“Tall,” she added, sounding smug. “An insufferable oaf. Do you mean to keep me trapped against this wall all evening, Duke, or will you take pity and let me free?”
Spencer blinked. The minx was forever three steps ahead of him. It vexed him that she could have taken a severe tumble from a horse and yet turn up in the midst of the night with her sauciness and still make him want her. “That depends.”
“Upon?” Her hands were somehow once more upon him, studying him, sweeping over his abdomen and lower still.
“Jesus,” the sibilant whisper tore from him. Those small, elegant fingers—suited to playing over the keys of a piano—were a scant inch from his engorged prick. He caught her wrist in a firm grip, keeping her from the sort of foolishness that could only end with her nightdress around her waist and him deep inside her. It had been far too long for him, and she was far too tempting. If she touched his cock a second time, he did not trust what he would do. “Return to your chamber, princess.”
“I was attempting to do so,” she informed him, her tone lofty, “when you accosted me.”
“You threw yourself into my chest,” he corrected, but he somehow could not find it within him to release her wrist and step away from her. Her heat seeped into him, welcome and intoxicating. How perfectly her body fit to his, the supple curves melding to his hardness. There were a hundred other occupations he could be about at the moment—sleeping, reading, poring over the newspapers or his estate ledgers and correspondence, even drinking whisky—and yet he could not think of anything he longed to do more. He wished to remain where he was, memorizing the feeling of Lady Boadicea Harrington in the dark while she said wicked things and her scent settled about him like an opium cloud, sweet and intoxicating.
He could not recall when he had last felt so deliriously invigorated. So bloody alive.
“Surely if one of the two of us knows his way about in this sprawling manor, in the darkest pitch of night, it would be you, Duke,” she still found the temerity to argue.
Amazing. Nothing would knock it out of her, not even a fall from Damask Rose that would have made able-bodied men cry like babes newly born. She had not shed a tear, though she’d been undeniably shocked, the wind stolen from her. The fall had rattled her but it had not undone her. Lady Boadicea Harrington was a force of nature, as subtle as a hurricane, and he rather found himself admiring her pluck.
Clearly, the lateness of the hour had addled his mind.
“Of course I know my way,” he forced out. “But not when spirited minxes are skulking about in my path when they ought to be abed, resting as the well-trained physician who attended them recommended.”
“I am attempting to rest,” she muttered. “I cannot do it in that chamber. I was seeking the chamber originally assigned me. It would seem I am hopelessly lost, however, and the gentleman I came upon would rather seduce me than offer his assistance.”
“Seduce you?” He could not contain the mocking laugh that escaped him then. If she thought his nearness and slight touch were seduction, then she was indeed a true innocent. “Is that what you think this is?”
As he posed the question, he loosened his grip on her wrist, stroking the soft skin where her pulse pounded with his thumb. And then he canted his hips, pressing into her more fully, until he knew there was no doubt that she felt every inch of him. Her swift inhalation cut into the night.
“Duke,” she whispered, but her tone was not one of protest. Rather, it was akin to a sigh. An affirmation.
Yes, his body said.Take her. Haul her into your arms, carry her to the emerald chamber, and make her yours.He longed to. Wanted with a fierce desperation to lose himself so deep and hard inside her that nothing else could dare intervene. But reality intruded in the form of a creaking door and footsteps down the hall, along with the reminder that she had indeed suffered a fall from a horse that morning. She needed the rest that Dr. Martindale prescribed. She needed to recover. And he most certainly did not need to fuck her against the wall as if she were a lowly whore he would tup for the night and never see again. She would be his wife. His duchess.
He released her and stepped away, though the loss of her scalding heat and delicious curves reverberated through him. “Someone is here,” he whispered. “Do not say a word. Whilst I offer distraction, remove yourself to the duchess’s chamber, which is straight down this hall in the opposite direction and then two turns to your right. It is for your own good.”
Hoping she would for once in her life forego her inner hoyden and listen to caution, he stalked toward the sound of the interloper, which could only be his brother. In the absence of their guests, he and Harry alone had chambers in the east wing for the moment.
His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, and as he reached the end of the hall, he finally recognized a tall, lean shadow. “Harry,” he said quietly, feeling awkward, for he had not spoken with his brother since the last interminable quarrel at the ball, and he felt guilty as hell for wanting the same woman his idealistic sibling imagined himself in love with.
Love was a fiction invented by fools, for fools. But Harry had yet to discover that the impractical dreams of one’s youth never translated into a reality. Life was bitter and bleak and ugly and rife with disappointment, hurt, and pain. The sooner Harry resigned himself to that excruciating truth, the better, for his sake.
“Bainbridge,” came his brother’s terse acknowledgment.
“What are you doing, lurking about at this bleak time of night?”
His attempt to infuse lightness into his tone fell flat even to his own ears, but he did not know how to speak to his brother. Didn’t know how to cut through his anger. Or even how to make sense of the events of the past few days. If he could explain how the lady he disapproved of as a wife for his impressionable younger brother would soon become his duchess, he would have. But he could not. Weakness? Stupidity? Lust?
Something else that was far more disturbing, with far greater implications?
He refused to contemplate it any further.
“I should ask the same question of you.” Suspicion colored Harry’s tone. “I could have sworn I heard a female voice.”
He stiffened. “I was going to the library for a whisky and a book. I neither saw nor heard anyone else.”
“I know she was here,” his brother said. “I can smell her perfume. By God, Bainbridge, you better not have further compromised Bo. Have you not done enough damage already by taking my bride for yourself?”
He winced, Harry’s taunt finding its mark. For the first time, a strange, unwanted thought occurred to him. What if Lady Boadicea had ventured into this wing with the intention of finding Harry? What if the two of them had somehow arranged an assignation?
Rage, raw and molten as lava spewed from a volcano, erupted over him at the prospect. Millicent had not been faithful to him for the entire duration of their marriage, though he had never strayed. She had made certain he’d known. He had caught her, several weeks before her death, inflagrante delicto, with a stable hand. He still didn’t know which offense was worse, the fact that she had allowed the man to fuck her with full knowledge that Spencer would see the act, or the fact that she had gifted the rogue servant with coin and precious family heirlooms, enabling him to disappear forever.
