“You have already used that curse.” His lips quirked, so fleeting that if she hadn’t been so close, so aware, she would have missed it.
“I beg your pardon?” she growled.
The Duke of Rakecombe sighed and slicked back his hair with a firm hand.
What was he doing? What was it about this woman? And why had he even made himself known from the shadows?
No one answered.
All he did know was that he wanted to delicately carve up Lord Sherburn with the sprung blade nestled inside his ebony cane.
“You used that particular curse in Vauxhall Gardens, I recall, and I do not believe they serve twice.”
Her livid eyes narrowed, and he cursed his own tongue with words more vulgar than dogs eating feet.
Vauxhall Gardens was where he’d first kissed her. He hadn’t meant to. The plan, such as it had been, had involved distracting Miss Quinlan from her cousin’s side in order that his comrade could arrange a tryst.
But it had all gone to hell.
Miss Quinlan had tripped in the dark and he’d halted her fall, but slender fingers had clutched at his lapels, full breasts had pressed at his chest, and before he’d been able to gain control, his wayward lips had been kissing her, all rational thought upended.
Purely the clattering of his fallen cane had brought back his senses.
And then she’d had the gall to slap his face and inform him he kissed like some aquatic creature – the wretched jade.
“I’m flabbergasted, Your Gracelessness,” she retorted, “that you recall anything of that night. I can only suppose you’d imbibed too much punch. Some men cannot hold their drink.”
Oh, how he wanted to punish that insulting mouth. Miss Quinlan had no restraint, no decorum, no veneration for his noble title.
He ought to stay far, far away.
He should stride off now.
He leaned down, lips meeting her heated cheek. “I remember everything, sweet cherry. The scent of violets clinging to your hair, the softness of your mouth despite the flow of blasphemies from your lips, the silkiness of your skin.”
“And I recall,” she snapped, that silky but stubborn chin turning, “how you looked nauseated as you wiped a hand across your mouth. How you called me a capricious saucebox and told me I kissed like a shrew.”
Miss Quinlan’s snarled repetition of his words that night reminded him of his motive for uttering them.
There were reasons far beyond her comprehension as to why he couldn’t enjoy her acquaintance, and yet his treasonous body still refused to obey, his feet snubbed the order to walk in the opposite direction, his hands trembled to touch.
But his brain…his brain he could command. He wasn’t known as a staid heartless prig for nothing.
This ruthless reputation hadn’t been cultivated on some whim but to protect against closeness, against temptations such as Miss Aideen Quinlan.
With his perilous activities for the Crown, invoking dislike was wisest for all concerned.
So he stiffened his spine. Forced his eyes to winter. “And I meant every word,” he stated coldly.
Most women would have cowed before his insult. Mayhap their lip would have quivered, or a bright tear might’ve gleamed in their eye. They would have vowed never to speak to him again, presuming him a callous bastard, and his world would once again become safe.
Theywould become safe.
Of course, he should have known that Miss Aideen Quinlan would do no such thing.
When kidnapped last May, she’d scratched her ire into the Frenchman’s face, and Rakecombe couldn’t help the surge of protectiveness and admiration that assaulted him in equal measure as he recalled her strength, her wrath, her fire.
Miss Quinlan’s lips firmed, and coyly, she peeped up at him. “To answer your earlier question, Your Grace, I did enjoy Lord Sherburn’s attentions. So gentle and tender. Such soft hands. He knows how to delight a lady.”
