Chapter 1: The First Deception: A Kiss in the Dark
The scent of his soap, sandalwood and something sharper, filled her senses as his shadow fell across her. Ella kept her eyes lowered, the heavy silk of the duchess’s dressing gown slippery under her suddenly damp palms.
“You’ve been quiet tonight, my dear.”
The Duke’s voice was a low rumble in the cavernous room. She’d practiced the duchess’s tone, a lighter, melodic thing, for hours in the scullery. Now her own voice felt lodged somewhere beneath her ribs.
“A slight headache, Alistair. Nothing of consequence.” The lie tasted like ash. She’d delivered trays to this room a hundred times, head bowed, invisible. Now she was the centerpiece.
His hand came up, not to her forehead, but to cradle the back of her neck. His fingers were warm, strong, tipping her face up toward the firelight. “You’ve been having a great many headaches lately.”
Ella’s breath stuttered. His eyes, a piercing green she’d only ever glimpsed in passing, searched her face. She’d applied the cosmetics with painstaking care, darkening the duchess’s eyebrows, dusting gold across the lids. The wig of chestnut curls was pinned so tightly it pulled at her own mousy hair beneath. She felt like a doll, an exquisite forgery.
“The season is so fatiguing,” she murmured, parroting a phrase she’d overheard.
“Is it.” It wasn’t a question. His thumb stroked the line of her jaw, a casual, possessive gesture that sent a jolt straight down her spine. He owned everything he touched. Including, it seemed, his wife’s borrowed skin. “Let me distract you.”
He bent his head, and Ella froze. This was not in the instructions. The duchess, fleeing to the continent with a portrait artist, had been vague. Keep up appearances, Ella. He must not suspect. She’d said nothing about this.
His lips were on hers.
It was not a gentle inquiry. It was a claim. Firm, insistent, tilting her head to a better angle. The world narrowed to the pressure of his mouth, the faint scratch of his evening stubble, the dizzying heat that pooled in her stomach. She’d never been kissed. She’d imagined it might be sweet, like the stolen strawberry tarts she sometimes nibbled in the pantry.
This was not sweet. It was a devouring. It was heat and demand and a skill that left her utterly unmoored. A small, pathetic sound escaped her throat.
He mistook it for encouragement. His arms wrapped around her, one hand splaying against the small of her back, crushing the layers of silk between them. The other hand tangled in the wig’s careful curls. He tasted of port and power. Her hands, trapped against his chest, clenched the fine wool of his jacket. She was drowning, and a treacherous, hidden part of her never wanted to come up for air.
He broke the kiss, his breathing slightly ragged against her cheek. “See? A better remedy than lavender water.”
Ella could only nod, her lips tingling, her mind a white panic. He began walking her backward, his mouth now on her neck, nibbling a path toward her shoulder. The four-poster bed loomed in her peripheral vision, a dark monument.
“Alistair,” she gasped, the name foreign and heavy on her tongue.
“Mmm?”
“I’m… I’m quite tired.”
He chuckled, the vibration humming through her. “You won’t be.”
The back of her knees hit the edge of the mattress. She sank down, a fall she couldn’t arrest. He followed, a knee on the bed beside her, caging her in. The firelight danced over the sharp planes of his face, all focused intensity. He was unraveling the sash of her gown, his movements sure, practiced. This was his routine. His right.
The silk parted. The cool air of the chamber hit the exposed skin of her chest, followed an instant later by the scorching heat of his palm. His touch was rough, eager. He wasn’t gentle with the duchess, then. The realization was a shock.
His hand stilled.
Ella’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird. She followed his gaze. The borrowed nightgown was lace-trimmed, decadent. But where the neckline gaped, the edge of a scar peeked out—a thick, ropy line from a childhood burn from a boiling kettle, pale against her work-faded skin. A mark the polished duchess had never borne.
He stared at it. His fingers, which had been possessive, now merely rested against her skin, unmoving. His earlier passion seemed to recede, replaced by a still, cold focus.
“What is this?” he asked quietly. The warmth was gone from his voice.
Her mind blanked. The carefully rehearsed stories, the mannerisms, all evaporated. She was just Ella, a housemaid in her mistress’s bed, caught.
He lifted his eyes from the scar to her face. His gaze was no longer clouded with desire, but sharp, analytical. It scraped over the makeup, the wig, the terrified widening of her own eyes, which she knew were a simpler, softer brown than the duchess’s hazel.
He didn’t move away. He just studied her, the silence thickening like frost on the windowpanes. The heat of his body was still so close, but a new, terrible distance opened between them.
A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It seems,” he said, his voice lethally soft, “my wife has developed a few… new features.” His thumb pressed down on the scar, not cruelly, but with a definitive pressure. A claim of a different sort. “You will tell me,” he stated, “exactly what this is. And you will tell me now.”
The momentum of the night, of the charade, crashed to a halt. The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the frantic rush of her own blood in her ears.