Page 56 of Wicked By Design

Her tone was light and careless, but Damian understood the depth of her regret and wished things might be otherwise. “I’m sorry, Celia. I can’t blame the man for wanting better for you, but he’s a fool if he thinks cutting you out of his life is the answer.”

She sent him a remarkably direct look, her lovely eyes compassionate and amused all at once. “I am glad you think so.”

Damian snorted, realising she was turning his own words back at him.

“Anyway, it’s not that. I had expected nothing else from him, and to be honest, he’s taken it better than I expected. At least he’s leaving me be. It’s just that we are to be married in five days, and I had it all in hand, a small affair as we preferred, but now my father has said spiteful things about it being a ‘shabby hole-in-the-wall affair, Grandmama wishes it to be grand and ostentatious. I am having the devil’s own job keeping her from undoing everything we agreed. If you hadn’t arrived when you did, I might have run screaming for the hills.”

“I am glad to be of service,” he remarked dryly, though despite his cynical tone, he was glad. He had once remarked upon being neither of use nor ornament, but if Celia needed his support, the least he could do was provide it. “Would you like me to speak with her?”

Celia’s head came up, the glance she sent him so surprised he almost laughed. “You would do that?”

Damian looked away, wondering why she was so startled by his offer. “Why not? She ought not be bothering you when you have already explained your wishes. It cannot come as a shock to her that you do not wish the world to come and gawk at us out of curiosity. I shall make my first stand as your husband and tell her I am putting my foot down. I will not allow it. How’s that?”

“Oh, yes, please, Damian. I should be very grateful. The poor darling means well, but she cannot accept that I am happy and that I only want a small affair with only the people I love in attendance, not a grand circus where everyone comes to gawk at us.”

Only the people I love.

And him, he amended silently, for she didn’t mean it that way. He wasn’t included among that select number. He told himself he was glad of it, but he had the unhappy suspicion that wasn’t true.

“Very well. When we return, I shall have a quiet word and inform her that my lady’s wishes are not to be questioned, and I am not to be disobeyed… not that I expect her to take much notice of that. I have a strong suspicion that the women of your family are not easily managed. However, in the meantime, what shall we do?”

She considered this in silence for a little while before darting him a provocative smile. “A shame it’s too cold to swim.”

Damian frowned at her and then remembered she had been on the beach when her sister and the Dowager Duchess of Hawkney had caught him and Gideon skinny dipping in the sea. With an inward wince, he realised he had stood on top of the bloody rocks like cock of the walk and taken a bow, shameless creature that he was.

“Ah,” he said, his tone rueful.

Celia grinned at him, waggling her eyebrows provocatively.

“Stop that,” he said, the uneasy notion that he had not entirely lost the ability to blush even after a decade or more of wickedness making him scowl.

“Stop what?” she asked, all innocence, the wretch. “I promise you the events—and especially the images—of that day have been indelibly printed upon my brain. I shall never forget them so long as I live.”

Damian said nothing, desire and embarrassment warring within him, the longing to allow her the teasing closeness she offered at complete odds with his need to keep a distance between them. In the end, there was nothing he could do; he had lost this particular battle some time ago.

He sent her a dark look. “You told me you were unimpressed, as I remember, that your little boy cousins delighted in waving their privates about and you had seen it all before.”

She met his gaze, those remarkable golden eyes glowing with such heat he felt it lick at his flesh, inviting him to burn. “I lied,” she whispered.

He wanted to shake her, to demand she stop, and yet he didn’t want her to stop at all. He wanted to burn, he wanted everything she was so willing to offer him, and it scared him out of his mind because all the methods he used to prevent a child with his previous lovers would be impossible to stick to with Celia. It wouldn’t be enough to feel her hands on him, her mouth, he would go too far, be unable to stop and then — Everything would go to hell.

Yet she was to be his wife, she was his friend, and if he could not bed her, he could at least enjoy her company. That was what friendship was, wasn’t it?

“Well, as you said, it is too cold despite the sunshine. So what—”

“Oh, ices at The Mermaid. It’s not too cold for that,” she said, with such childlike eagerness he could not help but laugh.

“Very well, if that is what my lady wants, ices is what she will have,” he replied with a smile, and escorted her to the hotel.

Cilly sat opposite Damian, very aware he had seated her so she could admire the view over the sea, whereas he sat with his back to it. She lowered her menu an inch, watching him surreptitiously over the top of it. He was contemplating his choice too, and Cilly took a moment to drink him in.

Lord, but he was handsome.

Her heart ached with longing as she regarded his high cheekbones and those grey-blue eyes. They could be so cold and devoid of emotion, but she knew now that was simply an act. He had spent a lifetime building barriers so no one could get close to him, no one could hurt him as his mother had hurt him. She could not imagine the depths of the ordeal he had endured as a child, and longed for the opportunity to make it better, even though she knew it was hopeless.

He was not hers to mend, even if such a thing were possible. But she wanted to do all in her power to make him see that the future need not be so bleak. The urge to wrap him up in her arms and declare herself was one she had to fight every day, and it was only getting harder to do.

Her feelings towards him had been easy enough to manage at first. She had desired him and found him fascinating, wanted to know more. Now she knew more, she wanted to know everything, and those first stirrings of desire had deepened and expanded, filling her heart and her body, until she could no longer pretend she did not know what the name of the feeling was.