She should be sleeping.
Elise knew she should be exhausted, knew she should seek her bed and find the rest she would need to keep her wits sharp and her mind clear. Except the house had been silent around her for hours and still Elise tossed and turned, her mind unable to quiet.
Her rooms seemed cavernous suddenly. Empty. A little like the way she was feeling inside. The last days of travel had been a gift, each minute with the man who had stolen her heart something to be treasured. But she was out of those minutes now. This night, she knew, marked the beginning of the end. Elise would do what she did best over the coming week, and with the help of Ivory and Alex, she would see Noah restored to his rightful place.
Elise fingered the brooch the Barrs had given her, the steel gleaming softly in the light from the single candle she’d left lit on her washstand. She traced the strands of the branches with her index finger, the metal warm beneath her touch. Courage and strength were what the twisted oak represented. Two things that she was going to need in order to walk away from Noah Ellery. She only hoped she had enough of each to survive it.
Elise shoved her twisted sheets back and rolled out of bed. Lying here in her bed was pointless. Sleep was as elusive as it had been an hour ago. She lit a small lantern and wandered into her massive dressing room, setting the light and the brooch on the long counter in the center of the room. Around her were shelves and shelves of costumes. Most were folded, sorted by function and style, but some of the more extravagant gowns had been settled over dressmaker’s dummies in order to keep their silks and satins from being crushed or creased.
She went to the shelves first, selecting the items she would need tomorrow. The clothes she laid out on the counter by the lantern, along with the appropriate wig and accessories. Then she turned her attention to the gowns on the dummies. There were a dozen of them, obscenely expensive, elaborate creations that belonged in the dressing rooms of royalty. She ran a hand over one, a masterpiece of ice-blue silk and blonde lace, pearls sewn along the edges of the bodice. It was stunning, and one of her favorites, but it was inherently English in appearance. She needed something far different, she mused as she examined each gown and dismissed it in order. The cream one was too virginal, the saffron too proper—
She stopped abruptly at the last. She hadn’t worn it in a long time. And it was perfect.
“Do you actually wear all of this?”
The voice came from behind her, and Elise nearly came out of her skin. She whirled, her heart in her throat.
“Merde.” She put a hand out on a shelf to steady herself.
Noah was leaning back against the counter, dressed only in his breeches and a shirt he hadn’t bothered to fasten at the neck, staring at the array of clothing surrounding them. “I couldn’t sleep.”
She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths. “So you thought you might sleep better in my room?”
He looked at her then. His eyes followed the smooth arch of her neck and dropped to the deep V of her chemise where it was tied loosely at the tops of her breasts. His gaze continued down, and he stripped her with his eyes where she stood. “No. I hadn’t thought to sleep at all.”
Fire tore through her, stealing her breath and making her feel as if she might come apart right there. She should be making an effort to distance herself from him, she knew. Prepare them both for the time when they would be nothing to each other but a memory. She should not be standing in a dressing room in her chemise wondering if there was enough room on that counter for him to take her there. It would only make things more difficult. Elise forced herself to think through the fog of desire that had risen.
She stepped back, as if inches of space would make this easier. “Noah—”
“I want you, Elise.” The soft light carved austere shadows across his features. “I need you. And not just now. But for always.”
She shook her head, his words twisting her heart. “You don’t need me, Noah.”
Noah picked up the brooch that still lay on the counter beside him. “You’re wrong. You’ve made me better.”
“I only showed you what you could be. You were always better.”
“Will you stay?” he asked, staring down at the polished steel.
She knew what he was asking. She knew what he wanted her to say. But she couldn’t promise him more than she could offer. “I’ll be here to see this through,” she whispered, knowing that reality needed to find purchase in this conversation. Anything less would only hurt them more in the end. “But you must know that my role here is not the one it was in Nottingham. The upper realms of London society are where Miss Moore excels. Trust her guidance. She will not lead you wrong.”
Noah nodded.
“After tonight, when you see me, I won’t be me. Once this starts, Elise DeVries will no longer exist. I’ll be whatever person the Duke of Ashland needs me to be at any given moment. Do you understand?”
He straightened and closed the distance between them. They were separated by a breath, their bodies nearly touching.
“Yes. It means I won’t be able to do this.” He bent his head and kissed her softly.
“You won’t be able to do that,” she agreed with quiet regret, her heart breaking into small, jagged pieces.
“Or this.” He ran his hands over her face, tracing her brows, her cheekbones, the outline of her lips, with gentle, tender touches.
“No.” The backs of her eyes were burning.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead before resting his own against it. “I should have believed you at the very beginning.”
