Just then, when a modicum of rationality tried to stake a claim, he escalated his tactics and slid his tongue into her mouth.
She liked it. She did not lie to herself about that. It stirred her deeply and hinted at intimacies to come. However, it also startled her enough that her mind actually found itself.The Duke of Stratton is trying to seduce me.
She turned her head. She pressed against his hold, hard. She stumbled out of his embrace and turned away to compose herself.
She heard his breathing, and her own, and knew she had permitted too much to occur. This man had been impossible already. She did not think he would get any better now.
“You should go,” she said.
“No.”
No?Rather suddenly she felt very much herself again. She turned to face him.
A mistake that. He smoldered there, his gaze on her, his jaw and mouth hard. He looked dangerous and sensual and too handsome to bear.
Too much passed between them in the silence. That she had lost ground and he had gained it, that she might hate his family but she did not dislike him nearly enough, and that something had started here that he at least intended to finish.
“Youmustgo,” she said firmly.
“Why?”
Oh, he was bold. “Because I must too. I am to meet my sister at a dressmaker’s, and I need to start out.” She brushed past him and walked to the door. She stepped into the reception hall and called up the stairs to Jocelyn to bring down her pelisse.
“At least you do not live here all alone,” he said, following her out.
“Of course not. There will be more servants soon. The notices have been published. I expect to hire an army. In a week I daresay I will be tripping over them.”
“I assume that means you do not yet have a coachman. I have my carriage here. I will take you to your sister.”
She had planned to hire a hackney. “I will permit that because I am late. However, if you so much as try to touch me, I will stab you with a hatpin.”
Jocelyn came down and handed her the pelisse. She donned it, tied on her bonnet, and allowed the duke to escort her to his carriage. Only because it was more convenient, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the sensual haze that still threatened to descend on her.
* * *
“This color should be unexceptionable,” Clara said, tapping a fashion plate in a consulting room at Madame Tissot’s shop. “It is not nearly as dark as the other gray. More dove colored, but still subdued.”
“Not too boring and old, you mean.” Emilia’s excitement about shopping for a few new dresses had been almost ruined by the commands she carried to the shop from their grandmother. Dark purple or gray had been the decree. Emilia blurted it out as soon as Clara entered the shop and had almost burst into tears too.
“I am sure Grandmamma does not want you to look like an old woman,” Clara said. “We will find a lovely fabric similar to this in color. It is almost silver. Perhaps we can find one that even has a tint of lavender in it too. I am sure that Madame Tissot will have some ideas.”
“I should order a good muslin as well. Does that have to be gray too?”
“I don’t see why you cannot wear white, or cream, in a muslin. It is hardly the color of festivity, and you are still a girl.”
“I am so glad that Grandmamma did not come. And that you did. Now if we could just gethimto leave.” She angled her head toward the door, beyond which one would find the reception chamber.
Clara glanced in that direction even though she could not see through the door. She knew to whom Emilia referred. Stratton had insisted upon waiting, to bring her back when she and Emilia were finished.
Emilia pondered three plates, unable to decide on that muslin dress’s design. “I don’t want to look too much a child, but I fear Grandmamma will never allow me to wear this one here unless it is remade.” She pointed to a dress with a neckline that showed rather more of the chest than a girl in mourning might reveal.
“One of the new fashionable high necks should take care of that,” Clara said. She gazed at her own set of plates, none of which had been painted white. One, however, showed a color much like that of a pale, muted hydrangea. “Look here at this, Emilia. The color is mostly blue, with a tint of purple. I would want the color on this other design here, but wonder if it would pass as still respectable for the daughter of man buried just over six months ago.”
“I am hopeless and cannot help you. Perhaps he could.” She again angled her head toward the door.
“What would he know about it?”
“He would know what his mother did, wouldn’t he? And if dukes do not raise eyebrows, why should anyone else?” Emilia said. “Not that you care much about that.”
