But she did not touch him. Not yet. Instead, she forced her mind to the tenuous situation in which they now found themselves. “Lucien will send me to Albemarle for certain if he finds us before we are married.”
She had not meant to make the worried observation aloud, but now she had, the duke was scowling down at her.
“He has threatened to send you away before?” he asked in a voice that was silken seduction wrapped around steel.
“Once,” she admitted. “When I spoke to him of you.”
“The devil.” His eyes narrowed. “What did you say to him about me, spitfire, to make him so angry?”
“I defended you.”
It was unwise, she was certain, to make such a revelation to him. Just as she was certain it was unwise to allow his sobriquet to send a frisson of warmth straight through her. She had already sent enough caution to the wind with her madcap scheme of running away with him. For the sake of her heart, she knew she ought to proceed with caution. After all, they were not yet wed.
His lush lips quirked into an arrogant smile. “Is it wrong of me to enjoy the notion of you as my champion?”
“No.” She grinned back at him, unable to shake the fantasy they were the only two people in the world. For a beat, all the danger and deception, everything they had done this evening, fell away, and they were Violet and Strathmore, man and woman, soon to be husband and wife. “I will gladly serve as your champion any time you like, so long as you continue to bestow such smiles upon me.”
“You like it?” His smile deepened, his eyes glittering with deviltry and a hint of something darker and deeper.
She flushed. A full body flush, every inch of her skin growing heated, aflame from head to toe. He was looking at her as if he could read her every wicked thought.Do not think about his mouth, she told herself.Do not even look one more time.
She tried to think of Lucien. Of Aunt Hortense. Of Charles. And there was an answering clench of guilt in her belly, to be sure, but it was replaced by the intensity of the Duke of Strathmore. He was smoldering. Stealing all the air from the chamber. From her lungs, specifically. From her mind, precisely.
Her gaze dropped.Blast him, even his teeth were charming, their only imperfection a slight overlap between his bottom teeth that somehow rendered him all the more alluring.
“It is a pleasant smile,” she managed to say at last, striving for a tone that was careless and easy. As if he did not turn her insides into a sizzling heap of ash. As if she were not, even now, a conflagration for him, longing to throw herself into his arms and kiss him senseless.
“Ah.” He canted his head, considering her with a thorough stare that saw far more than she wanted it to. “I seem to recall an occasion upon which you also referred to my kisses as pleasant. Shall we disprove this statement in the same manner?”
Yes!cried Wicked Violet.
“No.” She kept her tone as tart and prim as possible, reminding herself that, while she had done something exceedingly reckless and brazen and likely foolhardy this evening, she must not forget she was a lady. “We are not yet married, Strathmore, and though Aunt Hortense is not here to act the part of chaperone, I must insist we both act with decorum until the vows are spoken.” She paused, realizing how her words had sounded. “And afterward.”
It would be what Aunt Hortense wished for her to say.
“Decorum,” he repeated, raising a lone brow.
How did the man make a word with such a bland and rigid definition sound like a sin she wanted to commit with him?
“Yes.” Yes to sinning with him. “No.”
She blinked, confusing herself. He had her flustered and overly warm and saying and doing things the old Violet never would have done. But the old Violet had been too busy crocheting seed pouches for Charles to dare to even dream of an adventure with a too-handsome duke her brother intended to arrest.
He stepped nearer, touching her for the first time since they had made their great escape, aside from the impersonal and gentlemanly touches he had employed to assist her into and out of the carriage. His long, elegant fingers, which were neither a working man’s nor truly a lord’s, but somewhere vaguely in between—much like Strathmore himself—skimmed over the hollow at the base of her throat.
She inhaled sharply, her pulse pounding with such embarrassing ferocity, she knew he could absorb the frantic rhythm with his fingertips. He held them still, a gentle touch over her heartbeat.
“It cannot be both yes and no at once, can it?” he asked softly. “It must be either yes or no.”
Her cheeks stung with heat. Why must she forever be making a ninny of herself before him? She wondered again why he wished to marry her. Likely to spite her brother. In a sense, she was marrying him for the same reason, so she supposed there ought to be some validity in that.
“You are correct,” she agreed. “It must either be yes or no.”
But sometimes, sometimes it was gray.
Those fingers of his traveled, skimming lower, flirting with the high, lace-trimmed collar of her modest day gown.
“I am confused, my lady, and I fear you must help me. Am I acting with decorum now?”