Elise shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You believe now.”
“Yes. Whatever you say, I promise to believe—”
“No,” she interrupted. “You believe in you now. No matter what happens.” She put a hand on his arm, feeling the solidity of him beneath his shirt. “I’m proud of you, Noah Ellery.”
He went completely still.
She lifted her head and looked at him.
“No one has ever told me that.” It came out as a strangled whisper.
She touched his face. “They should have.”
He released a shaky breath.
“You’ll stumble in your speech at one point in time,” she said quietly.
“Yes.” He covered her hand with his. “I can only imagine the rumors that my cousin has fostered over the years. I know that at some point someone will suggest that I am a simpleton. And when they do—”
“You will not challenge them to a duel,” Elise intoned.
“Agreed. I’ll hire you to shoot them instead.”
“Very funny.”
“If I find myself caring about opinions that do not matter, I will think of you. Of your faith in me. I will think about what truly matters.” He pressed the steel brooch he still held into her hand.
Elise felt her breath catch in her throat.
“I will think about what Francis Ellery might have taken from me that has nothing to do with the duchy of Ashland. And I will see him pay for his actions.”
“There might be a line,” Elise murmured, thinking of King and whatever stake he had in this.
“Do you know what the most ironic thing about this entire thing is?” Noah asked.
“The fact that the socially ambitious Miss Silver called a duke a nothing?”
“Well, there is that,” he said, a shadow of a smile touching his mouth.
“Then what?”
Noah gazed at her. “Bedlam cured me. Not the institution, not the mad-doctors, not the purges or starvation, but the company they chained me to.”
“Joshua?”
“Yes. As I child I couldn’t form the words I wanted to say fast enough. I missed words or used the wrong one. And the more my tutors or my father tried to beat my errors out of me, the worse my mistakes became. And the less I spoke. Until I just didn’t.”
Elise rested her head against his shoulder.
“Bedlam was always so loud. People crying. Talking. Screaming. Joshua and I would be locked in a room sometimes, where there were no windows. No light, just darkness. But there was no sound either, so it wasn’t so much a punishment as a reprieve from the constant din. And there Joshua would talk about paintings.”
“Paintings? Like art?”
“Yes. The knowledge he possessed about artists, especially those of the Renaissance, was staggering. The painters, the sculptors, the men who created worlds out of nothing but a bit of canvas and oil, marble and bronze. He’d traveled the Continent as a boy, had seen many of their works himself, or plates of those he couldn’t.”
Elise frowned and raised her head, a strange sensation creeping up her spine.
“I think it was his way of keeping himself sane,” Noah continued, oblivious to her disquiet. “After a year I worked up the courage to ask him a question. After two years he would listen as I recited the names and their works back to him. It was easier for me to repeat things I heard. He never once criticized my speech, only corrected. I think he cared more about my ability to remember that it took one hundred and twenty years for St. Peter’s Basilica to be completed and to be able to describe the Navicella mosaic that might be found inside. Or that I might recall that Sansovino’s statues of Mars and Neptune that guard the Giants’ Staircase at the Doge’s Palace were meant to represent Venice’s power by land and by sea.”
Holy, holy hell. The loose ends that had bothered Elise were suddenly tying themselves up into knots at a blinding speed.
“What happened to him?” Elise asked, striving for a neutral tone.
“For three years after we escaped, we stayed together. Survived in the streets.” Noah was tracing patterns along her arm with his fingers. “He was a born leader there. Where I only survived, he flourished.”
“And after three years?”
“Abigail eloped. Not that I was part of her life, but my sister was the only reason I had stayed in the city as long as I had. I could still watch out for her, even if it was from a distance. So when she left London, so did I.” He paused. “Joshua chose to stay. That was the last time I saw him. I’d like to think he survived. I’d like to think he found his own measure of happiness.”
Elise swallowed with difficulty. The boy Noah had known as Joshua had certainly survived, though she wasn’t sure she could comment on his happiness.
I owe him a great debt.
Joshua was King. King was Joshua. And what he owed Noah was his life. The man who now rested at the pinnacle of London’s underworld had once been chained to a boy who had been quick with a knife. The ruthless dealer who specialized in stolen art had once taught a young duke to speak.
“Elise?” Noah was staring down at her strangely. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Her mind was racing. She had given King her word that his involvement would remain confidential. Not only did the repercussions of breaking her word to such a man give her pause, it went against her honor. The violent and unspeakable acts that these two men had endured and the bond that had resulted were things that were theirs. Whatever existed between Noah and Joshua, and whatever might yet one day lie between them, were not for her to meddle in.
“I think he would have survived,” she said simply.
