She tried to get closer to him and stepped on his shoes. This made her stumble and he had to catch her to keep her from falling, and she burst into laughter. She was so pretty, so rosy and sweet as she laughed in his arms that he quite lost his head.
Those pink lips. That warm breath with the scent of sugared violets. He wanted those lips, that breath. That delight, that promise. That hope. That kindness.
This soft, abundant, feminine flesh and these shimmering locks of fire.
He pulled her closer, bent his head, and kissed her laughing mouth.
She stopped laughing. She stopped doing anything at all. She was immobile. A heated, statuesque goddess against him. Her lips tender and pliant and seemingly made for his.
A hunger he had long thought dead rose up in him. He wanted her naked, underneath him, begging him to take her. He wanted his face buried in her voluptuous breasts, his hands on her lush bottom, his cock in her cunt. He wanted her with a ruthless savagery that knew no reason.
His depraved thoughts surging, his mouth still joined to hers and his arms still locked around her, he heard the library door open and his friend’s shocked gasp.
“Oliver. Henrietta.”
Henrietta. The girl in his arms was Henrietta.
But even as her name branded itself on his heart and his cock, the animal part of his brain would not allow him to release her.
Mine.
She was the one who pushed him away and put a distance between them.
“Papa, I fell and Mr. Hartwell saved me.”
A slow dawning.
Something deplorable had just occurred and he was the agent of it. Oliver took two halting steps away from Henrietta and turned and bowed to Crispin.
“Your Grace.”
When he straightened from the bow, he saw Danforth, Burchester, Ramsey, and Ramsey’s son standing behind his friend.
His muzzy head whirred and clicked like his old viameter as he grappled with the immense ramifications of the kiss he had just stolen.
Damn, damn, damn, damn. Damn you to hell, Oliver Hartwell.
If it had been only Crispin who had found them thus, the situation might be salvaged for the girl. No matter what, Oliver had lost the duke’s trust—and almost certainly, his friendship—and that was a lethal blow. The worst thing he could imagine. The end of everything good in his life. But only for him. No harm would come to Lady Henrietta.
But for her to be discovered in the arms of a man in the middle of the night in front of witnesses outside the family? A scandal of the worst kind.
Poor girl. He had ruined her as he had ruined everything and everyone else in his life.
Oliver glanced quickly at Henrietta. Her whole face was red, making the freckles that dotted her snub nose disappear.
“Papa, you aren’t angry, are you? I was on my way to the stables.”
The duke turned to the other men. “If you’ll excuse us.”
“Certainly,” Lord Ramsey huffed, and the four men disappeared.
“Henrietta, go to your bedchamber. Now. Mr. Hartwell and I must talk.”
“No, no— What are you going to talk about? You mustn’t think, I just wanted to, I mean, I saw the light in the study.” Henrietta poked a foot out from under her nightdress. “See? I have boots on. I’m going out to the stables.”
“Hen. Your bedchamber. Now.”
The girl chewed her lip and scurried from the room.
