“I did so willingly, not begrudgingly, and only because it suited me to do so, Esmeralda.”
Why did he always have to have an answer for everything she said? “Nonetheless, we have an arrangement, Your Grace. One that you insisted upon, and I am determined to hold you to it.”
“Those are brave words.”
She had to be. If she lacked the courage to speak now, she was doomed. “I’m sure Lady Norwood has already started spreading the news of who my mother is, but because I am Viscount Mayeforth’s first cousin, I see no reason it will reflect badly on Lady Sara and Lady Vera for me to continue as long as you allow it.”
“That is not the point about this, Esmeralda. You are a lady and shouldn’t be working at all.”
He brushed his hand through his rich, thick hair again.
She had exasperated him, but she couldn’t back down. “I play the cards life dealt me,” she answered, sounding stronger than she felt. “Now, do I have my position here in your household or do I return to the agency tomorrow morning?”
His gaze locked on hers. “I can’t have you in my employ, and it has nothing to do with my sisters.”
“That’s rubbish,” she argued. “You don’t live here. What else could it be? If you find me so objectionable, I can have a separate carriage take me to the evenings’ events.”
“You don’t understand yet, do you?” He leaned his body in close to hers. With his lips just inches from hers, he reached up to pull a pin from her hair and dropped it to the floor.
“What are you doing?”
A low, attractive chuckle whispered past his lips. “Taking down your hair so I can see it.”
Another pin followed the first. Esmeralda wished she had the willpower to jerk away from his touch, but it was as if his hands in her hair had mesmerized her and she couldn’t move. The third pin hit the floor, and several tendrils of hair fell down past her shoulders.
“Don’t you know that the only things I find objectionable about you are that you hide your golden-brown hair in that tight knot at the back of your head and you wear no color other than gray.”
“They are appropriate for me and my station in life.”
“Not anymore. You know I couldn’t kiss you as long as you were part of my household.”
“Only ogres take advantage of their staff in that way.”
Another pin slipped from her chignon, and the length of glass beads she wore in her hair plopped onto the rug at their feet. The duke threaded his fingers through her long tresses as they fell around her shoulders.
The smile on his face was gentle, and earnest. “Much better.”
Esmeralda’s heart felt as if it were melting in her chest.
“Now that I know you are an innocent, properly brought up young lady, and we are equals, I’m not supposed to kiss you either.”
“Equals?” She harrumphed, her distaste for the power of peers rising inside her again. “You jest. Dukes are equal to no one but other dukes. Sisters are not equal to their viscount brothers, and I am certainly not equal to you.”
He placed a finger on her lips to silence her and, rather than move away as she should have, she accepted his touch without a flinch.
His gaze swept up and down her face as if searching for something. “We are social equals, Esmeralda. If you stay here, when I come over, I will want to kiss you again.” With the back of his palm he slowly, softly caressed her cheeks. First one and then the other.
“Not even a duke should always get what he wants,” she countered.
He smiled. “I will explain by showing you what I am nobly trying to save you from. I desire you, Esmeralda. With the intensity of a desperate drowning man swimming for dry land.”
His expression was so tender it caused her breath to catch in her throat.
He ran his thumb across her lips once, twice, three times. “I want to kiss you here on your beautiful lips.”
She wanted that too.
With the delicate touch, and without letting his fingers leave her heated skin, they skimmed down the column of her throat to the hollow at its base where they rested. “I want to kiss you here where your blood pulsates against my touch.”
