Cain locked the door to his father's study behind him and paced distractedly down the corridor. He had responded to the bell pull, assuming a late cup of tea and a game of chess was in order, however what had greeted him instead was a sight he was not likely to forget.
He had purposely avoided the Wyvernstone gathering and his announcement of a yet to be determined betrothed, in the hope of delaying the event. His unsatisfactory croquet match with Verushka had left him feeling more discontent rather than less and he knew that distance was probably the best thing for them. But, the very woman he was so desperate to avoid was right there in front of him, like a beautiful Amazon she had crept into his home only to strike at the sensitive underbelly of his abode. Every time he tried to push her away, they collided instead. He was almost done fighting the urge to take her into his arms and be done with uproar of the world.
No. He stopped and shook the vivid image from his head. That would not do. Duty and honour would not be ignored. Unfortunately he could not give Verushka his hand in marriage but he could at least soothe her pain. He could make certain that she knew how much the short month they had spent together had meant to him, and that going forth his heart would always remain in her grasp. Yes, he exhaled with a sense of righteous resolution and his feet quickened to where he instinctively knew she would be waiting.
Cain pushed open the door to the expansive kitchens and rounded on the pantry, which was once again warm with heat despite the deserted tables and chairs. Treading softly over the amber brickwork he eyed Verushka seated on several cushions, wedged into the corner with a heavy tome, metaphorically licking her wounds.
"So, you come here often?" he leaned against the archway, feigning nonchalance.
Verushka's eyes snapped up abruptly. "Oh, it's you." The tension from her shoulders eased a little and she returned her gaze to the book on her lap.
"What is that supposed to mean?" he inquired congenially, taking a seat next to her on the warm pantry floor.
Verushka remained silent but exhaled a measured breath.
"Are you not talking to me now?" Cain nudged her gently with his elbow.
Verushka drew her finger along the edge and flicked the page over without having read a word. "Ouch!" she exclaimed and seized the tip of her index finger now blooming with fresh blood.
"Here, let me see that." Cain offered firmly.
Before Verushka could withdraw the oozing tip to the safety of her mouth he had pulled her hand into his, inspecting the laceration for phantom splinters before pressing the fresh white linen of his handkerchief to her flesh.
"Ow," Verushka hissed at the pressure.
Cain met her eyes and held her gaze with a powerful intensity. "I'm sorry," he whispered in the quiet space.
"For what?" Verushka's bark still carried the bite of indignation.
Cain leaned in closer softening his voice. "For everything."
"Then why did you do it?" Verushka demanded "Why do you continue to act in a way that you then have to apologise for?" She pulled her hand back into her own lap.
"I don't know." Cain shook his head plagued by the implications of her question. "No, I suppose I do know. I constantly find myself in situations where what I want to do and what I am supposed to do are in direct conflict."
Verushka looked up at him through coy lashes. "Well what do you want to do? Shouldn't you do what makes you happy?"
Cain smiled wistfully. "Life is not always that easy, my dear. Are you happy with the life you are currently leading, pretending to be the ward of a Duke?"
Verushka met his eyes with solemnity. "I can't tell you why I am in this position but you have to believe me that it is for the greater good."
"Are you sure you cannot tell me?" he pressed, wanting her to confide in him of her own accord.
"Yes," she answered resolutely while pulling frustrated at the stitching of the cloth that bound her hand until her persistence frayed the once smooth edge.
"Very well," Cain sighed, "but, does it make you happy?"
"It doesn't make me sad," she responded thoughtfully.
"And yet, you have left a glittering ballroom to sit in a pantry... with me." Cain's jade eyes seemed to sear every secret from her soul until it lay naked and fluttering before his gaze.
"And you are avoiding your betrothal announcement to sit with me." Verushka pursed her lips in annoyance.
"Excuse me, Miss Wyvernstone I was doing my best to avoid you," he countered with a grim grin.
"Oh, well that is very flattering," Verushka sniped and then fell back into silence.
"Maybe not," Cain murmured and attempted to seize her hand once more, "but it is the truth."
Verushka twisted her wrist and pulled her fingertips free from the sizzle of his skin greeting hers.
Cain folded his hands and contented to sit next to her without the succour of her touch. "You fog things up, you always have. I am trying to see through to what I have to do and having you near is a temptation that I cannot endure."
