Page 25 of Plucked By the Orc

Duncan stopped there. He knew full well that she didn’t want to talk about her past for the benefit of his manuscript.

“My apologies, Miss Gabbert,” he told her. “I should not pry.”

“Fine job of it we’re doing,” Iris commented. “Sticking to the inoffensive pleasantries.”

“Yes. We shall refrain from anything but pleasantries while at Mother’s. Speak of the unusual string of sunny days that had recently favored the city or the inconveniences of an affliction of the lungs.”

“Nothing’s wrong with my lungs. ‘ealthy as a ‘orse, I am.”

Duncan slapped his brow. “Miss Gabbert!”

“What? We’re not in a lesson.”

“But you must train your speech patterns so you don’t have to think about them. The proper pronunciation will flow naturally. Try again.”

Iris lifted her chin and put a hand on her hip, trying to look him straight in the eye as she did so. A muscle in her neck twitched from the effort. “Healthy. As a horse. I should say.”

“Much better. At any rate, you might be in good health, but no doubt some matron or another calling on Mother will have some such ailment. And will want to go into detail about it. If you can manage listening, such a woman shall be your friend forever.”

“Matrons! You mean we’re going to a room filled with people?”

“It doesn’t matter. If others are there, they are but minor characters in the drama. As a dowager duchess, Mother will hold the highest social rank.”

“Other than your rank, you mean. Youarecoming?”

A smile lifted his lips once more. “I will be there. Truly, you’ve nothing to fear. You have done very well, and I’ve no doubt you shall charm my mother. Otherwise, I would not subject you to the experience.”

“Subject me?” Iris scoffed. “Don’t you make it sound like a laugh?”

“Mother is a woman of discernment. That much is true,” Duncan told her. “But there is a quality to you, Miss Gabbert, which even the most discerning individual will admire.”

That smile again. Grim as the usual set of his features were, the simple change in expression made everything around himsparkle. It made something inside Iris sparkle as well, a soft pulsing in the most private part of her anatomy.

Did Duncan think she wouldn’t notice that whenever he saw her, his claws retracted? Iris knew what that meant. Plenty of girls whispered about such things when the crowds thinned between the last interval and the final curtain call at Drury Lane.

Iris found no shame in being human in every sense of that word. Despite a hundred pamphlets and sermons about the “sins” of the flesh, she thought that opinion nonsense. If she thought of it at all. When they’d first met, she’d told Duncan she wouldn’t put up with anything untoward, but only because that’s what a girl was supposed to say under such circumstances.

If she were being honest with herself—not always the most pleasant thing—she had spent most of the night before tossing and turning, imagining what might happen were he to reach out to her for a caress. And she found her hand straying down and stroking herself as she imagined his large fingers doing the same.

More than anything, in that moment, she wanted him to touch her. To throw common sense and all his blasted schedules and rules out the window and admit he wanted her.

“That’s all well and good.” She kept her voice soft as snow while moving boldly to him, looking up to take in his fascinating features. Lord, but his form was large enough to make a girl swoon at the mere sight. “But when you said you had something in mind, I thought of something not involving your mother. Not at all.”

His lips were so tantalizingly close, and she thought it was only a matter of bridging that gap between them. But he was so wonderfully tall that she needed him to lean into her.

If only Duncan would throw all caution to the wind and claim her as any hot-blooded man would for a woman he desires. To gather her in his arms and carry her up the steps to hisbedroom. To press his lips to hers until they both opened their mouths entirely to one another, pin her wrists above her with his massive hand, and explore her body, feeling the curve of her waist and the fullness of her breasts.

Instead, he cleared his throat and stepped abruptly away. Duncan Higgins may have been from the Hidden Realm, but he was every bit the proper English gentleman, as much as any of these gents born into old and titled names in London or elsewhere.

“I’ll see if Mother is available for us to call on her on the morrow,” Duncan said. “Fifteen minutes should suffice.”

Chapter Nine

“Duncan! What a pleasure to see you, my dear.”

“Mother. You look well.”

After handing his top hat to the butler, Duncan strode across the neatly appointed parlor of the new townhouse on Park Lane. His mother sat in a rocking chair near the hearth with a woolen wrap around her shoulders. Though Orcan women did not share the immense proportions of their men, she had specially commissioned the rocking chair for her size, which was not outlandish but tall and muscular by human standards.

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