“I talked with Abigail tonight,” Noah said suddenly. “After we went upstairs. She’s agreed to stay at the dower house near Kilburn.”
“How did you manage to convince her of that?” Elise asked with some surprise.
“My mother will need somewhere to recover. Abby will see to it.”
It made sense on many different levels. “I think that’s a good idea,” she told him.
Noah gathered her against him again, wrapping his arms around her. They stood in silence for a long minute.
“What if I can’t forgive my mother?” Noah asked, and his voice was bleak. “What if I’m not a good-enough person to forgive my own mother for what she did?”
Elise pulled back and looked up at him. “Then forgive yourself, Noah.”
Noah closed his eyes briefly, before opening them to gaze at her. After a heartbeat he moved away from her and stopped near the doorway of the dressing room, holding out his hand.
Elise placed the steel brooch on the counter with careful deliberation. Courage and strength could wait until tomorrow. Tonight would be theirs, and though it would make everything hurt so much worse, Elise couldn’t bring herself to care.
Silently she padded toward him, taking his hand and allowing him to lead her to the side of her bed. His hands went to the ties of her chemise, and one by one the laces loosened until the garment simply slipped over her shoulders and fell to the ground soundlessly. Elise shivered as the cool air touched her skin.
“I don’t wish to speak of the past anymore tonight,” he said. “I don’t wish to speak of the person I was or the person I might be tomorrow.” He lifted his shirt over his head, letting it fall on top of her chemise, and his breeches followed. He bent his head and kissed her, a long, sensuous kiss that left her gasping. His mouth moved from her lips to her neck, over her collarbone, and then to her breasts. Elise closed her eyes as he toyed with each nipple, his tongue and his teeth making everything in her body ache with need.
He pulled away suddenly and got onto the bed, lying back against the pillows at her headboard. “Come here.”
Elise stood for a moment, admiring the magnificent man now sprawled out in the center of her bed, his eyes simmering with desire. The light caught the scattered blond hair across his chest, the whorls darkening slightly as they descended over the ridges of his abdomen and between his hips to end where his cock jutted, hard and ready for her. With each of his rapid breaths, with each of his movements, muscle rippled beneath taut skin, demanding to be touched. And he was, for this moment, infinitely touchable. He was, for this moment, still Noah. Still hers.
This would be goodbye, even if he didn’t know it yet. She would keep this memory and put it away carefully with the others. When she was strong enough, she would retrieve them. She would remember every moment of what it had felt like to fall in love with this man. This duke.
Elise lowered herself to the bed and crawled over him, coming to straddle his thighs. She ran her hands over his chest, her fingers playing with the hard pebbles of his nipples. She bent and replaced her hands with her lips, sucking each one. Her own nipples brushed his abdomen, and his erection pressed against the soft skin of her belly. She moved her body forward, then back, a gentle friction along the length of his cock that had him arching beneath her.
Elise lifted herself off his body, pushing forward on her knees and bracing her hands at the sides of his head. His own hands went to her shoulders before sliding down and cupping her breasts. He pinched her nipples just hard enough to send bolts of sensation straight to the juncture of her thighs, stirring the acute ache that throbbed there into a relentless pressure.
She could feel his length pressing up against the folds of her sex, and she reached down between them to position him, her fingers brushing against her own wetness. She rocked forward just a little farther, and now she could feel the blunt head of his cock poised at the entrance to her sex.
Beneath her his hips bucked, and the movement forced the tip of him into her. She kept them there, unmoving, letting anticipation amplify the pleasure that was building, a vortex of craving and yearning and need that was escalating in every cell of her body.
Noah’s hands were on her hips now, his skin bathed in perspiration. Wanting. Waiting.
Elise lowered herself back to her elbows, careful to keep their bodies connected, and kissed him, a hot, openmouthed kiss that he returned. She licked his lower lip, ran her tongue along the edge of his jaw and down his neck. She sucked gently on the tendon that was straining there, licking the salt from his skin.
He made an inarticulate noise but didn’t move.
Ever so deliberately Elise rolled her hips back, seating him halfway within her, reveling in the feel of his completing her the way no man would ever do again.
“Who do you want to be right now, Noah?” she whispered against his ear, feeling her body reach deep within itself. She was close. So very close. She moved again, felt his cock slide deeper, and she gasped as the first spasms of her climax took hold deep within her.
His hands tightened on her hips, his fingers biting into her flesh. “Yours,” he rasped, as he pushed her down, impaling himself fully within her. “Yours,” he repeated, thrusting hard and sending Elise hurtling into an abyss of ecstasy. “I want to be yours.”