Whatever her station in life might have been before her amnesia, Bea knew with absolute certainty that she could not possibly have been a mouse. Griffin had also called her a woman of fortitude, and Bea did not doubt she was a woman of determination and resolve. Anything less and she would not have survived her abduction and the beatings, nor would she have managed to secure her own escape.
However, it was clear now that she would be gone from here soon, one way or another.
Away from Griffin.
She might never see him again!
She was not a mouse, and she would not have Griffin think of her as such, but was instead determined he would see the strong and capable woman she knew herself to be.
A woman who knew exactly who and what she wanted.
Chapter Eight
So much for his claim that he needed to work, Griffin acknowledged several hours later as he sat sprawled in the chair behind the desk in the library, a single lit candle on his desktop and the glow of the fire in the hearth to alleviate the darkness of the room behind him.
He had removed his jacket and cravat from earlier, several buttons of his shirt he’d also unfastened for added comfort, his thoughts ranging far and wide, before inevitably coming back to the exact same subject.
Bea.
His fingers clenched on the arms of his chair as he once again pictured her as she had looked in her bedchamber earlier: her hair slightly dishevelled, her cheeks flushed from the tears she had cried, her eyes dark with hurt, the swell of her breasts softly rising and falling as she breathed, her arms long and slender, hands and fingers delicately elegant. Hands he ached to have touch and stroke him.
She was desire incarnate!
A desire that was slowly but surely eating into Griffin’s very soul, and driving him out of his mind.
‘Griffin?’
Griffin turned so quickly in his chair at the unexpected sound of Bea’s huskily soft voice, when he had been thinking of her so intensely, that he was in danger of falling out of it!
He almost did as he took in her appearance. She was framed in the doorway; her hair loose and silky about her shoulders, and she was wearing only her nightrail, with a thin silk robe over it and a matching belt fastened about the slenderness of her waist.
Griffin stood up, as was his custom when a lady entered the room, his brow lowering into a glower as he felt his body react instantly to Bea’s appearance, and even more intensely than the uncomfortable and throbbing ache at dinner.
‘What on earth are you still doing awake at this time of night?’ His voice was husky as he tried to temper his tone, recalling how he had upset her when he had spoken to her harshly earlier.
She stepped into the room and closed the door quietly behind her before moving further into the shadowed library, the corners of the room completely dark. Only Griffin, his hair tousled, as if he had run his fingers through it several times in the past few hours, stood out in stark relief against that darkness. The unfastened shirt at his throat revealed a hint of dark hair covering his muscled chest.
Her chin rose determinedly before she lost her nerve and turned on her heel and fled. ‘Has Pelham retired for the night?’
Griffin continued to glower. ‘I believe so, yes.’
She nodded. ‘I waited upstairs in my bedchamber after my bath until I believed he might have done,’ she informed him softly.
His eyes narrowed warily. ‘Why?’
Now that she was here, face to face with this physically mesmerising man, Bea was starting to wonder that herself!
It had all seemed so simple up in her bedchamber earlier. She would take a leisurely bath, wait for the household to go to bed before then going downstairs to seek out Griffin, with the intention of tempting him into kissing her again. With the intention of showing him she most certainly was not a mouse. Here and now, faced with the sheer masculinity of the man, she felt decidedly less confident.
What did she possibly have to offer a man of such sophistication and self-confidence as him? A man, a duke, who only had to snap his elegant fingers to have any woman he chose?
In her present loss of memory, homeless, friendless state, absolutely nothing.
Her nerve completely failed her. ‘I have been afraid to fall asleep these past few nights because of the nightmares that occur when I do.’ She drew in a deep and ragged breath.
Of course, Griffin acknowledged with a wince, he’d noticed these past few days, during their hours spent together in the library, that she occasionally dozed in her chair beside the fire. As if, he now realised, she had not slept at night.
‘Would you like me to sit with you again until you have fallen asleep?’ he suggested gruffly.