Page 59 of The Duke's Only Desire

Chapter Seventeen

Sophie sank deeperinto the warm bedding and watched as Shay stirred the banked coals until a bright flame glowed warmly in the fireplace. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. The light played across the smooth planes of his naked body and glinted red highlights in his mussed blond hair, and when he returned the poker to its stand, the muscles in his back rippled and made her long to run her fingers over him. Again.

He glanced over his shoulder and caught her staring. A wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I think you’ve turned wanton.”

“Your fault.” She tucked the velvet-covered counterpane beneath her chin. “I was painfully proper less than an hour ago.”

He chuckled and walked back to the bed, to slide beneath the warm covers with her. He drew her against him, and she snuggled instinctively against his side. Where she belonged.

A long sigh escaped her. Being with him like this felt completely natural, as if she were a part of him, and she couldn’t help but smile as happiness blossomed inside her chest.

He nuzzled his mouth against her hair. “I’m going to have to keep a bottle of cognac in your room for convenience.”

Her heart leapt with hope at that small comment. “Planning on spending more time here, then?”

“If you let me.” He rolled over on top of her and gently swept her hair away from her cheek. All amusement left his expression. “Don’t leave, Sophie.” Vulnerability colored his voice, and his eyes squeezed shut. “If I ever lost you—”

She cupped his face between her hands and kissed him, to silence whatever terrible thing he’d been about to say.

“You won’t,” she promised against his lips. Then she gestured a hand at the mess of belongings scattered throughout the room that she had been in the middle of packing when she’d found him in his room. Clothes lay tossed over every chair in anticipation of being packed away into the half-filled trunks sitting scattered across the floor. “Ifyou help me put everything away.” She brushed her lips across his cheek to his ear. “And then I’ll let you keep an entire case of cognac in my undergarment drawer.”

“Lucky brandy.” With a growl, he placed a hard kiss to her mouth that promised many more intimacies to come. His apprehension eased away with a visible softening of his shoulders.

He dropped back onto the mattress beside her. Sophie rested her head on his shoulder, her hand playing idly across his chest. Her fingertips traced over the rough ridges of his scars, then the smooth skin that hadn’t been damaged. But a long scar sliced just above his left hip… She stilled.Thatscar wasn’t from the fire.

She sat up and stared down at him as she traced her fingertip along the crescent-shaped indention. “What happened here?”

He shrugged away her concern. “Knife cut.”

Her mouth fell open. “You werestabbed?”

“It wasn’t serious.”

Well,thatwas a lie if ever she’d heard one. “When?”

“During the wars.” He took her hand and placed a kiss to her palm. With that kiss, she felt him draw away from her, even though he remained in bed with her.

“When you were a mercenary, you mean?”

“When I was a damned fool, yes,” he corrected with a grimace. “Being a mercenary was a mistake.”

“But you were a soldier.”

“I was a lad who didn’t know any better.” He slid his arm around her and drew her back down beside him. “I was brash and reckless, hot-headed and uncontrollable, desperate to prove myself to the world and, most of all, to my father.”

“So a typical eighteen-year-old then,” she commented dryly.

A soft chuckle rumbled beneath her ear. “Far worse than that. But I knew I was meant to be a soldier, even when I was training at Eton alongside Devlin, Lucien, and Chase.”

She nodded against his shoulder. She knew his friends—brothers, really—from his stories of them in the letters he’d sent. Now she realized why they had all been present at their wedding. Shay had needed their support at the moment when he had changed their lives forever, believing this joining of hearts would never happen.

“When the opportunity to join the Prussians arose, I took it. I was a second son and had no other path in life, and I certainly didn’t want to go into the Church or become a government official. So I joined my friends in becoming mercenaries. I thought that as long as I was fighting Bonaparte, there was no difference whose flag I served under. But by the time Chase and Devlin returned to England, I was ready to join the British and fight for my own crown and country. That was when I truly became a soldier.” His arms tightened around her. “But being a mercenary taught me the most important lesson of all.”

“How to be a leader?” she guessed.

He nuzzled her hair. “How to persevere, even when suffering.”

He didn’t mean against the French. Her lips were barely able to form the question whose damning truth could no longer be hidden. “What happened the night of the fire?”