But oddly, she wasn’t angry at all.
Because even if he was distracting her, he was also looking at her like she wasn’t a nuisance. Or a rival. Or the daughter of a man who’d feuded with his family for decades.
He was looking at her like she was… irresistible.
And dash it all, if that didn’t feel rather thrilling.
Her heart lurched. She rose onto her toes to meet him halfway—but he was already there.
His hands slid to her waist, and suddenly she wasn’t kissing him so much as being kissed. Lifted. Anchored to him like she weighed nothing at all.
She was not a small woman.
And yet her toes no longer touched the ground.
She gasped against his mouth, her fingers curling into the lapels of his coat. The kiss deepened, dizzying and delicious, a tangle of breath and warmth and years of unspoken longing.
This wasn’t a polite, stolen kiss in a moonlit garden. This was a lifetime’s worth of fantasy crashing into reality. Her skin prickled. Her chest ached. Her lips parted on a sigh.
She was floating.
And then—
A cough.
Charles stiffened. Felicia blinked, her dazed gaze dragging toward the source of the sound.
A shadow emerged from the hedgerow.
Mr. Loxley.
His smile was oily. Triumphant.
“Well, well,” he drawled. “What would the earl say if he knew his daughter was lifting her skirts for the enemy?”
Chapter 5
By Kerrigan Byrne
Charles's face hardened, his blue eyes turning to ice as he gently released Felicia. "Watch your filthy tongue, Loxley, before I cut it out."
Loxley sneered, his gaze sliding over Felicia with a lascivious appraisal that made her skin crawl. "I'm merely pointing out what everyone will soon know. The Montclair spinster spreading her legs for a Harrington. How the mighty have fallen."
Charles moved with startling speed for a man his size, placing himself between Felicia and Loxley. "Apologize to the lady. Now."
"Lady?" Loxley laughed, the sound ugly in the moonlight. "Is that what you call your whore? Tell me, Your Grace, does she moan prettily when you—"
The crack of Charles's fist connecting with Loxley's jaw echoed in the garden. Loxley stumbled backward, his hand flying to his face in shock.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. "You'll regret this. I'll tell the earl everything. By morning, all of Devonshire will know about the Montclair slut and her duke!"
The duke’s second blow took the starch out of Loxley’s knees as he crumpled to the ground.
Felicia stared at the unconscious man, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. "Charlie..."
He turned to her, chest heaving, eyes still blazing with fury. He grabbed her hand, his fingers warm and strong around hers. "Come with me."
She glanced back at the house, at the sprawled form of Loxley. "But—"
