Chapter 10
1314 Words
Silas
The scent of burning cinder and sea mist hung heavy in the study room, but all I could smell was her.
Clara Mercer.
I unbuttoned the top notch of my high collar and stood by the window with a tumbler of dark amber liquor in my right hand.
My eyes dropped to my right hand. I was still wearing the dark, tailored leather gloves.
I always wore them. To the high imperial court and the officers of the Imperial Navy, the gloves were merely a trademark of "The Iron Duke".
The truth was far more pathetic, a curse that had plagued me since my early youth. A severe, visceral rejection of the skin. An affliction or perhaps a psychological illness born of the noble filth I was raised around that made me violently sick whenever a woman came within my personal space.
The scent of sweet perfumes, the brush of silk, or worst of all, direct physical contact with a woman’s skin triggered an unbearable skin inflammation and nauseating vertigo. It made me keep my distance from women.
Until the night I met Lady Clara outside on the day of the Grand winter Salon.
I remembered it vividly. She had stood mere inches from me, her dark hair wet from the downpour, eyes burning with a terrifying, icy focus.
When she stepped into my space with her contract, I had braced myself for the familiar, suffocating wave of nausea. I had waited for the burning itch to start under my cuffs.
It never came.
Standing next to her felt like standing near an open flame in a frozen wilderness. There was no revulsion. No vertigo. No skin-crawling irritation.
That anomaly had bothered me for days. Was it a fluke? Was it the atmospheric pressure of the storm? Or was there something fundamentally different about this woman?
She had walked into my life, completely unbothered by my reputation.
"You didn't flinch when Victoria threatened you," I suddenly said quietly, the sound breaking the stillness of the room like low thunder.
She didn't look up from her ledger, though I could tell she felt the weight of my gaze on her. "I spent three years being terrified of that woman, Your Grace. They kept using me to do their bidding."
I stepped away from the window, the faint rustle of my leather boots absorbed by the thick rug. I crossed the floor toward the desk, stopping right beside her chair.
The familiar wave of revulsion; the suffocating vertigo that usually spiked whenever I stood this close to a woman never came. Instead, the air between us grew warmer.
"Silas," I murmured softly.
She paused, her fountain pen hovering just above the paper. A small drop of black ink gathered at the gold nib, threatening to ruin her ledger. "What?"
"When we are in private, Lady Clara, you can drop the 'Your Grace,'" I said, surprised at myself. I watched her closely, searching for any sign of hesitation, but she only met my gaze with that razor-sharp composure of hers.
She set the pen down in its brass tray and rested her hands on the cool mahogany, tilting her head to look up at me.
I stood so close that if she leaned forward even an inch, her shoulder would brush my thigh. My gray eyes held hers in the flickering firelight, watching the slight, quickening of her pulse at her collarbone.
"And what should I call you, then?" she asked softly, tilting her chin up, refusing to give an inch. "My ally? My business partner?"
A faint, unbidden curve touched my lips. I rarely smiled, but looking at this terrifying, brilliant woman, I couldn't help it.
"Silas will do," I replied, taking a slow, deliberate step closer. I set my empty glass on the corner of the desk and reached out.
She didn't flinch. She didn't pull back.
I reached for a long, stray lock of dark hair that had slipped free from her braided crown during her confrontation with Victoria.
Very slowly, my leather-clad fingers tucked the strand behind her ear, my knuckles lingering for a fraction of a second against the warm skin of her jaw.
For twenty-eight years, my gloves had been my armor but touching her, even through the leather, felt like pressing my hand to a hearth after a lifetime in the snow. My chest tightened, not with the usual nausea, but with a fierce, dark hunger.
"You are a terrifying woman, Clara Mercer," I whispered, dipping my head lower. My gaze dropped briefly to her lips before rising back to hold her icy eyes. "Cold as ice and completely unyielding."
"Is that a complaint, Duke Vance?" she asked, her voice barely above a breath, her chest rising and falling beneath her dark silk shirt.
"No," I corrected. My thumb traced a tiny, agonizingly slow circle along the edge of her jawline, just above her collar. "You know I have seen men fight for power and women plead for protection... but I have never met one who takes both by force, and looks so magnificent doing it."
Her heartbeat hammered against her ribs, but she kept her gaze locked onto mine, subtly leaning into the firm pressure of my hand.
"Be careful, Silas," she murmured, a low, lethal thread in her voice as she reached up. Her gloved hand rested flat against my chest, right over the steady, heavy beat of my heart. "If you stare too long into a fire, you might get burned."
I felt the sudden heat of her palm radiating through my linen shirt. I didn't pull away. Instead, I covered her hand with mine, my long fingers closing around her gloved fist, trapping her against my chest. I bent down slightly, bringing my face so close I could feel the warm brush of her breath on my cheek.
"Then let it burn," I whispered, my eyes burning with an intensity I didn't care to hide. "I brought you into my world so we could burn it to the ground together."
For a long, agonizing second, neither of us moved. The space between our lips was less than three inches, filled only with the suffocating tension stretching between us.
Then, using every ounce of my self-control, I slowly released her hand and stepped back. I drew a deep breath, letting the cold, distant mask of the Iron Duke slip back into place, though the heat lingering in my chest betrayed me.
"Kenneth is waiting with the preliminary dossier on Senator Malakar," I said, my voice smooth and steady once more.
She blinked, taking a slow, steadying breath to master her racing heart before picking up her fountain pen again.
"Senator Malakar," she repeated softly, her voice dropping into that icy tone reserved for her enemies.
I offered her my gloved hand once more. As her fingers slid into mine, the dark, unspoken promise between us hung heavy in the quiet room.
I had intentionally closed the distance between us and when I leaned down, bringing my face within inches of her, my pulse hadn't spiked and my skin didn't burn.
She really is different, she had stood her ground, laying out her tactical demands for the Northern Syndicate Exchange.
She didn't want my pity. She didn't want a savior to fight Julian Vance for her. She just needed my fleet to hold the perimeter while she tore Julian’s heart out with her own hands.
A slow, dark smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
Julian was a fool. He had possessed this kind of woman and tried to keep her in a cage.
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