In her distraction, Georgiana did what she did best and made exactly the wrong move. Her folio hit the slick flagstones, stopping a duke in his tracks. The amusement melted from Dunmere’s face like wax while his son raced around him in giggling circles.
In that instant, she knew His Grace cared for society no more than society cared for him. No more, perhaps, than it cared for her, though he plainly mistook her for one of them.
Gazes locked, an organic rhythm of the kind no one understands or can create muscled through her, the weight of those five long seconds doing untold things. The sudden vibration made her think of tangled limbs, of whispered urgency, of bodies straining together in breathless heat. She blamed this, in part, on the scene she’d stumbled upon last month in Baron Ramsey’s library whilst searching for a midnight read—a couple she would not name, knotted together on the sofa in the act of removing their clothing, as though it were a minor inconvenience.
As if he heard her unseemly thoughts, Dunmere blinked and lowered his impossibly blue regard to his son, raindrops clinging to his dark lashes, his striking face gone soft for the boy alone, his drenched clothes revealing the hard architecture of his chest, waist,and thighs. A smear of dirt streaked along his neck, and his shirt was torn just enough to bare a glimpse of skin.
Mercy, to be that beautiful.
A gust carrying the piquant scent of leather and man danced across her, cooling her flushed skin. Standing there, waiting for the moment to break, she noticed another remarkable thing. The Duke of Dunmere’s gaze had not once snagged on her bodice, as other men’s so often did. He’d looked at her, quite singularly, directly in the face. Yet she’d felt his attraction like a finger skimming her cheek, and suspected he’d felt hers as well.
Before either of them could speak, for at this point they must, his son raced over, bending to pick up her folio. “You dropped your book, miss,” he said, with a gap-toothed smile. His hair was the same shade of ebony as his father’s, but his eyes were a clear, luminous green. Georgiana had been too young to meet his mother at an event, but she wondered if that was where the striking color had come from.
Without worrying how it must look to a duke, Georgiana went to her knees before the boy. “Thank you, you’re quite kind.”
“Say hello to Lady Georgiana,” Dunmere said, his voice a gravelly murmur that landed squarely in the center of her belly. She glanced up, shocked he knew her name. Only to find his face as blank as new parchment.
Though there was amusement tilting his lips, an indistinct tell that suggested he was entertained by her surprise. She wasn’t sure she liked being entertaining.
“Hello, Lady Georgiana,” he said, and thrust her folio at her. There was dirt smudged along his cheek and neck, and at the collar of his shirt. He’d been playing hard, it appeared, as children should. Although her mother would not have agreed.
Removing a piece of straw from the boy’s mussed hair, she asked, “And you are?”
He wiped his fist beneath his nose and sniffled. “I’m the Earl of Landon.”
His father’s mouth twitched. “Lord Henry is enough for now.”
Henry frowned. “But I’m a proper earl.”
“Someday, you’ll be a duke,” Dunmere said, ruffling his son’s hair. “Though, if you’ll allow it, I’d prefer to keep the title a while longer. The whole earl-at-seven business is aristocratic nonsense. Let’s not talk lineage until you’re at least thirteen.”
Georgiana could not help but laugh. “Prudent ambition on both your parts.”
Henry beamed at her, entirely unabashed. Entirely adorable. “I don’t know what prudent means, though Papa often calls me spirited.”
“I begin to see,” Georgiana said gravely, “that spirited may be a gentleman’s word for several frightening qualities. I’ve heard much the same said of myself.”
Henry’s grin widened, as though he’d discovered an ally of the highest order.
A hard gust sent rain slanting beneath the portico, cool droplets striking Georgiana’s skin. The light had thinned to that strange storm-dark that belonged neither to afternoon nor evening, the lawn beyond the terrace silvered with mist, the hedges bowing in the wind.
“You should go in,” Dunmere murmured.
He said it to his son, perhaps. Or to both of them. Georgiana could not be certain, with that current moving between them again—silent, insistent, felt more than understood—while Henry squatted cheerfully between them, oblivious as only a child could be.
Then Dunmere held out his hand to help her up.
It was absurd that so small a courtesy should feel dangerous.
His gloved fingers closed around hers, firm and warm despite the rain and the fine kid leather. The touch was brief, gallant, nothing at all. Yet the shock of it ran through her veins with wholly unreasonable force, as though her blood had mistaken the moment for something far more intimate. The faint dusting of freckles on his nose, the least ducal thing imaginable, startled her into a fresh rush of longing.
Unnerved, she rose too quickly, nearly stumbling. The stark scent of damp wool and something darker—bay rum or sandalwood—lit the air around her. Naturally, he smelled as good as he looked. A raindrop meandered down his jaw, and Georgiana had to curl her fingersinto a fist to keep from capturing it. As it was, she tracked its path until it bled into his rumpled collar.
“Careful,” he murmured, his gaze steady on her.
The word was low enough that it seemed meant for her alone, a warning that sounded like an invitation. So was the one that followed, dropped beneath his breath with perfect severity. “Tempest.”
Georgiana would have told herself he meant the weather, had Dunmere’s mouth not betrayed itself at one corner, bringing to life a dimple deep enough to lose her good sense in. Delightful little grooves radiated from his eyes—she’d capture them with charcoal and paper if she could.
