Out in the sun and under the shade.
On a cold winter’s day when the fire crackled and a steamy summer night when fireflies danced beneath the stars.
She wanted his kisses in all of the seasons that were and all of the weather that could be.
Wasn’t that a revelation? To want something for the sheer, selfishdesireof it. It almost felt wrong... and at the same time, wickedly right.
“I like...” Suddenly nervous, she had wet her lips, and then wet them again when Ambrose’s eyes darkened. “I like reading and embroidery. I like playing the pianoforte. Occasionally I like to paint, although I’m not very skilled. What—what pursuits do you enjoy, Your Grace?”
Without warning, the driver of the carriage then turned them sharply to the right to prevent crashing into an elderly man who had been paying closer attention to a pair of debutantes than the crowded bridle path in front of him.
Kitty had shrieked as she slid sideways into the corner of her seat while Mara fell into Ambrose’s lap. He caught her securely against his side, his arm creating a steel barricade that wrapped around her waist and held her securely while the driver regained control of the rig and pulled them safely off to the side of the road.
“Are you all right?” the duke asked, his lips moving against the rebellious curls that had escaped from her bonnet. The fan of his warm breath against her bare skin ignited a spark down low, in the secret, velvety place that Society and her governess-nanny-housekeeper (how the blessed woman had maintained all three positions, particularly with Kitty as a charge, remained a mystery to this day) had told her never to think about andneverto touch.
But contrary to her commands, it wasallshe’d thought about late last night, and in the wee hours of the morning, when she had lain awake, her breaths growing shallower and shallower as her first true kiss replayed through her mind on a hazy loop half-drowned in sleep and the lingering dregs of newly discovered lust.
As her mind had continually crept back to Ambrose, her hand had crept under the covers to her breasts. She’d been startled to find that her nipples—twin parts of her body she’d rarely paid any attention to—were hard and protruding. Fueled by curiosity and a daunting sense of depravity, she’d lightly pinched her aroused flesh between her thumb and finger... and swallowed a gasp at the answering rush of sensation that spread from her breasts, to her belly, to her loins, like water being poured downhill.
Her inquisitive hand had slipped below the flat plane around her navel to the downy curls nestled at the apex of her thighs. Curls that parted easily when she searched and found the small, hidden nub that tingled pleasantly when she rubbed her fingertip in a circle on top of it.
Cheeks red with shame and arousal, breaths coming in fits and starts, she had experimented with pressure and placement while the moon stood guard, its silvery light casting a steady, unwavering beacon of twilight across the end of her narrow bed.
On the other side of the room, Kitty had snored fitfully, oblivious to her sister’s secret deeds under the cover of darkness and a heavy blanket. As Mara’s fingers had thrummed below her waist, her heart had thrummed above it. An odd, excited, heavy beating that had urged her wrist to rotate faster, and faster, until...
Heavens.
Mara didn’t remember if she’d cried out, but she thought it quite possible. A verbal release to the build-up of steam inside of her. A kettle whistling at the point of boil. Shedidrecall yanking her hand away from her legs and pulling a pillow over her head to muffle the sound of her rapid breathing. Breathing that gradually slowed as her muscles relaxed and sleep took her into its elusive embrace.
When dawn had come, yellow light tinged with a filter of gray, she’d lain silently in her bed counting the cracks in the plaster ceiling before Kitty had woken up and come bounding over, babbling on and on about what they might do when the duke came to call.
She shook her head, as if she could shake away the memory of the night before and the uneasy mixture of pleasure and shame that accompanied it.
“I am... I am unharmed,” she told Ambrose then in response to his query, her voice reduced to a croak that lodged uncomfortably in her throat. She coughed to clear it, then coughed again—a startledhem hem—when the arm around her ribcage tightened imperceptibly, tucking into his side as easily as if he were slipping her into his pocket.
“Why don’t we disembark and walk?” he asked, his low baritone a rumbling caress against her nape. “There’s a path through the laurel that leads to a small stream that should be far less crowded than the main thoroughfare.”
“I would like to—to stretch my legs,” she said faintly.
“Excellent.” Exiting the carriage by swinging his leg over the side, he opened the door and then offered his forearm, which she accepted after just a moment’s hesitation. A little hop, a swish of her skirts, and then she was on the ground beside him, the top of her bonnet scarcely reaching the bottom of his chin.
“I guess I’ll let myself out then,” Kitty said loudly as Mara and Ambrose set off toward a high green hedge. “Don’t worry about me.”
Walking in the duke’s shadow, Mara snuck a glance at him. She found it difficult to give his countenance her full attention. Like looking directly at the sun, his dark, harsh beauty was too overwhelming to take in all at once. Particularly when it was directed ather.
She still hadn’t the slightest notion of why his interest had extended to her and not her sister or any of the other far more fetching young ladies of theton, but she wasn’t going to question it and she dared not questionhim. This looming giant of High Society wielded as much, if not more, influence and political power than the Prince Regent himself.
In whispers behind closed doors, she’d overheard the Duke of Southwick described as dangerous. At the time, she’d thought little of it. An exaggeration, to be sure, for how truly dangerous could a duke be? What was he going to do, stab someone to death with his quizzing glass? Then, at the ball, and later, after the theater, she’d uncovered the truth.
Ambrose wasn’t dangerous.
Fish not cooked all the way through was dangerous. Sewing without a finger protector was dangerous. Drinking Kitty’s lemonade was dangerous.
But the Duke of Southwick?
He wasdeadly.
He was a bolt of lightning on a clear day. A patch of thin ice on a frozen pond. St James Square after dusk.
