You cannot have more, she reminded herself sternly. It was impossible. Irresponsible. She had told him once that he made her want to break all her rules. But in truth, he made her wish she possessed no rules at all. How could she ever spend the next weeks, perhaps months, at his side without wanting to touch him? Without being tempted to kiss him or to offer her body to him once more? Without stealing to his bedchamber in the midst of the night?
Doing so seemed as likely as the Atlantic Ocean drying up in one day. So much intensity, such deep connection, could not be vanquished. But she had to protect herself. Too much more time in his arms, and she would lose her heart.
“Good morning, Miss Montgomery,” he said in his impeccable aristocratic accent, one more reminder of why she could not run to him again this evening.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” she returned with equal formality. She would have offered a curtsy, as she reckoned it was the proper response. But she was wearing her trousers, and dipping like a debutante seemed silly. So she bowed back at him.
His lips twitched. “That will be all, Reynolds,” he announced to the butler without ever removing his gaze from Hazel.
The butler and pair of footmen assisting him disappeared with alarming haste, leaving Hazel alone with the man her body did not want to resist. She frowned at him for being so handsome, for using his tongue so well. For making her come undone so thoroughly, she had been nothing but a quivering, spent mass of woman in his bed. For showing her what she had been missing. For making her want something she could never have.
“You laughed at me,” she accused, feeling in the mood to argue. Perhaps it would be a way to arm herself against him.
“You laughed at me as well, if you will recall,” he countered, raising a brow. “Please, sit. We have a great deal to accomplish today, and I would like to get an early start so we have enough time to go on an excursion later. I know how grumbly Famished Hazel can be.”
The lightness in his tone took her aback, for it was not at all what she had anticipated. Indeed, it was almost…intimate, for lack of a better word. Jarring, for certain.
“I laughed at the absurdity of your question,” she reminded him, “not at you. For you know as well as I that it was a question you ought never to have asked me.”
“Why not?” He skirted the table suddenly, moving past her in such proximity her swift inhalation encompassed his scent. He withdrew a chair and gestured toward her imperiously. “Have a seat, Hazel.”
“I will sit when I wish to do so,” she countered, for just because they had been lovers—past tense, she reminded herself, as it could not happen again—did not give him a right to order her about. She would breakfast when and as she pleased.
“You did not answer my question,” he persisted.
“You know as well as I all the reasons why you ought never to have asked me to marry you. Everything about me is unconventional.”
“That is one of the things I admire about you,” he said seriously. “Sit.”
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
This was not how they were meant to conduct their breakfast. They were meant to sit, attended by servants, so that nothing untoward could be said, and then focus upon their investigations, before returning to the site of the railway bombings and meeting with Winchelsea. Business. Impersonal. Formal. That was what she had wanted this morning.
How was she to contend with a Duke of Arden, who was looking upon her as if he wanted to consumeherfor breakfast, instead of the sausages and eggs?
“You would prefer I pretend not to admire you?” he asked innocently. “Strange indeed, Hazel, for I would think an independent woman such as yourself would demand her suitor admire her.”
Suitor?
The word may as well have been a curse. Her heart thumped faster. Louder. Her palms began to sweat.
“You are not my suitor, Arden,” she corrected coolly.
“What if I am?” he returned, his countenance deadly serious.
“You cannot be,” she snapped, her tenuous grip on her own feelings making her irritable. “We have been over this tired discussion before. If there is something you need to know, I will tell you. If not, you need not worry about me. Very likely, I will be on my way soon enough anyway. We already know the identity of the dynamitards. Now it will be a matter of catching them, before they elude us.”
“You see? Famished Hazel, baring her claws.” He gestured toward the chair again. “Sit. Please.”
Her stomach chose that second to deliver a loud, indignant, and wholly unladylike rumble. Bemused, she pressed a clammy hand over her belly, wishing for once she had worn a corset, for perhaps the infernal contraption would have staved off the sound.
Her cheeks went hot. Arden said nothing, merely regarded her calmly. Knowingly.
Well, she was hungry. There was no denying it. And he seemed content to continue their impasse, he at the chair, she standing in the midst of the dining room like a fool. So she did the only thing she could think of doing. She strode to his vacated chair and seated herself with as much elegance as she could muster. She was aware she possessed precious little grace, but she could force herself to conform when the situation required it.
She laid Arden’s napkin neatly in her lap and regarded him from the opposite side of the table. “I am quite famished, Mr. Arden. Thank you.”
She took care to drawl the words, lifting his untouched coffee to him in a mock toast, before she took a sip. The decadent, dark liquid rolled over her tongue, bitter and rich and delicious. She had to admit, he had excellent taste in coffee. Even if he was an overbearing, arrogant duke.
