He inclined his head. “Yes.”
Elation shot through her, almost making her giddy.
“I’m leaving in the morning.”
His lips compressed, the harsh angle of his jaw tightening again. “I am aware of that, madam.”
“Then perhaps you will call me by my name.”
“Adelia Louise.”
He had remembered her middle name. The realization sent warmth creeping through her.
“Addy,” she countered.
Anyone could call her Adelia, just as anyone might know she was Adelia Louise Fox. The newspapers had reported on everything from the size of her waist to the color of her eyes, to the size of the fortune her father had settled upon her as a lure for prospective husbands. She hated the public perception of her, the ceaseless desire from people she had never met to know about her. To think they knew her merely because they had read about her in the papers.
But not everyone had leave to call her Addy. That name was reserved for her closest family and friends. She wanted to hear it now, in the duke’s precise, perfectly accented baritone. Just once. More than once, if she were ruthlessly honest with herself, but once would suffice if it was all she could be allotted.
Marchingham swallowed again, looking as if he were at war with himself. So handsome and composed, and yet there was a storm gathering in his eyes. The same storm she had felt in him when he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her, when his tongue had slipped inside her mouth, when he had held her to him as if she were something both precious and breakable all at once.
“Say it,” she urged him. “Or are you too afraid that saying it will make everything that has happened between us these last eleven days impossible to ignore?”
“Addy,” he bit out, as if doing so caused him physical pain. “Addy Louise Fox, you should know better than to be knocking at an unwed gentleman’s door at midnight.”
She grinned at him, unable to contain the wild rush of joy coursing through her. She felt like a fireworks display in the night sky, explosive and combustible.
“I do know better.”
He frowned, his nostrils flaring. “Then why are you here?”
“You know why.”
“Addy,” he rasped, clearly trying to cling to his resolve.
But then he reached for her, and she knew he was failing. His hands clamped on her waist in a possessive grip as she stepped forward. Their bodies connected from chest to hip. And oh, without the layers she ordinarily wore, what a revelation it was. She could feel him against her—that male part of him, thick and insistent against her stomach.
Proof he was not unaffected, had she needed any.
“What shall I call you?” she asked, settling one hand on his shoulder while the other cupped his cheek.
Letty and Lila had always referred to him as Marchingham. She had no notion what his given name was, even if she did know the taste of him on her lips and the way he kissed.
“You shouldn’t call me anything.”
But despite his warning, he turned his head, punctuating his words with a kiss directly to the center of her palm.
More warmth spread through her. She liked that. She liked that very, very much.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“I loathe my name,” he murmured. “I always have.”
“What is it? I promise not to laugh.”
Her teasing had its intended effect, startling a chuckle out of him.
“Hoyden.”
