More was happening here than the careless discarding of a mistress who had outstayed her welcome. She could smell the lust on him. That at least hadn’t changed.
So why didn’t he tumble her without delay in the bed that had been their battleground?
“Please tell me what this is about, Your Grace,” she said calmly.
“Jesus, Verity!” He whipped around to confront her again, and she saw she’d finally awakened the anger she’d feared earlier. “My name is Justin. Kylemore, if you must. Stop bloody Your Gracing me into the ground. You don’t need to hammer the message home.”
“What message?” she asked, confused but strangely undaunted.
His long mouth flattened in self-derision. “I want you. You don’t want me. But you’ve accepted that escape is impossible so you’re making the best of a bad situation by humoring me. I can’t blame you. It’s the sensible choice. Perhaps if I were a sensible man, it would be enough for me too.”
“You think I’m being pragmatic?”
“Aren’t you?” His remarkable eyes were haunted as they settled on her.
At last she thought she understood. “You want Soraya back. I’m not enough for you,” she said sadly.
He inhaled deeply, audibly. “Yes, I want Soraya back. But I also want Verity. They’re both the same person, you bloody little fool.”
Suddenly under attack from an unexpected quarter, she flinched back against the pillows. “No, they’re not,” she said sharply.
His eyes burned into hers. “Yes, they are. You created Soraya because you wanted someone to blame for everything you’ve done, everything pious little Verity can’t countenance in herself. Soraya sold her body. Soraya enjoyed sex. Soraya wasn’t afraid.”
He took another deep breath, and his gaze didn’t waver from hers. “Well, here’s a revelation, Verity Ashton. Soraya is you. Soraya’s innate sensuality and sense of adventure are also yours. Verity is sweet and virtuous and Soraya is a woman who goes after what she wants without regret or fear. Those two women unite in you. Until you recognize that, you’re no use to me or to yourself.” He turned once more to go.
“What do you want, Kylemore?” she asked unsteadily to his back. His accusations charred a path through her mind. Was he right? And if he was right, what could she do about it?
He didn’t look at her as he spoke very slowly and clearly. “I want you to want me the way I want you. I want you to come to me and tell me that. Then I want you to show me it’s true.”
She’d been prepared to surrender so much tonight, but never had she thought she risked this final bastion of her soul. He was too demanding, too greedy.
“You ask too much,” she whispered, shocked.
“Yes, I do,” he said, and the sorrow in his voice lingered in her ears as he left her alone in the firelit room.
Chapter 17
Verity still pondered the duke’s extraordinary parting lines—how could she not?—the next afternoon as she sat in the sunlit garden. The rain that had made her escape so wretched had relented for the moment. She ached all over from her ordeal in the mountains, and she was tired after a troubled night.
Kylemore had been gone all day. Which, she told herself, was a blessing.
What could she say to him? Especially now, when he wanted more than her simple physical surrender. Instead, he wanted everything—her heart, her soul, her body. More than Verity had ever been capable of giving.
He saw too clearly, damn him. Somehow, he comprehended the games she’d played for her sanity’s sake.
At fifteen, she’d created a being called Soraya who could commit any sin, break any rule. Verity, the core of who she was, remained as pure and untouched as she’d been when she’d sat in chapel with her Methodist parents.
The fiction was fragile. But it had helped her survive.
Now Kylemore wanted to meld
the two halves of her nature into one. More, he wanted her to present that unified whole unconditionally to him.
Was all this just one more twist to his revenge?
If she gave him everything he wanted and he spurned her, he’d destroy her. She knew that in her bones.
His rejection would cut to her soul because she no longer had Soraya to hide behind. She risked her real, vulnerable self.