“Pardon?”
“No, I’m not kind. I’m terrible.”
“Oh. I’m sure you really are kind, but I shouldn’t correct you, should I? So I’m going to go, because, you see—”
The duke broke into her babble. “May I suggest . . .”
That you kiss me with those dangerous lips? That you put your arms around me? That we both undress, Your Grace, and get back into the bed and you let me get a feel of whatever was prodding my backside for the last ten minutes? That you remind me how wondrous the human body is? And that I’m alive and not just going through the motions in the hopes that everything will work out happily in the end?
The duke blinked several times as if he could read her thoughts.
He cleared his throat. “May I suggest coffee before anything else?”
Six
She was a strange one. Of course, not as strange as he was since no one was as strange as he was, according to his mother and Dagenham, the two people who knew him best. But Franny didn’t know anything about a kitchen. Kittredge had to stoke the stove and heat the water and grind the coffee himself.
She stared at him, agog. “A duke knows how to make coffee?”
He shrugged. “I make a point of spending six weeks a year in a hunting box with no servants.”
His eye was caught by a pile of his books by the hearth. Curiously, it stirred not a whit of anger in him.Shewas welcome to read his books. Welcome to anything she wanted, really. But how could he convince her to wanthim?
“The first year Dagenham and I nearly starved to death. And we were right ogres to each other with no coffee. The next year I spent two months in this kitchen before we left, learning how to make coffee and eggs and roast a haunch of venison.”
“And make toast?”
“There’s no such thing as making toast.”
“There isn’t?”
“No. One buys bread and slices it and then one attempts not to burn the slices of bread. So you see, nothing is made.”
“There’s bread in the larder. Will you not burn some toast for me, Your Grace?”
He’d do anything she asked of him. He found the bread and a knife and started sawing off some slices. “What’s the rest of your name?”
“Cranwell.”
“Miss Franny Cranwell.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“No, that’s my name, all right.”
A horror struck him and turned his knees to jelly. “And it’s Miss Cranwell? Not Mrs. Cranwell?”
She ducked her head. Was she smiling? “Miss.”
“Miss Frances Cranwell.”
“Francesca.”
Of course. Of course, she was a Francesca and not a Frances.
He looked around but had no idea where a toasting fork might be. He put a kitchen cloth over his arm and brought over the board with the bread on it.
