"I don't know how to do anything else but fight." "I know." He lifted his right hand. He didn't grab her.
He slowly, deliberately brushed the back of his knuckles against her cheek. The touch was electric. Norah gasped softly, her eyes fluttering shut for a fraction of a second. She had been starved of human warmth for so long that the simple friction of his skin felt like a branding iron.
"You survived, Norah," Henry whispered, his thumb trailing down her jawline, resting against the frantic pulse in her throat. "The war is over. You can put the armor down." Norah opened her eyes.
She looked at the man who had torn down an empire to pull her out of the mud. She saw the absolute, uncompromising hunger in his gray eyes. But beneath it, she saw a desperate need for the exact same thing she wanted. An anchor.
She reached up and grabbed the lapels of his coat. She didn't wait for him to lean in. She pulled him down to her. The kiss was not gentle.
It wasn't a polite drawing-room brush of lips. It was a collision. It was months of tension, anger, and suppressed adrenaline finally finding a release valve. Henry made a low, rough sound in the back of his throat.
He hauled her out of the chair, his arms wrapping entirely around her waist, lifting her feet off the ground as he backed her against the heavy oak desk. Norah's hands tangled in his dark hair. She kissed him with the same vicious, terrifying desperation she had used to drag herself out of the lake. She tasted whiskey and smoke, and she felt the hard, unyielding muscle of his shoulders beneath his coat.
He wasn't fragile. He wouldn't break. He kissed her jaw, his mouth trailing down her neck, his breathing heavy and ragged in the quiet library. "Norah," he breathed against her skin.
"My God, Norah." "You said separate rooms," she managed to gasp out, her hands gripping his shoulders as if he were the only solid thing in the world. Henry pulled back slightly. His eyes were entirely black.
"I said that for Mrs. Gordon's benefit. I am rescinding the order." Norah let out a sharp, breathless laugh. "You are the Duke. You can do as you please."
"No," Henry said softly, brushing a stray lock of hair from her face. "I am only doing what my Duchess commands." By December, Lochavan was buried under three feet of snow. The loch had frozen solid.
A sheet of black ice reflected the stark winter sky. Inside the keep, the fires roared day and night. They had settled into a rhythm that was entirely their own. There were no dinner parties.
There was no polite society. They spent their days managing the massive estate, arguing over crop rotations and tenant laws, and their nights tangled in the heavy wool blankets of the master bed, learning the geography of each other's scars. Norah had filled out. The hollows in her cheeks had faded, replaced by the sharp, healthy flush of the Highland winds.