“No. It’s not. It’s your excuse, you darling man. Look at all the difficult things you get out of just by saying that.” She made her voice into a gruff baritone. “I’m the Duke of Kittredge, and I’m an arsehole. So I don’t have to go to Christmas house parties. So I don’t have to be pleasant when I don’t feel like it. So I don’t have to—”
He winced. “Stop.”
Oh, no, she had taken her jest too far.
“I’m sorry. It’s just I think you’re splendid and everyone else should think so, too. Including you.”
“Well, then we would all be as madly deluded as you are. Thank God, we’re not.”
No. This ended now.
“Fine. Let’s have amorous congress.”
Kittredge held completely still.Was it possible she had said what he thought she had said?
She knocked on the ceiling of the hack and the driver slid the little hatch open.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
She went forward onto her knees on the backward facing seat to talk to the man, giving Kittredge a superb opportunity to admire her bottom.
“Actually, Johnson, it’s me.” She had learned the hack driver’s name, of course. “We’re done shopping. Please take us back to His Grace’s house.”
“Yes, miss.”
“There.” She shut the little door and turned and sat. “Done. Because I promised myself I would never again bed an arsehole.Ergo, you’re not one. And it should take care of your bad mood.”
“Stop the hack,” he roared.
She turned and slid the hatch open but before she could say anything, the driver said, “I heard, miss. Stopping now.”
“Close that.” He gestured. She closed the little door again and turned back to him, not the least bit affected by his shout. The hack rumbled to a halt.
He gritted his teeth before speaking. “Do not tease me.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re sincere?”
“I am.”
He got out of the hack but left the door open and went round to the front quickly, slipping in the melting, gray sludge.
The driver tried to stand up to bow. “Your Grace—”
“Sit,” Kittredge snapped. He took a coin out of his purse and tossed it to the man who caught it, fumbling with the reins. “You can keep that sovereign if you can get us to my town house in five minutes without killing us or the horses.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The hack went like lightning and yet it was still not enough haste for Kittredge. He opened the door to the town house and dragged Franny inside. He slammed the door and wrapped his arms around her and at last got his hands on her perfect arse.
God. Damn. So perfect.
“Kit.” She laughed and pushed at him. “Let me take off my things.”
He backed away, his cock already near bursting. He’d lost his hat somewhere and he stripped off his greatcoat and tailcoat as Franny put her parcels and reticule down, removed her gloves, shrugged her way out of her pelisse, untied the bow on her bonnet, put the bonnet down on the hall table, looked at her hair in the mirror—
“Enough,” he growled and lunged forward and put his shoulder to her stomach and grabbed around her thighs and headed up the stairs, her laughing all the way.
