f course, he couldn’t bloody well sleep.
Spencer paced down the hall of the east wing, skulking through the dark without benefit of light. He didn’t require illumination. He knew where he was and where he was going, but the quiet calm of the darkness mollified him, if only slightly. He liked being alone. Preferred it actually. It was the only time he could be himself.
Ironically, it was also the only time he could forget who and what he was.
Well, that and whenever he had Lady Boadicea Harrington’s lips crushed beneath his. But he did not wish to think of her now, in this moment of blissful solitude. And so he drove all meditations on fiery curls, freckles, beauty marks, feisty ladies who didn’t listen to reason, and the scent of jasmine and lily of the valley from his mind.
For the first time in years, he had taken a chamber other than the duke’s apartments at Boswell Manor. The chamber wasn’t at fault for his restlessness. The bed was firm, bedclothes laundered and soft. The room itself—known as the emerald bedchamber—was done in shades of green, which he did not find quite as offensive as the salon. Though perhaps Lady Boadicea did have a point about his mother’s penchant for ostentatious color. It seemed at odds with her ordered, repressive personality.
He had never thought his mother’s stylings at Boswell Manor garish orde trop. But now, he did. Lady Boadicea could change wall and window coverings as she pleased when she became the Duchess of Bainbridge, and he wouldn’t mind.
The notion of her as his duchess seemed at once foreign and not as alarming as it should be. An odd sensation skittered through him, as though the warmth of the sun blazed into his skin. He felt alive and rejuvenated and yet also…peaceful.
This would not do.
The woman was invading his mind, ruining his pleasant seclusion, making him feel things he had no longer believed himself capable of feeling. Unless—yes, that had to be it.Lustwas the true cause of it all, not Lady Boadicea herself. Clearly, he had been wrong in his belief that he could abstain from congress with a woman and not suffer for it. The use of his hand alone was not sufficient to make him impervious to temptation. Or to losing his bloody mind.
Naturally, he silenced the stubborn voice that rose in his head to remind him that no other lady before or since Millicent had ever had such a profound effect on him. Quite. He told it to go straight to the devil and never come back.
The alluring scent of jasmine hit him three seconds before she ran smack into his chest. He caught her to him, absorbing the impact of the collision without even taking a step back.
“Please tell me that isn’t you, Duke.” The husky voice that never failed to settle as an ache in his groin interrupted the stillness.
His hands spanned her waist, feeling for the first time nothing but soft, rounded woman beneath his touch rather than the staid line of a corset. The ache grew in size and magnitude until his cock twitched. Damn. He lowered his head before he could stop himself and ran his cheek over the silken cascade of her hair.
Lady Boadicea Harrington was sleek, yielding, and warm. Everywhere. He took a discreet inhalation, savoring that sweet, floral musk once more. He would never again, for as long as he lived a day on God’s earth, be able to smell lilies of the valley without getting a cockstand.
One of her filthy little words had invaded his brain.
What was it she had said?Do you mean to see me thrown into the nearest dank prison cell for daring to read the word “cockstand”?Such smut. The woman was a menace. She had trespassed in his library, kissed him, defied him at every turn, stolen his horse and almost broken her foolish neck, and now she was sulking about in darkened hallways in search of Christ knew what.
“What the devil are you doing about at this time of night?” he demanded, irritated by her lack of common sense yet again. It rather seemed to be an ongoing affair.
Did she not have a care for herself? She had taken a bad fall, and the doctor had prescribed rest. Sitting still. Slumber. Remaining abed. Spencer had given her the best goddamn chamber in the manor, and yet here she was, clad in only arobe de chambrewith nothing more substantial than a nightdress beneath, smelling so sweet that he wanted to lick her from that saucy beauty mark down to her dainty toes.
“I could not sleep.” Her hands, which had fluttered to his chest in their crash, moved slowly, as if she put a great deal of effort into studying the firmness of his flesh, the delineation of each honed muscle. She stilled as he took another deep breath of her scent. “Are you sniffing me, Duke?”
He winced at her incredulity and straightened to his superior height. Thank God for the darkness. His cheekbones went hot. “Of course not, Lady Boadicea. Why would I do such a ridiculous thing?”
Her caresses resumed, leisurely. Torturous. He wanted to push her out of reach and send her back to her chamber, yet he never wanted her to stop touching him.
“I pondered the selfsame question.” Her physical inquisition continued, traveling down his abdomen, her clever fingers undoing him. “And yet you inhaled, just as one might if a particularly aromatic dish had been laid before him. The sort of dish one could not wait to consume.”
Bloody fucking hell. Those low, wicked words sent a fresh bolt of heat to his cock. His dressing gown rendered it deuced difficult to hide the effect she had upon him. He was erect, pressing into her belly, and it was too late to push her away.
Anger swirled within him then, and he welcomed it, needing to banish this dangerous careen of desire. “Do you think to goad me with more of your bawdy references, princess? Or perhaps you really do want me to consume you, like an aromatic dish. Is that it?” He led her backward, not stopping until he had pinned her against the wall with his much larger body. “Should I consume you here? Now? What did you read in your book that stirs you most? Do you want my tongue on you? In you? Say it, Lady Boadicea.”
“I did not intentionally collide with you in this hall, for it is dark and I’ve an abysmal sense of direction.” She leaned into him, and she had to have rocked on her toes, for her hot breath stole over his mouth in a maddening impression of a kiss. “But how you do intrigue, Duke. Continue. Where were you? Ah, yes. Your tongue, I believe.”
Did her wickedness know no bounds? Did she have no shame? He didn’t know whether to kiss her or throw her over his shoulder and deliver her back to the duchess’s chamber where he’d last left her. He had intended to shock her with his vulgarity, but instead she sidestepped him and leveraged his words against him. For hearing her refer to his tongue made him want to wield it. To take her mouth, lick into the satin depths, to do far more wicked things elsewhere.
“You are impertinent.” He steeled himself against the lush enticement of her form and innuendos. For an innocent, she possessed a shocking imagination and vocabulary.
Of course, there was the possibility that she wasn’t, in fact, an innocent at all. It would explain a great deal. However, he felt certain that her boldness had its roots in her personality and not in her depth of experience. Either way, he supposed he would discover the truth soon enough when they were man and wife.
“You are large,” she pronounced.
He sucked in a breath at her shocking statement. His shaft was pressed against her. Of course she would have felt it. But remarking upon it…