There was a long silence before Verushka spoke again. "Why is it so important for you to marry who the Queen wants? Not that I'm saying we should get married, I mean I barely know you," she stumbled inarticulately over her embarrassment, "but, there are tens of other courtiers who she can marry off. Why must you make such a sacrifice?" She had wondered if Cain was somehow embroiled in the protection of the Queen but she hardly thought that the marriage of an inconsequential duke would serve to secure the monarch. Nor was he likely to have slipped the life of a spy neatly passed both of his parents' observations.
Cain sighed. "As I have mentioned before, my family are close friends of the Queen and it is my duty and privilege to serve her in any way that I can."
"Do you keep believing that the longer you say it?" Verushka replied archly.
"Yes," Cain answered with a whisper of exasperation. "You would be surprised by what the ton are willing to do for their Queen. As a new member of the aristocracy, you will in time learn the truth of that sentiment more thoroughly than you understand it now."
Silence reigned again as Verushka continued to twist the expensive handkerchief into nothing more than broken threads.
"I cannot afford to marry for love, Verushka.... But if I could-."
Verushka looked up at him sharply. "If you could?"
Cain smiled, his body relaxing on the precipice before a leap. "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, for I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."
"Shakespeare?" she asked surreptitiously wiping the residual dirt from her cheek.
"Bexley," Cain answered, "for I am sure the Bard foresaw my mind when I saw you." He drew her into his arms and cupped her face between the palms of his hands. "Verushka Anne Wyvernstone, or whoever you choose to be- I think I have loved you since you first spilled berry jam all over my sheets. And every day since I have loved you more, not less. I have been astounded by your wit and stubborn vivacity for life. I have watched you grow into the woman you are today and I know that your future has many great things in store. I am only sorry that I cannot be one of them."
Verushka felt her heart lurch in her chest. Cain had always used the dandy to hide the duke within but he had never lied to her. And yet, she could hardly believe the words that he was whispering. The sweet smell of biscuits wrapped them in the scent of honeyed butter as the oven's lingering fire melted her resolve. He held her as if she mattered, caressed her as if he cared and still she dared not give him her heart.
"You cannot love me, you cannot," she repeated, almost to herself.
"Why can I not?" Cain brushed the wetness pooling at the edge of her lashes.
"You don't even know me."
"I know all I need to Verushka. But I ask you this question, do you love me?"
Verushka clenched at the pounding beneath her breast and remained silent.
"Are you afraid to love me?" Cain tilted his head with a curious lilt.
"I... I," Verushka tripped over her vowels.
The debonair duke trailed a finger down her cheek to lift her chin up to him. "Shall I make you fall in love with me?" He whispered the question upon her parted lips that bated for more than air.
"I could fall in love with you, Your Grace." Verushka found her voice once more. "It would be easy, as easy as breathing. But, I won't."
Cain pulled back to meet the resilience in her gaze. "Why not, my dear, when I have told you that I love you so completely?"
A sadness overcame her features and she could not hide it, not even in the shadowed confines of the pantry. "To what end, Your Grace? We cannot be together- you have said as much. And my heart, as untried as it is, would have no defences should it truly fall. You have no doubt loved before, and I am sure will love again, but I fear that my heart once lost, will be lost forever. I dare not lose it to a duke who is destined never to be mine."
She swallowed a rising lump in her throat and focused once more on the scattered silken threads in her lap. Not game enough to meet his beautiful emerald eyes, she shredded the last few pieces of fabric between her shaking fingers and bitten nails.
Cain waited until her breath returned to its regular rate and rhythm then he reached for her with more tenderness than ever before. "Perhaps you are wise, Verushka," he began, "but I cannot be wise." He grasped her shoulders and pulled her into the encircling safety of his embrace. Their lips met and Verushka tasted the salty remorse of her own tears as they spilled over her cheeks and mingled with their passion. Her arms curled around his neck unbidden as he laid her on the sprawling cushions by the heat of the bricked alcove. She let the sureness of his hands be her comfort and lost herself to the beat of his pulse alongside hers.
Time was unmeasured as in a dream. Verushka wished that she could have been stronger, but she was otherwise. She felt the strain of her sinews succumb to his words. And still, it was more than words. It was his touch, his taste, his palpable emotion that drew her in. The man resonated with a heady mixture of passion and purpose in the face of utter failure and insurmountable facts. It was dangerous, it was disastrous and it was her undoing.
His lips stroked her neck, nuzzling gently at the warm flesh behind her ear before taking the lobe between his teeth. Verushka gasped on the perfumed pantry air and gripped his shoulder. Her cut re-opened and a slice of blood swept across the surface of his sapphire coat. Unperturbed by his damaged linens or her cumbersome garments, his palms caressed the length of her slim body to slip around her waist and grip her swathed hips to his.
