking his hand and squeezing it. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. You don’t quite have that broomstick-up-your-ass expression he’s so fond of. You’re not your father, Sterling.”
Laughter burst from him. “Your disrespect toward your betters is shocking, Edie. I love it.”
“The problem is, I don’t think they’re my betters.”
“Neither do I.” He squeezed her hand back. “But he would.”
Over the years she’d been privy to certain arguments between the pair of them. The duke had expectations of his son, but Sterling had long been rebellious. He didn’t fit, he’d told her. He’d spent his entire childhood chafing at the constraints of the title and the expectations upon him. It wasn’t what he wanted for himself. It wasn’t what he was made for. He’d spent years feeling too big for his skin, and it wasn’t until his magic finally exploded out of him—a cataclysmic event he wouldn’t even speak of to her—that he’d finally understood where he belonged.
It had been the first official sundering between he and his father.
But certainly not the last.
The last time they’d argued, the duke had told Sterling that if he refused to give up his magic and take his place within the family, then he wanted nothing further to do with him. He would no longer be welcome at Clarenvale House, he’d be cut out of the will, and any financial remunerations he received from the Clarenvale trust would dry up.
Edwina knew the duke expected Sterling to come crawling back to him.
The problem was: The duke didn’t seem to know his own son.
