Strangely, she could find no anger in his face. She wondered why.
He sighed heavily and came into the room. “Are you all right?” His dark blue eyes searched her face. “Kate tells me there’s no fever.”
“I’m fine. I’m never sick.” Her sturdy Yorkshire forebears had gifted her with an iron constitution. Her eyes sharpened on the duke. He looked strained and unhappy. “How are you?”
“Me?” He was clearly surprised at her inquiry.
It struck her he was a man who never expected anything as commonplace as kindness.
“Yes,” she said steadily. “You were out in the elements too.”
The wry smile that somewhere in the last days she’d learned to treasure flickered and died. “The recollection of my sins kept me warm.”
With apparent reluctance, he stepped forward to the bedside and ran his hand down the shining braid of hair that fell over her shoulder and across her breast. The gesture conveyed a rare tenderness. Even so, her heart began to race with excitement and her nipples tightened under their chaste cotton covering. He was close enough for her to hear his breath catch at the swift response.
He stepped away, and the warmth of his touch went with him. “Sleep now.”
Shock silenced her for the few seconds it took him to reach the door. “Your Grace?”
He didn’t turn. “Good night.”
Good night?
Clumsily, she scrambled out of the bed, ignoring the screaming protest of her aching muscles. “Wait, Your Grace.”
He looked back at her, his eyes opaque.
“Yes, what is it?” He sounded calm, uninvolved, neutral.
What was happening? She’d braced herself to meet rage, disdain, insult, vengeance. But this indifference bewildered her.
In her head, she’d played out many scenes of what might happen tonight. None had included having to coax him into her bed. Good Lord, hadn’t she spent the last days battling without surcease to keep him out of it?
“Aren’t you…aren’t you going to stay?” she asked awkwardly.
Soraya would have come up with something alluring to say. Verity, however, was at a loss.
He shook his head, although at least he didn’t leave. “No.”
No?
She must be going mad. Did her insatiable lover deny her?
On trembling legs, she went after him and put her hand on his arm. She had a mom
ent to register the tension in his muscles before he shook himself free.
“Your Grace?” she asked softly.
“Madam, I am weary,” he said in a cold voice. Still he didn’t look at her.
Unbelievably, he rejected her. And it hurt. How it hurt.
Had she hurt him like this each time she’d denied him? No, of course not. He wasn’t vulnerable to her the way she was vulnerable to him. How could he be? She’d merely been a challenge to his pride. Now she wasn’t even that much.
“I see,” she said slowly, fighting desperately to conceal her pain. “I ask your pardon for detaining you, then.”
“Christ give me strength!” he bit out under his breath. “You’ll catch pneumonia, woman!”