She nodded. “We were still working on it in the wee hours of the morning when a servant came to fetch Uncle Maurice back to the hall. That’s when we learned that he’d headed over here earlier and hadn’t been seen since. We told the footman, and a search was begun immediately.” Tears welled in her eyes. “They found Uncle Maurice washed up on the bank the next morning.”
Which meant that if Joshua had killed their uncle Armie, it could only have been to stop what the man had tried to force her into.
As if she’d read his mind, she muttered, “It’s merely Uncle Armie’s death I’m not sure about. Joshua might have . . . it’s possible that he—”
“To be honest,” Grey said slowly, “I would hope your brother did murder him if the only other choice was seeing you become the man’s mistress. Hell, I’d shake your brother’s hand for it. Your uncle deserved death for what he tried to force upon you.”
Her gaze swung back to him. “You can say that, even though he was a duke? And related to your half brother?”
He snorted. “Contrary to popular opinion, there’s no code of ducal honor that we all follow.” His voice hardened. “And if there were, I’m sure your uncle broke it by trying to make you commit incest.”
The ugly word made her flinch. “Good point.”
“I make them occasionally,” he quipped, to inject humor into an increasingly difficult discussion.
At least it brought a smile to her lips. “Yes, you do.”
“In between my attempts to seduce you. If I’m to be honest, I had no more right than your uncle to—”
“Do not compare yourself to Uncle Armie. He never gave me a choice. You always did, even when you were suspicious of me and my brother. A lesser man would have used the situation to blackmail me into his bed.” She stepped closer. “You never resorted to such a thing.”
“I don’t believe in blackmail,” he admitted.
His uncle Eustace had tried to blackmail him into signing papers, and Grey had refused to be bullied. So he sure as hell wasn’t going to try the same tactics on anyone else. Especially a woman like Beatrice, who’d always been at the mercy of her relations.
Even early on, he’d sensed they had that in common. And now that he knew they did, it made him desire her even more. Which, given all she’d told him about her situation, was unconscionable.
He cleared his throat and tried to remind himself of his real purpose here. “Much as I desired you, I promise I would never have resorted to force to get you into my bed.”
“I know.” A blush suffused her cheeks again. “I never thought of you as pushing your attentions on me. And certainly not in the way my uncle did.”
He stared hard at her. “All the same—”
“No!” She pressed a finger to his lips. “I won’t let you see it as comparable. Until you came along, I regarded marriage as only a way for a woman to find financial security. I thought relations between men and women must surely be dirty and unpleasant. I couldn’t imagine finding enjoyment from a man’s caresses.”
When she paused, he rasped, “And now?”
Her beautiful brown eyes shone up at him. “Now I know it’s possible to find pleasure in touching a man, in being with a man. Knowing a man so intimately that—”
He kissed her. He couldn’t help himself. Having feared that his actions had only added to her fears, it humbled him to discover he’d managed to alleviate them a bit. And when she looped her arms about his neck so she could kiss him back, his pulse thudded hard and fast in his veins.
She had a mouth like an angel—a seductive angel with a penchant for claret. Yet the taste of it on her tongue wasn’t nearly as heady as the intoxication of kissing her and holding her, knowing that she wanted to be there.
Which only made it harder for him to resist touching her. Her floor-length wrapper was chaste as a muslin gown—made of starched linen and finished off with frilly ruffles at every collar, cuff, and hem. But when he gave in to the urge to let his hands roam beneath it to her nightdress . . .
God, but that thin piece of worn cotton shielded nothing. With no corset to hinder him, he could plunder her pert breasts to his heart’s content, reveling in their softness. And the feel