Verushka felt the heavy weight of him upon her and she opened her mouth to his. He entered her lips with a groan, tasting of a palette still lingering with tea and shortbread. Verushka couldn't help but note that there was a rhythmic motion to their bodies like the lapping of the Thames against the embankment. With each wave it eroded away her resolutions and her control until her need consumed her and she was lost beneath the surface of her affectations. What was the point of pretending? Why did she resist her own desires when his was so well matched? In the dim recesses of her mind she was certain that there were good and sound reasons but she no longer cared to hear them. When Cain was touching her she heard nothing but the sound of his voice.
Unfortunately, at that moment his voice was requesting that they cease.
"Tell me to stop," Cain growled between his perfect teeth.
Verushka ignored him and pressed her lips to his brow, her tongue sweeping over the cool metallic ring at the arch of his eyebrow.
"Verushka, tell me to stop," he repeated.
Why was he talking? she wondered as she slid a questing hand up his firm and sculptured torso.
"I need you to help me," Cain managed to grate between pants.
"I am helping," Verushka answered with a bite to the chiselled line of his jaw.
Cain immediately seized her wrists and pinned them to the heated stone of the floor. He stared at her beneath him, her golden locks fanned about her, her swollen lips fuller than usual and her cheeks flushed from excitement. He hesitated long enough to utter a blasphemous epithet. "Consequences be damned." His long fingers dove into her hair, twisting its cornflower strands with the ferocity in which he pulled her mouth to his.
Verushka welcomed his body back to hers, but something he had said niggled at the periphery of her mind. 'Consequences' he had mentioned. What consequences? She sensed the frantic edge of his fervour and a trickle of shock at the unknown jolted her mind free. The repercussions of their actions would be irreversible. It would leave him without a choice and her without a purpose. Verushka flinched at the memory of her mother's heartache and though she loved the woman who bore her, she had no desire to follow in those particular footsteps.
Verushka summoned her courage and willed her limbs into inertia. "Stop, Cain," she whispered
Immediately he stilled above her, ceasing the passage of his mouth across her sun coarsened skin. He held himself as steady as an aged oak in a storm for several long moments before he released a shuddering breath and rose to his feet.
Verushka ached from the loss as he crossed the small alcove without a backward glance until he hovered in the doorway to rest his palm to the cool exposed bricks. She collected herself from the floor, pulling the shoulders of her dress back in place and smoothing her untamed hair with trembling hands. "I,.. I'm sorry Cain."
"No." His hand cut through the air without looking upon her. "You have nothing to apologise for. The lapse was just as much mine, if not more so." He took several breaths before continuing as he stared out into the darkened kitchen pointedly avoiding her eyes. "I came here tonight to tell you that I love you, not to claim you. We cannot be together, that much I know. But, that does not mean I will stop loving you. Perhaps you are right, perhaps we do not know one another and with time whatever affection you have for me will dim, but mine shall not. Whatever happens, 'Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love."
"Bexley?" Verushka asked simply to delay his departure.
"Shakespeare." Cain turned to her and forced a smile before he slipped into the darkness beyond.
Verushka was left clutching the shreds of his handkerchief and though the alcove seemed warm only moments before, now a chill seeped into her bones and icy shards struck at her heart. Something that felt a lot like despair froze her core and before the reminiscences of a lovers caress could pull her gaze back to their corner of the pantry she stole out into the frigid night in search of her Director and Duchess.
She ran with greater haste than she had come but regardless of the speed that whipped the hair about her face and lashed the long wet grass against her legs, she could not outrun her pain. Despite her desperate efforts, the mistakes of her mother still lingered in her veins. She could no longer save her heart, but she could save the Queen. Dawn was still several hours away and if she hurried the politics and pollution of the city would cloud any memories made under the country's starry skies.
If you want more chapters like this one, hit that **VOTE** button!
A/N: Finally this chapter is done! The next one we are back in London and hot on the heels of the assassin! What do you think about the development between Cain and Ver?
Thanks for the constant support, votes, messages and comments. If I haven't thanked you personally yet please don't think I haven't seen your kind efforts. I know you are out there reading in the shadowed corners of your room, turning eager pages in the park and waiting patiently for the next chapter. I appreciate every single one of you!
Here are some of my FB posts. If you would like to see more then check it out here:
https://www.facebook.com/InaraRoseauthor/
https://twitter.com/inararoseauthor