“My dignity left the room when I removed my trousers.”
She dissolved into laughter, and he took shameless advantage of it, kissing her throat while she tried and failed to regain her composure. His mouth found the sensitive place beneath her ear, and the laughter thinned into a breath.
“Hugo,” she whispered again, but this time it sounded less like a warning.
His arms tightened around her. “Say that once more and I shall forget there is a card table in this room.”
“Perhaps the card table deserves to be forgotten.”
He drew back just enough to look at her, his eyes dark with mischief and heat. “Are you encouraging me?”
“I am merely observing that furniture should know its place.”
He laughed, low and delighted, and kissed her again.
This time, Lily forgot to be clever. She slid her hands up his bare arms to his shoulders, feeling the warmth of him beneath her palms. He backed her gently against the edge of the table, and the cards scattered in a soft, treacherous slide across the floor.
Neither of them cared.
His mouth moved over hers with increasing persuasion, and her fingers curled against him. She felt him smile.
“You are very quiet for a woman who had so much to say about loopholes.”
“I am thinking.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Good.” He kissed her again. “Thinking is vastly overrated.”
She made a small sound, half laugh, half sigh, and caught his lower lip between hers just long enough to make him go still.
Then a discreet cough came from the doorway.
Hugo froze.
Lily froze.
The footman, to his eternal credit, had fixed his gaze on some interesting point several inches above the mantel. His face was as expressionless as a marble bust, though one ear had gone violently red.
“Your Grace,” he said, with the dignity of a man determined not to notice that his employer was standing in his smallclothes while the Duchess was pressed against the card table amid a battlefield of discarded garments. “Her Grace. Cook wished me to inquire whether you still intend to dine this evening.”
Lily made a strangled sound and promptly hid her face against Hugo’s shoulder.
Hugo, who had faced creditors, rival peers, furious tenants, and one particularly vindictive dowager, appeared to lose all command of the English language.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Dinner. Of course. We are great admirers of dinner.”
The footman gave the smallest possible bow. “Very good, Your Grace.”
“But perhaps,” Hugo added, with a level of composure Lily found frankly heroic, “dinner might be delayed by a quarter hour.”
Another pause.
“Half an hour,” Lily said into his shoulder.
The footman’s gaze remained fixed on the mantel. “I shall inform Cook.”
